Samawa Idle Guide

New player handbook.

Sawana Idle Guide

Some of the information is outdated after the 2.1 update, bounties now calculate differently and Valor gains overall have been increased. There is also a new crown system which early game can be great for boosting Valor gains by getting the sacrifice Valor multiple times per run.

Hello all, this is a work in progress guide and I will continue to add to this when I get time. Hopefully this information will be useful to you and if you have any questions head over to the official discord. https://discord.com/invite/Uy83FuCGFa

Now updated for 2.0 content, I tried to include everything I could remember but if there is still missing information or something you'd like to see included just comment or message me on Steam/discord.

Towers

The Towers

Archer tower

The Archer tower has extremely good single-target damage. It's special ability is Rain of Arrows, which is an onslaught of arrows on a single target. Its other passive abilities are; an increased chance to do 2x or 3x damage, increased attack speed and chance to execute >50% hp targets.

This tower is great to start out with as it has a low cost to max out the tree.

Archer tower is used as a Main Damage Tower.

Fire Tower

The Fire Tower has decent AoE damage over time by leaving a burning area on the floor. It's special ability is Meteors, which when hit a boss, increase the boss fight time on hit up to 30s extra.

This tower is used when wanting to push to a higher max stage, and only requires 4 skill tree points to be useful.

Fire tower is used as a Support Tower.

Lightning

The Lightning Tower has incredible AoE damage, when maxed each attack will chain to 10 enemies, twice, while dealing more damage each chain. It's special ability is Lightning Strike, which is a burst damage ability with both a massive crit damage bonus, as well as doing more damage to non-boss enemies.

This tower is primarily used for speed clearing low stages to fast Rebirth.

Lightning tower is used as a Trash Clear Tower.

Poison tower

The Poison Tower is a damage over time focused tower. It's special ability is Toxin, this is similar to the fire towers regular attacks that leave a pool on the ground for AoE damage over time, but has ramping damage by increasing each tick. It also has a passive ability for a chance to shoot 10 projectiles in a Circle.

This tower, due to the ramping damage would be used to clear high stage bosses, when paired with Fire tower.

Poison Tower is used as a Main Damage Tower.

Energy Tower

The Energy Tower is kind of an AoE tower, but that's not why we run it. It's special ability is Super Nova, which sends out a wave hitting all enemies, with a chance to fire again on each hit. It's passive ability is what makes it great, on hit has a chance to pull monsters, this keeps monsters consistently grouped.

This tower is generally good for most builds, and a good early support as you dont need many skill points to get use.

Energy Tower is used as a Support Tower.

Ice Tower

The Ice Tower has a great balance between single target and AoE damage, it's special ability is Frost Bomb, which is an AoE explosion, with upgrades it'll throw 5 bombs, with the same enemy taking more damage if hit by multiple. Passive ability has a chance to shoot a frostbolt instead of an ice shard, but when doing so will also shoot multiple ice shards, 10 at max.

This tower is great for any purpose, has great performance so far.

Ice Tower is used as a Main Damage Tower.

Some setup examples

Ether Farming

This is my build for fast clears and re-birthing early and frequently. It is designed to clear low stages as fast as possible.

Towers used: Lightning | Ice | Energy

Stage Limit Pushing

This build is for reaching breakthrough on max stages for Automator cogs. It is entirely focused for boss fights, increasing the duration and maximising the damage on them . You may also reset skill tree to remove boss count.

Towers used: Fire | Archer | Poison/Ice

Upgrades

Upgrades are temporary bonuses you can give to your towers which will last until you Tier up the tower. Damage is the only stat that'll always be there, others are random. The best upgrades I'd say are Chance to Fire Again, Crit Chance/Damage and Attack Speed.

Runes

Feel free to use these runes whenever you want, they dont last through reset so you can just drop them if you're stuck and want to try breakthrough a stage.

Bounties

What each bounty does

Gold Bounty (Gold Coin)

• This bounty will provide you with some gold, if you have support tree chest upgrades this wont even make a dent in your gold.

Area Damage Bounty (Lantern)

• This bounty leaves a DoT pool, growing in size depending on the rarity.

Instant Damage Bounty (Swords)

• OP Boss killer bounty, sends a projectiles to deal instant damage, higher quality will chain to more enemies.

Boss Strategy

The instant damage bounty (swords) pretty much one hits bosses, even after Lv. 1,000Lv. 6,000+ (with the right investment). Not much else to it than to wait for swords to appear, start fight and click them.

