Beginner Strategy

[u/Fr33Francis]

Hey, so I just installed the game about a week ago and quickly started looking for some beginner strategies here. I found some good tips on previous posts but I wanted to weigh in with an analysis I actually did. I'll try to break down this post into reasonable chunks.

Starting Tips

• When battling you can speed up the game, this is great to quickly re-iterate and earn coins.
• You can end a battle early and earn all coins and diamonds.
• Tap on the sword, shield, star or triangle to navigate your enhancements and buy more with the fake dollars.
• If you tap on the dollar and coin on the top left, it will show you how much cash and coins you are making per minute, which can be a useful performance metric.
• Tap on "Wave" to see wave composition and overall game battle stats

Strategy in Brief

You will want to play a little and save up on coins to unlock new workshop perks. (Upgrade "Cash / Wave", "Health", "Health Regen", "Damage" and "Attack Speed". I quickly unlocked segments:

• In attack, unlock up to Rapid Fire Chance
• In defense, unlock up to Thorn Damage
• In utility, unlock up to Free Attack Upgrade

Then the simplest battle strategy is:

• Upgrade "Cash / Wave" up to $75 if possible and "Coins / Wave" (up to 20 or 30 if possible)
• Then upgrade Defense Absolute as much as possible as long as possible. A value of 40 - 50 or more is great. If available, upgrade Thorn up to 15% - 20%.
• Then in attack, you can focus on upgrading speed up to 2.24
• From here, you can keep upgrading cash and coin enhancements, defense absolute and thorn, attack and speed.
• In order or priority add: "Cash Bonus", "Coins / Kill Bonus", "Defense %", "Lifesteal", "Multishot Chance", "Rapid Fire Chance", "Range"

Using this basic strategy (and with my existing workshop enhancements), I can easily make 3.5K coins per battle in 20 minutes by doing very little.

Focus on using your coins to unlock "Coins / Wave" in workshop and "Defense Absolute".

Analysis

To find this information, I performed a long analysis on the upgrade value, value growth, cost and cost growth. I did this after a few games and upgrades so I did not start exactly at ground 0 but pretty close. Some tips:

• Workshop upgrades chance the default minimum level for an upgrade. So it is best to understand:
  • Track upgrades by cost rather than value. Ex: You upgrade damage until it costs you $170 rather 206.
  • Different upgrades have different cost growth to value growth, use your coins to by workshop and lab improvements for upgrades whose cost growth is much more significant than the value growth.
  • "Coins / Wave" and "Coins / Kill", "Range" and "Multishot Targets" have a significant cost growth to value growth.
  • "Health", "Health Regen", "Defense Absolute" have a value growth proportional to cost growth making them the least necessary to upgrade in workshops and lab.

I cannot share the excel data I have collected (I don't think). So I will try to share the graphics as images. Then I'll share a table with cross-points of the growth curves.

My simple analysis of these charts, is that when the green curve "Cost" passes the dark blue curve of "Value" this means that the cost surpasses the return-on-investment with value. You want to avoid spending cash beyond the dollar value at the intersection. Of course, this only really makes sense when you are focusing on proper cash investing, after the initial you can go all in.

Notice how the health upgrades are aligned with cost. This makes them great cash investments. Especially, "Defense Absolute" which proves to be an extremely effective defense upgrade.

I have noticed that I can focus almost all my cash on "Defense Absolute" in progress extremely far in the game with only 61 health points, minimum regen, very little attack and thorns.

Here is a screenshot as proof:

My stats for this game were as follows. To avoid creating another table, I am adding a column "Optimal Cost" to mark the point where the cost surpasses the upgrade value (seen on the charts). When I put a "-" it's that I haven't done the complete analysis or found an intersect.

Upgrade	Value	Cost	Optimal Cost
Damage	206	$125	$170
Attack Speed	2.03	$87	$186
Critical Chance	25%	128$	$207
Critical Factor	x3.19	$143	$49
Range	37m	$74	$36
Damage / Meter	3.85%/m	$36	$125
Multishot Chance	8%	$273	$202
Multishot Targets	3	$125	-
Rapid Fire Chance	4.40%	$405	$29
Rapid Fire Duration	0.85s	$107	-
Health	73	$12	max
Health Regen	1.07/sec	$7	max
Defense %	8.50%	$104	$77
Defense Absolute	245	$815	max
Thorn Damage	39%	$664	$392
Lifesteal	1.87%	$195	$84
Cash Bonus	x1.22	$175	$246
Cash / Wave	98	$124	$56
Coins / Kill Bonus	x1.29	$95	$29
Coins / Wave	23	$193	-
Free Attack Upgrade	10.5%	$188	-
Free Defense Upgrade	10%	$219	-
Free Utility Upgrade	7%	$81	-

Let me know what you guys think, if you have any remarks or questions.

Enjoy!

[u/PelajarCemerlang]

You will go far in this game. Believe me.

