Mycopunk Employee Upgrades: s

Employee upgrades are a separate pool from weapon nodes. Every employee has a six-tier tree with its own skill points, its own grid and its own rarities, and the nodes never drop for a different employee. The tree is the biggest single difference between two players using the same class.

The six tiers

Each employee tree is split into six tiers, and tiers three to six open at fixed skill-point totals:

Tiers 1 and 2 are the starter set: three nodes each, usually one movement tweak and two ability modifiers. Everything above them is where the class identity lives.

How many upgrades each employee has

The counts above are per tier; the deep pool beyond tier five holds the rest of each tree, which is why an employee at 18 skill points still has nodes left to find.

Where employee upgrades drop

Employee nodes drop randomly from any source — missions, weapon-level rewards, boss tables and crafting. They are not tied to the employee you are currently playing, which is how a Wrangler main ends up with a full Bruiser tree.

Patch 2.0.3 fixed the Codex so Standard employee upgrades correctly show that they drop randomly from any source, which had been mislabelled since launch.

The employee grid

Each employee has its own hex grid, starting at 5×5 and growing the same way as weapons:

Because the grid is separate from the weapon grid, employee nodes compete with each other and never with gun nodes. A player who spreads points across two employees ends up with two half-filled grids.

Drop-only nodes

Some employee nodes are marked drop-only: they never appear in the starter set and cannot be picked from a curated tier. These are the nodes that make a class feel unfamiliar after a hundred hours, and they roll from the same mission and boss tables as everything else.

The Amalgamation exclusive

The Mycologist is the only employee with a boss-exclusive upgrade: one node that only drops from the Amalgamation. It is the reason a Mycologist main has a reason to run the weekly boss even after finishing the rest of her tree.

Hollow employee upgrades

Employee patterns can be hollow, exactly like weapon patterns. Patch 2.0.2 fixed a bug where a hollow employee upgrade could not be equipped alongside the hollow cryo upgrade; before that fix the two conflicted.

Perks and skins

Employee trees are separate from the skin system. Skins are cosmetic drops from Fulfillments and mission rewards (Wrangler 15, Bruiser 16, Scrapper 16, Glider 16, Mycologist 11), and hats were added as a separate cosmetic slot in 1.0.

FAQ

Do employee upgrades apply to all employees?

No. Each node belongs to one employee and only works when you play that employee.

What are skill points in Mycopunk?

Skill points are the gate for tiers three to six, at 5, 9, 14 and 18. They accumulate on the employee you are playing.

Can you respec an employee?

You can overwrite nodes, but placements are permanent for that copy. Interim Manager, a Contraband node, rerolls your employee upgrades while keeping their patterns.

Two pages pair well with this one: the employees overview for what each crew slot can do, and the mission list for which activities appear on the map and when.

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.