Before anything, if this guide helps you, I'd like to ask you not to forget to rate it!

Another thing is that if you really, reaaaally liked this guide you could drop a an award here as well!

It's annoying to put stuff like this right off the bat, but this guide took A LOT of work to put together and I'm not asking because I'll get something in return.




Thank you very much!
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"Be clever, be quick and show no mercy."

This guide is mostly intended for beginners and players looking for a bit of hindsight from someone else.

This guide is mostly about most of basic information about the three characters: Mercenary, Sorceress and Marksman. I'll be detailing as much as I can about them and their skills.

I will also describe towers and traps and what exactly they do, going on about their upgrades and a bit of my personal opinion on them.

I will also make note about most enemies. At least the ones that really matter, like Giant enemies and those with their own quirks.

The Ink is full of surprises and challenges. Are you ready for them?
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This guide isn't a walkthrough or straight up "how to win" or farming equipment or money. This guide aims to cover all basic and some advanced aspects of the game.

Also, I'm not going to say "this is the worst trap, this is the worst skill, this is the worst character". Things like this are better left for you to decide, all I can give is my opinion to help you decide.

Sole guide writer, editor, image collector and editor, typo hunter and fixer, etc... Basically everything you see here was created and cobbled together by me.

I've been working on this guide for quite a while to be honest. Gathering images and cutting them to fit here while spacing everything right so nothing looks clunky and weird was a major pain. This thing was supposed to be published in late July, but due to several other complications it came to fruition only now.

Just don't ask me stuff on Endless, I never liked modes like this and no game has ever gotten close to make it actually entertaining.

I also created several other comprehensive guides for other games of the similar genre:
http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2555082930 http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=321647347 http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=505739685 http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=621968802 http://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=729779266
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Neocore Games for creating a game that fits in the Action-Tower Defense genre, something small and seldom explored by companies, but what become my favorite game genre right beside Open World RPGs.

1. Hints and Tips:
   Overall hints and small bits I can offer to help new players and maybe give a light to more experience people. Nothing too in-depth or complex, though.
   
   
2. Scenario Mode:
   A section explaining the quirks of Scenarios, a mode where you can customize each map with extra challenges if you think the game is too easy.
   
   
3. Traps and Towers (and Summons) Listing:
   Here you'll know what defenses you can use against the enemies and the requirements to unlock them. I generally use the term "trap" for Ground defenses, "tower" for, well, towers, pillars, turrets and sentries and Summons for traps that can summon creatures to aid you. There are also Special towers that can only be built in certain levels when it gives you the structure for it.
   
   
4. Enemies Encyclopedia:
   A listing of enemies of all types in the game all of them categorized; Normal, Horde, Armored, Giants, Champions and Bosses. I'll be showing their traits and unique characteristics if there's any worth mentioning.
   
   
5. Characters and Skills:
   We have three available characters and they have a lot of skills, and by that I mean real lots. Here I'll explain every skill for each character so you can decide what kind of build you'll do.

So far, Mercenary is my recommendation. He's tough, hard to kill and can tank enemies in front of your towers while you learn the aspects of the game and what enemies can do to you. Additionally, Mercenary also has Experience boosting passives which helps him level up faster.

Sorceress and Marksman on the other hand are fragile and one mistake with them can bring a lot of problems and troubles that are quite hard to fix under pressure.


Choices, choices, choices...
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If you build traps/towers during the breaks between waves you can sell them and get a full refund (only those build on that phase, selling any built previously will incur in some refund penalty). But keep in mind if you do it during the combat phase you'll only penalized getting less essence back regardless of what you did.

Always take in consideration which upgrades to use and when to build as lots of maps later on, especially Scenarios with Red King challenges, just doesn't give you enough essence to cover more than two spots.
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A good basic combination of towers and trap to have with about every character (early and sometimes even later on) is Icicle Field with Upgrade 1 and Frost Pillar with at least Upgrade 2. Both of them will slowdown enemies considerably in most cases giving you some breathing room and time to handle enemies coming from multiple spots.

Frost Pillar's Upgrade 3 will also freeze enemies, but some Armored, Champions and Bosses cannot be frozen (but still may be slowed), so watch out for them.


A simple, but useful combination to stall enemies. It may be sorta expensive without runes, though.
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When playing solo you have control of whether you want the game to run at normal speed, half of it or twice as fast.

Using this mechanic to you advantage can help you get out of hairy situations at times. Let's say you forgot to build or upgrade a trap and enemies are going there right now, you can very well decrease the speed of the game and build everything way "faster". It's also good if there a lot of crap around the Gate and you want to have full control of the fight and time to see what's going on and what skills to use where; this saved my skin more than once.


This can be useful to analyze a situation to save your 3-Star Rank.
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Some of the traps' upgrades gives you a nifty boost to elemental damage, using this to your advantage to boost the damage of your skills or other traps is not mandatory to win, but will make your life a whole lot easier if you master the concept.

• Acid Geyser (with Vulnerability) + Physical damage (180% max).
  
• Spring Trap (with Oil Splash) + Fire damage (90% max).
  
• Blast Furnace (with Vulnerability) + Fire damage (45% max).
  
• Icicle Field (with Vulnerability) + Ice damage (90% max).
  
• Portal Glyph (with Vulnerability) + Lightning damage (45% max).
  
• Essence Trap (with Vulnerability) + Poison damage (90% max).

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Some maps, and sometimes only on certain Tiers, will have extra objectives that will go anywhere from having you to kill a neutral monster (or all of them) to do stuff like going without a certain type of trap.

You DON'T need to get a perfect victory and do the objective, you can always go two games one for it and another for the side quest.


Most side quests awards you extra Gold, Experience and/or Research Points to upgrade traps.
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Reset is possible for both skills and traps for each Skill Point or Research Point you'll have to spend 200 coins to reset them. Considering you might reset 10 Research Points to spend on another trap you'll use up 2000 coins. If you want to reset 20 Skill Points you'll spend 4000 coins and so on.

But when should you do it? Whenever you have money and whenever you feel your current build isn't living up to your expectations, especially if you're having a hard time trying to beat a map. Also in late game, unfortunately, it becomes almost mandatory to reset your trap setting as you might face maps without Mechanical or Mystical traps slots at all.


Gearing up to get more money helps always have coin for resets.
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Certain traps and towers like Enthropic Pillar, Abyss Crater and Razor Launcher have double damage properties.

• Marksman only
  Razor Launcher: Poison Brewing + Targeting Expertise (maximum of 20% damage increase).
  Enthropic Pillar: Poison Brewing + Targeting Expertise (maximum of 20% damage increase).
  
  
• Sorceress only
  Abyss Crater: Pyromancy + Fulguromancy (maximum of 60% damage increase).
  Enthropic Pillar: Venom Expertise + Arctic Magic (maximum of 60% damage increase).

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Tier 3 and 4 is when the game really stops screwing around, if an enemy flies the game will probably give it a shorter path to your Gate. You better keep a close eye on those red lines marking their paths because they surely are not just there just for show.


Gargoyle and Nightfangs tend to become serious threats since they will avoid most of your traps and towers.

The mini-map is a vital tool you must learn to use and never ignore if you don't want to get caught off guard by a Champion or enemies powering through your defenses.


Champions are marked as yellow dots in a red circle.


You can also check what will come from each door and better yet, it shows only what's left from that spawn point. Pay close attention to those before each wave if you don't want to build the wrong trap for the wrong type of enemies. Also watch out for Bosses and Champions coming from each spot.
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The magnified map. Triggering this to quickly scan something, to check if a monster in particular is on a less protected spot is very important to handle situations properly.

Notice the darkened enemy spawn points with "X" on them, that also indicates when no more enemies will come from there so you can focus on other points of the map (this is also shown in the mini-map).

Also, notice the big skull over there, aside from the game vocally announcing it, it also indicates if a Boss monster is in the map.
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The list shows everything you'll fight in that particular wave and how many of them, with the mini-map you can even see how many are still left in the map.

Word of warning, some maps of Tier 4 do pull a very mean move (to avoid using improper words) that is to throw more bosses the list can show and this can catch a player completely off-guard if they don't scan each spawn point carefully.

Deathtrap has a simple Crafting system that allows you to forge equipment up to Epic grade. To forge an equipment you must first find or buy its Schematic and have enough gems and money to do the crating.

Some equipment will have a few fixed properties that will have varied strengths, but some equipment like Legendaries will be completely random and you might have to create a lot of them to get the set of statuses you want for your character which can burn a lot of material and money.

That said crafting isn't perfect; crafted equipment will scale at a maximum level of 75 and Godlike equipment are very rare, but overshadows Epic crafted equipment quite easily if you Upgrade them a couple of times.


A Schematic, recipe, for crafting a new equipment.
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In order to get the gems for your equipment you must either salvage items, you can also earn them by finishing maps, but you won't get as many gems as you'd.

Assuming you have Mark of Fortune and Gold and Magic Item Finding equipment, finishing maps like Pale Keep, Necropolis, Wounded Crag (when they have extra Chest Keys to get) will give large amounts of Gold and lots of items. Three extra keys and 100%+ Gold find can easily make you over over 100k Gold at the end of the level.


Salvaging equipment you won't use is a good way to stock up gems, materials, for crafting equipment and later on, upgrading Godlike items.

Godlike items are a considerable step up from Epic grade items. They are pieces of equipment you can upgrade by using their corresponded gem as material and gold and with each level they gain a new property to increase its status even further.


Elusive, difficult to get to its maximum potential, but very much worth the effort.
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First of all you must hit Level 55 and play a map with the average level of 55. Tier 4 maps, or Scenarios and Endless maps as they scale up to your level all have a small chance to yield Godlike items at the end (for Endless you must hit a decent wave, something over 10 or more).

These items are very difficult to get even with Mark of Fortune and characters with gear to increased Magic Item Drop chances, but can appear on "Special Offer" of shops every once in a while. They can be quite expensive, however, costing anywhere from 50 to 100k Gold.


Level 55 is the bare minimum to start hunting for the best equipment for your characters.


A Runic Armor, for Sorceress only, on the Special Offer.


A Godlike accessory dropped at the end of a level.
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First things first: You need something around 470 gems and approximately 42,000 Gold to get a Godlike equipment to its maximum potential. The material and Gold required to attain the next level will progressively increase with each upgrade.

Once you have everything you can go on Crafting tab and Upgrade it. Each level will bring a new property for your item and you'll realize how much powerful they are than any Epic items you might have.


The gem right beside the item's name (and level) shows what gem you'll need to use as material to upgrade it.
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Now here's the weird thing about Godlike items. The first two properties are fixed and will always come with the item, the other two will be completely random can have any property the item can have (for instance, Armors will never have Critical Chance property).

Like with Magic, Rare and Epic equipment, the strength of their properties will vary from piece to piece and this is another randomness that can annoy you as you may get an equipment with good, but weaker than average, properties.


Notice the 3rd and 4th properties. Even the Upgrade properties of Godlike items are alike, but their values can vary a lot.

Scenario is a mode that you'll unlock as soon as your character hits Level 20. Here you can play all maps you have completed so far. Maps have different wave of monsters and they are considerably tougher than usual (about Tier 3 or 4 tough), so it's always good to give it a run without any challenge to know what you'll be facing.

This mode allows you to customize the maps with challenges that can make enemies considerably tougher, faster and hinder your character's ability.

Bear in mind that while the Red and Purple challenges are doable, the Blue challenges will make even Darkmoor something to be wary.

Enemies drop 15/30/45% less Essence.

Very annoying challenge. Less essence means less traps and towers which means you'll be doing a lot more killings. Add that to the challenge bellow and some of the Blue King challenges and you're in for a real rough ride.

Trap upgrades are 20/40/60% more expensive.

Another extremely annoying challenge. Even with the passive skills to add discounts to your trap and tower upgrading they'll be very expensive and you'll probably NOT have enough to cover more than a single point.

Your base starts with 30/60/90% less points.

* 14/8/2 points respectively from the original 20.
This one is incredibly dangerous. On three stars you'll have only 2 gate points which means you can screw up only ONCE, sometimes not even that as a lot of enemies take more than 1 gate point if they reach it. Remember also that if you die you lose one gate point.

Enemies are 10/20/30% faster.

This one can be very problematic and dangerous. On 3 stars rating this challenge make small enemies like Kobold Wartfiends, Grubshrieks and Rusalkas run as fast as your character on their average movement speed. That means if they slip by and you don't have anything to deal with them (towers, traps, a nearby teleporter) you're probably screwed.

There's also the fact that with this challenge on enemies will stay less time on traps and in the range of your towers which means they'll take less damage from them. Combine it with the third Purple King challenge and your traps will hardly do anything more than soft or slow them for a small bit.

Your hero gains 15/30/45% LESS Rage-Mana-Focus.

This is possibly the most difficult challenge to handle, especially with Marksman as he has no way to increase his Focus beyond Ambush Stance. Reduced general mana recovery means you'll need to mind carefully when you should blast your best skills, even more so if they use a lot of mana.

Trap deals 10/20/30% less damage.

Very annoying and problematic as well. With your traps and towers dealing less damage than they should (or having their passive bonuses hampered by it), it's quite possible that even Horde enemies will survive easily against short trap and tower courses. Combine that with some of the Red King challenges and you'll learn to be on your toes even against the smallest enemy.

Enemies have 15/30/45% more HP.

Self-explanatory. Enemies with more HP means they take longer to die and if you face something like Giants or Armored enemies you'll quickly realize how dangerous the situation can get and how fast things can get out of hand if you have a ton of enemies swarming you while you try to deal with them.

Potions are 25/50/75% less effective.

* This also reduces your natural healing regen as well.
This is normally the easiest one to handle even as Mercenary, but I don't think I have to say this thing can really put you in a hairy situation if you are careless. Even with a tough tank character you should mind how much you can take and back off if things even so as much start to look bad for you.

Enemies have a 15/30/45% chance of respawning when they are killed.

* Enemies that respawn will return to their original Chaos Gate.
* Enemies will respawn only once. Giants, Armored and Bosses CAN respawn.
* Respawned enemies DO NOT yield any essence on death.

