A million patches later...

[Horoai]

returning player. Where do I even start?

I remember playing 'open' exclusively with my friends, no mods or cheats though, and all my characters over there are level 74-76. Got every class as builder with what I suppose used to be their 'stat' (e.g. turret damage for mage) at 800 to 1000 and a couple of different fighter characters mainly a Jester and a huntress.

So where do I go from here? Which maps should I try to beat in order to advance?
Or should I play endless and grind some mythical gear + mana for fully upgrading said gear?
Really, I have no idea which maps I even did last... I guess the jungle map on some difficulty lower than the absolute highest and the sky castle where you get to fight the dragon again? Idk :D

Guide please!

[Veetoo]

If you are returning i woud suggest playing on ranked and NOT in open. You get the achieves there.
If you dont wanna do that you will still need a few more builders and dps Toons (monk, jester, barb)... The game has changed a lot the last few years, i myself, havent played this game in a very long time.. The new players can better help you 👍🔥

[Horoai]

I don't care for achievements really.

What builder do I still need then?

[Veetoo]

Ev, aura builder, huntress for her traps.. They buffed the mage a lot.. Best builder when i was active (damage twr and twr rate for upgrade points, ) cant type long answers due to my damn Phone

[Horoai]

I already have those.

[Xengre]

Most important to gear up are App, Summoner (thp & tdmg 2:1 ratio roughly, IGNORE rate/range entirely does not scale), Aura (mainly range & tdmg).

Traptress is pretty useful sometimes but is decreasingly useful the more powerful your Apprentice gets. Her gas traps are her main function though her ethereal/inferno/proxi are very useful sometimes, too due to low DU (and cheap mana cost for some challenge maps) but high dmg value (inferno + lightning used to be more valuable before Lightning towers were massively buffed and still has some uses). Don't neglect her but she isn't a priority focus for your stats like the above three.

EV buff beam doesn't scale well at all off stats, tho it does a tiny bit off tdmg & thp after a few thousand points... so not a priority, either, and reflects/physical walls are generally fine with a moderate amount of THP.

DPS chars are very very low priority compared to tower builders. Best DPS char all around is Monk (pet dps mainly, NOT hero dmg so mainly aim for a good pet rather than good weapon is most important here). There are many reasons monk is the best on field character and no other class comes even competitively close outside niche situations. For pure boss killing a properly geared EV (MUST be using staff from Embermount campaign) with her beam attack, and Barbarian Hawk stance when very very VERY well geared, otherwise stick to monk. Jester and Huntress make solid DPS heroes at range and Jester is by far best upgrader (very tanky HP scaling, can used ranged mana weapons, and has the fastest cast speed stat scaling for upgrade/repair able to get nearly instant ups when not lagging and used with genie pet).

Best DPS pets Seahorse/Megachicken (has advantages/disadvantages between the two) followed by Dragon (outside event Dragon the normal pet dragon is a clear step down but still much better than others). All three are pretty easy to get.

Proppellor Cat is ok for DPS Jester/Huntress (usually you will want DPS pets and Monk has a stupid pet scaler + hero boost invalidating these two for this purpose but can be useful for certain bosses... Odd One, or Kraken on that map that starts with a P and gives Monk weapon that shoots blue screen cancer, I mean fire). Necessity for DPS/Hawk Barbarian and for EV boss killer with beam. Perfect ones are not necessary. At like 170+ boost it doesn't scale very well much higher, so aim for at least 170ish as well as hawk/beam + hero dmg stats being decent.

Best tower stat pets are generally farmed on Moonbase campaign (MUST do dance secret minigame, note Treadmills are comparable to Diamonds when lucky with overstat but require lv 100 to use). Dice are mentioned by some but this is false (ult++ can go to 999 in a single stat but the rest of the stats are a joke compared to overall effectiveness of having several 600-800 points of a Treadmill/Diamond/Embermount Rock).

App towers you care about are Lightning/DST mainly (almost never use any others).
Squire is viable but App currently, very very clearly outclasses Squire atm so literally no point.

Don't forget mage minion can heal other minions nearby and it is based on % max health of target (hence the emphasis on tower hp for summoner as a priority).

Spider minion will web targets disabling special abilities and causing target to take double damage (generally just ogres as trash die by aura/traps/LT before reaching walls which is good). Combined with Buff beam DPS boost, active hero boost (active hero boosts towers by 30% dmg that that hero built, ex if your app built LT/DST) and further with afk summoner boosters (app + huntress guardian pet) you can get some crazy multiplicative increase on damage. Throw in monk tower boost when able to. Example of what this can do suddenly a 1.5m dps DST might go as high as 20m+ DPS while LT might go from 200-400k up to 4-8m DPS (this is per tower examples btw... yeah it is nuts). Sadly, Monk tower boost not viable in Survival if farming armor but great if farming pets only. This has to do with next tip...

