Upgrade Disk
Upgrade Disks are unique items in Blue Prince. Found in various rare rooms and hidden locations throughout the estate, Upgrade Disks can be used permanently upgrade certain rooms by improving their contents, effects, types and other properties.
How to obtain
There are multiple locations in which Upgrade Disks appear. Upgrade Disks themselves are not distinguishable, though using an Upgrade Disk usually permanently prevents it from spawning in the future.
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for all single-use Upgrade Disk locations.
There are 15 single-use locations where Upgrade Disks can be found; after they are used, they do not spawn again (although some get replaced with other items).
Some can be found by simply drafting certain rooms:
Office
Morning Room
There is an Upgrade Disk lying in plain sight on a table near one of the Morning Room doors.
Her Ladyship's Chamber
There is an Upgrade Disk lying in plain sight on the far table by Lady Epsen's Diary in Her Ladyship's Chamber.
Some can be obtained from certain rooms with a little more effort:
Commissary
An Upgrade Disk can be purchased for 15
from one of two reserve item selections at the Commissary. Selections including the Upgrade Disk are only offered while the standard selections are all unavailable, due to one or more of their special items not being in the item pool. Finding this Upgrade Disk therefore requires collecting enough of the Commissary's regular offerings to invalidate every standard selection. For instance, every standard selection includes either a Shovel or a Sledge Hammer, so acquiring these two items before drafting the Commissary will guarantee that the Upgrade Disk is offered.
The Upgrade Disk reserve selections are permanently removed from the Commissary once the Upgrade Disk has been used.
If other Upgrade Disk(s) are obtained after the disk from this location on the same day, then all of the Upgrade Disks obtained are used, the last Upgrade Disk obtained in the day will respawn, allowing it to be collected and used a second time.
Garage
An Upgrade Disk can be found in the trunk of the Garage car. Opening the trunk requires Car Keys.
Once used, the trunk instead contains two items. See Garage#Interactions for more information.
Great Hall
The Great Hall has seven locked doors; one directly opposite the door it was drafted from, and three on each side of the room. On each side, one door leads to an actual drafting door, one door leads to nothing, and one locked door leads to a "prize". One of these two prizes is an Upgrade Disk.
The layout is randomly chosen at the start of each day. The doors on the center of each side can never contain prizes, leaving only four possible places where the Upgrade Disk can be. Great Hall inner doors can be unlocked by almost anything that unlocks regular doors, including the Lock Pick Kit, most standard special keys such as the Prism Key and Master Key, and unlock effects such as the Foyer. By drafting into the Great Hall from the side, the door leading to the doorway can be identified, which may reduce the possible doors that need to be checked further.
After this Upgrade Disk has been used, or if it is otherwise unavailable, it is replaced by a random assortment of resource items.
The Upgrade Disk in the Great Hall
Resource items in the place where the Upgrade Disk once was
Some require more sophisticated tools to find the disks:
Vault
There is an Upgrade Disk in deposit box 304 in the Vault, alongside three cyan gems and Jean Ribbon's passport. Accessing this box requires Vault Key 304.
Using the Vault Key on the deposit box unlocks it permanently, allowing it to be accessed on subsequent days without the key, which is permanently removed from the item pool. The deposit box won't contain the gems on subsequent days, but will continue to contain the Upgrade Disk until it is used, after which it will only contain the passport.
Trading Post
The Trading Post contains a bundle of dynamite off to the side that cannot be picked up. Lighting the fuse of the dynamite with an ignition tool will detonate it during a short cutscene, permanently granting access to a hidden chamber containing moonshine equipment. The Upgrade Disk lies on one of the barrels to the right, alongside a stockpile of 40 which does not respawn.
