The Tower - Idle Defense Ultimate Beginners Guide

The Tower - Idle Tower Defense Ultimate Beginners Guide will help new and experienced players to get better understanding of the game, explain its game mechanics, good and bad skills, strategy against specific enemies and stages and list overall tips for the players to get better at the game. It's part of The Tower - Idle Tower Defense Guides series, where you can find the rest of the guides on the game. It will help both F2P and Paying players, but overall it's written from the F2P Perspective.

The primary focus when starting is creating a snow ball effect. Absolute Defense will be the main tool early on but will be dropped off later on. If you are interested in IAP purchases - buying the No Ads pack as it is the best purchase and great QoL.

Stages of the Game

1. Turtle
2. Blender - eHP(Health based)
3. Devo -eHP
4. Blender - GC(Glass Cannon - Damage based)

The point of my guide is to speed up early game progression by limiting your focus on upgrades so you are not spread too thin. There are two main upgrades, cash upgrades done during a run, and coin upgrades done outside of a run. Starting out we are converting currencies for maximum efficiency, cash to coins, and coins to cash. This guide is meant to be a general direction and is not an absolute guideline. There are some parts you will have to experiment with.

The Tower Beginners Video Guide

This video guide will showcase most ingame mechanics and explains how to properly progress in The Tower - Idle Tower Defense mobile game as a new player and what to focus on.

Workshop Upgrades

Workshop Upgrades in The Tower Idle Defense are replacing the need to purchase the upgrade during the run. In this beginners guide we will highlight the most effective way of spending your coins for them. A good stopping point for each upgrade when you can start working more on something else is when you are able to max it easily in a run turning the box gold. This means you have enough upgrades there for the time being and would be better off focusing somewhere else.

In this Beginners Guide we will just cover the basics of Workshop Upgrades. For in-depth info visit The Tower Beginners Workshop Upgrade Guide.

Economy

1. Cash and Coin per wave should be where you put all coins for your first few runs
2. Once you are past 100 waves regularly, stop step 1 and start on cash bonus and coins per kill
3. Ignore free upgrades and interest for a while

Health

1. Absolute Defense should cost twice as much as Health. 50 levels of absolute defense is more than enough here to progress out of T1.
2. Health should be one or two levels each run and focus reast of coins on following steps
3. Regen is fine to do a few levels but ignore it once lifesteal is unlocked.
4. Defense % start on once ABS is 50-100 levels.
5. Get Thorns to 11%, then 21% then 26% then 34%
6. Unlock Lifesteal - Upgrade cost should be 2x HP upgrades until max.
7. Keep Knockback at same costs as Attack Speed until Knockback Force is Maxed.
8. Orb speed is great for coins and so it an orb or two, but they are cheaper to do with cash until you can easily afford them.
9. Stop here until most of your Health items are maxed.

Damage

1. Once Lifesteal is unlocked start adding in Attack Speed.
2. Keep Damage and Crit Chance at the same cost. Crit factor is very expensive, so only do a level here and there.
3. Keep range at zero for now. Can upgrade with cash if needed. Same with Damage per Meter
4. Once you can max Attack speed in a run, start on Multishot. Then repeat for rapid fire and bounce shot.
5. Only unlock Super Crit when you are easily making 100m in a single run.

Costs in Workshop

Cost of Workshop upgrades increases as you get more and more of them. Overall costs of maxing essential Workshop Upgrades at this stage are Approximately 40 million Coins. Best tactics is to evenly distribute the Coins between the required stats, focusing on something that you need at the moment.

Attack Speed, Crit Chance, MultiShot, Rapid Fire, Def %, Thorns, Lifesteal, Knockback, Orbs, Cash and Coins to 100 - 12 million Free Upgrades - close to maxed Packages - unlocked

When most of these stats get 10-20 levels left with coins, you can go to the next stat with coins and just finish them with cash during a run.

For fastest progression early game, start with the stats in the defense column after utility and then start attack column.

The Tower Idle Tower Defense Blender Workshop Upgrades

Packages

Early game it's worth running free upgrades. So, unlock Packages in utility as soon as you can. Although don't spend too many coins, they are very expensive for early game.

Lab Upgrades

Unlike Workshop upgrades Lab research will add a multiplier to the current stat value making it a really powerful way of making your Tower stronger. The main issue is that Lab research also take time to complete, and each next level will require not only more coins, but more time to finish.

You will start with 1 Lab once it's unlocked, but you can and should buy more. Most people advise going full diamond investment on Lab purchases, but I prefer to get some Cards from time to time. Just make sure not to go overboard and prioritize saving for the next Lab unlock.

There are some very important researches that you should focus on for the most time, but since you start with one Lab and unlocking additional Labs costs Diamonds which you might not have yet. The way around it is balancing your research, working on the research that take up to 7 hours during the day and leaving the longer research overnight.

You would like to focus on something that is useful for you in the long run, but it's totally ok to get some cheap and fast researches that can help your current build or you just feel like getting. The only exception is Tower Range. Avoid it right now, since working on it too much might harm your early builds.

