What causes a purchased meta upgrade not changing run starting stats?

Starting stats are initialized from base values, and the permanent meta upgrade is read too late or never queried during run setup, so the upgrade has no effect.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix a Meta Upgrade Not Affecting Starting Stats

Quick answer: Read all purchased meta upgrades when constructing the RunState and fold their bonuses into starting stats before the first floor loads.

Spending meta currency on +10 starting HP should show up next run. If it does not, the upgrade is not being read at run setup. Applying meta bonuses during state construction fixes it.

How to fix it

1. Apply meta bonuses at run setup

When building the RunState, query the persistent meta upgrades and add their bonuses into starting HP, damage, and other stats before any floor generates.

2. Keep upgrades as data

Store purchased upgrades as a list of stat modifiers in the profile so applying them at run start is a single fold over the list.

3. Recompute, do not patch live values

Derive starting stats by combining base values with meta modifiers in one computation, so adding a new upgrade later cannot be missed by a forgotten patch site.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unity error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Ship the fix, watch the signature disappear from the next build. That's how you know it's really gone.