Freezer
The Freezer has an Upgrade Disk hidden in a secret section of the room, sealed by a sheet of ice acting as a wall, alongside a letter from Denny Revane. The ice can be bypassed in several ways:
- By raising the temperature with a nearby Furnace
- By applying heat directly with an ignition tool
[Contraption Spoiler: Power Hammer] By demolishing it with the Power Hammer
Destroying the ice wall is not permanent and it is always found refrozen on future days along with all the other frozen items. The Upgrade Disk is not replaced by any other items once it has been used.
Thawed gems and doorway leading to the hidden section of the room
The Upgrade Disk and note within the hidden section of the room
Tomb
Immediately left after entering the Tomb main chamber, there are a pair of ruby socketed candles. Lighting both of these candles with an ignition tool causes the wall to permanently move out of the way, leading to a stone table with an Upgrade Disk and two pairs of ivory dice. On subsequent days, only one pair of dice spawn.
Location of the first set of candle holders
After lighting the first set of candle holders
Two pairs of dice and an Upgrade Disk found in the first location
The pair of dice found in the first location on subsequent days
Two disks are found underground:
The Foundation
Once the elevator in The Foundation has been activated, the lower level of the Foundation can be accessed. An Upgrade Disk can be found on a pile of boxes near the back of the room.
Abandoned Mine
There is an Upgrade Disk located in plain sight on the central platform in the Abandoned Mine's Torch Chamber. The chamber requires access to the north side of the Reservoir.
Two disks are hidden in Found Floorplans:
Lost & Found
There is an Upgrade Disk in Lost & Found's item pool. It is rather common, though like all random items, it can be made more likely to appear by acquiring other items in the pool.
Mechanarium
The 3rd diagonal door in the Mechanarium, found immediately to the left after entering, contains an Upgrade Disk.
And one disk requires solving a puzzle stretched out across several rooms:
Archives
There is an Upgrade Disk in the bottom drawer of the isolated Archives filing cabinet in the center of the room, alongside Mary Epsen's birth certificate. Opening this drawer requires a File Cabinet Key buried in a hidden dig spot in the Patio. The location of both the key and the drawer where it is used are hinted towards in the Aquarium, by markings that appear in the sand of the Patio and Archives tanks when the water is drained to a level of 1 or less in the Pump Room.
Digging up the key is a permanent action; if the key is lost without being used, it respawns on the side of the grill without needing to be dug up again. Using the key permanently consumes it and prevents it from being acquired again. The drawer remains unlocked permanently, though it can still be closed and opened again.
The mark by the grill in the Aquarium
Arrow mark in the Aquarium
The hidden dig spot in the Patio
Digging up the File Cabinet Key
Spot that the File Cabinet Key reappears in if it is not used
Cursor shown when hovering over the correct drawer
The Upgrade Disk alongside the birth certificate
The birth certificate
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for repeatable Upgrade Disks.
There is an Upgrade Disk available for trade in the Trading Post in exchange for rare items. Unlike the other Upgrade Disks, this disk can appear repeatedly. This repeatable disk is identical to the one-time use disks from other sources.
The full list of items that can be traded for the disk is Emerald Bracelet, Master Key, Ornate Compass, Sanctum Key, Cursed Effigy. (Trading a Sanctum Key does not count as using it, and it will spawn at its original location the next day.)
The trades only have to a chance to appear, as the Trading Post may also offer Allowance Tokens for these rare items, so to maximize chances it is best to bring in multiple items. The Sanctum Key in the Reservoir is the easiest to access of these rare items to farm for Upgrade Disks, although it must be done before that key is used.
Usage
While standing in front of any terminal with one or more Upgrade Disks, a prompt will appear allowing the player to insert a disk by pressing [E]. Doing so loads a "FLOORPLAN UPGRADE PROGRAM" which flips through various floorplans, seemingly at random, before settling on one to upgrade. Once the program is initiated, it is impossible to exit out of the terminal until the upgrade has been completed except by forcibly quitting the game.
There is no correlation between Upgrade Disks' locations and the rooms they upgrade; the rooms upgraded seem to be taken from a pool of upgradable rooms at random. There are exactly enough Upgrade Disks in the game to perform every upgrade that can be chosen, though the Floorplan Upgrade Program may show rooms during its selection animation that cannot be upgraded, such as the Workshop. Floorplans which have already been upgraded will also appear during this animation and are shown in their base form.
