Know your Kingdom: A Walkthroughless Walkthrough

Walkthroughless What-now?

Do you want something to help you solve the level but still give you the satisfaction of that “Ah ha!” moment when you crack it?

This is what I intend to provide.

You might have often found yourself stuck on a particularly nasty level of Kingdom Rush without being able to make any kind of headway. You know you’re close, but are missing something.

Unfortunately, most guides pretty much give you the solution. In effect, it’s all or nothing. You either go with headbutting the wall for a while or just give up and get the answer. But that kills the joy out of completing the level... as it then became a case of playing-the-game-by-numbers.

So less of a step-by-step guide, my aim is to cover the stumbling blocks or cool moves and hand them to you under the table all sneaky like. You get to enjoy cracking Kingdom Rush without having to headbutt the wall repeatedly.

I’m serious. Stop it.

Tips Before You Go

Because who doesn’t like freebies? Some general tips to help give you some starters to get cracking:

Note: If you have already read Know your Frontiers: A Walkthroughless Walkthrough, then you can skip this next bit and get straight to the levels themselves, as these tips are basically the same.

If you fail… change somethingI’ve been guilty of this many times. You fail a level… then on the replay do the exact same thing again, only this time willing the game even more, as if that will make a difference.

“Grr! Grr! Grr I say! I’m really want this enemy to die!”

Of course, what happens is that the same lines break and you still lose.

And it’s easy to do. You’ve created what you feel is logically a very sound defence, so changing it can feel like taking a several steps backward.

But the most important thing with this game is to try things out. There’s no penalty for losing a level. So if it goes wrong: Try something different.

Sometimes it’s changing the towers you use, others it’s how you upgrade them. In fact, some of the later levels purely come down to the upgraded abilities of a particular 4th level tower… so try them out! Experiment with different quantities or at different times. Sometimes the trick is to build a completely unconventional setup.

Kingdom Rush is as much about adaptability as it is strategy. It is not a case of learning a single tactic that will solve everything… but getting to know the quirks of the towers at your disposal and being able to apply it.

Max out towers before Heroic / Iron challengesSmall detail, but you might notice that the Heroic / Iron challenges limit the level of upgrades your towers get.

So before you try the level – make sure all 6 upgradable elements are at that level or greater. These levels are tricky, so you’ll want every advantage going for you.

For example: If the max upgrade level is 2: You’ll want at least the entire bottom 2 rows of the upgrades purchased.

Identify the Kill-Zone(s)Not all paths are equal.

The inclusion of infantry means that a lot of combats will cluster into particular areas of the map. Most maps are awkward with weirdly placed tower spots: So the trick is about identifying the areas where you stand the best chance of defending. These are your Kill-Zones.

Generally, these are chokepoints and/or patches with the greatest amount of available tower spots overlooking them.

(I’m using Kingdom Rush Frontiers maps so as not to spoil the fun of these maps)

Now bear in mind this doesn’t mean you focus solely on the Kill-Zones – just your primary upgrades. You’ll still often want to expand to cover most of the map – creating additional Kill-Zones or just adding vital auxiliary towers to help keep enemy numbers in check (whether it’s reducing the amount that hit your lines or catching any that sneak by). Identifying Kill-Zones is primarily about getting your foot in the door: Finding the best places to set up and place your initial focus. Gold is scarce, so you’ll rarely get to sprawl the whole map with the best towers: So it’s all about being economical.

In general, you’ll want at least 1 Kill-Zone covering each road. Sometimes that involves letting both roads merge (so you defend as one), or covering them separately. It depends on the level. Just make sure each is covered in some way.

Be aware, of course, the best Kill-zones also depend on the enemies you face, so you’re not always able to identify them at a glance. As you play, you might find that some areas work better than others – so it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. As the level unfolds: Pay attention to what areas take brunt of the force (or even break) and adapt accordingly.

Now how to make the most of them…

Know Your Towers

To understand how best to capitalise upon a Kill-Zone: it helps to know some quirks of the 4 tower types at your disposal:

BarracksWhen you plan for a barracks tower… don’t pick them for damage.

Their primary job is to stall enemies and hold them in range of your brightest and best towers. Damage is just a bonus. They don’t deal a lot and most enemies beat them in a straight 1-vs-1, so it’s more about pinning enemies down long enough for your better towers to pummel them. The main reason to upgrade them is primarily to improve their survivability.

You want at least one barracks in every Kill-Zone and vital areas where you need to stall enemies. Always build them in range of other towers.

The thing to remember: The barracks tower itself cannot shoot. So anywhere you place it is somewhere a ranged tower won’t be. Now I appreciate this sounds inconsequential, if obvious… but this means that anywhere you place a barracks will not get ranged tower coverage.

Let’s take a slightly extreme example to demonstrate. Consider the below setup:

Assuming the enemies travel from the north: This layout is very weak. How come? The problem is that all of the ranged towers are at the very bottom. The enemies will get to stroll down the entire top path completely unhindered, meaning that the only time the ranged towers start shooting is when the enemy are straight on top of your infantry.

Let’s switch it about like so:

Though the same towers are used and the infantry are in the exact same place: This placement is much more effective. The reason is that the ranged towers can now shoot at the enemies on both the top and bottom road. So by the time the enemies reach the infantry, they will have had more shots directed at them. And the bonus just stacks: If the towers whittle down the enemy numbers, it ultimately allows your infantry to survive much longer, making the defensive line considerably more resilient as a whole.

As a result: The best locations for barracks are awkward tucked-away spots that a ranged tower would have too much of a limited range with. In effect, give them the worst spots in every Kill-Zone. Try to place them towards the back so that your ranged towers can get some free shots before they hit your troops.

Additionally, in some cases: You might have a super-cool Kill-Zone with many towers covering each other, but an awkward lone tower spot a bit further ahead. If you need some more infantry, this is also a good spot; adding a top ‘layer’ to your Kill-Zone, if you will.

ArtilleryFor something with such a delightful explosion and heart-warming ‘splut’ sound as it frags enemies… this tower requires a lot of finesse to use properly. It is, curiously, perhaps the trickiest to use for that simple reason that, wielded incorrectly, it’s just an oversized money-sink.

Its subtlety is the numbers. The basic blast deals about 8-15 damage, but only shoots every 3 seconds or so though (3.8 damage-per-second). To give you some comparison: The archer tower deals around 6 damage-per-second. So against a single target: The archer tower deals 50% more damage… at nearly 50% of the cost.

It goes without saying then: The only time the Artillery is worth its money is when it’s crashing down on top of as many enemies as possible. Clustering enemies together with infantry is vital for getting your money’s worth. Cram several in one place, and the collateral damage is just deliciously obscene. So you need the chokepoints.

As such, always pair artillery towers with infantry. Most enemy waves appear in single-file, so you’ll need something to help bunch them up. When it comes to the Kill-zones, it helps to tuck them nearer the back (similar to the barracks) as they won’t be of much use until the enemies are bunched up... so better to let the other ranged towers get the first shots at the incoming foes. This does change, however, when the Tesla Coil is concerned, so check that section for more details.

Archer / MageThese are essentially your ‘ranged towers’. The archer towers are cheaper and fast-firing, the mages are slower but deal heavier damage.

The mages counter enemies with armour, the archers counter enemies with magic resistance.

As a general rule, you’ll want both. The only exception is, obviously, if a particular road has greater levels of a particular resistance.

In a balanced set though: Mages tend to deal more damage overall and can punch through armour (which also negates barracks / artillery, so is more threatening than magic resistance), so they tend to get the better locations and first upgrades, but really it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Keep both rolling and upgrade them equally, as they’ll both have their key parts to play.

They pretty much operate well anywhere. Against a balanced force (i.e. mix of resistances), the main thing you’ll want is to ensure you have reasonable coverage throughout the level (i.e. your entire back line isn’t just archers). You can generally achieve this by alternating on tower spots: The first is a mage, the one next to it is an archer, then mage… and so on…

How to put them togetherSo you’ve identified a pretty sweet strategic spot. Now what?

As before – this isn’t a clean-cut strategy that you can just apply to every level. In many cases, the weird positioning of tower spots mean that you’ll often be forced to shoe-horn something in… But as a general pattern:

Start off with a barracks at the most awkward or furthest-back point and move the troops so that they’re in the centre of the area the towers cover.

If you have space for artillery, place this one near the back as well, as it’s only really useful once the enemies cluster up.

The front then gets your ranged towers.

Again, this is more a pattern than an exact science, and there will likely be many exceptions and scenarios that break this. But it’s a decent starting point to try things out from.

1. Southport

The game’s intro, walking you through most of the basics you’ll need for the game.

CampaignIf… you need a walkthrough for this level, may I suggest something easier like Darkest Dungeon?

HeroicA surprisingly tough gig out of the starting blocks. The most important thing is not to attempt this one until you have all of the Level 1 tower upgrades – you’ll need every edge you can get. What will help you most is artillery in place by wave 3: It’ll make very short work of those goblins.

IronA classic combo. Explosions to wreck many enemies and bodies to help let said enemies gather under said explosions. If you get stuck where one artillery cannot seem to pass muster… have you tried two? It’s fun!

2. Outskirts

CampaignYou don’t have much to set up, but the large presence of goblins make artillery a good place to start, and something to keep them in place for it. The game even helpfully points out the best kill-zone for you (although I’d swap around where it places your 4 tower types).

You’ll then want a mage for the orcs, and archers to help with the wulfs after it.

Don’t forget to make liberal use of reinforcements too. Rain of fire is good to use when you know you won’t easily be able to crack a group of enemies. Take the orcs on the last wave, for example: There’s too many of them to easily take… so they’re the best targets!

HeroicA strangely fiddly level. It’s unlikely that you’ll be overrun, more a stupid wulf will sneak by.

Though nuking wulfs with meteorites may seem a little over-the-top… it is your best bet as there are often too many to contain quickly. Build instead to handle the orcs and goblins first. Wait for the wulfs to hit your lines and nuke them. They’re fast-moving enough that the other ones should run unto the burning ground – maximising your damage to them. Remember as well to keep putting down reinforcements to bulk out the number of infantry you have.

In all the excitement, the last hurdle you must hit is a Level 2 artillery for the last wave. One of those should see you through nicely.

IronGetting by the first patch of the level is actually its greatest challenge. Rain of fire is best used on the orcs at the end, so you’ll need to just use reinforcements and your wits for the first bits. Two little tricks help you immensely though:

Firstly, the lack of barracks means you lack all-important staying power. With no real reliable way of keeping large scores of enemies in place, artillery may not pull its weight as well here.

Secondly, if you get sick of seeing archer arrows miss wulfs by miles… try the mages. Their shots are far more reliable here.

3. Pagras

This is where things get interesting. The shamans are particularly thorny. Whilst not especially strong, they are magic resistant and have a nasty habit of hiding behind their buddies and healing them. The trick here is to isolate them when you can. Stalling them with reinforcements means you can pick them off separately – not when they’re healing an angry mob. Failing that, having some solid artillery or rain of fire works just as well if you wait for the mob to bunch up.

Ogres are basically battering rams. Level 2 mages do the most damage, so having them near a line of infantry is important as you also need to stall them long enough to make the damage meaningful. Keep chucking reinforcements in their way too, to help prolong your barracks’ efforts.

CampaignThe addition of Shamans emphasises the importance of combined arms; a staple of your levels from here on in. Due to mixes of resistances, your key kill-zones should have some form of mage and archer support so as not to be caught out if a particular enemy gets too close.

Given the number of tower spots available, it makes the most sense to set up right near the exit, after both roads have merged. Get a good mix of towers (one artillery and two of each of the others) and don’t be hasty to expand further. Sit back and upgrade your towers before adding auxiliaries to the outlying spots. Use your reinforcements to stall the Shamans, keeping them away from the rest of the mob. That way they’re spending less time healing their friends.

HeroicA particular toughie. The tower setup that worked before will work here too… you just have less breathing room in which to set it up. As before, worry less about expanding but in getting level 2 towers on board. You’ll need them.

Getting artillery out by Wave 2 is critical. That and barracks near it to help bunch up as many enemies as possible. This also has the added benefit of letting you bunch up tons of enemies of Rain of Fire.

The real targets of this level are actually the Shamans. Keep an eye on where they appear, to figure out whether to try and stall them or simply let them run ahead and be picked off by your towers. This is also the naughty trick to the last wave. Your best bet here is to chuck down as many barracks as you can afford along the north road, simply to stall the 5 ogres as long as possible whilst you allow the Shamans to run ahead and get taken down. You should be able to whittle them down enough that a well-aimed Rain of Fire will see to most of the Ogres.

IronThough this level can appear brutal without your tried-and-true artillery… there is an elegant simplicity to it.

The trick is in realising that there are only 2 Shaman waves, both of which can be bested with Rain of Fire if you hit the first trio as soon as they appear. Knowing this means that… certain considerations can go out of the window.

4. Twin River Pass

Whilst you get to start playing with Level 3 towers, the game introduces 2 new nasties that will become regulars of the rest of the game.

Bandits are glass cannons. Whilst they are speedy and shred your infantry if they close in, they’re easily taken down with decent tower fire. On the flipside, Brigands are slow and tanky (but equally unpleasant to low-level infantry). Mages are an absolute must around them, ideally above level 2.

Each on their own isn’t too bad… but the real problem is that they tend to tag-team. The brigands soak up your fire, giving cover for the bandits to sneak up to your infantry. Until you’re toting higher-level artillery later in the game (at which point that solves the dilemma), you generally want 2 high level mages and infantry, and be prepared to jump in with your reinforcements and hero to keep the lines alive.

CampaignTempting as it may be to try and blockade where the road splits… there’s just no real way to do it effectively, so you grudgingly have to split your attention and defend both roads separately. Luckily, a well-placed killzone in each road should do the trick.

Better still, you have a hero to play with now. Gerald Lightseeker is pretty hardy, so is best placed in front of your barracks units to shield the bulk of the damage against them (and level him up, making him stronger). It’s best to keep him on the right path, as that has the messier mix of enemies. Doing this also means that, instead of trying to build both roads equally, you can put your primary attention into strengthening the left road and letting Gerald bolster the right one.

