Your Swordsman has reached level 5. Pick a specialization — this can't be changed later.
Every tower has its own EXP level, up to 99 — separate from its gold-bought upgrade tier. Kills grant a little EXP, killstreaks grant a burst of it, upgrading with gold grants some too, and simply surviving to the end of a round grants EXP to every active tower. Each level-up hands out exactly 1 stat point — small and frequent rather than big lump sums.
STR: +3% max HP per point for everyone, plus +8% damage per point (scaling even
better at heavy investment) — but only for
Warrior-archetype towers.
DEX: +3% attack speed, accuracy, 💥 crit chance, and 🍀 Luck (bonus gold per kill) per
point for everyone, plus +6% damage per point — but only for Archer-style towers.
INT: +6 range and 💥 crit damage multiplier per point for everyone, plus +6% damage
per point — but only for
Mage-archetype towers.
Dota-style: each class only gets bonus damage from its own preferred stat, never from the
other two. Every 5 points invested, the next 5 are worth progressively less — heavy
investment in one stat is never worthless, just increasingly inefficient. Points come from
leveling up (see above), plus a little randomly whenever you spend gold to upgrade a
tower's tier.
Every fighting class favors one stat 25% more effective than the others: Warriors (Swordsman and its evolutions) favor STR, Archer-style classes favor DEX, Mages favor INT.
Only Swordsman, Archer, and Mage are built directly. Every other class is reached by investing 10+ points into a specific stat — a one-way transformation that keeps your accumulated stats.
Buy class-specific gear from the Shop and equip it from a tower's inspect panel. 6 slots per tower — fill all 6 to awaken it as a Hero with a permanent bonus to every stat.
A tower that reaches 100 combined STR+DEX+INT becomes Legendary — you'll name it, and it permanently gains +10% size, +5% max HP, and +5% damage reduction.
Burn: ticks 4% max HP damage every 0.5s. Poison: flat damage every 0.6s, strength set by the Blowdart that applied it. Slow/Stun: from Mage and Hammerman. Shield: absorbs a set amount of damage before HP is touched, regenerating over time when not hit.
Kills within 1.2 seconds of each other build a streak — the same tower has to keep landing hits fast, or it resets. Every 10 kills in a row unlocks a tier, from Killing Spree up to Ascended at 100, each granting a bonus stat point.
If a tower's HP hits 0, it's overrun and locked out of action for the next 2 full waves before recovering.
Barricades don't attack, don't earn EXP, don't level up, and can't evolve — they're a tough obstacle, not a fighter. Bought as an item from the Shop (costs wood + stone, not gold) for whichever tower you have selected — drag it out of that tower's inventory onto a valid path tile to place it live, or onto any tower's inventory to store or move it. Once placed, it physically blocks enemies from passing.
A Barricade's HP is its literal block-strength (shown as a fraction, e.g. 7/10) — it only loses HP while something is actively pressed against it, at most 1 point every 2 seconds, so a single Barricade can hold a chokepoint for a long time before breaking.
The map starts small and expands ring by ring as you clear waves — at most one expansion per round, plus a free one every few waves. The path is regenerated (and re-checked against your existing towers) every time the map expands.