Tower Build Guide
NOTE: All upgrades are explained at the bottom. You should consult my UW Picker before making any UW (Ultimaye Weapon) selections, or you could cost yourself months of progress to recover from a bad choice. Your first UW is very cheap at only 5 stones, but the cost rapidly raises to the point it will take months to roll another choice.
Also join discord for more up to date information. The discord is the place to be; reddit is full of misinformation, outdated information, and players that are not very good trying to pass off their own poor strategies as useful. This guide was updated in 23.4, so it may be out of date by the time you read it. It also will be updated again soon with information about Workshop Enhancements and elite enemies, they are briefly touched on, but more comprehensive earlier game strategy doesn’t exist yet.
When done reading, check out my Farm Guide, which expands on this a bit for more advanced farming mechanics. You may also want to check out my other tools located in the Appendix at the end of this document, they answer most math/questions you may have about upgrade values and costs in the game.
Early in Tier 1 you want to get Def %, Defense Absolute and Thorns and build those, as well as your coin/cash utility upgrades. It revolves around blocking enemy hits while they kill themselves to thorns. Do not touch Regen.
This strategy will get you very far in Tier 1 but will fall off very fast, so don’t invest too far into it. You will feel like a god or that you broke the game because you will skyrocket hundreds of waves and go for hours in Tier 1, but prepare for Tier 2 to smack you in the face. I consider this “Demo mode” or “the Tutorial” because you can use these waves to test out how other upgrades work.
Note that every hit by the same enemy does 1.04x damage (known in the community as the Heat Up mechanic), so even if enemies “shouldn’t hurt you”, they will start to if they hit you enough. Also note that enemies that survive too long give half coins, and that if enemies die too slowly, you will hit an enemy cap and stop spawning - both of these considerably hurting your coin income.
So use this to get an initial farm build setup, and move off this ASAP, probably once you can get a couple hundred waves in T1.
Also hunt the Enemy Balance card. You only need one copy, put it in your slot. While lab slots are much more important than getting other cards, if you do pull some, other useful cards at this stage are cash, coin, attack speed, fortress, extra defense, and critical coin. Note that critical coin makes basics drop a coin if they die to a critical hit, and for the purpose of the card, thorns (and later orbs, ultimaye weapons, and death ray) count 100% as a crit, even if you only have 1% crit chance. (However for the critical hit event mission, they do not count).
In run, focus on your cash/coin upgrades for the first few waves as their value compounds over the run, and when they get too expensive or you struggle to live, switch to your Turtle Upgrades.
This is where the real game begins. Instead of blocking enemies with Absolute Defense, you will start increasing your HP to soak up the damage instead, and use Lifesteal to heal it back. Thorns will still be putting in a lot of work. You will now want Damage, Critical Chance and Critical Factor, Attack Speed, Knockback, Multishot, Rapidfire, Bounce Shot to put out a lot of bullets to lifesteal with and keep enemies off you, as well as Orbs, and Free Upgrades added to your repertoire, in addition to the Cash/Kill upgrades. For cards, add in Plasma Cannon, Health, and remove Fortress.
At this point my general recommendation is:
This is an EHP build. EHP (Effective Hitpoints) is how much damage you can actually take, with defense reductions factored in.
As you progress through tiers and unlock labs, start working towards a Blender/Frogger build.
You should be starting to max out your upgrades in higher tiers mid run pretty easily at this point. The key here is going to be:
Note that old guides may reference “Inner Orbs” - the card was renamed to “Extra Orbs” instead, and the adjuster changed from a % of your tower range to fixed meters. The orbs can be adjusted from a minimum of 60m, to a maximum of 1.3x your tower range; and if your tower range is too low, they just get fixed at 60 meters. Also the workshop orbs used to be fixed at 60 meters, they are now 75 meters.
The goal of this build is to optimize the orbs so every single non-boss enemy dies to them. If even a single non-boss enemy hits you at any point in your run, you need to make your orb setup stronger. These hits are referred to as “chips”.
The classic “Blender” build is to have both sets of orbs rotate at where the ranged enemies stop to fire, taking advantage of the slight pause before they shoot. I created a variant “frogger” that instead separates the orb lines by a 5 meter space between them to maximize how long enemies spend in an orb line that performs significantly better.
