A list of things I've been thinking about the game as I pursue consistent Threat 10 wins Intro Hi all, I've been wanting to write a guide as I climb the ranks and watch some YouTube videos. I haven't managed to consistently beat Threat Level 10 yet, but I have some thoughts I want to put down on paper to share with others. Kings One of the main mechanics is playing to the strengths of your selected king. Each king gets a set of 3 active abilities, and a set of 3 "quests". The quests are conditions that, when met, give you an instantaneous boost in resources and power. Since one of the main gameplay mechanics here is tempo -- when are you strong, when are you investing in future strength, and when are you just struggling to survive? -- these quests can become lynchpin moments in your strategy. Or, sometimes, you more or less ignore them, or they're passive bonuses. It depends on the king, and it all becomes something you plan around when you start a run. Some kings' abilities require or produce certain resources. Meanwhile, certain unit types also require those resources. As a result, certain kings lean naturally into certain unit types, since you're already more or less required to invest your economy into making that. Take a look at what resources your abilities require, and prioritize gameplans that work around them. Baldwin Baldwin is the economic king. His abilities generate additional resources, accelerating you along the curve that leads from low production and trash units to power. His quests aren't too important... One of them nets you a 400 bonus wood if you manage to destroy 15 trees (which is awkward to achieve... requires Tornado / Deforestation / Fissure spells). The other 2 grab you artifacts, with variable random bonuses, after beating bosses. Baldwin is a comfortable, all-rounder king. He can complement most strategies. The ability to create a constant drip-feed of peasants has niche uses in Grunt builds and as meat shields for a strong backline, but don't forget, 3 Peasants is always a 3% boost to all production. Leonid Leonid is built around Meat and Wine. With 15 Wine he can activate every tile on the board, which is quite powerful at the beginning of a high-threat-level run when the board is covered in junk tiles. (Those junk tiles are more or less half of a basic production tile each... If you manage to clear them all rapidly at the start, by say comboing Leonid's ability with the Julian advisor, it can rapidly accelerate your early economy.) His Meat ability provides +100 max and current HP to all your units on the board, and his passive provides a chance for units to spawn with double HP. At first glance you might think this complements a selection of high-HP units, like Bumblebees (which his 3rd quest produces an instant army of), or Militia. At lower threat levels this works great... At higher threat levels, I think the play is rather to go for high damage units, and let the HP production he can supply counteract the squishiness. I've had runs with Leonid where I literally had 3 simultaneous waves of enemies on the board, because my units just wouldn't die, but neither would the enemies. At Threat Level 10, look to invest in strong sources of damage, and let the HP bonus cover your weakness, not amplify a strength. Leonid has snowball potential with his Meat ability, but it's a hard road to winning Threat Level 10 with him. It all comes down to Tempo... When do his quests trigger? When do you get your "final" army that you can continue to heal, and amplify with Meat? Or what do you consider expendable in your army, and when? He's a tricky one to play well. There's also the issue of the 2-tile starting Gaze, which sucks but is offset by his +15% production bonus. He may be intended as a complement to Baldiwn, as the default "military" king vs. Baldwin as the "economy" king, but in practice... I find him hard to make shine. Leo No need to dwell on Leo, because many YouTubers have covered his strengths well. He was considerably OP during the launch of the game and won a nerf... It boils down to his ability to snowball rapidly past the early game by generating resources from Blueprints, which are a plentiful resource early-game and a scarce one late-game. He basically trades this early-game plentiful resource for permanent power & scarce resources. Playing him nowadays is all about keeping a steady supply of Blueprints without bottoming out on strength... The Research Tables are particularly important for him. For other kings, a junk roll on a Research table means either +5 or -5 Denarii, depending on whether you opt for a reroll. For Leo, that becomes permanent damage, production, and boost of resources. Keep those Morale boosts flowing, and Leo snowballs into good strength fairly easily. Brezhnev Brezhnev is the healer king. I think of him as like what King Leonid wants to be... His first ability is a large heal for the cost of water, and his first quest nets him two hospitals. I think he'll do well in the Graveyard, like when the acid rain strikes, and also under conditions in which your army size gets severely limited (like the 6x ghosts at the end of the graveyard). His third ability is the "bomb"... You place it on 2 units, and if those units die