FLERP – Early Guide to Reach NG+10 and Beyond

Just some tips, tricks, findings, and a bad google sheet you can use to plan for higher NG+!

How to Reach NG+10 and Beyond

Please note: all credit goes to Alex!

General Starting Tips

  • Buy whatever shows up to clear early waves.
  • Get just enough firepower to reach 50 gold ASAP.
  • Don’t spend past 50 unless you’re literally about to die.
  • Keep buying random towers to minimize your tower Re-Roll costs.
  • Level up low-level towers to LV 2 if given the opportunity, even if you’ll sell them later.
  • Save your gold for Item Re-Rolls.
  • Only buy useful items unless you’ll go below 50 gold.
  • Pay attention to your Shop LV before spamming tower Re-Rolls for a specific tower.
  • Hero and Spearman are worth going to LV 3 if you find them.
  • Start buying your preferred towers as you go when it’s safe to swap them in.
  • Any build should work if you play to maximize gold and your best items.

Let me reiterate:

Any build should work if you play to maximize gold and to get the best items for your build.

You should at least reach NG+5 doing this before you may need to pre-plan your towers and items due to the sheer number of towers that are available to you.

Use This Google Sheet

It is not pretty, beware.

This is my rough and dirty spreadsheet to plan builds.

Just make a copy of it so you can use it and fix whatever looks ugly. If there’s demand enough, I might consider making it even prettier.

Click.

With this, you can enter the towers you want, select your items (even if it’s more than 10 in case you are unlucky), and then you will at least have a basic comp builder that will tell you what your synergies will be and what the item effects are–and you can track your progress as you get the towers and items you wanted.

This is very rough, but the comp builder alone should be helpful for many.

Even if you don’t use this, I would still plan out your NG+ once you hit a brick wall with just going with the flow, especially for items!

Click to enlarge…

Observations (Subject to Change/Get Nerfed)

The 4 Mythic Bonus might be important for high NG+

  • Mostly because Wyvern (and Yeti with any chill) scale well.
  • You get another tower in exchange for 2 OP towers and 2 meh towers, all with their class synergies to add.
  • If your build uses any of the classes in Mythic, consider going 4 Mythic.
  • The “Unique” item stacks really well at high NG+ once you start going past 12 towers or so.

You won’t get past 20 minutes with current balance as of 1.1.2 (and that’s ok)

The changes made in 1.1.0 have drastically changed the scaling of the game. If you played before this where the game was “won” at 30 minutes, you’re going to be in for a surprise!

Right now, either due to HP and enemy count scaling or just the game’s ability to keep up with itself, you will drop to 0 frames and you will probably die soon after crossing the 20 minute finish line.

Here’s to hoping for future patches to at least help with the drop to 0 frames madness of billions of damage going out all at once!

I’m guessing the game starts giving up calculating everything before it lets the enemies just crash into you.

Class Bonuses (and Most Class Items) Are Classist!

As far as I can tell, unless it literally tells you “all units” on it, the buff probably doesn’t affect towers outside of the class listed on that item. The same goes for the class bonuses for having 2 or 3 or more of a kind. Keep this in mind when planning your build and especially while playing!

Any Build (Probably) Works!

Just keep in mind that some classes are just built different.

You will probably only get use out of most classes when you get their items or you build a strong comp that shares good units with good class bonuses.

You may want to consider building around your favorite tower or two, then find good Class Bonuses and Items that would make them even better.

Items that buff all units for each tower of a class are NG+ OP

As you get more room for towers, consider things like Haze, Dueling, and Inspire if your build can squeeze lots of that class in without losing much.

For example, Dexterity buffs all towers by 20% attack speed, but Haze with 4 Wind is just as good (so why not use both?)–I like to run 8 or 9 Wind for a juicy 40%+ attack speed (aka cooldown reduction).

They don’t do much at low NG+ unless you are just spamming all from that class, but NG+5 and beyond will often use these Items well! Just make sure it says something like “all units” in its text!

Some Thoughts (1.1.2)

The game feels like it wants you to lose after 20 minutes despite the nerf to enemies, likely due to something else holding back the game from keeping up with all the damage (or something else related to the 0 FPS that ensues). I miss going past 30 minutes when it was mostly enemies going faster and faster. Back then, I got just past 60 minutes several times (and the timer went back to 00:00).

I love that the tower cap was removed again! It feels balanced enough because you will be punished for playing too slow or greedily, and there is a real limit to how many towers you can cram into the center. And now that the tower stacking bug is gone, you really have to organize your towers with the tankier guys out on the edges!