You may want to put one of these orb lines near the end of your range or just outside it, and the other orb line just inside your range, so enemies are knocked through them over and over and have to keep crossing them. At a 69.5 tower range, if you leave your Extra Orbs at 60-65m, the Workshop Orbs will be just outside your range where you knock enemies through them, and achieve this effect. If you struggle to keep enemies juggled through them, increase your range lab a bit and put your extra orbs so both sets of orbs are inside your range. The optimal value changes based on your build and what you are trying to do, sorry there isn’t a “what range and orbs should I use”.
At this point, all enemies should be dying to orbs, and only bosses should be hitting you. Plasma Cannon brings it down from 3 hits of thorns to only 2 hits to kill the boss. At 7* it goes down to only 1 hit to kill the boss.
Almost all further builds build upon blender / frogger as a base. This is how you kill every normal enemy for the rest of the game, and further builds are just around how you handle bosses (and now, elites).
Recovery Packages will become your primary source of healing and you will eventually start surviving past your oneshot (when you die with full hp) to instead living until your trueshot (when you die in one hit even with full packages).
You will start needing a lot more damage here to deal with elites. Don’t neglect that either (you may want to consider unlocking Amp Bot in an event)!
At that point there are only a few ways to grow. The first step will be to increase your HP, which leads us to your next mid game strategy, Devo. (Note that this depends on the order you get ultimaye weapons; if you get Spotlight before Death Wave, you may want to NOT pick Death Wave and skip this section. If you get Death Wave before you can get Spotlight, lean heavily into it. I’d still suggest skimming it either way, at least the part about the ES/DD rng). Currently you will eventually want both, both to unlock UW+ upgrades (requires unlocking all 9 UW to buy these upgrades), as well as to use a later-game hybrid build.
So now you have a good blender, only bosses are hitting you, and the only way to really go further with this build is to have an even bigger HP pool to soak up even harder bosses.
If you get the Death Wave ultimaye weapon, you can perform a strat called Devo (short for Devolution, as you Devolve your tower’s stats intentionally). The base requirements are around 5 billion workshop coins and the Death Wave Health lab research maxed out. You can do it earlier, but it will suck. I have a comprehensive guide into maximizing the health multiplier from it, but the basics are:
This will get you up to an extra 7x multiplier on your HP.
There are further variants using this method to optimize coin multipliers as well. I very much HATE their existence and will not be detailing them, so see the discord for more information on them (and to further hurt my soul).
You will probably drop down a few tiers to maximize this multiplier, don’t drop too low (anyone who says “do the highest tier you can do X waves on” is bullshitting; test for yourself as the tier coin multiplier is also important!)
At this point the only way to get any further with an ehp build is:
Note that with the addition of elites, this works significantly worse if you cannot kill elites before they hit you. This only applies if bosses, and ONLY bosses, are hitting you, which is unlikely to be the case as of v23, but its still important to understand how the mechanic worked.
So now you are living to your trueshot, where a boss will kill you in one hit with full packages. You can live further though taking advantage of the Energy Shield card.
Death Defy rolls before consuming Energy Shield or Second Wind, as long as the hit would fully kill you in a single hit if the card wasn’t there. This means, after trueshot, you can roll death defy, and if it succeeds your energy shield stays. If it fails, it uses your energy shield, which starts to recharge. Since a boss is only hitting you one time, this means only every other boss even has a chance to hit you. With multiple charges of energy shield, you can go hundreds of waves before finally dying. You can use Demon Mode when your energy shield is under one charge to survive a boss as well and let it continue to recharge.
A note on energy shield and the multiple hit research:
These do not give you a “second” and “third” shield. You still have only one energy shield. Instead, think of it this way
This technique will continue to apply to all further builds
The requirements for this will vary depending on if you built through Devo or skipped Death Wave and came straight here.
If you built Death Wave, you will be around here when you are ready to transition as you need to pass your Death Wave’s performance:
To have enough coins for this, you will need a strong Golden Tower and Black Hole (which means a few thousand stones building them), and you also need a max Chrono Field (which means at least 6000 stones), and a good spotlight (another 2000-3000 stones), plus whatever you spent on Death Wave, and any unlock costs wasted on other UW that you were forced to pick, bringing this up to 10-20 thousand total stones.