they go out with a bang. The damage of the bang escalates over about 5 seconds, so it's wasted on a unit that's about to die, but works well on front-line expendable units. Brezhnev is a very comfortable, all-rounder king who'll do well at high difficulties. Spellus Spellus is an oddball. His starter gaze has only 2 tiles, but he passively generates Crystals over time. Meanwhile his skills and quests revolve around making and expending spells. When I first tried him I thought of Spellus as one of the weakest kings, because spells have certain weaknesses. For one, they're generally poor against single tough enemies -- they shine when wiping out a large mob. For two, they fall off in endgame... A single spell can wipe an early wave, but it'll barely dent a 3rd boss one. That's when I learned about really mastering the use of each spell. A quick AoE like a Chain Lightning is a #1 pick on early waves, and a spell like Stun or Sheep might not do very much. But the 4-5 seconds that Stun spell buys you can be HUGE on a boss who one-shots each of your units, giving you the extra 5 seconds of DPS needed to finish him before your army dwindles to nothing. There are tricks to stockpiling spells, like using the College buildings with the upgrade that turns it into a spell choice. Then, as long as you're only holding 5 spells, you can save up the spell choices. There are also tricks on the Graveyard to casting lots of spells quickly, e.g. from the bonfire building the dirtbag first boss gives you. This can let you rapid-accelerate your first quest (80 of every resource), which will then let you rapid-accelerate the rest of the game. Finally, there's excellent utility in the unit-creation space to all the Crystals you'll be accumulating. If you don't want to spend them on a spell-making building, throw them to the Mushroom King advisor (HUGE to survive early game, and still useful at the end), or go for early Unicorns. Spellus went from "meh, seems quite weak" to probably my favorite king. Kings Ctd. Alucard There's just one thing you need to understand about Alucard. His most important ability is the one that upgrades Undead units. But it's only useful when you're pushing high level undead units higher. Meanwhile, the area of effect on it is just a circle, and your undead units are typically mixed together in an ugly mob. Take a second and use your mouse to get the circle over just your strongest undead units. Done correctly, you leap-frog the strengths and tiers of units you should have the field at any point of the game. Done poorly, your basic skellies turn into slightly-less-basic skellies, quickly die, and the ability was wasted. Do it right and Alucard snowballs hard... Do it wrong and you'll wonder what his abilities are even there for, even when playing on the Graveyard and shooting for Relics. Don't forget the free Wine you can get out of placing his first ability on a big mob of corpses. There are several Veteran Barracks buildings that require a chunk of wine to build, then make units with basic resources (Musketeers, Owl Druids for 2). Alucard is really happy with these units. Saladin Saladin is a little tricky to figure out at first, but once you get the pattern, he's straightforward. Having a large variety of one-off units = more power. To achieve this, you need unit capacity, but once you achieve it you get boosts in unit capacity, plus Wood which is what is spent to get more unit capacity. Focus on Barracks buildings with a small number of units, like Assassins, Bear Druids, and the like. Let your abilities fill in the remaining slots. You'll need to play with a very flexible, diverse economy to potentially support all those different units. But in exchange, the power boosts you'll get from having them, plus the sudden injection of strong units you get from your ability can lead to a comfortable game. Advisors There's a certain alchemy between picking your advisors and picking your king. There are some advisors I play pretty much every game regardless of the king, and there are some advisors that really shine on particular kings. Some advisors are there to smooth your early game, which is a critical time. The less stress you're under in the first few waves, the faster you get through the flattest part of your power curve and into the exponential growth portion. Some advisors are there to rocket you along the exponential growth portion. I like to try to pick a balance of advisors that help me in the early game and ones that help in the late. Here's a few that I find especially interesting. Ember Two Musketeers from Wave 1 is hard to pass up... I almost always take this guy. Unlike other early power spikes (like 3x Spells, or 3x Militia), you can keep these Musketeers alive well into the lategame. That's a constant stream of DPS against every single wave... Plus they'll singlehandedly carry the first wave or two for you. Keep 'em alive and the value of this advisor doesn't fade for a good long while. Phoenix 7% chance for a unit to rez after death is one of my favorite things to take on Leonid. Leonid's first ability involves pumping extra HP into your troops, but the day always comes when those troops you've been pumping up for 5 waves meet their match, and all that