This challenge isn't very problematic per se, but combine that with the above challenges which make enemies tougher and faster and you've got yourself a real big problem. It's not uncommon for the Finagle's Law (or Murphy's) to act in full force thirsty for your misery here; from the smallest Horde enemy to the meanest Boss, this thing can (and quite possibly WILL) resurrect enemies so they reach you in the worst time possible.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this challenge can easily turn a good, completely under control, situation upside-down in a matter of seconds. Be always prepared for the worst outcome possible and ready to counter it.

If you are feeling particularly daring or think the game is too easy, try these out. As rewarding as they are, Scenarios have a tendency to break arrogant players who think they've seen everything.

Essence is premium here, especially with enemies dropping anywhere from 15 to 45% less of it and upgrades costing 20 to 60% more than usual, so even with trap upgrade discount skills and runes you'll easily notice you are barely able to bring up two or three fully upgraded traps or towers.
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Crippling Bash, Physical Condition and Arcane Mending may seem like stupidly overkill even for Tier 4 maps, but on a max difficulty Scenario you also get 75% of penalty for healing. And that means ALL kinds of healing: Potions, passive and active healing, so those skills can actually help and very well save your life.
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With your general mana gaining hampered in 15/30/45% you won't recover it as fast as you'd want to and that can be extremely problematic when it comes down to fighting large groups of Giants or several enemies with Champions or Bosses.

Instead of indiscriminately blasting skills like there's no tomorrow, check the situation before deciding to do it and remember you basic attack skills (Strike, Icebolt and Shoot) can become quite powerful later on. Also, World skills generally don't cost anything to activate.
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Max difficulty Scenarios leaves you with only 2 Gate points and that means you can only slip once (sometimes not even that). It also makes Horde enemies (3 speed rating) VERY fast and characters with normal, average, walking speed WON'T catch up or shake them off, so pay attention to that especially as Marksman.
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Value the utility of your traps and towers over their raw damage power.

I'll be honest, the challenge where your traps will deal about 30% less damage hurts a lot, and I mean a lot really. Because of that even effective traps/towers against Horde enemies like Lava Grill and Blast Furnace or Gun Sentry or Frost Pillar against Giants can be rendered moot.

Because of that I tend to use traps that gives me more time to kill enemies or at least leave them VERY vulnerable like Icicle Field's slowing and Vulnerability to Ice or Blast Furnace's Vulnerability to Fire, Acid Geyser and Vulnerability to Physical attacks and so on.
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One of the challenges will give every monster a second chance to pester you, it doesn't matter if it was a small Horde enemy or a freaking Boss, they can resurrect at their original chaos gate and if you don't take that in consideration things can easily take a turn for worse in a matter of seconds.

Always make sure to have enough mana stored for emergencies, it's not uncommon for Armored and Giants respawn and reach your chokepoint at the worst moment possible, so you always need to have a Plan B for situations like this. Trust me, this happens more often than you imagine.

On the sections below I'll describe my view on the many traps and towers Deathtrap offers to you. Opinions and its usages may vary wildly from one player to another, but never take any word as "the only way" to use. Test as many combination of traps and towers as you can, no matter how nonsensical and weird they may seem - you never know what you might find.


Tools for many highly messy jobs to deal with the Second Swarm.


There are specific grounds and bases where you can build certain types of traps and towers. It's important to know them and recognize them from the get-go to speed up your reaction time and construction during combat phases.

Bear in mind some of the latter maps force you to use only Mechanical or Mystic traps and towers.


Left: Floor for Mechanical Traps - Right: Floor for Mystic Traps


Left: Base for Mechanical Towers - Right: Base for Mystic Towers


Floor exclusive for Summons.

• Lava Grill
  
• Icicle Field
  
• Stasis Trap
  
• Abyss Crater
  
• Portal Glyph

• Lightning Pillar
  
• Frost Pillar
  
• Phoenix Pillar
  
• Enthropic Pillar
  
• Olympus Pillar

• Acid Geyser
  
• Spear Trap
  
• Essence Trap
  
• Spring Trap
  
• Tick Mine Dispenser

• Sentry Gun
  
• Razor Launcher
  
• Blast Furnace
  
• Voltaron Coil
  
• Cannon Sentry

• Monster Cage
  
• Reanimator Pit
  
• Archer Post
  
• Suicide Swarm
  
• Winter Queen Sigil

• Artillery Sentry
  
• Empower Beacon
  
• Enhancer Beacon
  
• Heat Ray Sentry
  
• Hook Grinder
  
• Jotunn
  
• Metamorpher Sentry

• Rejuvenation Pillar
  
• Salvage Recycler
  
• Service Station
  
• Squash Trap
  
• Whirlwind Column
  
• Wind of Death

Before you are able to build upgrades on your towers you must spend Research Points earned by finishing maps. If you want to get as many Research Points as possible you must finish the map with a perfect 3-Star rank (which is impossible on Casual and Normal for Tiers 1 and 2); each star will award a certain amount of Research Points.

For each 5 levels your characters gain you'll be able to upgrade the two passives or each trap, tower and summon with the maximum level being 21 with a character at Level 100. You normally need 81 Research Points to max a tower or trap (61 if any of its two passives cost only 1 point). Stasis Trap and Spring Trap however requires whooping 102 Research Points to max out.


Example of some maxed traps and towers.


Towers and traps can go beyond the level 21 limit with Runes.

Most of traps will be locked until you finish a certain number of maps and finish a certain challenge for each specific trap and tower. While some of these will be very easy for a certain character, it may take a while for others to do it.

For instance: Sorceress has little to no reliable means to Poison enemies until Level 10 and Marksman has very few good ways to deal Ice damage until he gets to Level 20, so they'll need to rely on Acid Geyser and Icicle Field respectively if you wish to get a trap faster.

Tier 2 and 3 traps, towers and summons will have an extra criteria: finish 8 and 13 maps respectively, but even if you do know what to do the traps will not start unlocking until you've actually beaten the required number of maps to trigger the challenges.





Example of a trap being unlocked, in this case, Portal Glyph.


You may unlock several traps at the same time, but you can only do it if you win the map you're currently at.

• Lava Grill
  
• Icicle Field
  
• Stasis Trap
  
• Abyss Crater
  
• Portal Glyph

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Lava Grill is the first Mystic Ground Trap you get and is good at handling Horde and Normal enemies, although expensive in most cases upgrading and setting two of them (if possible) will almost grant that nothing but the toughest Normal type enemies will pass through (considering you keep the trap leveled as well).

Upgrade 1, Ignite, is nothing spectacular unless you have Entropy skills from Marksman, but will grant that small crap like Horde enemies will die there.

Upgrade 2, Damage, is very good (after all more damage is always welcome) but quite expensive.

Upgrade 3, Disorient, can useful to prevent enemies from attacking you, which is something useful for Markman and Sorceress. It is also good to protect fragile Summons like Archers, but bear in mind you won't be able to stall them by forcing them to attack you.


Horde and Normal enemies are the main victims for this trap.
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One of the most useful traps of the game not for its damage, but for its utility. Icicle Field will slowdown any ground enemies that steps on it, be it a small Horde enemy or a hulking Giant enemy, even bosses. However Icicle Field can slow down enemies only once and flying enemies as per usual will completely ignore and bypass it.

Upgrade 1, Slow, is extremely useful from Tier 1 to Tier 4 and all the way to Difficulty 27 Scenarios. Slowed down enemies for longer can be useful to lump them together for area attacks from you or your towers.

Upgrade 2, Damage, is something I'd recommend only if you go as Sorceress with Arctic Magic. Since enemies will be hit only once and Icicle Field's damage isn't anything impressive, even with this upgrade I have my doubts on its worth.

Upgrade 3, Vulnerability, can be good if you use a lot of Ice based damage like Ghastly Shape, Frost Ring, Icy Wind and the like.


Learn how to set this thing properly and certain maps will be much easier. Watch out for flyers, though.
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Stasis Trap is an odd trap that will cause Horde, Armored and Normal type enemies to be encased and rendered immobile for a few moments. In maps where you fight them in moderate numbers this trap can be quite useful to give you some time to deal with everything.

Upgrade 1 gives you a bit of damage up to 30%, nothing terrific even on its maximum.

Upgrade 2 will make enemies trapped to be rendered immobile for longer, a good and cheap upgrade for this trap.

Upgrade 3 decreases the cooldown of this trap, but remember that once an enemy is encased he'll be immune to this trap for the next 5 seconds.


Armored enemies can be held for a while to give you a break.
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Abyss Crater is another odd trap. It has a small chance to kill instantly any Horde and Normal enemies that goes close to it but without an upgrade they won't reward any essence for its killing.

Upgrade 1 will salvage a bit of essence up to 60% of any enemy it kills.

Upgrade 2 will increase the damage caused by this trap if it doesn't instantly kill enemies (or it can't), since Abyss Crater doesn't have a lot of damage to begin with I can't really recommend investing in this.

Upgrade 3 can be interesting, it will act more or less like Sorceress' Disintegrating Ray and cause enemies killed by this trap to explode dealing their maximum health as damage which can be helpful.


Set this thing as close as possible to the enemy spawn point to thin out the small trash.
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Yet another oddball among Mystical Traps. Portal Glyph will cause any enemy that steps on it to have a chance to be teleported back on its traveled route. It originally has 20% chance of causing it, but it can normally be increase to 41% with Improved Glyph and to impressive 71% with Upgrade 1 at level 3.

Unlike what the tooltip says monster CAN be affected more than once by this trap. It can even kill enemies by chopping their health consecutively.

Upgrade 1 will increase the teleportation chance up to extra 30%.

Upgrade 2 will cause any enemy teleported to lose up to 30% of its health which can be good if you invested points on other upgrades.

Upgrade 3 will cause enemies to become up to 45% more vulnerable to Lightning damage. However the game doesn't explicit how long this lasts.


Trippy in more means than one.


The 30% of health chopped by Upgrade 2.

• Lightning Pillar
  
• Frost Pillar
  
• Phoenix Pillar
  
• Enthropic Pillar
  
• Olympus Pillar

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Lightning Pillar is the first Mystic tower you get and is unique in the fact that the longer it doesn't act the more charges it'll stock and those charges are used to attack much faster as soon it starts blasting away.

It has the armor piercing property, but I wouldn't recommend relying solely on this tower to handle Armored enemies as its damage is quite low, even with passive upgrades and skills to enhance its damage, and it can barely kill one on its own, let alone groups of them. To make matters worse the only Vulnerability comes from Portal Glyph and it's quite tricky to make good use of it (which is also luck based).

Upgrade 1, Multi-jolt, this upgrade will enable the Lightning Pillar to shoot more than 1 target at a time up to 3. It'll always have a 50% chance of doing so, but if you keep upgrading this tower it'll eventually shoot so fast, even without charges, that you'll be seeing it hitting other enemies quite often.

Upgrade 2, Attack Range, is exactly what it says, more range means tower firing more which means (technically) more damage.

Upgrade 3, Extra Charge, will allow the Lightning Pillar to stack more charges (2 more per level). Charges will basically stack on building phases or between small breaks during waves.


An upgraded Lightning Pillar fulminating multiple enemies.
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Frost Pillar is a Mystic tower dedicated in taking Giant enemies and slowing them while dealing a decent amount of damage while they stay within its range.

Upgrade 1, Damage, increases the modest damage of this tower, while most stuff still won't take much damage, Giants will certainly feel that extra 30/60/90% extra damage if they get close.

Upgrade 2, Slow, is useful on Giants or enemies that cannot be frozen solid as Frost Pillar will slow them down at very least.

Upgrade 3, Freeze, is more or less the "opposite" of Upgrade 2, it'll keep enemies frozen for longer which can be surprisingly good for crowd control with two or more Frost Pillars close and with this upgrade. This upgrade is kinda expensive, though, so mind your essence.

Upgrade 3 will also give this tower an odd priority system; with that Frost Pillar will target enemies that are not frozen, however if the enemy is immune to freezing (Armored, Giant, boss) the tower will lock on to that target and keep firing and slowing it for as long as it is possible as usual.


Left: Frost Pillar freezing multiple enemies one at a time - Right: Locking on a Giant.
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Phoenix Pillar is a somewhat slow firing Mystic tower that will launch a fireball to damage enemies, the fireball will cause a moderate sized explosion and if the damage exceeds 25% of their Health the enemy will be knocked back. This tower is pretty expensive and its upgrades are also pretty pricey, but it becomes very powerful when fully upgraded and two of these at maximum level can handle pretty well medium sized crowds of Normal and Horde enemies without much trouble.

Upgrade 1, Reset Time, covers a major weakness in this tower which is its annoyingly long cooldown. Each level reduces its cooldown in 1 second (up to 3), but this upgrade is pretty expensive.

Upgrade 2, Damage, is another expensive upgrade; it will make this tower hit harder, remember enemies will be knocked down if the damage exceeds 25% of their maximum health.

Upgrade 3, Ignite, will give the tower a damage over time effect, since this tower hits kinda hard this can be useful, even more with Marksman and his Entropy skills.


A great tool to wreck Normal and Horde enemies.
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Enthropic Pillar is an odd tower. It'll fire a beam that will "latch" on the enemy and keep healing everything around it, which sounds great on the paper (especially with Monster Pit), but without a lot of investments you'll quickly realize how useless this tower is. This tower does have quite cheap upgrades and Marksman and Sorceress with Poison damage boosts can turn this tower into something quite powerful as well.

Upgrade 1, Beam Bounce, will give 50% chance for the beam to latch on 1 to 3 more targets increasing the effectiveness of this tower.

Upgrade 2, Attack Range, increases its normally somewhat poor range.

Upgrade 3, Healing Pulse, gives a chance that after Enthropic Pillar kills an enemy it has a 10/20/30% chance of fully healing anything in a 12 meter radius. Be it a simple Suicide Swarmer or a massive ally Jotunn.


Enthropic Pillar may seem a bit too situational, but give it some boosts and the Essence Trap's Vulnerability upgrade and it becomes powerful enough to be actually useful for you, and possibly your Summons.
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Olympus Pillar is the final Mystic tower you'll unlock and it an interesting one. It deals neutral damage, so it doesn't actually get any penalty from any type of enemy (except the natural 70% of Armored ones) and it can be a good all around tool, if an expensive one, to handle crowds and help deal with medium threats. Keep in mind that, unless you upgrade it, this tower has a considerable delay between aiming and actually firing, which can throw you off and become a problem.