With that said some important researches in each category for the new players Main Research

1. Game Speed - as high as possible, but it can be pretty slow and take your only lab slot, so don't go higher levels before you get more Labs.
2. Labs Speed - will help to do research faster
3. Labs Coin Discount - not really necessary, since most of the time it's not the coins cost, but research duration.

Attack Research

1. Attack Speed - best attack research to get for new players and should be the only Attack research you are working on for a while, since it will increase Attack Speed cap and will help in all game areas.

Defense Research It will vastly depend on the build you are using, you can get a couple of Defense Absolute, but don't go too hard on it, since it falls down later on.

1. Health - great research for effective HP builds, like Blender, it will help you to survive longer.
2. Defense % - increases Def % cap, making you take less damage. Just amazing

Utility Research

1. Coins/Kill Bonus - will allow you to get more coins during the run, should be top priority along with game speed.
2. Cash Bonus - get more Cash in the longer runs, allowing you to get more upgrades and survive longer.
3. Cash/Wave - good for faster starts, and pushing higher stages.
4. Max Interest - will allow you to get higher income per wave if you have enough Cash in the bank.

Perks unlock is another upgrade you would like to take later, since it will allow you to progress waves easier.

Visit The Tower Labs and Research Guide For a detailed Labs Guide.

In Run Upgrades

Your first few runs cash and coins per wave will be more important but will be outpaced fairly quickly. Once you are getting past 50 waves swap to coins per kill and cash bonus

In Run Upgrade Order

1. Spam cash per wave for the first 5-10 waves
2. Spam cash bonus for the next 10-30 waves
3. Spam coins per kill until Enemy damage starts to exceed your Absolute defense
4. Spam Absolute Defense and Def% to survive as long as possible. Also take thorns to next level from step 5 above.

Completing a Run

You are in survival mode during Step 4 and the amount of each step will vary from player to player. You want to spend all cash at the start to get more cash as you go, then swap to coins to increase your coins for the run and then survive as long as possible. there are other upgrades you can do to survive but this is the simplest method and will be more than adequate to get your through the early stages of the game. Once you max the list of items below by wave 200ish in a run, see Blender Guide

Gems

Gems are the premium currency in The Tower. Daily, Weekly missions, Tournaments and Ad Gems are main sources of Gems, but even if you utilize them to the maximum, it will take a while to farm gems required for your goals.

There are multiple ways of spending the gems, but for starters your focus should be unlocking extra Labs, Card Slots and getting specific Cards with heavy focus on the Labs.

For more information about Gems earning and progression visit The Tower Gem Farming and Spending Guide.

Turtle Build Guide

Turtle is the very first Beginner friendly build, that will allow to easily and cheap farm Coins and progress some Tiers.

This guide will outline the basic Turtle Build principles. Check The Tower - Idle Tower Defense Turtle Build Guide for indepth Guide with more info.

Main Idea of a Turtle Build is that you will completely ignore the enemy damage with Absolute Defense and Defense% and take out the enemies with Thorns. It's a very money and coin efficient build for early game, but it will lose its effectiveness later on.

Here is a video guide for the Turtle Build, explaining the main mechanics and showcasing how it works:

So, for a while you should only focus on cash, coins, abs, def % and thorns with coins until you can easily max them in workshop during a run before you move onto other things (you don't max abs. You'll get a few hundred levels at most). So cheap upgrades into HP will be useful as well at this stage.

During a run, once Absolute Defense gets very expensive you can start doing Health upgrades.

Tier 2 Before attempting Tier 2 you should have the above-mentioned items properly upgraded, and you'll need to be close to blender. Meaning Knockback, Lifesteal, Orbs, Attack Speed and multishot will need to be at least halfway to max. Those are not extremely strict rules, so always give a try to the higher tier if you are in a mood and try to beat stage 100, since when you unlock a new tier your daily and weekly coin rewards increase.

Blender Build Guide

Orbs and Thorns will be your primary kills for a long while. More bullets with knockback push enemies back into orbs, and then thorn will take care of bosses. During this stage of the game, unlock packages and start building them up since you goal is just to tank bosses a few hits. Once the following is maxed you are officially out of early game and into Blender. Congratulations!

Go for the full Blender Build Guide to properly learn how to use and develop it.

Here is a video guide for the Blender Build, explaining the main mechanics and showcasing how it works:

Blender Build In Run Upgrade Order

Depending on the Stage Tier, amount of Workshop and Lab upgrades the order of in run upgrades may vary.

1. If you are doing a push run for the next tier: Totally ignore coin upgrades, focus on cash and survivability early on, keep your defensive upgrades high enough to survive, and build from there.
2. If you are doing a farming run: Do couple of cash upgrades, then focus on saving up enough cash to get max income. Then spend extra cash for Cash and Free Upgrades. Add Offensive/Defensive upgrades as needed. When Utility upgrades are high enough level most of the required upgrades to the appropriate level and focus on upgrading Def%, Attack speed, and then heavily focus on Health.

Overall for Blender build you will need following upgrades:

• Cash and Coins
• Def %
• Thorns
• Lifesteal
• Knockback
• Orbs
• Attack Speed
• Multishot

After Guide Once most of your shop is maxed and only the very very expensive ones remain. Continue going with HP costing twice as much as damage. This will keep you busy in The Tower - Idle Tower Defense until you figure out what you want to do.