In the early hours of Atomic Heart, the game walks you through the purchase of ‘Shok’, an elemental upgrade for your sentient polymer glove Char-Les. This tutorial, as well as my experience with similar games, led me to believe that this was the only elemental upgrade available to me that early on. In fact Char-Les even says, [“More skills will become available to you soon” clip], but this is not 100% the truth as all the glove upgrades are available right away, you just need enough materials for them.
Atomic Heart does not tell you this, but if you head back into the NORA machine following the free tutorial upgrades, you’ll see that you have around 30 Neuropolymer that can be used. This is just enough to afford Polymeric Shield by itself OR Frostbite and Polymeric Jet together. The latter will set you up with 3 elemental powers right out the gate, giving you an early advantage against your foes.
The best part is that you are not locked into your decision here. You can return abilities at any point in the game at a NORA for 100% refund of resources. So if you'd rather try out the Shield ability first, you can do so and still try the other two abilities later and vice versa. The game eventually gives you this information, but it's great to know sooner so you can start tinkering with your playstyle in the opening hours. This awesome refund feature also works when dismantling weapons and consumables, but you won’t need to worry about the weapons part yet. This is because unlike the glove upgrades, all the weapons are not available from the start and need to be unlocked using found blueprints.