By wave 4, however, you’ll want to be playing with artillery on both roads, and ideally want the basic set of towers set up either side. You shouldn’t need much, but upgrading them is the biggie. This is especially true by Wave 8, when you get Ogres, so will want at least Level 2 mages ready for them (pushing to 3 is a bonus). You can also take a lot of pressure off by using Rain of Fire on the Shamans as they all emerge (but before they split up). You get this opportunity a lot in this level, and is the perfect way to keep them from healing their buddies. Just be aware the rain of fire takes a long time to hit the very bottom of the map, so fire it a second or too ahead of them.

HeroicA surprisingly tough level to crack, though your job will be made easier if you are aware that the last waves involves mobs on the left, armoured guys on the right and Ogres on both. Think about what this means for the towers you’ll need to use (or more specifically, not use) and you’re most of the way there. You just now need to survive long enough to get it all online. Upgrading your towers is the key to this level. That and having enough bodies about to keep the bad guys stalled.

The opening waves are tight, but you’ll help yourself massively if you can hold off both lanes on Wave 2 without resorting to Rain of Fire (barracks are key here to squeeze time). Doing so lets you crack Wave 3 with ease, which is important as you’ll need to be fielding some level 2 artillery on the left very shortly. As before, try to keep the Shamans away from the herd with your reinforcements. Let the orcs get picked off first, then let the Shamans run in with the ogre and get nuked all as one.

If you crack Wave 4, you’re pretty much there.

IronFun fact: This level is the birthplace of the Walkthroughless-Walkthough. Many years ago when first playing Kingdom Rush, I found myself stumped on this level and impatiently looked up a solution. Unfortunately (and to this day) this level became dull as dishwater as a result. Knowing the trick, I simply did towers-by-numbers and there was no sense of achievement to it.

If you find yourself equally stumped at this level’s thorny problem and conclude that no matter how many barracks you build, there’s never enough to keep all the bad guys at bay… You would be absolutely right.

With this in mind then, what option remains?

5. Silveroak Forest

It’s a little terrifying knowing that someone thought “you know what will make these armies of brigands and bandits scarier? Spiders crawling over everyone!” Oh yeah, and they’re resistant to mages.

Though archers are the obvious friend to help keep the numbers trimmed… but your best ally here is actually a large, beefy artillery. The reason here is that where there’s spiders, there are Spider Matriarchs… who create even more tiny spiders (in case you needed more). It can be tough keeping so many numbers in check – that is, until you discover the utterly satisfying one-shot pummelling that a level 3 artillery brings. Never leave home without it.

CampaignThough the level appears generous in its tower spots, you’re given a bit of a raw deal in that all of the roads converge into one very fiddly crossroads right by your exit. Though you’ll want some expansion, it’s generally better to focus on making upgrades around here as strong as possible, as that is where the bulk of the action will occur.

How to defend that awkward crossroads though? Your best angle is to pay attention to top road: Very few tower spots overlook it. You have your archers and pretty much need a mage and barracks to finish the picture. The other two roads at least have more spots nearer the chokepoint, so can open the door to more towers and artillery to do your dirty work. The artillery is especially important for the road on the right, which chucks forth the spiders.

With the archers hogging the best spot, you’ll want to pepper the nearby spots with mages to thin out the incoming brigands. Upgrade these as you go along and remember to hold your rain of fire for when the bad guys bunch up.

By wave 10 you’ll want to start rolling out Level 3 artillery. It crushes the spiderlings instantly, so will help the subsequent waves considerably.

The final hurdles can get hectic… So now’s a great time to try out your shiny new level 4 tower. Save up and splash out on the ranger outpost, then play about with its upgrades. Sure they’re expensive. But the right one will really save your butt here.

Tempting as the Elven Output in the top-left may look… don’t bother. They are far too expensive to maintain and don’t sit near enough tower spots to be covered well.

HeroicA very tough level. Your starting pot is generous but vanishes quickly when you spread it over 3 lanes. The good news is that the 3 lanes are very predictable: Spiders from the right, brigands down the centre and bandits around the outer ring. At least here you can specialise a little for each road. Make a serviceable kill-zone at the very top of the map around the pre-built archer tower.

Don’t sprawl too much. Get some level 2 towers up and running immediately and use rain of fire to get past the first scrappy wave. Get an extra tower or two in the first handful of waves to help counter the attacks from the left.

By wave 4, you’ll want to be playing with level 3 artillery. Wave 5 is the killer though. Your ace-in-the-hole is a very, very powerful ability that can decimate large mobs. Drop everything to buy it. If you can bring it online, this and the final wave will be considerably easier.

IronThere is an elegant simplicity to this level once you spot that the towers have changed slightly. This is no accident, and is your secret to keeping the pesky spiders in check. With some artillery on hand as well, this road will take care of itself.

With this in mind, your real threat actually becomes the brigands along the central slip-road, as they can draw too much attention that should otherwise be on the spiders. As such, this is where most of your reinforcements should be thrown, in range of the appropriate high-level tower. Keeping many of them at arm’s length is key for survival here.

The last ingredient is simply something for the bandits running around the outer ring. You really don’t need to overthink this one. They don’t cluster, so artillery is pointless, and Marauders will occasionally head that way too. If there’s enough towers at a decent level, this path will largely look after itself.

6. The Citadel

The capital is under siege and they’re chucking everything at you. The gargoyles are nothing to worry about though. Dark Knights, though scary-looking, go down with a solid mage around. Even the boss is a cinch.

It’s the damn Shadow Archers you need to watch out for. They lurk behind their friends and shoot your infantry from range. Left unchecked, they just decimate your lines and let everything else run through. Strong archer towers are the best counter, but a well-placed artillery can also be useful. Tying them up in melee is also an excellent idea – either with reinforcements or your hero. Generally though, nuke them on sight.

CampaignConsidering you already some Imperial Guard hanging around, it seems a shame not to make use of them. The two groups at the front make for ideal places to defend, so set up shop there. The guards at the back will help catch anything that sneaks by. Though you have to split the roads, it’s fairly easy to do. Set up shop and focus on just upgrading those towers as you get the funds. Good mages will be very important here with the presence of Dark Knights and Marauders.

Truth be told, the real make-or-break of this level is how you deal with the shadow archers. Everything else can be worn down with enough grit, but these nasties can wreck an otherwise stellar defence. The general trick is: If they appear in the centre, nuke them before they split up, using your reinforcements to help them gather in one place. If they appear on the flanks, nuke one side and use your hero and reinforcements to keep the other side busy… anything to take some pressure off your main lines. A handy tip to note is that the shadow archers tend to sit in good range of the lone tower spots at the bottom of the map, which enable great opportunities for archers to do your dirty work for you.

By wave 10, you’ll have ogres, so want to be toting level 3 mages. Remember that the cluster of shamans are the best targets to nuke as well. Wave 11 is when you’ll want to start playing with your newly-acquired arcane mages, as they’ll be critical for the coming waves. Let them work their way through the heavies as you focus on just keeping the archers off everybody’s backs.

At wave 15, you want to start investing heavily in your back lines – particularly the 4 tower spots that encircle the back line of Imperial Guard. The Juggernaut itself is a cinch. It’s slow and takes the long route round, meaning your towers will almost certainly crack it. Its real threat, however, are the minions that it often launches behind your lines. If you planned ahead and got tower coverage here though, you’ll be fine.

HeroicA formidable level that can be hard to best cleanly, and that is precisely the counter-intuitive trick with this one: Plan for your front lines to fall.

You’re hit by large numbers of armoured heavies this time, so a high number of mages are essential. To give way for these, it’s curiously best to forego archers and allow artillery to counter the resistant units here. The real scoop is where everything goes. Initially set up as if you mean to hold the 2 front chokepoints again. But this time leave room for Plan B. Plan B being the 3 Imperial Guard by the exit. You can feasibly support both the front line and these guys if you place your towers carefully, and this will become very useful.

Wave 3 is the doozy and where you will likely lose your front Imperial Guard. Ultimately it’s about letting your front line buffer the worst, with your Plan B picking off the stragglers that inevitably get through. Wave 4 is full-on armoured heavies, so crank up your mages here. Again, it’s near-impossible to hold the front line, so don’t panic. Slow them down and, if your towers are well placed, you’ll wear them all down eventually. By wave 5, you’ll ideally want your artillery at Level 3 to really put the hurt on the worgs and shadow archers. At this point, you should be sitting quite pretty. All that’s left is to get some Paladins on the go to help stall the shadow archers and the last wave will be a cakewalk.

IronA deceptively tough level, despite only being given one choice of tower. The game plan is pretty obvious… its secret is in knowing when (and when not) to use your Rain of Fire.

The first target is roughly the second wave of brigands. Clear one chokepoint and chuck your money into replenishing your troops on the other. Remember that upgrading a barracks fully restores both health and any fallen comrades immediately, and the key is to make sure you have enough guys for the first wave of Shamans. If you kept your numbers healthy, you should be fine. The reason for using Rain of Fire early was to ensure you had it in store for the next set of Shamans. This one’s the doozy that normally breaks you. Nuke one chokepoint then, again, replenish the next. Don’t be afraid to set up more barracks on your back lines and pull some guys back to defend there if it gets hairy. If you can get Level 3 soldiers hitting the shamans, they’ll go down quickly.

If you crack that… you’ve got this one. The enemies are plenty tough, but the ball’s very much in your court now.

7. Coldstep Mines

Don’t feed the trolls. In case you needed reminding. Only problem here is they’re carrying large spears and are out to eat you whether you like it or not.

These can be formidable foes if you don’t prepare properly. They have decent health, regen and chew through infantry if they get close. The secret is in high, single-target damage; predominantly mages. Don’t leave anything below level 2, and you really want 3 and above once the fur starts to fly. A condensed collection of hard-hitting towers will pay off considerably more than a large spread of weaker ones.

CampaignThis level is elegantly straightforward if you obey one very simple rule: Ignore the topmost set of tower spots entirely.

The biggest danger in this level is spreading yourself too thin. The presence of trolls means that you cannot really chip away as you would other fiends, so it’s basically hitting them hard or nothing. For this reason, keeping compact with max level towers will be far more valuable here than a large coverage. For this reason too, it’s also shrewd to shelve artillery for this one, as single-target damage will give you more bang for your buck.

Bear in mind as well that some waves sneak right to your back lines – So ensure this gets the first pick of upgrades, even though the road above will likely be seeing more action.

HeroicThis level is essentially a condensed version of the campaign, only with more trolls.

Thankfully, the same approach that worked before will pay off here as well: Stay compact and upgrade the heck out of everything. By the time the trolls start rocking up on wave 4, you’ll want several level 3 towers going. What also helps massively to get through the final waves is to nuke the trolls at the top before they all split up.

IronDespite the generous starting pot, the lack of artillery and awkward placing of the barracks makes this level difficult. Whilst you may be inclined to try and set up a generous array of defences… this is one of those levels where putting all of your eggs into one basket can pay off immensely. Chuck everything into one, really good tower. Your problem early on is crowd control… crack that and the level is a piece of cake. If you spend the rest of level simply adding more towers to the mix, you won’t even need to upgrade your infantry.

From here on in, this approach is an important one to keep in mind for some of these levels: Sometimes a single, well-upgraded tower will best even a large array of defences when setting up.

8. Icewind Pass

Do you know how much you like Shadow Archers? Imagine if they were bigger, meaner and had worse breath. The outcome are Troll Champions, and their axes are looking forward to getting acquainted with many foreheads. At the very least they tend to not be as numerous, so mages are your best bet here, perhaps distracting them in melee with reinforcements too. When in doubt, give them rain of fire.

Troll chieftains also make an appearance, buffing nearby trolls (as if they needed encouragement). How you deal with them roughly depends on where everything else is, as their allies are generally the more dangerous targets here. If you can keep them away from their buddies with reinforcements, that’s the obvious route. Other times, however, it’s actually better to let them boost a few guys, letting their speed boost move them away from the pack, giving you a chance to beat them up before the rest arrive. Other times it’s just timing your rain of fire to catch the lot of them (don’t waste it on just a lone chieftain) – this is especially true when they start inciting the champions.

Oh… And they have a cave troll yeti. Lots of them in fact. Though big and scary, just have arcane mages to greet them and they’ll go down eventually.

CampaignThis level is crazy amounts of fun. Sure the enemies are plenty tough, but there’s more money here than you’ll know what to do with. Just like Coldstep Mines, you’ll help yourself massively if you ignore the temptation to sprawl and instead just dig in to that very attractive chokepoint in the south. It has a huge amount of tower coverage and, played correctly, you’ll barely need to branch out, if at all (sorry, Sasquatch). You’ll have a great chance to play with Level 4 tower abilities here, and it’s well-worth doing to get a flavour of what they do and how they may help give you the edge.

Your life will also be easier if you note that the only thing to come along the southern road are spiders.

Don’t be too spooked by the opening waves. A level 2 artillery will help get your foot in the door, and simply proceed by building to counter each wave. Once you have the towers set up overlooking the road, there’s little left but to upgrade them bit by bit. High powered mages are a good one to prioritise for the trolls and dark knights.

The shadow archers and troll champions are a pain… but you never want to face them in a fair fight: Blast them with rain of fire when enough of them gather in one spot to shoot at your guys. Even if your lines are quite full of enemies, nuking the ranged guys is almost always the better idea as they’re the ones reducing your infantry.

Whilst you’re busy making a merry mess of everything, you’ll want to start investing in some insta-kill and crowd control for the closing waves. By the time you have tons of yetis bearing down upon you in wave 15, a couple of insta-kill abilities will take the pressure off (there’ll be more of them soon enough…) and field-testing your new Big Bertha is near-mandatory for the final rush of spiders. Don’t forget artillery isn’t the only thing that can hit multiple enemies, however. You’ll have the money to burn, so try a few other abilities out!

HeroicLess is more when it comes to this level. Just like before, don’t bother trying to sprawl. Dig deep, hit hard and this level will be a breeze.

Artillery is a key player here, especially for the opening waves. That with some good mages should get the bulk of the bad guys. Though the trolls hit you hard on wave 2 – Try to hold out enough to rain of fire the last cluster of them. That should give you enough cash to jump to level 3 artillery in time for wave 3.

As before, don’t play fairly with the troll champions. Pin them down then nuke them and forget they even existed. Equally on Wave 6, save your fire for the second cluster of white wolves that hit with the yetis.

