Weapons & Augments

Weapons

Upgrading Towers

Click a tower to open its info panel. Towers level up automatically from kills, or you can spend credits to upgrade manually. Max level is 10 (or 20 with Turret Capacitor). At max level a tower can Prestige — resetting to level 1 but keeping a permanent bonus.

Augments

Augments are placed on tiles adjacent (including diagonal) to a tower. A tower benefits from the 3 nearest augments in range — extras are shown as OFF (greyed out) and act as reserves. Remove an active aug to activate a reserve. Augments on Supercharged tiles give double their bonus.

Path Hazards

Path hazards are placed directly on path tiles. Enemies walk over or through them. Unlike towers, hazards don't aim — they passively affect everything that passes.

Conqueror System

The Conqueror system is your persistent meta-progression — it carries over between runs. The XP bar at the top of the screen fills as you earn credits from kills. Each level gives you Skill Points (SP) to spend.

Conqueror is designed to reach full completion right around wave 100 — the same wave Ascension unlocks. Think of it as your mid-game progression: click effects and persistent upgrades come online steadily, then Ascension takes over for the late game.

Click Effects — spend SP to unlock and level up

Click Effects trigger when you click directly on an enemy. Each effect has 10 levels (1 SP per level for 1-5, 2 SP for 6-10).

Persistent Effects — one-time unlocks (wave-gated)

These are gated by the highest wave you reach: Mid Game upgrades unlock at wave 25, Mid-Late at wave 40, and Late Game at wave 60. Reaching a gate in any run unlocks that tier permanently.

Conqueror+ — post-Ascension acceleration (wave-gated)

Once you reach Ascension (wave 100), a third tab — 🌀 Conqueror+ — appears in the Conqueror panel. Its 12 boons help you race back to wave 100 on future runs without the early grind. Each unlocks at a future wave milestone (115, 125, 135 … up to 225), so you earn the catch-up tools by pushing past 100. The Skill Points from a fully-maxed Conqueror are enough to buy the entire base tree and every Conqueror+ boon, with a little to spare.

Black Market

The Black Market offers powerful permanent upgrades for large credit investments. These are the primary credits sink in the late game.

Cosmic Events

Starting from wave 5, there is a 40% chance each non-boss wave triggers a Cosmic Event — a space phenomenon for that wave — a helpful boost on the normal maps, but on Expert maps and the Labyrinth it can also be a harmful Severe storm (see below). A banner announces it, and a badge stays visible during the wave.

COMMON Frequent boosts. UNCOMMON Stronger effects, wave 15+. RARE Powerful events, wave 30+.

Common Events

Uncommon Events

Rare Events

⚠ Severe Events (Expert maps + Labyrinth only)

Harmful storms that only strike on Expert maps and the Labyrinth (wave 10+). Survive one for a score bonus — or force one on demand with the Aetherium's Severe Anomaly.

Round Mutators

From wave 30 onward, non-boss enemies can spawn with random mutators shown as icons above their HP bar. More mutators stack at higher waves: 1 at wave 30, 2 at wave 60, 3 at wave 100. Bosses roll their own scaled mutators from wave 10.

During a Mutation Cascade cosmic event, all enemies in that wave have at least one mutator.

Defensive

Offensive

Tactical

Exotic (wave 50+)

Ascension-Tier (wave 100+)

These appear once you're deep into the endgame. Ascendant mutators (wave 125+) are mechanic-based threats that can't be brute-forced with raw DPS — they start as under 5% of spawns and steadily take over the pool, eventually stacking two or three at once, and they appear on bosses too. Cosmic Brandisher is ultra-rare and carries a legendary reward.

The Wandering Merchant

Starting from wave 15, a Wandering Merchant 🧙 may appear on the path mid-wave. He walks slowly and is extremely tanky — roughly 8-10× a normal boss's HP at that wave tier.

