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Max TD — field reference

The short version, for looking up while a run is going. If you have never played, the full guide walks through a first run properly.

What you are doing

Waves of attackers march at the tower in the middle of the screen. Every one that reaches it costs you a point of health; at zero the run ends. The tower fires on its own — you never aim, you never move. What you actually do is spend gold, and the whole game is the question of what to spend it on next.

Kills pay gold. Gold buys weapons, upgrades and income. Waves get longer and the units in them get tougher, so standing still is losing slowly.

Controls

  • Everything is a tap or a click. No hotkeys, nothing to drag.
  • The shop is the panel along the bottom. It stays open while you play, and buying never pauses the wave.
  • Hold a shop button to buy repeatedly — one purchase per second at first, then two, then four from the third second on.
  • Tap a weapon slot you already own to cycle its targeting mode. Each slot remembers its own.

The arsenal

Nine weapons, five slots. Prices below are the first purchase; speed and crit are bought per slot and get steeper each level.

WeaponClassBuy SpeedCrit
Laser Gunnormal 15050120
Flamethrowerfire 300200120
Ice Arrowice 450250150
Gold Towernormal 600250220
Ice Launcherice 1000350180
Poison Dartpoison 1000300200
Cannonfire 2500450250
Chain Lightningelectric 2500450220
Shockwave Cannonelectric 5500600280

Two of them are not really damage dealers. The Gold Tower barely scratches anything but mints gold on every hit — it buys an economy at the price of a weapon slot. The Flamethrower fires a cone that flying units simply pass over, so it wants a partner that can reach them.

Targeting

By default every weapon shoots whatever is closest, except Chain Lightning, which prefers bosses on its own. Buy Advanced Targeting for a weapon in the Tower Loadout and you can pick per slot:

ModeWhat it does
NEARClosest first. The default, and usually right when leaks are what is killing you.
FARFarthest target still in range. Starts damage earlier, so runners are already hurt when they arrive.
LOW HPFinishes wounded units. Turns overkill into extra kills — strong on fast-firing weapons.
HIGH HPFocuses the toughest thing on screen. Keeps tanks from soaking your whole output.
BOSSBosses first. Best on your single heaviest weapon.

Switching modes costs nothing once unlocked, and it often stops more leaks than another damage upgrade would.

The shop

Three tabs. GUNS buys and upgrades weapons, UPGRADES holds health and spawn speed, and ECONOMY is where runs are actually won.

Attack speed and crit

Speed is the strongest early gold in the game — more shots per second multiplies everything else you own. Crit gives a chance at double damage, and each level costs 1.5× to 1.8× the last while the benefit per level shrinks. Early on, speed is almost always the better buy.

Health and spawn speed

Health restores 10 HP for 100 gold — worth it when you are about to die, a waste otherwise. Spawn speed makes enemies arrive faster: more kills, more gold per second, and a much shorter margin for error.

The four income upgrades

Buy these early. A small tier bought in the first waves keeps paying for the entire run, which is why it earns back far more than the same gold spent late.

UpgradePays
Steady IncomeA fixed sum every 10 seconds, no kills needed. Keeps ticking while you rebuild after a bad wave.
Basic BountyExtra gold per normal attacker. Grows on its own as waves get bigger.
Wave BountyA lump sum per completed wave. Best on long survival runs.
Golden RushA large bonus per Golden kill. Pair it with crit or a slow so none of them slip past.

Damage classes

Every weapon deals exactly one class. From Stage 5 on, units start blocking classes — and every block has an answer. Armour is always immune to its own class, and one specific class cuts through it for double:

ArmourImmune toTakes double from
firefire ice
iceice fire
normalnormal electric
electricelectric poison
poisonpoison normal

Anything not listed deals ordinary damage. A doubled hit shows 2x over the weapon that landed it, and a critical counter-hit stacks to four times normal damage.

Reading the colours

A tinted unit always means class. On Stages 7, 8 and 10 the colour is the class that does not work. The one exception is a Stage 9 shield, where the colour is the class that breaks it.

MISS over a weapon means it is blocked. 2x means it is the counter — build around whatever is showing 2x.

This is why a single-weapon build stops working around Stage 7: one class is one answer, and the armour rotates.

What comes at you

UnitBehaviour
BasicStandard ground units. Slow and weak, dangerous in numbers.
FastOutruns your shots if your attack speed is low.
FlyingPasses over Flamethrower cones entirely. Laser or Chain Lightning answer these.
ShieldedSlow and tanky. Crit helps more here than anywhere else.
Golden ★Very fast, very tough, and worth 75 gold. Always the priority target.

Bosses arrive after a set number of kills, each one stronger than the last, and each one worth a large pile of gold. Early bosses move in wide circular arcs; later tiers scale harder and move less predictably. Stage 4 has its own Titan with a multi-phase path and a great deal of health.

The ten stages

StageWhat changes
1Tutorial ground. No bosses.
2Warm-up. Bosses and the full shop appear.
3The baseline run. Survive to wave 30.
4Everything twice as tough. Bosses every 1000 kills, plus one huge one: the Titan.
5Fire does nothing, ice does double — for the whole run.
6Electric does nothing, poison does double. The Lightning Boss takes only ice.
7Armour, one new type per boss kill.
8Each wave locks every unit to a single class.
9Bosses in pairs, plus class-locked shields.
10The legion adapts to whatever you used last.