In survival once upgraded/built ONLY use summoner if farming armor. Drops are based on active heroes (ex: huntres out means huntress weapons + armor drop, jester who can use anything drops EVERYTHING). This is bad because:
- Weapons dropped in survival are horrible PERIOD (doesn't matter if it is Ult++ it is going to be garbage, the only time this is ever an exception from what I've seen is rarely sometimes the four shard maps might drop a half ok weapon very very very very rarely, not worth looking at it if it is a weapon considering better are easily gotten elsewhere).
- Armor is worth more mana so summoners cause only armor to drop = more mana farmed
- Armor is what you are in survival to farm, and pets.

For weapons core info:
- Akakiti Jungle campaign reward (NOT an easy map without good stats/build AND a DPS for boss but other people run it often so feel free to try to join one and assist in upgrade/repairs/dps). Ok dps weapons but great tower weapons (RNG can be a little bleh on some like monks so may require numerous runs).
- Moonbase ok dps/tower weapons
- Sky City Campaign Saws for Hawk Barbarian (lower dps than Akakiti's but higher hawk, HARD to get good ones because RNG SUCKS and honestly not worth it with EV nowadays).
- Embermount Staff for EV (has insane multiplier that makes her beam broken on bosses, sadly the campaign of this map is exceedingly difficult for most the player base so good luck getting a good one... even a soso one should produce quality results for getting your EV DPS started tho)


Best armor farm map in game is Coastal Bazaar (you want like 4k+ stats to do it effectively with four chars out, two being summoner boosters and zero DPS). WIth less characters you might be able to do it with weaker stats. Loot quality caps at wave 22 (so wave 22+ loot is best armor that the game can drop, but it does seem like the odds of ult/ult+/++ dropping increases at higher waves? tho stat quality is no better after 22).

Best accessory map is the one with two Cupid bosses at end, and trying to prevent the couples from matching (I don't rem name). Also one of the hardest maps in the game (and incredibly strict build timer when going for secret). Secret doubles accessory reward for all characters on field at end (with 4 player split screen that is 8 top tier accessories per run). RNG is horrible tho so it WILL require a lot of runs. Don't even bother until your stats are 4k+ and would be ideal with a friend/someone to assist in map. There is a specific strategy employed by most to do this because the Cupid bosses are so poorly designed (for numerous reasons). (Winter Wonderland gives equally good accessories but doesn't have the double acc reward, does give coal tho...)

Arcane Library gives glasses accessory (top tier stats, tho RNG is awful so run it a lot to get but worth) from campaign nightmare and is STUPID easy to run (gives ok exp/mana, too so your bad RNG runs aren't entirely wasted). Can basically afk it with a ok lazy build and ok stats (prob wait until 2-2.5k stats to start doing this tho).

Good accessories matter a lot for reaching higher stats as they can have stats start at 200-300 range and with 250+ upgrades go into 500+ range on a single stat (outside crazy event accessories). A tip with accessories they are horribly expensive to upgrade but after approximately 30m (or maybe first 40 or so levels that is) every upgrade after is 1 mana. This means after about 40/250 ups the last 210 would be 1 mana each (210 total) for an extra 210 stat points. Thus I wouldn't really upgrade accessories unless they have 200+ ups and 2-3 good stats with no severe negatives against your given hero build.

Best mana farm by far is Coal from Winter Wonderland sold to players. Ex. can sell coal when I played for 20-25b each (sell in shop as 20b, 25b, etc. as you can't type 25,000,000,000 since shop caps at around 2b with precise numbers). Pirate invasion is also ok as is Coastal Bazaar survival. Note: Pirate invasion is UNBEATABLE, literally (eventually around wave 23 or so they become invulnerable and mobs can't be killed). In order to really get the higher wave counts you need 3-4 jesters spamming wheel to help kill mobs because of their ludicrous scaling. Good source of accessories as well just behind the cupid map but does require several jesters to do it effectively.

Game supports controller split screen (or as most do emulating controllers, see some of the steam guides to find info about it somewhere in them). This means leveling 4 heroes at once, more heroes = more loot = more mana and loot in survivals, 4x as much campaign rewards on the good ones if you can handle it, and 4x as many pet rewards. Don't ask me for specifics on setting this up just look for it. Very worth tho.

Autohotkey/macros are what people use to stack towers (convenient for building fast and does spare some buff beam DU sometimes) Google tower stacking if curious for the game.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff but to lazy to come back and fix it so good luck.