This guide will remain a work in progress, and while most of the advice in it will allow you to progress into HQ tier 5 and beyond relatively quickly – by no means is it the absolute best or only way to do things – it is just what has worked for me and remained relatively quick. **The Menu** When you first start the game, you are looking at the menu, with some basic stats on the left, patch notes on the right and options to start a New Round (Hold off the hordes of evil cubes), Visit Town (Where we go to purchase different upgrades and features between rounds), Import/Export (Allows you to download a text code as a backup save), and Hard Reset (Which allows you to wipe all of your progress and start over) **The Battle Screen** When you first select new round, it prompts you to choose a difficulty, I would recommend starting in easy until you get the basic idea of how the game works and accumulate the first few upgrades for your tower. After you choose your difficulty you enter a screen with your tower (The blue rectangle in the center) and a variety of cubes will spawn with increasingly higher stats that will attempt to knock it down. The bottom left series of buttons are the upgrades for your tower that will improve a number of different functions of it, allowing you to build it offensively, defensively and add some utility skills – and eventually the ultimate skills. For the early part of the game, the abilities that let you acquire more orange cubes (Special Resource Income namely) and the ones that allow you to attack faster and hit more targets are very powerful, and that is what I will recommend building first, but feel free to experiment with what you enjoy or prefer seeing your tower do instead. **What happens when I die?** Don’t worry you haven’t lost for good, you are able to either retry the map (Which restarts you on the same wave you started, with the same basic upgrades as you had at the start), visit town (To go stock up on some more upgrades to beef up your tower) or return which brings you to the main menu. **Town** There are a number of different buildings in town, which I explain pretty in depth in my other guide [here.](http://www.kongregate.com/forums/32139-the-perfect-tower/topics/649283-basic-info-guide-in-progress) **What skills to get / Basic HQ tiering** For the purpose of writing this guide, I have started a hard reset game, and these are the skills I raised as I moved thru the tiers: Tier 0 – First map, Easy difficulty – Immediately went into options and turned quality to low, and damage text off and auto restart turned on at 1 enemy limit. Went into the gem tab to get the starter gems and watched the video bonus thing. Started research on rapid fire – bounce – multishot since they will power you up a ton. **Early Farming \<10k BP total** Once you have multishot / bounce researched, max out the projectile amounts with blue cubes, spend as much as possible in SRI and attack speed so you can turn auto skip to 50 asap, and benefit from the fast wave rate to get tons of oranges thru SRI. **Tier 0-1: Hard wave 300 approximately 15-25k bp** Something like [this.](http://puu.sh/qgHxl/1be6ca0ba0.jpg) I was able to make it to wave 300 using this build and just buying damage thru the waves, I also bought a little crit multiplier. Research was at damage I so if yours is higher, you can do it easier. Before tiering up to Tier 1 I recommend maxing the factory lines (I would stop interval at a max of 4-5 atm), and buying all the cubes you have unlocked inside the Statistics and Info page. **Tier 1-2: Hard wave 1000 approximately 100k bp** Something like [this.](http://puu.sh/qgN45/4956c9a06e.jpg) What isn’t shown is maxed Serious missile, Special Resource Income and Bonus, both Gem Skills and Offensive chance at 100%. Similar to T0-1 bought damage/crit and execute stuff as I went, and maxed out the small upgrade skills so offensive chance forced into good stuff. **Tier 2-3: Insane wave 500 approximately 1.1-1.2 million bp** This is where it gets different, since for insane using an offensive setup will cause your shots to reflect and kill you very quickly, so we shift into a defensive setup. Maxed in electric aura, universal aura, block chance and amount. Take universal resist to about 25%, regen to 5%, division shield to 25, max interest and put all the rest into Hit points. At somewhere around wave 410-430 the enemies will start to stop instantly dying, and ONLY at that point spend all your white cubes on hp. Also will require the interest limit research high enough to not cap out by the end. Higher hp research will lower the overall BP requirement. **Tier 3-4: Insane wave 1500 approximately 11-12 million bp** Welcome to probably the slowest part of the game. The setup in workshop is spent in a very similar fashion to the build for the last tier, with the exceptions being to max universal resist %, and take division shield to 100. It plays out about the same way, around wave 1400-1430 spend all your whites and hopefully make it to 1500, if you die, spend all the orange cubes into blue into more hp and try again. Once again interest limit high enough will help, and more HP research will lower what is required. You are going to need roughly e126 starting HP and then buy hp at wave 1420ish approximately. **Tier 4-5: Insane wave 10,000 approximately 4-5 million bp** Welcome to probably the fastest part of the game, due to the new bounds upgrade. Build should be around 30% new bounds, and the same as T2-3 build but with slightly more hp.

