Cap Raiser

A Video Game's Status Effect, item, power, ability, equipment, or any other thing that increases one's numerically defined limits, a.k.a Caps, which is also the super-trope of this trope. Can't upgrade a cap without one existing in the first place.

In Metroidvanias, they're usually placed in hidden areas as a reward for exploration, given as an easy way to make the player feel like they accomplished something, or locked behind plot points like a Double Unlock to lock away things in an easy way. Can't buy the things that need more money to buy or mana to cast, until the limit has been raised such that those things are affordable.

Role Playing Games that have both Character Levels and Hit Points and other values that are both consumable and capped, likely will increase those caps when the levels go up. If a game also has a Class or Job System, a character promoting to a Prestige Class or changing/adding jobs will commonly either directly raise their caps or adjust them to be more in line with their new Class/Job.

Supertrope of Heart Container, which is for when it's permanent, applies itself when acquired, and affects Hit Points. Also related to Wallet of Holding, as there are games where you can increase the cap of the money you can carry.

This has high overlap with Rare Candy because that is another trope about stat-increasing items, but which is about increasing current value, usually, and are decided to be used, not automatically so. It isn't a subtrope because the stats a Rare Candy increases doesn't have to deal with increasing a cap at all, such as the common case of an "attack" stat whose only limit is 999, with a character being at the max Character Level only taking the stat part of the way there, needing the Candies to get it to its true maximum.

High overlap with Character Level, since usually, when Character Level goes up, stats that have caps, have their caps raised. May also be a case of Attack Speed Buff since some of them will raise a One Bullet at a Time cap.

Compare with Reduced Resource Cost in regards to items and resources, for another way to improve the value of individual resource units, by making things cost less instead of being able to hold more of them.

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Examples:

Literature

• Mother of Learning: Mages' capacity for personal mana grows over time as they use it, but it caps out at approximately four times their starting reserves; their souls can't handle anymore. There are ways to reach the cap faster, but they have serious side effects and don't actually make you stronger in the long run. However, divine magic bypasses the usual rules and is capable of reinforcing a soul to grant more mana capacity without the usual problems. Zach has a divine blessing that doubles his mana capacity — but it came with terms and conditions that will kill him if he doesn't meet them.
• Tree of Aeons: Most people find that levelling up becomes almost impossible around approximately level 80; the exact point varies by the individual, but level 100 is essentially unheard of outside of special cases like heroes blessed by the gods. However, by experimenting with soul manipulation, Aeon is able to produce a [Soul-Strengthening Seed], which someone can consume to break the cap and ascend further. After taking a seed, no actual limit has been found, except the need for lots of Level Grinding. Too bad that the ingredients are fragments of the shredded souls of executed criminals...

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition:
  • Most powers that don't use spell slots are limited to a few uses a day. The only way to increase the amount of uses is to gain character levels (or sometimes, increasing a stat).
  • Each stat normally has a cap of 20. The capstone ability for the Barbarian, Primal Champion, increases the Barbarian's Strength and Constitution scores by four points each, while also raising their cap to 24.
• Warhammer 40,000: Higher-tier units are usually available in limited quantities, but some special characters allow certain units to be taken as a standard choice.

