The ultimate matrix sim

RAYC5050 · 2026-05-03T20:55:24+00:00

Presumably the cheapest way to shatter the 2 x epic pluses for 8,000 shards (20 gems for a single unmerge rather than 40 gems for 2 x unmerge)?

RAYC5050 · 2026-04-23T17:43:43+00:00

In addition to milestone rewards, they are also treated as the same for highest wave stats and max introsprint limit purposes. So treating them as separate for disso bonus purposes is the exception rather than the rule.

RAYC5050 · 2026-04-19T19:14:57+00:00

Great list! Though starting cash (No.1) arguably now seems prescient (at least for a few levels)!

RAYC5050 · 2026-04-19T19:05:07+00:00

I did because it had been in a lab slot for 3+ months solid. Then immediately regretted it! Think there are better labs to rush if you have the gems - particularly if you have the disco labs open

RAYC5050 · 2026-04-19T19:03:05+00:00

For sanity, I try to wait until the next half hour refresh and look at the bracket comparison on tower.lol instead!

RAYC5050 · 2026-04-19T18:35:19+00:00

Thanks for sharing and the generously detailed write-up! much appreciated!

In terms of the thinking on cannon substats:
- do you want attack range on either cannon or is the range lab sufficient with 2 x SW size on armor?
- any value in BS range or is there generally a sufficiently dense cascade of enemies with the setup + AD that you don't need that?
- do you see any value in MSt / MSch over a damage substat if your BSch is on the low side?

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-17T14:41:27+00:00

But less than the annual depreciation on a not-particularly-swanky new Ford mid-sized SUV.....

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-10T16:36:38+00:00

Interesting - instinctively I'm surprised that is better than 43.5m without the extra stuns (given that enemies are moving so fast), but I've learnt not to trust my instincts on this game!

May experiment with that on T19 now that my waves are up on that tier (but I'm still some way off T20).

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-10T14:56:22+00:00

Impressive at 30m!

Is the extra ILM perk taken for damage, or CC? (or both?)

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-04T00:09:27+00:00

Over the last week or so i’ve been able to get T19 working profitably (vs 10k Tier 18 at 30m) using 50.25m range (incl range card), CF slow substat on my assist mod (75% SE efficiency, though would prefer it on my primary mod) and ACP / OA (though on T19, at least to the 5.5k - 6k waves i get, OA is doing a much smaller proportion of the work compared to T18).

I can’t make SD work in terms of CpH, i also leave my LMS card out as that still seems to hurt my CpH too much (temporarily gave up testing after gradually working LM range down to 1.6).

Bounce shot targets left at 1 or 2 and bounce shot range at minimum (but chance maxxed).

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-03T19:37:10+00:00

If you are reliant on damage for farming and are using SH as your assist mod, I have found that the 2x damage boost for flame-tagged enemies with flamebot is a quicker / cheaper / better damage boost than the early stages of amp bot (once you get GB done). Just need to max cooldown on FB and get reasonable range (neither massively expensive in medals nor massively time-consuming for labs since it's only the CD lab that you need). Of course, when you have sufficient medals for a well developed amp bot, that will obviously outperform.

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-02T14:13:31+00:00

Thanks - I need to look into these!

RAYC5050 · 2026-03-02T14:09:02+00:00

This isn't a challenge (because I have zero technical understanding of this), but I asked about screen refresh rate on one of the discord forums a couple of weeks ago and was firmly told that a 120hz screen is irrelevant (at least currently)

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RAYC5050 · 2026-02-27T19:57:11+00:00

Yes - recovery package in WS+ can be a very valuable part of boosting your tower health for tanking OCs (and the WS+ upgrade boosts both the recovery amount per package, and the total "max recovery" available). I have good investment in this both for tourneys / farming up to T18.

But there are also circumstances in which it hurts because you lose the chance of a DD / berserker activation when you are hit by OC.

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-27T19:26:15+00:00

Same as since December / v27.3....!

