Mycopunk Secret Upgrades: et Mods

"Secret upgrades" in Mycopunk means two different things: the Contraband rarity, which is a purple tier of seven nodes that never appears in normal mission rewards, and the Ouroboros-only nodes that change your grid instead of your gun. Both are treated as secret because the game does not list them in the collection screen until you own one.

The seven Contraband nodes

Contraband costs 800 scrip to upgrade and only 60 rare resource, which makes it cheaper than Oddity despite sitting beside it in the tier list. It also cleanses for free in Ouroboros — the only tier where that is true.

Two of these nodes break the normal rules rather than boosting a stat. Interim Manager randomizes your employee and rerolls every employee node you own while keeping the patterns, and Fake ID does the same for the weapon side plus 50% max health. Both are pattern-inheritance enablers: after a reroll you keep the geometry you built and get a new set of effects inside it.

Handheld Pocket Universe

The single strangest node in the game. It rewrites the cell cost of every other node by rarity: Standard becomes 1 cell, Rare 2, Epic 3, Exotic 4. A grid built before picking it up becomes a different grid afterwards, which is why it is usually the last node placed rather than the first.

Multiversal Thievery

Commandeers one column from each of your other upgrade grids. In practice this means your weapon grid grows by a column while the other slots lose one, so it is a transfer rather than a gain — useful when one gun is carrying a run and the rest are filler.

In For A Pound

Grenades cost health to fire and lose their cooldown entirely. This is the only node in the game that converts a resource you regenerate into a resource that regenerates on a timer, and it is the reason some players run three grenades and a healing node.

Ouroboros-only nodes

Ouroboros, the roguelike mode added during Early Access, has its own reward pool where most upgrades can be stacked and where Interim Manager and Fake ID appear far more often. Pattern inheritance is the mechanic that makes this mode different: you can pick up an upgrade, keep its effect and graft it onto a shape you already like.

Stacking is the other half. Outside Ouroboros only a handful of nodes stack (Shell Packer, Globblin, Heavy Pockets, most of the Shocklance and Accelerator pools); inside Ouroboros almost everything does, with diminishing returns applied to keep four copies of one node from breaking the run.

How to tell if a node is secret

If it is not in your collection screen and it is not a mission reward you have seen, check the rarity icon: purple means Contraband, red means Oddity, and anything described as "randomizes your employee" or "rerolls existing upgrades" is an Ouroboros node that leaked into a normal drop pool.

FAQ

Are secret upgrades permanent?

Contraband nodes are permanent once placed. Interim Manager and Fake ID reroll your existing nodes but do not remove themselves, so a save can keep both indefinitely.

Can you get Contraband nodes from missions?

They appear in the Ouroboros pool and in high-threat reward rolls, but not in the standard mission reward table. Amalgamation and level 32 weapon rewards are the most reliable sources.

What is the rarest upgrade in Mycopunk?

Handheld Pocket Universe, because it only exists in the Contraband pool and only drops in endgame content. There is no crafted path to it.

If you are planning what to open next, the upgrade grids explained page covers node shapes and rarity, while the threat levels page shows what the harder tiers actually pay.

Sources

Upgrade shapes, rarity tiers and cost values were read from the live upgrade inventory in Mycopunk 1.0 and cross-checked against the official patch notes and the Steam store page. Community reports on rolled nodes come from the Steam guide index.