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Progression in Marvel's Wolverine runs on two currencies and one equipment budget. Technique Points buy and improve combat moves, upgrade points earned through exploration feed the same trees, and Adaptations are passive perks equipped against a limited allowance rather than stacked without cost. Logan does not gain more health from levelling up; the healing factor covers survivability instead.

Technique Points

Technique Points are earned as you play and spent across the game's progression trees, mainly on Special Techniques, the unlockable combat moves assigned to shortcut slots. Techniques can be upgraded as well as unlocked, and Insomniac's own settings list refers to suit and technique purchases as menu actions, so both are bought through a storefront-style interface rather than found in the world.

Four points can be granted before you start: three come with the Digital Deluxe Edition and one with any pre-order. See Editions and Pre-Order Bonuses.

Adaptations and the strand allowance

Adaptations are passive perks that upgrade long-term effects and skills, including Logan's health and his Rage meter. They are mixed and matched to suit how you fight, and some can be used to make the game harder rather than easier.

The catch is capacity. Adaptations are equipped against a limited strand allowance, sometimes described as mutation strands, so building a loadout means choosing between perks instead of taking all of them. Raising that ceiling is one of the rewards for finishing Nightmare Door trials quickly.

More on those trials is on Nightmare Doors.

Suits and crafting

Suits are crafted rather than simply unlocked. Mike Daly has said plainly that the game lets you craft suits, and hidden crates scattered through the levels contain the raw materials that feed it. Official material describes the crates as holding raw upgrade materials; hands-on coverage is more specific and ties them directly to suit crafting.

Hands-on sessions counted 27 suit slots and roughly 20 claw designs in the customisation menus. Only a subset of those has been named.

The named suits and claws are listed separately.

Collectibles

The whisky bottles are the most unusual of the three because the collectible and the story are the same object. Mike Daly has described Enhanced Senses tracking smells that trigger lost memories, in the form of whiskey bottles Logan had an experience with and simply could not recall until he had that smell in hand again. The spelling appears both ways in official and press material.

Finding any of them relies on the same exploration tools; see Enhanced Senses.

Mission Replay

Mission Replay lets you return to any completed mission to find collectibles you missed. In a linear campaign that is the mechanism that keeps completion possible without a second playthrough, and it pairs with the Nightmare Doors as the studio's stated reason for encouraging mission replays at all.

Puzzles

The game contains puzzles, confirmed by a Skip Puzzle option in the settings that lets you bypass them outright. No puzzle type has been described in detail.

New Game Plus

New Game Plus is supported at launch. Mike Daly has confirmed that it carries over all progression and lets you start the story again, and it adds optional modifiers that can be mixed and matched.

Those modifiers change the pace rather than just the numbers. Daly has described them as able to really accelerate combat and make it feel extreme, both in how quickly you can take out enemies and in how quickly you can get a game over. Senior project director Jess Reiner-Reed has confirmed that some Adaptations are only available in New Game Plus. The individual modifiers have not been named.