Best Early Upgrades in Dave the Diver

There are tons of things that you can spend your hard-earned gold on in Dave the Diver, but some upgrades are certainly better to prioritize. If you’re just starting out in Dave the Diver, this guide will cover the best upgrades to focus on early to ease your start to the game.

Best Early Game Upgrades to Prioritize in Dave the Diver

One of the first things that you can obtain and upgrade to make your life easier is the Small Net Gun. You’ll need plenty of fish, and capturing them alive helps ensure highly quality ingredients that mean you earn more gold. The Small Net Gun can be obtained after finding it in weapon cases and using it a few times; you’ll then be able to craft it in Duff’s Weapon Shop. Once you unlock the ability to upgrade weapons, upgrading the Small Net Gun to a Medium Net Gun is a big quality of life improvement. You’ll be able to capture up to 7 fish at once per net, and you’ll have 4 nets to use instead of 3, making it much easier to stock up the restaurant early on.

For the iDiver upgrades, you should consistently raise the levels of your Air Tank (to dive for longer) and the Diving Suit (to get to lower depths). Those are pretty much required to progress the game. The Cargo Box can be upgraded as needed, but I’d recommend focusing on the Harpoon Gun early. Not only will it start doing some good damage, but you’ll also be able to start collecting fish in one go, which will help speed up collection after you run out of nets.

The restaurant also has some very important upgrades that you’ll want to unlock as soon as possible. One of the best things you can do is find two good staff to hire: one who is good at cooking to assist Bancho in preparing food, and one who is good at serving. 

Once you have them, you can also upgrade them. Upgrading staff vastly improves their stats, and they also gain a new skill on their second upgrade. You’ll want to focus on upgrading your serving staff first. On the second upgrade, they will gain the ability to pour drinks, which is invaluable to have as they can be time consuming tasks that mean you could miss out on customers. With the extra drink pouring help and upgraded stats, your server will help you look after all the customers you get early on, building a stockpile of gold to level up everything else you need.

Those are the best ways to spend your gold on upgrades early in Dave the Diver. This path will make sure you get the most out of your playthrough, optimizing the processes and making things easier to manage while starting out! If you’re looking for more tips, check our full suite of guides to the game.