I did a brief overview of the P2E mechanics of Crazy Defense Heroes shortly before. Hoping that this article will be useful both to Hiveans and those who naturally google for it, here it is: some tips from a fellow 35-level player. No VIP, no bullshite Crazy Defence Heroes guide (iOS, Android).
Towers, Spells, Heroes, Equipment
You start out with a really small deck: enough to introduce the core game mechanics. Before you can start to build a strong hand from aesthetically attractive—and efficient!—cards, you have to proceed through the Campaign far enough. There are some 30 Towers, 30 Spells, 20 Heroes, and 30 Avatar Equipment pieces to choose from, so style and creativity are welcome. Each card is unique in a certain way; it is impossible to rank them by DPS. Crowd damage, damage type, range, projectile speed, bonuses against particular enemies, and unique properties make each card more or less effective depending on a map and enemy type.
From the practical point of view, you need a way to dispatch fast & weak enemies, slow & strong & armored ones, and crowds. It obviously should influence your card choice: see which enemies slip through and adjust the hand accordingly.
You'll also notice that some cards do not synergize with the others. For example, if their attack interval is roughly equal then the second tower may waste lots of shots firing at an already dead enemy.
Always Scout a battle before jumping in. E.g., you might consider taking weaker physical damage cards if most of the enemies have 60% magic resistance.
Use a tiny round Robot button to auto-build a hand before a battle. It picks the strongest cards (and those fit for Clan Quests) and it's free.
Never use auto-battle in Clan Quests and other important battles, like Invasion battles. The AI is bad at spellcasting misfiring, wasting damage, and losing the perfect timing.
When I started to play, I wondered what the Sun, Moon, and Cloud card attributions have to do with the gameplay. Do I get a bonus if all of the cards in my hand have a Sun affinity, for example? In most battles, the affinity does not matter. In other cases, you will see the respective notice before a battle: "+30%🌞 -30🌜", "+20%🌜 -60%⛅" etc. It keeps players from building overpowered hands and adds flavour.
Resources, Gold, and Gems
Resources and Gold are used to upgrade Tower, Spell, and Hero cards. Each upgrade increases the card power at a constant rate (e.g. +0.4% slowdown power per level) but the upgrade cost rises. So what do we do considering that:
- the most cards you can ever hold in hand is 8;
- the most cards of each type (Tower, Spell, Hero, Equipment) you can use in Missions is 8;
- generalization is cheaper;
- certain events buff one card aspect (Sun, Moon, Cloud) and nerf another.
Ideally, you would want to upgrade 7-8 cards of each affinity in such a way that they overlap with 7-8 cards of each type. Not only it's complicated, it is nearly impossible on practice: some of the cards share the primary or the secondary resource for upgrading. Fully upgrading a hand that heavily relies on a certain resource would take much longer than a hand that consumes resources more or less evenly.
The only reasonable course of action is to improvise and adapt until your deck size allows for some freedom of choice. There is also an impressive knowledge base with card upgrade prices, tips, and detailed event descriptions for real geeks. Being a real geek myself, I started to fill in my own spreadsheet with all the game-related numeric data before I discovered that most of it had been already done.
My sheet was not completely useless though: I figured out the average outcomes of Raids and Scavenging, and some efficient ways to spend Gems and Gold.
Scavenging vs Merchant vs Shop Offers
Always grab Gold Chests for Gems when you see one on sale from Merchant. The first one costs 20 Gems and there's 90-150K of Gold.
Always grab Battle Chests for Gold. The first one costs 75K Gold.
See, if you buy a Premium Chest for 400 Gems, you'll most probably get a two-star card, a random one. Sure, there's a chance to get higher tier cards, but no one would disclose the possibility of this happening. So, a random 2-star card for 20 Gems is fine for me. Duplicates upgrade an existing card and move you towards a guaranteed 3-star card anyway: 20 duplicates cost exactly 400 Gems (if you stick to the cheapest offer) and they guarantee a 3-star card chest.Never accept an offer to buy a 3-star card for 3500 Gems.
Same reasons as above apply. Instead, when you get a nice 3-card that fits your strategy, accept a resource pack offer to upgrade it to rank 2.Scavenge for Gold, buy the necessary Common resources from Merchant (preferably just a few batches from the stock: it is cheaper that way).
Do not buy Rare and Epic resources from Merchant, request them from clan mates and Scavenge for them.
Gold is the bottleneck when it comes to card upgrades. 3-star cards take millions of Gold to move through a Rank, so it makes sense to accumulate it and abstain from upgrading a low-tier card just because it's cheap.
It also matters that Gold buys you the resource you need while Scavenging is fairly random: you end up with a pile of unused resources.Maximize the outcome of Scavenging: pick the areas that bring the resources you need right now plus the ones you'll need for a desired card later.
Do not buy upgrade materials for Gems from Merchant; spend 50 Gems for 50 Energy and run Raids more often instead. Not only it's cheaper Gem-wise, it brings XP and spare resources.
Chests and Quests
As soon as all the Quests are unlocked (up to the Nightmare one), disregard low-level Quests. