Upgrades increase the production of colonies, provide various multipliers to BPS, BPC, and unlock new game features.

Other ways of unlocking new features and boosting production include:

equipping Evolved Bacteria
researching the Dark Matter Institute technologies
purchasing premium bonuses
collecting Gene Strands
completing certain achievements

Bacteria Upgrades

New Bacteria upgrades appear in the menu as you purchase more colonies (v. 1.1.2)

Bacteria upgrades give various multipliers to global BPS, BPC, as well as increase the production of different colonies.

The player unlocks new bacteria upgrades by purchasing more colonies. After purchase, Bacteria upgrades cannot be sold or disabled. An option to buy all Bacteria upgrades is unlocked after destroying Lableilara.

Most upgrades can only be bought once, but some are iterative. Iterative upgrades usually become available after the player has bought 200 of one colony type. Afterward, they can be purchased once per 25 new colonies.

For BPS colonies, there is also a second tier of iterative upgrades, which becomes available per every 1000 colonies owned and provides a 500000% increase for the production of that colony.

Currently, there is only one iterative bpc upgrade and it is unlocked after obtaining 200 Bacteria guns and it can be purchased again after each 25 new Bacteria guns.

All bacteria upgrades are lost when attacking a planet or entering a Black Hole.

Skill Point Upgrades

Skill tree

Gene Strand upgrades enable and increase the idle BPS bonus, tapping combo bonus, as well as provide various multipliers to total BPC and increase the production of different colonies.

To purchase an upgrade, it's necessary to purchase the prerequisite upgrade and have a sufficient number of skill points.

Skill point upgrades remain after planet attacks, but are lost upon entering a Black Hole.

Effect

Upgrades can have a variety of effects, the simplest of which increase the total BPS, while others may enable new game mechanics, such as BPS conversion or Tapping Combo.

Upgrades Increasing Colony BPS

Many of Bacteria upgrades and skill point upgrades only increase the production of one colony by a certain percentage.

The effect of such upgrades is multiplicative. For example, if you have an upgrade that increases the BPS of Petri Dish by 200% and an upgrade that increases Petri Dish BPS by 300%, then the total production of Petri Dish is increased by 600%.

Upgrades Adding Bacteria from BPS to BPC

Some regular and Gene Strand upgrades increase BPC by a percentage of your total BPS. They do not decrease your total BPS.

The effectiveness of these upgrades is determined by:

their base effect; and
the number of destroyed planets.

The base effect is not displayed in the upgrade description. For regular upgrades, the base effect usually is 1%, but Toxic bullets, for example, has a base effect of 5%.

The final effect of the particular upgrade is calculated according to the formula:

effect = base effect / PlanetsDestroyed²

Main page: BPS conversion

List of Upgrades