Towers
All towers have a 40% chance of being available any given round, except the Guard Tower, which is always available.
Guard Tower | |
Gold Cost: 10 Points: +1 Cooldown: 1 sec Range: 700 Special: None |
The mainstay of your defenses, the Guard Tower is the only tower which is guaranteed to be available in every single round. Since it's got a decent range and isn't too expensive, it works well for building up walls, especially when you need to put a tower in some distant corner where it's range of fire over your maze is very limited.
Flame Tower | |
Gold Cost: 15 Points: +1 Cooldown: 0.5 sec Range: 300 Special: None |
The Flame Tower has a sharply limited range, but it's high attack speed makes it invaluable, and it tends to replace the Guard Tower as your primary walling tower when it's available. Place the Flame Tower in areas where it will get a lot of time to fire for maximum effectiveness. You'll want as many enemies as possible to stream past it one at a time, and if possible, force them all to go past it twice--after some other detour sufficiently long that the last enemy has passed for the first time by the time the first enemy comes by for the second pass.
Strong Tower | |
Gold Cost: 25 Points: +3 Cooldown: 1 sec Range: 700 Special: None |
Strong Towers have the potential to rack up points very quickly with +3 per attack, but this is offset against their high cost. One Strong Tower costs less than three Guard Towers, but it also doesn't form as long a wall, so the length of your maze will suffer if you use too many of these.
Cannon Tower | |
Gold Cost: 10 Points: +1 Cooldown: 2.5 sec Range: 700 Special: Splash (200 AoE) |
While it fires slowly, the Cannon Tower is useful for its ability to hit several targets with a single attack, scoring points for every target hit. Place them near locations where enemies tend to bunch up; remember that you need to average 2.5 hits per attack in order to compare favorably to a simple Guard Tower. You'll be able to tell how effective your Cannon Towers are being because the number of points scored with each attack will appear near the tower as it shoots.
Lightning Tower | |
Gold Cost: 15 Points: +1 Cooldown: 2 sec Range: 800 Special: Shockwave |
The Tremor Tower releases a shockwave with each attack, making it effective against enemies in a radial line. It also has the longest range of any of the towers. Keep in mind that the shockwave affects a very narrow line, so you need to get enemies lined up well in order to hit them. As with the Cannon Tower, the Tremor Tower will display the number of points earned each time it attacks.
Barrage Tower | |
Gold Cost: 35 Points: +1 Cooldown: 2 sec Range: 500 Special: Multishot |
The most powerful tower in your arsenal, the Barrage Tower hits every target within range each time it attacks, giving the potential to earn up to 20 points per attack! However, it's high cost and restricted range mean that you need to be careful where you place this tower. You need to hit seven targets per attack on average in order to have the same points/gold/time as Guard Towers, and Guard Towers have a longer range and build better walls, so make sure you place these where they can hit a lot of targets at once. Again, the number of points earned will be displayed each time this tower attacks.
Cold Tower | |
Gold Cost: 20 Points: +1 Cooldown: 2 sec Range: 500 Special: Frost Attack |
Between its increased cost, reduced firing rate, and shortened range compared to the Guard Tower, the Cold Tower is not an impressive investment for sheer damage output, but it has the potential to aid your defenses tremendously by slowing targets down as they run through your maze. The frost attack will slow targets' movement speed by 50% for five seconds. Try to slow down the target at the front of line as they pass through a narrow bottleneck--if there isn't enough room to go around him, all of the targets behind him will be forced to wait even though they haven't been slowed.
You can use the "random fire" option on Cold Towers to force them to pick their targets at random from all runners within range, allowing one target to attack several runners without as much micromanagement.
Venom Tower | |
Gold Cost: 30 Points: +0 Cooldown: 2 sec Range: 500 Special: Slow Poison |
Like the Cold Tower, the Venom Tower can slow down targets as they pass through your defenses. The slow poison will slow targets by 50% for five seconds. This is cumulative with the slowing from frost attack, so use them in conjunction to slow your targets to a crawl. Additionally, though the Venom Tower scores you no points when it attacks, poisoned targets will grant you 1 point every second for as long as they remain poisoned.
You can use the "random fire" option on Venom Towers to force them to pick their targets at random from all runners within range, allowing one target to attack several runners without as much micromanagement. This can be helpful in maximizing your points from poison.
Ethereal Tower | |
Gold Cost: 15 Points: +0 Cooldown: 3 sec Range: 700 Special: Banishing Attack |
If there's one tower you need to be careful not to build too many of, it's the Ethereal Tower. Not only does this tower score no points with its attacks, it also turns its targets ethereal, preventing any other towers from attacking them for five seconds. The advantage is that the banished units have their movement speed slowed by 75%.
If you want your Ethereal Towers to stop banishing targets, you can order them to hold fire and they will stop attacking until you tell them otherwise.
Haste Tower | |
Gold Cost: 10 Range: 100 Special: Haste Aura (+35% attack speed) |
This tower does not attack, but can still gain you points by improving the output of other towers. Towers must be built touching the Haste Tower (diagonally doesn't count) in order to receive the speed bon