Instead of just more enemies as 20 minutes comes and goes (and the FPS crashes), I wish they were a little tougher and/or faster instead of 4 times as many. The game should be controllable at least until 20 minutes, but from minute 14 it already starts going off the deep end (at least on higher NG+s).

Microing towers around with wait is a real thing that can extend your run, but it’s not very fun! Before the tower cap was removed again, back from 1.1.0 to 1.1.1, I had to run all tanky bois and pause the game constantly to swap around the damage until I could get everyone to level 3 and have all the items I needed. Some micro is cool, but maybe not that much just to win a NG+9 with only NG+5 number of towers!

Saving to 50 ASAP and greeding for item rerolls while buying just enough feels like the only early and mid-game strategy for NG+. I don’t hate this, but I don’t think there’s any other way to do well without saving up as much gold as you can while clearing stuff. You will need it to get actually useful items and still have time to level up most of your team to level 3 before the 15 minute mark.

I really like buying towers I won’t need later and balancing the gold spent if they carry my butt for 10 minutes. Hero, Spearman, Wizard, even Buccaneer–to name a few.

Some towers feel like absolute dog unless you make the universe support them. I’m looking at you, Summoners!

Warriors and Wind (and Mythic perhaps) are probably busted and easy to win with compared to the others. I don’t think it’s just the individual towers (though Arctic Knight and Solar Knight have insane scaling, for example). But the items and the Class Bonuses are just bonkers for them!

Tower Thoughts (1.1.2)

  • Chainers probably don’t scale well even with their items.
  • I haven’t tested Pirates but after the gold nerfs, maybe beware of them.
  • Controllers are great, especially on lower NG+.
  • Arcane is probably fine, Shadow is fine I hear, and Summoners are probably okay with their items bought early enough.
  • Support is like Mythic for me: Half of them are probably insane, but the others are meh. But you don’t really have to go for 4 Support imo.
  • Guardian is funny if you’re trying to clear a higher NG+ but you can’t fit more towers in (like in 1.1.1), but feels worse than just killing them faster–and you better start pausing and microing your towers because taunt will get them killed!
  • Duelist is great as a second class to buff your others, but is too small to build around imo. Still probably fine.
  • I haven’t dared try Blaze…it doesn’t look NG+ friendly at all, but I could be wrong.
  • Frost holds a special place in my heart, but it’s probably not worth going for 4 of them unless you’re at a lower NG+ or you want to challenge yourself. The chill effect doesn’t really scale very well since it stops around 35-55% even with all the things you can add to it.

Standout Towers

Great Towers:

  • Solar Knight – was OP, still OP I bet.
  • Arctic Knight – is way more OP (at higher NG+)! They are both Warriors, by the way…Scaling off of numbers of enemies will probably always be broken the way the game is currently scaled. Controllers with their Exterminate are also on my radar, but they haven’t quite proven to be obscenely busted, yet.
  • Blizzardess – is my best friend. Chill on the entire field, gives me bonus 25% damage with Frostbite. And I’ve seen her get to the top of charts that don’t have the other OP towers in them!
  • Yeti & Wyvern – are busted for just having raw aoe damage! You don’t even need Uniqueness to get some great damage, but it helps
  • Hero & Spearman (and even Wizard) – put in work for level 1 towers! Sometimes Buccaneer keeps up for a bit, but he falls off by mid-game. Hero and Spearman never really fall off!
  • Wind Caster & Battle Mage – are amazing if you find them early on (and they do well later, too).
  • Scarecrow & Tempest – are lifesavers! They, along with Frost towers with big aoe, help CC the clumps of enemies while you dps them down.

I don’t know about these:

  • Birdkeeper – is another Wind for my 5% attack speed from Haze. Yup.
  • Prisoner – is great for about 3 minutes, then it feels like a waste of a spot unless you go pure Chainers (and even then).
  • Devil – has anyone seen this do much?
  • Lich – felt weak for his level.

All of Blaze, Chainer, Pirate, Shadow, and Summoner feel kinda meh besides a few specific towers at best.

Item Thoughts (1.1.2)

Standout Items

  • OP?
  • Dexterity – a must.
  • Execution – a must.
  • Power – a must.
  • Sabotage – probably a must? I don’t know how much enemies get armor, but armor pen is OP.
  • Threat Zone – a must on higher NG+ when things really clump right next to you (unless the zone is comically small, I have no clue).
  • Haze – use if you have 3+ Wind and no other items required or if 6+ Wind always.
  • Inspire – use if you have 2 Supports unless you must get another item instead.
  • Dueling – use if you splash in even 2 Duelists and have room, imo.
  • Frostbite – if you run a chill aoe like Yeti or especially Blizzardess, use this.
  • Uniqueness – must if you run 4 Mythic.
  • Tailwind – must if you run even 4 Wind even if they are a secondary, especially with Wyvern and Sky Maiden.

