McBlue’s Practical Guide to The Tower: UW Strategy

McBlue’s Practical Guide to The Tower

Table of Contents

• Overview
• First Games
• TLDR: First Games Summary
• Workshop & Upgrades
• Early Runs & Upgrades Strategy
• Next Run and Coin Bonuses
• Thorns, Lifesteal, and Health Focus
• No Ad Pack and Multipliers
• Lots More to Unlock and Progress
• Overall Strategies: Build Types
• Gems and Night Run Tips
• Defense and The Wall
• Ultimate Weapons
• Modules and Event Strategies
• Lab Priority and Research
• McBlue’s Devo Strategies
• Q&A and Video Guides
• Advanced Topics
• Philosophical McMusings
• Tower Lore, Memes, and Final Notes

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Overview

A quick-start guide to The Tower. Ready? Let’s begin.

First games

You started the game and have no choice but to start your first run. Sucks to be you… you’re going to die.

TLDR: First games summary

1. Absolute Defense

2. Cash Bonus, Coins

3. Thorns, Range, and Multishot

4. Lifesteal - Abandon Absolute Defense. Now HEALTH with Damage, Attack speed, Crit chance and crit factor, etc.

5. Free-ups

6. 1:1 for Damage:Health until Damage is too expensive (free-ups take over), put all cash into Health

7. Work on unlocking other things in Attack, Defense, and Utility… EXCEPT for THE WALL (See Common advice #5 for Wall)

Workshop Upgrades

Here you see three tabs: Attack, Defense, and Utility. Do your best. Put an upgrade or two into everything you can, and a few more upgrades as you can afford it through the run. You should be able to make it to wave 10 most likely - and die due to the Boss.

You are now back at the main menu and probably got about 90 coins. Behold: The Workshop (WS).

Put 75 of those coins to use by unlocking Defense% and Absolute Defense. You will likely not have enough to spend any other coins. That’s OK. Let’s start the next run.

This time try something a little counter-intuitive. Put equal points into mostly Absolute Defense and Damage (a few in others are okay, but lets mostly stick with the things that matter for the 2nd run.) Abs Def will negate that exact number of damage. (However, each hit from something will slowly increase in damage by a small factor. So if you let it sit there attacking you too long, damage will eventually break through.) Notice the boss is now acting like a small child trying to wack you while you have your hand to its head, you laughing at it. Good to feel superior to the peasants.

Continue to put cash into things after the first boss is down. Diversify if you wish. I get to about wave 17 before I fall victim to the horde of small squares.

Back to Main Menu: Now you’ll be directed to use gems to purchase your first card. Do so and see what you get. Get a 2nd while you are at it. Use the best one you have and unlock slots as you find more useful cards that will benefit your runs (see Cards and Lab slots for more advice).

Back in your Workshop, I advise you to unlock Cash Bonus and Cash/Wave.

3

Again, you will not have many coins leftover to get much else. Maybe a rank in Abs Def or Damage to get a small head start.

A side note about Cash bonus and Cash/wave: Treat Cash/wave as an afterthought. Cash bonus is where the real cash flows as your main multiplier. Upgrade this first. Even in your runs, high ranks in cash bonus early on will increase the total cash you will have throughout the run, giving you the means to earn the most coins.

Next run: do it again. I think at this point you will have the option to watch an ad to get a 1.5x coin bonus for the next 20 minutes. Go ahead and do that. Continue the run as you have learned so far. Put a few ranks into Cash Bonus as you go (I know what I said earlier, but even a few ranks in cash/wave at the start will at least add that much cash per wave which does help a bit early on).

Back after this run, you may have enough to unlock Coin Bonuses with 100 coins. Do that and put any remaining coins into various things as you can afford.

Start another run. You are now a generalist. Put upgrades into what you can afford with a special emphasis on Absolute Defense for now to stay alive. Your goal is to earn 500 coins to unlock your next big ticket to success: Unlock Thorn Upgrades. You may unlock Range Upgrades as well. Everything you can get is good at this stage of gameplay.

Unlocked Thorns!

Progression and Advanced Mechanics

Congrats!! Now you are getting somewhere. This is the moment you can start leaving Absolute Defense behind, in favor of Health. Now you have a goal to balance all your Damage to support the amount of Lifesteal you have. More ranks of Lifesteal gives more lifesteal back from your damage. Health will give you the most advancement in terms of what kind of damage you can take. AND- with a good rank of Thorns to do most of the damage to anything that touches you, you’ll be nice and tanky for a while.

With the addition of Elite enemies, you’ll still need to do a fair bit of focusing on overall Damage. Not all of them will succumb to your wall of thorns and there is one that halts your ability to lifesteal… that will end your run with haste.

At this point you should have a fair understanding of what is going on. From this point forward I’ll have common advice in the next sections.

And if I may be so bold as to suggest that if you plan on playing this game for more than a few hours, save yourself a bit of sanity and buy the No-Ad Pack. Furthermore, if you find yourself wanting to really advance quickly, there is also the permanent 2x and 3x (for a combined 6x coin gain - and if you consider the no-ads packs it’s kinda like a 9x boost).

Lots more to unlock

Continue progressing and gaining coins. Focus on Damage and Health (there are 6,000 levels of them, after all).

