Level and rarity are separate
A card has a stored level and a displayed rarity. The normal card-level cap is 3. Raising a card’s level improves the values authored for that skill and can raise its rarity alongside the level. A higher rarity does not mean the card has already reached its level cap.
Different skills improve in different ways. Beam gains power and uptime. Barrier gains duration and a shorter cooldown. A resource refill cannot become fuller than full, so its upgrade can improve how soon it returns instead. Read the before-and-after preview rather than assuming every level adds the same percentage of damage.
How to raise a card’s level
An Ascension Sigil raises one chosen card by one level. Open your bag, select the card, and use Ascend. The current cost is one sigil per upgrade. Sigils are dedicated upgrade items; they are not the same currency as crystals.
Ascension Shrines provide another route by charging crystals. A boss reward can also offer a card upgrade. These methods improve the card you already carry, preserving its identity and elemental choices. You do not need a duplicate card, and matching two copies is not the current upgrade rule.
| Source | Payment | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Ascension Sigil | 1 sigil | Raise one eligible card by one level |
| Ascension Shrine | Displayed crystal price | Raise one eligible card by one level |
| Boss upgrade choice | One available reward pick | Raise the selected eligible card by one level |
What happens to rarity
Normal leveling raises rarity by one step per level, up to the Mythic ceiling. A card already near that ceiling still gains its level even if its rarity has no further ordinary step to take. The level cap remains the upgrade limit.
Fighting Aura appears in several starting rarity forms. Those are versions of the same skill family, not seven unrelated roles for a deck. An upgrade keeps the exact card you hold, raises its stored level, and calculates its new rarity. It never walks through the starting-rarity forms or replaces the card with another version.
Do not judge an upgrade only by its new frame color. A cooldown reduction, a longer control window or an increase to a supporting effect may be the part that makes the card fit your build.
Temporary and Cosmic levels
Star can temporarily raise another card’s effective level after the required power-up sequence. This bonus lasts for a limited number of uses and cannot exceed the normal cap. It is a tactical effect, rather than a permanent substitute for spending an upgrade.
Cosmic lets you choose how to use it. Place a Cosmic Primary Element in the primary slot to obtain the skill’s Cosmic variant, or place it in the Super Element slot to grant one extra effective card level and lift the effective level cap by one. The Super Element form can also lift the rarity ceiling to Cosmic. Removing that form returns a Cosmic Primary Element to your bag.
An effective level beyond the normal cap does not promise that every numerical field gains another universal increment. Skills use their authored level values. Read the resolved card description to see the result for that particular card.
Which card should you upgrade first?
Prioritize a card that already does important work in your opening hand. A reliable attack is a strong candidate when fights are taking too long; a defensive card is worth considering when your damage is sufficient but one mistake ends the run.
Check whether the next level changes the part you need. A longer effect may be wasted if you already end the fight before it expires. A shorter cooldown may matter more in a four-card deck that repeatedly uses the same hand. Once a card is capped, use later rewards to strengthen its supporting effects or fill a genuine gap in your build.
