# Welcome to my (WIP) Tower Strategy Guide for *No Creeps Were Harmed TD*

This guide is aimed at players who want a deeper layer of strategy. Not just a list of towers, but how they interact with artifacts, how to counter different creep types, and how to scale into Endless mode. Think of it as a more advanced framework for understanding when, where, and what to build.

Only a small part of the player base is completing even the first 15 maps. I’d guess it’s because the game can be pretty unforgiving, and there isn’t much detailed info out there. My goal isn’t just to help you beat maps. It’s to help you dominate them, without needing copy-paste builds for every level.

There are already a couple of decent guides on Steam that are great for learning the basics. I still recommend checking them out. I learned from them myself. But this guide is for players who want more. I’m aiming to help you get consistent, high-level results no matter the map or creep setup.

Everything here is based on my own testing and play. If you’ve found a strategy that works better, feel free to share it. If I can confirm it in-game, I’ll include it. I’d love for this to grow into a community-driven resource that helps more players master the game.

## 🧠 Tips and Mechanics You Should Know

### **Target Preferences**
- Customize targeting in settings
- **Change Blaster**: Closest ➜ Fastest
- **Change Brian Jar**: Random ➜ First
- Avoid using Random for anything. Usually you want either Closest, Strongest, First, Fastest, or Last

### **Walls vs Ground Tower Placement**
- Tower on ground is usually better
- Wall placement can improve line of sight but also removes line of sight to close tiles.
- Use placement preview: red X = blind spot

### **Pathing**
- You can change creep pathing by placing walls or towers in their way, redirecting them.
- If there are two paths, you should always try to force one path into the other so that you don't have to build double defenses. It's cheaper to make a bunch of walls on one side than towers on both sides. Some maps force you to deal with separate paths but most of them allow you to force them onto the same side.

### **Tower Combos**
- Some towers work best together
- If a combo isn't possible, use solo-reliable towers
- Example: *Lag Field + Pulser* (combo-dependent) vs *Ranger Turret* (independent)

### **Cloak Detection**
- Needed for Cloaker, Fader, etc.
- Detection is **per tower**, not shared. Lag Field is the only way to provide detection to other towers in a radius.
- Each tower must have its own upgrade

### **Quantum Farms**
- Only use if you're going for Endless
- I build 1–2 early, go to +1, then finish upgrading around Wave 20
- Don’t over-invest too early or you’ll lose momentum
- Slight POW boost even unupgraded, but I don’t recommend focusing on POW
- Credits are more valuable for tower scaling

## 📌 Rather than listing all tower stats here, I’m just going to list off the ones I personally think you should either avoid or use as frequently as you can. I'm more-so focusing on countering creep types in this guide (next part) That way, when you load into a map, you can build your strategy around the enemy list instead of guessing.

If you want to see tower stats, check the Steam turret guide. It has everything except the Gatler, which I don’t recommend anyway.

## ❌ Towers I Don’t Recommend

### **Artillery**
- Requires good placement and elevation
- Takes up 4 tiles and needs overhead clearance
- Decent AOE when it hits, but misses too often
- Feels okay early on, but quickly falls off

### **Gatler**
- Expensive, large footprint (4 tiles)
- Limited ammo, frequent reloads, and slow recovery
- Poor accuracy at peak fire rate (when it should be strongest)
- Gets outperformed by cheaper, more reliable towers

### **Laser Gate**
- Difficult to place effectively
- Can break if placed too early
- Random, inconsistent damage
- Not awful, but there are much easier options


## ⚠️ Only Use for Gleep Vats

### **Beam Emitter**
- Cheapest option for destroying Gleep Vats (extra credits)
- Can be sold right after use
- Can deal boss damage with long enough lock-on
- Always enable "target Gleep Vat"

## ✅ Towers I Recommend

### **Ranger Turret**
- Needs 4 tiles and clear line of sight
- Works best on high ground or sideways-facing platforms
- Counters nearly everything: fast, tanky, shielded, bosses, cloaked
- Has Cloak Detector by default
- Highest damage and range in the game
- Weakness: slow fire rate and visibility issues on flat terrain
- **Artifact Tip**: Instant Reload removes the fire rate issue and lets it handle swarms

### **Pulser*
- When Ranger Turrets are impractical, this is your boss killer.
- Only takes up one tile and it's not that expensive (so efficient!)
- Does massive damage with a slow projectile that can penetrate through walls and other towers.
- Won't hit anything fast without lag field support.
- **Artifact Tip**: Instant Reload turns this thing into a monster. It'll fire almost as fast a blaster but it does huge damage on hit.