Even if you only have enough coins to put 10 upgrades into one or both Damage/Health after each run, you are making progress!

Somewhere around level 4,000 on each of them you’ll begin to be able to max/Gold Box them during farming runs with cash only. If you are curious to see all the unlocks in each tab, see the Max Devo section for pictures.

For a detailed analysis of Workshop coin costs and cash cost during runs, look for other posted guides or ask for help finding Skye's tools in the discord.

Overall Strategies: Build types

This is a practical guide, not all inclusive. Deep Dive guides are available and I will not reinvent those wheels.

• Simple: Blender - max everything
• Advanced: UW based - Obviously depends on what Ultimate Weapons you have unlocked - usually results in Devo or devolved upgrades (e.g. Slow bullet output with maximum damage). I have some uncommon; albeit, advanced devo types under the So you think you can’t devo section.
• Glass Cannon: Chain Lightning is an easy choice to start the damage journey for any type of player. Other ultimate weapons will require more significant stone investment to bring later forms of glass cannon to fruition.

(More on Build types later)

Double Your Damage!

As your ultimate weapons develop, consider where the damage is coming from and how to best advance that damage. Bullet and UW damage comes from Damage, Crit Chance and Crit Factor, Super Crit Chance and Super Crit Factor. Concentrate on these labs to better all your damage at the best pace. Notice how Damage/Meter is not on that list. While Dmg/Meter is beneficial, it would only affect bullet damage (however, much later on with Spotlight+, Dmg/Meter is a direct enhancer of Spotlight’s multiplier).

As mentioned earlier, even 10 upgrades into damage and/or health after each run is major progress. Getting farther in a run means more coins. Being able to progress to a higher tier to farm is a coin multiplier.

Having trouble with Elite Vampires? Unlocking Super Crits is a massive damage multiplier and will be able to dish out multitudes of higher damage numbers to deal with Elites and protectors. Having Super Crits will get you farming up to Tier 8 (give or take). You can now unlock (V24 - Tier 2 wave 1,000) Garlic Thorns from the lab and dish that vampiric damage right back at them.

Once you save up to unlock Rend, you’ll find yourself accelerating damage at a burnout pace. Rend will quickly (albeit slowly at first) rev up the amount of damage an enemy will receive… and the longer an enemy stays alive, the more and more damage it will take until the cap is reached-(looking at you, Elites).

Farming

(More on this soon. For now: farm the tier where you can reach wave 4500 or higher. Preferably wave 6,000+ regularly. Use those Perks to get all the coin bonuses. The best farm runs are 10-12 hours long.) See Cards section for farming presets.

Now What?

Here are things to aim for between farming runs. These milestones will unlock various tools to further achieve coins. These are not all of them, but some of the most important ones.

While farming, you will get to wave 70 on Tier 1. This unlocks the Event. Use the event to earn Medals and you can spend them on the following:

• Themes and relics: Long term, stacking unlocks that give incremental coin bonuses; and various tower upgrades. These are the longest term benefits over time and should be a primary focus.
• Currencies: Easy early way to get Green Stones. Later on, the cost of medals per gain in Stones are not very efficient. But at the beginning of the game, this will be your best option to unlock your 1st to 3rd Ultimate Weapons. Each unlock will be a higher cost and it’ll take time (unless you buy stone packs every two weekends).
• Tier 1 Wave 150: Lab speed research to quicken the time it takes to research. Super important.
• Tier 2 Wave 90: Modules unlocked. Get a few, but early on focus on getting Lab slots, and some Card slots and cards. (See Cards and Lab slots section)
• Tier 2 Wave 150: Perks! This will be a key element to better farming: coin, damage, defense boosts. Tradeoffs like CTO (Coin Trade Off - better coins, less health).
• Tier 2 Wave 250: First Perk Choice: Get this and set it to Perk Wave Reduction (you can only choose white perks, not green nor purples). Tier 2 Wave 400 gives Improve Trade-off Perks research.
• Tier 4 Wave 80: Perk Option Quantity. This will make finding good perks much easier.
• Tier 4 Wave 150: Target Priority. This is a lesser important unlock but it helps with special tower builds and effectively focusing your tower’s bullets in coin heavy multiplier areas.
• Tier 5 Wave 40: Ban Perks. Get a number of harmful and useless perks out of the selection. (Some that are very harmful now may end up being useful later.)
• Tier 6 Wave 50: Extra Orb Adjuster. This will be very helpful once you have the uncommon card: Extra orbs, especially after you have the Black Hole ultimate weapon.

Cards and Lab slots

• Generally speaking, I aim for a philosophy of sanity by leaning mostly toward getting all 5 lab slots, but take a few gems to pull some new cards along the way… and if you happen to find a card that is definitely useful then by all means unlock a card slot so you can use it. There is an argument to be made to unlock between 8-8 useful card slots by the time you have the 4th lab slot while you save gems to unlock the 5th lab slot.