The main problem with this tower is that without upgrades it's far from impressive and its 100 building cost can be a hassle on maps where you don't get a lot of essence.

Upgrade 1, Delay Decrease, is a great, cheap-ish, upgrade to remedy its problematic delay between shooting and hitting the target.

Upgrade 2, Damage, makes this tower hit harder, a great addition with Delay Decrease, but the most expensive upgrade for this tower.

Upgrade 3, Blast Radius, gives it a larger area of effect turning Olympus Pillar into possibly a good crowd control tower.


Unless you upgrade it, watch for the delayed strike of this tower.

• Acid Geyser
  
• Spear Trap
  
• Essence Trap
  
• Spring Trap
  
• Tick Mine Dispenser

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Acid Geyser is your first Mechanical trap and a versatile one. Its main function is to deal with Armored enemies by piercing part of their armor and also reduce their thick defense in 30% (base decrease).

Despite being weak against Horde enemies it can be quite effective in handling or at very least softening them with the right upgrade (Corrosive Cloud) and if you decide to invest heavily on its passive upgrades you might be surprised how powerful it can be for a starter trap.

Upgrade 1, Poison, causes enemies to take damage over time proportional to the trap's base damage going from 15 to 25%.

Upgrade 2, Vulnerability, is amazing even on level 1. It decreases the defense of enemies hit by 120% and even further at 150 and 180% on levels 2 and 3. This upgrade is a bit expensive, though.

Upgrade 3, Corrosive Cloud, causes a poison cloud to linger and cause 30% up to 50% of the damage dealt by Acid Geyser, this is what makes this trap rather effective against Horde enemies. I'm not quite sure if this also triggers Poison.


A simple, but effective trap.
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Spear Trap is a heavy hitting Physical trap that is particularly good dealing with Armored, Giants and even bosses. This trap however is expensive, so it's probably best if you build it near the end of your trap and tower route if possible.

Upgrade 1, Reset Time, is self-explanatory, it'll reduce 0.5 second per level out of the normal trap cooldown: 4 seconds. On level 3 this almost gets Spear Trap's cooldown cut in half.

Upgrade 2, Damage, is also self-explanatory, since this trap already hits hard to begin with this one is very useful. However this upgrade is very expensive.

Upgrade 3, Poison, causes the Spear Trap to deal 5 to 15% of its damage to enemies for 5 seconds, with the Damage upgrade this can be a great option to handle bigger enemies.


Specialized in killing Armored foes, but capable of killing smaller enemies with ease. Its long cooldown makes it impractical to use against large number of monsters, though.
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Essence Trap is something very useful when used correctly. It increases your income from kills and this trap is borderline game breaking when its passives are upgraded. Its area of effect is decent, but it's better if you have hard area hitting attacks to kill lots of small enemies within its range, or wait for a juicy Giant/Boss enemy to get close and pop it like an essence piñata.

Upgrade 1, Essence Drop, is a neat something to have that can increase further the income from killings. I feel it's only worth to have it on level 3, though.

Upgrade 2, Vulnerability, is cheap and can grant 90% of extra damage for Poison attacks, this is particularly powerful for Marksmen with Poison Streak or alongside traps like Acid Geyser, Razor Launcher and Suicide Swarm Nests.

Upgrade 3, Stun, is expensive and gives 10 up to 30% chance of stunning anything that steps on the Essence Trap for 3 seconds. Nothing particularly useful in my opinion.


Knowing the range of this trap is crucial to get it to work at its fullest.
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Spring Trap is an interesting trap, it doesn't pack a lot of punch but with the right upgrade it can be an effective stalling trap against Normal and Horde enemies. The instant kill property of this trap is odd and highly unlikely to work in your favor, enemies must be positioned at a very specific spot to be thrown off the ledge and relying on it to do heavy cleaning on Normal and Horde mobs is also a very bad idea.

Upgrade 1, Reset Time, make Spring Trap reset faster and lower its cooldown up to 1.5 seconds out of its original 4.

Upgrade 2, Damage, will give a damage boost up to 90% which can actually make the Spring Trap do respectable damage as long as you keep Intertial Amplifier upgraded as well.

Upgrade 3, Oil Splash, is an interesting choice for characters relying heavily on Fire damage be it from other traps or their skills, the Spring Trap will douse enemies with oil making them up to 90% more vulnerable to Fire attacks for a few seconds. This upgrade is pretty expensive, though, so keep that in mind.


Spring Trap armed with Oil Splash acting.
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Tick Mine Dispenser is an odd trap. It has a small chance (that can be improved) to attach a bomb on any enemy that steps on it, whenever you kill that enemy they'll explode damaging everything around them in a 3 meter radius. The initial chance isn't very high, though and you'll need to invest heavily on this trap if you want to make it useful.

Upgrade 1, Ignite, creates a damaging effect where the enemy died and anything that goes on it will also take damage, this effect lasts for a short while (3 seconds) and will deal 10 up to 30% of the Tick Mine's base damage.

Upgrade 2, Blast Radius, will increase the effectiveness of Tick Mines increasing its area of effect in 0.5 meters per level.

Upgrade 3, Twin Mines, will give a small chance (from 10 to 30%) of latching a second mine to any enemy that steps on this trap. Tick Mines hits pretty hard already and having the possibility to cause twice as much damage to enemies and things around it is very tempting.


Left: Enemies that were set with Tick Mines. - Right: Killing an enemy with a Tick mine.

• Gun Sentry
  
• Razor Launcher
  
• Blast Furnace
  
• Voltaron Coil
  
• Cannon Sentry

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Gun Sentry is the first Mechanical tower and a versatile little thing as long as you upgrade it. It can bear slowing attacks with area hitting attacks and is a good little thing to help you in early game until you unlock more skills with your characters. Learn how to set it up and it'll help you a long way.

Upgrade 1, Damage, helps a lot this tower, especially with Upgrade 3.

Upgrade 2, Area Damage, is decent (expensive, though) and turns the Gun Sentry into possibly a good crowd control or crowd staller tower in case Mystic things like Icicle Field or Frost Pillar are not available.

Upgrade 3, Slow, is a good upgrade, but very unimpressive on its own. When combined with Upgrade 2, however, it turn Gun Sentry into a ranged area slowing tower.


Gun Sentry will be your faithful "basic, but all around" tower. Don't underestimate it.


A good option to use against Giants as well.
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Razor Launcher is a Mechanical tower that will attack with a disk which will pierce enemies and hit other behind it (each subsequent enemy take 30% less damage), however without proper upgrades this tower has very poor crowd control capabilities. However an upgraded Razor Launcher can handle small crowds of Horde enemies and heavily bruise Armored enemies which tends to be a big problem in early game.

Upgrade 1, Damage, is your run-of-the-mill tower steroid to make it hit harder and kill faster. This upgrade is expensive, though.

Upgrade 2, Sharpness, decreases the piercing penalty in 10/20/30%, which means on level 3 this eliminates the penalty altogether.

Upgrade 3, Multi-Razor, is a cheap and interesting upgrade. It'll give a 15/30/45% chance of the Razor Launcher to spit a second disk potentially doubling its damage output.


Razor Launcher is a bit expensive to build, but it does a good job at handling Armored enemies, especially when upgraded.
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Blast Furnace is an interesting Mechanical tower, it doesn't have a lot of range but it still can do a lot of damage to anything that goes near it also causing 10% of the tower damage to be added as burning for 5 seconds.

This tower should be mostly used to help you handle large crowds of Normal and Horde enemies, but with the right upgrades and additional help from other traps it can easily harm Armored and even Giants quite a bit.

Combining this tower with the slowing effect of Icicle Field whenever possible is one of the most efficient ways to assure Normal and Horde enemies will die before they can get past it.

Upgrade 1, Vulnerability, will cause enemies take 15/30/45% more damage from Fire attacks which directly increases the own tower's strength as well.

Upgrade 2, Damage, will make this tower more powerful. This is great to make sure Blast Furnace will be able to kill or at least damage a lot Normal enemies as well.

Upgrade 3, Burning Damage, will increase the burning damage of Blast Furnace causing it to deal additional 5/10/15% with the original 10% damage it naturally has.


Horde and Normal type enemies are easily dealt with if you keep this trap upgraded.
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Voltaron Coil is a weird Mechanical tower that has a large range but will only activate when something gets pretty close to it, however it'll hit everything in its range and even more enemies if you have upgrades on it. This tower however is a bit slow to attack, so keep an eye for possible stragglers that can survive the shock.

Since this tower doesn't have strengths or weaknesses it's a great option against Normal and Horde enemies and even better if you have Trap Boost skills.

Upgrade 1, Damage, is the same deal of always: more damage (30/60/90%), faster killing and happiness for you. It's important for Voltaron Coil to have as much damage as possible to make up for its moderate cooldown.

Upgrade 2, Chain Bolts, will make targets outside the range of this tower to get hit too. Up to 3 more enemies can get hit, this upgrade is very cheap too.

Upgrade 3, Weaken, is another cheap upgrade and will make enemies hit 15/30/45% weaker for 5 seconds if they get shocked by a Voltaron Coil. Useful to keep yourself or your Summons alive.


This tower isn't always easy to use and set up properly, but when it is, it does pay off.
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Cannon Sentry is the biggest and meanest Mechanical tower (which isn't actually all that big at all). It's a watered down version of the ginormous Artillery Sentry but it can be as effective, if not more, when upgraded.

Cannon Sentry shares a problem its Mystical counterpart, Olympus Pillar, has which is delayed strike, the Cannon Sentry will fire but the shell will take a short while to reach its target which can be annoying and even problematic. This tower also is expensive and fires very slowly, it can bear upgrades to remedy that to some extent and with the knockdown upgrade can become surprisingly effective tools to stall Armored enemies in Survival maps.

The main saving grace of Cannon Sentry is that it becomes very useful when it get upgrades and they aren't terribly expensive to build. One or two fully upgraded Cannon Sentries can help you a lot in certain levels.

Upgrade 1, Reset Time, will decrease the cooldown of this tower, it bears the greatest bonus of its kind (mainly because this tower has a really damn long cooldown), decreasing it by 1.5/3/4.5 seconds.

Upgrade 2, Projectile Speed, covers another deficiency from this tower: the shell travelling time. Every level of this upgrade considerable hasten its travelling speed (25/50/75% faster) and the impact will be almost instantaneous on its maximum level.

Upgrade 3, Knockback, gives a chance of 15/30/45% to knockdown most types of enemies. This is pretty useful to stall enemies and two Cannon Sentries with this can be surprisingly effective in stalling groups of enemies.


Heavy artillery.

• Monster Cage
  
• Reanimator Pit
  
• Archer Post
  
• Suicide Swarm Nest
  
• Winter Queen Sigil

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Monster Cage will release Vrikolaks (or werewolves) as soon anything gets close to it and will draw attention of any hostile and keep it occupied until either he kills it or dies. At first this trap is very unimpressive since the Vrikolak might die quickly, but with upgrades they can become effective meat shields buying you precious time to deal with any threats and them go help them wipe out the others.

One important thing to note is that the health of the Vrikolaks varies between each level too.

This trap is unique in the fact one of its passive upgrades, Serum Injector, has a chance to spawn a White Vrikolak (Snowpelt?) which is x2.5 more resilient and stronger than regular brown ones.

Upgrade 1, Creature Health, makes the monsters get a health boost up to 150% more, quite a bit, but this upgrade is also pretty expensive.

Upgrade 2, Creature Damage, is self-explanatory, but even on maximum level the monsters won't do really lot of damage, so unless you're a Mercenary with Sigil of Inspiration or Battle Roar, I wouldn't recommend getting this.

Upgrade 3, Monster Pack, will make the trap release 1 to 3 extra Vrikolaks, together with Upgrade 1 this turns Monster Cage into one of the most effective means to tank and stall enemies.


Like I said, it's possible, but don't count on it.


Click to enlarge and see how much health they can attain. Upgrades turn them into much needed tanks for Sorceress and Marksman or stalling helpers to help create chokepoints on separate lanes.
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Reanimator Pit is an odd summon trap that has a chance to cause a Ghoulkin to spawn whenever anything dies close to it (up to 3 Ghoukins); be a pest like Horde enemies or a humongous boss.

Ghoulkins have a limited living time and aren't quite as effective as Vrikolaks from Monster Cage, but Reanimator Pits are cheaper to construct and build, additionally if you have strong traps to kill enemies within its range you can replace dead Ghoulkins considerably faster than Monster Cage.

Upgrade 1, Creature Limit, will increase the quantity of Ghoulkins the trap can create up to 3 extra reinforcements.

Upgrade 2, Creature Health, will increase the durability of Ghoulkins.

Upgrade 3, Creature Damage, will cause Ghoulkins to hit harder, but since they tend to die so fast and are even weaker than the creatures from Monster Cage, this is really an upgrade I don't recommend getting.


Ghoulkins are expandable forces but good enough to stall enemies when put to good use.
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Archer Post will summons up to 3 Archers on its normal, un-upgraded state. Archers will attack enemies from a good distance at a steady pace. Be on the watch for flyers as they can easily take "shortcuts" out of their path to attack Archers early and bring unforeseen consequences.

Archers, like all summons, are particularly vulnerable to Decontaminators and deal very low damage against Armored enemies, so be careful with them.

Upgrade 1, Area Damage, will cause the arrows shoot by the Archers to have a small area of effect up to 1.5 meters.

Upgrade 2, Dodge, will give the Archers 15-30-45% chance to avoid direct damage as long as the attack doesn't have area of effect.

Upgrade 3, Creature Limit, will extend the limit of Archers the Summon can hold up to 3 extra Archers (from the default 3).


Archers can be a good asset to deal with anything but Armored enemies and stuff like Decontaminators.
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Suicide Swarm Nest has many things in its tooltip wrong. It won't immediately create all Suicide Spawns, but rather one at a time and house a maximum default of 5 per nest. The Suicide Spawns also won't immediately suicide bomb themselves on enemies, but will engage and brawl with them dealing weak melee damage to them and after an enemy kills it, it explodes dealing the poison damage.

