LogFAQs > #950496009

Okay, so rundown on the tower defense. I'm going to pretend like you don't know anything about TDS.

There's an entry portal where enemies appear. They have to walk through the stage, and then reach an exit portal. Your job is to cut them down along that path. To do that, you erect towers that autoattack the enemies as they pass. In Theater Mechanicus, you can only construct towers at select nodes and you cannot directly impede the progress of the enemies with, say, a wall.

Generally in TDS, you want to create a "kill zone" where you funnel the enemies through and then focus all your efforts on ensuring they die in that one specific spot. Since we don't level up towers within a stage here like in other games, this is really just a matter of finding choke points and putting towers down. Very simple and direct. The enemies in this do not do damage or deviate from their path. Not for the towers. Not for you. Not for taunts.

You have access to four towers, corresponding to the four elements on "the wheel." Hydro is a short-range AE that should be placed at the lead edge of the kill zone. Pyro is a long-distance bombard that easily does the most damage, but has slow-traveling projectiles that can miss quicker opponents. Electro and Cryo are direct, single target attacking, with electro being much better than cryo.

However, you can also trigger elemental reactions. Hence why cryo isn't worthless. Freezing enemies is fantastic. Damage-dealing reactions are pretty good, too. There will be other towers later -- anemo, physical, and bombs -- but for today that's what we have to work with.

The other wrinkle is that your character is there and can interact with the world...except you're kind of a ghost, because your attacks don't deal damage. They DO however knock back or apply elements. I'd recommend bringing a sword user and standing in the enemy's path, spamming charge attacks to keep them from progressing. Or just, y'know, Jean. Alternatively, bring a cryo user to support your hydro towers, but keep in mind you won't gain energy and therefore have no access to your burst. In that regard, archers are possibly the best elemental appliers.

Each stage consists of four waves. The enemies very slowly pour out of the entrance portal. Once a wave is done, you have a chance to pick a bonus. Bonuses cost the same resources you use to build the towers with. You'll gain more by killing enemies, but if you have none at the end of a stage, you might be limited in selection. There are two special types here, fickle and fearless. Fickle comes with a drawback. Fearless costs nothing, but is strictly a downside. Both have additional score rewards at the end.

Speaking of score, the scoring table seems very elaborate at first, but it's actually quite simple. You get points for surviving. You get points for not letting enemies through. (You can miss up to 20, but it's almost trivial to stop most or all.) You get points for selecting bonuses. The most I've gotten on a run so far was around 450. It's probably possible to do a little better.

We only have access to two maps right now. The first is two entrance points that merge and then separate around opposite sides of a square. Just attack them before or after the square. The second features a bridge and two entrance points. Set up by the bridge or behind it. You can turn off the bridge if there are particularly troublesome foes coming.

It costs 1 Xiao Lantern to do a run. There are no other limits on how many points you can earn or how many times you can try, so you can just keep accruing points to spend on tower upgrades. I improved the four towers to level 4, as well as a fifth tower type I didn't discuss that isn't super important yet.

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