• Recommended farming preset, in order of number of unlocked card slots:

• Coins, Enemy Balance, Cash, Extra Defense, Health, Fortress, Crit Coin
• (Things like cash and crit coin can be traded out for health based cards near end-of-run to prolong the run for extra coins/cells if desired)

• Added Damage if additional card slots unlocked:

• Attack Speed, Berserker (very rare), Damage, Critical Chance

• Tournament/milestone presets:

• Your card setup will depend on if your tower is a Health, Damage, or Hybrid build.
• Suggest removing Enemy Balance to reduce the load on your tower (experiment with your tower to see if the extra cash is truly required for your tower or not - similar to milestone runs).
• Extra Orbs set to slightly inside tower range to better blend anything in BH which has been updated to center just slightly inside the tower range.
• Attack Speed vs Damage card what if I can only choose one?
• If you had to choose only one between these two cards, attack speed would be the most beneficial. The reasoning is by the end of your run, you most likely will not have the overall damage to kill with bullets; you will exclusively be getting kills via Orbs. When this is happening to your tower, attack speed will be used as extra knockback to push everything back to orbs; whereas a damage card will be effectively useless. In addition, attack speed is a form of damage anyway, and will put more damage on elites. Obviously if you have enough card slots, use both.

Common and clever advice

Gems

Gems pop between every 10-15 minutes. Use a digital watch to vibrate every 13 minutes and you’ll find gems usually waiting on you. If not, wait another 1-2 and it’ll show up. My experience has 13 minutes as a very likely time to usually have gems ready to tap. Also nice to have if you work and need a small reminder to get gems and you’ll be able to get approximately 400 gems per day when combined with daily missions.

Night run

Tower while sleeping: Sometimes it’s not possible to realistically setup a tower for running 7-8 hours while sleeping. One alternative suggestion is simply reducing game speed to 1x. Over roughly 8 hours this will equate to about 800 waves. 2x is 1600. This way, overnight, you do not need to have auto-perk enabled. When you wake up, you’ll just be 800-1600 waves ahead of where you started, still towering. At this point you can pick perks and upgrade your tabs and be on your merry way at full game speed.

Playing on phones

Buy a 10,000 mAh power bank to keep with you when a charger will be out of reach. You can go most of the day with what is essentially an extra phone with you to power your tower. A 20,000 mAh bank tends to be too heavy in my opinion.

Defense Absolute and Def%

Defense% and Absolute defense work in tandem. If you use any kind of Devo build, you’ll want as much of both as possible for your early run’s waves. Regen plays a key role later with Wall or a Wormhole Redirector mod. The general advice says not to unlock wall too early as it will hamper your Free-up chances with Health by dividing among more random choices.

The Wall: when to unlock?

To best know when you are ready to unlock the wall is as follows:

1st: You should be able to max Health with only in-run Cash with minimal use of Free-Ups.

2nd: You must have a coin income so that you are able to afford the Wall Regen labs; and it starts at 30 billion coins. The 10th Wall Regen lab is 80 billion coins and will put you at 100% regen. These are quick labs and can be completed within 5-7 total days with 2x or 3x lab boosting.

3rd: The one major disclaimer about the Wall is Thorns is drastically reduced in usability. You will have to use the lab to get any Thorns at all! Therefore, the best way to really utilize the wall is to have enough damage to fight your way through the waves. The major benefit you gain from this strategy is Elites that suspend regeneration will not stop regeneration of the Wall itself; therefore, not only do you have Def% and Absolute Defense in play, you also get whatever Regen you have from doing the labs - elongating how long you can devo if that is your build.

But if you totally rely on Thorns to do most of your killing instead of damage, that is when the Wall may not work out how you’ve hoped. Then again, if you want to progress in the tower, ultimately damage is the way to go; as you will reach a point that damage scales much higher than you can ever achieve through defense (even by hitting 98% defense). And at that point in your Tower career, Wall will only act as a single hit absorption with whatever thorns level you have.

After Tournament:

6. Don’t forget to turn Black Hole back on…

Ultimate Weapons TLDR

1. Golden Tower, Black Hole, Chain Lightning / Deathwave / Spotlight are the ideal initial order to obtain, and each give coin bonuses in some form.

2. Next options, if the ones above are not available, may require nuanced planning and suggest asking veterans in the Discord channel for guidance.

3. Spotlight is a lovely damage amplifier for everything, and any other damage amplifier becomes multiplicative here.

4. Death Wave (V24.3) has had a major revamp. It now appears to be a Jack-of-all-trades style ultimate weapon that gives bonuses to Coins, Cells, and damage. Early-waves phase of farming runs now have a Death Ring, or Firewall, that will stay until the damage pool has been depleted by the onslaught of anything that comes into contact and will tag DW’s bonus onto anything that is destroyed by it or destroyed by anything else if it has been tagged with its Effect Wave prior to the Ring activation.

5. Smart missiles and Spotlight have a strong synergy through Spotlight Missiles.

6. Inner Land Mines and Smart missiles work well together by stunning bosses in a position where smart missiles land multiple amplified hits on a boss.

7. Chain Lightning hits things hard and has a good chance to add shock to amplify all sources of damage (Module: Dimensional Core will super focus this effect and drastically increase the single target damage and amplification effects).

8. Chrono field requires lots of time and stone investment to do what it needs to do.

9. Poison swamp has a nice stun effect and extra damage output. Also a nice assist for Spotlight Missiles Orbless Devo

1. First Picks:

Golden Tower is by far the most useful of the lot. But if you don’t get this in your first set of choices, that’s okay.

Black Hole is a good 2nd place choice that gives great coins once you put some time into the labs.