Suicide Spawns are pretty expensive but having them alongside things like Monster Cage can be an effective combination and you'd be surprised how fast they can respawn and even stall enemies when fully upgraded, not to mention they can pack quite a punch when they die.

Upgrade 1, Blast Radius, will make Swarmers to gain a small boost to their area of effect when they die, they'll affect 0.5, 1 and 1.5 meters more from their default 2 meters.

Upgrade 2, Swarm Size, will allow the nest to hold more Swarmers, up to 3 more.

Upgrade 3, Instant Replacement, is interesting, it has a chance to instantly create another Swarmer as soon one dies up. The chances are 8-16-24%.

Don't you just want to squish them?
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Winter Queen Sigil will summon a Winter Queen to help you fight enemies by casting a powerful, multi-hitting blizzard spell.

This summon is by far the most powerful of all, the blizzard hits a large area and can kill large groups of enemies with ease, especially if you concentrate your attacks or hold enemies within the range of the attack. However the Winter Queen is rather fragile and has a considerable respawn time if she dies and is quite fragile, so you must try to keep her safe from harm.

The Winter Queen can also inadvertently aggro flying enemies and make them fly over pits shortening their path to the Gate, so make sure to keep an eye for them if the wave has any enemy of that type near where she is stationed.

Upgrade 1, Reset Time, will cause the Winter Queen to use its spell more often decreasing its original cooldown (8 seconds) in 3-4-5 seconds.

Upgrade 2, Reduced Delay, increases the already high damage of the Winter Queen in 30% up to 90%.

Upgrade 3, Creature Health, gives the Winter Queen a much needed health boost capping at 150% more health.


All hail the queen.

• Artillery Sentry
  
• Empower Beacon
  
• Enhancer Beacon
  
• Heat Ray Sentry
  
• Hook Grinder
  
• Jotunn
  
• Metamorpher Sentry

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Artillery Sentry is a big, powerful and very slow tower which will fire explosives to hit groups of enemies, I'm not sure how this tower prioritizes targets but I assume it fires on the largest concentration of enemies within its (large) range or at least the bulkiest enemy of the lot.


Big and powerful and just as slow.
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Empower Beacons will increase your attack and will also affect your summons. More than one Empower Beacon buff can stack if you can build these towers close to each other.

This support tower also affects any summons you may have, so it's in your best interest build them where you intend to put your allied creatures as well.


Summons and players will be boosted by this support tower.
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Enhancer Beacons works on the same vein as Empower Beacons, except only for towers/traps/summons. The bonus is bigger and the area it affects is the same of the previous tower.

Whenever possible build this support tower as soon as possible. It'll turn groups of towers and traps into efficient ways to deal with sides where you don't plan to stay protecting.


Enhancer Beacons are good assets, try to build them as soon as you can.
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Heat Ray Sentry is an interesting tower that will increase its power up to four times its original damage for as long as it can hit the same target and it hits fast enough to be actually useful even against Giants or Armored enemies. The only problem with this tower is the fact it can only hit one enemy and it has a weirdly annoying "cooldown" while it locks on another target.


Not so hot against numerous enemies, but great against single ones.
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Hook Grinders are expensive Special towers that will instantly kill anything that isn't a Giant, Champion or Boss.

Since the levels where this tower is available tend to be plagued with small enemies it can be difficult to make the best use of this toy, but Mercenaries can pull more resilient enemies back in the range of it with Chain Snare and Sorceresses can stall enemies stunning them with Lightning.


Slow, but useful and powerful when used correctly.
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Ever wondered what is to have one of those Golems on your side? Jotunn will remedy that. They are big, brutish and pretty powerful summons with a lot of health, but if they die you won't be able to buy another to replace it, so watch out.

If you are a Mercenary and have access to Sigil of Inspiration keeping the Jotunns alive won't be a lot of problem and will possibly increase their attacks even more.


An imprisoned Jotunn and a freed one fighting for you.
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Metamorpher Sentry will fire small rays that has a chance to turn enemies into chickens. Chickenfied enemies can't attack and will lose half of their maximum health, but will still march towards the Gate and the effect will eventually wear off.

It's important to kill enemies while they are chickens as fast as possible whenever you can.


Cluck.

• Rejuvenation Pillar
  
• Salvage Recycler
  
• Service Station
  
• Squash Trap
  
• Whirlwind Column
  
• Wind of Death

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Rejuvenation Pillar gives anything in its range a small health regeneration which is particularly useful to keep tanky summons like Vrikolaks from Monster Cage alive or in other cases allied Jotunns. The regeneration from one pillar is slow, but still easy to notice and monsters healed by two pillars can be surprisingly tough to kill unless something big decides to fight them.


Very useful for Summons and as useful for you.
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Salvage Recycler almost always appear in levels where you don't get a lot of essence from enemies, it's imperative to build them as quickly as possible, but never neglecting your defenses, to handle the enemies coming at you.

It can be somewhat tricky to balance out whether you should build Salvage Recyclers or a something to protect the gate.


The more the merrier.
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Service Station is undoubtedly the most useful Special tower as it decreases the cost for building and upgrading every type of tower, trap or summoning regardless of your character specialization and on top of that it's quite cheap to build. This also stacks with skills you may already have.

This is particularly useful to create large concentration of defenses meant to hold enemies in one chokepoint while less protected areas will be guarded personally. If you value your essence, never forget to build this tower before anything.


Service Station has a generous range and is extremely useful. ALWAYS build this one first.
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Squash Trap is something that hits REALLY hard and is the only thing that can actively knockback Giant enemies. Coincidentally you can only build them in levels where lots of Giants appear.


Watching smaller enemies getting squashed never gets old, though.
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Whirlblade Columns are good towers that will serve as a great crowd control since it'll hit everything that goes close to it and on top of that slowdown enemies that gets in its range. The only problems with this tower is that the range isn't too great and it's somewhat expensive to build.


A very bloody mess left by Whirlblade Columns.
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Wind of Death is a unique tower that is already built in the maps where it is available. However it costs 100 essence (without discounts) to activate it and it has a very long cooldown of 90 seconds.

When activated Wind of Death will cause massive Poison damage to all enemies on the map and will most likely wipe out every Horde and Normal enemy that is there.

Since Wind of Death is activated via "upgrading" it, equipping Runes is very important in order to save as much essence as possible. Skills like Marksman's Poison Mastery which decreases the cost for upgrades of Poison damage traps will also decrease the cost to activate this tower too.


The wind is howling.

Normal type enemies don't have any particular weaknesses, but they don't have any strengths. Any tower or trap will do a good job either killing of softening them for you.

This kind of enemies however do come in good numbers, so traps like Lava Grill and towers like Sentry Gun (with Upgrade 2) Phoenix Pillar are recommended against them, but chances are you'll have to deal with them on your own as they are noticeably more resilient than Horde enemies.

Normal type enemies rarely come with a trick to throw you off, but ones like Assault Metallopods (chance of becoming invincible for a short time) and Metallopods Shocktroopers (will cloak briefly to avoid damage) can catch you off guard if you ignore them.
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Horde enemies, as you might guess, always come in large numbers. They are normally easy to deal with with a good Splash damage tower, but they have the nasty habit of slipping through your defenses every now and then if you are not paying attention.

Some Horde enemies are more dangerous than they look like Rusalka Nymphs as they can cloak for a brief period after getting hit once, essentially making them immune to most types of damage.

Flying enemies like Grubshriek are very fast and will ignore floor traps and this can cause a lot of trouble as they generally come in such large numbers even a good tower setup can fail in holding them.
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Armored enemies are among the most obnoxious enemies of the game on par only with Giant enemies. Every Armored enemy has immense 80% damage reduction against everything except Piercing towers and traps, and even them still suffer from damage reduction and will NOT be enough to kill this type of enemy on their own in most cases.

The biggest problem about Armored enemies is the fact they tend to pop up first and spearhead the assault soaking damage from towers and traps or get through while other smaller enemies take the heat for them, easily bypassing even strong trap and tower setups. In either case, they're bad news and you should never leave them unattended .

Acid Geyser with the second upgrade helps a lot if you are playing either as Mercenary or as Marksman as they can reduce the physical defense of these things and make them much faster and easy to kill.

Armor piercing towers like Lightning Pillar, Razor Launcher and Acid Geyser suffers from 50% damage penalty instead of 80%.
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Big, tough and brutish. Everything you don't want to fight comes with Giant enemies. These things tend to be a lot of trouble and can easily overrun careless players especially as they almost always have one trick up their sleeve (besides hitting hard).

Giant enemies are immune to the Chain Snare of Mercenary or the Grappler Bolt of Marksman and the only way to stall them is to get in front of it and let it bash you, but unless you are a Mercenary, or Marksman and Sorceress with VERY good equipment, doing this is a really bad idea.
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Champion monsters are beefed up versions of some regular enemies you'll face. They are marked as yellow dots with a red ring in the mini-map and you should watch out for them as not only they tend to have MUCH more health but also always have one or two nasty extra tricks up their sleeve.

On top of everything Champions are immune to certain status ailment like freezing which makes them even harder to stall.


Fighting a Shredder Champion, notice the blue aura around his feet.
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"Boss approaching!"
"Final challenge!"
"Here it comes!"
"Prepare for the lord of the Swarm!"
"The boss is here!"
"The lord of the Swarm is here!"




What's worse than an Armored enemy, worse than a Giant and worse than a Champion of those? A boss enemy.

Bosses, as you might guess, are among the most dangerous enemies of the game and can quite easily turn a good situation into a nightmare as they always can summon more enemies and do something annoying, dangerous, problematic or everything at the same time.

Most bosses will destroy 5 Gate Points if they manage to reach it (with exception of Slaantz that destroy all 20 for some reason), but they can potentially do more harm since they tend to have the ability to summon minions and yes, they CAN and will destroy Gate Points if you don't pay attention to them. This make bosses like The Master particularly dangerous if you don't have something to deal with the mass amount of rats he summons once his first health bar is depleted.

• Assault Metallopod
  
• Batmoth
  
• Decontaminator
  
• Eater of the Dead
  
• Horned Abonimation
  
• Horned Brute

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• Kobold Deep Miner
  
• Lesovik
  
• Metallopod Shocktrooper
  
• Miner Kobold
  
• Nightfang

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• Nightfang Stalker
  
• Pale Gentleman
  
• Pale Maestro
  
• Shadow Imp
  
• Shredderbeast

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• Arachnopod
  
• Grubshriek
  
• Heavy Arachnopod
  
• Kobold Wartfiend
  
• Rusalka
  
• Rusalka Nymph
  
• Suicide Shriek

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• Gargoyle
  
• Glacier Golem
  
• Kobold Tusker
  
• Mechanus
  
• Rock Golem
  
• Shredder

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• Augmented Dirigiblusa
  
• Behemoth
  
• Dirigiblusa
  
• Harpy Temptress
  
• Harpy Windrunner
  
• Inkwraith
  
• Lesovik Shambler

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• Pistonbeast
  
• Quag Devourer
  
• Quag Thing
  
• Rubezahl
  
• Tripod Charger
  
• Tripod Crawler
  
• White Wobbler

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• Augmented Dirigiblusa Champion
  
• Batmoth Champion
  
• Behemoth Champion
  
• Decontaminator Champion
  
• Eater of the Dead Champion
  
• Gargoyle Champion
  
• Glacier Champion
  
• Harpy Windrunner Champion

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• Horned Brute Champion
  
• Inkwraith Champion
  
• Kobold Deep Miner Champion
  
• Kobold Tusker Champion
  
• Lesovik Champion
  
• Lesovik Shambler Champion
  
• Mechanus Champion
  
• Nightfang Stalker Champion

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• Pale Maestro Champion
  
• Pistonbeast Champion
  
• Quag Devourer Champion
  
• Rubezahl Champion
  
• Shredder Champion
  
• Shredderbeast Champion
  
• Tripod Charger Champion
  
• White Wobbler Champion

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• Arachnideus
  
• Borgovian Siegebrute
  
• Devourer of Light
  
• Dreadful Queen
  
• Forest Demon

_____________________________________________________

• Great Shubin
  
• Horrendous Floater
  
• Jotunn
  
• Khorg, the Pulverizer
  
• Lesovik Gloomspawn

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• Lord of Dread
  
• Lord of Putrefaction
  
• Lord of Remorse
  
• Lord of Sorrow
  
• N'urch, the Living Hive
  
• Quaglord

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• Master Grenadier Hertz
  
• Sahak, the Dismemberer
  
• Sinestro the Magnificent
  
• Slaantz, the Great Boglord
  
• The Master
  
• Venomous Reaper

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Assault Metallopod
  
• Batmoth
  
• Decontaminator
  
• Eater of the Dead
  
• Horned Abonimation
  
• Horned Brute

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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Assault Metallopods are annoying enemies that tend to come in large numbers for Normal type enemies and can become invincible for a brief moment every time they get hit, this makes traps like Lava Grill, Gun Sentry, Lightning Pillar, Blast Furnace ineffective at killing them. Using hard hitting attacks and towers and traps are normally a good option to ensure that shield won't get in your way.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1


Batmoth is a sturdier and slower version of Grubshrieks. Like all flying enemies they won't be affected at all by any ground traps and only towers can target them, they also have the nasty habit of having shorter paths to the Gate, so always pay attention to that red line.

Batmoths attack with a ranged poison bolt which is very annoying as sometimes they will attack you while flying over a pit, if you don't have any good ranged attacks you'll be forced to lure them where you can bash these things to death.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Decontaminators are the bane of Summons. They attack consist of a constant area damaging pool of acid that will steadily deal damage to anything that stays on it, combine that to the fact they tend to come in groups of anything from five to a dozen and that your Summons are stationary or too stupid to move away... Yeah.

These enemies also can cause a lot of problems for you too if you are careless around them. The acid damage WILL add up quickly, so don't underestimate them.


The damaging debuff caused by Decontaminators.
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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Eater of the Deads are not terrifically durable nor powerful, but they almost always come in large numbers and their trait can make them annoyingly difficult to kill if your area attacks aren't very strong. If you're having trouble killing them quickly make sure to get help from your towers.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Horned Abominations are not particularly dangerous unless the player is extremely ill equipped or suicidally careless. They are not tough nor strong, but generally come in decent numbers and the main problem they bring is the fact they love to target and pick your Summons from afar softening them for other enemies as well.


