This guide explains which towers do what when playing survival. For full disclosure, I play survival mostly on normal or hard – higher difficulties require strategies that focus less on endgame. Some, but not all, of the advice will carry to difficulties past hard.

This guide will assume that the reader knows basic facts about the game, all of which will be available in the in-game encyclopedia. Things like concussive damage being good against cybernetic but bad against biological, or the rough behavior and types of the 3 bosses (Behemok, Ravener, and Zorast). I also think of survival matches in 3 phases: Early game, from the start to the first bosses (15-20 minutes in), then midgame, then endgame, when creep health finally completely surpasses tower DPS (around 1:05, give or take ten minutes). Good builds and okay builds, assuming they survive early game, will behave near-identically until endgame, at which point proper DPS and slows will give you an extra 5-30 minutes.

This guide also assumes the player is using a custom commander. Unless challenging yourself in ways other than the gameplay, you should.

Here’s my loadout when I play single player:

• Towers: Missiles, Lasers, Radiation, Slow Goo, Speed Boost, Crit Boost, Inhibitor
  
• Support: Missiles, Mines, Fury, Overdrive, Execute, Fear, Disable

Here’s my loadout when I play 2p. Note that since you can’t control where your excess mass ends up, both players should have access to the tower(s) built most frequently.

• Towers: Missilesx2, Laser, Radiation, Pillbox, Flak, Teslas, Slow Goo, Turbulence, EMP, Speed Boost, Crit Boost, Range Boost, Inhibitor
  
• Support: Missiles, Laser, Executex2, Furyx2, Overdrivex2, Fearx2, Disablex2, Focus Fire, Instagib

Obviously, these are examples, not the end-all be-all of loadouts. There are plenty of towers I didn’t include, and plenty of alternate playstyles I ignored (such as power stations). I recommend you read what I’ve written below, read the in-game encyclopedia, and make your own judgments.

There are a ton of small tricks and optimizations to the general build strategies described below, but enumerating on the finer points of goo placement is not in the scope of this guide, nor something I'd feel qualified to attempt. Instead, I'm offering a quick overview for people that don't know where to start.

Obviously, this varies by map, and is mostly common sense. Try to find a spot where all creeps bunch up. Ideally, there will be a nice large staging area next to it, where you’ll be able to fit dozens upon dozens of towers. The more towers you can fit together into a giant amorphous blob, the more towers each boost can touch – and the more boosts each tower can touch.

Once you’ve found a good spot, start building. For purposes of this guide, the “front” of your build is the part creeps pass first, and the “back” is the part the creeps pass last.

Your build can cover longer sections of track, but it gets riskier as you do so. And make sure that the tracks from the front of your build to the back, or the kill-zone, are covered by inhibitors. This prevents HP and shield regen by all creeps. In rare circumstances you can control what towers fire on raveners through missing inhibitors, but in general, this advice is sound.

The bulk of your mass will be spent on DPS – meaning towers under the DPS header below – as well as on boost towers. I recommend towers like missiles, laser, pillbox, and flak forming the core of the build. Along the edges, place towers such as teslas, slow goo, turbulence, radiation, EMP, or flamethrower – things with small range, generally with area of effect, and affects you want to keep on the creeps as they pass.

I recommend keeping all towers to a grid. If you do not, then not only are you wasting space, but boost towers will not be touching 8 other towers around them, and thus will be wasting potential.

Here’s an obvious one many people forget: If you have an area of effect tower and a single target tower, place the aoe in front. That way, it will kill all of the small creeps so that your other tower can focus on the bosses. Similarly, in builds, I generally place piles of area of effect towers such as missiles and flaks before my piles of single targeters such as pillbox and lasers. Obviously, towers with secondary effects (radiation, tesla, goo, etc.) should be placed throughout your build regardless.

There are many patterns to use for boost towers. The best one I’ve found is very easy: You just build a line of boosts, a line of DPS towers, and then repeat. Each boost is touching 6 DPS towers (3 in the line above and 3 in the line below), and each DPS tower is in turn touched by 6 boosts. Here[cadenzainteractive.com] is some math (not by me) supporting this design.

