Outer Shell - B tier, buy if you struggle with the bosses, but Force Field will usually be a better use of your money.

Resource Vacuum - S tier, buy as soon as you can. No explanation needed.

Plasma Drill - D tier, really not good, only upgrade if you dont have anything to spend money on. Only good to place the torpedoes further in the mine.

Masking Plates - A tier, if you know how to get the most out of the time.

Hook and Turbines - D tier in the base game, A in the DLC. They useful, but try to upgrade engine instead. It's impossible to beat the DLC bosses without these if you don't have Jump upgraded enough.

Missles - A tier, level 3 and above missles is the only way to consistenly defeat 2nd boss in base game. They are essential in the DLC.

Engines - A tier, after level 3 there is no point in using hook and turbines in the base game.

Induction Amplifier - S tier, covers all small and medium mines fully if at level 4, the digging bonus is very good if you only go up in the base game. I would advise maxing it if you are planning to have fun in the dlc, don't even explore the rest of mines there if it doesnt reach.

Depth Scanner - D tier, only really useful if maxed, but it's very cheap. If you have it maxed you see the amount of anomalies, so dont bother mining if you have all the anomalies.The amount of anomalies doesnt include blueprints sometimes, so its still worth it to mine

Seismic Generator - B tier in the base game, A tier in the DLC. Torpedoes normally destroy almost everything the generator can reach, but in the second dlc area they barely scratch the blocks, while the generator makes slow but steady progress. Be careful though, when you aren't moving you are vulnerable to many monsters, and you can't use your Armored Claws.

Combat Capacitor - B tier, really good in the early game and the dlc, or if you have singularity or stake. Don't expect it do do much against any bigger monsters.

Armored Claws - S tier, absurd damage, really good if you use something that rotates slowly.
At max level dont even point your gun at the ground enemies even as far as the second dlc area.

Force Field - S tier, the amount of green crystals it will save you is insane, it's basically free hp. Buy as soon as possible.

Torpedoes - A tier in the base game, D in the later dlc areas. MUCH better than plasma drill. Falls off really hard in the dlc since the blocks have so much hp in the second area and further.

Jump - B tier. This upgrades' sole purpose is dodging a few boss attacks, but Hook and Turbines do the exact same thing but more consistently. Maybe buy level 3, but no more.

Devastator and Emergency Repair Kit - F- tier. These are hard to rank as they are the only consumable upgrades in the game, but I think these are just a crutch.
Why spend tens of thousands of points on something that just delays your death by a few minutes at most?
The repair kit only gives you 10% of your health back, and it costs 50 thousand points, and the Devastator is even worse: it kills all enemies on the screen, does nothing to bosses and costs 100 THOUSAND points. Both of these are single use.
Never ever should you buy these.

Emergency Safe - B tier. This one is also hard to rank as it works only on death. Saving some resources on death sounds good, but you should be spending it all as soon as you get them to get more of them, and this upgrade does not care about spent resources.
This is usually a bad upgrade, but there is a nifty little exploit with it: you can transfer resources from the base game to the DLC. This allows for some crazy stuff, like having 8 cells as soon as you start the game, and that is just the beggining. You can smuggle abslolutely any resource, including the top-tier ones.

Chronosphere - F tier. You may see a pattern here: most DLC upgrades are utter trash.
This upgrade slows down time for a few seconds when you reach 10% health, once per session. This only really works as an alert system, reminding you to repair your spider and giving you some time to do it, but you should always be looking at the spider or your health bar. This is even more pointless because going in the upgrade menu is instant and pauses the game. The slowdown also slows your spider and your gun, so this can sometimes even be detrimental. At least it isn't too expensive.

Shockwave - S tier. You may be thinking now: "S tier? Is this guy insane?", but hear me out. Using this effectively requires some skill and strategy.
The first level of this upgrade is beyond garbage, but the second level and above deal such an absurd amount of damage I feel like someone on the dev team forgot to remove a few zeroes. Level 2 deals 6 THOUSAND damage, and level 3 is double that. To put this into perspective, the max level missle, the God Slayer, deals 12 thousand damage. This damage triggers everytime you use Jump, Hook or Turbines. Every time. The area may be a bit small and it is only for ground enemies, but you know who's a ground enemy? The Zeus. And he also happens to be immune to Armored Claws. Having this and some decent Hook and Turbines makes all Zeus fights absolutely trivial, provided you dodge enough stuff and position yourself correctly. This won't help you with the Leviathan but that is much easier than the Zeus.

Microwave Generator - F tier. This deals some unknown amount of damage everytime you do a static jump in an area above the spider. As far as I am aware it only works on air enemies, not even the Leviathan. I don't think I have ever hit something with this. Ever. If you are getting use out of this that means you probably forgot to upgrade your gun for the entire run.

String Projector of the Core - ??? tier. I have no idea what this actually does, and I have no intention of sitting in front of a screen for an hour to find out, at least for now. Sorry.













pls give awards