Workshop

Early Game

I try to focus any type of multishot upgrade, but early game where you're not able to reach high workshop levels to get enough synergy, you may want to focus Trigger and Speed. After a few resets you'll be at a point where you can experiment freely.

Just to note, the system is tied to stages more than xp, the curve for both leveling and slime xp drop is quite ridiculous to the point you can only level by pushing stages where xp is higher. You can maybe grab a couple levels by going afk, but it will stop after a few.

Tier Lists

Last update reduced our total workshop level, but increased the stats they give, meaning we can no longer max every option we have. Therefore I have made 2 lists for either Ether Farming or Stage Pushing

Ether Farming Tier List

I meant to put crit damage into the ignore section, will update soon.

Multishot explanation

First I would like to mention how multishot upgrades work, you have your initial projectile of 1, you then have additional bullets (multishot) that are added on to this, backfire will mirror any projectile behind you, including your additional bullets. Lastly we have fire again, this will cause the tower to trigger all projectiles again.

• If your multipliers were 2x fire again, 3x backfire and 7x additional bullets, you would have 8 * 3 * 2 = 48 projectiles.

A huge amount of our damage comes from tower special abilities, which primarily trigger based on crit hits, which is why this is also a focus on both lists.

Stage Pushing Tier List

Now that we can reduce boss count to 1 using negative artifact passives, the upgrade focus is now fire again and attack speed to focus the bullets onto the boss, with crit chance again for tower specials.

Runes

Focus your runes on upgrading the top of the tier lists first and abuse the grey/blue runes for extra rerolls. Never purchase rerolls using workshop points.

Skill Tree

NOTICE

The Skill tree is extremely cheap to reset, and you can even trade skill points back into Ether for 100% return. Dont hesitate to spend your points and experiment however you feel free, game is not punishing towards trying out new stuff.

Cost of Skill Tree Points

The Cost of these points appear to be around a 1.465x increase from the previous figure rounded up, the first 20 costs are; 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 14, 21, 31, 45, 66, 97, 143, 209, 307, 450, 659, 966, 1415, 2073.

What to prioritise?

Good nodes to try get to early are the 3 Ether ones, they do not provide stage progress, but will increase your Ether income for upgrading everything else. The scaling of Ether on higher stages currently isn't great, so upgrading it from the skill tree is recommended. Early on the Stronger Towers and More Gold nodes are quite strong so I would put points into there for strength increases before focusing on the ether nodes.

Valuable Treasures is also a great node to pick up, and synergies well with the support tree for a nice boost to our gold income.

Having the first node unlocked for the towers you are currently using is nice early game, and then you can start working on the tree for your primary damage tower.

Any leftover points on rebirths after upgraded to what you decide is a reasonable cost, you can put straight into Stronger Towers and More Gold for some direct upgrades.

The top row of the Star tree you can ignore for the time being, inheritance can save you some time though as you will no longer need to clear the stages without Ghosts (Ether Bosses).

Something worth picking up a bit later is Better rarity. It is really nice as it will increase the chance of rolling rare upgrades in Workshop and tower upgrades, also helps obtaining higher quality runes.

More XP you can pretend doesnt exist, due to the way the xp curve is calculated in relation to slime xp drop, it will only keep you a level or 2 ahead of what you would be, and is completely useless once you consistently reach max level (30).

Total Ether cost for tower trees

This is a graph of the Total cost to max a tower tree, support towers dont need to be maxed but I have listed that info anyways. Trigger levels I've only added for level 15, not 25.
If you want to add that info on it's ~10,400,000 for on crit, and ~5,400,000 for per second.


Due to how cheap Archer tower is, as well as it being a decent overall tower, I recommend using this as your first damage tower.

Just want to point out again, fire and energy need nowhere near that investment to be good.
Fire can be maxed without burn area for ~228,282 Ether
Energy can be maxed without explosion area and crit chance for ~137,411 Ether

Upgrade path for each tower

I've left out the per second nodes because once you have some crit and projectile upgrades on crit will proc way more frequently. Very early game you can opt for the side passive upgrades first, but if you are at a stage where you can proc special skills then I'd swap them out to focus on them.

Artifacts

The 2 proposed strategies for reaching 2k+

Lind's Damage Multiplier

Lind's strategy revolves around the fact that the damage artifacts are multiplicative and not additive, meaning for each one you stack they will all be stronger.