What he does

When the merchant spawns, his shop panel opens automatically showing 4 items for sale. He stands still while you browse. Closing the shop is final — it cannot be reopened, and the moment it closes he starts walking for the exit.

Space Die 🎲

Killing the merchant drops a Space Die. You can hold up to 3 dice at a time, shown in the top bar. In the merchant's shop, spend a die to reroll the entire stock — useful if none of the current 4 items interest you.

Shop Items

The merchant's stock is drawn from a weighted pool across 3 tiers. Items that apply to a specific tower are added to your Inventory — click the item, then click a tower to apply. Global items activate immediately on purchase.

🎲 Cosmic Dice Mini-Game

When you have at least one Space Die, a 🎲 badge appears next to the Black Market heading in the sidebar. Click it to open the Cosmic Dice panel.

Each roll costs 1 Space Die. You and the Merchant each roll a die — roll higher to win. A tie is a loss. Win conditions:

Win → a random prize appears at the bottom of the Black Market outlined in bright purple. It stays there all run until you buy it. Re-rolling replaces it with a new prize.
Lose or Tie → nothing appears. Die is still spent.

The prize pool includes all standard merchant items plus 10 exclusive dice-only items that can't be obtained any other way:

The Ascended Merchant

From wave 215, a second merchant begins to appear — rendered in solid gold, and unmistakable. He shows up at most three times in a run, on his own schedule, and he deals only in endgame hardware.

What he sells

Nine slots, rolled completely at random from a pool of 28 — duplicates and all. You never know what you'll get. His stock is Ascended weapons (every gun, at Ascended I, II or III) and Ascension structures: Mass Driver, Singularity Core, Void Rift Generator, Cascade Node, Temporal Anchor, the NanoBots and the Hand of God.

An Ascended weapon arrives finished — fully levelled, Gold Weaponator, already Ascended to its tier, and it lays down its own ×2 Supercharged tile when you place it. No assembly, no grind.

His prices

He charges in credits AND shards, from 5,000,000¢ + 1,000 shards for a Tier I weapon up to 15,000,000¢ + 3,000 shards for Tier III or the Hand of God. Ascending a weapon yourself costs 10M / 30M / 90M and escalates every time — so he is a huge discount on credits, bought with shards. If you have banked deep, he is the biggest swing in the game. Merchant discounts still apply to the credit half. His stock cannot be rerolled — no dice.

Ascension System

At wave 100, a Black Hole event fires and the Ascension System unlocks. The Conqueror bar splits in two — the right half becomes the Ascension bar. This is your late-game progression layer, separate from Conqueror and run-specific (resets each game).

Ascension Shards ◈

Shards are earned by damaging Chaotic and Ascendant enemies — the special high-value targets that appear from wave 100+. Ordinary enemies don't drop shards, so income is tied to hunting the glowing purple ones rather than clearing raw waves. Bosses and super bosses also drop shard caches, and every super boss is a guaranteed shard payday. Spend shards in the Ascension panel (click the ◈ button in the bar) alongside credits to unlock powerful items.

Skill Tree — Three Branches

★ APEX Tab — Premium Per-Tower Tools

The APEX tab holds two premium upgrades, each with its own unlock card and per-tower apply buttons:

⟐ Ascension Arsenal (Sidebar)

Once you unlock Apex Protocol, Apex Catalyst, the Ascended Weaponator, or the Ascended AugMentor, they also appear in the Ascension Arsenal section of the sidebar as quick targeting-mode buttons — click the button, then click a tower (or augment, for Catalyst and the Ascended AugMentor) to apply. You can apply from the sidebar or the APEX tab grid.

◈ Aetherium — The Shard Store

Once nodes are bought, shards keep piling up — so the Aetherium tab lets you spend them on run-scoped boons: Emergency Repair (full heal, 150 — doubles each use), Severe Anomaly (force a Severe event, 120), Overload Surge (+50% tower damage next wave, 250 — doubles each use; has an auto-buy toggle), Summon Super Boss (risk/reward loot, 400 escalating), Second Wind (survive one lethal blow at 1 HP, 750 — doubles with each purchase, and cannot be bought during the Wave 500 Final Gauntlet), and a Space Die (900). Effects apply to the current run only.