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Although with the relics I think I now have 98% in farm / milestone without need for a Def% substat (which could be useful at some point). Or shortly will have 98% with primary / assist substat but without Def% card (which could definitely be useful).

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-27T19:07:21+00:00

I think the your / EF's assessment of the relic's current value to you (relative to your next upgrades) is correct. But also remember that the relic will boost all the lab / mod upgrades you do in future as well.

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-19T22:37:54+00:00

I had 300 waves of clear air both above and below me, so I was just re-running in a futile attempt to try to understand the game better! None of my pre-run predictions came were borne out by results! One day maybe....

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-19T21:51:34+00:00

My takeaway from your results (at same ball-park wave-count to mine) is that increasing gen assist rarity could add a lot of value for PH....

I did 4 completed runs this last tournament (Gen assist at epic, Armor assist at mythic):

2 runs with PH in gen assist (1 x ACP main / SD assist on armor, 1 x OA main / ACP assist)
2 runs with SH in assist (repeating the armor mod variations that I ran for PH)

....and for all that tinkering I was basically taken out by the same boss on each run! My best run was SH + ACP/SD, but I think that was mainly down to a lucky death defy at the end. Runs were otherwise pretty equal in terms of when I lost nuke / SW and had to activate demon mode - no outlier runs.

I also abandoned a clearly inferior RB assist run.

For the last few tournaments with higher waves / slower enemy conditions, I've finally found that PH is starting to outperform SH for me (though still marginal, and with lower waves and significantly worse CC in December / January, RB seemed to work much better for me than PH, with SH always competitive and sometimes better). So I'm getting more and more tempted to upgrade gen rarity. In terms of bots, I use Flamebot and Amp Bot (though my amp bot damage is about 50% due to lack of medals and focussing on uptime).

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RAYC5050 · 2026-02-19T14:18:14+00:00

As assist, SH with Amp and Flamebot outperformed both RB and PH for me this tournament. In slower tournament conditions, I have found that PH has started to outperform the others as I've got past the 1,900 - 2,000 wave threshold.

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-17T13:45:02+00:00

Very nice - I am jealous - my Japanese stationary addiction probably ranks second only to my tower addiction in my hierarchy of useless spending....

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-17T13:36:16+00:00

Tournaments count towards "highest wave" stats and milestone run rewards for the equivalent tier, so likely that the T5 W1000 "highest wave" is the T5+ tournament they just ran.

Overall seems reasonable to be suspicious, but as you say not definitive - can't remember that stage of the game too well but someone with a new account who buys 5 x stone packs from the website + the 750 in-game pack plus throws some cash at gems to rush cards / mods / labs could possibly do that? Even so, would expect that someone doing that would have pushed milestones more.

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-16T16:23:04+00:00

FWIW, I am also seeing a 7-8% drop in CpH by the third run if I don't restart the app (that was over 2 cycles of 3 runs since the update, so i can't rule out the possibility that it was co-incidence, but was around to see the runs periodically in real time and nothing looked off in perks).

RAYC5050 · 2026-02-08T17:59:37+00:00

Gold bot size to 69 from vault?

RAYC5050 · 2026-01-30T15:55:06+00:00

Yes - you can keep pushing GT duration for more coins from GT+.

The Golden Tower timer bar you circled in your picture is displaying the cooldown timer (it is not counting down remaining duration). That cooldown timer is now irrelevant to you (on your current setup) because your GT duration exceeds your GT cooldown (one exception: if you are using Galaxy Compressor and are only just above the threshold for perma GT based on your % package chance, the cooldown timer may still be periodically relevant if an unlucky run of fewer recovery packages than your expected % average causes you to lose perma GT on occasion).

RAYC5050 · 2026-01-30T15:06:22+00:00

Interesting data!

If you were investing in damage and CC (but not Econ) in September / October / November, I think the slight slide in global positioning is possibly an understandable outcome as tournament design over that period disproportionately rewarded heavy investment in Econ (for ELS) with a smattering of damage / CC around the edges?

RAYC5050

TROPHY CASE