If you skipped Death Wave, you should probably be around here when you are ready to transition:
If you skipped Devo, you can skip chrono field for now, reducing the requirement to likely around 5000-6000 total stones. You will still need to build CF afterwards, but this can be done first, and you can take the Slow tradeoff perk in farm runs to make up for not having it.
How this build works:
As of v22, some people like to get Chain Lightning next before moving on to Missiles, and take advantage of the damage amplification from its labs with the Dimension Core module. This can boost you significantly further.
This may be advantageous earlier as of v23, as it provides a lot of benefit for elites.
Instead of Energy Shield, you use Health to tank hits when the boss fails to die, and your damage to kill bosses as often as possible to let your health recharge. This combination is fueled by the 22.15/16 increase of Package Max and Health, as well as some slight enemy damage nerfs in higher tiers. This will mainly help in tournaments; in farm runs, you will still likely want to specialize. For a lot of later game players, they find that Health gets them further in many battle conditions than Damage, provided they have adequate chip control and can kill bosses often enough to let it recharge.
This helps you significantly with dealing with elites as well, so if you have a weaker farm build, this may be the way to go. I find that endgame, hp provides me zero value and I kill elites and bosses long beyond where I could take a hit, but I cannot currently evaluate weaker progress to see how it stacks up.
At this point you want:
Smart Missiles, with their missile amplifier lab, will drastically outperform bullet damage. You can kill bosses with tens to hundreds of sextillions of health with a proper build.
Inner Land Mines will chain stun a boss close by, so that your smart missiles will all target it. With a 30s Smart Missile cooldown and a large quantity, as well as 6 Inner Land Mines and the perk, you can chain stun a boss to get multiple volleys of smart missiles into it. Hopefully one of those volleys happens in Spotlight, and even better if Amp Bot overlaps and your SM procs the Ultimaye Crit card. Chain lightning further adds an extra multiplier on it if you are lucky, but this is the least important and least reliable aspect
You need a very strong Spotlight, SM and SLM for this.
Start the run with just DW and SLM enabled as far as damage UW go, and no orbs/extra orbs/death ray. When SLM can no longer kill a tank in 2 hits, turn on SM. When you still get chipped too much add in your orbs. Combine this with uncracked for maximum gains. The idea is that enemies will not die outside of spotlight since SL missiles only hit inside spotlight, and the spotlight multiplier becomes required to gain any kills anyways, so it forces the spotlight coin bonus on more enemies.
Wall THorns + Boss ORBs - the idea here is to use a very fixed wall rebuild timing so the boss reaches it while it’s invincible. Between Boss Orb Hits, and Wall Thorns, you can fully kill a boss without it reaching you, which with ES/DD/DP/HC can let you kill bosses for infinite waves. You’ll want your Boss Orb Hit lab maxed, lv 10 Wall Invincibility lab, and a fairly high (14+, ideally 20) Wall Thorn lab. For the safer more frequent boss cycles, you will need your Wall Rebuild lab fairly high, as well as Wall Rebuild substats. Thorn % substat and Orb Substats are helpful but not required. Don’t add the ILM green perk, don’t run Space Displacer, and don’t run PS stun or Stun Bot, as they can mess up the timing. Do run ILM without the green perk, ideally with +mines substat, to stun the boss in place for the wall if you overshoot its arrival. You want the boss to move as slow as possible, so no +boss speed perk.
Some times to target:
Combine this with ES/DD, possibly a DD substat, possibly Death Penalty, and possibly Harmony Conductor, and you can handle bosses for infinite waves, so as long as you remain chip free, you should live as long as needed. This won’t work in T14 or 15, but works for infinite bosses in 13 and below.
This will not give you infinite waves anymore, as the new elite enemies will eventually overrun you, but it will make bosses meaningless forever. Since bosses never are a threat done right, you can focus all your strategy on mitigating elites for as long as possible, such as taking the damage/boss hp tradeoff.
For more advanced endgame strats, see my Farm Guide
Attack - how much damage you do lol, has 6000 upgrades, costs 800T+ coins to max.
