Permanent Progression and Unlocks

This is a roguelite, not a roguelike, and the difference is everything for how you should approach the first ten hours. In Eternal Palace Sakura, unlocked weapons, abilities and upgrades persist across runs. You are not starting from zero each time. That single fact changes how you should spend your first run.

Run one is a scouting run

Because the progress bank is permanent but the palace is not — it rearranges itself every time — the first run is not about clearing the palace. It is about finding out which fighting arts you want in a build you will actually enjoy using. You are gathering options.

• Do not spread attributes thin across every art you see. Depth beats breadth.
• Pick one combat route and buy into it. A coherent half-built style beats a scattered full one.
• Take the exploration attributes even when the route does not need them — they are the cheap half of the income.

What actually persists

Element	Persists?
Unlocked weapons	Yes — carried between runs
Unlocked abilities	Yes — carried between runs
Permanent upgrades / attributes	Yes — the meta-progression
Fighting arts (50+)	Yes — unlocked permanently once bought
The palace layout	No — regenerated each run
Run-specific resources	No — reset on death

That table is the reason the game feels good to return to. The build is yours; the challenge is not. Every run is a new arrangement of a familiar set of tools, which is exactly the loop that makes fifty fighting arts feel like fifty options instead of fifty chores.

Planning toward the endgame

Because the endgame is gated behind power, the sensible order is: settle on a route in the early runs, then spend the mid-game attributes on the arts that multiply that route rather than the ones that merely add to it. A wide combo that clears trash but loses to bosses is a build that stalls. Learn the boss, then buy the answer to it.