Might be weak:

  • First Strike – a trap for high NG+ because you rarely 1-shot, and random low damage will waste the bonus 30% more often than not.
  • Royal Oath – let your 2 Bonus Guardians taunt if anything, and even then taunt kills more towers than it protects, imo.

Getting literally all of the Minion Items or not will probably make or break a mostly Summoner build.

Screenshots (1.1.2)

NG+10 right at the win time:

The loss screen:

The final damage chart:

The stats screen:

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8080 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

10 Comments

  1. I think you should really move Devil out of “Felt Really Weak Outside of Their Build” in “Individual Towers” section.

    To make it work all you need is the Evil Eye tower. Shadow synergy and shadow items amplify damage but not required. Devil also scales off wind focused build because faster proc of its Level 3 perk.

    I just tried it in NG 10-15 and the performance is similar with Wyvern which is magnitude better than other towers most of the time. I didn’t use any shadow items in those runs.

    Great guide, btw. I use your pointer to go warrior, wind, and frost very effectively.

    • Sure, I can do that if it works fine enough with just Evil Eye. I agree that it would scale well if it has the size to do so, and I suspect it’s higher NG+s where you get more density closer to the center that make it even better without needing all Shadow.

    • Pertlio, I played NG 5 using Devil + Evil Eye with the warrior, wind, and frost build. The result still came out with Devil and Wyvern on top of the damage stat.

      However, I am against adding Devil combo into wwf build in lower NG run since it interrupts build synergy. The problem with Devil in lower NG is actually tower slot for class synergies rather than the actual tower performance itself.

      In conclusion, use Devil if spec into shadow in lower NG. Add Devil + Evil Eye in higher NG when there is available tower slot to complement your primary build.

      In other topic, Devil and towers with projectile penetration like wind towers or Phoenix really highlight chainer/arcane limited hit count problem.

      • Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I think my comments in the guide are similar to your findings here in that it’s more of a build around or wait for NG+10 to add when you can afford more towers outside of your build. Thanks for investigating to confirm this!

        And I agree with you on the insane difference there is between “infinite” towers that either are aoe or at least have endless chain/no target limit and towers like Chainers and Arcane. This is why I wish the balance was reverted somewhat so there wouldn’t be so many enemies by 15 minutes. I also miss trying to live for an hour with particularly broken builds, it gave the game another goal other than higher NG+s.

        Maybe those towers should hit harder to make up for their hit limit?

  2. I’m pretty sure the class bonuses applies to any towers that can use that bonus. I remember having 6 Shadow and my non-Shadow towers’ range have gone off screen as well.

    Probably at the baseline, range, attack speed and generic damage class bonuses would apply to any tower since that’s the baseline stat of any tower, whereas armor pen, chill, burn, etc would only apply when you get the item that grants the towers those stats.

    • Interesting if that’s the case. The range increasing does make it sound like they apply anyway, but at least last patch, when you go from 1 to 2 Warriors, the damage tooltip on non-Warriors remained the same while the tooltip always updates for everything else including when Supports cast.

      If this is true, then you’re almost forced to go 6 Warrior 6 Wind baseline in NG+.

      Maybe this is a bug? Or maybe only some class bonuses apply?

    • the last time I did 6 Shadows was before even 1.1.0. Though now I just use Evil Eye and the 2 Support effect to get what 6 Shadows give.

  3. litch beats arctic knight in damage in late-late game. If You manage to apply frost on everything, his chain attack has infinite charges. Playing frost+wind is extremely powerful thanks to litch and arctic knight + massive speed

    as You’ve said infinite scaling units are the best and one of them, which was not mentioned is curser. This tower tends to be in top parts of the charts consistently. Necromancer can also be top tier, but it requires alot of investing in items.

    Devil is also good, but You gotta have shadow council and late game – he hits alot of enemies

    • I’ll try Lich without Chainer items but make sure he’s LV 3 to compare the damage. I do remember it does scale off of chilled enemies.

    • I haven’t tried every build, but I suspect they’re all decent to OP when you make your build revolve around them. Devil sounds like a good example where it has no range at all unless you go 6 Shadow with Shadow Council as well to help make it OP.

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