Golden Upgrades

**Golden Upgrades** is a special type of upgrades that begin dropping within specific intervals after the player reaches 15% Achievement bonus.

## Drop rate

Golden Upgrades will drop every X number of zones starting from zone 1 depending on the player's Achievement bonus, infinitely.

 100%
 300%
 600%
 1000%
 2000%

Once the player's achievement bonus reaches 2000%, they will earn additional Golden Upgrades at 500% intervals - i.e. 2500%, 3000%, 3500%, and so on - until they reach 10000%, for a total of **16 additional Golden Upgrades.** At 10000%, this switches over to 2000% intervals - i.e. 12000%, 14000%, etc. These golden upgrades are received at the beginning of a run, immediately after using the Portal.

## Rewards

Each time Golden Upgrades drop, they appear in a set of three. The player then has the choice of picking one of the three upgrades. Once the upgrade is picked, all three of them disappear. The bonus from all Golden Upgrades disappears after using the Portal.

Each time **any** Golden Upgrade is purchased, the general strength of them increases, and the next set of Golden Upgrades will be stronger. The strength bonus also disappears after using the Portal.

 Battle
 Void

Below is a table showing the gain increase in practice for a **select number of Golden Purchases bought**. The *Total* column assumes that only that particular type of upgrade was being purchased in that run. The player can purchase the upgrades in any order - the gain increase still applies to every upgrade.

For example, if the player bought the Helium Golden Upgrade three times in a row from the start, and then bought a single Battle Golden Upgrade, then a single Void Golden Upgrade - their Helium gain would be increased by 6%, attack/health by 12% and Void map drop chance by 10%.

All three of these factors stack multiplicatively with the other factors that increase that particular statistic.

## Auto Golden Upgrade

*Your Trimps have extracted and processed many Golden Upgrades by now, and though you're still nervous to leave things completely to them, you figure they can probably handle doing this on their own as well. You find the nearest Trimp and ask if he could handle buying Golden Upgrades on his own, as long as you told him which ones to buy. You can tell by the puddle of drool rapidly gaining mass at his feet that this is going to take either magic or a lot of hard work.*

*You can't find any magic anywhere, so you decide to found Trimp University, a school dedicated to teaching Trimps how to extract the might of Golden Upgrades without any assistance. Weeks go by while you and your Trimps work tirelessly to set up the University, choosing only the finest building materials and hiring only the most renowned Foremen to draw the plans. Just as you're finishing up, a Scientist stops by, sees what you're doing, and offers to just handle the Golden Upgrades instead. Probably should have just asked one of them first.*

*You have unlocked AutoGolden!*

After purchasing 77 total Golden Upgrades over the course of the game, Auto Golden Upgrade is unlocked. This allows the player to automate the purchase of Golden Upgrades once it becomes available.

An "AutoGold" button will appear, which has five settings:

* AutoGold Off - No purchases will be made.
* AutoGold Helium - As soon as a Golden Upgrade is available, the Helium option is selected.
* AutoGold Battle - As soon as a Golden Upgrade is available, the Battle option is selected.
* AutoGold Voidtle - As soon as a Golden Upgrade is available, the Void option is selected. Once the maximum bonus of 72% is reached, the Battle option is selected.
* AutoGold Voidlium - As soon as a Golden Upgrade is available, the Void option is selected. Once the maximum bonus of 72% is reached, the Helium option is selected.

If starting a new run with extra Golden Upgrades available (due to a high enough achievement bonus), Auto Golden Upgrade will wait 4 seconds before purchasing an upgrade.

In Universe 2, AutoGold Radon replaces AutoGold Helium, and AutoGold Voidon replaces AutoGold Voidlium. They work in the same way, purchasing the Radon Golden Upgrade when it becomes available.

## Custom AutoGold

Completing the U2 Archaeology challenge twice unlocks **Custom AutoGold** which allows you to specify a mixture of Golden Helium/Radon, Battle and Void to be purchased automatically at the start of each portal.

## Exceptions

### Void

If the player unlocks Golden Upgrades before unlocking Void maps, the Void upgrade will not appear.

If the multiplier for the Void upgrade were to reach above 72%, the upgrade will be grayed out and will not allow the player to purchase it with the following message:

*This upgrade would put you over 72% increased Void Map chance, which would destabilize the universe. You don't want to destabilize the universe, do you?*

### Helium

Golden Helium is grayed out and can't be purchased if the player is doing a Challenge².

*You can't earn helium while running a Challenge²!*

Abandoning the challenge allows the upgrade to be purchased. It is possible to stockpile a bunch of Golden Upgrades and then buy Golden Helium in a bulk after abandoning a Challenge² for the bonus*.*

## Trivia

* Reaching a new achievement tier mid-run causes golden upgrades to immediately adjust to the new tier.
* In patch 3.6, Golden Upgrades were added.
* In patch 4.1, a new Achievement breakpoint was added at 2000%, for Golden Upgrades every 25 zones.
* In patch 4.3, after purchasing 300 total Golden Upgrades over the course of the game, a new feature known as Auto Golden Upgrade is unlocked. This allows one to automatically purchase the specified Golden Upgrade once it is available.
* In patch 4.5, a feature was added that every 500% Achievement bonus increase past 2000% gives the player a free Golden Upgrade at the start of the run. Thus, a player with a 4000% Achievement bonus will start the run with 4 golden upgrades.
* In patch 4.10, Golden Void was capped at 72% (it was 60% before).
* In patch 5.4, the unlock requirement for auto golden upgrade was changed from purchasing 300 to purchasing 77