(New Meta Note: Chain Lightning has proven to be a higher rank of choice, even over Spotlight and Deathwave, due to the sheer damage potential and its inexpensive nature. This is an ideal choice especially for free-to-low spending players as CL is fully functional at unlock and only then requires stone investment to increase its potential. An additional note on CL is the damage you gain from it will propel anyone in tournaments; therefore, increasing overall Stone income.)

3rd place is a near tie between Chain Lightning, Deathwave, or Spotlight (for stone pack buyers) due to their damage and coin potential. As of the newest V24.3 update, Death Wave has renewed potential, and possibly the ultimate farming UW other than Golden Tower itself. Not only will DW come with a coin multiplier, it is capable of increasing the amount of Cells used for quickening lab times; it even has an additive damage amplifier that comes with the Effect Waves which activate right before the main damage wave. In addition, it has a very strong Health multiplier which labs will make stronger than ever before.

Chain Lightning has become a recent favorite among the community due to its very powerful damage potential. Its immediate function is nice for free or mostly-free players and will only get better as more stones are invested into it. For players that regularly buy Stone Packs, CL will quickly be the primary damage dealer of any tower, effectively rendering bullet damage to <1% of overall damage. CL may be damage only, without cell or coin bonuses. But consider with pure damage, one can easily farm higher tiers than you otherwise could. This higher tier farming DOES give cells and coin bonuses. Hence, the favoritism. (I think CL is a gateway ultimate weapon to glass cannon builds when paired with spotlight and chrono field.)

Spotlight is a good 3rd option but I believe for players that regularly buy Stone Packs every few weeks. This is because to make SL fully functional requires 3-4 beams (and larger angles for wide coverage) which is prohibitively expensive without long term saving or regular stone packs.

If none of those are in your first choice set, then you may want to join the Discord server, if you have not already, and ask for advice. Otherwise I will attempt to explain the pros/cons of the others in later sections.

2. Alternative choices:

I will start with my guiding philosophy toward Ultimate Weapons: Function vs Potency. Chain Lightning and Poison Swamp are functional as soon as you get them, but their potency is lacking. Chain lightning Labs will increase the damage taken from all direct damage sources. Mods can further increase the damage by stacking the effect (Dimension Core). Once you reach the higher tiers (Tier 16), you can unlock even more labs that will cause damage to decrease to your tower if for every 1% damage something takes from CL. Poison Swamp’s lab will enable a chance to stun any non-boss or non-elite enemy and the swamp’s radius and stun time can be increased. Smart missiles, Chrono Field, and Inner Land Mines all require extra stone investment before their function shows. Smart Missiles’ function takes a fair number of stones to truly become functional. 1800 stones are required to max it’s Cool Down to 30 seconds (an extra 750 stones to bring that down to 20 seconds from the V24 update). 60 seconds is okay, but honestly you want–bordering on need, to get SM’s cool down to 20-30 seconds to be fully usable. Or you can use them for more economical purposes and keep SM in sync with GT/BH activation times for SM-Devo builds. Beyond that, you’ll then need some stones to get a few extra missiles and damage, not to mention the labs to amp up its damage.

Spotlight Missiles vs Smart Missiles

○ Each is activated independently - you can have SM turned off while SLM is on.

○ I would like to make a side note that Smart Missiles can be very good to have even without max cool down. This is when Spotlight is also unlocked - this allows the Spotlight Missiles to be completed in the lab. In this situation the rapidity of missiles from spotlight is determined by only the lab… but the strength of these missiles is determined by how many stones have been invested in Smart Missiles’ damage! Imagine having only invested a total of 85 stones into SM damage to go from base 14x damage to 32x damage - on top of the level of amplifier from spotlight (also consider the SM amplifier labs and explosion radius).

Chrono Field’s function requires significant stones and time to complete. This is a UW for dedicated players for the long haul. V24 update: max slow is now 75% and an ancestral 15% mod now caps at 90% speed reduction.

Land Mines’ function is possible with maximum mines unlocked (6 without mods) and the ability to rotate via labs. When the rotation labs are completed, a boss can be nearly permanently stunned to allow for direct hits of Smart Missiles.

3. Ultimate Weapon Interactions

• Spotlight (SL) amplifies all direct damage (not the percentage based black hole damage from labs) by its multiplier. (Outdated as of V24.3): Death wave uses SL to greatly extend its usable duration, often to the point where your tower’s defenses can no longer take damage. This is a key element of modern Max Devo builds. https://youtube.com/shorts/DlDcsdFvPSE?feature=share This video shows the benefit of DW with the SL multiplier. Also this shows that a shockwave activation can also essentially reactivate another death wave. (The Mod used with this was video was Anti-Cube Portal, which also increases damage by 7x for 7 seconds)

4. Should you restart your account if you did not get Gold Tower or Black Hole?

I am personally against this due to each UW that does contribute to coins has been rebalanced to a degree that you can easily get coins without the big two. The chances of landing not landing twice in a row on some Ultimate Weapon that contributes to coins now is exceedingly low; and if you are forced to choose between the ones that do not, CF, SM, PS, CL, ILM, at least one will be extremely useful in your early game: CL is a great all-around damage. SM will set you up early for Spotlight Missiles. In short summary, don’t give up until you reach 2-3 ultimates. CL will be a major step to expanding bullet damage and enable a player to simply farm higher tiers and defeat protectors with increasing ease - which itself gives a much better coin bonus that can easily replace not getting Golden Tower.

