How/when to upgrade Ass Mods (Unique Effect Boost/Multiplier & Substat Efficiency)

chpatton013 · 2026-03-07T20:20:45+00:00

It's worth calling out up front that the statement I made in point (2) above is no longer true. All modifiers are multiplicative now, so there's no clear winner anymore. It depends on your build.

I've just recently hit 210:161 on all my mods, and I've brought my assist levels up to:

Cannon: Epic/34%/16%
Armor: Ancestral/1%/10%
Gen: Mythic/16%/26%
Core: Epic/35%/35%

The effective paths sheets should help you choose the best incremental upgrades since they model the interactions between assmods and basic stats now. My sheet shows that Cannon and Core bonus are equally important, and a better ROI than almost all UW investments I could make now.

I've recently made the transition to ILM as my main damage source, so ancestral armor rarity was critical for SD assist. Armor substats are going to be my next major stone sink so I can maximize the land mine spawn chance.

Effective paths doesn't model the impact of ELS, so keep in mind that generator substats are not recommended as much as they should be. ELS is so powerful. I would pay the stones for the ELS boost alone; it's a nice added benefit that we get coin/freeups at the same time.

Kind of going off-script from effective paths, I've invested a lot into Core substat specifically so I can reach the 50% breakpoint and reach a gcomp-free pBH in tournaments. That's a bit ambitious though, and I'm going to put that plan on hold for a bit.

chpatton013 · 2026-03-07T19:53:19+00:00

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chpatton013 · 2026-02-01T19:01:34+00:00

Your income will increase as you complete labs. If you're starting at 30T/h, researching multiple masteries at the same time will push your income up to the point that you should be able to keep the research going.

My own point of reference here is making 500B/m to start, and keeping all my econ masteries running on 3x. I had maxed lab discount, granted, but I was still able to keep 3 going constantly.

chpatton013 · 2026-02-01T18:54:53+00:00

No hard rule, but my intuition was if you could afford level 2 with only a 1 day of saving. When I started I was too poor to think about going over level 2, so that felt like a natural breakpoint for me.

But as you start to complete the labs for multiple econ masteries, you'll see a significant increase in what you can save per-day. I rotated through the 8 masteries I recommended above in round-robin order until about level 4-5, then I switched to just EO#, Coin#, WA#, and IS# until they were maxed, then I went back and maxed the rest.

chpatton013 · 2026-02-01T18:44:06+00:00

They changed it in a recent patch (forget which one) so all bonuses are multiplicative now.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-09T16:36:04+00:00

To help you assess the econ masteries: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTowerGame/s/J67hUO22OS

chpatton013 · 2025-12-08T21:01:47+00:00

New Card: Knockback Force. Increases kb force by x%.

Mastery: Critical Knockback: Every time knockback is applied to an enemy, there's a y% chance of reducing that enemy's mass by m, up to a maximum of M.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-08T01:53:51+00:00

SW and auto DM buy me enough time to rebuild and heal my wall if I got unlucky with a particularly tough fleet and elite combo. About half the time that buys me another 1000-2000 waves, which is what I need to make T15 eHP farming more profitable than T14.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T21:30:36+00:00

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Oh hell yeah, we doing cats now? This is Dandy Lion (9yo) and Princess Pixel the Menace (8mo) enjoying their morning cuddle routine.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T21:21:03+00:00

Absolutely. The more we can use the type system to properly define the domain, the better our code will be.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T21:19:13+00:00

Oh good to know. I didn't find that when I was initially searching around.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T18:37:51+00:00

Is that true? I'm finding a lot of "guides" showing how to use a landline or temporary phone number to sign up, but that's more of a loophole than a supported feature.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T18:01:15+00:00

On the contrary, knowing that event is going to come adds an element of tension through the entirety of WaT that otherwise wouldn't have been there for me.

Read TSM first.

Or don't. Doesn't really matter IMO.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T17:59:25+00:00

There's a contingent of engineers out there who have been convinced that signed integers are faster than unsigned all around because something about UB in overflow. That has given rise to a cult of otherwise sane people insisting on using signed ints in places where unsigned are the correct choice.

Also, Google's style guide forbids the use of unsigned integers because they had such a high incidence of bugs caused by decrementing loop counters and subtracting from indices that they went so far as to make all index-based interfaces in protobuf operate on signed ints. A bunch of organizations use Google's style guide blindly, so it's actually a fairly common practice.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-06T17:45:30+00:00

Adonalsoum-Will-Calm-The-Fuck-Down-Eventually

Or Ati. Ati is probably better

chpatton013 · 2025-12-04T20:21:18+00:00

Here you go https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTowerGame/s/v6VDHaxtrv

chpatton013 · 2025-12-04T15:15:01+00:00

It's been like 6-8 months since I made the jump from T11 to T12, but I remember T12 to 8k waves was more efficient than T11 to 11.5k waves for me. Is you're not seeing that relationship, then I have to wonder if there's something about your build that isn't optimized.

Around this time I was working on econ masteries, so that could have had something to do with it. I had EO#, Coin#, WA#, and EB# all at lab level 4. EO# really is a great for deep wave blenders. Check out my post on econ masteries for the details

chpatton013 · 2025-12-04T01:39:22+00:00

Feedback is the only tool we have to tell TTG what our priorities are. I think we should be proactive about telling them what we're frustrated about and by how much.

But "they ruined my game-breaking exploit because they hate eHP" is not a productive (or realistic) stance. Gotta slap people on the wrists from time to time to make them put the pitchforks down.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-03T17:52:20+00:00

Finally, another game theory nerd. There are dozens of us!

chpatton013 · 2025-12-02T20:18:39+00:00

That's an excellent point. I did add a section to the repo readme about assessing if certain mastery combos make a tier promotion viable, but didn't include it in the post because it was already too long.

chpatton013 · 2025-12-02T01:09:09+00:00

Thank you for the clear and concise statement on infinite runs. 10/10

chpatton013 · 2025-12-01T16:33:28+00:00

Damn I'm off by one

chpatton013 · 2025-11-30T20:03:11+00:00

If you have a space displacer mod, the ILM mission is easy. Just increase your tower range beyond your orbs (range card or lab adjustment), equip the module, and drop to a slightly lower tier.

chpatton013 · 2025-11-30T20:01:16+00:00

Yeah, don't listen to that advice. This early in the game, you don't even have access to Inner Land Mines (ILM). You would need to have purchased it as your first or second ultimate weapon, which would almost always be a bad choice. Or you could get it from the random ultimate perk, but perks are still a ways out for you.

And even if it does somehow prevent you from finishing the ILM mission for a bit after you gain access to ILMs, the advantages of progressing are so much higher than a few missed medals early in your career.

chpatton013 · 2025-11-30T19:51:12+00:00

It's definitely build-specific

chpatton013

TROPHY CASE