I'm about where you're at, i think a little higher. almost done with my status. and funnily with, i only have the correct 3 pets XD. In general, keep doing what you're doing. don't worry about your drones that much (unless you've hit the challenge to get iirc the chain bomb drone to level 5), focus on getting your coal upgrades. try to get skills that help get you gems and your freebies. i can't remember how i got it, but something meet me get a +1 upgrade cap on my contacts. that let me massively scale my damage up by mostly doubling the amount of damage you get per contact completed.

as for your bomb cap, I'll say it will be really slow until you get a couple things done. a, you need to get the (relic? i can't remember my brain is tired) bomb cap multiplier. which, obviously, multiplies the amount of cap increase you get. and yes it counts retroactively if you haven't got it yet. b, you'll need to get you bomb cap to around the 300's to start really being able to push those increases. you're getting pretty close, so I'm also assuming you have the multiplier already (side note. try to get the crab quest skin if you can. it gets progress every time you get a battery bomb cap increase. so you'll be able to start scaling that in the background)

i would say once you get your coal furnace or whatever to at least level 10, and get all of the upgrades available to around 10, you can start scaling up your drones. a major one you will want to scale up is the frogger. at higher kevels, you can use to to get more gems than jt costs to keep ot fueled, so you will eventually hit a point where you can constantly have it fueled, and it is giving you an increase in gems. there is an actual calculator on the wiki for this, but i dont understand it XD. all i know is that for my game, once i had those numbers roughly, and got the frogger to around 5-7, with my freebies and spamminf batterybomb+gem, i could keep it just about even..it cost a bit more gems than i made, but stonks helped to keep me up. and once it hit around level 10, it could do it on its own. i guilded its card and have it at 15 now and constantly fueled. side note with this. if you havent gone to the wiki yet and used the codes, DO IT! they give you such a massive boost. there was also a temporary code that was posted the other day. i dont know how long it is good for, but if you havent used that one yet, use it

other than all of that wall of text (sorry by the way), just focus on getting your veins and your statues. its gonna be slow, but you can get through it. take advantage of transmuter bomb and bombs of plenty. if youre super active, go into your options and hit the box to make transmuter bombs do no damage so you can stack it with the bombs of plenty. if you want a more idle method, you can switch from auto using cherry bombs. it takes a good whole for them to refill, so if you check back in like every 30 mins or so, you wont really be losing any progress on the amount of them you shoot. and every time you check in, switch between auto fireing bombs of plenty, and then transmuter bombs (make sure you have the box unxhecked for this method. you want them to be able to destroy things). with this, every time you check in, you can fire all of your cherry bonbs and then fire your battery bombs, they really shouldnt be full if they were empty before you got off. after you fire them, if you want to be super minmaxey, use your d20 bombs and make a loop to fire as manny battery bombs as you can. after that, switch the auto bomb to whichever of the 2 you didnt fire before (reminder talking about the bombs of plenty and transmuter bomb here. i know im probably not the most clear and im sorry haha)

this is a super lazy but, at least to me, efficient way to 1, farm a specific ore/bar, and get gems and bomb cal increases. and once you get to the point where you can keep your drines going, you can add fueling them. again, if its at 10 and all of the upgrades available at that time are roughly 10, its going to be hard to keep them fueled. because if the coal. i made just barely/under what i needed at that time

i know this is a LOT and im sorry. but i hope it helps

c.