Kingdom Rush: Tips and Tricks

Evil wizards, trolls, and orcs are threatening the kingdom; do you have what it takes to lead an army of knights, archers, and artillery to defend the kingdom?

Kingdom Rush challenges you to battle waves of enemies as you strategically place defenses around the map. The challenge is to stop the enemy from invading various cities throughout the game. This is no easy task, but thankfully here are some tips and tricks to help out your quest to defend the kingdom.

When you first start out you'll want to get comfortable with the controls and how the game is played. Make sure you click on everything because there are various drop boxes with options and information such as upgrades or the ability to place troops in a given area.

You'll notice that when you click on an area to build you'll get four options: an Archer Tower, a Barracks for ground troops, a Mages Guild (a wizard tower), and an Artillery Tower. They each have their own specific advantage and disadvantage and it's important to know how they can affect gameplay.

Towers

With the Archer Tower, you get a pair of archers that barrage arrows on your enemies with a decent rate of fire and a medium sized attack range. Archer Towers are more effective placed BEFORE Barracks.

The Barracks provide soldiers to take on your enemies head on with hand-to-hand combat. This is important because the soldiers slow down your enemies on their path to the city. This gives time to your support towers such as the archers, to fire arrows at them.

Click on the Barracks Tower when it is constructed and then click on the flag. It allows you to set a rally point for your troops to defend which you can change at anytime.

Mages Guild gives you a wizard that hits your enemies with a burst of magic that is especially useful for enemies with armor. The downside is that their rate of fire is slow so placement of those towers is important.

Artillery Towers shoot large cannon balls with a great damage effect but their rate of fire is slow, which may allow some of the enemies to simply run right past your defenses. These towers work best against a large amount of enemies.


Strategy

A rule of thumb is that you want to have at least one Barrack Tower for every two support towers. Meaning, you want to be able to slow your enemy down in hand-to-hand combat so that your archers, wizards, and artillery can add on even more damage.

Setting up an Artillery Tower or Mages Guild at the beginning of the map is a good way to hit your enemies with some initial damage. Your archers or soldiers can finish off what is left of them.

Knowing the range of your towers is important too. Before constructing a tower you can hover your mouse over a prospective tower and you will see a hollow circle representing the range of fire/attacking range of the tower.

This is something to consider due to the fact that you preferably want your towers within range of each other to add as much damage possible. A good example would be Artillery Towers have the widest range but the slowest rate of fire.

Be sure to check out who or what is coming in your upcoming wave. To do this you can hover your mouse over the pulsating skull. It will then tell you what type of enemy is coming and how many of them there will be.

You can then adjust your towers accordingly to the type of enemy you will encounter. You can find out more about your enemy by clicking the open book symbol in the top right hand corner.

This opens up the Encyclopedia, which gives you information about your towers as well as your enemies' strengths and weaknesses.



One enemy you will encounter is the Wulf. Wulfs are very fast and will sprint past your support towers such as archers and mages guilds. If you are faced with a large wave of Wulfs, building Barracks with solders to stop them is your best option. You may have to sell some of your other towers and build new Barracks to ensure you stop them all.

Power Ups

Reinforcements- These are local farmers that help attack enemies on the ground. Their health is shorter than regular solders and their damage is not as effective but be sure to use them as much as possible. Think of them as roadblocks that can give you time to build another tower or slow down an enemy that slipped past your defenses. Be aware that they tend to die quickly but you can send out another pair 10 seconds after they die.

Rain of Fire- Gives you the ability to damage a mass amount of enemies with great effectiveness. This power-up should be used sparingly due to the time it takes to regenerate. When using Rain of Fire, be sure to aim in front of your enemies as they are moving and pick a place where they are all bunched together for a better effect.

Gold

Be strategic with your gold!

Before the battle begins make a note of how much gold you are given at the start of the level. Look at the top left corner to see how much gold you have, how many enemies are allowed to pass (heart symbol), and how many waves of enemies there are. This is important as each tower has its own set price.


If you make a mistake and build a tower you don't need/want, you can always sell it for a reduced price by clicking on the tower then clicking the $ symbol.

As you progress in the game, saving your gold will be important as you can upgrade the towers you build. The rate of fire, damage dealt, and recovery time will all be improved depending on the tower. Instead of building more towers you may choose to improve the ones already in place.

Calling waves of enemies early gives you more gold but be careful. Calling enemies early without the proper defenses could cost you a star(s).

Stars

Stars are extremely important in Kingdom Rush and ultimately help you progress throughout the game. Stars are what you receive at the end of a level depending on how many enemies you allowed through your defenses.

Stars allow you to buy upgrades to: Archers, Barracks, Mages Guild, Artillery, Rain of Fire, and Reinforcements. They also allow you to get special characters called Heroes.

Each Hero has a unique ability and is more powerful than your average solider.

To gain more stars you can replay each level twice by completing the Heroic and Iron Challenge. These challenges are substantially more difficult and have rules such as no Archer Towers allowed or one life total for the level.

Conclusion

This game offers hours and hours of playtime with the large number of achievements to obtain, upgrades to buy as well as new Heroes to unlock. After reading this, you should be well prepared to take on any enemy and still be hungry for more!

P.S. sheep don't like it when you click on them! Clicking on them multiple times causes them to explode!