⚡ Overcharge Core (Black Market Bridge)

Not part of the Ascension panel, but the bridge to it: the Overcharge Core (1,000,000¢, at the bottom of the Black Market) permanently removes the damage cap on one tower so it scales indefinitely. The base cap now rises with wave (from ×8), which softens the old flat-damage wall — but removing it entirely still gives the strongest late-game scaling, so grab one as you push toward your first Ascension.

🜲 The Legacy Vault & Ascension+

Reach Wave 215 with the Shard Cache unlocked and the Legacy Vault opens — the endgame meta. From that point on, Ascension stays unlocked permanently (no more re-earning it at wave 100), your purchased tree nodes persist across runs and reloads, and at the end of every run you bank 70% of your unspent shards and 25% of your credits into the Vault. The Vault is a persistent war chest that grows every time you play, and it funds the new Ascension+ tab.

A 🜲 Ascension+ button appears at the top of the Ascension panel once the Vault is active. Ascension+ holds twelve permanent upgrades, each gated behind a wave milestone (225 → 475) and paid for with Vault shards + credits. They're the tools built to push you toward the ultimate goal: beating Wave 500. They persist forever, so they're multi-run goals — you'll afford a few per deep run, not the whole tree at once.

⚔ Expert Maps

Expert maps are dedicated hard maps for players who have mastered the four originals. Each carries its own rules and a sustained threat — a real fight from wave 1 to 500, not just a late ramp — with tougher, denser enemies (about +55% HP) and its own signature Ultra Boss. They're opt-in from the map picker and never change the original maps. Your leaderboard placement and Wave-500 win are tracked per map, and each has its own Conqueror feat.

☠ Ultra Bosses

Expert maps introduce the Ultra Boss tier — a step above the classic Super Bosses. Nine exist: five roaming ultras (The Wrecker, The Marksman, Critical Mass, The Siphon, Null-Field) and each map's own signature boss. They arrive on a schedule: a roaming ultra at each milestone wave (every 75), then the map's own signature boss at wave 450 as the pre-finale climax, and the whole ultra roster again in the Wave 500 Final Gauntlet, ending on that map's signature. Ultras drop Ascended loot — and defeating all nine earns the Ultra Slayer feat.

The Four Maps

🛡 The Arsenal Control Console

THE PROTECTOR is fought through a two-control Console beside the base — not by clicking the boss:

◧ POWER-DOWN lever — when the boss telegraphs DEFLECTION, flip this to silence your missile towers so nothing gets reflected. Ride out the window on beams, then power them back up.
⚡ OVERLOAD switch — beam / direct-fire damage charges the OVERLOAD meter. When it lights, flip the switch to collapse the Protector's shield — it's stunned and exposed for a burst window (power everything back up and dump), then the shield reforms. Deflection grows more frequent as its HP falls.

☠ Prestige Difficulty

Prestige is New Game Plus for a game you have already finished. It unlocks once you have cleared Wave 500 on every Regular map — Cosmos, Galaxy, Debris Field and Worm Hole. Nothing about it is required; it exists for players who ran out of game.

Pick a tier on the front page before you start a run. The skull row sits under the map picker — click the prestige emblem above it to fold the whole row away when you are not using it, and click again to bring it back. Whatever you have armed is applied when the run starts, so changing tiers mid-run does nothing until you restart.

