Splatoon Raiders Early Tank Upgrades: Gadget Slots

Progressing early in Splatoon Raiders depends heavily on how you spend limited skill points on your Tank. The most impactful early upgrades focus on boosting how much damage your Gadgets can deal and how many Gadget Part slots you can equip, rather than spreading points across everything at once.

What to prioritize for early Tank upgrades

With early-game skill points in short supply, the game’s most efficient growth path is to plan which stats to level first. The best starting targets are:

Gadget Part Slots and Gadget Damage (best upgrades to prioritize first)
Weapon Damage (next step after Gadgets)
HP (generally a “later if needed” choice)

How each stat affects your Tank

The early priority makes more sense when you understand what each upgrade actually changes:

HP: increases your Max HP.
Weapon Damage: increases the damage dealt by your equipped weapon.
Gadget Damage: increases damage from your equipped Gadgets (including examples like the Splatchet).
Gadget Part Slots: increases the maximum number of Gadget Part slots available for each Tank.

Important clarification: raising Gadget Part Slots does not increase how many Gadget Parts you can equip by itself—it increases the slot capacity you have to spend on parts.

Choosing between Gadget Part Slots and Gadget Damage

Your best first move depends on what you can already equip. In general, Gadget Part Slots are usually the stronger early priority, but only when you have enough parts to use the higher capacity. If you’re deciding between the two, use this practical logic:

Upgrade Gadget Part Slots first when you plan to stick with one Tank type early (for example, the beginner-friendly Power Tank). Because Gadget Parts are tied to the equipped Tank type, staying with a single Tank helps you accumulate parts for that type—then you’ll want more capacity to equip stronger ones.
Upgrade Gadget Damage first if you expect to switch Tanks frequently at the beginning. If you’re changing Tank types often, you may not have enough Gadget Part slots to fully benefit from higher-capacity setups, making extra damage from Gadgets a more immediate win.

Gadget Part capacity and limits (how the system works)

Gadget Parts come with a slot cost. Your Tank has a fixed Gadget Part Slot capacity, and parts must fit within it.

Each Gadget Part uses a certain number of slots.
If your capacity is 20 and a part uses 5 slots, you would have 15 slots remaining afterward.
You can equip up to 9 total parts per gadget, as long as the total slot usage does not exceed your Tank’s Gadget Part Slot capacity.

What happens after you outgrow your early capacity

Once you have more Gadget Parts than you can currently equip, Gadget Part Slots should become your main priority. The slot bonuses let you field better parts, and those gains outweigh the extra damage you might get from further Gadget or Weapon upgrades.

By contrast, HP upgrades tend to matter less early on. The reason is that you can recover HP quickly and you have multiple lives, so survivability isn’t the limiting factor at the start compared to improving Gadget effectiveness.