TapDefense Challenge Tips and Strategies
December 30, 2008
New version of TapDefense is now available! Now we have challenges: “This is Sparta,” “Sudden Death,” “Ten Towers,” “Silver Spoon” and “Credit Crisis.” I am working on getting tips for you guys and will post my solutions as I progress. Please leave any tips you have in the comments.
This is Sparta:
12.30.08 – Easy: Won this keeping all 3 wings with a score of 11,671 and 13,755 gold left. You start with three halos, so first thing you should do is to upgrade your interest. What I did was upgrade interest once and then researched ice. I started with three arrow towers and then upgraded one to level 4. A level 4 arrow tower has huge range and will do 250 damage. Set this one in the middle. The other two I kept at level three and then upgraded one more at around round 30. After a while gold was not an issue and I had three storm towers (2nd to last tower I researched) all at level three and they were slightly staggered. I then researched earthquake and put it as my last defense. Basically it would clip some of the starting monsters but took out any that made it through the gauntlet I setup before.
12.31.08 – Med: Won keeping 2 wings with a score of 10,210 and 10,742 gold left. Very similar tactics I used in ten towers and the easy sparta. I started with the three arrow towers except I. put two of them where the earthquake tower is on the picture. I upgraded the arrows to level 4 once they were in-effective as level 3. I’m finding out that you need to raise enough money, not only to get everything to level 3 but you to buy earthquake and upgrade to level three. I don’t see any way to beat the politicians without earthquake.
Ten Towers:
12.31.08 – Easy: Won this level losing 1 wing with a score of 37,591 and 137,500 gold left. Start out the same as you would playing the regular game. I made sure to upgrade interest twice before I researched any towers. I had three arrow towers, two water towers and two cannons and upgraded them up to level 3 slowly, not too much to use up all my money. I then upgraded my farthest arrow tower to level 4 and it acted as a type of sniper. The first tower I researched was ice and I replaced both of my water towers and upgraded to level 3. I maxed the rest of my towers with level 4 arrows because you will need them from level 30 to 33. Once I got past level 33, got my storm tower and staggered them (see pic). Used the earthquake to finish off the politicians and that’s it.
1.3.09 – Med: Won this level with a score of 8,860, 10,267 gold and 10 wings lef
t. 
This level was pretty easy if you employ the tactics that I mentioned in Credit Crisis. Lined the path with arrows and two level three water towers in the middle. I had a few level 4 arrows toward the end, especially when money wasn’t an issue. Once again, earthquake is a must have and level three ice makes it real easy to kill everything with it. See pics for my final config.
Silver Spoon:
12.31.08 – Easy, Medium, Hard: No tips here, just have fun. The real challenge of this section is to see how much gold you can rack up. There is no way you can lose it, especially if you research interest with the first two halos that were given to you. This is a good level to relax to and not worry about strategy and focus on kicking some ass.
Credit Crisis:
1.2.09 – Easy: Barely won with a score of 5,283 and with twelve gold left. The key of this level is to only choose towers that you want to keep throughout the whole game. I started with a level three water canon and two arrow towers. My big mistake was to upgrade the arrow tower to level 4 (waste of money). I should have started with two level 3 water canons. Anyway, you need to get a level 3 earthquake to win so make sure that you have enough money for that.
1.2.09 – Med: Won this level with a score of 6,586, 17 gold and 18 wings left. What I had to do is muddle through for the first 7 levels with arrow towers (see pic). Once I got my 
first halo, I researched, ice and replaced one of the arrow towers with a level 3 ice. I put it where it could shoot at monsters coming and going. I researched the earthquake tower next and put it on top and made it level 3. Put a level 3 storm right at the beginning and bought as many ice as I could with the remaining money to slow down the monsters for the storm and earthquake towers.
1.3.09 – Hard: Won this level having a score of 5,230, 15 gold left and 11 wings le
ft. 
What I did was line the path with arrow towers (see pic). I held on long enough to wait to research earthquake and upgraded it to level 3. After that I lined the path with ice towers to slow down the monsters. Didn’t buy one magic tower. The canon was put there because I had just enough money to buy it.
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Posted in Software, iPhone, tapdefense
January 9th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Can’t get through hard on Sudden Death.. medium was a challenge, but so far no luck on hard! Some of these new challenges are pretty tough!! As always, thanks for the tips and updates… what a wonderfully frustrating game!
February 6th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Aachk! I can’t beat sudden death on hard no matter what I try! Any advice?
February 11th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I can’t think of any. A friend of mine, Todd, who has posted a number of comments on here has vented with same frustration as you. He gets close but there is always that one that will sneak by.