Attack Speed - the frequency your tower fires at. You want this as high as possible to keep enemies knocked back
Critical Chance - your chance for a bullet to crit, and also increases UW damage.
Critical Factor - multiplier when your bullet crits. Also increases UW damage. Note that the cap was increased in a previous patch, so the scaling rapidly increases past the old cap and can very easily eat your coins.
Range - how far away your tower can shoot. This is a bad stat as other mechanics are altered based on it and causes all sorts of issues, and DW/DR both have max ranges that can’t keep up with high labs. Do not do the lab. You can slide your range lab between runs, so slide it to level 0 if you upgraded it. Workshop max is fine until you are farming with black hole, at which point, you may want to respec and lower it even further, but you likely do not want any levels in the lab until you really know what you’re doing.
Damage Per Meter - this is kind of a lie, 10 meters in game is really 1 meter in the game code, so this really works out to Damage Per 10 Meters. It gives you a bonus to damage based on how far away an enemy is. Also note that the max of this was increased in a previous patch, so anything after the old max has extreme scaling and will eat your coins.
Multishot (Chance/Targets) - chance on shot to fire bullets at multiple targets in the same shot
Rapidfire (chance/duration) - chance on shot to increase attack rate for a short period of time
Bounce Shot (Chance/targets/range) - chance when a bullet hits a target to bounce to additional targets. Note that Bounce Shot Range was increased in a previous patch, so anything after the old max scales heavily and will eat your coins. You very much want lightspeed shots lab research to couple with this when you can research it, so the bullets all hit their targets instantly.
Super Crit (Chance, Mult) - When your bullet crits, this is a chance for it to upgrade even further to a super crit, for an additional multiplier. This also increases UW damage and is VERY expensive, so hold off until at least like 10 billion lifetime coins before unlocking this; the 100m unlock cost is pennies compared to the hundreds of trillions of coins it costs to upgrade it fully, it is meant as a late game upgrade.
Rend Armor (Chance, Mult) - a very expensive LATE GAME upgrade that makes it so when a bullet hits an enemy, it has a chance to increase the damage further bullets do to that enemy, stackable up to 800% extra damage (increasable with labs). This is very expensive, and only worth it for the late game Glass Cannon (Bullet) phase. Once you have good missiles, it becomes useless, and it is EXTREMELY expensive, so its window of usefulness is currently very small.
Health - This will be your primary stat after you get off tier 1 until very late in your tower career, likely the main thing you will focus on for 9+ months, and then it becomes near useless just like def abs :) 6000 upgrades, a bit under a quadrillion coins to max out
Regen - This is completely useless early game end game, but fairly useful midgame, at least with a good Wormhole Redirector or Wall Fortification lab. Although it is a popular meme because of how useless it is, it is not currently stacking up endgame. 6000 upgrades.
Defense % - reduces how much damage an enemy does by a %, BEFORE applying defense absolute. This scales with enemy damage and will be useful as long as you are using health. With labs, perks and the card, it hard caps at 90%, even if it would be higher
.
Defense Absolute - reduces how much damage an enemy does by a flat value, after defense %. This does not scale well after Tier 1 and is only used in niche ways for strats like Devo. Do not bother with after T1 this until you really know what you’re doing. Also note that enemies do 1.04x damage per hit (via the heatup mechanic), so even if you should fully block their attacks, they will eventually hurt you if they don’t die fast enough. 1.2 Trillion coins to max out; 5000 upgrades.
Thorns- when an enemy hits you, does a % of their max HP as damage back to them, maxing at 99%. This means that if an enemy hits you 2 times, it instantly kills them. Thorns count as crits 100% of the time for the Critical Coin card regardless of crit chance, but not for the Critical Hit mission. Bosses take half damage per hit to thorns (49.5% at max). Most people stop these at breakpoints where it reduces how many hits it takes to fully kill an enemy by 1, until it becomes easy to just max out.
Lifesteal - % of your damage heals you. Does not apply to thorns or orbs or uw, only bullet damage. After you switch from def abs, this becomes very important to keep yourself healed until you get recovery packages.
Knockback Chance/Force - your bullets knock an enemy away from you. Very important to keep you from getting hit, and to keep an enemy in orbs.
