Pure Breeders have niether shields nor weapons. You can redesign the pure breeder and increase it's own tech. When it redesigns it can only increase it's size depending on the amount of harvested bio-mass. i.e. if it has harvested 3 then the redesign can be a max of 9 in size. Having said that, redesign does not use up the bio-mass (unlike normal breeding).
Normal breeders cannot redesign themselves. Normal breeders and pure breeders can spawn offspring 1 tech higher than themselves. But pure breeders can increase their own tech during redesign by more than 1, depending on the bio-mass band they are in:
| Tech 0-15 | Green bio-mass | 1 tech increase per turn |
| Tech 16-50 | Orange bio-mass | 2 tech increase per turn |
| Tech 51-150 | Purple bio-mass | 5 tech increase per turn |
| Tech 150+ | Blue bio-mass | 10 tech increase per turn |
Pure Breeder Tech increase is done by holding 's' and clicking on the pure breeder itself. In the spawn window you can increase the pure breeders tech by an amount determined by the table above.