Thanks for the guide for tiering up.

Very useful. Will use a lot.

im tier 1, but by no means i can get over wave 350 on hard, ive got the configuration in the screenshot, but what steps did i miss?

Thanks for the guide! this definitely helped me earlier on <3

> *Originally posted by **[michimueller](/forums/32139/topics/651718?page=1#10714897)**:* > im tier 1, but by no means i can get over wave 350 on hard, ive got the configuration in the screenshot, but what steps did i miss? Did you checked your HQ that if you are able to tier up? BTW before you tier up, exchange all orange first, you will like most of them go to red, then some green and stats. As soon as you passed the requirement to level up, don't exchange for more blue, you can't carry blue toward next tier. *Edited* Oh I thought it was tier 0, for tier 1>2 you just need to farm more and buy all easily capped offence as well as Offence chance, then put all points into damage, eventually you will able to instant kill all the way to 1000.

after a few hours farming and investing in damage i finally made it, well i made it in a farming session, so only by luck i found out that i was beyond 1000(i made it to 1250).

What is the recommended hp for T2 500 insane?

It's somewhere right around whatever a million bp will get you, with the other skills suggested (Depending on number format, it is either around e39 or PY)

Is putting all your stuff into fortify amount instead of starting health good? You can still tank 1 hit early on with all the % defense boosts, so you won't die when you are first hit, and the health will go up a bit.

It can be useful, but point for point hp scales better in all the middle ranges. (Even with no hp research) Fortify is very strong in challenge mode, and once you have HP value capped

Bump, working on a chart for fortify vs hp as well, still trying to get an idea

When Tiering up you can take any spare blue beyond what you need for the blueprint requirement and purchase purples.

There's no need to do that Cael - it automatically converts all blue and orange you have on hand (Including what is in your blueprint) into purples for you

This really should be sticky.

I can't, for the love of god, get past the 0>1 tier... I have done everything on your list, and even have better stuff. Over 25k bp spent and stuff, but yet, I keep getting 1shot by the black guys...

> *Originally posted by **[matomias12345](/forums/32139/topics/651718?page=1#10815599)**:* > I can't, for the love of god, get past the 0>1 tier... I have done everything on your list, and even have better stuff. Over 25k bp spent and stuff, but yet, I keep getting 1shot by the black guys... In T1 I was struggling to get past 700 or so and then accidentally got to 2000 after investing in Unbreakable via white resources. Try it on for size. Up your universal resist and resist bonus as well as checking your damage reducing stuff to see if you've neglected anything. I can't overstate the damage vs bonus either. I didn't encounter any major difficulty beyond time until near 750 by focusing on damage, damage bonus, and universal related upgrades. It's mostly a damage/crit dump. EDIT: Buy Purification too. I just recalled that the miniguys died like flies by doing damage stuff but the bosses were cheese when I turned them white. After I started using purification it took till I was almost done for them to be an issue. You only need a few percent with maxed Fire Rate and Rapid Fire and Slow + Ice Aura. It only has to successfully trigger once to eliminate attack reflection.

great info. when i reached tier 3 this happened: https://postimg.org/image/5jre7kbml/ so insta t4 for me :D

Welp, i beat tier 1 with only 40k bp. lel

i cant view the picture

I get stuck around wave 120 on insane in tier 2, not because I die, but because I don't kill the enemies, they do no damage, but it takes a solid 20 minutes to kill them, what should I do?

Let's bring this baby back up!

for me, i wave 400000+ insane but its pretty**long rounds

> *Originally posted by **[Cedwyn](/forums/32139/topics/651718?page=1#10718390)**:* > What is the recommended hp for T2 500 insane? > > around 5YY

Hi, T1-2 don't work for me ... :( Can you put screenshots of upgrade please ? :(