Video Games

• Age of Empires: Building Houses, Manors, and Villages increases the total amount of units that you can build.
  • The various economic technologies in Age of Empires I increase both resource gathering rate and carrying capacity for wood, gold, and stone.
  • Age of Empires II: The Wheelbarrow and Hand Cart technologies boost Villager carrying capacity in addition to boosting their movement speed. The Aztecs can carry more resources per trip as a civilization bonus, while the Goths add +10 to their overall unit cap. The Chinese and Incas have Town Centers and Houses that provide additional population space, while the Huns start out with the maximum population space available without the need or ability to build Houses.
  • Age of Empires III: Both the Chinese and the Russians can go over the standard population cap of 200 to a max of 220, and the former can build Villages that provide more space than Houses and can be further upgraded to provide even more space. The Lakota, like the Huns in the previous game, start out at max population space and don't need to build Houses.
  • Age of Mythology: Most civilizations can only sustain a maximum of 100 Faith at any given time. Followers of Zeus boost this limit to 200, double the usual amount.
• ANNO: Mutationem: Ann starts off being only able to carry five items. After collecting several Grom Points for the Skill Tree, she'll be able to upgrade the total of how many more items and equipment she can carry up to twenty at maximum.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • The Ring of Wizardry, "Evermemory", doubles the number of first-level slots a mage can fill with memorized spells, although multiple rings can only raise the limit to twelve slots (which is still far more than can be achieved without them).
  • The Amulet of Metaspell Influence, "The Amplifier", adds an extra second-level spell slot.
  • Edwin's Amulet adds an extra spell slot at every level. However, only Edwin can wear it; it can't even be removed from him.^note Technically it isn't prohibited for others to wear, so if a game editor is used to add it to someone else, it won't be removed on level up.
• Banjo-Kazooie: In the first game, Cheato grants special codes to Banjo and Kazooie so they can go to Treasure Trove Cove and input it in the interior of the Sandcastle to increase the cap of a specific item: Blue eggs, red feathers and gold feathers. In Banjo-Tooie, it is required to give Cheato his lost pages first, due to Gruntilda punishing him for having helped the duo in the first game.
• The Binding of Isaac:
  • Your Tears stat (fire rate) is normally capped at 5 tears per second. However, certain items don't increase Tears but actually raise your fire rate directly, which will exceed the normal cap all the way until the nearly-impossible-to-reach hard cap of 120 tears per second.
  • Normally you can only carry a maximum of 99 pennies at a time. As of Repentance, the item Deep Pockets lets you carry up to 999 instead.
  • Birthright is an item that has a different, unique effect for each character. A few characters have a Birthright effect that breaks certain caps.
    • Magdalene's Birthright effect increases her heart limit from the normal 12 all the way up to 18.
    • Keeper is normally limited to only 3 Coin Hearts (a special heart type that's restored by money instead of health pickups), but Birthright will increase it to 4.
    • Samson gains damage for the rest of the floor each time he takes damage, up to 10 times. With Birthright, he can get the bonus an additional 4 times each floor.
    • Tainted Magdalene slowly loses her health over time, eventually bleeding down to only two hearts. Birthright gives her a third permanent heart that doesn't bleed away.
• BioShock:
  • Bioshock 2: Researching the Thuggish Splicer will raise the maximum amount of money Delta can hold by 200, and the cap starts at 600.
  • BioShock Infinite: Infusions are pickups that boost the player's choice of limits: health, salts, or shields.
• Borderlands: Storage Deck Upgrades, a.k.a SDU-s, upgrade the inventory size so more flexible inventory configurations, and more loot to sell, are holdable. Also there's weapon slot upgrades to allow more guns to quickly switch between instead of having to go through the inventory menu for them.
• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon:
  • Mana cap increasers look like potions of blue liquid.
  • Big Heart Symbol-s are the icon for Hearts cap increasers.
• Civilization: In the Gathering Storm expansion for Civilization VI, constructing buildings from the Encampment district like Barracks and Armories increases the maximum capacity of your strategic resources like Iron and Oil.
• Command & Conquer: The early games in the series limited the amount of currency (Tiberium / Ore) the player had at any time, which could be increased by building more refineries or silos.