IronThere is a charming simplicity to this level. You really don’t need to overthink it.

The lone mage only really needs to be level 3 to get you rolling. Save the rest of the money to build enough artillery to pound brigands into crater-shaped dust.

You’ll eventually find though that the mage tower cannot stop the gargoyles indefinitely. There’s little you can do to help it. As such, you need another option and the game tips on the loading screens have probably even told you what it is! Once you start the level and get a foothold, make a beeline for this upgrade. It’s in one of your level 4 towers. If you get this in place in time and stop them getting distracted by the bad guys on the ground, the level is as good as yours.

9. Stormcloud Temple

You should be well-acquainted with the foes in this level by now. The only new face are Rocket Riders, which are basically speedy gargoyles. Though not especially tough, their speed boost can sometimes have them bypass a key tower. The trick is to have a spread of ranged towers to pepper them along the path, rather than a single point where you try and catch them.

CampaignThis is an awkward level no matter how you cut it. Though you can feasibly allow the top and middle roads to merge, you’re forced to guard the lower road separately… So brace yourself to guard at least 2 fronts here. Unlike before, however, this level benefits from a very healthy dose of urban sprawl. If you’re splitting your attention, you might as well chuck down towers everywhere. This is especially important when facing the Rocket Riders, as their quick speed makes it more viable to harry them along their whole route.

Going mage-heavy is generally your best bet for this level. You’re too spread out and the enemies too few for artillery to really do anything. Just make sure you have some good archer and barracks coverage across the middle road as you’ll be getting plenty of wolves down it. You’ll also give the lower road a better chance if you focus your main towers on the lower part of it so that your towers aren’t distracted by the middle road.

So long as you keep the ranged enemies in check with a little help from Rain of Fire, this level should be pretty easy-going. The biggie is, around wave 16, you’ll want to start chucking everything into the northern road… that’s where the boss will be coming in. J.T. has a lot of health, but also arrives alone on the northern road, so that’s your best chance to have all of the towers there laying into it. A Sorcerer mage by the front door is especially helpful as that’ll increase the damage every other tower is doing to it.

HeroicA condensed version of the campaign level. Luckily, the same approach tends to get you most of the way through this one too. Mage towers are, once again, king, and will see to the bulk of what lumbers down the northern and southern roads. The real question is how to manage the centre: The large presence of worgs and winter wolves means you definitely need more in the way of combined arms and a solid foothold of decent-level infantry to hold them back. Whilst your first priority should be making sure your ranged towers mean business, having troops that don’t melt immediately is useful later on. All you really need in this level is enough time for your towers to do their thing.

Though the last wave gets pretty nuts, if you have enough high-level towers firing you should be ok. Don’t worry too much about level 4 abilities here. A ton of high level towers will generally win out this one.

IronThe secret to this level is all about the bro-tastic tag-teaming of your mage towers. Both level 4 towers bring excellent abilities to the fight and it’s all about letting both do their thing. Their abilities will play a very key role so, perhaps with the exception of Polymorph, you’ll want to explore them all if you haven’t given them a look yet. As general rule, focus on your pre-fab towers and getting them top-level before you start building more.

Another thing that may help you in terms of where you set up… have you perhaps noticed a particular bit of the map has fallen silent?

10. The Wastes

The campaign’s closing chapters brings you into desolate wasteland full of brigands, bandits and a new host of demonic fiends.

Whilst not especially strong, the nasty quirk of demons is that they explode upon death, generally taking your infantry down with them. Trying to clear them before they reach your infantry, therefore, tends to be the best approach. Archers are the obvious starting point to start chipping away, but your newly-acquired tesla coils can also be very valuable here to blast them even if they’re surrounded by other bad guys. The rangers’ wrath of the forest is also a very formidable upgrade, stopping the spawn in their tracks. Besides that, it’s just plugging the gaps with reinforcements until more infantry rock up again.

Likewise, Demon Lords are more a pain than a major threat. They can take a beating, so generally should be left for Rain of Fire to see to. There’s not much you can do about them shielding their buddies, but you can capitalise on their slower speed by stalling them with reinforcements to allow the other guys to run ahead. Despite the shields, you generally want to focus on the little guys first, as they’ll be more of the problem than the actual Demon Lord itself.

CampaignAn otherwise straightforward level made punishing by the awkwardly-placed graveyard. There’s little you can do about the skeletons pouring forth, so you simply need to set up shop to ensure they stay down. This may be a great opportunity, however, to give your newly-acquired Tesla Coil a spin.

Though the roads converge, you gain little by trying to defend them as one so are better off handling each separately. Luckily for you, each road has a very distinct set of units (or, more specifically, their resistances follow a very clear pattern) so you can pretty much specialise each road to fit. Given that the left road has both demons and the graveyard, it’s pretty clear this needs the most attention – Both a hard-hitting kill-zone to counter the skeletons but also a good range of towers to whittle down the incoming demons as much as possible before they clobber your skeleton line.

The right road is best defended a little along the vertical strip where there’s a good array of tower spots (by and large, you shouldn’t need to bother with the horizontal bit of road at the top). You ideally want your best ranged towers hugging the right side of the road, so that they don’t get distracted firing at the other road. You don’t need a lot here, just enough high-level towers to hold the armoured heavies at bay. You ideally want it to be able to hold its own so that your hero can be on skeleton duty.

HeroicFinally, your hero remembered their invite! And just as well… The real challenge of this level is carefully balancing your funds across both roads. The good news, however, is that the patterns of enemies are pretty much the same as the campaign level – So if you managed to best that with relative ease, you should be most of the way here. It’s just sharpening a few bits.

In particular, you want some solid crowd control by wave 3. You have to drop a lot to be able to get the upgrades in time, but if it’s rolling by then you’re sitting pretty and should be most of the way there.

What may get you, however, are the Skeleton Knights from the graveyard. They are numerous and very pointy. The first biggie to get your foot in the door is a nearby mage, as that is the obvious counter. However, once you’re rolling you’ll want to start employing more forms of crowd control by way of your level 4 towers. There are several available to you, so if you chuck a few in to bolster your artillery, you should be pretty comfy by wave 5.

IronDamn cheek. They give you a beautiful new piece of artillery and then take it away from you!

Fear not, however. This level is basically a copy-paste of the Heroic level. The only riddle you need to solve is crowd control without artillery. Thankfully you should have already come across several options when completing the Heroic level… and you have enough money here to get one online right away. Play it correctly, and this level is nothing more than a rinse-and-repeat!

11. Forsaken Valley

By now you’ve seen most of what the campaign has to throw at you, though it has one last trick up its sleeve: Necromancers.

They shuffle along and, similar to shadow archers, sit back and used their ranged attacks. Oh, and then they casually summon hoards of the undead to march upon you. In general, you have one of two options for these guys:

Firstly, intercept them with reinforcements and your hero as soon as they appear (bonus if they’re also in range of a nice tower or two). If you’re quick, you may be able to take them down before they summon anything. Plan B is crowd control. You’re going to struggle to take everything down one by one – so don’t. Have a tesla coil in place to simply flash-fry everything that shuffles past.

CampaignDespite being the penultimate challenge… If you’ve managed to best most of the Heroic and Iron levels up to this point, this level is an absolute cakewalk once your foot is in the door. You’ll be sitting on enough money to build whatever warped chaos you desire.

You have enough coin to comfortably split up and defend both roads near the bottom (as in, where the enemies come in). As each site has plenty of tower spots, you’ll unlikely need to stray from these. Pay attention as well to the specific resistances, to know how to specialise each road (though don’t go too overboard, as there is a small trap near the end).

The only real headache is getting enough punch to keep the left road in check where you’ll be losing infantry to the demons’ explosions. Let your reinforcements help pick up the slack here and just focus on getting good archers down. Once you’re rolling though, very little should be able to stop you.

The only “gotcha” is that, on the penultimate wave, the enemies on each road swap their resistances (so armours guys hit the left, and magic-resistant hit the right). However, as long as you have 1 appropriate tower to help counter them, you should be able to just mush through them no problem, resistances and everything.

HeroicThough this level hits harder, you no longer have the switcheroo at the end, so can at least go nuts in specialising each side properly.

Considering there are quite a number of enemies off the bat, including waves of flying enemies mid-way through… only 1 tower really fits the bill. Later, things might get a bit hairy with the waves of Magma Elementals in Wave 5. For these, you’ll want some insta-kill goodness online. You can crack them by attrition, but this is much easier.

Beyond that, it should be another case of rinse-and-repeat: Play with Level 4 abilities and let them do the heavy lifting.

IronThis is one of those weird levels that is incredibly easy until it suddenly kicks you in the face. Said kick is simply lots and lots of armoured slayers in one a huge, final onslaught.

Whilst you certainly don’t want your infantry melting at the sight of an angry knight, their upgrades are not the most important here. Staying power is good, but there are too many enemies about for that to play the pivotal role. Though mage towers don’t exactly boast crowd control… they do have ways of buying you time and keeping numbers in check, and that is your meal ticket for a victory here.

12. The Dark Tower

This is it. Vez’nan’s house. The big cheese, the head honcho, the jerk who’s been ruining your day. Aside from the man himself, there’s now nothing here you haven’t annihilated before. So who cares if you weren’t invited… Let’s get him.

CampaignThough the graveyard makes an unwelcome return, everything at least converges into a single, long road with plenty of tower coverage on it, making your job considerably easier. You’ve hopefully noticed the pentagrams on the floor… beasties will be pouring out of that eventually, so it’s pretty clear-cut that you’ll want to set up at the bottom.

Despite the sprawling roads, don’t be in any rush to expand too soon. Keep the bulk of your attention on the strip of towers along the bottom and ensure that they mean business. Once you have the staples down, your first point of attention should be crowd control. That graveyard will only get worse, so you want a counter nice and early. If you can get some heavy-duty crowd control by around wave 6, you’ll be sitting very comfortably for the next several waves… necromancers and spiders be damned. If you’ve played it correctly, you can simply kick back and rake in that gold.

At this point, the deck is very much in your favour. Sure the enemies are plenty tough, but you should be in control of the situation and can start expanding your tower coverage across the rest of the level. At the point you get the Magma Elementals, you’ll want to be grabbing hard-hitting towers to accompany your crowd control.

The main place to focus on in the penultimate waves is the long road that snakes out from the left of Vez’nan’s tower… that’s where he’ll be coming from. Infantry will get toasted immediately, so it’s generally better to go for more hard-hitting towers along this patch. Get all the juicy upgrades that include any kind of bonus damage. Earth elementals are also good for stalling if you need something to buy a few seconds. At the point Vez’nan rocks up, nuke him, harry him with reinforcements and simply let your towers do the talking.

HeroicAn otherwise brutal level were it not for the presence of a single, very formidable tower that makes this battle pretty one-sided. The requirement to immediately best large groups of both land and flying-based enemies actually gives you this answer.

If you get this in place, the level is pretty much yours as long as you don’t get complacent. You’ll definitely want some extra crowd control in the form of archers, but you’ll mainly want to ensure you have a decent assortment of mages, as the groups of armoured heavies and Magma Elementals are likely the only things your initial toy won’t really deal with.

Play this correctly and even your Rain of Fire will be gathering dust.

IronThey’re onto us!

Though your primary source of crowd control is removed… that doesn’t mean you’re out of options. You just need to be a bit creative and leverage some tower abilities that can do a similar job. Don’t stop at just one either. Though they may not be as reliable, if you chuck enough of them down you should about get by. Once you have your foot in the door on the southern strip, it also helps to try and expand to the road above too, to really make the most of thinning down the incoming foes.

Your rain of fire will generally want to target the Dark Slayers, whose armour makes it hard to pick out from the crowd before they get to your lines. The last wave of Magma Elementals are, strangely, a bit of a breeze. If your crowd control was well-picked, you’ll actually end up slowing them to enough of a crawl that you can just whittle them down by pure attrition.

13. Sarelgaz's Lair

At the point you finish the campaign, the world map opens into a ton of bonus levels which you can largely complete in any order you wish. These bare-knuckle brawls are a step above the battles you’ve faced to date, so generally don’t expect an easy ride from here on out. Ideally, you’ll want to be playing with the full set of upgrades (or at least only 1 or 2 away from the max) and making use of the top-level heroes (which is basically anything from Elora Wintersong onwards). I’ve completed these in no specific order other than a vague left-to-right along the map.

Our first step is the world of spiders, because in all the fun and excitement you’ve obviously missed them crawling over your face. They present a pretty tough new foe though: Son of Sarelgaz. These mega spiders tote both a high physical and magical resistance, presenting few flaws to take advantage of. Worse, Sarelgaz clearly lacks a TV as there are tons of them.

Your tower abilities will play a key role here, as they can give you strategic edges over these nasties. Sorceror mages are an excellent tower to have greeting these fiends where they apply a general damage weakness to give your other towers more to work with. But insta-kill abilities are also great for taking most of the pressure off.

CampaignThe good news is that most of the tower spots here are excellently placed for coverage, giving you two very formidable kill-zones. The bad news is that two kill-zones means two fronts to split your attention between.

So don’t.

In general, the left road is a little harder to defend as it doesn’t have the delightful wide bend that the right road can use to lay on plenty of hurt, so give this one your main focus. Set up rudimentary defences on both sides and get to work on beefing up the left. Your hero and reinforcements should be able to shoulder the worst. Take advantage of the narrow path to allow your reinforcements to safely pelt javelins from the neighbouring road.

Despite the presence of trolls… The most important thing here is actually something to best the necromancers on Wave 10 (which will hit sooner than it feels). Focus on the left road first then have the right catching up. If you can get coverage up in time, that should be your foot firmly in the door and will see to the bulk of the headaches of mobs. At this point you should be able to start bolstering each road evenly. Your life in waves 11 and 12 will be considerably easier if you rain of fire the trio of Dark Slayers leading each brigade.

At this point you should be sitting pretty. At the point the Yetis start rocking up, you’ll want to start augmenting your killzones will hard-hitting single-target counters. This is especially important for when the Son of Sarelgaz start turning up on wave 16. Keep the reinforcements’ javelins flying wherever any start to look threatening.