For example if they were additive, 2 40% damage upgrades would be an 80% increase.
Due to them being multiplicative, 2 40% damage upgrades are actually a 96% increase.

This will make towers very strong and you should have smooth stage progression until you hit your limit.

Haqua's Bounty Strat

This is a bounty focused build, with enough support stacks (see Shards later on in the guide) bounties are so crazy that you dont even need upgrades on the artifacts, but you can still grab some if they appear. Personally I focus increased boss timer to increase the boss fight window for a sword bounty to hit using the automator.

This build is extremely slow once you start getting further into the game as your towers do 0 damage compared to enemy hp, so the only way to progress is through bounties, but so far has not reached a limit, passing stage 6,000+...

If you want to enjoy the intended experience of this game I wouldn't recommend this build.

Ether Farming

Plus boss count, you can get a crazy amount of bosses on screen with this and with more bosses means a higher chance of ghosts appearing.

Negative Effects we love

There are 2 effects I always aim for, which is -boss count for stage progression builds, and NO LEGENDARY MONSTERS! No longer do we have to wait half an hour to kill this random legendary enemy that drops no loot, we can just remove it from the game!

Automator

When do you unlock the Automator?

The automator is unlocked after clearing level 200, and you will receive 1 additional cog to spend on it every 50th level breakthrough from there.

Automator Recommend Upgrade Order

The first 2 to unlock are going to be Enhancer and Ascender. These 2 are the staple to being able to leave the game open in the background by upgrading and increasing the tier of towers while you're not looking. These will also be the first 2 that we max out, upgrading them evenly.

2 sections of the automator that I would recommend putting 1 point into are Upgrader and Explorer, with these 4 sections, the only thing you'll need to click into the game for is claiming workshop passives and either starting boss fights to push or rebirthing to start again.

After the above is done you can consider one of these next.

If you're actively tabbing into the game to fight boss or reset, I would start working towards Refiner, especially if you have a fair amount of %rarity in the skill tree.

If you are not often looking at the game, challenger will be more beneficial to you so that the game will continue to push in the background if you get stuck.

Worker I've left without points for now as I level and reset too quickly for it to be of use, I just claim the 30 points at the start of a reset and let it go, and if I'm actively pushing then I want to select the upgrades manually to make sure they're efficient.

Collector is pretty meh, if you're pushing you want to use the loot specifically for boss.

The Bounty Strategy

Focus all points into Challenger and Collector if you're running the bounty setup so that you can leave the game afk with a chance of pushing.

Support Tower

When does the support tower unlock?

The support tower unlocks at Lv. 300, while it's damage isn't significant, it's support capabilities are extremely powerful.

Recommended Upgrade Path

1st - Pink

• These chest nodes are what you want to rush first, they will drastically increase your income for the game, especially when you run into rare chests.
  
  • The path also runs along nodes that increase monster damage taken per support stack, of which are very strong.

2nd - Purple

• This node allows a chance for support to hit all targets, allowing a more stable application of support stacks to all targets.
  
  • Small node is a +100% chance to chain, this means each shot will hit another target

3rd - Blue

• These give +1% Crit chance against monsters per support stack, at max stacks this will provide 14% crit chance. Increasing the activation of tower skills and overall damage.
  
  • Small nodes give a small boost to all tower damage by giving them all a %of highest tower damage. With the 4 nodes here and the support stack upgrades after, the lower 2 towers will get a +1.4x damage of highest tower damage added to them, which is quite significant early game.

4th - Neon Blue

• This provides with a +2 max support stack count, we get this one before the others as it's better value for money and the mini node.
  
  • Small node here has the support tower fire an extra bullet.

5th - Green

• These 2 node provide +1 max support stack each, we have a lot of nodes by this point that increase based on supp stacks so these are great to upgrade.

6th - Yellow

• Now that we've got the good stuff done, we're going to be working towards the cheap multi-shot upgrades, fire again being priority, to help us get to max supp stack faster.
  
  • We will also want the last %damage taken per supp stack nodes here.

7th - Orange

• These gold drop upgrades stack with gold/hit on chests, making them another fantastic boost to our income. We will also collect the last cheap multishot upgrade here.

8th - Red

• Fire again is a priority over the other multishot upgrades, collection of the 2 remaining %of highest damage nodes are optional
  
  • With all 6 nodes, at 7 stacks, your 2 lowest damage towers will deal a bonus +2.1x of highest damage tower per shot. Waiting for damage meter to confirm how strong this actually is.

