Stuck on bonus levels... help!

[The Hermit Spycrab]

I made it through most of the game only having to replay the boss levels, but after I beat the dark tower, there was a HUGE difficulity spike.

The only one I have beaten so far was the first one in the forest, but too often I find I have too many types of baddies to deal with and not enough money to cover them all.

Take the second forest level, for example. It has a lot of the "bandit" type guys, then some of the "mega-cluster-but-super-weak" spider babies spawned from a spider, and some flying things thrown in the mix. I find myself needing wizard towers for the bandits, dwarves for the spiders so some little ones don't sprint past my troops, and archer towers for the flying things that come in.

You only start with about 700 coins in this level, and it is NOT enough to build up good stuff before you get mega pounded.

[Honorable_D]

Pretty much all the bonus levels are balanced around you having max upgrades.

You'll need to go back to the first levels and beat them on Heroic and then Iron - you'll get 1 star for beating each for a total of 2 per level.

[Unimarobj]

EDIT: Ok, my bad, expect a wall of text in this post. Mainly aimed as advice for OP or whoever is having issues like theirs. Sorry!

Mmm, I was happy to finally try my hand at the bonus levels, as I never bothered with them in the flash version.

Anywho, to help you:

First and foremost, you will probably want all of the upgrades. Do you need them? Definitely not. Do they help? Yes, a ton. I did 2 of them without max upgrades, then decided to go get all of the heroic/iron challenges on the campaign stages (just for the hell of it). Outside of the extra stars, doing the heroic/iron challenges will force you to think in varying ways, pushing your strategic mindset limits, which helps you improve with the game in general.

Second, which hero are you using? Not all heroes are created equal, and that is something to keep in mind. After you beat the campaign you unlock two of them who are exceptionally strong compared to the rest. Personally, I feel that Elora Wintersong (Ice Mage hero, basically) is the best for several reasons. A large AOE damage ability, a large AOE slow, and her ranged attacks slow the enemies (might only be if you have the top mage upgrade), and her ranged attacks also have a 33% chance to freeze the enemy (applies to flying enemies too!) Alvair (sp?) the big one who turns into a bear is powerful as well, but not for dealing with a ton of enemies at once. He does get immunity while in bear form I believe (not certain, haven't really used him too much), which could help a ton with tough enemies like treants and bosses.

Third, and most obvious probably, is what towers/special abilities/placement you are using. Yes, various strategies work, but there are some general rules per level that help a ton. I unfortunately can't take the time to detail them per level (maybe later this week I could do it as a sort of guide for the Steam community, though) because I have school in the morning and can't remember what I did per level, exactly, but here are some quick tips:

Don't spend too much where it isn't needed. It feels AWESOME to have a bunch of fully upped towers, but isn't always needed. Quantity > Quality applies in some cases.

Balance the map if it has split enemy paths. Let your hero take on one path to level up quickly, while using reinforcements to help them out, while focusing your tower-building on the other side (this does NOT really apply to the first forest level, that I recall, but more to the second, and DEFINITELY the Spider one and the rest). This does not mean that you don't use towers one one side, just that it's a LITTLE bit more strong on the other, since your hero is on the one side.

Remember that poison from the forest marksmen towers ignores armor.

Don't use Reinforcements when they'll just die, unless you're buying time for good reason. It's good to have them hold enemies for your hero or towers, but try not to waste them, even if you use them every 10 secs (the cooldown).

Chain lightning artilleries are very, VERY strong. They can kill 5 goblins in one shot if they are maxed to hit 5 enemies, for example, but besides that they have a substantial AOE presence. They are not too great against bosses or single, strong enemies, however.

Don't spend too much on soldiers. A couple of barracks in key places (ALWAYS at least one near the exit), but focus more on damage. Upgrade the soldiers as needed, typically aiming for paladins. It is ok to use a combo of paladins and barbarians, though, with the point of barbarians to be a ranged squad behind the paladins, and clean up crew (they hurt a good bit), in certain situations.

The Forest Marksmen tower AOE stun is very helpful, as is the Arcane Wizard's teleport ability.

Sorry, that's all I've got for now :/ I'll subscribe to this conversation so that hopefully later this week I'll remember to attempt a guide. It won't be video (I don't know how to do that, honestly) but I can do each level and just take pics of my setup/talk about what happened in the level, to see if that helps. Feel free to add me as a friend, though, and I'd be willing to help you directly whenever we're both on :D

~Uni

[Cdr.Keen]

you don't need to upgrade all - just upgrade the skills you need. mage + tesla towers and maxed rain of fire will work for all levels :)

[AceKilla]

^ yep frost hero and almost all tesla towers (works for quite a few bonus levels)

[just.dont.do.it]

Almost ANY bonus level non-iron solution should start with "1. Build yourself a fully upgraded Tesla on spot that most enemies walk through".

Seriously, most of the early problems are solved with a Tesla. About the only level where I didn't build Tesla first was the 2nd bandits level (on the account of two exits and my unwillingness to build a Tesla too close to them -- on the only spot that could cover them both). Yet, the first tower after the initial batch was still a Tesla.

[MTaur]

Saw this thread a few days ago, and the remarks about Tesla towers were spot on - I was like the OP was, and now I'm rolling through challenge levels with relative ease. This is several months after the post that it's still just more of the the same. The game probably needs a lot of rebalancing overall -- it's ridiculous how Tesla makes super-hard levels into levels that are no harder than the vanilla campaign. The harder you think about adapting your strategy to the mobs, the harder you make your life for yourself. Nope, Teslas and cannon fodder is all it takes.

The thing about Tesla vs Big Bertha is that it's pretty hard to make Bertha hit five enemies or more. And in situations in which Bertha can hit 5 or more enemies, Tesla can continuously sap health from 20 or enemies with the static field, anyway. Simply put, the chain lightning is just insanely reliable, and there doesn't even seem to be a significant loss to base damage to justify it. It's great at AoE, and still pretty good at single-target stuff. You can throw any notion of specializing damage between single-target and AoE wave clear out the window. Tesla is an above-average jack of all trades whose weaknesses hardly ever justify getting a true specialist.

So yeah. You just need backup from upgraded reinforcements and eventually paladins (and maybe Earth Elementals too for good measure). If you were thinking about strategically setting up a diverse array of low-level towers and upgrading according to need, forget about it.

[Doomerang]

I don't know, trying to push tesla's in castle blackburn levels especially will leave you screwed. And Pandemonium demands other towers

[Herr Lobster]

I try and get a tesla tower fully upgraded as soon as possible. I found hacksaw was a pretty useful hero for those levels with the swamp monsters as he could 1 hit kill them. Just got 130 stars (all on normal, not gonna bother replaying on a harder difficulty).

Wish Frontiers would come out on steam

[Poppis]

Originally posted by Feathers:

I don't know, trying to push tesla's in castle blackburn levels especially will leave you screwed. And Pandemonium demands other towers

You playing on hard? Because in normal I 3 stared them(apart from the last level) with teslas.