effort and Meat is wasted. When Phoenix procs in those moments, she really shines. Panther Panther enables a whole gameplan, which is getting the building which turns Wood into troop upgrades. Meanwhile focus on one unit type, or all unit types from a particular family (e.g. all Warriors or all Arcane), and you gain a way to acquire lots of power that doesn't require a large unit capacity. This is one of my favorite ways to counter the 6x Wandering Ghosts in the graveyard that are otherwise so painful. I like Panther a lot, but he's valueless in the early game, and also valueless if you don't plan your unit composition. Spinner Spinner puts a +35% boost on a random tile. The reason I sometimes like this is when the early game is going to be painful, like with the 2 Kings that start with just 2 squares in their Gaze. I typically design my castles with a set of tiles focused on production (often in the center), and a set of tiles focused on military, sometimes with a hybrid set of tiles with boosts for combat like Arenas or Hospitals. If that 35% tile shows up near the 2x 20%s you start with, great, you have a supercharged early economy. If it shows up far away, I plan my military complex around it. You don't realize how painful the -20% tiles that cover your castle are, and this guy really provides some relief for that. Flunkey Flunkey's more or less a must-take... 10 Denarii per wave adds up to a huge amount of value over the course of the game, and it's almost never wasted. If you don't see any upgrades or tiles you want, you can always just spend it on resources. Best of all, it's up to you, and padded against a certain amount of RNG. Sophie Speaking of padding against RNG... It's tough to play without Sophie once you unlock her. It can still be interesting sometimes to go without the slot and roll with the punches of the game, picking up some other advisor's boost in the process. But Sophie's great. Zeus I've gotten good use out of Zeus in the Graveyard. Graveyard has some waves that appear before the first boss with a single, extremely beefy unit like a Wretch. Zeus counters those nicely, which can otherwise be run-ending, especially if you're playing, say, Spellus. He can become value-less later and is generally value-less against a wave with a large number of enemies, but when he's useful, he's REALLY useful. Often worth the pick for one of your "Help me in the early game" advisors. Other scattered thoughts about surviving Threat 10 Like a lot of roguelikes and roguelites, this game is all about the growth of your power curve vs. the growth of the enemies power curve. There are things you can do to invest in your own future power, but if you dip too hard into that bucket and neglect current power, an unlucky wave can lose you the game. Vice versa -- if you focus on safety in the early game, you can be rapidly outscaled and overwhelmed even as early as the first boss. Threat 10 isn't really fair, so you have to either be relentless, lucky, or somewhat unfair yourself. Prioritize the first 2 Gaze upgrades, and let Advisors cover the early wave. Prioritize covering your entire production area with Blue tile upgrades. Don't spread things around... Try to work in a narrow area which you're upgrading, and only place down what you need to achieve the next objective. That means you have to be setting the next objective, all while watching the growth of enemy strength and determining whether you should be investing in growth or defense. To some extent you get the ability to modify the enemy's strength by selecting your waves, but to some extent that's an illusion of choice... Go too long without taking strong waves and you're likely to get outscaled later. Prioritze the establishment of a military somewhere shortly after the first shop, e.g. Wave 4-5. You might be able to get by on early spells and advisor boosts before then. However, on Threat 10, there's seldom a Levy Barracks-based military that won't be anything other than a death trap for you. Levy Barracks militaries can get you TO the 1st boss OK but seldom past it on Threat 10. So you typically need to leap-frog up to Veterans before the 1st boss, and likewise up to Elite before the 2nd. In order to achieve that, everything has to be maximally efficient. The runs I've lost, I usually look at my resources and find that I'm sitting on piles of something like Clay I never managed to use. Everything you earn needs to be invested into either survival or earning more... Nothing can be stockpiled, unless it's critical resources to make units (like Wheat typically) leading up to a boss, where you know you'll need to replace units. Finally, there's the choice of building around a planned army composition and forcing it with Sophie, vs. rolling with the punches to some extent of what the game hands you. I find the 2nd more fun, but I try to formulate some kind of plan (for what my economy will focus on, plus what my army will be) as I progress toward the 1st boss. Please share any tips you have to win consistently on Threat 10 if you've been able to achieve this! (Unless it's a narrow formula that's boring, like "play as King Leo, use these exact 6 advisors, and follow these exact 10 steps and pursue this exact army composition".)