5. (GT activation time sheet - Future)

Modules

Black Hole Digestor

(V24 update: the entire section here is now outdated. I need to do some tinkering to see how to most effectively maintain orb kills when using reduced tower ranges with BHD. My initial thoughts are you actually need to increase tower range in order for natural orbs to line up BH-center with Orbs. Otherwise it seems if anything does get past your orbs, you’ll be in a pseudo-’orbless’ build.)

This particular mod is an interesting niche that seems to be beneficial for early-mid game and very late game strategies. The special ability of this mod allows Free-Ups to be used and never auto-upgrade the Range in the attack tab. This allows Blender strategy builds to do something especially helpful. Normally, blender requires the Extra Orbs card with the adjuster lab to best get kills inside the BH center, which is the quintessential blender build. But with BHD, you can start a run at minimum range and, even with 4 orbs flying around, practice an Orbless strategy due to those orbs not really being directly in the center of Black Holes. This is good for concentrating kills inside Spotlight’s area with normal bullets and/or missiles, etc. (Sure, those orbs will be insta-killing things, but not as many as a full blender at max range).

Here is the cool part: once your orbless or pseudo-orbless strategy runs its course, instead of maxing out range and using Extra Orbs Card, you can manually increase the range to about 56.00m to 59.0m (this will vary with your Black Hole size)! What does this do? Consider at this point your Black Hole size might not be huge - normally at 69.5m tower range BH doesn’t look huge and likely will not have full coverage. By only increasing tower range to about 57m, your BH center will be right about the center of your normal workshop orbs. This is Blender but with a large ratio for BH’s size! And your orbs will be doing the same thing as extra orbs… but at the same time you can free up a card slot for something else.

(Note: A common question that comes up is what happens when everything in attack, defense, and utility tabs are maxed… do you still get the coins per kill bonus? Answer is Yes. The game will ‘roll’ for the chance to upgrade each tab, each wave, before checking what to upgrade. That roll is enough to give you the bonuses even with nothing to upgrade.)

Event Strategies

1. One of the most difficult event missions for non-devo builds is the kill with inner land mines.

○ Use the tradeoff perk that decreases knockback but increases lifesteal.

○ Remove the Attack Speed Card.

○ If you are lucky enough to get it, use the Space Displacer mod.

○ Do not increase your tower range if possible.

○ If you do not have Inner Land Mines unlocked, you’ll want to use your first perk choice as the random ultimate weapon perk (then the Extra set of inner mines perk); reset the run if you do not get the correct ultimate weapon. When using this suggestion, start on a much lower tier than you normally farm to give your tower the time needed to get the number of kills required.

2. Defy Death (multiple times in a single run):

○ Intro sprint

○ Start on highest tier unlocked

○ Use Energy Shield and Second Wind card if you have them.

○ Use a mod to roll a sub stat that increases the chance of death defy. Alternatively remove the health mod or de-level it to remove the benefit.

○ Remove all cards that give Health, Defense, Absolute Defense, Recovery chance.

Lab Priority

Overall philosophy: Begin by thinking of each lab slot as a category type as needed: Main, Attack, Defense, Utility, Ultimate Weapons, Perks, Cards, Bots, Modules. Obviously we do not yet have more than 5 lab slots; therefore, each lab slot must be shifted as necessity requires.

Main Research

Early Game

• Game Speed (lab to completion at earliest convenience)
• Lab Speed (high priority within reason)
• Discounts (Very low priority - A few short timed labs into these will take the edge off needing as much cash)

Mid Game

• Reroll Daily Mission

Mid-Late Game

• Workshop Enhancements
• Target Priority

Attack Research

Early Game

• Attack Speed (suggested no more than 10 levels above others in this category – hit fast with bricks, not twigs)
• Damage
• Crit Factor
• Super Crit Chance
• Super Crit Multi
• Light Speed shots (utility)

Mid-Late Game

• Max Rend Armor Multi
• Damage/Meter

Defense Research

Early Game

• Defense% (Lab times will climb quickly - switch to other important labs when needed)
• Garlic Thorns (unlock milestone Tier 2; Wave 1000)
• Health
• Defense Absolute (lab is underrated - use lab time with caution with this one)

Mid Game

• Wall Regen
• Wall: Thorns, Health

Mid-Late Game

• Wall Fortification
• Orb Boss Hit
• Wall Rebuild
• Health Regen

Utility Research

Early Game

• Coins/Kill Bonus
• Cash Bonus

Mid Game

• Enemy Health Level Skip
• Enemy Attack Level Skip
• Package After Boss
• Recovery Package Chance

Perks Research

Usually in order of affordability

• Unlock Perks
• First Perk Choice (Usually suggest Perk Wave Reduction unless another is needed for specific strategies such as Event Missions)
• Perk Option Quantity
• Standard Perk Bonus
• Waves Required (not very important but nice to have a few early levels in – suggest 10)
• …
• … Let's be honest. You want all of these as you can get them.

