Published and developed by Johan Lindberg, Maze Defenders – Tower Defense is one of the best tower defense-style strategy games currently on the market.
It features appealing 3D graphics, fun combat mechanics, various upgrade choices, and highly strategic gameplay that’ll challenge the minds of even the toughest TD enjoyers!
Photo: Johan Lindberg
In this guide, we’re going to show you all the basic things you need to know as a beginner in Maze Defenders – Tower Defense, as well as some tips you can use to get a solid start on your tower-building career!
ABCs Of Tower Defense (Basics Guide)
As a beginner in Maze Defenders – Tower Defense, you’ll need to learn the basics of TD battles, resource types, and upgrades & crafting.
Mastering these three components of the game will allow you to play more efficiently and avoid mistakes that might slow down your account’s progress.
TD Battles
Photo: Johan Lindberg
Maze Defenders – Tower Defense revolves around a drag-and-drop style of play where you can build or execute:
- Towers – They can be built and placed to deal damage or support other towers in a specific range.
- Walls – They can be built and placed to block certain pathways so enemies cannot pass through.
- Traps – They can be used to apply status effects on your enemies. Useful for crowd control and extra damage as well.
- Spells – They can be cast on a targeted unit/area to either damage enemies or support an allied structure. All spells have a cooldown and cannot be cast upon use until the cooldown is over.
You also have HP which decreases whenever an enemy gets through your defenses and Gold which is required for building towers and walls.
Resource Types
Photo: Johan Lindberg
There are five main types of resources that you should focus on farming as a beginner in Maze Defenders – Tower Defense:
- Gems – Used for purchasing certain upgrades. It is also used when crafting.
- Metals – Used for upgrading tower abilities and crafting.
- XP – Used for upgrading tower abilities.
- Tower Cores – Used for crafting new Attack or Support towers.
- Crafting Materials (Amber Shards, Ancient Iron, Enchanted Stone, etc.) – Used for crafting towers, runes, or armour.
You can get most of these resources just by playing through the Story Map, but we also recommend farming them from Daily Ranked Maps as soon as you unlock them early on.
TIP: If you want to unlock more towers ASAP, the best way to do it as a beginner is to go straight to playing Ranked Maps as soon as you unlock them.
Upgrades & Crafting
Photo: Johan Lindberg
To get stronger in Maze Defenders – Tower Defense, you’ll need to either upgrade existing towers and builders or craft new ones.
Ability upgrades for towers require XP and Metals. Crafting new items, equipment, or towers requires Gems, Metals, Tower Cores, and Crafting Materials.
Five Best Tips For Beginners
Listed below are the five best tips that all budding tower defenders can use to improve their skills and the efficiency of their accounts in the long run.
Tip #1: Don’t Spread Your Resources Too Thin
Photo: Johan Lindberg
If you’re a beginner, we recommend picking four towers at most at the start of the game and focusing all your Metals and XP on them for ability upgrades.
This will help you budget both resources early on, as you can easily run out of them if you invest in too many towers all at once.
Tip #2: Have At Least Two Types Of Damage
Photo: Johan Lindberg
The reason why it’s advisable to invest in four “main” towers as a beginner and not just in one or two is so you can have some variety in your damage type this way.
Towers have different types of damage. Arrow Towers, for example, have Physical Damage and Avalanche Towers have Ice Damage.
Enemies in some stages will have resistance against Physical Damage and some against Ice Damage, so it would be best to have some variety in your towers even early on.
Tip #3: Wall & Tower Placement Is Key
Knowing where to place your walls and towers makes a massive difference when it comes to winning or losing a stage.
For example, here’s a stage with minimal wall placement where enemies can just walk straight to your base with little to no obstacles:
Photo: Johan Lindberg
Now, here’s the same stage where some walls and towers are placed—blocking the easiest path to your base and forcing your enemies to take a detour:
Photo: Johan Lindberg
As you can see, you can easily manipulate the outcome of a battle if you know how to properly use tower and wall placement to your advantage.
Just like in most other tower defense games, you should never let your enemies take the path of least resistance!
Tip #4: Check Your Modifiers Before Battle
Photo: Johan Lindberg
The Modifiers determine what buffs both you and your enemies will have upon starting the stage.
Be very careful and always read what Modifiers stages have before tackling them.
After all, not knowing that a certain Modifier is giving your enemies certain buffs or damage resistance to an attack type may just be the sole reason why you cannot clear a stage.
Tip #5: Take Advantage Of Perks & Power Runes
Perks can be selected in certain waves during a stage, and they can help your towers defend better via buffs and added effects.
Read their descriptions carefully and take into account what type of towers you’re using before picking your Perks.
Photo: Johan Lindberg
Power Runes can be found in some map tiles around the stage and can be used to power up your towers:
Photo: Johan Lindberg
To take advantage of this mechanic, all you need to do is place any of your towers on the tile the Power Rune is on and just let them cook!
Conclusion
As our final tip, we highly recommend that you join Maze Defenders – Tower Defense’s Official Discord Server if you want to learn more about the game and help out with its development by giving your valuable feedback.
If you want to check out some great content about other tower defense games like Maze Defenders – Tower Defense, feel free to visit the articles we have for Path To Nowhere and Destiny Child: Defense War!