Around wave 18 you’ll ideally want to leave the left road to its own devices and to focus on grabbing every useful-looking upgrade in the towers on the right. This is where Sarelgaz herself will be lumbering down, so you’ll want everything stacked in your favour for it. Grapeshot, poison arrow, earth elementals… you get the idea. Even teleport is handy to help keep other enemies at bay so that all of their attention can go onto Sarelgaz. If you rain of fire her early, you should be able to catch her with a second. Just make sure you pour the money from this wave into your left road because, even if you beat Sarelgaz, you still have to beat her friends and many will be slamming into your left road like nothing else.

HeroicThis is largely a juiced-up, high octane version of the campaign level. Though you won’t be filling every tower spot, you’ll want to basically mimic what you did before, albeit under the intense pressure of having your lines clobbered by every bad guy and their pet. You stand the best chance, however, if you plan for Wave 3: Copious, copious amounts of spiders hitting both lanes.

As before, shore up the left lane first to stand alone whilst you let the right load limp through the opening waves. You won’t have much room, so use enough to help the right road survive long enouh to get that crowd control down.

If you played it correctly, you should be able to patiently sit and let wave 3 bring in bucketloads of cash. You’ll need these funds to quickly get some counters to the yetis going. There’ll be plenty of them, but the right towers will pay off in that they’ll help clear the Son of Sarelgaz later too. The finishing touches should just be to expand your set of towers and abilities too merrily keep the large numbers of enemies in check during the final waves.

IronThis level certainly won’t do your arachnophobia any good. However, as annoying as the Son of Sarelgaz are, they’re unlikely to be your real problem. The Spider Matriarchs are.

The crux of the problem is that the tiny spiderlings become very hard to keep in check, no matter how many shots you have going. Therein lies the secret: Don’t rely on just shots. Pay attention to your towers abilities and let them do the heavy lifting. With enough of them going, the level will be frantic, but doable.

14. Hushwood

The Hushwood set of levels revolve around the brigands and bandits that made regular appearances throughout the game. Only now, the bandits are getting smarter… they’re bringing bigger bandits to the fight, each one larger than the last.

Raiders are extras in 80’s gladiator movies who have a perplexingly large collection of spiked balls to throw at people’s heads. Their bulk and armour make them annoying, especially as their ranged attack lets them sit back. Strong mages are the obvious counter, but the second key element is crowd control… Not only does it help to whittle them down, but more importantly it clears the weaker enemies from around them, giving your mages a clear shot.

Pillagers are huge mo-fos that, just to spite you, come in with magic resistance to troll the inevitable mages you’ll have set up to tackle everything else. Whilst it’s true that you can whittle them down with archers… it’s generally better to just let one-shot kills do the talking. Enough disintegration rays and sniper shots will see to the worst of them.

CampaignThrough the sprawling roads may look daunting, this level is pretty easy if you start at the very end: The towers overlooking the exit. This is where everything converges, so is as good a place to start as any. It’s not like you have the money to do much anyway. Primarily this is a sound spot to plan for crowd control.

Let your heroes and reinforcements predominantly harry the main road, whilst you get towers in place to cover the key chokepoint and prevent anything slipping by from the south. Whilst you’ll want a nice mix of towers to get rolling, your first port of call should be some crowd control to repel the worgs on wave 6. Mobs are very common in this level, so getting rolling early will take off a huge amount of pressure.

Wave 7 is when the raiders start showing up, so you’ll want to quickly pivot to start getting a serious mage response to them. They’re going to become a regular problem in this level, so ensure you keep investing in mages as you go. You’ll also want to start edging forward along the main, central road to add more towers to thin down the oncoming foes so they don’t clobber your lines as one, horrible mess. If you can keep this road under control, you can largely ignore the northern one. Wave 10 brings you your pillagers, at which point you’ll want to start investing in some one-hit kill abilities. If you follow these rough waypoints, you should be fine.

By this point, the road to the south is probably going to start getting on your nerves. But how to protect such a flimsy route? The trick is in the 2 tower spots that straddle both roads. It’s true that most towers suck there because they tend to get distracted by one road. So what if a tower’s effects could hit both? There’s two I can think of, and both will be invaluable here.

HeroicThough this level’s intro is crazy, it also makes it very easy: Good crowd control, no doubt about it. The real question is what you do next.

You have less time to set up and considerably more armoured heavies on you, so it’s all about the mages. Whilst archers may get a spot later on, you really just need to able to brute force your way through the marauders to begin with. Sure you get pillagers, but some creative ability use will see them off in no time at all.

You won’t get to expand much, so sit tight and keep compact this time. Always keep some money on hand to upgrade your barracks in a pinch, as that will quickly replenish troops to prevent speedy worgs sneaking by if marauders take out your guys.

IronYou should be familiar with the starting play here, as you had to do it for the Heroic level. Now you just need to keep on doing it! There’s little to be gained by trying to stall your way through the armoured guys early on… there’s just too many of them. Just lay into them and they’ll go down eventually. Don’t slow down when you get a nice killzone either – keep expanding as you get the cash.

At the point you get trios of Pillagers, that’s when you will want to start thinking about beefing up your infantry, as the lines will start buckling from the road to the south. You’re not really in a position to outgun them here, so simply focus more on buying time for your other towers.

15. Bandit's Lair

No new surprises here, there’s just awkward roads and lots of bad guys. There’s enough bandits here to make Ali Baba’s 40 thieves look like a sewing circle. However, if you’ve been able to best the previous level comfortably, then you should everything you need to crack this one.

CampaignTo be honest, the biggest challenge of this level is getting your foot in the door. The roads are awkward and it can be hard to keep everything in check whilst you get set up. Your life will be made a little simpler, however, if you pay attention to what tramples down each road. Though they mix more later on, you have spiders and squishies to the north (yes, the bandits lovingly set up camp next to a spiders nest), armoured heavies through the middle and worgs on the south. If you build with these in mind to begin with, you should be able to acquire a solid foundation that will see you through the bulk of the level.

Oh, and do you see those little palisades in the middle of the level? Plan to have tons of ranged towers overlooking it – So don’t waste those spots on barracks or artillery.

Whilst the spider attacks will get tricky, it’s really Wave 8 where you’ll want your crowd control up and running in the north, as you’ll have hordes of bandits on you. Curiously in the subsequent waves these will start hitting the middle road and south too, which will be your cue to get crowd control covering both of those. At this point, the Pillagers will have found their invite to the party and, yep, you guessed it, it’ll be time to start breaking out the one-shot wonders to help keep them in check. From that point, things will get pretty crazy but you’ll be pulling in enough money in that you should pretty much be able to spin up whatever you need. You’ll likely need mages for the top and bottom as the Marauders and Raiders will start gracing those roads too.

Don’t panic too much when the Kingpin shows up, he’ll heal up any damage you clip him with at the start. Instead, simply sit back and focus on clearing the rest of the level, saving your rain of fire for the troupe of Marauders that try to follow him (catching him whilst you’re at it). Remember that tower cluster you kept vacant by the palisades for ranged towers? He’ll be smack bang in the middle of them, so will go down very quickly if you have a solid collection of ranged towers there.

HeroicIf your first thought upon seeing all of the bandits was crowd control… then you’re on the right track. However, I wouldn’t be so quick as to reach for artillery. It’s hard to have it straddle both lanes, plus you’re inundated with armoured heavies on the following wave. Something else will get your foot in the door, at which point all you really need are a boat-load of mages. Ransack every academy / cellar / weird tower that wizards like to live in and have them disintegrating anything shiny. Sure there may be pillagers later… disintegrate them too.

The southern road is actually pretty quiet for the most part, aside from roving worgs escaping the bandit kennels. Your best bet is to leverage some crowd control that can also lend a hand catching stragglers on the middle road. Besides that, put all your money up top.

IronThere’s an elegant simplicity to this level. The top road gets just bandits. Lots and lots of bandits. If you bested the previous level, you should be well-versed in how to keep them in check. All you’ll need to do in this level is just periodically add more firepower to that road. Ideally you want this road left to its own devices.

The southern road is where things get pretty dicey, as you get armoured heavies from both the middle and south. This time, defending at the chokepoint is a sound idea; backed up by your hero and reinforcements. There’s no real shortcut to quick kills here, so just chuck down infantry and reinforcements and rain of fire when necessary. Whilst some crowd control is helpful for the brigands, the real prize is something for the pillagers that mosey down these roads later. Plan for them and the level is a cinch.

16. Ruins Of Acaroth

You know those goblins you ruthlessly killed at the start of the game in the name of tutorials? Well they’re back, and this time they brought their friends. These are now more than a rabble of orc… these are Uruk-H- Oh wait, wrong movie.

Orc champions are little more than brigands/marauders. Even though they possess magic resistance when riding worgs later, it’s nothing that combined arms cannot really handle. The real headaches are the other two.

Goblin sappers are like shadow archers that discovered incendiary devices… a really, really bad idea. They’ll decimate your lines in seconds, so the only real counter is to lay into them with ranged towers before they get that far. A tesla coil gauntlet, in particular, will reduce them to itty bitty craters in no time at all.

Forest trolls are your standard-fare Yeti/Pillager, but their party trick is obscene regen, meaning if you don’t lay into them hard, they’re not going down. Arcane mages are your primary go-to for these guys, being one of the few reliable sources who can out-pace their regen but also toting a handy one-shot KO spell. Sorceror mages can help ensure everything else is doing decent damage and musketeer sniper shots are also always welcome.

CampaignAnother awkward sprawl, most notably the middle road that cuts through everything. Though everything converges onto one spot, you’re generally better off trying to defend two fronts here. There are a lot of delicious spaces on the right road that allow you to keep it at arm’s length whilst you try and tackle the top road.

Don’t try and set up anything too fancy in the opening rounds. Spread wide and get a healthy array of basic towers down… it’s just goblins and orcs. You’ll want to favour mages, in particular, as you’ll get orgres and orc champs on you shortly.

The best bet to keep your head above the water is to prioritise the centre/top road. Tempting as it is to focus heavily on the right road, you have considerably more breathing space there and can have a secondary killzone to catch any that break through your first one. The top road, however, doesn’t quite have this luxury.

Things will start heating up around wave 8 when the Goblin sappers try bombing your lines. Rain of fire them as they emerge, so that you can also catch the orc champs too. Though the top slip-road seems measly, you’ll want to start beefing up plenty of ranged firepower here as it’ll get plenty of mobs trying to flank you.

Wave 14 will sneak up pretty quickly, at the point the forest trolls start rocking up. Now’s your cue to jump to your best mages and start getting 1-shot magic in. If you get in trouble (especially on wave 15), prioritise the Goblin sappers with rain of fire, as them decimating your lines will be a bigger problem than trying to whittle down a forest troll by attrition.

By this point you should be in a position to really start piling on the tower upgrades, which should make the latter waves a breeze. Gul’Thak himself is strangely one of the easier bosses in the game. So long as you can knock out his friends, the right units can basically wall him until he keels over.

HeroicThere’s enough orcs and goblins here to keep you knee-deep in the spoils of battle. Fortunately, you have enough money upfront to make very short work of them. No need to sprawl this time… get the good stuff immediately. The second order of business is some mages for the orc champs. Placing them nearer the exit leaves you in good stead for the ones dismounting worgs later on and sees to your anti-forest troll goodness too. Your heroes and reinforcements will actually be able to keep an obscene amount of enemies in check on their own at the start, and you don’t need to worry about the right road until wave 3.

The real headache of this level, however, will be the Worg Riders on the third and final waves. They’re not especially strong, but are numerous and bulky for their speed. To be honest, you don’t so much need to block them, as simply stall them long enough to dismount them – at which point your mage towers can pick off the slow orc champs. A mix of crowd control, archer abilities and infantry will be your answer here. As before, use the right road to just whittle them down… it doesn’t matter if some get by, so long as they’re suitably bruised and thinned out.

IronWhat’s this? Large numbers of squishy units to fend off and artillery to do it with. Hmm…. Ngh. My head…

This one’s a breeze. The only real kicker here is not getting so carried away with crowd control that you forget to get some high powered mages for the forest trolls at the very end.

17. Glacial Heights

Because we all know how much you loved trolls. Have some more. I insist.

If you’re intrigued (and a little worried) by the ominous sheets of ice across your level, well you should be. One of the fascinating new additions are Troll Pathfinders. They’re similar to regular trolls but instead carry a sled which, weirdly, is about as deadly as a spear when they brain you with it. The problem is upon hitting the ice they zoom along it, skipping all infantry. Whilst it’s true that decent mages are good for knocking them down and Tesla coils hit quickly enough to catch them in transit… their real weakness is the Wrath of the Forest upgrade on the ranger hideout. Infantry may not be able to stop them in their tracks, but the vines most certainly can, giving the rest of your towers the opening they need.

The second addition are Troll Breakers. Their obscene tankiness, regen and area of effect attacks make it very hard to wall them (though top-level Paladins can stand a chance), meaning you’re generally better off just one-shotting the suckers. What? Don’t look at me like that. They started it.

CampaignThis level looks pretty straightforward right up until the point where the Troll Pathfinders whizz right past would otherwise be an amazing killzone: The middle road.

Given this, it’s actually better not to sweat the middle road too much at first. The real action is actually at the top. That row of 3 spots are your most important towers for getting your foot in the door. If you can pick towers that can help service the middle road too, your life will become considerably easier. Use your hero and spells to make a stand up top and help get rolling. Don’t be afraid to throw up a quick tower in the south to buy time if any sneak by.

Despite ignoring most of the level, it shouldn’t be too hard to keep your head above the water. You’ll want a good tower overlooking the entrance on the right road, however, to assist your hero and reinforcements from preventing the troll pathfinders from reaching the ice.

By about wave 9 when you get a pretty heavy gargoyle/wolf combo, your trio of 3 should be taking care of things very nicely. The next order of business is to start padding out the middle road. You’ll have Troll Breakers on you soon, so getting some one-shot towers included will save you a lot of faff. Don’t worry about trying to get infantry along it too… simply play for high damage and cutting down foes as they try to run by.

Before you get complacent, by now sitting on vast piles of money, the last key consideration is your back line (in particular that weird lone tower spot). The last waves get pretty hectic where there’ll be too many pathfinders to keep off the ice – So you’ll want to be ready.

HeroicThis one’s pretty messy, no matter how you cut it. You lack the meaningful funds to sprawl and the annoying middle road forces your hand somewhat. You either need to split your attention across the roads or defend by the exit where they converge. Neither are ideal and, regardless, your hero and reinforcements will be relegated to anti-pathfinder duties by the exit for the most part.