Module Research

Also usually in order of affordability

• Daily Mission Shards (benefit over time; as soon as possible)
• Reroll Shards (benefit over time; as soon as possible)
• Rare Drop Chance (expensive, but again, when you can; Common Drop Chance helps sooner)

Ultimate Weapon Research

Most research here is top tier as you can afford. Therefore, it becomes difficult to say what should be done before others.

I will strongly note that if you are making a decision to develop econ and your choice is between coins/kill or a UW-coin-bonus related lab, usually the UW-coin-bonus lab will net you the most benefit. There are resources/tools on discord showing what coin, lab, or stone investment will net you the most and/or quickest return. Likewise, if you are wanting to invest in damage, then UW based labs that focus on damage UWs will often give you the best results for more waves (I.E. Shock Chance, Lightning Amplifier, Missile Amplifier, etc.)

(I think I will develop this area further and attempt to prioritize a list based on each UW, on another date.)

McBlue’s Devo Strategies (pre V24 relic)

Devo… Max Devo.

Starting Workshop: This setup is generally what you will aim for when doing Devo. I give myself extra flexibility, but you may easily go ahead and max a few more things such as Knockback Chance and Knockback force. (Flexibility in part due to events sometimes needing 400 workshop upgrades and that becomes difficult without spending 150 gems to respec… so you give yourself something to upgrade as needed.)

If you have Wall unlocked, you can also probably max thorns without causing much trouble. Without Wall, I suggest keeping thorns lower until you upgrade it during the run.

Cards at Run-Start

The Video: Day in the Life of The Tower, Max Devo Vol 2

Things to keep in mind while watching.

1. The first goal of perk choice is to stay alive long enough to get what you need. a. Defense percent b. Health Regen (with Wall and Wall Regen labs)

2. The second goal of perk choice is to get economy/coins farming to 100% as fast as you can. a. CTO (coins trade off) b. Golden Tower Bonus c. Coins Bonus d. Black Hole Duration e. Death Wave +1 f. Increase Game Speed

3. The best way to achieve both goals is to choose perks in an order that will either get you exactly what you want, or to choose perks that will only need to be chosen once to effectively remove them from the pool of potential choices and increase the chances of landing on the ones you do need.

Chosen Once List

a. Any Green perk (prioritize Economy or Damage as needed)

b. Any Purple (CTO is a primary goal, followed by others)

c. Increase game speed is the only white color perk that can only be chosen once

Max Devo Video Breakdown

1. First 3600 waves are dedicated to increasing perk coins and defense and regen. All cash goes to EHLS/EALS. (Just to show what important roles Wall Regen now plays, I delayed maxing out HP and Regen until about wave 3600 to see the before and after effects on the wall.)

2. Wave 3979 is a slowdown to show how DW still works within the SL exposure area, even when it can’t kill outside of the spotlight.

3. Just after this segment you will notice the wall is starting to break down from the weight of damage. At this point if the wall breaks, and a vampire halts lifesteal and regen of the tower, the run will be over quickly. Therefore, attack speed is increased and more bullets are put into the mix. The goal here is to minimize the number of multishot and bounce shots that the tower puts out. You want to keep enemy squares in the spotlight kill zone and not let so many enemies touch the tower. This is an Orbless phase and DW will quickly phase out in favor of GT and BH duration and SL angle for the main coin gains.

4. Until wave 5290 the multishot and bounce shot numbers are slowly increased. Spotlight missiles are turned on so anything it kills will be in the SL coin bonus area. And range is slightly increased so workshop orbs will start killing more squares in the BH center, but not needing extra orbs card for outside of the tower range (55 is about the ideal range in my experience).

5. Shortly after all UWs are turned on, the remainder of workshop orbs are added.

6. Wave 6400 Free-ups are activated to push the last few percentage points of EHLS/EALS up to max. Cash is used to push what remains of the tower to maximum potential. Cash card is removed and the extra orbs card is put in its place now that the BH center is out of range.

7. Run continues until the end.

So you think you CAN’T Devo?! Think again.

Q: McBlue, what if I only have Spotlight and either BH or GT, but not both?

A: Blender is not your only option…

1st is Target priority lab level 2 unlock Tier 4 Wave 150; 1 Million coins to lab level One, 1 Billion coins for lab level Two and set it to In Spotlight. 2nd is Spotlight Coin bonus labs. 3rd is Spotlight missiles; 200 Million coins for first lab and required to activate the missiles. My understanding is you can have spotlight missiles with only Spotlight and do not require Smart Missiles unlocked… however the damage of SLM will be limited to SM’s base level which is 14x tower damage. Devo your attack speed, multishot chance, rapid fire, and bounce chance very low; all while keeping Damage, crit factor, and Damage/meter as high as possible. You can still use the Free-ups card if needed so it will very slowly increase those stats. This will keep the vast majority of bullets going to only things in your spotlight’s view - which is where the heavy coin bonus is. Remember when doing Devo, you will want Def% and Defense Absolute as high as possible to avoid damage as long as possible; regen will greatly help if you have Wormhole Redirector or the Wall with Wall regen labs done. Spotlight missiles will greatly help kill anything inside your spotlight areas - when you can afford it, lab it as fast as possible!

