Augmentation in SOL Shogunate is the gene splice system layering biological upgrades onto Yuzuki. Augmentations slot in as collectible biological enhancements that grant new combat skills and survival traits. The system sits alongside weapon-elemental infusion and feeds into the wider combat sandbox documented on the overview page.
How Gene Splices Work
Gene splices are framed as collectible biological upgrades. Each one Yuzuki recovers grants either a new active capability, a passive survival trait, or a permanent change to how her body interacts with the lunar environment. Because the augmentations are biological, the visual signature is internal: Yuzuki appears like a normal person at a glance, with only a faint thread of gold visible in her musculature where modifications run beneath the skin.
Picking up a new gene splice expands the loadout pool that the player draws from before each encounter, the same pool used when configuring weapon infusions for the Vulnerability Matrix.
The Gene Board
Gene splices do not all live in one flat loadout list. They slot onto a Gene Board, and placement matters. Slices positioned next to each other can interact, and certain adjacencies unlock new abilities that neither slice would produce on its own. The board is the surface where the player decides not just which splices to run with but how they sit relative to each other.
On top of placement, the board allows mutation. Two existing slices can be fused together to produce a new one, with the originals consumed in the process. Mutation is the part of the system that does not unwind. The board layout itself can be rearranged at almost any point, but a mutation pair is gone once it is spent, which forces a real choice about how the player wants to evolve a build. Slices themselves come from two sources: defeating enemies and finding them in the environment, so the pace of new options is tied to how aggressively the player engages with combat and exploration.
Confirmed Augmentations
Augmentation | Role | Effect |
|---|---|---|
Bio-Ceramic Skin | Defensive | A kintsugi-inspired bioceramic plating that hardens visibly when Yuzuki enters vacuum or extreme environments. Resists radiation, shrugs off hostile temperature swings, and lets her keep fighting on exposed lunar surfaces and orbital encounters. Reads visually as gold-veined armor laid over her musculature. |
Enhanced Vision | Utility | A perception augmentation that improves how Yuzuki reads the battlefield. Specific functionality has not yet been detailed publicly. |
Defensive vs Offensive
Augmentations split along two broad lines, and the player picks how to weight them based on the encounter.
Defensive augments
keep Yuzuki alive in hostile environments. Bio-ceramic skin is the canonical example: vacuum, radiation, and extreme temperatures are deadly on the lunar exterior, and defensive splices are what make outdoor traversal and orbital combat survivable.
Offensive augments
expose enemy weaknesses and feed straight into the
Vulnerability Matrix
. Where bio-ceramic skin lets Yuzuki absorb a lunar storm, an offensive splice is what turns a stalemate against a heavily armored boss into a clean stagger window.
The two categories are not mutually exclusive. Most encounters reward a mixed build, with defensive splices as the floor and offensive splices as the ceiling.
Adaptable Loadout
The augmentation loadout is intentionally adaptable. Before each encounter the player configures which gene splices Yuzuki has active and pairs them with weapon infusions that match the threats ahead. A patrol of armored guards, a cinematic boss, and a sprint across the open lunar surface all reward different combinations.
The studio has framed this as a samurai philosophy of using whatever tools are available. The katana stays central, but the augments and infusions around it are the part that the player tunes between fights.
Where Augmentation Sits
Augmentation is tightly tied to the lunar setting. Surviving the outdoor surface and the airless transit corridors of the Moon is a real combat constraint that defensive augments answer. Bio-ceramic skin in particular is what makes the open exterior playable rather than a hazard zone the player avoids.
Unconfirmed Details
Several specifics have not been published yet, and the wiki will fill them in as more is revealed.
The full augmentation catalog beyond bio-ceramic skin and enhanced vision.
Stat tuning and per-augment numerical values.
Unlock pacing and where each augmentation appears in the campaign.
Augmentation costs, currencies, or any wider economy attached to gene splicing.
Slot limits or any cap on how many splices Yuzuki can run simultaneously.
Respec rules for swapping augmentations between encounters or runs.
Engineered Survival as Privilege
The studio has framed augmentation in the wider Shogunate world as a privilege of station, not a baseline. Genetic engineering of the kind that gave Yuzuki her bio-ceramic skin and combat conditioning is bound up with the resources and access of a great clan, and the gene-splice pool she draws from is treated as part of her inheritance from a house that was supposed to outlive her. Working underclass populations on the lunar exterior do not enjoy that protection: long-term low gravity wears down the body, and the offsets for it sit behind walls of money and rank. This is one of the lines the campaign uses to draw the divide between the Shogunate elite and everyone else on the Moon.