Sublight Armoury & Unlocks Guide: Research Tiers and Meta Progression
How Sublight Armoury progression works: run-earned meta currency, research tiers, ships, weapons, tools, permanent upgrades, and why some unlocks stay unavailable.
The Armoury is Sublight’s between-run progression layer. Runs earn meta currency that unlocks weapons, tools, ships, and permanent upgrade tracks. Some content is research-tier gated, and later demo patches added clearer UI showing which mission unlocks the next tier. If something remains locked, do not assume buying the previous node is enough; check the research requirement.
What changed in 0.17.0
The 0.17.0 overhaul introduced the current Armoury model and intentionally gated some early content to make onboarding clearer. This is the backbone of long-term build variety.
Research tiers
Players in the video corpus repeatedly stop to ask where the next research tier comes from. Patch 0.17.6 explicitly added an Armoury element showing which mission has the next research-tier unlock and whether the next tier was unavailable in the demo. That is the key troubleshooting step.
What to buy first
Spend for build access, not collection completion. Unlock a weapon family, ship, or equipment option that supports a playstyle you already understand. Broadly buying one node in every category gives you more menu entries but not necessarily a stronger run.
Difficulty and unlock incentives
Demo gameplay showed harder clears exposing more unique unlock incentives. Exact Early Access conditions can change, so use the Armoury’s current mission/tier text as the source of truth when a requirement differs from older footage.