If you build Speed-Crit-Speed-Crit one line, then swap it to crit-speed-crit-speed the next line, each tower is boosted by 3 crits and 3 speeds. This is the optimal DPS, as explained below in the boost tower description.

While towers in this section can have other effects (Radiation, Lightning, etc.), Damage towers refers to the towers that cost a lot and form the core of a build. DPS towers come in 3 tiers, costing 340, 366, and 390 mass for a level 3. Cheaper towers can be excused for being a bit worse, but the investment is similar enough that you should be getting roughly equivalent bang – especially considering that the boost towers you buy will be an equal added investment regardless of which DPS tower you build.

Pros:

• Very high damage
  
• area of effect
  
• Fairly long range (85)

Cons:

• Hits only air
  
• Weak against the only boss it can hit (ravener)

Flak Towers are solid at their job, if used correctly. They should be placed near the front of any build, so that they can use their area of effect on the largest number of enemies and, more importantly, weaken and destroy flying enemies so that your other towers can concentrate on more important targets. Best combined with turbulence towers, if you have enough slots.

Pros:

• Highest damage piercing tower capable of hitting ground and air
  
• Low Cost
  
• Solid Range, starting early (65, starts 55)

Cons:

• Single target
  
• Low damage for a straight DPS tower

Cannon isn’t a terrible building. With 500 higher dps, it would be one of the best weapons. As is, it’s good at killing Zorasts.

Unfortunately, many other towers that cost only marginally more are significantly better at it. Skip this one.

Pros:

• High effective range
  
• Highest damage concussive tower

Cons:

• Single Target/Split Damage
  
• High Cost

Drone towers are decent, but in my mind always the runner-ups for concussive dps. With no significant redeeming features, I see them as strictly worse than missile towers, and as such should be replaced by missile towers in any build. As essentially a DoT (Damage over Time) tower, synergizes well with inhibitors.

Pros:

• Powerful DoT
  
• area of effect
  
• Cheap
  
• Stacks with different levels

Cons

• Low Damage
  
• Short Range (35)
  
• DoT cannot penetrate shields

The flamethrower is tricky. Like all area of effect towers, it should be placed at the front. However, as survival gets underway, more and more creeps at the front gain shields. And if placed at the back, of course, it’s not using its area of effect.

Flamethrowers are not bad as dps frosting on an already-solid build. I never take them when I solo, see them in 2p games, and see them often in 3p games. Like all DoT, synergizes well with inhibitors.

Flamethrowers apply a “burn” affect corresponding to the level of the tower. This means that a level 1, 2, and 3 flamethrower can all burn the same creep, so that it has 3 burn effects on it at once (obviously the level 3 one will be stronger).

Pros:

• Highest damage heat tower
  
• Instant damage
  
• Medium-long range. (65)

Cons:

None worth noting.

The tower that serves as a standard, and with good reason. Medium cost, medium-high range, and fairly high damage. For any build that needs high heat damage – in other words, any build having trouble with behemoks, which is all of them – the laser tower is indispensable if used right.

Pros

• Very long Range (120)
  
• Powerful stun
  
• Electrical Damage

Cons

• Poor Targeting Algorithm
  
• Low Damage

On paper the lightning bolt tower is perfect: Sure, it doesn’t deal as much as many other DPS towers, but the damage is of a type that nothing resists. More importantly, it keeps the mobs in place so it can kill them! Just lay down a line, boost, and go to town.

However, the lighting tower has one huge flaw preventing it from being a dps backbone. If you place one, it will always target un-stunned enemies, which is fine. If you place multiple, they will often volley at the same time, and all hit the same enemy. This means that 5 lightning bolts in one spot will often do as much slowing as 1. As such, lightning should be used sparingly, and is not a replacement for DPS towers – although it is amazing when a boss gets focus fired.

Many people place lightning towers apart from their normal build, and leave them lying about at level 1. Evaluate whether their upgrades are worth the money, especially if placed away from your boost towers.

Pros:

• Area of effect
  
• Good Damage

Cons:

• Ground Only
  
• Inaccurate

A tower with all right damage, if every bullet hits. There are better towers.