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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Horned Brutes are annoying enemies that will skip small portions of their path by teleporting forward every now and then, most of times this small teleport is enough to avoid a lot of damage they've taken from towers and traps.

They aren't very fast and you can easily catch up to them, but you probably will be forced to leave your position which can bring another set of problems.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Kobold Deep Miner
  
• Lesovik
  
• Metallopod Shocktrooper
  
• Miner Kobold
  
• Nightfang

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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Kobold Deep Miners are tougher than your average Normal type enemy and has a dangerous trait: Mass Haste. That thing will speed up any enemy, or groups of them, as long as the Deep Miner is around, and most of times it's difficult to identify this thing before you notice they brought a group of friends with him.

If you can, kill this thing before anything. Faster enemies means they'll stay for less time in range or your towers or traps which means less damage.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Lesovik is pretty much a Horned Abomination slapped into a Mythical creature. He's just as annoying and like them they'll attack from a distance if possible.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Shocktroopers are more or less like Rusalka Nymphs, except tougher an a bit slower. Make sure to keep an eye for these things as they love to cross your first lines of defense by cloaking and can end up damaging the Gate because your trap setup didn't hold one or two of them.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Miner Kobolds are somewhat sturdier than most Normal type enemies and with that extra health they tend to be able to survive traps meant to handle Horde enemies like Lava Grill and Blast Furnace even if they are fully upgraded.

They tend to appear in decent numbers, nothing like Horde enemies, but enough to be a problem for any trap and tower that doesn't hit several targets.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1


Nightfang are Batmoths on steroids who prefer to get in close combat rather than spit a green projectile at you. The biggest issue of this thing is the fact they are really durable and most of times they appear you will be forced to deal with them personally unless you fill their path with towers.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Nightfang Stalker
  
• Pale Gentleman
  
• Pale Maestro
  
• Shadow Imp
  
• Shredderbeast

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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1


Nightfang Stalkers are beefed up versions of Nightfangs and they have even more health than their regular counterparts, on top of that they can make copy of themselves. Since they are labelled as Normal type of enemies there's nothing to help you kill it fast, but if you really want to handle it as fast as possible make sure to use vulnerability upgrade from your towers and hit them with the right element.


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Threat Level: Moderate / High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Pale Gentlemen are annoying enemies that loves to attack from afar and while they don't have a lot of health, whenever one dies everything close to it will get a considerable 50% damage bonus for a short moment, that 50% is VERY easy to notice and if you don't feel, your Summons probably will. Thanfully that bonus doesn't stack on itself if more than one Gentleman dies.

Mark of Vengeance is considerably more dangerous on Tiers 2 onward, and since sometimes bosses and Giants can come tagging with Gentlemen... Do the math.



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Threat Level: Low / Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Pale Maestros are ranged enemies that will attack in moderate numbers on up to Tier 3, but sometimes on maps of Tier 4 you'll face a small army of them and you'll realize how annoying and problematic they can be if you didn't build up anything for heavy crowd control up until then.

They have Animate Dead which has a chance to spawn an Eater of the Dead when a Maestro dies. As I said, five or eight Maestros isn't a big problem, but if you face something like fifteen or twenty of them... Eater of the Dead everywhere.





Pale Maestros attack en masse on Tier 4 maps, each one of them will spawn more enemies after dying, so have some heavy crowd control ready for them.
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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Shadow Imps are bland and trait-less Normal type enemies. Their main gimmick is to always appear in huge numbers, much more than Miner Kobolds, and try to overrun your defenses. If you're not ready to handle them they might succeed. Employ area damage traps and towers against them and make sure to keep an eye on the mini-map just in case.
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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Shredderbeast is another type of enemy that's hardly worth mentioning, their only notable aspect is their higher than average attack power. On late game, Tiers 3 and 4, they tend to attack in very large numbers just to keep you reminded that crowd control is an important thing in this game.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Arachnopod
  
• Grubshriek
  
• Heavy Arachnopod
  
• Kobold Wartfiend
  
• Rusalka
  
• Rusalka Nymph
  
• Suicide Shriek

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Threat Level: Very Low
Speed: Fast
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Ararachnopods are generic Horde enemies of machines (mechanical), they don't have any quality other than the usual "attack en masse" thing most enemies of this type does. About anything that causes decent area damage will easily take them out.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Very Fast
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1


Grubshrieks are annoying things that are quite fast and tend to appear in large numbers and some bosses loves to create even more of those pests, normally past your defenses, so watch out for them.

Towers with area damage like Blast Furnace, Voltaron Coil or upgraded Phoenix Pillar are good options to handle these pests without you having to run everywhere.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Very Fast
Attack type: None
Gate Damage: 1

Heavy Arachnopods are treacherous enemies that will never attack you but will run nonstop towards the Gate and are even faster than regular Horde enemies, and on top of that they have more health than average Horde monsters.

Their trait make them ignore everything hostile towards them and not stop to fight stuff like summons or even you which makes them particularly dangerous on maps with a lot of enemies as they might breach your defenses and ruin a perfect victory because of that.

If they are coming, make sure to always keep an eye on the mini-map, you can never be too careful around these things.


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Threat Level: Very Low
Speed: Very Fast
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Kobold Wartfiends will probably be your first victims and they are nothing special. The biggest problem they can cause is to slip by your defenses because you got distracted by something bigger coming on your way.




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Threat Level: Very Low
Speed: Very Fast
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Rusalkas are hardly a threat if you have a decent trap to deal with Horde enemies. They are as fast as Kobold Wartfiends and like them the worst they can actually do is overrun your defenses with sheer numbers. Rusalkas tend to be a favorite summon for bosses, so watch out if they do summon them near the gate, especially in Scenarios.
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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Very Fast
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Rusalka Nymphs are more or less like regular ones, except they are sturdier and have the annoying Defensive Cloak trait which allows them to bypass the most common ways to deal with them: Lava Grill and Blast Furnace as they'll cloak and avoid any further damage.

Always make sure to keep an eye for them, you never know if one will slip through your defenses.


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Threat Level: Low
Speed: Very Fast
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1


Suicide Shrieks are like Grubshrieks: fast, annoying and easy to kill. The catch with this enemy is the fact instead of attacking you they'll suicide bomb themselves on you or anything allied to you.

The damage of Suicide Shrieks aren't anything spectacular, but they tend to come in triple digit numbers so that thing WILL add up very quickly if you're not careful around them.


Suicide Shriek's shtick.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Gargoyle
  
• Glacier Golem
  
• Kobold Tusker
  
• Mechanus
  
• Rock Golem
  
• Shredder

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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2


Gargoyles are flying enemies and tough things to kill. During the first maps they appear they tend to stick to the usual path most monster takes, but on Tiers 3 and 4 it's not unusual for Gargoyles to take shortcuts making them very dangerous as they can't be killed quickly unless you have REALLY strong equipment.

Since these things are flyers Acid Geyser is useless against them, stick to Lightning Pillar and Razor Launcher to deal with them if you need.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Glacier Golem is a direct upgrade to Rock Golem in terms of health. It isn't invulnerable to Ice damage nor is vulnerable to Fire damage.

The biggest problem with this enemy is the fact it has a lot of health for an Armored monster and upon dying it'll freeze everything close to it (traps, towers, summons, players) for a couple of seconds. Although Glacier Golems tend to be among the last enemies in the wave sometimes they do appear midway through it and with your defenses frozen solid more enemies are bound to slip through.





Stuff like this happening in the middle of a wave can bring real big problems.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

Kobold Tuskers are slow Armored enemies that tend to appear in early levels on tame numbers. They don't have any special trait beyond the generic Armored defense and are mostly there to teach how annoying these things can quickly become.


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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1

Mechanus is an annoying type of Armored enemy. It is faster than most enemies of its category but will stop to throw bombs at you if they get in range, like most Armored enemies they aren't particularly powerful, but they more than make up for this in resilience.

The biggest issue this enemy brings is that if left unattended, they can easily power through most defense setups since they take a lot less damage from everything and moves faster than usual.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

Rock Golem is a tough enemy with slightly less damage than Kobold Tuskers but slightly faster, they're still slow like molasses going uphill, though. They tend to come in slightly (tired of that word yet?) larger numbers, so be careful as they can bring a lot of problems in groups.


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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Shredders are the last type of generic Armored enemy you'll meet. They are as slow as Kobold Tuskers and generally come paired with Mechanuses or other Giant enemies to pester you.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Augmented Dirigiblusa
  
• Behemoth
  
• Dirigiblusa
  
• Harpy Temptress
  
• Harpy Windrunner
  
• Inkwraith
  
• Lesovik Shambler

_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 2


Augmented Dirigiblusas are, ironically, less of a threat than regular Dirigiblusas. They have the same damage, slightly less health and don't pack Haywire Missile. The only dangerous thing they actually do is the fact they don't stop to keep attacking you for more than a second or two and will keep floating towards your Gate slowly but surely.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

Behemoths are problematic Giant enemies that have a lot of health (a common thing for this type of enemy) and the fact they can give a shield to themselves or, worse, to an Armored enemy or even bosses if possible. They also have Quake Strike which makes impossible for Archers from Archer Post to dodge their attacks.

Make sure to have a good anti-Giant tower or trap ready for them.





A shielded Behemoth.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 2


Dirigiblusas are slow but annoying enemies with tons of health. They tend to come in small numbers but they will disable one trap or one tower every once in a while, that happens to be your best towers in the vicinity, tough luck.

Like Augmented versions, Dirigiblusas will never stop for more than a moment to keep attacking you which makes them somewhat more dangerous as you can't stall them as well as you'd want to.




A Dirigiblusa disabling an Essence Trap.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 2


Harpy Temptress is a bulky flying monster and it has a rather painful long ranged Lightning attack which makes her annoying to fight whenever she appears among other monsters.

Harpies are particularly dangerous for low level Sorceresses and Marksmen as that Lightning Bolt will hurt quite a bit and if you are not careful around them they can easily kill you while you're distracted.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 1


Harpy Windrunner is the non-Champion elite version of Harpy Temptress, they have more health, more damage and on top of that they have the Repeat Runner trait, which automatically resurrects in her at full health original spawn point her when she dies and as if that wasn't enough she doesn't give any essence on her second death.

Windrunners should be treated with caution and always keep in mind you'll face her twice, it's not uncommon to one of these things come with a pack of enemies, die and force you to come back to the same place to deal with her.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Short Ranged
Gate Damage: 2

Inkwraiths are among the most annoying enemies of the game, they have a lot of health, a painful Lightning attack that will hit you consecutively and they'll keep spawning Kobold Wartfiends which can damage the Gate. If more than one Inkwraith enters the field on separate sides expect to have a headache dealing with them.





Hits a large area and multiple times. In other words, stay away from this if possible.
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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

Lesovik Shamblers are Lesoviks on steroids and they tend to lead packs of their less beefed versions, but unlike them they prefer to smack you with their axe instead of firing from a distance.

Shamblers have a trait called Armor Aura which gives a problematic 40% damage reduction to stuff around him, this will make Normal type enemies strong enough to bypass even good defense setups and sometimes give even Horde enemies enough durability so they can do the same.

Always try to take a Shambler out as soon as you can, they can bring a lot of problems if you leave them leading their allies close to the Gate.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Pistonbeast
  
• Quag Devourer
  
• Quag Thing
  
• Rubezahl
  
• Tripod Charger
  
• Tripod Crawler
  
• White Wobbler

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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee and Ranged
Gate Damage: 2

Pistonbeast is among the bulkiest regular enemies, this thing is pretty tough even for a Giant monster and can take a while to bring down even without the help of towers or traps.

This monster will almost always start attacking from a good range with a Lightning bolt and if you get too close it'll then engage in melee combat with pretty hard hitting attacks.


Pistonbeast's Lightning attack.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

Quag Devourer is another enemy with lots of health and can be seen more or less as a beefed up version of Eater of the Dead enemies. It has a less effective Death Syphon Aura, but it has so much more health that it barely makes any difference.

Quag Devourers tend to be a problem because later on they almost always come with a lot of smaller enemies that will die around him, consequently healing this monster constantly. Make sure to have a hard hitting attack or tower as in a lot of cases he's almost guaranteed to reach the last portions of your defenses.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow (Very Fast once Furious Rush kicks in)
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

Quag Thing is a monster that's always dangerous and annoying because of its Furious Rush trait. Whenever its health gets down to 40% the Quag Thing will go ballistic and start running towards you or the Gate with a speed stupidly disproportional to its size and damage.

On lower levels they are deadly for Marksmen and Sorceresses as it's nearly impossible to shake this thing off them and they can kill both in a couple of hits, even Mercenaries can have a rough time with this enemy.

Make sure never to leave a Quag Thing leave your sight, with his Furious Rush he can easily power through almost every tower and trap and reach the Gate if you get careless.




A Quag Thing berserk with Furious Rush.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 1

Rubezahls are the most "basic" type of Giant enemies. They don't stand out in any status (health, attack, speed) but are rather common and tend to come with Quag Things.

They do have a trait called Monstrous Regeneration which allows them to (very) slowly regain some health, so it's generally a bad idea to leave one bruised unless it's close to a tower or trap.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 2

Tripod Chargers are annoying enemies and tough even for a Giant type monster because of the Shield Dome trait, that thing will give it roughly 33% more health and unlike Behemoth's that shield doesn't go away until you break it.



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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 2

Tripod Crawlers is another Giant enemy that summon Horde enemies and that makes him incredibly annoying as if you're careless he can very well create Arachnopods past your towers and take Gate points from you.

Try to always have something to deal with possible stragglers just in case.



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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 2

White Wobbler is a very annoying enemy and by that I mean REALLY annoying. This thing is tough, has a "get off me" melee attack (which at the time of this writing) is glitched and can permanently drop a character and leave them helpless like flipped turtles.