Once things have a ton of Health where your bullets and/or SLM cannot kill anymore, think about adding in other UWs like chain lightning or poison swamp. Inside the SL area, damage is amplified and will likely kill things only inside the SL area. Things like DW / CL / PS / ILM damage are all much higher at this point and only capable of doing enough damage inside that SL area. Once nothing has enough damage, this is when you switch to Blender and kill everything with orbs and thorns.

Q: Do I need to have DeathWave to devo?

A: You can also use Smart Missiles in lieu of DW when synced with GT and/or BH for SM-Devo. (V24.3 edit) You may still devo bullet speeds when you do not have Death Wave to best use SM or SL. Once you do have DW, having a Devo build is not necessary as it was in the past.

Q: Can SM and DW be used to benefit each other?

A: (V24.3 edit) DW and SM can go off at the same time and the Death Wave’s Effect Wave should go off instantly - Smart missiles will then do as much damage as it can and give you the benefit of coin and cell multipliers. This should occur even after the Death Wave Ring is consistently breaking after it is created.

Advanced topics (TBD)

1. Long term progression path - path toward Super Crits and beyond (unlocks and labs paths)

2. Modules

3. Night runs

4. Advanced Tournament strategies/micro strategies

5. Sandbagging

6. Timers for daily shard missions / gems

7. Game speed

8. Target priority

9. Research priority Early, mid, late game; Maximal Maxtrix Area and calculus.

10. Goals for F2P players vs P2W

11. Medals and spending guidelines; themes and relics, currencies.

12. Start Devo When Tips - screenshots

13. Cost: how much to play? Coin boosters, milestone packs, stone packs, event pass (yearly cost)

Explanations:

1. Crit Coin and how it works

2. FAQ/Situations from discord members

3. Links to most complex subjects; milestone tables,

4. More advanced lab milestones and costs; labs/goals based on LTC; coin saving

5. Where and when to use gems - gem rotation for cards/mods - discipline

6. Checklist for tournaments

Philosophical McMusings:

Free-to-play Journey vs Pay-to-Win Shortcuts

Free2P Journey:

As a free player, one would not expect to get to end-game material in any realistic timeline. The game is not designed to let you get there easily. The ultimate weapons to focus on will be GT, BH, and CL for the best overall outcome. GT and CL have a spectrum of use and do not necessarily require massive stone investments to be useful. BH can have permanent status with moderate stone investment, which effectively eliminates control issues for basic enemies. CL will carry the brunt of bullet-esque damage.

What should a F2P’s goal be? Unlocking Tier 10 is pretty cool. You’ve seen most of what you will ever see and got a few UW tools and wave-4500 relics along the way. Be happy with good enough. Do you really need a sportscar when a 2013 Honda CR-Z will get you to your destination (only hybrid that comes in a manual transmission, far as I know of - quite fun!).

SL requires a moderate stone investment to get what I feel is a true minimum of use: 3 beams (out of 4).

SM requires about 2500 stones to get the cool down to true functionality, then more to increase potency.

CF permanence is a major buffer between mid and top level players and requires 2000 stones and lab time to get it.

Pay-win shortcuts:

Quick gains in Stones allow for a few quick strategies. Permanent BH. Skip the GT sync, go directly to who-cares. About 3000 stones will get max cool down and enough duration to have BH active at 100% with a Gcomp mod. One wouldn’t need to use MVN mod until gcomp is fully developed. Use Harmony or Dimcore instead. Or whatever to keep perm-BH.

SL max beams. 1225 stones get you 3 beams. 4th takes 2500 stones (for a total of 3725… yikes!). But what you get is what I like to refer to as the Lawn-Mower effect. Combined with a developed CL may as well be a flame-throwing Lawn-Mower. Very much key to a good Orbless build. Use tournament stones to expand SL-angle and SL-bonus.

SM and permanent CF are large stone investments and is key to furthering maximum damage to bosses, which will almost always never be enough damage, but it’ll delay ever being hit for a looong time. Getting these UWs developed will allow anyone to skip Health builds, and skip right to Glass Cannon builds. Tournament Fast-Pass.

The Tower lore? Stories? Memes?

7-6-2024 McBlue became blue for the first time

Skye/Jory

Bob

Fudds

Dear Diary - Are you there Fudds? It’s me. Blue. Update when?

Blue’s off the wall topics: favorite sandwiches

Memes: Devo: Deh-vo or De-voodoo?

Video references and concluding notes

The following sections include visuals and screenshots that illustrate various UI elements and runs. Images referenced in this guide appear in the images section below with descriptive captions to aid understanding of the UI and strategic contexts. The images include screens of the workshop upgrades, lab slots, card inventories, and run progress snapshots to help you map described strategies to actual in-game visuals.

The Video: Day in the Life of The Tower, Max Devo Vol 2

Things to keep in mind while watching.

1. The first goal of perk choice is to stay alive long enough to get what you need. a. Defense percent b. Health Regen (with Wall and Wall Regen labs)

2. The second goal of perk choice is to get economy/coins farming to 100% as fast as you can. a. CTO (coins trade off) b. Golden Tower Bonus c. Coins Bonus d. Black Hole Duration e. Death Wave +1 f. Increase Game Speed

3. The best way to achieve both goals is to choose perks in an order that will either get you exactly what you want, or to choose perks that will only need to be chosen once to effectively remove them from the pool of potential choices and increase the chances of landing on the ones you do need.