• In Crimson Glaive Sigma, you can find upgrades that increase the energy capacity for your guns.
• The Dark Cloud games:
  • Both games have the Fruit of Eden, which increases any character's life meter.
  • Dark Cloud: Gourds increase characters' thirst meters.
• Dawn of War: Infantry and vehicles use separate caps, limited to 20 for both (usually). However, each faction uses a different way to achieve maximum cap:
  • Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, and Sisters of Battle use research to increase each cap by 5.
  • Every Webway Gate built by the Eldar increases their cap further. The Avatar of Khaine also increases both caps by 4 (but since it costs 5, it actually only decreases it by 1).
  • The Orks increase their cap by building WAAAGH! Banners. They have a maximum of 100 cap, since unlike other factions, each individual ork in a squad takes up 1-2 population. Some units are only available past a certain amount of units, and a bug allows a player to save and load a game, resetting the cap to zero, allowing them to train hundreds of units.
  • The Tau and Dark Eldar increase their cap via upgrade buildings.
  • Every production building built by the Imperial Guard increases the corresponding cap by 2.
  • The Necrons' cap increases with every Obelisk they build.
• Disco Elysium: Some of Thoughts in Thought Cabinet allows you to raise learning cap for abilities. For example Regular Law Official raises all learning caps by 3.
• Donkey Kong 64:
  • By rescuing Banana Fairies (by taking photo pictures of them), the amount of Banana Camera films, explosive oranges and Crystal Coconuts will increase (by one each time a Banana Fairy is rescued).
  • In later worlds, Funky and Candy will put into sale numerical upgrades for their respective products, provided that the Kongs bought the latter in the earlier worlds: More ammunition for the fruit-shooting weapons, and more stored energy for the musical instruments.
• Doom:
  • Doom's Backpack doubles the amount of ammo that you can carry for all of your weapons.
  • Doom (2016)'s Argent Cells, when acquired, boost the player's choice of stat they boost, out of max health, armor, or ammo capacity. Each can only be boosted so many times before they can't anymore and are removed from being selected.
  • Doom Eternal: Sentinel Crystals are the currency for Perks that raise caps.
• Dune II:
  • Building windtraps increases the amount of power available to you, which is necessary to create new buildings safely.
  • Building spice silos allows you to store more spice (currency) at one time.
  • The maximum number of units in the game at one time (yours plus the enemy's) is fixed. Once that cap is hit, you can't build any more units. However, each enemy unit you destroy allows you to build an additional unit.
  • The maximum number of buildings in the game at one time (yours plus the enemy's) is fixed. Once that cap is hit, you can't build any more buildings. However, each enemy building you destroy allows you to build an additional building.
• In 8Bit Killer, you can find large ammo containers that increase your ammo capacity.
• The Empire Earth series:
  • Empire Earth:
    • The Coliseum wonder increases the builder's total population cap while lowering it for everyone else.
    • Population cap can regularly be increased by research every few eras.
  • Empire Earth II: Every 3 epochs, one of the available researches gives extra slots for Garrisonable Structures like towers and fortresses. The latter is particularly important for Western civilizations, as their modern-age power lets them teleport a garrison anywhere on the map via air-drop.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: The 3D remake has an Augment system that enables you to give characters abilities they wouldn’t ordinarily have. One of them is the Limit Break augment, which can only be obtained in New Game Plus and enables which ever character equips it to break the game’s 9999 damage limit.
  • Final Fantasy X: Character damage is normally limited to 9999, but custom weapons can be given a property that increases this to 99999 (and legendary weapons have it by default). Similarly, custom armor can be crafted that raises the HP and MP thresholds from 9,999/999 HP/MP to 99,999/9,999.
  • Crisis Core: The normal caps for Damage, HP, MP, and AP are 9,999, 9,999, 999, and 999. Zack can find items that raise the caps of each one of these, allowing Zack to deal 99,999 damage and have 99,999 HP, 9,999 MP, and 9,999 AP. Especially for damage and HP, he's gonna need those caps lifted for the late-game missions.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • In the Eureka exploratory zone, you can acquire up to five magicite through the main campaign to increase your elemental power. But by gathering certain Rare Random Drop items in Eureka Pyros and Eureka Hydatos, you can obtain a sixth and seventh magicite to become even more powerful.