One of the nastiest tricks of this enemy is the Living Nest trait, as soon as you finish this thing off a bunch of Grubshrieks will pop right away and if you're unlucky they can trap you. In the case of Mercenary this isn't too bad, but ill equipped Marksmen and Sorceresses can easily die because of this.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Augmented Dirigiblusa Champion
  
• Batmoth Champion
  
• Behemoth Champion
  
• Decontaminator Champion
  
• Eater of the Dead Champion
  
• Gargoyle Champion
  
• Glacier Champion
  
• Harpy Windrunner Champion

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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3


There isn't really much to say about the Champion version of this monster other than I already said. Augmented Dirigiblusa Champion merely has its health considerably buffed and takes way longer to bring down, so it's always a good idea to shower this thing with some anti-Giant towers or really hard hitting attacks like Bash, Shock Bolt or Spool of Fire.


Fighting an Augmented Dirigiblusa Champion.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3


Batmoth is yet another unremarkable Champion buff enemy. It's just a Batmoth with tons of health and the biggest threat this thing poses is the fact sometimes Batmoth Champions will go through shorter routes and as it is with any Champion monsters, this thing is considerable tougher than regular ones.
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Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Behemoths are headaches. Behemoths Champions are trouble.

Since Behemoths have big health pools to begin with whenever a Champion gives a shield to itself it's really hard to deal with it without good anti-Giant towers. Like regular Behemoths, they can give shields to Armored enemies turning them into another big problem as well.



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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

Decontaminator Champions are nothing truly ferocious or dangerous, they do have way more health than regular enemies, but are still easy enough to deal. Just watch out for their poison pool as it deals a lot more damage.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee and Ranged (Pool of Fire)
Gate Damage: 3

Eater of the Dead is one of the few Champions who gets a few new tricks besides the ability of tolerate more being stabbed, shot, burnt, etc. It has a new Regeneration Aura to help him stay alive and a new Pool of Fire attack which he'll use as soon as he can, and you hit him. It works exactly in the same vein of Decontaminator's pool of acid and will keep dealing steady damage for as long as you stay on it (which is particularly dangerous for most Summons).






Pool of Fire created by this monster.
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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Gargoyle Champions are tough costumers, besides having that thick armor they have a very substantial health boost which makes them extremely difficult to kill quickly. If you ever notice one is coming keep an eye on its path to know if he isn't going to fly over any gaps.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Another Champion creature boasting armor and a very high health. Remember this thing has Cold Vengeace and will freeze solid you, your defenses and summons if it dies close to you.





Cold Vengeance is this monster flipping you off upon death.
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Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

If you didn't hate them as regular enemies you'll certainly hate them now. As Champions, Windrunners boast over twice as much health and they still pack the Repeat Runner trait which respawn her on her original spawn point forcing you to deal with this enemy twice.

Always keep a good anti-Giant tower at prepared and upgraded for this Champion if you don't want to have more trouble than you need with her.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Horned Brute Champion
  
• Inkwraith Champion
  
• Kobold Deep Miner Champion
  
• Kobold Tusker Champion
  
• Lesovik Champion
  
• Lesovik Shambler Champion
  
• Mechanus Champion
  
• Nightfang Stalker Champion

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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

A Horned Brute with Blink and a lot of health, make sure not to take too long to kill it or else it can keep skipping parts of the maze and reach the gate more easily than other enemies. Never rely on Monster Cage or anything to stall him, it tends not to work all that well.



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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

Champion version of these things are even more annoying because not only they take a lot longer to die but their Lightning Shock attack is very strong and can easily destroy your character's health. Steer clear of this monster until it attacks and always keep an eye for the Wartfiends it summons.



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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Oddly enough the Champion version of these monsters lack the Mass Haste trait their regular counterparts do which makes them slightly less dangerous, but like all Champion monsters they have way more health than most regular enemies.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Another Armored enemy with lots of health and Armor, slow and tough to kill like others mentioned before. Remember to use traps Vulnerability upgrades to make your life easier against them.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

Nothing unusual aside from the beefed up health and boost in its damage. The same deal with most Champion creatures.


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Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Shamblers tend to be a headache on their own, but a Champion is a serious problem because you can't kill it as quickly as the regular one, this allow this guy to keep enemies coming with him buffed and taking less damage from your towers and traps and potentially get them really close to the Gate.





The Armor Aura from a Lesovik Shambler.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

Mechanus Champion is nothing out of the usual drill with Champion enemies, it has more health and the Armor trait, however do remember that Mechanus is a monster that moves faster than usual for Armored enemies, so don't ignore him for too long.



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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3


Flying enemy with tons of health and can possibly pop up in levels where flying enemies will go over gaps on Tier 3 and 4. Yeah, not fun. While you can kill them fast, it's always good to stay close to your towers to deal with Nightfang Stalker Champions to hasten the process.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Pale Maestro Champion
  
• Pistonbeast Champion
  
• Quag Devourer Champion
  
• Rubezahl Champion
  
• Shredder Champion
  
• Shredderbeast Champion
  
• Tripod Charger Champion
  
• White Wobbler Champion

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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

Champion versions of Pale Maestros trade the Animate Dead for a much more annoying trait, Frost Missile. They use it every once in a while and will aim at you or your summons, this turns him particularly dangerous if there's a lot of enemies close by as if you get hit you'll be rendered helpless for a couple of seconds.





Frost Missile can freeze more than one target if they are close enough to each other.
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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee and Ranged
Gate Damage: 3

Pistonbeast Champion follows the rule of of Champions enemies: a lot more health, hits harder and takes way freaking long to die. Strong skills and anti-Giant towers or traps are recommended like always.



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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

A Champion monster with Death Syphon Aura, it's the Lesser version but still means trouble since he tends to pop up with a lot of small fry like Eater of the Dead and Kobold Wartfiends.


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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Everything unimpressive Rubezahl had as a regular monster he still has as a Champion. Less health and attack than most enemies of its category and only a slow health regeneration that not even as a Champion helps quite a lot unless your damage is low.


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Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Shredder is another Champion with Armor, which means the biggest issue with him is the fact you can take a lot of time just to kill this one enemy.


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Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Shredderbeast is nothing new or notable. It just has a crapton of health and tends to be a nuisance because in most cases it'll endure enough punishment from your towers and traps to get to the Gate unless you go deal with it personally.


_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Tripod Chargers is another annoying enemy that can take way too freaking long to kill because he will raise a shield that will give a health increase proportional to his own just like his regular counterpart. Since he's a Champion you can guess that health boost this time will actually make a difference for him.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 3

Thought these things couldn't get more annoying? Say hello to the Champion version which can summon Rusalkas like a boss enemy and on top of that has more health and still packs that annoying knockback attack.

Be extra careful too since he tends to create 8 Grubshrieks from his Living Nest trait much more often than his regular counterpart.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Arachnideus
  
• Borgovian Siegebrute
  
• Devourer of Light
  
• Dreadful Queen
  
• Forest Demon

_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Arachnideus is a tough and annoying boss, he has two of the things you'll learn to hate the most on bosses: self-healing and summoning and he has a very annoying attack with his Delayed Blast Swarm as well.

You can, and should, destroy the Repair Drones and the Mechanical Eggs before they hatch to avoid more problems. While the Eggs are not all that bad if you have traps to deal with Arachnopods, the Repair Drones will keep the boss healed and make killing him difficult.




Battling two Arachnideus(es?).
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 5

Borgovian Siegebrute is yet another step up for the Behemoths, this thing has a lot of health and like Jotunn it loves to screw with your tower setup by freezing them and force you to break them so they keep firing on the enemies.





The Borgovian Siegebrute.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Extreme
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 10

Devourer of Light is probably the most dangerous boss of the game because, just take a good look at his statuses and traits. He can do a lot of things that can royally screw you and Inkheart on Tier 4 is the best level to show how this guy can turn the tables against you.

Time Slow will force everything but the boss himself to run at half speed, if you're close to him you're probably gonna get zapped good.

Toxic Sludge Jam is VERY annoying, it has a pretty long cooldown but EVERY trap and tower will be encased into things like Frost Bolt Swarms and disabled for a couple of seconds which is more than needed to let something to get through your defenses.

Last but not least, Leeching is a passive trait that will keep Devourer of Light healed as long as he has some friends nearby and since he pops up with tons of them around you'll need some serious firepower to bring either everything around him fast or outdamage the healing factor.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5


Dreadful Queen is a flying boss, a boss level Harpy and like those types of enemies she doesn't give a damn about you and will go straight to your Gate occasionally summoning Suicide Shrieks and jamming some traps or towers with Protector Spirits (nothing like Slaantz's).

Since she doesn't stop to fight you should try to go for her as soon as she shows up, Dreadful Queen also has a lot of health and it won't go down quickly unless you have REALLY good equipment and towers.




Something the game doesn't tell you is that the Dreadful Queen can jam your defenses with these things.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Forest Demon is one of the most annoying bosses and whenever he appears you better have good anti-Horde measures or else things can spin out of control if you get even a bit careless. This thing just loves to spam Rusalkas and Grubshrieks and on early levels you don't get a lot of skills to handle these things, so make sure to fight it close to your towers and traps.





Battling Forest Demon on Forest of the Fallen.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Great Shubin
  
• Horrendous Floater
  
• Jotunn
  
• Khorg, the Pulverizer
  
• Lesovik Gloomspawn

_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 5

Great Shubin is a Kobold Deep Miner on heavy steroids and he appears in a level where the side quest is not to harm anything directly. Have fun finishing that one with him around.

Although his health is below the average for a boss monster he's also faster and comes with a pretty big group of enemies with him, so watch out.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Remember how unremarkable Dirigiblusas were? Horrendous Floater changes that, this is a pretty buffed enemy and quite a step up even from its Champion variants.

It can freeze towers, it'll use Blink freely instead of only when it takes damage (although it has a pretty long startup) and once it dies it splits into three regular (level balanced) Dirigiblusas. In short, don't let this thing get floating around the map until it's too late, the three Dirigiblusas can and most likely will damage the Gate if you ignore this boss.






Boss ready to use Displacement.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee (long reach, though)
Gate Damage: 5


Jotunn looks like a giant Glacier Golem and is in fact categorized as Giant instead of Armored, he doesn't even have the Armor trait, but more than makes up for that with a much bigger health pool and pretty hard hitting attacks like Frozen Soil.

This boss also has Frost Bolt Swarm and he can encase up to three towers at a time forcing you to break it if you want to have them firing at him. He will sometimes try to trap you by rising a Wall of Ice behind you, but if you are far enough this won't be a problem and the wall is pretty easy to break as well.






Jotunn's after using a Frozen Soil attack. He also froze a tower as well.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee and Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Khorg is a buffed version of Pistonbeasts and has a few tricks the game doesn't outright shows like creating three orbs of Lightning element and throw them at you, Khorg also has an area attack where he causes explosions all around him, so watch out with Marksman and Sorceress as that can catch you off guard.

Like all Pistonbeasts he also has a medium range Lightning attack that is pretty strong, so don't assume you're completely safe from him.


Khorg can summon Lightning homing attacks when fighting as well.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 5

Lesovik Gloomspawn is the unholy mixture of Shambler and Forest Demon. He has strong physical attack with Quake Strike, a nasty Spike Wave spell that hurts a lot, Armor Aura to protect his minions. The only good news is that he has low health for a boss monster.

Make sure to watch out for that Spike Wave, it's somewhat hard to notice when it's coming and it can bring you from full health to near death in a blink of eyes.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Lord of Dread
  
• Lord of Putrefaction
  
• Lord of Remorse
  
• Lord of Sorrow
  
• N'urch, the Living Hive
  
• Quaglord

_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Extreme
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Lord of Dread is one of four Inkwraith Lords that almost appears together in the same level. While his health is very low for a boss, he has the strongest Armor rating from his Momentum Shield and will bring Kobold Tuskers into battle.

Among all Inkwraith Lords you should bring this one down as fast as possible, otherwise he'll keep summoning Tuskers (armored enemies) into the battle and even if you do kill him the Tuskers can end up getting past your defenses making the job of killing them incredibly difficult.

The quickest way to bring down a Inkwraith Lord is to hit him while he's opening a summoning portal. He best way to do so is to hit him from behind as the portal will get in your way and even if you do destroy the it the Inkwraith Lord will keep marching ahead.




_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Lord of Putrefaction is another Inkwraith Lord, the only major difference is that he summons packs of Eater of the Dead instead of Tuskers which normally isn't a lot of problem.




_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Lord of Remorse is the same deal of the previous Inkwraith Lords. He brings Pale Gentlemen into the fight, though, so watch out for that buff as the Lord of Remorse attack can hurt quite a bit on its own.




_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Lord of Sorrow is another Inkwraith Lord and he summons pack of Kobold Wartfiends. Always try to keep a good anti-Horde trap or tower in the way of this boss as Wartfiends can slip past your defenses while they are wasting time on the boss himself.




_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 5

N'urch is the meanest White Wobbler of the game, like the lesser versions of this monster it summons Grubshrieks (even though it does't have the trait shown), Suicide Shrieks included, so approach this enemy with caution as the Grubshrieks can trap you.






N'urch telling some Vrikolaks to buzz off.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee and Ranged (Pool of Fire)
Gate Damage: 5

Quaglord is a weird mixture of Quag Thing, Devourer and Eater of the Dead Champion. Although he has all those traits and is even able to summon Wartfiends he is generally one of the easiest bosses to deal with mainly because his health pool is so low.

Threat Levels:
Very Low < Low < Moderate < High < Very High < Extreme

• Master Grenadier Hertz
  
• Sahak, the Dismemberer
  
• Sinestro the Magnificent
  
• Slaantz, the Great Boglord
  
• The Master
  
• Venomous Reaper

_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

This boss is just a Mechanus further buffed from its Champion status. He has a lot of health for an Armored enemy, so you might take a while to kill him. Besides that he behaves exactly like common Mechanuses with a rather slow projectile attack and a steady, faster than usual, movement towards the core.





Armor and lots of health are a very annoying combination.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 5

Sahak is a buffed Kobold Tusker with Quake Strike. Like any Armored enemy he's tough and takes some time to bring down, but he hits REALLY hard and even Mercenaries tend to have a tough time stalling him.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Sinestro is the boss version of Pale Maestros. He doesn't have anything to stand out among the bosses of the game, not even the Frost Bolt from Champions and is overall the most unremarkable boss here.



_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Very High
Speed: Slow
Attack type: Melee and Ranged
Gate Damage: 20

Slaantz is a considerable threat and has a lot of annoying traits that makes him one of the most dangerous bosses of the game. He is also the ONLY enemy in the entire game that will destroy all 20 points if he reaches the Gate.