Orb Speed/Orbs - little balls of doom that spin around your tower, fixed at 75 meters. Any enemy they touch instantly dies, besides bosses, protectors, and enemies inside a protector’s aura. These count as a critical hit 100% of the time regardless of your crit chance for the critical coin card, and do not count as crits for the critical hit event mission. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT MECHANIC IN THE GAME, and your entire tower career will be spent around optimizing them. Max them, and their labs, ASAP, and optimize your tower range to position them in a useful location.
Shockwave Size/Frequency - Fires a green ring out from your tower that pushes away all non-boss enemies (other enemies can shove bosses). Upgrades make this bigger, and happen more frequently. It’s fairly useful. Later strategies may intentionally use lower values to knock enemies just barely to the orb line but not past them. You can adjust your shockwave size lab between runs, the same as your range lab, so set both to lv0 and set your shockwave size to 1.9 for later farming strats
Landmine Chance/Damage/Radius - enemies have a chance to spawn little mines when they die, that explode on contact and hurt other enemies nearby. These are fairly useless, and leaving them locked soft-bans the perk related to them, so most people do not unlock them unless they are required for an event mission, until they are ready for Death Defy (10 billion lifetime coins is a good unlock point, if an event doesn’t force them earlier). Note that the Landmine Damage cap was increased in a previous patch, so anything past the old cap is very expensive and scales terribly and will eat all your coins.
Death Defy - a chance that, when an enemy would kill you, you flash red and do not die. Up to 30% at max, but fairly expensive. Think about this sometime around 10 billion lifetime coins imo. This rolls before consuming Energy Shield or Second Wind, provided the attack would kill you in one hit without the cards present, so you can get very large numbers once you have a good energy shield.
The Wall (Health, Rebuild Time) - This is very expensive and ACTIVELY HURTS HEALTH BUILDS. DO NOT UNLOCK THIS until you are GLASS CANNON at many trillions of lifetime coins, and expect to spend 6 TRILLION COINS and 25 THOUSAND GEMS on labs before they are useful. They do not have thorns without a lab, and even with the lab, the thorns won’t fully kill a boss. So now the boss hits the wall, does not die to hit but breaks the wall, heating up 1.04x, and then hits you harder than it would have without the wall. Leave this one locked. With Wall Fortification, it has a bit more utility earlier on for hybrid, but still expect to spend trillions on labs!
Cash Bonus - Multiplier that increases how much cash enemies give you, as well as how strong cash/wave is. Cash is a decimal but the decimal value isn’t shown, so even an extra .01 does add up over time! (Enemy kills give an extra $1 per 10 waves until wave 200, and then an extra $1 per 20 waves). This is an extremely useful upgrade, take the lab to ~25 at most, where it takes a day per level.
Cash / Wave - At the end of every wave you get this much cash, multiplied by your cash bonus. This is extremely useful early in the game, but falls off to cash from killing enemies later. Still, max this ASAP, take the lab to ~25 at most, where it takes a day per level. Note that waves have two periods, a 26s normal period, and then a cooldown period (9s normal wave, 12s boss wave, halved in tournaments) - this applies at the end of the cooldown period.
Coins Per Kill - Multiplies how many coins an enemy gives you, and note that coins do have hidden decimal places, so those .01 add up. Basics only give you coins with the Critical Coin card, otherwise only special enemies drop coins. Coin bonuses do not scale with wave, however at higher waves more enemies spawn and more of them are special, so high waves give you significantly more kill coins. Coins are your most important farmable currency as they let you upgrade your workshop between runs. Upgrading your workshop means you start at a higher level, but the cash upgrade cost still uses the original value, making it significantly easier to max things out midrun. This is THE MOST IMPORTANT FARMING STAT after the very beginning early game. This is an extremely useful upgrade. Take the lab to max, but swap it out with other coin economy labs based on whatever gives you the highest ROI at the time.
Coins / Wave - Gives you coins when the wave ends. This is not as useful as coins per kill, but still very useful until midgame. Take the lab until ~25 at most, where it takes a day per level.