Anticipated outcomes of Devo performance

The day in the life video emphasizes strategic pacing and tiered progression. It highlights the balance between defense and offense, the importance of economy for farming, and the strategic value of selecting perks that compound through waves. The guide encourages experimentation within the constraints of lab slots, ultimate weapons, and card slots. It also emphasizes keeping a robust defense while scaling damage with ult weapons and lifesteal to sustain longer runs.

Q&A and video guides

Q: McBlue what if you do not have Gold Tower or Black Hole in your first playthrough?

A: CL and SM still offer substantial damage and coin multipliers, and you can farm to Tier 8 or higher to unlock new UWs. Don’t give up; you can build a strong economy with CL and DW synergy and eventually unlock GT or BH as you progress.

Q: Can you speak to the benefit of Blender with orbs and thorns during the midgame?

A: Blender focuses on maximizing point-of-kill efficiency through a combination of thorns, orbs, and range upgrades. Even without max range, strategic lab upgrades and card slots can yield a high coin multiplier during SL windows.

Q: Is DW necessary for a specific playstyle?

A: Not strictly; however, DW synergizes very well with SL and boosts coin and cell multipliers, especially in early to mid game farming.

Advanced topics

1. Long-term progression path toward Super Crits and beyond

2. Modules and their synergies

3. Night runs and offline farming

4. Tournament strategies and micro-management

5. Sandbagging and pacing

6. Timers for daily shard missions and gems

7. Game speed tuning

8. Target priority in varied scenarios

9. Research priority across early, mid, late game; Maximal Maxtrix Area and calculus

10. F2P vs P2W considerations and goals

11. Medals, relics, currencies, and farm optimization

12. Start Devo timing and tips with screenshots

13. Cost models for run expense and stone packs

Explanations

1. Crit Coin mechanics and usage

2. FAQ/Situational guidance drawn from community discussions

3. Milestone tables and subject links

4. Advanced lab milestones and costs; lab goals based on LTC

5. Gem usage and rotation discipline

6. Tournament checklists and optimization guides

Philosophical McMusings

Free-to-play Journey vs Pay-to-Win Shortcuts

Free-to-play Journey: A realistic progression path that focuses on GT, BH, and CL as core tools. These UWs can be valuable with moderate stone investment and provide a path to end-game with steady coin income.

Pay-win Shortcuts: Strategic stone investments can accelerate progress such as permanent BH or faster SL expansion, but should be used with caution. These paths often unlock faster farming and more dramatic power spikes.

Final Notes on Tower Lore and Memes

The guide ends with light-hearted notes on the Tower community, memes, and the personalities involved in its creation and ongoing discussion.

Tower Lore, Memes, and Final Notes

• 7-6-2024 McBlue became blue for the first time
• Skye/Jory
• Bob
• Fudds
• Dear Diary: updates and musings on the Tower world
• Memes and Devo terminology

Images and visuals references

The following images illustrate key UI and run concepts referenced above. See the images section for captions and alt text.

Image: Upgrades Tabs

Image: Main Menu and Workshop

Image: Defense Upgrades UI

Image: Workshop Upgrades

Image: Cards and Lab Slots

Image: Devo Run Start

Image: Card Inventory

Images

• url: images/three-tabs-upgrades.png

alt: Three upgrade tabs showing Attack, Defense, and Utility in the Tower UI

caption: Tabs for Attack, Defense, and Utility upgrades

• url: images/main-menu-workshop.png

alt: Main menu screen with Workshop and coin indicators

caption: Workshop appearance in main menu

• url: images/defense-upgrades.png

alt: Defense upgrades screen with Health and Regen stats

caption: Defense upgrade options

• url: images/workshop-upgrades.png

alt: Workshop screen showing Cash Bonus and Cash/Wave upgrades

caption: Workshop upgrade options

• url: images/cards-lab-slots.png

alt: Cards and Lab slots inventory screen

caption: Cards and Lab slots overview

• url: images/devo-run-start.png

alt: Run-start cards view showing decks and slots

caption: Cards at Run-Start

• url: images/card-inventory.png

alt: Inventory of all available cards during a run

caption: Cards inventory screen

• url: images/day-in-life-devo.png

alt: Day in the Life: Max Devo Vol 2 video still

caption: Day in the Life of The Tower, Max Devo Vol 2

• url: images/devo-run-steps.png

alt: Step-by-step Devo run progression screenshots

caption: Devo run progression

• url: images/cards-run-start.png

alt: Run-start cards screen

caption: Cards at Run-Start

• url: images/cards-inventory2.png

alt: Inventory screen with unlocked slots

caption: Inventory and slot options

• url: images/devo-video.png

alt: Video Day in the Life thumbnail

caption: The Video Day in the Life of The Tower, Max Devo Vol 2

• url: images/large-workshop-screens.png

alt: Large workshop upgrade screens showing attack and defense labs

caption: Large workshop upgrade screens

• url: images/campaign-milestones.png

alt: Milestones and perks event chart

caption: Event milestones and perks progression

• url: images/tower-lore-memes.png

alt: Tower lore memes and final notes

caption: Tower lore and memes section

End of guide

This document preserves the flow and actionable guidance on starting runs, upgrading paths, lab priorities, ultimate weapon choices, and endgame farming strategies for The Tower as authored by McBlue.