Every run in Escape Tsunami for Brainrots is a gamble between pushing deeper for high-value collectibles and making it back alive. The default carry limit is a single Brainrot, which means you're making one dangerous round trip for every unit you want to place at your base. Carry Upgrades change that math entirely, letting you grab multiple Brainrots in a single outing and dramatically improving your income per run.
Quick answer: Purchase Carry Upgrades using in-game money to increase your carry limit from one Brainrot up to a maximum of seven per run. The upgrade option is in the same upgrade interface as speed and base upgrades.
What Carry Upgrades Do
Carry Upgrades raise the number of Brainrots you can hold simultaneously while out on the track. Each upgrade level adds one additional slot. At the maximum level, you can pick up and transport seven Brainrots back to your base in a single trip. Since every Brainrot placed at your base generates passive income per second, hauling more units per run compounds your earnings significantly — especially when you're grabbing high-rarity units from deeper zones.
Unlike speed upgrades, carry upgrades are not reset by rebirthing. Once you buy them, they stick with you through every rebirth cycle, which makes them a permanent investment in your account's efficiency.
When to Upgrade Carry Capacity
Beginners should resist the urge to max out the carry capacity immediately. Carrying more Brainrots only pays off if you survive the return trip. Getting wiped by a tsunami while holding five or six units means losing all of them at once — a much bigger setback than losing a single one. Early on, focus on speed upgrades so you can reliably dodge waves and reach trenches in time. Once your speed is comfortable enough that you're consistently surviving runs, start investing in carry capacity.
A practical approach is to bump the carry capacity by one level each time you feel confident in your wave survival at a given speed tier. If you're dying frequently, that's a signal to hold off on carry upgrades and put money into speed instead.
Carry Upgrades and Rebirth Interaction
Rebirthing resets your speed levels back to zero but leaves your money, your placed Brainrots, and your carry upgrades intact. This is important because it means you don't need to re-purchase carry capacity after each rebirth. The max rebirth level is 26, granting up to a 12.50x money multiplier, and your carry slots remain at whatever level you've already unlocked throughout that entire progression.
Because of this, carry upgrades are one of the safest places to spend money before triggering a rebirth. If you're about to rebirth and have leftover cash, putting it into carry capacity (if you haven't maxed it yet) is a smart move since that investment won't disappear.
Pairing Carry Capacity with Base Upgrades
There's no point hauling seven Brainrots per trip if your base doesn't have room to store them. Base upgrades add additional floors and slots to your base, and the current cap sits at 40 levels. Keep your base capacity ahead of your carry capacity so you're never stuck with a full inventory and nowhere to place units. The base upgrade sign is located right in front of your base — interact with it and spend money to expand.
A good rule of thumb: before pushing carry upgrades higher, make sure your base has at least a few empty slots. Filling your base completely means any extra Brainrots you carry back are wasted effort.
Risk Management at Higher Carry Levels
Running with a full carry of seven Brainrots deep in the Secret or Celestial zones is high-stakes. Those zones spawn units worth millions of dollars per second, but they're also the farthest from your base and the hardest to escape from when a fast tsunami rolls in. A few strategies help manage the risk:
- Wait for slow waves. Before starting a deep run, watch for a Super Slow or Slow tsunami indicator. These give you the most time to collect and retreat.
- Know your trench locations. Trenches between each zone act as safe spots. Memorize where they are so you can duck in quickly rather than trying to outrun a wave back to base.
- Use the Slow Mode toggle if your speed is very high. Overshooting a trench at max speed is a common way to die while carrying a full load.
- Don't get greedy. If you've grabbed four or five high-value Brainrots and a medium-speed wave is incoming, retreat. The income from those units is worth more than the two extra you might have grabbed.
Carry Upgrades vs. Speed Upgrades — Priority Order
Speed is generally the higher priority upgrade throughout most of the game. Without enough speed, you can't reach the zones where valuable Brainrots spawn, and you can't outrun faster waves. Carry capacity is a multiplier on top of that foundation — it makes each successful run more profitable, but it doesn't help you reach new zones or survive waves you couldn't before.
The recommended progression looks roughly like this:
| Phase | Priority | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Early game | Speed first | You need to reach Uncommon and Rare zones reliably |
| Mid game | Speed + carry in parallel | Bump carry to 3–4 once wave survival is consistent |
| Late game | Max carry, then speed | Each run into Secret/Celestial zones should haul maximum units |
| Post-rebirth | Speed (carry is preserved) | Rebuild speed quickly; carry stays at your previous level |
Maximizing Income with Full Carry Runs
Once you've hit the seven-Brainrot carry cap, every successful deep run becomes a massive income boost. Grabbing seven Secret-tier Brainrots in one trip — where even the lower-end units like Matteo generate $200K/s — means adding over a million dollars per second to your base income from a single outing. Pair that with a high rebirth multiplier and mutations on your Brainrots, and your passive earnings scale rapidly.
Don't forget that Brainrots can also be leveled up once placed at your base. Each level increases a Brainrot's income by 1.25x, up to a maximum of Level 200. Prioritize leveling your highest-rarity units first, since the percentage boost applies to a larger base income value.
Carry Upgrades are one of the most straightforward systems in Escape Tsunami for Brainrots, but timing them correctly separates efficient players from those who keep losing full inventories to waves. Max them out once your speed and wave awareness can support the risk, and every run into the deeper zones becomes dramatically more rewarding.