After a floorplan has been randomly chosen, three possible upgrades of the floorplan, are shown. Upgrades may alter a floorplan's effect, items, documents, appearance, color, types, description, and even gem cost, though only the new icons of the upgrades can be inspected before making a choice. Upgrades generally directly improve a floorplan's effect or add a beneficial effect to a room that did not have one, though some upgrades instead replace an existing effect with a different one. There are no upgrades that alter a floorplan's rarity or shape.
Selecting one of the three upgrades prompts the player to confirm, after which the program permanently replaces the chosen floorplan. Once the floorplan is successfully upgraded, the program exits and the Upgrade Disk is permanently consumed. If the floorplan is still in the draft pool when this is done, the new room can be drafted the same day. Upgrading a floorplan doesn't cause any instances of that room currently in the estate to be upgraded, though checking the Room Directory while in a room whose floorplan has just been upgraded will show the upgraded floorplan instead.
List of room upgrades
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for all upgradable rooms.
All upgradable rooms are rooms that appear in the initial draft pool. No Additions, Found Floorplans, or Outer Rooms can be upgraded.
There are eight numbered Blueprints that can be upgraded, listed here in Room Directory order:
Spare Room
Parlor
Billiard Room
Closet
Storeroom
Nook
Mail Room
Aquarium
Seven rooms from the unnumbered categories can be upgraded:
Boudoir
Guest Bedroom
Nursery
Bunk Room
Hallway
Courtyard
Cloister
And one room can be upgraded twice, with three different sets of options depending on which upgrade was chosen initially:
Spare Bedroom
Spare Greenroom
Spare Hall
No rooms in the Shops or Red Rooms categories can be upgraded.
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for using more Upgrade Disks.
By using the Trading Post's Upgrade Disk from trading rare items multiple times, it is possible to get more Upgrade Disks than there are rooms to upgrade. Once this occurs, a random upgrade room will be chosen, giving three options for what to change the upgrade to.
If the Cloister is selected, a new batch of three upgrades are chosen, which will frequently be different to the initial three. The Spare Room's original upgrade (into the three colors) never appears, instead just offering a choice between the three rooms of the chosen color. This means the Spare Room's original upgrade cannot be changed.
- Switching off the Cloister of Joya keeps the effect permanently, meaning a good endgame strategy is to start with Joya then switch to a different Cloister to reap the benefits of both upgrades.
- Switching off the Speakeasy causes Dartboard Puzzles to be the difficulty appropriate for the current number of Dartboard Puzzles solved (including the easy ones), which will likely include several concepts that the player has not seen before at once.
Interactions
- Upgrade Disks stored in Coat Check or retained by a Moon Pendant will not spawn in their usual locations.
- [Permanent Addition: Blackbridge Grotto] The Blackbridge Grotto terminal can also be used to run Upgrade Disks.
Additional information
- The number of Upgrade Disks used is tracked in the Discovery Records page of Mount Holly Records, found in the upper section of the Library.
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for a Drafting Strategy book.
Upgrades and Upgrade Disks are described in Drafting Strategy: Architectural Digest Vol. 4. Page 8 describes the basic function of Upgrade Disks and the process of using them, while Page 9 shows all the upgraded floorplan options of the following rooms:
Additionally, Page 9 reveals that the total number of available Upgrade Disks is 16.
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for Satellite Dish.
One of the Staff Announcements messages reveals that there are 16 Upgrade Disks.
A follow-up message lists Her Ladyship's Chamber, Mechanarium, Freezer, Morning Room, Tomb, Great Hall, Vault, and Garage as rooms with disks.
A follow-up message also mentions one in the Archives, requiring a File Cabinet Key from the grill in the Patio to obtain. It also mentions that the hint for it is in the Aquarium.