When your character dies in Rogue Legacy 2, there are three options to choose from to play on your next dungeon attempt. Not much is with you when you die, but what ripples through the generations are the upgrades and armor you choose before you begin your journey. These upgrades are represented by the castle that you regularly build by purchasing the different parts of it and using your hard-earned gold. Not all of them are available yet as the game is still in Early Access. Some are better than others to start with.
Blacksmith and Enchantress
These are great to unlock first and essential. They're closer to the bottom and require you to buy before you can build your castle. The blacksmith grants you access to the armor and the enchantress unlocks the runes. You probably won't come across any pieces of armor or runes to use until you get stronger. You might find yourself finding a few blueprints of armor on your first few runs. Anyway, except to catch those first two.
All classes
Everyone has access to the knight, but there are three more available that you need to unlock with the castle: Barbarian, Mage, and Archer. Unlock them to increase the number of classes your kids can take when you choose them after you die. A larger pool gives you the flexibility to change your approach to the castle, improving some of the anomalous traits your kids receive depending on the class type.
Foundry (armor)
Above the mage class is the foundry upgrade where you can increase your character's starting armor. It's not much, but building on that start will be good for you. It gives you extra armor on top of any blacksmith armor your character is already wearing. He can add a decent amount to provide you with more health and get you further into the dungeon.
Fashin Chambers (weight capacity)
You can find this upgrade under the Blacksmith. This increases the weight of armor your characters can wear. The higher your weight capacity, the more armor your character can wear, giving you access to the higher quality parts you can find as you deepen the dungeon.
Arsenal and study room (melee and spell damage)
The arsenal (increased melee damage) is to the left of the barbarian, and the study room (increased spell damage) is to the right of the mage. You can switch between upgrading these two. You may even prefer melee attackers over mages, thus encouraging you to grab more arsenal. While the armor helps you survive, being able to kill enemies with a single hit clears more obstacles in front of you.
Disorder health (max health)
Your armor eventually breaks after your character has been hit enough times, and you only have health left. To increase these on all of your characters, you want to put more gold in the dining room. It helps you stay alive through all characters, regardless of traits. The only thing it doesn't help with is when a character has the 150% gold bonus to have the hit kill anomaly.