In truth, where you build isn’t so important as what. Whilst it’s true you’ll want a good selection of crowd control to keep the wolves, pathfinders and other nasties in check… what you really need are a solid collection of one-shot towers. You’re overrun with Troll Breakers in the closing waves and trying to crack them by pure attrition is nigh impossible. Though having ranged towers straddle multiple roads tends to be risky, it’s key here for getting the most bang (literally) for the handful of one-shot wonders you’ll be able to field.

IronThis level’s hectic, but a lot of fun. The trick is not to overthink it… A barracks/artillery combo has a very straightforward implementation. Just because you’re playing with tesla coils, doesn’t mean the sentiment doesn’t still hold!

There are a few key crowd-control spots that will be critical in this level. You’ll want to acquire two early on, and the third about mid-way through. You might get a bit stuck on the pathfinder attacks part-way through, where your hero and reinforcements will unfortunately have to be your only front line. There’s a few tricks though: Firstly, the only real place you can fight them tells you where you need one of your key towers. Another should ideally be in their path. This will thin them sufficiently for your heroes and reinforcements. The real trick, however, is not to be spooked by them… The small wave of trolls and chieftan from the south are the real killer here: Use your rain of fire of them instead. Taking them out of the picture will make dealing with the pathfinders much more manageable.

At the point you crack this bit and get the Troll Breakers… the level actually becomes deceptively easy. You cannot crack the Troll Breakers quickly, and thus are stuck doing it slowly. All you need, therefore, is the time to do so.

18. Ha'Kraj Plateau

This is it! We’re nearly there… the heart of this vicious plague…

That’s right: The toboggan shop where the Troll Pathfinders frequent. Let’s clean up this level so we ran run them out of town. Oh, and maybe take out the troll boss or something.

CampaignThough the level looks like chaos from all angles… you can largely ignore most of it.

One of your main tasks is to plug the pesky road from the north which will provide a constant trickle of Troll Pathfinders. There are few spots to intercept them, but the small patch of melted snow just before the crossroads is your best bet. Get some infantry to stall them whilst you have hard-hitting towers in place. So long as keep on top of your tower upgrades and have a little help from your hero and reinforcements, you should be able to block them outright.

Now with all this attention on the north, you might wonder what one earth you’re supposed to do about the rest of the level. Well… you may notice that all of the main roads filter through the chokepoint in the middle. Though this may sound like a recipe for disaster, especially with the amount of enemies it’ll see… it is surprisingly easy to defend. Some of the tower spots get beautiful coverage of vast swathes of the road, making crowd control a cinch. Saaaaay… isn’t a key area of crowd control right next to where you’re also keeping the pathfinders in check? How fortuitous!

Don’t feel too concerned about the amount of tower spots gathering dust. Just keep pumping out the upgrades. As you near the later parts of the level, however, move your expansion to cover the north road in preparation for the boss. Ulguk Hai isn’t too difficult. Their trick is just that they’re immune from attacks until they’re engaged in melee, at which point they lower their shield… So all you really need to do here is wall them. Get some toughs in their way in range of a hard-hitting tower or two and you can just wait them out.

HeroicThis is basically a stripped-down version of the campaign level with the exception that the northern road can now gather dust a little, seen as you no longer need to ready for a boss. The key areas of interest from before will basically be your staples here as well.

Once again, your primary focus should be to fortify against the Troll Pathfinders first and everything else second. Make liberal use of Rain of Fire in the early waves to take the pressure off. It’s only in the final wave that you’ll want to spin up a few one-shot wonders to make the Troll Breakers a bit easier.

IronConceptually, this level is pretty easy. You have nothing to block the Troll Pathfinders with… leaving only one alternative to stop them in their tracks. All you then need is something to fry everything in the level.

The real “gotcha” is the where everything lives. You have to be economical with your tower spaces, so need to make them count. To begin with, build to counter the Troll Pathfinders whilst trying to snag as many other fiends as you do so. Only with your foot in the door should you start thinking about counters to the oncoming roads. It’s hard to indefinitely block the pathfinders on one patch this time around (especially as you occasionally will need to pull your hero and reinforcements away), so look to cover both patches of melted snow to ensure you stand the best chance of stopping them all. Covering both whilst leaving your towers room to attack the oncoming roads will be your best bet.

The final cherry on top will be something new for the Troll Breakers at the finale. You should get sufficient time when you see them to build appropriately.

19. Rotten Forest

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from computer games, it’s that nothing good ever comes out of a swamp. Especially one full of dead trees, luminous water and hellish portals to the underworld.

For basic units, Husks are surprisingly tough. Whilst mages are the main counter whilst you get rolling, your artillery should thankfully be able to make short work of them later on.

Noxious Creepers are Spider Matriarchs on steroids. Again, top level artillery will give you the best chance, as even the best archers will take too long to dispatch all of the spiderlings. Don’t forget the wrath of the forest upgrade on ranger towers is also very helpful for crowd controlling them too. Other than that, let your javelins do the talking.

Tainted Treants are bulky, but strangely manageable. You just need a handful of hard-hitting mage towers to be able to keep them at bay, and thankfully you tend to have them by the time the Treants rock up.

Swamp Things are the real jerks though. Big, armed with regen and sit back chucking goop at your soldiers. They’re hard to take down quickly, so cut the middleman and use insta-kill abilities for quick effect (such as disintegration ray or polymorph). Additionally, having top-level Paladins will help stall their shots for a very long time, letting them sit there whilst your towers go nuts. As such, you generally want to stick to Paladins for these levels and only use them in range of lots of hard-hitting towers.

CampaignDespite the sprawling roads and generous tower spots, you actually want to stay compact for the bulk of this level. Obviously, it makes the most sense to first fortify where everything converges. Get a nice mix of towers up to repel the various husks and spiders that will harry your lines in the opening. In particular, get some artillery near that creepy looking swamp.

Get a few nice towers rolling, maybe even gracing the north and south-east… but by wave 5 you’ll need to drop everything to get your artillery maxed out, and it’s not the Matriarchs in wave 6 we’re worried about. It’s the Noxious Creepers on wave 7. No longer can you smash their spawn with a single well-aimed level 3 shell… you’ll need to hit harder, so throw everything into it to survive that wave. Crack that and for the next while you just need to steadily upgrade your towers to hit well.

By wave 10 you’ll want to start expanding to hit hard along the southern strip. The enemies here don’t have far to walk, so you’ll want to lay into them before they can get your lines. As you approach wave 13, you’ll want to start investing in more crowd control and insta-kill abilities. Things will get pretty crazy when the Swamp Things rock up, but having enough tricks like these up your sleeve will weirdly make these waves a cinch. There’ll be Treants everywhere, but if you picked up enough of the tower upgrades, they won’t last long.

By wave 16 you’ll want to chuck everything into the northern road. That’s where Greenmuck will be approaching, so have plenty of firepower in wait for it. In truth, Greenmuck isn’t that bad. You can easily shrug off its acid attack with some beefed-up paladins, so just need to kick back and let your towers do its thing. If it nears your lines, save your rain of fire for the chokepoint so as to catch as many other enemies as possible.

HeroicBy and large, this level is a cut-down version of the campaign level. The chokepoint remains, as ever, the best point to set up with some expansion to help the north and east roads. The northern road just gets Treants this time (and a single, grumpy Swamp Thing) which makes that pretty easy to manage.

The southern road, however, spews out spiders and necromancers in the opening waves. Combined with the demons from the portal, this could otherwise be a headache… if some solid crowd control didn’t render most of them charcoal. Make this one of your early priorities.

By wave 4, the Swamp Things start rocking up. You’ll want to try and harry and distract them with your hero and wear them down by attrition. Use the funds here to start investing in some insta-kill goodness for the 2 roads, as that’ll take a huge amount of pressure off the subsequent waves. With a tasty combo of crowd control and one-shot towers… the rest of the level will be a breeze.

IronAway from your beloved crowd control… what is a general to do!?

The secret to this level is to figure out how the swamp works. You know the green pool that Husks and other nasties waltz out of? There’s actually a pattern to it. It’s not quite the graveyard from the main campaign… but it’s not far off. Let’s just say: If your lines are being crushed by Swamp Things coming out from the pool, it’s something wrong you’re doing.

Once you’ve figured it out, the remaining options actually make this level pretty linear. To get your foot in the door though, you’ll be reliant on your reinforcements and their javelins. Considering they’re hitting armour though… is any way you could help them out?

Once your foot’s in, all you need is to build up your damage. Make generous use of your towers abilities to hit big nasties and slow everybody down. At the point you’re inundated with Fire Hounds (and even Swamp Things), it’ll be worth adding a damage magnet to help buffer them as your reinforcements and hero on their own won’t stand a chance. At least by this point you’ll have the tower coverage and money to make this play viable. In general, save your rain of fire for Demon Lords and Swamp Things. They think they can be a nuisance behind their lines… prove them otherwise.

20. Fungal Forest

One last headache and you’ll never have to look at those Swamp Things again… isn’t that thought delightful?

The only new fiend in this level are Rotshrooms. Whilst pretty basic, they have the annoying habit of releasing spores on death which whittle down your infantry’s health... and they tend to arrive in parades. Whilst not especially squishy, a combo of artillery and upgraded paladins is generally what you need to shoulder them.

CampaignThis level’s pretty brutal. It has little to do with the enemies though, it’s more that the game is pretty dang tight-fisted throughout, so you have very little to work with. There is an upside to this, however. With such meagre resources, careful attention of the key waves will point you in the right direction.

The first biggie is wave 5. You have noxious creepers hitting both the left and centre road, so need an ace in the hole to crack them both. Use your flimsy amount of coin to set up the primary spot immediately and then use your resources over the waves to get it functional.

Next up, you’ll need to start thinking about the Treants in the centre. You’ll get Swamp Things there on wave 9 too, so get ready to have something hard-hitting to throw in their faces. Additionally when this wave hits, survivability of your soldiers will become critical. You cannot realistically crack the lot of them before they hit your lines, but you can ensure your guys can shrug off most of it.

By the point you’ll be pulling your hair out with how little money you have to work with, the right lane will probably start getting annoying. With the large numbers of husks and, later on Noxious Creepers, you’ll need to ensure this road has some crowd control down too. If you play it correctly, you should be able to take the mega-wave of husks in your stride. Enjoy the breather, you’re far from free yet.

The next major headache will be the Swamp Things that hit both outside lanes in wave 10. You’ll have few options as you don’t want to torch too much money on the outer rings. Have units that can take the hits and maybe something hard-hitting to greet them… but predominantly it’s letting them all bunch up and slamming them with rain of fire.

If you’ve played your cards correctly, the next waves should be manageable. Just as well, as you’re near the finale and most of the map is likely empty. Throw everything into filling the central road with hard-hitting towers, as that’s where the boss will be rocking up!

Myconid itself isn’t very tough. Its problem is that it summons rotshrooms which draw your tower’s attention. Hitting it as soon as it appears is actually your best bet. Send your hero and rain of fire up to lay down as much damage as possible upfront. Hold your second rain of fire though… The last nasty surprise is that, when killed, Myconid summons a small flotilla of shrooms. It’d be sucky unless they were unfortunate enough to spawn in, say, a pool of scorching magma.

HeroicAnother toughie. Strangely enough though, the headache here isn’t the small troupe of Swamp Things right off the bat. It’s actually very easy to counter them where they come alone and leave sufficient time between each. No, the real headache here is what to do about the rotshrooms in the subsequent waves. No more can you just shoulder the damage; there’s far too many of them for that.

You can, however, stall them. And that’s this level’s little secret. Use the money from the Swamp Things to get to work preparing the centre and right roads. Waves 2 and 3 are scrappy, no matter how you cut it, though the elves can take off some pressure if you can keep them out of melee. Throw a bit of love into giving the left road some defences, but don’t go too crazy. You’ll need to shore up the centre for Wave 4.

Don’t panic too heavily about the Swamp Things though, just focus on building to counter the mushrooms. As you crack the Swamp Things in this wave, you should hopefully get enough gold to put the finishing touches to your main play, and the rotshrooms no longer a real threat.

Your final focus is readying for the penultimate surprise: A ton of Swamp Things on every road (I’d have preferred the washing machine). Though they look scary, your Wave 1 prep should actually see to most of them. Ideally you just want the right road receiving the same love. If you played the earlier waves correctly, the final charge of rotshrooms should be little more than a nuisance.

IronIf you thought the previous levels were brutal, this one’s especially nasty. You’re without your normal tricks of the trade for the rotshrooms, so have to plain old out-think them this time around. The creators have left you a clue, however. Why the additional elven barracks? They, my friend, are key to this level. They’ll get your foot in the door… but you’ll need a few more tricks to nail this one.

Elves are, unfortunately, incredibly squishy. So it’s all about keeping enemies at range. Therein lies the second clue. Only one option can reliably shield – especially from the innumerable Swamp Things that will lumber round the outer rings later on. Funnily enough, that leads you to the last clue: How else do you put down large units on a budget? Those are the 3 keys to this. The last is how to tie them all together. Unfortunately that’s just as sucky.

Start by creating something serviceable for the west road, but plan for the Noxious Creepers running around the east ring. They can be a headache early on, seen as they will produce inordinate spiders by the time they reach your lines… So don’t let them. In fact, if you plan cleverly enough you may even have something to stall the Treants down the centre road later on too.

Be miserly with your upgrades, by the way. Only pick the ones that do the job sufficiently for now. You’ll need the money, so look to see what ones you can pare back on if needed.

The next bit is the fiddliest. You’ll need to set up shop on the right road and counter the Treants in the centre. Bear in mind you’ll have Swamp Things on the outer rings later, so see if you can kill two birds with one mage-shaped stone. Use your rain of fire on the first set of 4 Treants to buy some breathing space. You mainly want them to be held at bay whilst you deal with rotshrooms from both sides. In general, have your reinforcements support one road and keep your hero on the other. Focus on keeping everything alive in terms of your upgrades at this point.

As soon as you see the Swamp Things, it’s time to bust out the third and final element to this. If your guys are tanky enough, you should be able to just stall them long enough to whittle the bad guys down. If you need money, don’t worry about selling up your counter to the Noxious Creepers either (they’ve served their main purpose). You’ll make it back soon enough once you start taking down the Swamp Things.

