Battle

Battles are the Tower Defense part of the game. They happen in the world.

Basic mechanics

As on any Tower Defense game, enemies of different types will emerge in waves from one or several entry points. They will walk, run or fly towards your home through a predetermined path. Should they reach it, they will remove a certain amount of lives. If you are reduced to 0 Lives, it will count as a failure.

To stop the enemies, you can

• Build towers on their way
• Use magic skills
• Control heroes

See below for more details on each.

Battles require 3 energy to start, but if you fail or quit, the energy will not be consumed.

To progress through the game, you will need to continuously upgrade your towers, skills and heroes. Most of the buildings are dedicated to this some way or another.

There are some consumables than can help you in battle, although most of them require diamonds to buy.

Once you conquer a particular scenario, you will be able to claim Level Taxes from it.

Each scenario comes in three difficulties: Easy, Heroic and Hard. Each Easy scenario unlocks the next one on a linear path. Heroic and Hard scenarios are not strictly required, but as their rewards are much better, they should be conquered as soon as possible.

Zones

Levels (also called: scenarios, maps) are grouped into zones. To access further zones, you need to increase your Kingdom Level. Please see the appropriate zone page for information on particular scenarios:

• Grasslands, available when you start the game
• The Tundra, requiring Kingdom Level 10-19
• Lava Plains, requiring Kingdom Level 20-29
• The Desert, requiring Kingdom Level 30-39
• Marshlands, requiring Kingdom Level 40-49
• Oblivion's Cave, requiring Kingdom Level 50-59
• Deep Sea, requiring Kingdom Level 61
• Mech Warship, requiring Kingdom Level 71
• Virtual Illusion, requiring Kingdom Level 81

Every zone has a special, hidden scenario that can only be accessed after getting 3 stars on every map and difficulty of that zone.

Confirmation Screen

Before you start a battle, you will see an information screen displaying:

• Energy required for the battle (3)
• If there are enemy fliers on the battle
• Challenge Rules:
  • Amount of lives you start with
  • Number of waves
  • Max. tower level
  • Towers allowed or disallowed
• Tax benefits: EXP (Kingdom Experience), Gold and items you can get by defeating the level or claiming its Level Tax)
• Recommended tower level. This is a very imprecise orientation, you may beat a level with towers 10 levels below recommended, or not be able to beat some levels (like the infamous Heroic Fauna Forge on Lava Plains) for lack of an specific tower type or upgrade.

It also allows you to select which heroes to bring into battle, and which Fairy Alliance upgrades you want to activate, if any.

Towers

There are four types of towers:

• Arrow Towers: Fast, not very strong. Physical damage that bypass magical armor (enemy defense)
• Mage Towers: Slower and stronger. Magical damage that bypass physical armor (enemy defense)
• Barracks: They don't deal a lot of damage, but they stagger enemies to allow damage dealing towers to finish them.
• Cannoners: Physical damage (bypasses magical armor), splash/AOE (area of effect) damage. Slow but powerful.

Towers can be upgraded to better versions of themselves. This allows towers to branch to 3 specialized tower types each, for a total of 12 different tower types. They can also acquire special skills and be modified by talents. Upgrades are described in detail in the Engineering Quarter.

Magic skills

You can also use magic skills during battle, which, if used wisely, can turn the tide of battle in your favor.

• Militia: Place 2 soldiers (akin to barracks soldiers) anywhere on the map. 10 seconds cooldown. Hotkey: A
• Static: Inflicts heavy damage to a single enemy. 25 seconds cooldown. Hotkey: S
• Hail: AOE (area of effect) damage anywhere on the map. 50 seconds cooldown. Hotkey: D

Magic skills can be strengthened in two ways. Both increase the power of the skill, but they don't change their basic mechanism. Upgrades are described in Magic Ward.

Heroes

Once you unlock heroes you can use them on battle. Heroes are stronger units that can be controlled independently and be moved all over the map. If they are killed, they will take 100 seconds to automatically revive, unless this is sped up by a Phoenix Feather. You can control a maximum of 3 heroes at the same time on battle.

Each participating hero will get 75 Hero Experience for the battle, if won. They don't need to survive to earn this experience. This quantity is small compared to the one offered by training at the Training Grounds, but not entirely trivial, especially on the first few hero levels and after you unlock more heroes. See Hero Experience for more details.

See heroes and Hall of Heroes for all the ways to improve them besides experience (augmenting them, giving them equipment, enhancing them, adding jewelry, and more)

Difficulty

Each scenario has three separate difficulties: Easy, Heroic and Hard. You can earn up to 3 stars on each one.

• Easy scenarios are the main story line. When you complete the last Easy scenario of a zone, you unlock the next one. They have usually more waves (up to 20) and start with more lives (20).
• Heroic scenarios require that you complete the Easy version first, but you don't need to do it with more than 1 star. You also need to have completed previous Heroic Scenarios. Heroic scenarios have only 1 wave (but a super strong one) and 5 lives. They also have particular conditions, like "no mage towers" or "only barracks towers". The conditions are not present in bonus scenarios.
• Hard scenarios require you to previously complete the Easy and Heroic versions of that map, plus all previous Hard scenarios. They have 6 difficult waves and you only have 1 life, thus it's 3 stars or nothing with them. Also, they usually remove some of the tower spots in the level, making some strategies much harder to pull off. The conditions are not present in bonus scenarios.

All scenarios feature rewards of Gold, Kingdom Experience, and assorted resources, but only Heroic and Hard scenarios have resources needed to upgrade magic skills (at Magic Ward) and only Hard scenarios reward Notch Rock, required for upgrades. Plus, Gold rewards are much better on Hard scenarios. You should aim to unlock them ASAP to exploit them later as sources of Level Taxes.

Updated

• Improved mission battles
• An acceleration button in the top-right hand corner during missions (16-7-2015): x2 (VIP 3), x4 (VIP 6)