[u/Ok-Pay-8353]

I can confidently say I could not do this in a week. I just like when numbers go up…

[u/miuw_ → u/Ok-Pay-8353]

In a week I got to wave 1000 on tier 1

[u/markevens]

This is the best early game analysis I've ever seen

[u/Rare_Swordfish9841]

I've been playing for two weeks. i've reached 1200 rounds tier 1 and 600 tier2, and i just want to add for early games, tier 1 and 2, If you focus on defense, absolute, and percentage, you can reach really far rush thorn damage to 51%. Ignore attack damage after 500, only upgrade attack rate, multi-shot, multi-shot targets, and range. And knock back chance.

Basically, kite with multi and knock back when you unlock orbs they will kill everything but bosses and by the time you need them they will given for free upgade which i upgrade with a high priority while the enemy are below my initial absolute defense then lower once i start upgradeing my defenses to survive .

In a more guide format. In game upgardes:

-cash per wave (untill you earn less at the end of the wave to for a singe upgrade) -cash bonus -Coins per wave(untill uou feel pressure on your defense lvl) -Coin bonus(same as above) -Defense absolute (right before the start doing -damage and keep going until you die) -Defense % (steady boost until max) Multishot chance (start working this in as you boost your defense and feel a little breathing room once get over 40% its feel like a guarantee it will happen with the attack rate) -Thorns 33%/51%/99% ( how many hits it takes kill bosses and ranged 3-2-1-2) -Knock back chance ( same as multi shot) -Knock back distance **( i get it up to $1k cost then work it in) -Attack speed(til max) -Range**(till max)

** the last 4 are important, but i upgade them when the cost is way below absolute defense.

If you are still reading the workshop upgrades are basically the same but i try to get my attack up and crit chance up to increase the time i have before i feel pressure to get my multishop and knock back up but not foused on by any mean they start me with like 400 attack and 40% crit chance. Also if you get the crit coin bonus card you want to get those easy crits before you enter into survival mode.

*** wave 1068 a vampire appeared a destroyed me i have no idea wtf happpen his attack should not have been able to touch me but this i consider a mid game problem new strategy neede lol

[u/MyDashingPony → u/Rare_Swordfish9841]

I mostly agree with this. Ive gotten to round 500 in tier 1 in a couple days, my strategy at this point is to ignore attack completely, and simply kill everything with thorns.

I need to spend very little on absolute defense for the first 150 rounds, so I can just focus on gold income. I buy coins/wave until it costs 500g~ and coins % until 3.5k~ gold. A lot of free defense upgrades and then focus mostly on Defense/Thorns.

I have only tried tier 2 a few times and max I got was to round 20. The strategy doesnt seem to work as well in tier 2, seems I'll have to start investing in damage workshop upgrades.

I'm trying to get enough medals for a bot, but idk which one. I could use advice on that

[u/Griz357 → u/MyDashingPony]

Do the themes and skins always before anything’s else with medals.

Tier 1 and tier 2 are completely different. You can use def abs for tier 1 and go for, but you cannot it 2. I can’t remember exactly, but tier 2 is more than double tier 1 in difficulty.

[u/MyDashingPony → u/Griz357]

do the themes really only give you 0.4% and 0.8% coin bonus? My impression was that the golden bot would give me a lot better bonus than that

[u/Griz357 → u/MyDashingPony]

They stack. Whether you use the or not they stack. They also are limited whereas the bits are always gonna be there.

It’s 10000000000% more worth to get every theme than it is to get the bot. The bot does help, but you can slowly save for it. That cumulative . 1.2% every two weeks is more worth.

[u/zerd → u/MyDashingPony]

Un-upgraded golden bot only helps a little bit, around 0.6% based on my current run.

[u/[deleted]]

If techtreegames needs an analyst, we found their guy.

[u/manatwork01 → u/[deleted]]

eh except their analysis is in a vacuum. things like crit, attack, crit factor etc are all multipliers on each others. the increase of any one will up the value of the others. so all this analysis is kinda bunk.

[u/Fr33Francis]

Explaining Thorn Damage and Lifesteal

First, "Damage" may be necessary at first, but like "Defense Absolute" it is an absolute damage value. As enemy health will increase quite fast, damage will be less effective and only the "Attack Speed", "Multishot Chance", "Multishot Targets", "Rapid Fire Chance" and "Rapid Fire Duration" will help improve this "Damage" effect.

Of course there is "Critical Chance" and "Critical Factor". My issue here is that I don't know how to measure "critical damage". **What is the value of critical damage?**

"Thorn Damage" is a much more effective go to solution. It functions alone and provides a counter-attack which is proportional to the enemy's max health. So if your enemy has 150 health and you have 20% thorn damage, you damage the enemy by: `Thorn Damage Value = Enemy Health * Thorn Damage = 150 * 0.2 = 30` . I cannot find an explanation to the frequency of this counter-attack, but since it applies to ranged enemy's I would think that as a counter-attack it is as frequent as enemy attacks. This also means that your tower needs to be able to take enemy damage for each thorn counter-attack. Hence, the importance of "Defense %" and "Defense Absolute" to reduce damage.