February 11th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Yes, I am having a frustrating time with sudden death/hard. I have a pretty decent strategy in the first 10-15 levels that gets me by without using a lot of money (with the exception of the devil, you have to load up on cannon’s and some water and that level is very tough.. then it eases up). Usually though I can’t make it past level 20 or 21 (can’t remember which). I have made it past a few times and died up around 30-ish but usually I can’t even make it there. I use lots of arrows of course, usually 2 level 2 water towers, some cannon towers and then eventually start exchanging the arrows for magic. And then I start to exchange some of the early cannon’s for storm later on… but anyway, it’s not working for me- I have probably tried to beat this 300 times… if anyone has other ideas please post them up!
February 15th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Todd, I can tell you our strategies are very similar, which means we are either headed in the right direction, or completely wrong. Have you tried going against the norm and researched magic asap? I found some success with that.
March 25th, 2009 at 12:57 am
I was able to finish Sudden Death Hard after no less than 500 attempts. The key is of course 100% credit management. Use arrows (no upgrade) to begin with, they are the cheapest per credit. It is more cost effective to buy another arrow tower than to upgrade another. It does more damage too.
Forget about earthquake, you will never have cash to upgrade it. I didnt use cannons, just wait until you can afford magic.
Also – the game depends heavily on how clustered the monsters are. The best stragegy will fail if the bastards come to close. This is particularily important in the early games before you can have several ice towers that slow everyone down.
Cash and ICE!
First round: Set an arrow tower in the top right corner and one in the middle tower ONLY (or anywhere else, but the corners are the prime spots). Play until you make it through. You will win in one in every six or so attempts.
Second round: Buy two more towers in good locations. Get a third if you need to (and don’t want to do round one too many times). After winning this round you should start accumulating credits.
Third round: Add three (or only two if you feel lucky) and hope for the best.
When getting two research points, upgrade interest rate.
Keep going on and add two or three arrow towers every time. Some time of course you get screwed and need to add more to the end to kill certain clusters of monsters.
Up until level 12 (or so, “The CEO”). Build either one water tower in the bottom corner and upgrade max or build two water towers with one upgrade. Upgrade two or max three arrow towers and hope for the best. You should be able to have 550 credits after this level is done. After the CEO your defences should be good enough to handle a couple of rounds without buying anything except whats listed in the paragrah below:
The level after the CEO gives you one research point. Get ICE. Replace your water tower with Ice and upgrade once, maybe twice. For a couple of rounds going forward, replace some arrow towers with ice if you can upgrade once. Don’t put Ice towers too close to eachother, they will not complement eachother.
As you go along, you need to get the magic tower and start replacing your arrow towers, but be careful, make sure you steadily reach over 1000 credits as you go along. Never buy stuff so you have less than 500 credits unless you are in one of the very last levels (of 43 total).
Finally, start deploying Storms, but only when you can afford to upgrade them fully. I ended the game with 5 fully upgraded when I finally won.
March 25th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Great Job! I gave up thinking that it wasn’t possible. Thanks!
March 25th, 2009 at 10:13 am
Thanks Larry. Yes, it can be done!
Another thing I’ld like to add in regards to importance of arrow towers; you can “double stack” them along the path and they are still very effective although it looks like they are out of range. You can litter the path with towers and they don’t need to be immediately next to the path. Within the round of the CEO keep several almost every piece of the path would be double stacked with not-upgradeable towers. They key is, having four arrow towers per “upward”/horizontal square is very damaging and cheap.
Try this: Go to “Silverspoon” Hard and just put in 30 arrow towers along the path wherever you can insert them. See how many levels you get through before you get one bugger by (which just simulates sudden death).
March 25th, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Nicely done Pokerguy, thats awesome, thanks for sharing your strategy!! Very impressive!
April 5th, 2009 at 2:58 am
Hi there, I finally managed to beat sudden death on hard after a zillion attempts, but in doing so found a good strategy that seems to work reasonably regularly now (maybe 1 in 30 or so) compared to 1 in a zillion beforehand. There are a lot of similarities between mine and the one described above, but a few differences so I thought I’d share some of my ideas. There are 2 things that I realised were key to a winning strategy.
The first one unfortunately is luck. If you have 4 or 5 monsters on top of each other, it’s virtually impossible to stop them, it’s an unfortunate part of the game I think that it just needs one level with a bit of bad luck and you lose.
The second is concentration. I realised that I shouldn’t be watching my monsters being killed, I should be watching the exit from hell. I am able to trust my towers to do their job, so I don’t need to watch them, but I do need to keep an eye on whether there are a large group of monsters on the way, in which case I need to pause the game and add a few more towers. I found that if I focussed on my towers killing the monsters, by the time I realised that I was about to be overwhelmed it was too late. So my advice is trust your towers and put your attention onto the exit from hell. A helpful way of building trust is to do the hard mode on classic to get a feel for the levels and what is the minimum requirement. This strategy is also good for saving the money, so you can build the minimum required towers, and then build more only if you need them. In this way you should be able to more regularly get into the later levels.