9th - White

• Collecting the last of the multi-shot upgrades to get more enemies stacked, faster, also good for what we're taking next.

10th - Black

• I've saved these till last as I have tried to get this to work a few times, the problem is that all of the multi-shot upgrades from workshop do not carry over to support, meaning that although it's dealing 11x damage of highest tower (with all 3) it is not a huge amount because we don't have tower special skills nor the amount of projectiles, attack speed or crit damage our normal towers have, it becomes much stronger once we have the multi-shot upgrades though.

? - Turquoise

• When I run energy tower, this upgrade does absolutely nothing as it is grouping all enemies and nudging them constantly. When you're not using energy and are running something with a floor DoT, such as Fire or Poison, this node will become worthwhile so enemies wont walk out of it.
  
  • If you are running this, you will want it before the 8th path

Leftovers - Other Nodes

• The rest of the nodes are pretty meh, personally I'd focus the atksp nodes from here, maybe the chance for rune monster to drop loot as legendary.
  
  • The 2 nodes for normal monters to die as if legendary we will ignore till the end, their loot will be insignificant.

Valor

How to unlock valor

Valor becomes available as one of the upgrades in the tower screen, and costs 1.00e98 gold.
Valor is earnt based on your highest stage reached before sacrifice and is calculated at each 100th level, and will add 1 Valor to the pool for each hundred.
For example:
Lv. 100 = 1 Valor
Lv. 200 = 3 Valor (+2)
Lv. 300 = 6 Valor (+3)
Lv. 400 = 10 Valor (+4)
There was an update that increases the amount you earn the further you push, I will update with new figures on my next run. For now this is the Dev's post on the new figures. (Blue is updated)

Lv. 100 = 1 Valor
Lv. 200 = 3 Valor (+2)
Lv. 300 = 6 Valor (+3)
Lv. 400 = 11 Valor (+5)
Lv. 500 = 18 Valor (+7)
Lv. 600 = 26 Valor (+8)
Lv. 700 = 36 Valor (+10)
Lv. 800 = 48 Valor (+12)
Lv. 900 = 62 Valor (+14)

Champions

The champion is quite nice for the very early stages, but is apparent to most of us now that he is kinda useless once you're further into the game.


Shadow starts to deal decent damage after level 25. This is due to the level 25 passive skill which will activate strongest tower's special skill on crit. This will keep Shadow damage scaling into late game.

It should take 625 Valor to upgrade Shadow to level 25.

Stacking attack speed and crit will still be the strategy to get the most out of Shadow. We need 38 attribute points (without level 40 bonus) to get 100% crit, 18 points with level 40, so you can either stop at 18 points and start on attack speed ready for level 40 or invest in crit early and pay to reset when the time comes.

For level 40 we need 1,600 Valor (975 Valor for levels 25 - 40)

I have made a calculator for how much Valor is needed to reach a specific Shadow level based on your starting level, just type starting level on the first row and finish level on the second, hit run and it'll tell you how much valor you need.
https://onecompiler.com/python/42mgbhncr

Shards

You will start with 3 shards, and then you unlock more with a %drop chance on sacrifice depending on highest stage reached. 20% for each 100, so 1 guaranteed shard at Lv. 500.

Be aware that it costs Valor to remove them, staring at 2 Valor and increasing by 3 each level. You can bypass the cost by destroying the equipped shard.

Shard xp gain is a linear increase for each new stage you have cleared within a sacrifice. For example pushing 1 - 100 and 101 - 200 will grant the same amount of xp, but if you rebirth you cannot earn xp for levels you've already completed.

If you sacrifice, the xp cap is reset and you can start earning more xp again without needing to hit a new max stage.

Decent Shard stats

There are a lot of different shard stats that we can have, and entirely RNG so you'll need to judge what's best for you at the time.

The 2 effects I think we can all agree are the best are Artifact Slots and Support Stacks. These are by far the most noticeable upgrades we've tested and are the core behind the 2 main strategies.

A QoL shard that people like to have is starting a reset with automator, it isnt useful for stage progression but it definitely makes life easier as you wont have to go back to active play each sacrifice.

Bonus bosses can be nice to have if you're far enough into the game to not mind spending valor to remove shards where you want a loadout for pushing and ether farming.