### **Flame Turbine**
- 2 tiles wide
- Applies double speed to hit enemies, but deals massive AOE in a straight line
- Basically counters the entire non-boss creep roster but you have to be careful about the speed increase it gives anything that's able to survive.
- Best placed on corners or long, straight paths
- **Artifact Tip**: Instant Reload improves uptime and effectiveness

### **Chain Bolter**
- One of the best AOE Towers
- Shreds shields and weak creeps
- Really good on corners.
- **Artifact Tip**: I think you're better off using artifacts on other towers. But Volt Wave on Hit is pretty good on these for extra AOE damage.

### **Splatter Gun**
- Cheapest AOE Tower
- Pretty slow fire rate
- Works great on corners where the lines are too short to justify flame turbines.
- **Artifact Tip**: I think you're better off using artifacts on other towers. But Instant Reload ups their dps a lot and homing bullets is also interesting because it allows you to use them from farther back.

### **Ground Pounder**
- Pretty expensive for how weak it starts
- This is a Late game scaling AOE Tower. Needs upgrades to shine but does great with investment.
- Perfect for putting in creeps' path and doesn't require vision, meaning you can freely stack them next to eachother.
- **Artifact Tip**: Instant Reload ups their dps a lot and freeze wave on hit gives them stall ability.

### **Lag Field**
- Takes up 4 tiles
- Place in the creep path to force detours
- Excellent against fast creeps like Runners, Skits, Hustlers
- Slows waves, giving your other towers more time to kill
- Combos well with AOE like Flame Turbine, Chain Bolter, Splatter Gun, Ground Pounder
- Also great with Pulsers. Their projectiles are slow but deal massive damage and have wall penetration.
- **Artifact Tip**: Not necessary. Performs well without one.

### **SRM Launcher**
- Expensive so I wouldn't recommend until lategame
- Takes only one tile, Needs overhead clearance but does not get its vision blocked by adjacent towers.
- Excellent against fast creeps and strong creeps alike, think of it as single target artillery with high accuracy
- These things are your best option when you get to the late-game and run out good corners for tower placement. You can put these pretty much anywhere and they work well against everything in the game.
- **Artifact Tip**: Instant Reload. Similar to the Ranger Turret in power increase except the SRM Launcher is lower range and more expensive but has higher base fire rate meaning more artifact procs, and SRM Launchers are much less picky about where they are placed.

📈 How many Towers?
Not sure whether to build more towers or upgrade the ones you have? Try to get 2-3 towers that counter the current creep types, then focus on upgrading what you already have instead of spreading too thin. In early waves, you can often survive with just Brian Jar and a Blaster to minimize upkeep. On harder maps, you’ll need more towers. so scout the wave types and plan accordingly. Once you get to endless mode, you want as many fully upgraded towers as you can muster. You need Quality AND Quantity to make it as far as possible.

## 🧟‍♂️ Creep Counter Guide

---

### **Critter**
Weak but numerous.
- **Early:** Blaster
- **Later:** Splatter Gun, Chain Bolter, Ground Pounder, Flame Turbine

---

### **Runner**
Speed-focused rushers.
- Blaster
- Lag Field (force pathing)
- Ranger Turret (support)
- Snap Trap
- SRM Launcher

---

### **Porter**
Teleport in a straight line, then pause.
- Use **zig-zag pathing** to break their momentum
- Place towers at corners where they pause
- Best counters: Splatter Gun, Pulser, Ground Pounder, Flame Turbine

---

### **Roamer**
Path-avoiding creeps.
- Use **walls** to trap them in your kill zones
- Flame Turbine forces movement
- Mini U cleans up out-of-range roamers
- Pulser works particularly well against them because you're likely to have extra walls to keep them in line (Pulser shoots through walls).
---

### **Cloaker**
Fast and invisible.
- Blaster with Cloak Detector
- Ranger Turret
> Note: Detection is **per tower**, not shared

### **Cloaker**
Fast and invisible.
- Blaster with Cloak Detector
- Ranger Turret
- Lag Field
> Note: Detection is **per tower**, not shared
---

### **Fader*
Turns invisible after taking damage. Counters are the same as cloaker but these can be killed before cloaking by any high damage tower if they're caught while uncloaked, making them slightly more forgiving to deal with.
- Blaster with Cloak Detector
- Ranger Turret
- Lag Field
> Note: Detection is **per tower**, not shared