Furious Stomp will knock you away if you get hit, Protector Spirits grants him invincibility until you kill all three of them the the Cogbinders will jam your traps and tower, keep in mind that if there are no available traps to jam they'll make a run for the Gate and yes, they CAN damage it.







Slaantz with Protector Spirits doing his job.


A Cogbinder working.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Extreme
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Melee
Gate Damage: 5


The Master is another dangerous boss. It has very powerful physical attacks but the most annoying things about him are: 1) he has TWO health bars and 2) his stupid Rat Swarm that can end a perfectly good game if you don't have something for heavy crowd control.

Just look at the picture below. Those rats are as fast as Horde enemies and after The Master's health is depleted once he'll summon them, if he's close to the Gate, you're probably screwed.




Each one of these count as a point for Gate damage.
_______________________________________________________

Threat Level: Moderate
Speed: Medium
Attack type: Ranged
Gate Damage: 5

Venomous Reaper is a weird boss, it looks like a Horned Brute but it doesn't have Blink. Instead it attacks like Decontaminators and has Death Syphon Aura like Eater of the Deads. In the end the only thing that makes him dangerous is Toxic Sludge Jam which can bring a lot of problems for you, otherwise he's as unimpressive as Quaglord.

The only truly impressive thing about this boss is its health (and Toxic Sludge Jam).






It's as annoying as it would be if you fought Decontaminators.

"Urgh, worst contract ever..."


Mercenary is a bulky, tanky and powerful melee character. He has a wide array of skills that makes him even more powerful and physically imposing being able to easily tank and stall hordes or enemies or the big, tough ones in front of your traps or holding them fast protecting your comrades from harm.

The Mercenary can also act as a support character with skills like Trap Boost to enhance a single tower, Sigil of Inspiration (for Summons) and Soul Web to increase the essence income from kills. Mercenary is unique in the fact he is the only with the Summon specialty, he is the only character who can boost their attack with his skills and even restore their healths.

Mercenary also has access to discount skills (not damage) for Mechanical traps and towers. Unfortunately he lacks anything for Mystical towers and traps and outside Runes they'll never get any discount with him.

A Mercenary focused on Summon traps can be a monster himself as he can either "increase" his damage by protecting the Archer Post or Winter Queen Sigil while they deal damage to them. He also can increase exponentially the durability of the Vrikolaks in the Monster Cage using the Sigil of Inspiration with the Dome of Inspiration passive to heal them, which also works wonders to keep anything from an expendable Ghoulkin to the somewhat fragile Winter Queen alive for as long as he can keep them safe.


+ Easiest character to learn, play and level up. Reinforced by two increased Exp gaining skills exclusive to him.
+ Can block enemies' path forcing them to stay longer on traps and within the range of towers.
+ Naturally high health regeneration and defense. Becomes a monster with Physical Conditioning and Juggernaut.
+ If you like Summons, this guy is the right choice for you.
+ Rage, his "mana", recharges easily; every time he attacks, either an enemy or even the thin air (Shift + Left Click).

- Has little options against enemies that are far from his melee reach.
- Lowest (but respectable) DPS of all three characters.
- Rage needs to be in check as Ghastly Shape and Fire Strike will easily dry your reserves if you use them repeatedly.
- No Mystical tower/trap specialization at all.
- Summon specialization unlocks only at Level 20.

• Physical (Mark of the Slayer)
  
• Ice (Mark of the North)

General:

• Mark of the Craftsman (Up to 8% discount to all traps and towers)

Mechanic:

• Contraption Expertise (Up to 10% discount for Mechanical traps and towers)
  
• Talent for Invention (Up to 10% discount for Mechanical upgrades)
  
• Spring Mechanism Expertise (Up to 30% of decreased cooldown for Mechanical traps and towers)

Summon:

• Selective Monster Breeding (Up to 30% of Summon enhanced health)
  
• Intensive Monster Training (Up to 30% of Summon increased damage)
  
• Sigil of Inspiration (Up to 570% damage boost for a short time and health regeneration, with a passive skill)
  
• Battle Roar (Increases the damage of all creatures in the map, a passive also gives it chance for them to critical hit enemies)

Mercenary's brute strength and sheer resilience makes him the perfect choice for beginners and veterans.

• Strike / Furious Strike / Paralyzing Strike
  
• Ghastly Shape / Ethereal Blast / Chilling Touch
  
• Rage
  
• Juggernaut

• Chain Snare / Barbed Hook / Electrified Hooks
  
• Frost Ring / Freezing Wave / Glacial Tide
  
• Channeled Rage
  
• Physical Conditioning

• Fire Strike / Flametongue / Blazing Inferno
  
• Bash / Crippling Bash / Murderous Blow
  
• Fury
  
• Iron Skin

• Trap Boost / Extended Boost / Spellbinding
  
• Contraption Expertise
  
• Mechanical Mayhem Analysis

• Aura of Vehemence / Extended Aura / Prolonged Aura
  
• Talent for Invention
  
• Spring Mechanism Expertise

• Sigil of Inspiration / Dome of Inspiration / Prolonged Aura
  
• Selective Monster Breeding
  
• Intensive Monster Training

• Touch of Death / Lingering Curse / Greater Curse
  
• Mark of the Veteran
  
• Mark of the Keeper

• Soul Web / Essence Drain / Persistent Web
  
• Mark of Fortune
  
• Mark of the Craftsman

• Battle Roar / Enrage / Inner Fire
  
• Mark of the North
  
• Mark of the Slayer

• Strike / Furious Strike / Paralyzing Strike
  
• Ghastly Shape / Ethereal Blast / Chilling Touch
  
• Rage
  
• Juggernaut

_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 100% of damage
2) 110%
3) 120%
4) 130%
5) 140%
6) 150%
7) 160%
8) 170%
9) 180%
10) 190%
















Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5 more Rage generated on each Strike
2) 1 more Rage
3) 1.5 more Rage
4) 2 more Rage
5) 2.5 more Rage
6) 3 more Rage
7) 3.5 more Rage
8) 4 more Rage
9) 4.5 more Rage
10) 5 more Rage








Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 6% area damage on Strike / 2% Stun chance
2) 12% / 4%
3) 18% / 6%
4) 24% / 8%
5) 30% / 10%
6) 36% / 12%
7) 42% / 14%
8) 48% / 16%
9) 54% / 18%
10) 60% / 20%















Strike is the main skill of Mercenary and the one you can't get rid of. While at first it seems like something you should not even bother with. But there are some important factors you should be aware about this little thing.

First, Strike is the only way to recharge your Rage without killing enemies and you can do it even by attacking the air (Shift + Left Click) and if you have Furious Strike you can earn more Rage per attack, which allows you to build up Rage while there are no enemies nearby. Second, Paralyzing Assault should not be underestimated, hitting enemies in an area with an attack that costs no Rage (mana) can be a pretty strong tactic, especially if you tank and do it in front of your towers, under your traps.

Both complementary passives of Strike are very useful, but I do recommend to upgrade Paralyzing Assault after you're done with other skills as Strike tend to have a barely passable damage without good equipment.


Simple, boring, but can remain mostly effective when you become stronger.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 70% damage
2) 80%
3) 90%
4) 100%
5) 110%
6) 120%
7) 130%
8) 140%
9) 150%
10) 160%













Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 70% damage
2) 80%
3) 90%
4) 100%
5) 110%
6) 120%
7) 130%
8) 140%
9) 150%
10) 160%










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.2 seconds increase in Ghastly Shape's freeze.
2) 0.4
3) 0.6
4) 0.8
5) 1
6) 1.2
7) 1.4
8) 1.6
9) 1.8
10) 2








Ghastly Shape is the first combat skill available for you and it causes the Mercenary to spontaneously dash forward so fast it looks he teleported. It can be used either to hurt enemies or to quickly move up to 20 meters instantaneously. It deals damage to anything that's in your path and with Ethereal Blast you'll deal damage to a small area surrounding your destination.

The biggest con of this ability is how much Rage it drains, 50, and without skills and gear to increase your Rage meter you can use it only twice, thrice at best if you have Rage (the passive skill) upgraded.

Both passive abilities are good, Ethereal Blast causes area damage and you can hurt enemies twice (dashing into them and using the blast caused when you arrive at the location), and Chilling Touch can freeze enemies up to 3 seconds if you decide to max it.

However if you intending to use Ghastly Shape only as a mean to move faster it's unwise to level any of them; even the skill could be left at mere Level 1 for that purpose. As a last note, Ghastly Shape is also useful to get you out of hairy situation, like if a Boss or any enemy traps you by summoning a lot of critters on you or simply get through them and go after that straggler heading to the gate.


More than an attack, Ghastly Shape is a somewhat costly skill that can get you around.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 5% maximum Rage increase
2) 10%
3) 15%
4) 20%
5) 25%
6) 30%
7) 35%
8) 40%
9) 45%
10) 50%






This passive skill is self-explanatory, it just increases your maximum Rage capability and is purely optional. If you feel comfortable to go without it so you can have another skill instead, it's your choice.

However if you are intending to use a lot of skills like Ghastly Shape and Fire Strike, I strongly recommend to max this one as they eat Rage like crazy and running out of it in the middle of a tough fight is very problematic.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 5% Health increase
2) 10% increase
3) 15% increase
4) 20% increase
5) 25% increase
6) 30% increase
7) 35% increase
8) 40% increase
9) 45% increase
10) 50% increase







Nothing much to say about this skill. It makes Mercenary bulkier than he already is and let him endure more punishment. Mercenary already has a high Health to start with and if you combine that with his next set of skills (Physical Conditioning and Iron Skin), you'll can guess how resilient this guy will become.

• Chain Snare / Barbed Hook / Electrified Hooks
  
• Frost Ring / Freezing Wave / Glacial Tide
  
• Channeled Rage
  
• Physical Conditioning

_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 100% damage / 10 enemies can be dragged by it
2) 110% / 11
3) 120% / 12
4) 130% / 13
5) 140% / 14
6) 150% / 15
7) 160% / 16
8) 170% / 17
9) 180% / 18
10) 190% / 19
















Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 10% bonus damage
2) 20%
3) 30%
4) 40%
5) 50%
6) 60%
7) 70%
8) 80%
9) 90%
10) 100%







Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 10% chance of Stun
2) 20%
3) 30%
4) 40%
5) 50%
6) 60%
7) 70%
8) 80%
9) 90%
10) 100%









Chain Snare is one of Mercenary's most useful skills. The main usage for this skill is to prevent enemies from getting past your killzone, especially those pesky Armored enemies. It can reel in up to amazing 19 enemies at maximum level and if you have skills like Physical Conditioning and Juggernaut you can keep enemies busy while you have another area hitting tower or trap helping you killing the monsters. Alternatively Chain Snare can be used to lump enemies together for a Ghastly Shape, the Frost Ring, a Fire Strike or any of the hard hitting skills of the Sorceress of the Marksman.

Beware of Giant, Champion and Boss enemies as they are immune to the pull effect and unless you have some good equipment you can't just stand there and pulling enemies to you as you might run out of Rage quickly.

The complements for this skill are very useful as Barbed Hooks will make Chain Snare gain decent damage and Electrified Hooks will stun enemies and leave them vulnerable even if for mere moments.


What's more fearsome than a tank? A tank you cannot evade.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 50% of damage
2) 55%
3) 60%
4) 65%
5) 70%
6) 75%
7) 80%
8) 85%
9) 90%
10) 95%












Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 1% chance of Freezing enemies for 2 seconds
2) 2%
3) 3%
4) 4%
5) 5%
6) 6%
7) 7%
8) 8%
9) 9%
10) 10%












Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.15m increased radius for Frost Ring
2) 0.30m
3) 0.45m
4) 0.60m
5) 0.75m
6) 0.90m
7) 1.05m
8) 1.20m
9) 1.35m
10) 1.50m








Frost Ring is a very low cost skill that causes the Mercenary to deal moderate damage around him. It synergies well with Chain Snare as it requires enemies to be extremely close to work.

This ability is particularly useful also in accordance to Paralyzing Strike which gives Mercenary an area damage with his normal attacks, both together can easily clean up amassed junk like Horde enemies and things like Shadow Imps, Horned Brute/Abominations, Pale Maestros/Gentlemen.

Freezing Wave and Glacial Tide are the complements for this skill. While Freezing Tide sounds nice, spending 10 skill points for 10% chance of freezing enemies with a skill that doesn't last very long feels too expensive to be really useful. On the other hand Glacial Tide increases the size of Frost Ring and it's very easy to notice once you get it around Level 6 and above.


What's more fearsome a tank you cannot evade? A tank that also damages you by merely standing close to you.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 0.5 more Rage awarded per enemy killed.
2) 0.75
3) 1
4) 1.25
5) 1.50
6) 1.75
7) 2
8) 2.25
9) 2.50
10) 2.75








Channeled Rage will increase the amount of Rage you recover after you kill each enemy. While at first this seems unimpressive, when you combine it with skills that hits several enemies like Frost Ring, Chain Snare, Fire Strike or even Ghastly Shape against small trash like Horde enemies you'll be surprised how effective it can be, and trust me, later maps and Scenarios throws you A LOT of Horde and Normal enemies.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 30% of increased Health Regeneration.
2) 60%
3) 90%
4) 120%
5) 150%
6) 180%
7) 210%
8) 240%
9) 270%
10) 300%








Physical Conditioning ups the already higher than average Health Regeneration of Mercenary up to very impressive 300%. With it you'll become nigh unkillable and you even might think it's overkill.

However there is a Blue King challenge that will decrease Potion recovery up to 75% and that also includes YOUR natural regeneration. Suddenly you might realize that 300% boosted regeneration is barely able to keep you alive.