Tempting as it is to nuke the Swamp Things… you’ll grudgingly need to hold your rain of fire. There are 2 final parades of rotshrooms that will charge down the centre lines that you must use it on instead.

21. Pit Of Fire

If you though the demon units of Vez’nan’s levels sucked… now you get to meet their friends. And none of them are especially pleased to see you.

Flareons would otherwise be nasty ranged foes, were it not for the fact that 10,000 volts up their backside have them vanish in a puff of smoke.

Gulaemon, whilst looking big and scary, are also deceptively straightforward to take down. They’re incredibly slow so you can normally clobber them with straight-up attrition. Reinforcements and their javelins are particularly great. It’s only if you try to melee them that they actually use their flight. Considering they are slow and tend to come alone (or good crowd control makes them alone), they are easy pickings for musketeer sniping shots.

Even Cerberus, in all his terror, can be a puppy if you meet him with a pat on the head, some food and juiced-up Paladins (and maybe an Earth Elemental if you’re feeling particularly frivolous). In fact, forget the first 2. He’s a “minor boss”, which means insta-kills and wrath of the forest doesn’t affect him, so you just have to hit hard and wait him out.

It’s the Demon Legions that suck. Whilst they may create only one friend… each friend will create another, who will create another, and so forth until your map is a mess of Demon Legions. Catching them early is the key. When they copy, they pass on their current health – Meaning even if you cannot kill the first one: Early damage will leave every copy weaker. Whilst mages by the door are the best counter, you’ll probably want to just cut out the middleman and rain of fire the suckers before they get too crazy.

Whilst I aim to be hero-agnostic in these levels… the fact that nearly everything will explode in your face renders every melee hero deadweight for these levels. You’ll want a good ranged hero, and Elora Wintersong tends to be the best one for it.

CampaignAt the point that you witness the burning ground torch your carefully set up units… you’ll have discovered the unpleasant surprise of this level. But don’t despair, this actually makes the plan of attack very clear for you. You’re left with one very attractive kill-zone on each road, each accompanying a delicious bend that’s begging for crowd control to do your dirty work for you. The fact that most of the units are resistant to mages also simplifies things further. The tempting tower spot overlooking both bends is also perfect for abilities which can simultaneously help both roads.

It’s only on the right road where Demon Legions will lumber forth that you’ll need a mage by the door to start softening them up.

Don’t worry too much about sprawling. The north-east of the map can pretty much be left bare except if you need an emergency tower to catch anything that gets by. For the most part, build small and build big. Though you’ll need some infantry to stall (especially for Cerberus on the right), they’ll get torched so often that stronger ranged towers and ways of keeping the masses of enemies at bay tends to be more important. Just level them up every now and then to ensure they’re not dying too quickly. The only things you really need to watch out for are Gulaemon on the left road and Legions on the right. Neither are especially brutal, but can catch you out if you didn’t prepare appropriately.

The only must here is to keep an eye on the wave counter to make sure your Paladins are ready by the final wave. So long as you can stall Cerberus long enough to let your towers do the work, it shouldn’t give you too many problems.

HeroicDon’t let the Demon Legions right off the bat spook you. You have a lot of crowd control to handle in the subsequent waves, and preparing for that is the more important starting play. It’s hard to build a solid defence for both roads immediately… so don’t. Set up shop on the right road and have your hero, reinforcements and rain of fire pick up the slack on the other (with a little mage help for the legions).

Once you have a foothold in one road, use your money to set up the next one. From here in it should be pretty by-the-books.

You’ll have 3 headaches in the final waves though. Legions on the right, Gulaemon on the left and Cerberus. Luckily, Gulaemon are big, slow-moving piñatas that tend to end up on their own… giving you a reliable counter right there. As for the right, getting a mage presence to greet the Legions and suped-up Paladins to greet Cerberus should get you most of the way there.

IronBy now you should be well-versed in crowd control and have more than enough money to generously get both roads covered and take the bulk of the level in your stride. The legions can be annoying, but why else do you get rain of fire? Start covering each road on the first bend (you’ll thank yourself later if you do).

With your foot in the door, you have 2 key things to prepare for. Once again: Gulaemon on left and Legions/Cerberus on the right. Your previous plays will get you most of the way there, you just need 2 small adjustments.

Without mages on the right, you may seem at a disadvantage, especially where you ideally need to clear the trio of Legions before Cerberus rocks up. But they’re alone. Sure they’ve got armour… but why not just skip that and one-shot ‘em?

As for the Gulaemon, they can be harder to isolate this time as they’re supported by Demon Spawn who would otherwise draw your precious firepower. That is, unless you were smart enough to have your crowd control early on the bend, leaving the Gulaemon completely exposed.

22. Pandemonium

A level that truly lives up to its name. There’s no new surprises here… just… um… hell, if you’ll excuse the pun.

This one of the fiercest levels of the game. Best this and there’s no stopping you. Ready, general?

CampaignThe enemies hit you hard and fast, and worse: You’re given a paltry sum of gold to get set up.

Here’s the good news though: The end picture of the level is very straightforward. Everything converges into one exit, meaning the small island of 5 tower spots are critical to your success. Better still, the layout means the outer towers will be symmetrical. Thus it’s simple: You need some serious crowd control each side, followed by one thing in the centre who can pivot to support. They’re throwing everything at you (including not one, but two Cerberus), so single-shot high damage won’t cut it for the middle. That’s where the outer towers come in.

The real challenge is getting that far.

The first trick is to actually fortify the right bend. Focus on just the outer tower for now… One good tower will hold that for now. I am aware that the first waves hit the left, but you should be able to fend them off with your hero, reinforcements and some rain of fire. As soon as your tower is keeping things in check on the right, swing left and do the same. On Wave 3 with the Demon Lords, try to bunch them together and nuke them before they make everyone else resistant. It’ll cut it fine with the Demon Spawn as you’re still building up the left, but you should just about get by. Keep chucking reinforcements in their way (ideally just behind other reinforcements to maximise on the javelins).

The Demon Legions will be a pain, especially as you can only nuke one. But resist the temptation to chuck up mage towers prematurely (there’ll be time for that later). Your best bet is to harry each one with your reinforcements and hero as soon as they appear. The less health the first one has, the less all of them will, taking pressure off your already feeble lines.

By wave 6, you should finally feel a little more in control of the situation. Don’t wait up though, you’ll need to get the two inner tower spots up and running to stay ahead of the curve. You’ll need something to slow down and damage large numbers of foes. Invest in your counter to Cerberus as well, as that won’t be too far off. Focus on making the central 5 as best as possible before you branch out.

By the time the large numbers of Gulaemon rock up around wave 9, your central spot should be nicely secure and you should be in a position to start thinking about outer towers. Something to thin down the Gulaemon is especially useful, as it would double-up as a way to quickly see to Demon Legions which rock up alone in later waves.

Each Cerberus hits you alone in Wave 10, giving just enough time to catch your breath before the other. Just pin it down and pummel it with rain of fire and javelins. Your defences should be able to keep everything else at bay. Crack this and you’re on the home straight. Your defences just need 2 finishing touches, and you’ll be sitting on more than enough gold over the subsequent waves to do so.

The Demon Legions in later waves may be a considerable nightmare… so rig the doorbell with some high powered mages for when they turn up. This little investment will make the waves that hit your lines that much easier to shrug off.

Finally, you’ll probably notice Molloch will attack through the centre road, so have enough friends there to throw him a welcome party. He moves surprisingly quickly so you’ll want to stall him whilst stronger towers wail on him (say, didn’t we build some in reach on the outer roads…?). He has a nasty habit of insta-killing infantry with a charged horn attack, so keep throwing guys in his way.

HeroicIf you managed to best the Campaign in one piece… then this one will actually be a piece of cake. The naughty secret is that the same island of 5 towers from before will win the day here as well. You even have enough money upfront to get your foot in the door as well. Simply play as you did before.

The only thing to be mindful of is having enough cash to get your infantry in good order in time for Cerberus on wave 5. Survive that and the level’s yours.

IronThough the immediate appearance of Cerberus may make this level appear a nightmare… it actually gives you most of the strategy. The trick is simply being able to take down each Cerberus before the next one rocks up (more to the point, does Molloch have some kind of breeding program doing on?)

The first item is obviously something to keep Cerberus busy. The second is some crowd control to help deter everybody else from getting involved. The third is the biggie to taking down the pooch… Pay attention to its resistances and you’ll have your answer. You’ll have more than one Cerberus later, so is there a tower that could field a number of roles perhaps?

Don’t worry about covering the right fully (for now). Set up to mean business on the left. If you’ve played your cards correctly, you should be able to take down Cerberus before the Flareons even show up on the right road. At this point, immediately pivot to shore up the right road. It’ll get a little hectic with Cerberus and Flareons, so don’t hesitate to let your hero or reinforcements fight it head-on whilst you wait for your guys to re-appear. If you can crack this bit, you’re actually pretty much there. The only trouble will likely be a handful of Demon Legions on either road. Your best bet here is to nuke one and use your heroes, reinforcements and even a quickly-spun-up mage tower to do as much damage as you can on the other.

Despite the chaos, you should be sitting pretty and, if you picked the appropriate upgrades, even the duo of doggies should be easy to sit out. You just bested one of the game’s worst levels. Doesn’t that feel pretty awesome?

23. Rotwick

The opening of the Blackburn campaign introduces you to many shuffling horrors. Though numerous, they are a piece of cake compared to demons or husks.

Though zombies are slow, they actually pack quite a bit of health so don’t get too complacent. As long as your towers are a decent level though, they shouldn’t pose a huge threat. Even if you see them swamping your lines, they don’t hit particularly hard so your guys should come out the other side in one piece.

Rats, likewise, are very easy kills. They just poison your guys if allowed to melee them… but are so squishy that won’t often happen.

The only tricky foe (using the term loosely) are wererats. The key thing to notice is, unusually for speedy high-damage foes, they have armour instead of magic resistance. So mages are actually helpful here to begin with. Though with the numbers you’ll be facing, you’ll certainly want artillery and wrath of the forest to do the heavy lifting.

CampaignThis relatively gentle intro into the new set of levels should be a welcome respite after literally hell. There are plenty of enemies to keep you occupied, but the only real risk is that they’ll swamp you more than anything else. Despite the sprawling roads, they all lead to one key chokepoint… so make that your bastion. Your biggest risk is trying to expand too quickly and spreading yourself thin. Sit tight and let them come to you. Plan for numbers more than high-damage targets initially. If your towers are beefy enough, they’ll make short work of everything (if not, Rain of Fire most definitely will).

The only thing to beware of are the skeletons that crawl out of the ground near your exit. Ensuring your crowd control covers the southern spawning point will save you a lot of agro down the line. Other than that, you shouldn’t have to worry too heavily. Build big and when your first chokepoint is toting the biggest and the baddest, simply add some heavy hitters further out to thin things down further.

Considering the obscene number of light foes, this level is actually a great time to play with Barbarians if you haven’t already done so. They’ll make short work of anything that manages to get through your gauntlet.

HeroicYou’re basically invited to mimic the killzone of the campaign level… and even given a generous pot of cash to do so! Take them up on that offer and go crazy.

The only caveat is that you might want your melee hero to sit out for this one. There’s too many rats to give them a chance to level up enough to not die repeatedly from them.

IronThe challenge of this level isn’t so much the tower choices, but with how absolutely little money you have to do anything with.

You cannot feasibly build to fend off both the skeleton knights and worgs, so pick the worgs and nuke the skeleton knights instead. If you blast the first wave of them as soon as the first 3 appear, it should recharge just in time to save your skin when the next lot descend upon your lines.

Though you want archers to pick off the worgs, a single low-level mage is actually pretty useful for the slowness if nothing else, helping squeeze a few more javelins out of your guys. You have little hope of properly besting the next wave though, so just try to hold them back as long as you can until rain of fire recharges. Retreat bit by bit to keep those javelins airborne and stop the speedy guys hitting the exit. It cuts it very fine, but you should just about make it.

You should be on the all-important level 4 tower, but it won’t be enough… you’ll need its abilities! If you need a boost in a pinch, you could even sell some other towers (say, wasn’t there ever an upgrade that helped with this?). Bear in mind as well that Wrath of the forest isn’t your only source of crowd control either… especially on a tight budget.

24. Ancient Necropolis

The empty spaces in the game encyclopaedia will hint that there are many more enemies to be introduced to… and they are certainly nastier than the ones you’ve so far met.

Fallen Knights are an interesting one. Despite the name ‘Knight’, they have high magic resistance. Thankfully, this means that they’re not too hard to take down by other means. The problem is that they don’t stay down. They suddenly become a Spectral Knight, which is the opposite end of the… uh... spectrum. Fully immune to physical damage, only mage towers can bring them down. That’s not your only option though. They can still be harmed by poison, some hero abilities and even the musketeer sniper shot. Though none will reach the same reliability as mage towers, it’s worth knowing these to have some extra tools to help keep them in check.

The headache are the abominations. Huge, fleshy time bombs that have a tendency to explode in the face of everybody, taking out even fully-upgraded paladins. Despite this, they’re not actually too scary. The problem is more the lack of infantry they leave in their wake for everybody else. Whilst you can try and keep them separate from your guys… your best counter is actually to ensure your crowd control is good enough that, even with them in your face, you can still keep everybody else at bay. Do this and you can often wait them out. If you really care about your guys though (or are sick of the hate mail from their families), you can avoid the explosions with some careful micromanagement by moving your guys away just before the abomination explodes. Both Polymorph and disintegration ray also do not set off their explosion.

CampaignDespite the general mayhem of the level, this one’s pretty straightforward if you know what you’re doing. Take each wave at a time, making sure your towers can handle the key enemies present. Any time you have money to burn, wait to see what’s coming up next as you’ll be hopping about upgrading to counter a variety of different attacks. The strength and mass of enemies mean you probably won’t spread very far, so once again sit back and let them come to you. The trick is in a versatile collection of high-powered towers at your two key killzones. Considering the almost polar opposite resistances of the Fallen and Spectral knights, each killzone will ideally need 1 tower of each of the 4 basic types. As Fallen Knights create spectral knights on death, you’ll probably want mages sitting behind your archer towers for this one, to let the archers maximise damage on any incoming Fallen Knights.