---

### **Skits**
Slow start, then burst speed + buffs others.
- Lag Field + Blaster
- Ranger Turret (support)
- Snap Trap
- SRM Launcher

---

### **Boomer**
Explodes on death and damages towers.
- Blaster
- Ranger Turret
- SRM Launcher
- Medic Hub
- Upgrade HP on frontline towers

---

### **Bricks**
Tanky creeps that get harder the more you hit them. These are basically damage sponges that spawn in waves. You want high damage and decent fire rate.
- Pulsers, SRM Launchers, stacked Ranger Turrets, Snap Traps (Support)
---

### **Geezer**
Shield-only creep.
- Chain Bolter (2x damage vs shields)
- Ranger Turret (ignores shields and one-shots)

---
### **Splitter**
Spawns more creeps when it dies. Counter with AOE.
- Splatter Gun, Ground Pounder, Flame Turbine, Chain Bolter

### **Stingers**
Flying creeps spawned from eggs or Leviathans. Very annoying.
- Blaster
- SRM Launcher
- Mini U
- Brian Jar
- Wall off excess eggs to reduce swarm size

---

### **Leviathan / Brute / Hustler / Phaser**
Tanky boss-tier creeps. All of them have nasty effects of some kind, usually dealing damage to you or summoning creeps when they die.
- Ranger Turret
- Pulser
- SRM Launcher
- Snap Trap
- Lag Field (support)
- Mini U (support)
- Chrono Ray (support)
- Medic Hub

## 💎 Artifact Recommendations

Not in any particular order, these are just ones I recommend watching for:

### **Blaster – Multishot**
Gives the Blaster wave-clear potential and helps handle large groups. Makes it more than just a backup tower. Starts at 20% and stacks up to 40%.


### **Brian Jar– Enrage on Hit**
Even with just a 1% chance, Brian Jar fires so often that this procs frequently, and it stacks up to 3%. If you're going to use a Brian Jar artifact, this is the one to pick. It helps him stay relevant later and pairs well with early-game strategies like greedy Quantum Farm openers.
---

### **Ranger Turret – Instant Reload**
Completely fixes the turret’s slow fire rate. With good procs, it can even wipe waves by itself.

---

### **Flame Turbine – Instant Reload**
More uptime = more consistent AOE. Huge synergy since the tower deals the most raw AOE damage in a straight line.

---

### **SRM Launcher – Instant Reload**
instant reload gives them way more uptime, letting them launch missiles nonstop.

Note: Artifact effects stack. But Instant Reload has diminishing returns (20 --> 30 --> 35). Because of this I recommend not stacking 3 instant reload artifacts for the same tower. You could alternatively use another instant reload for a different tower or a different effect altogether. See what you want to use for that map and focus on using artifacts you have for that. If you don't have any particular tower preferences, Brian Jar artifacts are a decent choice.

Better Artifacts can be farmed on endless mode, you can also upgrade them with essence.

(To be continued)

Endless Mode: Where Quantum Farms Shine

This is the stage where your early investments finally start to pay off. Quantum Farms are the economic engine that gets you to the point where you can survive the brutal scaling of Endless mode. Once the creep waves stop playing nice and start showing up in overwhelming numbers with tanky stats to match, your farm income becomes the lifeline that keeps you ahead.

Quantum Farms have the potential to give you way more credits than you would otherwise have. I've seen a ton of players in the community board suggest that they're not worth it. If your only goal is to make it to wave 30, then yeah I agree. But these are what can carry you well into Endless mode.

And once you start getting overrun in endless, sell the farms. They've served their purpose by that point. I think that part is probably not considered by most players thinking they're not worth the investment. Once you sell them you get back a good percentage of what you invested AND you have all the credits they gave you at the end of all the waves you had them for.

To make this work, your artifact choices matter a lot. If your plan is to push deep into Endless, you should dedicate at least two artifact slots to scaling your late-game carry towers. These will vary a bit depending on the map and creeps you're up against.

For your third artifact, a good choice is picking an artifact that gives you more power in the early game. Good choices are:

- Blaster Multishot or Freeze on hit, which give flexible coverage against fast or swarming enemies
- Brian Jar Enrage on hit

This lets you start greedier with your Quantum Farms without risking an early collapse. It’s all about balance. You need just enough power to survive the first 10 waves, but not so much that you slow your economy down.