Pros:

• Long Range (90)
  
• High Damage
  
• Area of effect
  
• Stuns Targets (-20% speed)

Cons:

• Wasted missiles on creep death
  
• Spreads damage (no lock-on)

Missile is a great tower, and the bread and butter area of effect DPS tower of most builds of mine. The cons, while both bad, also work to lessen each other in a way – since missiles fly everywhere, fewer are wasted when each individual creep snuffs it.

Missile towers are far and away the best concussive DPS tower. Drones cost more, are single target, and can’t stun. Mortars have plenty of disadvantages as well. Make heavy use of missiles, especially in the front of a build, where area of effect counts for the most.

Pros:

• Large area of effect
  
• Very long range (135)

Cons:

• Absurdly long fire time – can miss, mob can die while firing
  
• Low Damage
  
• Expensive
  
• Long minimum range
  
• Ground Only

The only concussive tower that can’t hit the cybernetic boss. When building a mortar tower, ask yourself: Why am I not building missiles instead?

It's actually P-T. I lied.

Pros:

• Highest damage tower that can hit ground
  
• Cheap

Cons

• Range on the lower side (52)
  
• Splits damage among all targets in range

Pillbox tower is easy to use decently, but very hard to use well. As a tower with no area of effect, it should be in the back of your build. However, if placed up front, its high piercing damage can make short work of Zorasts. Pillbox is a very strong tower if used with focus fire. In the hands of a commander skilled with focus fire, it can even be range boosted. Otherwise, range boosting is detrimental, serving only to dilute its dps by attacking unintended targets (you DID place it in the correct spot to start, right?).

I place these in the back of the builds, and place flak in the front, to befit their respective area of effect natures.

Pros

• Area of effect
  
• Applies defense debuff
  
• Applies a DoT

Cons

• Low range (40)
  
• Poor targeting algorithm

Radiation towers are essential to any of my builds, just like missiles.

Radiation towers don’t quite make the calling as heat’s central DPS source, although they do hit land and air, and their damage is decent (1k area of effect at level 3). Instead, they serve as souped-up flamethrowers, applying radiation to anything they hit, which deals damage over time and weakens the creep’s defense while the radiation drains off. I consider them better than flamethrowers in nearly every situation. Place them periodically throughout your kill zone to weaken enemies.

Like all DoT, radiation towers synergize well with inhibitors, which prevent mobs from healing. This means that if an area is well inhibited, the players can place radiations and flamethrowers down otherwise unused areas to soften up enemies. It also synergizes better with speed boosters than most DPS towers, since increasing its rate of fire will increase the speed of its radiation application, increasing the debuff’s effect and duration.

Pros:

• Ignores Shields
  
• Long Range (120)

Cons:

• High Cost
  
• High Minimum Range
  
• Low Damage

If any tower other than a railgun tower tries to kill the same creep, it will attack the shields. This means that the only advantage of the railgun tower, the ability to ignore shields, is essentially nullified unless you circumvent shields through an all-railgun build. And good luck with one.

Verdict: The worst tower. Using the railgun tower demonstrates nothing but inexperience or masochism.

Pros:

• One of the only piercing towers to hit both ground and air.
  
• Area of effect

Cons:

• Low Range (40)

If you want a general piercing area of effect tower, use this. If you want a general piercing tower, use a cannon. If you want good piercing towers, grab the pillbox and the flak.



Pros:

• area of effect – The best kind, it hits everything in range.
  
• Slows targets

Cons:

• Damage isn’t very high
  
• Very low range (22)
  
• Expensive
  
• Ground Only

Tesla Coils are great, and extremely hard to use. Since towers can only be placed so close to the track, there are few spots on most maps where Teslas are beneficial – generally on the inside of tight curves. Although their slow isn’t as powerful as that of Slow Goo, the autotargeting nature of it means that they are still powerful – and the area of effect damage makes them all the more powerful if placed next to other, more powerful slows.

If you have range boosters, this is one of few towers that I unreservedly recommend you boost. Boosting a tesla’s range boosts its DPS significantly, since creeps remain inside its range for longer. In addition, you can make a large area of creeps slow, although I recommend tacking on some slow goos if you can for the extra 20% slowdown.