So onto my tower building strategy, I only build level 1 arrow towers on the first 7 levels, and don’t build in the 3 “prime” corners as I like to save these for ice towers later. So you can beat the hellbat on level 7 by using 18 evenly spaced level 1 arrow towers, so on average you need 3 per level (on some you might need to add 4 or maybe 5, but it just means you add fewer on the next level), except the firecats which I find can be beaten 95% of the time with the same towers as the previous demons level. I also try not to build directly next to the road to leave space for more powerful towers later on, with the exception of the 3 spaces that surround each “prime” corner. I usually have around 260 to 270 gold by now.
I then find that adding 3 more arrow towers and upgrading one of the best positioned ones to level 2 is enough to get past the next 2, and then add 2 evenly spaced bomb towers per level next to the road but not in the “prime” corners (again you need to be flexible, you might need to add more to clear a particular level, so just add fewer on the next levels) until the next firecats level, when you should add an ice tower in the first “prime” corner slot, so your first halo upgrade should be ice not interest. Bomb towers are good because you get the splash bonus damage. You should also upgrade a few arrow towers. I find this to be a tough level to pass without using a lot of gold. To beat the next devil, just upgrade your ice tower to level 2. You should have around 430 to 450 gold by now and you can upgrade your interest rate. I estimate that I can get to this point around 1 in 3 times using this strategy.
Over the next few levels, I add 4 more bomb towers, 2 more ice towers in the “prime” corners and gradually upgrade them to level 2 by the firecat level 20. You can sell a couple of arrow towers near the corners and put a couple of your new bomb towers there. On this level I also upgrade a bomb tower and a few arrow towers. This level I find incredibly annoying as the firecats are so fast if you get 3 or 4 on top of each other there’s not much you can do. I upgrade a few more arrow towers on the devil and hellbat level. By now I have around 950 gold, 11 level 1 arrow towers, 8 level 2 arrow towers, 9 level 1 bomb towers, 1 level 2 bomb tower, and 3 level 2 ice towers in the “prime” corner postions.
You might be able to get away with not building anything for the next few levels, but keep an eye on it, and if you do need to build, then start building level 1 magic towers in good positions near the corners. But don’t necessarily sell any towers as magic towers have a good range.
I would also add a few more ice towers up to level 27 and maybe upgrade some bomb towers. By now if you’re lucky you could have around 1700 – 2000 gold. But to beat level 28 you will probs need 3 level magic towers minimum so a lot of expenditure is required on this level. This is where I often fail. Its easy if you get a level 3 storm, but I prefer to use magic and get the interest upgrade before level 29.
After this it becomes much easier, the only thing I would note is that you need a few more level 2 magic towers to get past level 33 which is the demons who are resistant to bombs. After completing this level 33, I’ve never failed to go on and complete the game, as it definitely gets easier from here on. Get the storm upgrade and build a storm tower near one of your corners (but don’t sell your ice towers) to complete the level with 5 devils and try to keep your gold levels above 1000 at all times after this as you need the interest. Then keep upgrading and building more magic towers, get a couple more storm towers and build and upgrade your bomb and ice towers as well.
I hope this is helpful to everyone, remember the key points of concentrating on the exit to hell and being flexible on building new towers mid level.
April 5th, 2009 at 10:46 am
Nice job! Thanks for the detailed answer. This will definitely help.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:26 am
I also just realised that I could improve my chances by building my arrow towers as close to the road as possible (using this you only need 15 arrow towers to beat the hellbat on level 7), and then double stacking them as described in one of the posts above, and following my original strategy by replacing the arrow towers next to the road gradually with bomb and ice towers (you still need to research ice before interest to beat the first devil level). This strategy gave me more gold to play with and hence increased my chances.
April 12th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Great work, jneve020. You and I can finally move on with our lives now
Interesting strategy saving the “prime spots”, I didnt think about that before.
Another good hint is to manage your ice towers wisely. If you have a level 3 ice tower in the lowest prime spot, consider inserting a level 1 cheap ice tower on the very first square at the hell gate. The level 3 ice tower will certainly ice large groups down, but the ice tower will always focus on the monsters that have advanced the longest way up the trail. By keeping a short range 40% slowing ice tower in the first spot you avoid – or at least slow down – large groups that otherwise will avoid the level 3 ice tower. Sort of a “primer” for the major ice tower.
Eventually, of course, you need more than one level 3 ice tower.