Stage 5 — Trial by Fire

A stage-wide rule rather than per-unit armour: fire deals nothing at all and ice deals double, to attackers and bosses alike, for the entire run. Rushing an ice weapon is the whole plan.

Stage 6 — Eye of the Storm

Electric does nothing, poison does double. On top of that the Lightning Boss takes only ice — every other class bounces off it, and the poison bonus does not apply. A storm cloud also strikes once a minute: it steals one purchased upgrade level and stuns that weapon for three seconds.

Stage 7 — Armored Legion

Attackers unlock one armour tier per boss kill, always in the same order — electric, fire, ice, poison, normal. The run opens with electric only and each spawn rolls among the tiers unlocked so far, so the mix widens as you go. Golden units never wear armour.

The bosses run a fixed rotation, which means you can prepare:

BossImmuneWeak to
1sticefire
2ndfireice
3rdelectricpoison
4thpoisonnormal
5thnormalelectric

The fifth is the one that catches people: laser and Gold Tower do nothing at all against it. The sixth starts the cycle again at ice.

Stage 8 — The Void

Each wave a void shift names one class. Units spawned in that wave can only be hurt by it, and they keep it after the next shift. The rotation only uses classes you actually own — so owning more weapons means a shorter cycle and less time spent unable to hurt anything. The boss locks permanently to the class it spawned under.

Stage 9 — Twin Assault

Every fourth attacker carries a class-locked shield that absorbs all damage until one hit of the matching class breaks it. The class is always drawn from the weapons you own, so it is never impossible — just expensive in time.

Bosses come two at a time, each immune to a different class, in a fixed order. One well-chosen pair of weapons covers both halves of a pair:

PairImmunities
1stice + fire
2ndelectric + normal
3rdpoison + ice
4thfire + electric
5thnormal + poison

Five pairs is the whole stage — ten boss kills.

Stage 10 — Adaptive Armor

From wave 3 on, whichever class dealt the most damage last wave becomes the next wave's immunity. That armour is weak to its counter like anywhere else, and the immunity never repeats within three waves — so leaning on two weapons stops working, because every third wave forces a class neither covers. Bosses carry the same adapted immunity.

Fun modes

Rogue

No shop at all. After every wave you choose one of three upgrade cards, and the run becomes whatever the cards gave you. Ranked by kills on its own board.

Spiral Maze

Enemies walk a long spiral instead of a straight line, which makes range and slowing effects worth far more than raw damage. Also ranked by kills.

Potty Rush

Ten minutes, one tower, one weapon — the Gold Tower. Gold comes only from its hits. Ten bosses walk in, one every fifty seconds, and any boss that reaches the middle ends the run on the spot. When the clock runs out Giggli arrives: he cannot be killed, every point of damage dealt to him is counted, and when he reaches the middle the run is won with that damage as the score. The mode is one question — how much can you build in ten minutes?

Between runs

The Skill Tree

Diamonds buy permanent upgrades that carry across every run and every stage. Each weapon has fire-rate and damage paths; maxing both unlocks that weapon's endless Mastery tiers at +5 % damage per level. There are also health and regeneration tiers, starting gold, and an Environment branch that doubles wave bounty, triples Golden Rush and doubles steady income.

Diamonds come from every 1,000 lifetime kills, from achievements, and from account levels. Prestige adds two endless branches of its own.

Achievements

Daily challenges reset every 24 hours, weekly ones ask for 25,000 damage with a given weapon, and milestones are what unlock the stages — clearing Stage 1 opens Stage 2, wave 20 in Stage 2 opens Stage 3, and so on. Epics and secrets are the long-term goals and pay the largest diamond rewards. Nothing is paid automatically: finished achievements show a COLLECT button.

Account level

Every attacker killed is one XP, in every mode, and your level never resets — not even on prestige. The first levels come quickly (500 kills, then 1,100, 1,800, 2,600) and then climb steeply; there is no maximum. Level rewards grow with the level and wait in the Account screen until you collect them.

Leaderboards

Four boards. All Time and Weekly use points — kills multiplied by the stage, so Stage 10 is worth eleven times Stage 1, and each prestige adds another 25 %. Rogue, Spiral and Potty Rush have their own boards, so a huge run in one mode can never push you up another.

The week runs Monday 00:00 to Sunday 20:00 CEST. At 20:00 the board freezes for four hours: no new scores count, the final standings stay on screen, and the winner's avatar takes a blue shimmering frame. First place wins 20 to 60 diamonds — the amount is shown on the board while the week is still running. The winner is decided on the server, and the prize is collected from a popup in the main menu during the following week.

An account is optional. Without one you keep playing as a guest and everything stays on this device; with one your save syncs across devices and your runs reach the boards.

Things that win runs

  • Leaks break your combo. The multiplier climbs to 5× and multiplies boss gold. One leaked enemy resets it, which costs far more than the single point of health did.
  • Buy income in the first waves. It is the only purchase that pays for the rest of the run.
  • Get a second class early. Two classes cover far more than one heavily upgraded slot, and armour begins at Stage 5.
  • Targeting is free. Switching a slot to FAR stops runners better than another damage level would.
  • Speed before crit. Crit costs 1.5× to 1.8× more each level and gives less each time.
  • Endless is a choice. After a stage victory you can keep going for the leaderboard instead of taking the win.

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