Teslas have one further merit. As long as there's a valid target within their range, they hit everything - ground, air, visible, cloaked, it doesn't matter. This does not mean that you can build pure tesla, because sometimes you have air around and no ground. It does, however, mean that if you build with teslas up front you'll have a lot less air leaking through. This makes the tower a solid DPS base, if situational.

I’ve used silos decently, but I’ve never seen a situation where I found my build was improved by using a silo damage base instead of another base. I’ve also never found a build that involved heavy amounts of both silos and other DPS towers.

If there is a way to get high scores using Silos, I don’t know it, so I won’t write them up, except to say that if you build them with massive numbers of crits and speed boosters they can be decently effective.

All utility towers are significantly cheaper than DPS towers. The 3 standard ones, which attack creeps, cost a total of 165. The two special ones have only one level, which costs 50.

Pros

• Damage comparable to some DPS towers at around half the cost
  
• Slows mechanical and cybernetic enemies

Cons

• Only damages shields
  
• Low range (34)

EMP towers are deceptively good. Their slow is Area of effect (on mechanical and cybernetic enemies) and stacks with slow goo. What's more, as long as a creep group is led by a mechanical or cybernetic tank, they don't have to individually slow everything in it, since the biological units will just play follow the leader. That said, slow goo slows more and works on all enemy types. EMP's only comaparative benefit is damaging shields, meaning that slow goos will be better in almost every way except for at the front of a build. One of the many examples of "Worse, but take both if you can." Recommended for 2+ players.

Pros

• Prevents enemy health/shield regeneration
  
• Reveals cloaked enemies

Cons

• If used wrong, can accelerate Ravener-based doom

There are three ways to kill cloaked creeps: Use only support (impossible as pure-damage support stops being viable 20-30 minutes in), use inhibitors, or use flares. If you use flares, 30-40 minutes in your hand will hate you. Do everybody a favor and build inhibitors.

The other benefit of inhibitors (besides slowing bikes) is preventing mob hp/shield regen. This means that not only can you have multiple killzones (or a spread-out killzone), but that you can place DoT towers basically anywhere. Inhibitors can be placed along a track, or built and then range boosted. Since they apply their effects equally to everything within range, range boosters will be a huge boon to their operation.

Pros

• More energy (+5), faster energy regeneration (+5%)

Cons

• Small change for 50 mass

Power stations and mass scraps are opposites of each other. I rarely find room for power stations in my build. For the price of a speed booster, I build three for 15 energy. Yay.

In a game with many people, somebody with the correct support loadout can take power stations and be the support guy. He can’t build only power stations, but he can build one every couple of minutes, which by late game will allow him to spam execute (the best support) and perhaps use a few others as well.

I'm still playing around with power stations, so edits pending.

Pros

• Nearly strongest ground slow in game (loses 5% to maxed lighting towers)
  
• Area of effect

Cons

• Range pretty low (40)
  
• Ground only

I’ve built builds that eked by on teslas, with maybe small help from lightning, but in general if you want slows – and you do – you want the slow goo. Slows goo, as an area of effect slow, will bunch up ground enemies for area of effect towers, keep enemies in tower range longer, make your towers require less turning time to retarget, and all in all lengthen the time from the time a creep enters to when it kills you. Pretty good for the price of a utility tower!

Pros

• Nearly strongest air slow in game (loses 5% to lightning towers)
  
• Area of effect

Cons

• Range pretty low (43)
  
• Air only

Turbulence are just slow goo for the air. To compensate for the relatively low numbers of air enemies, they have 3 more range and their damage goes from “negligible” to “piss-poor.” I recommend them in 2+ player games, to place along your build, especially near your Flak towers up in the front.

I’ll just write up the three boost towers in two groups: Range, and speed/crit. All boost towers cost 150.

Pros

• Increase damage in up to 8 towers nearby

Cons

None worth noting.

First of all: Speed booster is better than crit booster. A crit booster doubles the damage on 25% of shots, for a net DPS increase of 25%. A speed booster increases firing rate by 30%, as well as increasing turning speed, for a net increase in DPS of over 30% on most towers. Crit boosts can only stack 4X for a net DPS increase of 100%, whereas speed boosts would be increasing DPS by 120%+ and still have room for more.

