Category:Tower Defense (FR Minigame Type)  

Penguin Produce
Free Realms
Wikibase™
Minigame Types
Minigames > Tower Defense

All Tower Defense games have the same basic format, rules, units, and strategy for play. The Penguin Produce Minigame pictured, at right, is just one example.

This game is a overhead view of the approach to a hut. In the hut is a limited quantity of fish (usually 15). A winding path approaches the hut, and opponents will come down the path to the hut, take a bucket of fish and go back down the path to escape. Your job is to place penguins at strategic locations based on their rate of fire, range, and type of attack. You start with limited funds and get 1 coin for each opponent defeated. When they are beaten they drop the bucket (if they had one), and some will drop power ups. You can click on the buckets or power ups to put them back in your hut or bank immediately, or they will go there on there own shortly.

There are multiple waves of opponents. Each wave is a little faster and has more health. If you survive all the waves with at least 1 bucket of fish remaining, you win.

See the specific Minigame Starters page for a list of the units and their effects.

Power Ups
IconNameEffect
SlowSlow all opponents for a short time
Money BoostIncreases all coin earned for a short time. Wait to use this until the first target in a wave is just about to fall.
Building BoostDecreases the time it takes after a unit is placed until it can start firing
Attack BoostIncreases the firepower of all defenders for a short time
Range BoostIncreases the firing range of all defenders for a short time
Boom!I had assumed this did significant damage to all enemy units, but it appears to do minimal damage with a brief stun
Free Realms
Wikibase™
Minigame Type

There are also 2 speed icons on the control panel on the left. The game starts at x1 (normal speed) but you can change it to x5 at any time. Be sure your defenses are solid before using it!

Upgrade: You can upgrade a unit by selecting that unit, then pressing the Upgrade' button. The cost increases with each level, and each unit has different upgrade costs.

Sell: If you misplace a unit in a totally useless spot, you can sell it back for a portion of the price you paid for it. Select the unit to sell, then click the Sell button.

Strategies

  1. Placement: Other then upgrades, this is the most important thing you should consider. Some say pile everything at the entrance or this or that, and I'll tell you thats not going to cut it with the harder levels. Things to look for when placing your towers: Curves, where your tower can hit creatures longer. Double paths, so if the creature does get by you, you can hit it again on the other side. See Grouping for further ideas.
  2. Upgrading: Other then maybe the easy game, you can't win without upgrading your towers. There are 3 or 4 upgrades for each tower, and each upgrade adds increased range and power. Generally the poison and the slowing towers only get one upgrade out of me. Sometimes I'll upgrade my slowing tower again for a bigger range. I generally concentrate on upgrading the mid dmg tower and the high dmg tower (these vary by minigame, sometimes the high dmg tower is the ranged tower, but usually the mid dmg one is the ranged tower)
  3. Groupings: Poison towers I generally put at the entrance or in between what I call groupings of towers. A grouping is one slowing tower, one high dmg and one mid dmg tower. The slowing tower goes first obviously so it keeps the creatures moving slowly through your dmg producing gauntlet. In hard games i'll double up on the dmg towers to help out, and I generally create two groupings. On easy games, I usually don't need more then 4 towers, but I place more to hit the bonuses.

Additional Tips

Try not to waste money or powerups if you can. On the easier games I never use the powerups at all, on the harder games, I will have to use some when I'm waiting for more money for a big upgrade (They jump from 40 cost up to 350 on the high dmg towers)

Don't underestimate the poison towers. At maximum upgrade they can do 8 dmg, and you are thinking wow, big deal, but if I'm not mistaken that's 8 dmg per tic (they remain poisoned even out of range of the tower), that adds up really fast and if you have them placed at entrances, you will have softened up the creatures for your hard hitting towers.

Some minigames have creatures coming from three directions, and I place poison towers at all three of these spots, and there is usually one spot in the map that all three entrance creatures path too, and that's where you build your best defense. Hint: It's close to the hive entrance at the bottom right.

Careful upgrading while creatures are pathing, your tower won't fight for you while its upgrading.

If done right, You should be able to win most of the games with about 2 slowing towers, 2 poison towers, 4 high dmg towers and 4 mid dmg towers. (Obviously way less then this with the easier games, even on hard I can get away with less then this, so consider this a maximum amount, unless you are trying to get some kind of bonus)

Do Not Do

Build tons of towers all over the place, because this takes away the precious money that you need to upgrade your towers. Think of it like this one upgrade tower is roughly equivalent to 3 non upgraded towers at the first upgrade, and get exponentially better with more upgrades. Not to mention the increased range that allows you to attack creatures for longer distances.

Do not stack everything all in one place, the single hitting towers will continue to hit one creature till its dead or out of range. So other creatures can slide by barely getting hit. Refer to groupings above.

Scoring

When you have your strategies down pat, you probably will be looking into getting the highest score that you possibly can. While completing the bonuses help with this, one of the biggest factor for scoring is starting a new wave early. Each second that is remaining on the clock when you click the start button to begin the next wave will add to your score!

If you are looking for a huge score, don't use the time between waves to work on your towers--be ready to click that start button instead!

Allakhazam credits this post by xlezero at the SOE Official Forums for the Tower Defense Strategies.

This page last modified 2010-04-20 18:57:16.

Articles in category "Tower Defense (FR Minigame Type)"

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