Bounty Strat stuff

The main focus is still going to be support tower stacks and artifact slots, but these 3 shard bonuses are great for this build, Bounties Spawned are at Least Legendary (a must have), increased frequency of bounties appearing as well as increased boss timer.

Books

Cost of Books

The cost to unlock books increases by x3 each unlock
1st Book = 0 Valor
2nd Book = 3 Valor
3rd Book = 9 Valor
4th Book = 27 Valor
5th Book = 81 Valor
6th Book = 243 Valor

The Cost to upgrade books starts at 2 and then increases by 2x the last figure.
Level 1 - On unlock
Level 2 - 2
Level 3 - 4
Level 4 - 8
Level 5 - 16
etc.

Book Priority Order

This is my personal recommendation and is going by the fact that your focus is valor farming.
1. Zultanite - Increase game speed
2. Demonic Swiper - Increase boss timer and reduce boss HP
3. Cherrylicious - Reduce ether cost for everything.
4. Haqua - Increases tower damage every 15 tiers
5. Auric Sage - Increases gold earnt every 300 map levels
6. Lind - Ghosts drop more Ether every 500 map levels

Super Active 100 Sac Strategy

This strategy is for people who are actively playing the game to achieve high Valor/hr.

The basic idea of this build is to rush to Lv. 100 as quickly as possible and sac for 1 Valor. This will farm valor quicker than normal afk play, as well as level Shards quicker, but only works if you're constantly playing the game.

Optimal Shards are going to be those that have +Starting Lv., and preferably with Skill Tree starts unlocked with +xEther. I am using a +40 Shard with 750 start ether, which puts me to Lv. 81 on sacrifice after spending the Ether. Meaning I only need to push 20 stages to get 1 Valor.

There was an update that no longer allows us to start at 101 and push to 105 but I believe +60 still works, need to get around to making a backup save to test it or have someone else confirm it for me.

The best books for this strategy are Zultanite (Increase game speed) and Demonic Swiping (Reduce boss HP and increase Boss timer) optional 3rd book would be Cherry for reduced skill tree cost, but not as important.

Tips

Reset Treasure Chest HP

With the support tower, chests become the main source of income by dropping gold per hit.
If you are on farm mode before a boss, and still need extra gold from the chest, you can start the boss and exit to reset the treasure chests HP. This allows us to reliably gain gold without hoping for RNG.

Changelog

24th April 2024

• Updated Support Tower upgrade path to include gold nodes.

28th July 2024
Updated the guide for the 2.0 update

• Added Tower Upgrades section
  
• Reworked the Workshop Tier Lists
  
• Added Upgrade path for each tower
  
• Added Artifact Section
  
• Added Valor Section

[geckomoria2010]

Bei dem Guide fehlt noch wie viel valor man farmen sollte nach lv 400 Um den Helden Ordentlich zu skillen für den 2 run und wie man vlt auch shcon die anderen sachen vorbereiten könnte

[MuFeR]

Ah okay now makes more sense, as I wasn't aware 25 is the max I wasn't sure what that part meant.

[Haqua]

As stated above the chart, the numbers in there are for level 15 as realistically you'll be maxing everything else before you finish these off to 25, I also stated in there the cost for 25.

[MuFeR]

I think the costs are outdated because some are definitely off. For example the Trigger/Crit one is listed as 22100 total cost but lvl 17->18 alone costs 64400 for 1 lvlup and i'm not even sure if that's the last lvl.

[Haqua]

The gold from chests is now obtained when the monster is killed, unlike before when it was obtained on hit.

2.1 update changed how bounties scale and are now based on recent gold earnt/damage done.

[grustardo]

For me: It's chest give no gold and bounty give so much gold that everything else doesn't matter. Did they change something or i am missing something?

[Fireflies]

Looks like a useful guide for players, but as a guide for new players, it's more confusing than not. Perhaps when someone has advanced somewhat into the game it is helpful, but you're presenting information as though people already know what things like stage limit pushing are. This guide should come with another guide that explains how to understand this guide from an actual new player perspective.

[FPDevilTech]

im close to 500 and want to do my first sac for valor. Since Hero is recommended (ingame) is it still the best choice? Sounds like Book for increased Game Speed is maybe even better?

[still.mate]

@Cissero 1000+

[kannakamui.de]

Why is chain so bad in this guide? On each hit towers get a chance to trigger all their skills, fire/poison gets applied etc. isn't this insane damage boost?