    • In-story, this is the focus of Cocobusi's research in the Thaumaturge quests. Due to being born the Un-Sorcerer, Cocobusi hoped to use alchemy to develop a potion capable of increasing his aetheric potential and achieve his dream of becoming a mage. The potion fails at its intended purpose, but it's potent enough to revive Cocobuki after he offered his aether to Morno to draw the voidsent out of Cocobusi's body.
• The Final Fantasy Legend: Rare Candy:
  • HP600 potions cost 5000GP, and will boost your max HP by a random amount from 5 to 20 points as long as your maximum HP is under 600.
  • HP200 potions cost 100GP which will boost your maximum HP by one point apiece even if your maximum HP exceeds 200.
• Fire Emblem:
  • In most games, an unpromoted unit's stats, except for HP and Luck, cap at 20. From Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade onward, promoting a unit will raise these caps. The cap of each stat can differ from class to class, but they can be as high as 30.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening has the Limit Breaker skill which raises the equipped unit's stat caps by 10.
  • Fire Emblem Fates has the Eternal Seal, which raises a character’s level cap by 5. This is important as, unlike in ‘’Awakening,'' there’s no way to reset a unit’s level. (It carries over between classes)
• Grimms Notes: An update from mid-2018 introduced Poems of Trascendence, which were consumables that allowed Heroes to increase their level cap from 70 to 90, obtained only during events.
• In Hollow Knight, you can collect vessel fragments that assemble into intact vessels which act as an extension of the player's soul meter; any soul they collect while that meter is full will instead go into those vessels, which will quickly refill the primary meter should it ever get used.
• Hay Day: Building supplies like nails, planks, and duct tape can be used to increase the storage capacity of your barn (which stores items) and silo (which stores crops).
• Hearthstone: Wildheart Guff costs 5 Mana. When played, he increases the player's mana Cap from 10 to 20.
• Jet Force Gemini: Scattered around the planets and space vessels are Capacity Crates, which raise the ammunition cap of specific weapons. Unusually, they do not refill the weapons' ammunition proper, so it's up to you to find ammo crates for that (or, if it's a rare weapon like the Shocker or the Flamethrower, buy s refill to Diamond Geezer).
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • It's common, but not guaranteed that a game in the franchise requires Link to earn larger wallets that will allow him to increase his Wallet of Holding and carry more Rupees.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Link can only hold 8 bombs. He can later upgrade his bomb capacity to 12 and then 16 if he finds certain old men in dungeons and pays the 100 rupee fee to upgrade.
• Metroid: Part of the 100% Completion consists of expanding the caps of Samus' Life Meter and ammunitiion by collectiong Energy Tanks, Missile and Super Missile Tanks, and Power Bomb Tanks; if it make limit number go up, it's a tank. There are also game-specific collectables like the Ammo Expansions in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, the Ship Missile Expansions in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and the Aeion Tanks in Metroid Dread.
• Octopath Traveler: Both games have a damage limit of 9999 and allow the Warrior job to unlock a passive skill that when equipped raises the damage limit to 99999.
• Pikmin: Inverted. For most installments, the maximum amount of Pikmin that you can have out at a time is 100, and in certain games the cap is decreased depending on special factors.
  • Pikmin 3 Deluxe: The maximum is decreased to 60 in Ultra Spicy mode.
  • Pikmin 4 changes this, however. At first, the max is only 20, but there is a new item called "Flarlic," which increases the max by 10 each time until the max is also 100. Extra Flarlic gives other rewards instead.
• Pokémon:
  • The PP Up and PP Max items, the latter only appearing from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and beyond, raise the max amount of PP a single move can have. PP Up raises it by 1/5 of the base value, and PP Max sets it to the maximum possible amount at 8/5 of base value.
  • Pokémon GO: You can spend 200 coins on an "item bag" to increase your inventory space by 50 slots each; a similar upgrade is available to increase Pokemon storage space. The default is 350 items and 300 Pokemon, but maximum storage is in the thousands and increases slightly with new updates. Some events allow greater storage increases at a lower cost, usually to promote a big update.
• Quake II:
  • The Bandolier item raises the cap total of Bullets, Shells and Cells (and in the 2023 remastered edition, also Flechettes from Ground Zero) by 50; Slugs (and in the 2023 remastered edition, also the Mag Slugs from The Reckoning) by 25; and Disruptor Rounds (in the 2023 remastered edition) by 9.
  • The Ammo Pack item raises the cap total of Bullets, Shells and Cells (and in the 2023 remastered edition, also Flechettes from Ground Zero) by 100; Grenades, Rockets and Slugs (and in the 2023 remastered edition, also the Mag Slugs from The Reckoning) by 50; and Disruptor Rounds (in the 2023 remastered edition) by 18.
• Rise of Nations: Since resources are infinite in this game, the limiting factor for the economy is the rate at which resources are gathered, which is limited by the Commerce Cap. Researching Commerce technologies at the Library boosts the Commerce Cap, allowing the player to get more out of their economy.
• Science Girls!: Skills cost more as they go up in level, so skill levels are initially capped to certain levels determined by characters' SP, a.k.a Mana caps, but skills can only be upgraded so much before they hit true programmed limits on their growth.
• Starcraft: Food cap (Supply/Control/Psi for Terrans/Zerg/Protoss respectively) is exclusive to each faction rather than a shared one.
  • Terran Supply Depots don't do anything other than increasing "food" until Starcraft II, where they can be raised and lowered to serve as walls.
  • The Zerg are unique in that their population cap is increased by units rather than buildings, and these Overlords also serve as flying detectors and transports (in II, they lost the detection ability, needing to mutate into a different unit to do that).
  • Protoss Pylons power nearby buildings in addition to providing population cap.
• Stellaris:
  • There is a cap on how many stocks of regular resources (rare strategic resources are uncapped) your empire can store before any excess is discarded. However, building resource silos planetside and in spaceborne starports raises these caps by a set amount for each silo built.
  • Researching mega-engineering and having the Galactic Market open also increases the resource cap by 20,000 and 10,000, respectively.
• In the original Tales of Phantasia for Super Famicom, you can find food bags that increase how much food your party can carry to eat during travel.
• Titan Quest: Inventory upgrades, a.k.a Inventory Bags, are given as quest rewards at certain points, but since talking to people isn't necessary for a lot of the game, they can be missed. Partially covered by Developer's Foresight because if the first one is missed and returned for, the giver says:
  What are you doing back here, warrior?
  Forget something?
• Vampire Survivors: Beating Capella Magna for the first time unlocks the Great Gospel, which allows you to turn on the "Limit Break" option on the stage select. This has nothing to do with the Limit Break trope, but instead replaces the level up option of gold or chicken once all your items are maxed out with further random upgrades to your weaponry's stats, allowing for exponential and absurd power gain past the point of your power normally being hard-capped.
• Warcraft III:
  • Each faction increases its unit cap with a special building.
    • Undead Ziggurats can be upgraded into towers.
    • Orc Burrows can be garrisoned with workers.
    • Night Elf Moon Wells will restore health and mana to friendly units.
    • Human Farms actually do nothing special, but they're often used to barricade areas or defenses thanks to their small footprint.
  • Peasants can be upgraded to carry more lumber per trip.
  • The Mana Drain spell can temporarily cause a unit's mana to exceed its maximum mana.
  • All caster upgrades increase the caster's maximum mana and regeneration.
• In Warframe, you can find Orokin Catalysts and Reactors, which can be installed on your weapons (catalyst) or warframes, companions, and vehicles (reactors) to double the capacity of mods that can be equipped on them.
• The World Is Your Weapon: Sister's Gift LV2: Herb Pouch raises Herb Cap from 10 to 20.
• Yoku's Island Express: Your wallet is limited in the amount of fruit currency you can carry, which is used for buying new paths or for certain exchanges. There are several wallet upgrades throughout the world that can increase the capacity by 50 fruit each, from 100 fruit up to 600.

Web Original

• invokedThe Ballad of Edgardo: The Overflowing Spirit character perk makes a character's ordinarily-restrictive cap on Spirit points — Mana that can be used for both attacks and temporary stat boosts — infinite. Most users don't take it, however, because it does so at the cost of making the character unable to use elemental attacks. They are only able to use Raw Spirit, which ignores all defenses but is so extremely weak that it doesn't matter. Edgardo's player took this perk as soon as he read the part about the cap removal, neglecting to read the rest of it.

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