There’s a ton of misinformation about how crit boosters are better on slower firing turrets because they deal more per shot. So? Crit booster on a laser does the same as a silo: 25% of your hits deal more. That’s a larger difference but you have fewer hits, so it procs less. 75% of hits at normal + 25% of hits at double = 125% damage regardless of your original damage or firing speed. Similarly, +30% firing speed is the same on both. I honestly don’t understand how people say this without being struck by how off it sounds.

However, don’t discount crit boosts entirely, because here comes math. If you place a crit and a speed boost on the same tower, its DPS is increased by 62.5%, better than the 60% of two speed boosts (boosts of the same type are additive). If you place three of each tower type, then the DPS of the lucky tower is increased by 232.5%, compared to the 180% of six speed boosters.

Thus, use speed boosts first, but use crit boosts as well. Try to hit each important tower with an equal number of both.

Pros

• Reduces idle time of all boosted towers
  
• Increases effect of inhibitors, teslas, radiation, slow goo, turbulence, flamethrower, machine gun, and shotgun towers
  
• Increase attack range for Drones
  
• Greatly increases power of focus fire

Cons

• Reduces single-target DPS of pillbox and missile towers
  
• Reduces reliability of other tower’s targeting (focus fire nonwithstanding)

This is going to be the most controversial part of the guide, as it’s where I find the most disagreements with fellow Sol Survivor players.

While I recognize that range boosters have uses, I don’t think that they should be applied to most DPS towers in the majority of common builds. The difference between a very good and a merely good build only reveals itself at the end, at which point all of your towers are firing constantly anyway. Assuming you have good placement of your towers to begin with, you are better off increasing the damage that they deal. That said, it will allow your towers in the back to start firing at endgame bosses earlier, which may allow you to kill a few more before they overwhelm you. It can also be useful if you have one extremely concentrated kill zone full of slows and radiations.

If your game goes on long enough, range boosters can help boost towers placed in suboptimal locations. In single player games, I rarely get into a situation where I need to do something like this.

The best use of range boosters is placing them around an inhibitor tower – with teslas surrounding the whole mess.

I am still trying builds with range boosters on my DPS towers. I have yet to call one a success.

Me being concise, haha.

Judging support in survival mode relies heavily on this rule:

Direct damage is useless in survival after the first half hour. For 20 minutes, creep health and support levels increase. Then your supports are at their max, and creep health just keeps increasing.

Thus, the best supports for endgame are ones that help your towers do more damage. However, 1-2 slots for damage supports can be reasonable, since your build will be least consistent in early minutes.

It’s recommended that at least half of the players in a game pack either laser or missiles. These two supports have general utility of killing anything you need and staying on the board as long as you need them, although the energy cost and cooldown go continually up after a few seconds. They are the best tool for killing early creeps about to leak.

Compared to missiles, hard to use and not significantly better. Like all direct-damage supports, useless after the first half-hour.

Compared to fear, affects a larger area and costs 5 less energy. One of the best support if used right, since it keeps enemies in your kill zone for a few extra seconds – unfortunately, very hard to use right, since by the time you realize you need it, and call it, it’s often too late.

For the energy, deals more damage than laser/missiles. The damage, however, is a bit hard to control if there are multiple creeps in range when dropped. More effective single-target than Mines, if the creep isn’t anywhere near your colony – Drones deal their damage over a long time!

Note that the drone support is piercing, while the drone tower is concussive damage. I assume this was a late-in-development balance change (even with it, there are 6 piercing towers and 3 concussive).

Possibly the best direct-damage support, one that remains somewhat viable for 40 or even 50 minutes. EMP deals a huge amount of shield damage to ground units. However, I never found room for it in my builds.

The best support (*for survival on normal/hard). Unlike most other supports, every player in a survival game should have execute. Every one.

Since it kills creeps based on % of health remaining, it scales with their own HP bars. Of course, it only works on enemies that are low when it’s called and remain alive for about 2 more seconds, so its best use is for killing bosses that stubbornly refuse to die for at least that long.

One of the better supports. Its effective area is smaller than disable, and it costs more energy, but it can serve to bring creeps back into your kill zone after they’ve escaped it. Learning to use fear involves things like never using it on cloaked raveners (plant an inhibitor so they sprint back), never slowing creeps if possible (use it while upgrading a slow goo, so the goo hits them when they turn back).

