Your standard tower openers?

[Honorable_D]

On a normal map without crazy enemy types and totems all over, what towers do you normally open up with to get started?

I've been rolling with a Fire Tower at start of creep spawn, Frost Tower and then a Mortar. Fire Tower for good AoE and DoT, Frost Tower to help slow and start creating a kill zone and Mortar for even more AoE and great damage. I then usually go into several Assault Towers for more precise damage to deal with the all-to-frequent Ghost type enemies.

Bear in mind that I'm only in high 30's level and don't have access to endgame towers. But still, I am curious to what your guys' frequent opener build orders are.

[Marbur]

I think there is no clear walkthrough, because it all depends on what towers and spells you have and how many charges you got.
Half of the fun and the strategy is to work out a strategy with the cards you have at your hands.

Because I didn't have enough Mortar and Fire charges, I did use the Wooden Cannon still in my early fifties. It was really a big change when I could switch.

[Honorable_D]

I suppose that is true. There are enough towers and you get them so randomly, that everyone will have a different way they build while early to mid game.

I guess I was just curious as to how other players tackle the first 4 waves or so.

[Cdr.Keen]

Basically it's a good tactic to start with a aoe dot, a nutcracker and something to finish up the remaining.

[Marbur]

After hitting 80 I have the feeling Fire is falling back, now I use Fire only if enemies must be burned.
The tower is so strongly staying behind that getting the PvP version (+10% damage) is worthless.

[alveolate]

i'm lv71 and i just find a nice choke point for my spray + frost then spam ffwd until something annoying comes up.

spray costs only 2/3 of mortar and won't miss + hits air, but you do need to make sure it has at least 2.0 range for optimum effectiveness. and lv5 clears most stages.

fire seems like it has good dps; but it only fires in a cone, meaning it will miss some creeps if they just happen to zip past the tower at the right timing. that also forces the tower to turn and miss the other creeps coming up behind. generally, it's not too huge a problem, and you can position the tower so that the cone isn't firing forward at oncoming creeps but instead firing backwards at creeps running past the tower - or both where possible, like at a corner. the other problem is half of fire's dps is a dot, so if there's a healing tower or healing wave they could regen the dot part.

mortar has awesome aoe dps; but it also has that targeting problem... a speedy creep will force the mortar to fire deeper into your maze, thus shifting your killzone directly. this means you have to invest in single-target dps as well, fairly quickly if the speedy waves come soon. and mortars are pretty expensive. imo, they make a better mid-level tower when you have multiple killzones set up and the waves are taking a while to die, so you put up a mortar that can bomb anywhere along a line of stacked and slowed/cursed creeps.

the 3rd tower i use is usually fog, with very good range, high single-target dps, is cheap and is rapid-fire. this means that very little of the dps is wasted (cf. a sniper tower finishing off a small near-dead creep that leaked from aoe killzone). fog tower also counters one of the biggest weaknesses of spray tower: fog creeps/weather.

in free-maze maps, i also like to bring prime cannon since i can setup long corridors for them to maximise efficiency.

for small maps, assault and sniper can cover like 80% of the maze and are at pretty high efficiency; although generally i only use sniper when there are armored creeps to counter. fog has replaced assault in 70% of cases though, with just slightly less range but far less wasted dps and faster projectile travel time. imo, once i get purifier i will probably retire my assault/sniper for good (only blinkers and ghosts force me to use them most of the time).

[Honorable_D]

That is interesting that a support tower (fog) actually does good DPS. Is that a free tower you get when you level up? I've JUST started to find cloud enemies and only have that spell you get for free to deal with them...

When can you get Spray to 2.0 range? Is that only by use of range boosting rune or do towers get some special bonus when they get high enough level? (I'm only like level 41).

[archmag]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

That is interesting that a support tower (fog) actually does good DPS. Is that a free tower you get when you level up? I've JUST started to find cloud enemies and only have that spell you get for free to deal with them...

You get Fog tower shards from daily login rewards and at level 64 you get 15 shards from level up reward that should complete your first one. Two missions after making my first one at level 64 I got another one from mission rewards.

When can you get Spray to 2.0 range? Is that only by use of range boosting rune or do towers get some special bonus when they get high enough level? (I'm only like level 41).

Runes. For Spray slot 3 has Destruction rune (damage+range) and slot 5 has Vision rune (range) runes. For some other towers you can use Might rune (range as main parameter) in slot 1 and 6, Skill rune (range and upgrades) in slot 1, 4, Ascension rune (range, upgrades and blocks flying) in 1st slot and Ingenuity rune (range, upgrades and blocks underground) in 4th slot.

[Honorable_D]

I haven't even started to find combo runes like that yet. >_>

When do those start to show up?

[archmag]

As soon as you unlock the required slot, I think. Check green missions - Assaults. They should be rare when you are low level so are usually rewarded in 3rd and 4th slots. I don't remember when those extra slots unlock. At levels 27/44/63 wiki mentions that better ranked runes (5*, 6* and 7*) become available from those missions, but I don't remember if slots were unlocked at the same levels or not.

The Destruction rune was very rare and I think I bought 5* one from Random shop specifically for Spray tower, then played a lot before started getting new ones. The Vision rune is quite common after you unlock slot 5. Ascension is very rare and I have only one 4* on my towers. With Ingenuity I was lucky and was rewarded three of them at rank 4* from single mission. 5* Ascension/Ingenuity has minimal increase above previous rank (3% to main parameter, same amount of upgrades). I still don't have a single 6* and 7* of them with +3 and +4 upgrades at level 71. Well, I don't even have basic 6* and 7* Skill rune. Would have liked those extra upgrades.

[Honorable_D]

I see the true grind in this game lies with the runes. Hmmm, is that what keeps you playing endgame when you have all Legendary towers at max stars?

[ArtiXim]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

I see the true grind in this game lies with the runes. Hmmm, is that what keeps you playing endgame when you have all Legendary towers at max stars?

Pretty much. From there you get spare 7* runes and start rotating them in your towers depeing on the stage needs :D

Except for a position 2 devastating 7* - the drop rate on that rune must be < 0.1% or something stupid like that

[ultramage]

My lvl80 opening move is always a well-placed Tower of the Sun (lvl3 or so) near the prime deposit, and a Frost Guard somewhere nearby, ideally on a range boosting anomaly. Then maybe curse tower and/or purifier, and any special towers needed for the map.

[alveolate]

the "combo" runes aren't really super strong, altho the skill+root/spire are pretty nifty. they are purple+ rarity (epic / 4 stars).

the big thing is that those level up rewards that improve your loot rarity? they push out the most common type of card from dropping. like at lv27, you "can get a legendary rarity card in Assault mode", which pushes out grey runes from dropping, meaning the minimum drop you get will be green runes.

the next rarity upgrade is at 44, blue runes minimum.
and then at 63, purple runes minimum.

at that point, you will accumulate a lot of purple and orange runes when you farm those Assault nodes.

in short, focus on levelling your account and keeping your main dps towers levelled. unlock everything and stuff starts becoming easier. this also means conserving resources early on, since resources are really hard to accumulate before you unlock more mines (and your deck wouldn't be strong enough to reliably contest + hold mines anyway).

[ultramage]

Wrong thread, I think. Regarding that tho', today I found two runes in the rng shop at 50% discount (125 stars): cyan skill+spire for towers and cyan spell range booster rune that goes in the middle. It's worth it to check that shop every day.

[Marbur]

Random shop refresh is every 4h.