DNA tiers and upgrade costs
The five ShredDead DNA colours, which purchases each one gates, how node slots and skill levels are priced, and where the late-game bottlenecks land.
ShredDead pays you in DNA and charges you in DNA, in five separate colours. There is no official cost table, so this page documents what each colour gates, where the bottlenecks land, and the two points in a run where the economy turns. 
Five colours, one economy
The game shows five resource counters down the left of the screen, one per DNA colour. The tree prices its nodes in those colours, which means the real constraint on your build is not how much DNA you have but which colour you are short of.
| Colour | Where it sits in a run | What players report |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | Opening colour | Arrives faster than the tree can spend it; piles up later with nothing to buy |
| Yellow | Early-mid band | The recurring bottleneck — always in short supply, even late |
| Green | Mid band | Reasonable generation against reasonable costs |
| Purple | Late band | Short, but less painfully than yellow |
| White | End of the tree | The last colour to open; cost scale unknown at this stage |
That ordering comes from player reports in the Steam discussions during the first two days, cross-checked against the five counters visible in the official screenshots. It is a progression order, not a published price list.
Why yellow is the wall
One detailed post sums it up: yellow DNA is "always in short supply", the player is at white with a million still needed, and blue sits above two million with nothing to spend it on. Another player asks for a 10:1 conversion between colours to fix exactly that.
The design consequence is simple: treat yellow as the currency you are always behind on. When a node costs yellow, price it twice. When a node costs blue, price it once and do not hoard.
Slots versus levels, in money
| Purchase | Cost shape | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Unlock a slot | One payment, one colour | Opens the node |
| Upgrade a level | Repeating, grows with level | The stat you came for |
| Second branch | A different colour | A parallel lane |
Two achievements quantify how players handle this: Full Skill Tree (all slots unlocked) is at 23.7%, Mastery (everything fully upgraded) at 18.5%. Opening is cheap, finishing is not.
The DNA exchange
Players report a DNA exchange that appears late — one post describes reaching the final wave before discovering it. If you are mid-run and short on yellow, check the tree's later bands for a conversion before you grind; it exists, it is just not in front of you early.
Income, not savings
The only way out of a DNA shortage is raising income per minute, which means kill speed. That is why every build on this site spends its opening purchases on damage: faster kills mean more corpses, more loot and more DNA per wave. Builds has the three orders that do it, and loot and rarity explains why selling gear is a top-up rather than a strategy.
The prestige discount
The 20% DNA cost reduction behind prestige is the single most valuable purchase in the game, because it applies to every colour at once. One reset, taken once, is the usual recommendation — details on the prestige page.