• Fire Strike / Flametongue / Blazing Inferno
  
• Bash / Crippling Bash / Murderous Blow
  
• Fury
  
• Iron Skin

_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 150% damage
2) 170%
3) 190%
4) 210%
5) 230%
6) 250%
7) 270%
8) 290%
9) 310%
10) 330%









Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 1.5% additional damage from igniting enemies
2) 3.0%
3) 4.5%
4) 6%
5) 7.5%
6) 9%
7) 10.5%
8) 12%
9) 13.5%
10) 15%










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 1% chance of knocking down enemies / +5% damage bonus on Critical Hits
2) 2% / 10%
3) 3% / 15%
4) 4% / 20%
5) 5% / 25%
6) 6% / 30%
7) 7% / 35%
8) 8% / 40%
9) 9% / 45%
10) 10% / 50%












Fire Strike is a strong ability that causes fire to erupt as the Mercenary strikes down the ground in front of him hitting everything in a straight line. Although powerful this ability uses 60 Rage, the most for any of Mercenary's skills and you can't just spam it.

It's worth noting that Fire Strike has a wide range (4 meters) and hits a decent distance (15 meters). This ability is best put to use when enemies are lined up or at least bunched together as that will allow you to hit most of them at once.

Flametongue will make enemies take up to 15% extra damage for 5 seconds and since Fire Strike already hits pretty hard you can imagine this skill can become quite powerful. Blazing Inferno gives at maximum 10% chance of knockdown and 50% Critical Damage, while the knockdown doesn't seem much, the Critical Damage is quite handy if your Critical Hit Chance is high enough.


Line 'em up and toast them.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 400% damage
2) 440%
3) 480%
4) 520%
5) 560%
6) 600%
7) 640%
8) 680%
9) 720%
10) 760%








Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 1% of health healed per Bash
2) 2%
3) 3%
4) 4%
5) 5%
6) 6%
7) 7%
8) 8%
9) 9%
10) 10%









Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 3% Physical vulnerability after Bash
2) 6%
3) 9%
4) 12%
5) 15%
6) 18%
7) 21%
8) 24%
9) 27%
10) 30%









Bash is an extremely powerful single target ability, that hits REALLY hard and it's by far the strongest attack of Mercenary. It has a very low, almost nonexistent, cooldown and uses very little Rage to activate.

This ability is the perfect tool to go along with other crowd control attacks as Ghastly Shape, Fire Strike and Frost Ring and if anything survives it you can simply Bash it to kingdom come. It's also perfect to deal with tougher game like Champions and Bosses, even Armored enemies will feel this attack.

The complements for this skill are both useful. Crippling Bash will heal you up to 10% of your health whenever you hit enemies and Murderous Blow will cause Bash, and any Physical damage from characters or towers, to deal even more damage up to 30%.


Bash hits REALLY hard and is perfect to deal with Giants and Armored enemies quickly.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 1% up to 5% bonus
2) 2% up to 10% bonus
3) 3% up to 15% bonus
4) 4% up to 20% bonus
5) 5% up to 25% bonus
6) 6% up to 30% bonus
7) 7% up to 35% bonus
8) 8% up to 40% bonus
9) 9% up to 45% bonus
10) 10% up to 50% bonus

















Fury is a enhancing ability that will increase Mercenary's strength if he kills an enemy, it's his only attack buff ability (excluding Murderous Blow's debuff) and it can turn a moderate damage dealing Mercenary into a killing machine.

When combined with the fact Fury increases all types of damage, nearly every Combat Active skill becomes very useful, from the meek Strike to the already powerful Bash.


Fury's tooltip.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 15% increased resistances (all)
2) 30%
3) 45%
4) 60%
5) 75%
6) 90%
7) 105%
8) 120%
9) 135%
10) 150%








Not much to say about Iron Skin other than with Physical Conditioning and Juggernaut it'll make the Mercenary REALLY freaking difficult to kill, to the point you can only die on either Scenarios with 75% of your regeneration hampered or if you let yourself get beaten up by dozens of enemies.

• Trap Boost / Extended Boost / Spellbinding
  
• Contraption Expertise
  
• Mechanical Mayhem Analysis

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Type: Active

Level:
1) 100% Trap damage boost
2) 125%
3) 150%
4) 175%
5) 200%
6) 225%
7) 250%
8) 275%
9) 300%
10) 325%








Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5 seconds duration increase
2) 1
3) 1.5
4) 2
5) 2.5
6) 3
7) 3.5
8) 4
9) 4.5
10) 5








Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 10% increase in debilitating effects
2) 20%
3) 30%
4) 40%
5) 50%
6) 60%
7) 70%
8) 80%
9) 90%
10) 100%









Trap Boost is an ability that will dramatically increase the attack of any particular trap for a short duration. It has a fairly low cooldown too, but always try to save it for situations where you are not sure if you can handle every enemy on your own.

Extended Boost will make it last longer which technically means lower cooldown and Spellbind can make a humble trap like Icicle Field into something powerful and troublesome for monsters as not only they will take more damage as the effect of slowdown will stick with them for more time.

Contemplate or tank, Trap Boost is a very powerful asset for the Mercenary.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 1% discount on building for Mechanical traps/towers
2) 2%
3) 3%
4) 4%
5) 5%
6) 6%
7) 7%
8) 8%
9) 9%
10) 10%







A passive skill to make Mechanical traps and towers up to 10% cheaper. Since Mercenary more or less specializes on them or on Summons, it's up to you if you want it.
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1) 1.5% extra experience per enemy killed by Mechanical trap/tower
2) 3%
3) 4.5%
4) 6%
5) 7.5%
6) 9%
7) 10.5%
8) 12%
9) 13.5%
10) 15%











This passive will increase the experience gained when any Mechanical trap or tower kills something. It's a good skill to have if you want to level up quicker and if you use with the right set of traps and towers you can have them to do most of the killing for you and deal with whatever goes through; most likely GIants or Normal type stragglers.

For example: Trap Boost with Blast Furnace/Voltaron Coil to do away with Horde enemies or Trap Boost with Gun Sentry to take out Giants.

• Aura of Vehemence / Extended Aura / Prolonged Aura
  
• Talent for Invention
  
• Spring Mechanism Expertise

_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 2 bonus Rage per kill / 10 meters range
2) 2.2 / 10.5
3) 2.4 / 11
4) 2.6 / 11.5
5) 2.8 / 12
6) 3 / 12.5
7) 3.2 / 13
8) 3.4 / 13.5
9) 3.6 / 14
10) 3.8 / 14.5










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5m Aura of Vehemence range increase
2) 1m
3) 1.5m
4) 2m
5) 2.5m
6) 3m
7) 3.5m
8) 4m
9) 4.5m
10) 5m









Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5 duration increase of Aura of Vehemence
2) 1
3) 1.5
4) 2
5) 2.5
6) 3
7) 3.5
8) 4
9) 4.5
10) 5








Aura of Vehemence is a curious ability that will help your character maintain his Rage fueled as long as your traps and towers deal the killing blow to the monsters. This skill naturally synergies well with Trap Boost.

If you are intending to make extensive use of this skill you should go with a different mindset that is to wound enemies heavily with combat skills and let your towers and trap finish them off. If you do everything correctly you can keep using costly skills like Ghastly Shape and Fire Strike without being afraid of running out of Rage.

Extended Aura will cause the skill to become even wider as Aura of Vehemence's range increases naturally, which is very helpful since the more traps and towers it affects, the bigger the chance for one of them to kill enemies for you. Prolonged Aura increases the duration, up to 5 seconds, which is also very useful.


Traps and towers affected by this skill will have a red-pinkish aura.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 1% discount in upgrades of Mechanical traps/towers
2) 2%
3) 3%
4) 4%
5) 5%
6) 6%
7) 7%
8) 8%
9) 9%
10) 10%







A skill that decreases the cost of upgrades for Mechanical traps which is pretty useful as whether you like it or not you'll be using a lot of Essence to upgrade your traps and towers and while 10% seems low you'll come to realize this skill can help you more than you initially notice.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 3% reduced cooldown for Mechanical towers/trap
2) 6%
3) 9%
4) 12%
5) 15%
6) 18%
7) 21%
8) 24%
9) 27%
10) 30%









This skill will decrease the cooldown of traps that deal Physical damage up to impressive 30%. On maximum level this skill can be quite useful as it can help dealing with the long reset time of some towers like Cannon Sentry and make traps like Spear Trap activate faster.

List of traps that deals Physical damage:

• Gun Sentry
  
• Razor Launcher
  
• Stasis Trap
  
• Spear Trap
  
• Spring Trap
  
• Cannon Sentry
  
• Archer Post

• Sigil of Inspiration / Dome of Inspiration / Prolonged Aura
  
• Selective Monster Breeding
  
• Intensive Monster Training

_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 300% increased damage for Summons
2) 330%
3) 360%
4) 390%
5) 420%
6) 450%
7) 480%
8) 510%
9) 540%
10) 570%










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 5% health regeneration for Summons
2) 10%
3) 15%
4) 20%
5) 25%
6) 30%
7) 35%
8) 40%
9) 45%
10) 50%










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5 seconds of increased duration
2) 1
3) 1.5
4) 2
5) 2.5
6) 3
7) 3.5
8) 4
9) 4.5
10) 5








Sigil of Inspiration is a VERY powerful Summon focused skill. On its maximum level it'll grant massive 570% damage bonus for a short while to all Summoned creatures close to you which can easily turn the tide of a battle if used correctly, especially with Summons that are already powerful to begin with such as the Winter Queen. It lasts only for a brief period, but it also has a relatively short cooldown too.

Dome of Inspiration will give your Summons a steady health regeneration for a brief moment. Using this with Monster Cage will turn the Vrikolaks even more durable and the rare White ones almost impossible to kill as long as you are close to it. On lower levels this complement has dubious usage, but when maxed it heals Summons fast enough to bring creatures close to death to full health in a few seconds.

Prolonged Aura is self-explanatory, it makes the skill lasts for up to 5 seconds longer which is actually quite considerable.

If you are intending to use Summons, this skill is perfect for you.


Sigil of Inspiration will act as magic steroids for your Summons sharply increasing their offensive power and also keeping them alive. The red circle around the feet of your summons indicates which ones are currently buffed.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 3% extra maximum health for Summons
2) 6%
3) 9%
4) 12%
5) 15%
6) 18%
7) 21%
8) 24%
9) 27%
10) 30%








A passive skill that will increase creatures from Summons more durable. It can be useful to make Vrikolaks from Monster Cage tankier or Archers and Winter Queens less fragile, even Ghoulkin can become somewhat useful to tank enemies with this.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 3% extra damage for Summons
2) 6%
3) 9%
4) 12%
5) 15%
6) 18%
7) 21%
8) 24%
9) 27%
10) 30%








Another passive skill focused solely for Summons. It will increase the damage done by Summons up to 30% which may not seem like much at first, but if combined with Sigil of Inspiration the bonus will stack and things will hit even harder.

• Touch of Death / Lingering Curse / Greater Curse
  
• Mark of the Veteran
  
• Mark of the Keeper

_______________________________________________________

Type: Active

Level:
1) 40%
2) 48%
3) 56%
4) 64%
5) 72%
6) 80%
7) 88%
8) 96%
9) 104%
10) 112%










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5 seconds duration increase
2) 1
3) 1.5
4) 2
5) 2.5
6) 3
7) 3.5
8) 4
9) 4.5
10) 5








Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 2% chance of permanently debuff an enemy with Touch of Death
2) 4%
3) 6%
4) 8%
5) 10%
6) 12%
7) 14%
8) 16%
9) 18%
10) 20%











Touch of Death is a good skill for offensive support and will help everything in the entire map, you, your towers and traps and your friends. When used at the right time it can wipe the small trash with no effort.

Lingering Curse will make this skill last longer up to 5 seconds which is pretty good and useful if you are going for this skill and Greater Curse has a chance to make every enemy hit by it permanently affect by Touch of Death, however the change isn't the best being at best 20%.

Like most World skills this one has a pretty long cooldown, so consider using it when there are a lot of enemies at least close to your towers.


Enemies will be marked with skulls over their heads.
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Type: Passive

Level:
1) 2% extra experience per enemy killed by your character
2) 4%
3) 6%
4) 8%
5) 10%
6) 12%
7) 14%
8) 16%
9) 18%
10) 20%








Mark of Veteran will increase your EXP gain up to 20%. When you should pick it up is entirely up to you, if you want you can take it early on, or later when you have more skill points to spare and share among other skills.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 2.5% extra starting essece
2) 5%
3) 7.5%
4) 10%
5) 12.5%
6) 15%
7) 17.5%
8) 20%
9) 22.5%
10) 25%








Mark of the Keeper is a great skill to have from the beginning to the end. You'll start with more Essence, up to 25% extra, on every map which is pretty good, especially in Scenarios.

• Soul Web / Essence Drain / Persistent Web
  
• Mark of Fortune
  
• Mark of the Craftsman

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Type: Active

Level:
1) 60% bonus essence per kill
2) 70%
3) 80%
4) 90%
5) 100%
6) 110%
7) 120%
8) 130%
9) 140%
10) 150%










Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 1 second cooldown reduction
2) 2
3) 3
4) 4
5) 5
6) 6
7) 7
8) 8
9) 9
10) 10








Type: Passive (complementary)

Level:
1) 0.5 seconds duration increase
2) 1
3) 1.5
4) 2
5) 2.5
6) 3
7) 3.5
8) 4
9) 4.5
10) 5








Soul Web is a skill to increase your income from killings, it stacks with Essence Trap and can be a good asset if you can use it properly. Using Soul Web with Touch of Death to earn as many kills as possible is always a good idea.

Both complements focus on its cooldown and duration. Essence Drain will decrease the cooldown up to 10 seconds and Persistent Web will cause it to last at maximum 5 seconds longer.


Combine Soul Web with Essence Trap for maximum efficiency.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 5% extra gold after ending the level and chance of earning better equipment
2) 10%
3) 15%
4) 20%
5) 25%
6) 30%
7) 35%
8) 40%
9) 45%
10) 50%









Mark of Fortune increases your chances of finding better loot and more gold at the end of each map. Remember that some maps have creatures outside the usual combat zone which will drop chest keys and more chests means more loot and money at the end of a map.
_______________________________________________________

Type: Passive

Level:
1) 0.8% discount to all traps and towers
2) 1.6%
3) 2.4%
4) 3.2%
5) 4.0%
6) 4.8%
7) 5.6%
8) 6.4%
9) 7.2%
10) 8%








Mark of the Craftsman is a universal discount for every trap/tower/summon of the game, it's very useful even though its maximum discount (maxing at 8%) is lower than usual. It also stacks with others passive skills like Contraption Expertise and Talent for Invention.