Free Attack/Defense/Utility Upgrades - a chance at the end of every wave to increase a random stat in that tree by 1 level for free. These are very useful for most builds. For low range black hole builds, we intentionally respec and avoid these so we can keep our range and shockwave at specific values, but if you are reading this guide, you probably do not need to worry and should just max them for now! Note that free upgrades DO NOT PROC on skipped waves, only on the final wave it skips to.
Interest / Wave - Add the final cash on hand at the end of the wave to however much you get from cash / wave, and this upgrade gives you an extra “interest payment” of some percent on top of that. However, it caps out at $50 (max interest is upgradeable in the lab). This is useful early game, but becomes useless as soon as you have the Golden Tower UW, so don’t waste too much lab time on it. Note that if you have enough cash on hand to max out your interest payment for the wave (after factoring in your cash/wave), the $ sign in the upper left turns green.
Recovery Packages (Amount, Max Recovery, Package Chance) - At the end of every wave, there is a % chance you get a recovery package. This heals you for some % of your tower’s max HP, and can heal you over your max HP, letting you significantly overcharge past your max health. This replaces lifesteal as your primary healing source when you stop taking chip damage and only bosses hit you and is a very important upgrade. A lab exists to make one always spawn after killing a boss (in More Bosses tournament conditions, this is only after xxx0 wave bosses), and labs can increase how strong these are, but only the package after boss is really worth the time. If you run Galaxy Compressor, you may also want the Package Chance lab.
Enemy Stat Skips (Enemy Attack Level Skip, Enemy Health Level Skip) - This is a chance at the end of every wave to not increase the enemy’s attack or health stat, so it acts as if it has the previous wave’s stats still. This is extremely expensive (>100 Quintillion coins to max each one out, that is 100,000,000 TRILLION coins), but very powerful even for the few levels you can afford with cash/coins. Free upgrades make these VERY STRONG. This is an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT UPGRADE, so get it when it is reasonably affordable, as it will add hundreds of waves to your runs at that time. Note that these CAN proc on skipped waves, unlike Free Upgrades!
Enhancements - Do not unlock these until you can max your core stat (Damage, HP) midrun, as 1% of enhancement (which costs 5 billion coins) is likely more expensive than raising your core stat 1% with coin upgrades, or at least very close. Once you can max it out midrun, the only way to get more with coins will be enhancements though, but these are very expensive very fast. They are incredibly powerful and more detailed guides will likely come.
Lab calculator: https://tower-lab-calculator.netlify.app/ - see the max level of every lab, tables of costs, and compute time/gem/coin cost to do them, factoring in the gem discount for longer duration labs, as well as optimize the lab speed level you should research to for your target research. Use export json or export csv for lab speed and lab discount costs, or view their tables, as they cannot be computed in the normal flow.
Stone calculator: https://tower-stone-calculator.netlify.app/ - see the stone costs of every UW and UW+ upgrade, as well as compute remaining cost to whatever target levels, and see how long it will take. Also features functionality to help you calculate the value of Golden Combo when you are at the point you can unlock it.
Module calculator: https://tower-module-calculator.netlify.app/ - see the cost to upgrade modules to any level, compare the costs at various discount levels, compare the values at various upgrade levels, and simulate your weekly upgrade shard and reroll shard incomes.
Bot calculator: https://tower-bot-calculator.netlify.app/ - see the cost to buy and upgrade bots to any value, as well as calculate the impact of frequency labs.
Enemy stat finder: https://tower-enemy-stats.netlify.app/ - see the stats of enemies on every tier, and compare them by wave, hp, or damage.
Farm Tracker: https://what-tier-should-i-farm.netlify.app/ - track your farm runs and compare gains to find the best tier. Also includes an estimator for early game before you can really take advantage of uw/perks, but take that with a grain of salt.
UW Picker: https://what-uw-should-i-pick.netlify.app/ - find what uw you should pick given your current loadout and selections, along with explanations for why. Also view information about every UW.
I have a few other guides/tools that I do not maintain any longer but still may provide some use, see the discord for more info.
I try to keep these reasonably up to date with my opinions on the meta, as a top 10 champ player. You don’t have to trust me, but I’ve spent more time than you can imagine analyzing this game, building tools for it, and tens of thousands of dollars, pioneering many strategies, so learn from my experience!