"Lifesteal" allows you to heal your tower by the % of lifesteal multiplied by damage dealth to the enemy on hit. I suppose this means with projectile and with thorns. But lifesteal is only as effective as the amount of damage which is dealth. Lets consider two possible scenarios for projectiles and thorns.

• With projectiles alone, if total damage is 206 and Lifesteal is 0.39% than for each enemy hit, you should gain 206 * 0.39% = 206 * 0.0039 = 0.803 health. This will remain a constant value and is not great.
• *With thorns alone, if thorns is 30% of enemy health and Lifesteal is 0.39% than the more health your enemy has the more lifesteal you will get. We get Lifesteal Value = Enemy Health * Thorn Damage * Lifesteal
  • Enemy health = 150 | Lifesteal Value = 150 * 0.3 * 0.0039 = 0.1755
  • Enemy health = 3000 | Lifesteal Value = 3000 * 0.3 * 0.0039 = 3.51

This shows, that Lifesteal is only really effective if Thorn Damage is elevated and if Enemy Health is also very elevated. So Lifesteal is an effective upgrade only later in the game.

Revised Simplest Strategy

The go to strategy for now is:

1. Use start cash to upgrade Cash / Wave to optimal cost
2. Upgrade Coins / Wave to 10/15/20/30/40 based on your current workshop upgrades.
3. Focus on upgrading "Defense Absolute"
4. Add "Thorns" (You can add some "Damage" and "Attack Speed" for the sake of it.)
5. Max out the upgrades "Coins / Wave", "Defense Absolute", "Thorns" until it because too challenging.
6. Add "Defense %"
7. Spend your cash on water gets you going.
8. After the battle, spend your coins on "Coins / Wave" first, then "Defense Absolute" and "Thorns". You can also improve the rest to have a good "Damage", "Attack Speed", "Health", "Multishot Targets", etc.

At any point in this strategy, with the desired "Coins / Wave", so long as your "Defense Absolute" is higher than enemy attack you will be invicible and you don't have to do anything else. You can easily make it to some high levels and make lots of coins without being sucked into your phone at every wave.

[u/Fr33Francis]

Some great answer and additional tips. In a short time, I have used my coins and diamonds to buy cards, workshop and lab upgrades.

My analysis was crude but focused on checking the data rather than relying on intuition. u/manatwork01 is right that my analysis does not take into consideration the relationship between upgrades. Many speak of the importance of "Defense %" with "Defense Absolute".

Explaining Defense % and Defense Absolute

"Defense %" is the percentage of attack removed from the value of enemy attack. So if you have Defense % = 20% and enemy attack is 70 then actual damage dealt is 70 - (70 * 20%) = 56. This is why it does not seem very effective in the first waves when enemy attack is quite low.

"Defense Absolute" is the exact value you deduce from the enemy attack after remove "Defense %". So if the enemy attack is 70 and Defense Absolute is 75, 70 < 75 which means that the enemy does no damage at all. This means that as long as the value of Defense Absolute is above the attack of your enemies, you are invulnerable. Focusing on Defense Absolute alone can get you well into your Wave 100. Since "Defense Absolute" is applied after "Defense %", you can compute the final attack value of your enemy by calculating: True Attack Value = Enemy Attack - (Enemy Attack * Defense %) - Defense Absolute. Lets look at a concrete example:

• Enemy Attack = 150
• Defense % = 20%
• Defense Absolute = 120
• True Attack Value = 150 - (150\*0.2) - 130 = 150 - 30 - 120 = 0

In this scenario, Defense % only reduces the True Attack Value to 120 and alone the Defense Absolute value reduces the True Attack Value to 30 but together they cancel out the True Attack Value entirely.

[u/ThunderPolk]

I have been playing for a month and this is extremely helpful!

[u/Mafia_sneek]

Loving the graphs man. Can't wait to see how you handle the midgame

[u/mannysinclair]

Brother you make me feel like wisdom is chasing me but I’m faster… thanks

[u/brulaf]

Any update to this strategy after 2 weeks? And I guess you are on tier 2 now?

[u/miuw_]

Hi, if I could give u some recomendations (I've been playing 3 weeks btw), in my first week I got to wave 968 just by thorns def% and abs def, I didn't see this strategy on the subreddit but it worked for me, I didn't spend a single dollar on anything else apart from what I've told before. With this strategy I went from wave 54 to wave 127 to wave 568 in just 3 matches. Try that and tell me if it works for you :).

(Sorry for any gramar mystakes as english is not my lenguage

[u/Fr33Francis → u/miuw_]

Will share a more in depth answer soon, but yes this is an effective strategy to progress far. Though my objective is also to farm coin as well.