Where it works

Regular maps first, then Expert. Expert maps already run their own mutator pool, bosses and hazards, so prestige on top of that was never a switch — it needed its own balance pass, and it has one now. One Wave 500 clear at P10 on any single Regular map opens prestige on every Expert map at once. Not all four, and not the Expert maps themselves: requiring all four would make the era a completionist gate rather than a difficulty one. P9 does not count — deep is not the top. The Labyrinth is endless to a hard ceiling, so a prestige clear there has nothing to mean. Selecting a map that cannot run prestige moves your tier back to OFF, so what the screen shows is always what the run will actually use.

The ladder — one per map

Tiers unlock in order, and each map has its own ladder. Every Regular map starts you at P1. Clear Wave 500 there at P1 and P2 opens — on that map. Clearing P1 on Cosmos does nothing for Galaxy; Galaxy still starts you at P1. Four maps, four independent climbs, which is also exactly what the four Prestige feats track.

Because the ceiling differs per map, each map remembers its own armed tier. Arming P3 on Cosmos and then looking at Galaxy will not disturb the P3 — come back and it is still there.

The tiers

Ten tiers, each strictly harder than the one below it. Every column below is read live from the game's own difficulty table, so this page cannot drift from what actually runs:

What the tiers actually change

The Locker — gear

Prestige runs drop gear: persistent equipment that lives in The Locker and carries across runs. Six slots — visor, suit, gauntlets, legs, thrusters and anomaly — in five rarities: Common, Magic, Rare, Unique and Mythic.

Every tier can drop every rarity. Nothing is walled off behind a particular tier — a Mythic can fall at P1. What changes with the tier is how often, and how strong it rolls:

That second column is the important one. An authored piece rolls as strong as the tier that earned it, so a Mythic that drops at P1 arrives near the bottom of its value bands and the same item at P10 arrives at the top. It means an early lucky drop is a genuine trophy without skipping you past four tiers of the game.

Uniques and Mythics only drop from Ultra Bosses, which is why the Ultra cadence above matters as much as the odds do. Guaranteed drops and ordinary kills can never produce one.

Feats

Each Regular map has a single Prestige feat in the Achievements panel carrying a ten-step track — the same ten rungs as that map's ladder. Clear Wave 500 on that map at a tier and its pip turns green; light all ten and the feat unlocks. Pips above your current rung on that map show as locked rather than merely unearned, so the track reads as a climb rather than a list of failures.

◈ The Expert Era

Prestige on an Expert map is a different economy, not a bigger number. Everything on this page exists only there. A Regular run at P10 will never show you any of it, however deep you go.

Three rarities above Mythic

The ladder runs Common, Magic, Rare, Unique, Mythic — and then Atlantean, Anvilegic and Infinity. The top three drop in the Expert era only, and they are where the affix caps stop being polite.

Sockets and gems

Expert-era gear arrives drilled. There are eleven kinds of socketable in three grades — Rough, Faceted and Pristine — and they drop from bosses on Expert prestige maps. Seat them in the Locker.

Moving a gem costs nothing. Pull one out and put it somewhere else as often as you like — sockets are never permanent, because a choice you cannot undo is a choice nobody experiments with. The only restriction is timing: exactly like changing gear, you cannot refit in the middle of a boss.

Upgrading takes three of one grade plus Vault currency and returns one of the next, of the same type — so an upgrade never launders a gem you did not want into one you did.

The gem tray appears in the Locker the moment Expert prestige does, and it stays there — you do not have to be inside an Expert run to look at what you own.

Heirlooms — four items that exist once each

Umbral Cabochon, Chromatic Tribunal, Relay Prism, Wayfarer Opal. Ultra bosses only, P6 and above, and once one is yours the game will never offer it again. They are not stat lines — each one does something no ordinary gem does, and there is exactly one of each in your collection forever.

Sets

At Anvilegic and above a piece can belong to a set: Regolith Claim (economy), Gearbox Phenom (clicks), Rift Surfer (tower damage) and Tight Ship (defence). Wear two pieces for the first bonus and four for the full one.

Each set is built around a way of playing rather than a slot, so committing to one is a decision about your build — not a checklist to fill in.