It’s rather expensive, as supports go, and as such isn’t essential. But I use it for the endame boss juggle all the time.

Incredibly expensive, one of the highest damage supports. In early waves, plant it before creeps reach your towers, and it will kill the smaller ones.

If you have 3-4 people, one can take along flares. But in general, you should have inhibitors placed when you need them. Flares do not prevent health or shield regen.

Makes all towers in range target the same creep, and gives a slight damage bonus. This is where range can make or break you – If you divert more than needed, you can let other creeps through. Also keep in mind damage types. If you have a behemok in the area of effect-based front of your build, don’t divert all of your missiles onto him, it just means everything else will get through as your missiles ineffectually bounce off of its hide. Instead, wave until it’s in the back of your build so you can hit it with your heat-based lasers or piercing pillboxes. This is one of the reasons careful tower placement is better than range boosters.

Worse than overdrive, but if taken as a set, they can massively increase DPS of a pile of turrets. Costing 10 energy each, these are viable until the point where the DPS of ~10 towers is negligible, which carries them for a while indeed. Forum posts by the devs imply that these supports are as powerful as the booster towers – that is to say, +25% crit (+25% DPS). Fury has a slightly larger range than Overdrive, which in my experience generally means I hit 1-2 more DPS towers with it.

Note that fury does nothing for towers crit boosted 4 times. That said, I’m not sure why you crit boosted something 4 times…

A fairly good damaging support, Gas would be a clear choice over firebomb if it cost 15. Lays a DoT onto a pile of enemies – try to use it early, ideally as soon as creeps enter your inhibitors, before they hit your kill zone.

If you build power stations, this is one of the obvious choices to take. Unfortunately, 20 energy for a shrinking fraction of a boss’s health is worse than execute’s 20 energy to kill multiple bosses.

When compared to missiles, laser deals heat damage (good against bio), moves more slowly across the ground to distant enemies, but always attempts to follow your mouse, and has an area of effect.

I’ve never found it justifiable to use a slot on mass scrap. I’m always out of energy when I lose, so why make that come earlier?

Note that I am specifically judging Mass Scrap’s viability for survival. It’s perfectly viable in other contexts.

Mines are, in my opinion, the strongest early-game damage. The trick to learning mines is not to drop them far in front of a group of creeps, making them explode on the front of the lead rhino, but dropping them so that they will activate with the group of creeps directly above them. If used correctly, mines can consistently cripple entire groups of enemies for the first 15 minutes, which is very good given their low cost.

Compared to laser, missiles don’t consistently hit the same enemy in a group if targeted at one, retarget more quickly over ground, deal concussive damage, have a slight lag time, and waste shots if used poorly (or the player gets unlucky when using it).

Like all damaging supports, the damage is all but useless after the first boss wave. Nukes also slap massive radiation onto creeps in an area of effect, which is nice, but I don’t think it justifies the cost of 2 executes.

One of the best supports – for only 10 energy, increases the speed of all towers in a decent area. Better than fury despite slightly smaller range, but best stacked with it, similar to how speed and crit boosters interact. Forum posts by the devs imply that these supports are as powerful as the booster towers – that is to say, +30% speed/DPS.

If you lack turbulence towers in your build, laying a tornado as fliers pass your flak batteries can make a huge difference. I rarely take tornado because I don’t think fliers are what ultimately do me in, but in multiplayer games with enough turret types for proper dps balance I’ve seen it used to great effect. If you have turbulence towers, it’s somewhat redundant, since (say it with me) the damaging part of the support is quickly rendered useless by huge HP pools. This makes it an air-only disable for only 5 fewer energy.

Thanks to the people that helped my hone my survival strategy and showed me their own, including but not limited to MikieDare, OldWeapon, Wisdom Wanted/Doctor-Kreepers, Exciter, XXIII, Medic, Rinkia, The Redeemer, Zman, and Rakista if he can lay off the Drone towers for one game.

Feel free to let me know how I helped and how wrong I am about range boosters in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Edit 30/7: Improved EMP's rating on finding it stacked with Slow Goo
Edit 12/10: Improved Tesla's rating on finding that they hit air and cloaked enemies.