Optimization beyond farming
Power farming answers "how do I earn watts faster." Optimization in IGTAP is the longer game: how the whole economy — multiple resources, permanent growth systems and hidden upgrades — compounds over a full save. The game has more going on than the orange w counter suggests, and the achievement list is a reliable map of what a fully optimized save eventually touches: atoms, refresh orbs, the upgrade tree, secret upgrades, and escaping the facility.
This page sticks to what official sources verify and is explicit where they do not. Exact formulas and price curves are not published, so the guidance here is about priorities and systems rather than invented numbers.
The three resources: w, gp and np
The POWER panel in official screenshots tracks three resources at once: orange w (power, the watts you farm and spend), green gp, and purple np. The formal names of gp and np are not confirmed in official sources, so this wiki refers to them by their panel labels.
What is verified is that gp matters for the deepest purchase in the game: the atoms kiosk prices "Turn all of your power into new atoms" in gp (276.51Kgp in the official screenshot). So an optimized save does not only stack watts — it pays attention to which resource each system consumes, because the endgame conversion is gated by the green one.
Atoms: the big conversion
The kiosk "Turn all of your power into new atoms" is IGTAP's marquee late-game transaction, and buying your first atom is an achievement of its own: "I am igtapic." (61.0% of players). The all-or-nothing wording — turn *all* of your power into atoms — marks it as a conversion milestone rather than a routine purchase.
Official sources do not document in detail what atoms then do for your run, so any specific claim about atom bonuses is unverified. What players can say for certain: the kiosk exists, it is priced in gp, and reaching it is a recognised progression step. Treat your first atom as a checkpoint of a healthy economy, and time the "all of your power" conversion for a moment when your accumulated watts are not urgently needed for kiosk purchases.
Refresh orbs and the upgrade tree
Two more permanent-growth systems appear in the achievement list. Refresh orbs unlock via the achievement Stem Cells (50.4% of players); their exact effect is not described in verified official sources, so this page will not invent one — but roughly half of all players reach them, placing them in the mid game.
The upgrade tree is grown in two stages: "Exponential growth — Plant the upgrade tree" (60.9%) and "Environmental Energy — Fully grow the upgrade tree" (6.8%). The drop-off between planting and fully growing tells you this is a long-term investment: most players who plant the tree never finish it. An optimized save plans for the full grow-out rather than treating planting as the finish line, and the achievement names hint the tree's payoff is exponential in nature.
Secret upgrades and exploration
Optimization is not only menus. Two achievements guard the game's hidden upgrade set: "Not all those who wander are lost — Find a secret upgrade" (92.1%, so most players find at least one almost by accident) and "Definitely not lost — Find all secret upgrades" (just 1.1%). The gap between those numbers is the exploration game: secret upgrades are scattered where casual play will not look, tied to the facility's off-path areas and the dark vine garden outside it, reached by escaping the facility ("The greatest adventure is what lies ahead", 5.4%).
For a completionist or efficiency-focused save, secret upgrades are high priority precisely because so few players collect them all — they are among the rarest permanent advantages in the game. Community guides and videos cataloguing "every hidden upgrade/easter egg" exist, but verify anything they claim against your own save, since only the achievements above are officially confirmed.
Tying it back to farming
Every system on this page is fed by the farming loop described in our power farming guide: routes recorded, clones running, watts converted into kiosks, kiosks into faster farms. The optimization layer decides where the surplus goes:
- Keep clone count, reward multipliers and route Best times growing — that is the engine everything else depends on.
- Take the upgrade tree from planted to fully grown; it is a proven long-haul goal.
- Collect refresh orbs and every secret upgrade you can find, exploring outside the facility when your abilities allow.
- Watch the gp balance, because the atoms conversion is priced in gp, not watts.
- Convert to atoms deliberately, when the "all of your power" cost will not stall your kiosk progress.
Players who reach the end of this ladder join a small club: fully growing the upgrade tree sits at 6.8% of players, finding all secret upgrades at 1.1%, and the Vman speedrun's ominous message (Quam Formidolosum) at 0.5%. For the platforming side of long-run efficiency — cutting Best times so every clone earns more — see the fastest route guide; for racing the whole game, see the speedrun guide.