Well, the price to pay for the safety of your HP is way high in order to journey down the road without a scratch. But it's really ridiculous...I mean, I only managed to upgrade my weapon to the 3rd best type (Ryudo, anyway) ever since I started on it! All I can do right now is just pray for some random armor goodie everytime I hack a suspicious rock, mushroom, or two. Damn, upgrading weapons is just a totally #&$^%*( business everywhere I go....