To be honest though, they’re not the main problems. Even the abominations are manageable. Your real headache will be crowd control. There’s enough zombies and skeletons here to keep a necromancer working overtime. But a little trick that might save your skin is to notice how many spawn right by your exit. This is good: It tells you right where to place your crowd control. Your job will also be considerably easier if you use your hero, reinforcements and rain of fire to harry and take out the necromancers as they arrive. If you can keep them in check, this level should be a cinch.

HeroicThis level is a test of your skill in micromanagement. Skilful use of your hero, reinforcements and even infantry are key to winning this.

The naughty secret is the last wave: The bottom row is pelted with nothing but Spectral Knights. The counter is clear… but the challenge is how to get that far.

The first trick is that you don’t actually need loads to protect the upper road. If you can hold off the worgs on wave 1, you’re most of the way there. Though this road is visited by many a necromancer, you can actually best them with careful use of your heroes and reinforcements. Catch them early and try to stop them summoning anything. If you have trouble isolating them from their minions, put your guys behind them: They’ll stop to shoot at you whilst their skeletal friends will continue to wander ahead, leaving them open to engage in melee.

The second trick is to double-up on infantry. You won’t have many towers, and there’s too many foes for you to realistically hold back with just 1. Spend the first wave jumping your hero and reinforcements between each set of worgs. Keep the javelins flying and the worgs busy. When the abominations lumber up, move some infantry back from those engaged in it (or if you have a melee hero, let them engage the walking bomb) so that you can lure the worgs further ahead to be shot. The abomination on its own can just be taken down by attrition at this point. Remember to keep your guys moving to avoid its blast if you can.

Now it’s all fair and well building for the Spectral Knights… but what about the Fallen Knights? My friend, have you seen how few there are? Can you say “hellish rainfall of meteorites”? I knew you could.

IronYou really don't need to overthink this one. Pretty much nothing can scratch the Spectral Knights, leaving you only one remaining option. The question then is how to stall long enough to get the most out of it.

The rest is how to somehow use artillery to administer crowd control against a bunch of skeletons. What a quandary!

25. Nightfang Swale

A couple more pains-in-the-backside are ready to greet you in this hideous swamp. If the cauldron or ominous cackling in the background isn’t a hint: There are witches.

And boy, the Black Hags are annoying as sin. Their spell instantly turns your infantry into a frog. Though you could possibly try and kite it, you generally don’t have the luxury of such micromanagement. Instead, you just have to shoot them out of the sky with archers. Worse, they don’t even have the courtesy to follow the roads and will randomly track their own winding path. This can help you slightly, however. Their paths tend to take them away from the main bunches of enemies, helping to isolate them if you can spot the useful sites. Your hero is also resistant so can be used to draw fire away from the likes of your reinforcements (who can get to work with their javelins). Have a few sites littered with a good assortments of archers, place your heroes in front and reinforcements just behind them (so the hero draws the spells), and try to clip the hags in these sites as best as possible.

Lycans and werewolves hit hard, but nothing a solid amount of towers cannot handle. The biggie, however, is not to allow infantry to get in the way of Lycans. Only greet them with Paladins under the watchful eye of several towers. Any killed infantry turns into werewolves, making an otherwise tough job even worse. So if you have any infantry on outlying sites, it’s often better to just give way and let the Lycans run through for your more fortified sites to handle. Likewise, make sure your reinforcements have a screen of guards to ensure they’re not pulled into melee.

CampaignThe good news is that everything converges into a single road, so the key spot to set up is pretty clear. The bad news is that everything converges into that one spot.

This level gets pretty nuts, but a solid collection of crowd control and infantry should see you through. The good news here is that the Spectral Knights aren’t invited, meaning you can actually forego mages for the most part, so don’t let the wererats or skeletal knights spook you into investing heavily in wizardry. Generally you’re better off just mushing them into paste with a lot of hard-hitting artillery… It’ll pay off later when your lines are pummelled by insane numbers of hungry wolves.

To catch the Black Hags, notice that their path takes them on a wide, inverted ‘S’ bend. You can snag the early hags on the upper-right bend and later catch the others on the outlying towers on the western road. Filling these with archers will generally help to keep the witches at bay. Just make sure to have archer coverage near the exit too, as when things get nuts you might have to catch them right by the exit.

Despite losing infantry left, right and centre, it’s nonetheless a good idea to get a good coverage down. There’s a lot of fast-moving units in this level and you want to at least try to stall them a little for your all-important kill-zone. Just remember to move your guys out of the way when Lycans show up. Leave them for your hardest-hitting kill-zone by the exit. There’s enough money to build big, so max out those upgrades, especially at your central station.

HeroicIf you bested the campaign comfortably, this one should be fairly straightforward as it’s just a cut-down version of what you built before. Though the large numbers of wererats should have you considering a ranged hero (a melee hero just wouldn’t get the ability to level up properly here), once again don’t be spooked into jumping on the mage train. Focus on artillery and enough bodies to keep everyone around it. Then go nuts on archers. If you can survive the first few waves, this should be a breeze.

The effectiveness of your crowd control will be tested on wave 4. If you can kick back and let your defences take down the copious werewolves without having to call in Rain of Fire – you’re set! Don’t upgrade your infantry too heavily… not yet anyway.

Ignore the temptation on wave 5 to set up more crowd control… what you need are archers on the edges for the Black Hags. Remember how they travel in an inverted ‘S’ path? Even though wave 6 hits hard, you may notice that nothing will be travelling from either the northern or western road… which means both bends of the ‘S’ will be completely open for you to lay into the Black Hags (just be careful not to upgrade such that the towers now overlook the other roads).

As your lines get replaced by frogs and you need something less amphibian to block the bad guys, remember that upgrading barracks instantly creates new soldiers. This little trick might just save your bacon on the last wave.

Iron

A very tough level as the two things you need to keep Lycans at bay are missing… oh and you’re poor. Thankfully, 10,000 volts up the backside and being incinerated by meteorites never go out of fashion.

If you’re the sort to normally use Elora Wintersong (and as well, you should), you should probably sit her out for this one. Every enemy is resistant to magic and your reinforcement javelins will be far more valuable here than her spells – so you’ll want someone up front to play melee shield.

First order of business is something to get the most out of your javelins. You’ll want extra damage and ideally something to stop them getting pulled into melee. Use your rain of fire on the first pair of Lycans to get you more funds to set up (you’ll need it recharging soon enough). Next on the agenda is some serious crowd control. It’ll take ages to set up though, so sit tight and keep those javelins flying. Your next rain of fire is scheduled for the trio of Lycans from the west.

By and large, the multiple-target upgrade on the Tesla coils will be more valuable here than the area-of-effect attack. There are too many large units to get much mileage out of it, and funds are very tight.

Keep pushing for more artillery, as one won’t be enough for the grand finale. If you’ve built correctly you should be able to take the set of 4 Lycans without rain of fire. Keep an eye on your guys’ health and remember that, similar to barracks replenishing on an upgrade, similar effects can occur in other towers too in a pinch. You can’t afford even a small break in your lines this level.

Your third rain of fire needs to be saved for the crazed set of 5 already-transformed Lycans from the west. Let them bunch up first and waste them. Quickly get to work on your fourth and final tower, as things are about to get hairy in a most unpleasantly wolfy fashion. They’ll be throwing everything they have at you, and what you’ll need more than ever is, curiously, just a little bit more time.

At the point you’re overrun by Lycans… hold. You need to try and stay the attack with what you have. If you can ensure you don’t lose too many guys, you should just about squeeze by. When they make one last assault with impossible numbers, give them the only greeting fit for their kind: Big, fiery and meteor-shaped.

Then go have a breather and probably a cuppa.

26. Castle Blackburn

I’m sure this is going to come as a huge surprise to you, but apparently the lord of this realm has turned to the dark side. It’s not like the legions of zombies, werewolves, fallen knights and witches all over his kingdom are any sort of hint whatsoever. Be that as it may, it’s time to take down this sucker and end this.

CampaignA frenetic level that hits you hard early. The problem is that you have 3 roads to defend simultaneously, and most of your tower spots are shared between them. Though this seems advantageous at first, it’s a huge headache as your towers can end up being distracted on one road, leaving the other barely guarded.

Similar to Pandemonium, the trick to this level is to roughly plan what the end result will look like and simply edge your way there, building the necessary towers as and when is needed to counter the coming wave. The most important quandary to solve is the first: How to get 3 roads sharing properly.

Firstly, placing barracks in the shared spots is always sensible as you get to be in control of which road they guard. Secondly, the large numbers of rats in the first wave on both the top and middle roads are a great clue. A tower that can effectively look after both lanes is advantageous as you won’t have the rain of fire to cover both. Now there’s one key ingredient missing: Mages. You’ll have Spectral Knights hitting all 3 roads, so cannot avoid the need to have some sort of coverage on each.

This gives you the rough floorplan of your side of the map. Spend the first waves setting this up before even bothering with attempting to claim any of the outlying tower spots. They’re too disparate to really set up on until you have the funds to make them do anything meaningful.

At the point you hit Wave 9 and things start getting hectic, now’s the time to start pushing forward and claiming the middle spots. The roads are too scattered to meaningfully place infantry around them… but they are just screaming for heavy duty crowd control. You’ll need these to make wave 11 bearable. At the point you're this far, you should be sitting quite pretty. The last pieces are preparing for the Lord himself. He emerges from the top road and walks under the small pair or tower spots. Get all of these toting some heavy firepower in preparation. Additionally, the isolated tower spot in the far bottom-right is useful for getting uninterrupted shots on the black hags that swoop by, if they prove particularly bothersome.

Lord Blackburn is a tough nut to crack, not helped where he regularly disables nearby towers. However, your best chance at him is right at the start when the wave is quietest. Get your reinforcements and hero to greet him by the gates. He hits hard, but cannot instantly kill anyone, meaning you can stall him as well. If you can lop off enough health before his goons arrive, your job will be a cinch.

HeroicThis is the ultimate puzzle level. You’re not defending from generic rabbles on all fronts… each wave is a targeted attack with its own counter. The challenge is using the limited funds to get a clean counter to each one, leaving enough wiggle room to set yourself up well for the next.

The Spectral Knights off the bat force your opening hand somewhat. Considering they later hit the middle road as well, your first move should be pretty straightforward. Considering that tower abilities will be critical here… could you go one step further to have a useful ace-in-the-hole against both the Spectral and Fallen Knights as well? Believe me, it makes a huge difference. Leave the skeletons for your Rain of Fire. Hit the front and most will stroll into the ashes for your hero and reinforcements to pick off.

Your next challenge is the medley of Knights converging on the middle road. However, you should actually try to take this wave as-is. Keep your rain of fire for taking out as many Spectral Knights as possible… if you use it prematurely on too many Fallen Knights, you’ll just summon more Spectral Knights to the show, as they will miss the meteorites and are unaffected by the scorched earth. The reason for trying to fight as-is is because you want to start investing for wave 4. You’ll have an army of skeletons from the north and plenty of werewolves from the south. Very little overlaps both roads and you cannot succinctly nuke one either. There is… one spot however. You’ll need to throw all your cash into it to get it online before the big show though.

Wave 3 would normally be a headache… that is, if you didn’t pick up the nifty upgrade hinted in wave 1. That in hand means you can hold off the Lycans will little more than your hero and reinforcements.

Wave 4 is the doozy. By now you’ve hopefully just got your all-important tower in place. The most important element is keeping the enemies nearby whilst you stick all of the upgrades on it. The wave gets pretty scrappy as you might have to fend off a few werewolves sneaking by… but keep the javelins and spells coming and you should just eke through.

Wave 5 is messy, but you should have enough by now to see the worst of it off. Hold on your coins though… there is one last surprise for you.

Wave 6 they chuck all sorts of knights at you. Now’s the time to get a second mage tower covering both lanes on the double. If you can get this rolling in time, you should be able to survive.

IronI can only assume this wacky level was penance for the brutally tough Heroic one before... You’re going toe-to-toe with flying sheep.

Yes. Flying sheep.

Your best bet here is simply to go scattergun with your mage towers. They have the best accuracy against flying foes and you’re generally better off peppering the black hags (and subsequent sheep) as they fly through the level than trying to create a couple of kill-zones. A second polymorph tends to be more than ample to keep the Black hags in check. The rest is simply getting plenty of firepower up.

Don’t forget Barbarians may also be able to lend a hand.

Bonus A: Specialist Towers [Archer/Barracks]

Rangers Hideout

Contrary to a simple fast-firing arrow tower… the Rangers Hideout is deceptively the second-best form of crowd control in the game. The answer lies in the ‘Wrath of the Forest’ and, combined with the Tesla Coil, is obscenely powerful. For this reason, the Rangers Hideout is best placed centrally near your main killzone in a patch with plenty of road around it. Their arrows are, ironically, just icing on the cake.

Poison Arrows – Gives them an edge against armoured foes and bosses, so is worth pushing if you’re hit by them a lot, but tends to be a bit more of a novelty.

Wrath of the Forest – This is the one to get. Though 600 gold may seem a lot to sink, it’s generally worth it. Not only does it damage most enemies in the surrounding area, it also pins them in place briefly. This is great on so many levels. Not only does it buy you a bit more time, but it also stops them from attacking or casting spells either, further giving your front line more breathing space.

Musketeer Garrison

The obscene range of the Musketeer Garrison makes them great for outlying tower spots that other towers would struggle to get a good reach on. The other main reason you’ll want these guys is for their sniper shot, as it brings some very valuable insta-kill potential to your arsenal.

Shrapnel Shot – Quite expensive for what you get, as its recharge is a bit slow to rely upon. That said, if it sees a lot clustered enemies (especially if bosses/big foes hide around them too) it can buy you a ton of breathing space, but you tend to want other things up and running first.

Sniper Shot – This is where these guys earn their keep. You’ll need it top level to get decent mileage, but it has a solid rate of fire so is great for keeping heavies in check. If nothing else, it always deals a ton of damage.

Holy Order

If you’re ever unsure of which infantry upgrade to pick: Go for these guys. Fully upgraded, their survivability is unparalleled to the extent that they can wall most of game’s toughest foes – sometimes even indefinitely.

