The Last Defense

Choose your hero

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Perks

Valor is earned only by winning a battle: more on harder difficulties and in full battles. Perks are dear: even the cheapest takes at least five won battles.

Hero paths

A second path changes how a hero fights. Unlock it once, then pick it on the hero screen.

How to play

• One road runs from your fortress to the enemy's. Each side has ten towers in five pairs. Both fortresses send soldiers down the road every 30 seconds. Pick one of three maps: The Walled Divide (one straight road), The Serpent Rift (it winds three times) or The Crescent Bastion (it curves around seven lands).
• Win by destroying the enemy fortress. Lose if yours falls. Towers fall in order: a tower can only be hurt once both towers of the pair in front of it are down, and a fortress only once all ten of its towers are down.
• The enemy earns gold every second and quietly spends it on stronger soldiers, more soldiers, raids and more income. A boss walks with its army every 5 minutes (a little less often on the longer maps), and every boss is stronger than the last. In the end they cannot be stopped: finish the job first.
• Right click to move your hero (it finds the way around walls). WASD or the arrow keys move the view; click the minimap to look anywhere (towers there can be clicked and upgraded), and Space brings the view back to your hero. On a touch screen, tap to walk (or tap the minimap) and the view follows you. Out of a fight your hero runs half again as fast on the road. Your hero attacks whatever is close and in sight; right click an enemy to attack only that one (it chases it). Skills: Q E R F G to start; skills bought at the shrine go on T Z X C (passive skills need no key). Press a skill, then left click where it should go.
• Fog of war: black is land you have never seen; grey is land you have seen but cannot see now. Your hero, towers, fortress and soldiers see around them. Enemies only show while something of yours can see them.
• Tall walls line the road. They block walking and sight: nothing sees or shoots through them, not even towers. Big things block sight too (trees, boulders, houses, towers); small rocks and bushes do not. You cannot walk through their bases. Stand behind one and your hero shows as an outline.
• Click a tower or a fortress (on the map, or in tower control at the bottom right, which also moves the view there) to upgrade it: armor, health, damage, attack speed, regeneration and multi-target. Your fortress also has the barracks: stronger soldiers, extra soldiers in every wave, and raids. Right-click a soldier or the raid button to keep buying it whenever you have the gold. A fallen tower can be rebuilt with gold, back at level 1.
• Stairways lead off the road into seven lands. Their creatures run from level 1 (land 1) to level 75 (land 7), weakest near the stairs and strongest deep inside, with a champion at the far end. Camps pay gold and experience and come back 90 seconds after you clear them. Deeper creatures pay far more gold: a level 75 creature is worth about 300 level 1 creatures, so the best items are bought with gold from the deep lands. Creatures that walk back home keep their wounds.
• The forge: weapons marked with a hammer can be forged together. Two weapons and a forge fee make a much stronger one, and those make stronger ones again, up to six forged legendaries with powers of their own. Right-click any weapon in the shop or in your slots to see its recipe: what it is made from (ticked where you own the part) and what it forges into. Gold you spent upgrading a part comes back when you forge it.
• Consumables (shop, Consumables tab) go in their own bag of 3 and are used with 1 2 3: healing potions, elixirs, swiftness, a sight ward, and a teleport scroll that takes you to any of your towers or your fortress after 2 seconds.
• Shop with B at your fortress (items, upgrades and the skill shrine) or at the traders in lands 2, 4 and 6 (items and upgrades). H takes you home after 2 seconds standing still, and your fortress heals you quickly while you stand by it. Every level up gives a pick: open them with L when you have a moment.
• The command bar along the bottom: the minimap (bottom left), your hero (click the portrait for level-up picks), your stats (white is your hero, green what your gear and talents add; + shows every stat and your item sets), health and skills, your 9 items and the bag of 3, then gold, the shop and tower control.
• The mouse wheel, or + and -, zooms in and out. Settings, Controls and camera: scroll and zoom speed, scrolling at the screen edge, and WASD for the hero instead of the view. The battle saves itself every two minutes; save your own copy from the pause menu.