Healing Light – Generally the first upgrade to pick to immediately start giving your guys better survivability, as they even cast this mid-combat.

Shield of Valor – Though expensive this is a must-have which, combined with healing light, makes these guys utter tanks.

Holy Strike – This one’s more situational, as it’s the survivability you generally want. However, if your Paladins are seeing a lot of action and are getting swamped, this can be handy to help keep the crowds in check.

Barbarian Hall

On the surface, barbarians offer a straightforward trade-off: Less survivability for more damage output. Unfortunately this goes at odds with you wanting infantry to stall enemies, so would otherwise leave them playing second fiddle… were it not for the throwing axes.

These are not just toys to hit flying enemies with. If you ever find yourself with a cluster of 2 barracks, make the front ones Paladins and put the back ones as barbarians with throwing axes. The Paladins soak up the bulk of the hits whilst the barbarians offer fire support and eviscerate any foes who sneak by. It is an incredible combo.

More Axes – You can’t go wrong with this one, even in a support role – as it means you can clear enemies quicker to get back to throwing axes. Your guys last longer if the foes go down faster.

Whirlwind Attack – Situational but very useful in levels with lots of spiders/zombies: Where the enemies are weak but there are lots of them and, thus, your barbarians get pulled into combat often.

Throwing Axes – This tends to be the upgrade to jump on. Not only can they snag flying foes but will also hit nearby enemies even if not engaged in combat; akin to your formidable reinforcements and their javelins.

Bonus A: Specialist Towers [Mage/Artillery]

Arcane Wizard

For raw damage, you can hardly go wrong with the Arcane Wizard. It has the best single-target damage so almost always has a role to play. Tuck them into your main kill-zone so that they can hit the beefy enemies after all the squishy ones have been cleared away.

Death Ray – Insta-kill a bad guy. What’s not to like? You generally only need the first upgrade though. It’s only really in some heroic/iron levels where you’re swamped with tanky units that you may want to invest more.

Teleport – A curious toy that shoves enemies back down the road a bit. It doesn’t do much on its own, so you generally only want this when your level is quite established or you have several of these going (chained, this upgrade can get quite insane).

Sorcerer Mage

Though they lack the raw damage of Arcane Wizards, the interesting party trick of Sorcerer Mages is that their basic attack renders the enemy vulnerable to all other forms of damage (this includes from your reinforcements too). This makes them excellent for sitting upfront to greet oncoming foes and also gives them a useful edge against magic resistant enemies that the Arcane Wizard lacks.

Summon Elemental – This is always a fun upgrade to get. It essentially gives you a tanky barracks unit to play with. Though its attack is area-of-effect, it can only block one enemy at a time, so is best used alongside other infantry. A little trick to note: Purchasing the next upgrade will heal the elemental to full, which can save your (and its) life in pinch.

Polymorph – This is an upgrade you need to be careful with. Whilst a polymorphed foe is weakened and won’t be able to attack you, it will still continue to run down the road and cannot be engaged in melee. Worse, it still counts as an enemy if manages to sneak by your exit (apparently sheep count as a punishable offence in Lineria). Conclusion? Only equip this if your mage is far up the road and there are plenty of ranged towers between it and the exit. At which point, it’s very handy as a Death Ray equivalent for large foes.

500mm Big Bertha

There is something hugely satisfying about the explosion from an artillery shell crashing down onto unsuspecting foes. Sadly, the Big Bertha suffers from one, gaping flaw…

It is not the Tesla Coil.

Unfortunately, this means that it’s often outclassed and can be ignored for most of the game’s levels aside from when this is your only option for level 4 artillery.

Cluster Launcher Xtreme – A fun cluster that spreads itself down the road to share more of the love. It’s slow to reload and lower damage makes it hard to rely upon however, so is generally relegated to places with lots of tiny squishy units like spiderlings.

Dragonbreath Launcher – A cheap upgrade that lets you get a bit more versatility out of the Bertha, giving you an extra punch for stronger foes.

Tesla x104

At first glance, the feeble ‘zap’ of the Tesla Coil can seem underwhelmingly pathetic compared to the defiant explosion of an artillery shell. Make no mistake however, the Tesla Coil is one of the most overpowered towers available to you.

For starters, its attack is decent and can hit multiple foes even if they’re not clustered on exactly the same spot. But it gets better… It has access to an incredible area-of-effect attack that damages the entire area surrounding it every time it attacks, utterly frying squishy units. Its attack also hits instantly so you don’t get the frustrating misses of artillery shells hitting the wrong spot, as well as being able to target flying units. Oh, and it’s cheaper too.

It goes without saying then, that every level benefits from at least one of these in a prime spot. The ability to hit all around itself means that wide bends or places which straddle multiple roads are just perfect for this little beauty. Just have it slightly in front of your infantry with as much road around it as possible, and you’ll be laughing. Just make sure to give it its upgrades, as you’ll need them to really get the most out of this. It’s pricey but, believe me, is worth the cost.

Supercharged Bolt – Though not as impressive at first glance as the area-of-effect attack, this is a key upgrade if you’re being hit by mid-to-high level foes, as the direct attack provides far more meaningful damage, so you’ll want it hitting as many as possible.

Overcharge – This is where the fun happens. Jack this up the max in an area where lots of light units run past, then sit back and enjoy the show.

Bonus B: Reinforcements And Rain Of Fire

Reinforcements

Whilst 2 farmers seems to be stretching the definition of ‘Reinforcements’ somewhat, these guys are pivotal to your success. Sometimes you will want them bolstering your main line to add more bodies to keep the bad guys in range of your towers. Other times you’ll want to place them ahead to intercept and stall nasties – such as healers or archers.

As the spell recharges quickly, you’ll generally want to be using this constantly. Better still, it recharges slightly faster than it takes for the first bunch to disappear, meaning you can often get a decent window of 4 reinforcements present if you’re quick on the draw. If you summon the first lot slightly before the enemies hit your lines, the next batch should be ready to throw in just as they arrive.

For most of the campaign, you’ll want your reinforcements sitting in front of your infantry, not behind them. The reason why is, your reinforcements will vanish no matter how much HP they have left… Your barracks, on the other hand, have to recover. This means the best units to get pummelled first are your reinforcements (sorry guys), so put them in front to take the brunt of the attack. You can always make more… at least that’s what we tell their families.

Everything changes, however, as soon as you acquire the final upgrade of javelins. It’s worth the high price. These things are obscenely powerful and do considerably more damage than their melee attack… meaning you now should start keeping them behind everybody else so that they can chuck their spears unimpeded. If you lack the barracks units to cover, the next-best approach is to summon each pair of reinforcements slightly behind the first lot. If the first pair get pulled into melee, the back pair can keep chucking spears. If the first lot fall, they were at least going to be vanishing first anyway. Whatever you do, don’t stack them all on the exact same space, as they’ll all get pulled into melee even if only 1 bad guy shows up.

The spear’s ability to attack whilst keeping reinforcements out of trouble also opens the door for some excellent harrying tactics. If you can find roads which overlook the enemy’s route but are not in the direct patch, your guys can sit back and chuck javelins like crazy without ever being interrupted.

Rain of Fire

There might not seem much subtlety in launching meteorites at a bunch of bad guys… but there’s a few tricks worth knowing to get the most out of this delightful spell.

Firstly, the scorching ground upgrade is more than for singeing squishy creatures who run over it… it’s a secondary form of damage that, on harder foes, is necessary to hit them as hard as possible. Therefore, if you’re targeting a heavy-enemy, make sure you cast rain of fire where they can be forced to stand still – Either in front of barracks units or your reinforcements/hero – then try to keep them there as long as possible.

The real question, however, is when to use it.

As a general rule, you can simply get by using it as a sort-of panic-button. As soon as a sizeable force slams into your front lines (and it looks like they’re beefy enough to be a problem) – rain down hell and you’ll be sitting pretty. You should easily be able to clobber enough bad guys to get your money’s-worth. The key though, is not to leave it too late when everything breaks. Even if you crack that force, your lines may still need time to recover and there will likely be more bad guys on the way. Generally aim for when you have a critical mass of enemies bunched up, but before your infantry have melted.

Another useful trick in the later levels; you generally have enough cooldown to throw down one per wave. This can often help get your foot in the door by outright blasting the initial waves, giving you the headspace and money to set up big or even elsewhere.

9 times out of 10, this should suffice. However, there will occasionally be times when you’ll need to be a little more tactical with your rain of fire. If you find yourself losing a wave or level repeatedly, your timing of rain of fire may be something to consider. Sometimes you’ll want to hit enemies early, even if they’re nowhere near your front lines (at which point, use reinforcements to pin them in place). There are three main scenarios to keep an eye out for where this may be important:

Firstly, is when you have healers, summoners or ranged units. These units can compound the nasties hitting your lines, often making an otherwise easy wave nigh impossible (you’ll see this a lot with healers in the early campaign). Weirdly, it’s sometimes best to just go all-out and nuke the healers before they become any sort of nuisance, rather than waiting until everyone bunches up.

Secondly is if the enemies split up. If they emerge from a single road, you can sometimes deal more damage to a difficult wave by hitting them before you’re forced to defend on multiple fronts. (Conversely, waiting for them to join up on the same road is also a good idea).

Lastly is the most nuanced, but potentially vital… It’s when you have a chain of seemingly unwinnable attacks. There will come points when you cannot repel an attack without rain of fire. These sometimes occur immediately after an already frenetic attack (which goads you into using rain of fire prematurely). If you find yourself in this quandary: Work backwards. Pay attention to the final attack that you must save rain of fire for, then see how early you can cast it to give it time to recharge. Casting it earlier in this way can often soften the penultimate wave enough that you can now survive it with ease (rather than waiting until you are in trouble). This will then allow rain of fire to recharge in time for the deadly wave after it.

Put another way, if you cast rain of fire at the beginning of a threatening attack, you may be able to squeeze in a second casting at the end of it.

Bonus C: Hero Corner

There’s a definite power creep to the heroes in Kingdom Rush compared to the other games (in part an overhang from the initial in-app purchase model on mobile devices) meaning that, at the point you unlock the really cool ones, there is very little purpose in using the others. The rest are more there to get your foot in the door.

The cool ones in question are the final 6; Elora Wintersong onwards. There’s no real right/wrong ones to use, so it generally comes down to preference and who you think is the most coolest!

Elora Wintersong

Elora is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive heroes of the original game. Though making enemies run slowly on ice seems a bit ‘meh’, it is obscenely powerful when you have Tesla Coils rolling, basically flash-frying everything before they even get to your lines. She also learns a great area-of-effect spell that hits hard and fast.

The nuance on what makes her so good, however, is that she is a ranged hero.

Melee heroes face the problem of having to go toe-to-toe with foes, meaning you often have to wait for them to engage and pull them out when they take a beating. This is especially true later in the game where many foes are deadly or have nasty side-effects like exploding on death – making these heroes tough to level-up. Elora, on the other hand, takes this in her stride and can continue to lay down an uninterrupted hail of attacks, especially helped by her insane speed. This also lets her level up much faster, making her even more impressive.

In truth, there are very few levels where she struggles (Nightfang Swale, Iron, is perhaps the only one).

Ingvar Bearclaw

Ingvar’s a pretty cool melee hero in general (especially once he gets his bear form)… but the great thing about him is that he summons friends. This means more bodies on the field for blocking the bad guys… and you can never have too many barracks units – especially when they’re free!

Given they don’t hit very hard though, it’s important to let Ingvar hang around your main killzones. Stalling enemies is pretty meaningless on its own… but if you can block them in range of your brightest and best towers, you’re set. Though he may not be great at running out on commando missions… he’s one of the best walls for your front lines.

Hacksaw

There’s something pretty sweet about a giant mech, though I’d say Hacksaw is the hardest to use of the top-level heroes. The problem is his speed: His lumbering about can make it hard to defend multiple fronts, but also slows down getting him in and out of combat to level him up properly. As you don’t want him moving around much, aim for levels where you have a pretty set killzone to work with.

Once you get him rolling though, he makes up for it by being the only hero with a guaranteed insta-kill attack. As soon as you hear his drill in combat, you’re away! At this point, see if you can isolate large, dangerous enemies and have Hacksaw engage them. Let him wander up, gib the goon and then lumber back to let it recharge. Even if he’s not doing much about the mobs, his ability to outright remove the big troublemakers is fantastic.

Oni

You can’t go wrong with a freaking samuri. Oni is arguably one of the most proficient melee combatants, boasting solid health, damage and abilities. He is very simple to use, as he just needs to be chucked where there’s a fight and allowed to dish out as much damage as possible.

The only “downside” per se is, melee is his only party trick, meaning levels with dangerous foes and flying enemies can prove tricky for him as he doesn’t offer much else.

Thor

Thor’s an interesting and versatile hero. Though he doesn’t match up to Oni’s raw melee abilities, the area-of-effect stun from Mjölnir is obscenely powerful if you can get him levelled up. This means that he can generally play more of a part in the later stages of a level if you can muddle him through the opening phases. As such, get him in combat early on the weaker foes.

Ten’Shi

Whilst a ripped elderly dude in his underwear shouting “IRONHIDE” may be a little jarring, Ten’Shi fills a cool niche in that his hench form has a much-needed area-of-effect attack – and is the primary reason to use him. The single-target trade-off is that he is superb for dominating large mobs that smash into your front lines. The trick is just how to use it.

Firstly, get him out early to level him up quickly, as you want that ability badly. Secondly, when timing is key, don’t hesitate to keep him out of combat so that you can have him hulk up on the enemies you need him to… He teleports anyway, so you can quickly move him about.

Thoughts And Suggestions

Any hints too obvious?

Any hints not sufficient?

Disagree with any of the above and want to challenge me to a game of seeing how much infantry we can feed to J.T before anyone notices?

Then give me a shout! This guide is organic, so the aim is to update and tweak it based upon how much or how little people require help with certain levels. The only traps here are those I stumble upon, so if these aren’t working for you – Let me know and I’ll see what we can do!

I also entirely appreciate that there are many ways of completing most of the levels. If you find another way, kudos! This guide isn't an attempt to spell out the "ultimate" way - Just one that works and to simply give those struggling some sort of direction (and be a good laugh, hopefully). So don't worry if you've found a slightly different way of doing things... you've just found another way of being awesome!

Happy Gaming

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2754075060					

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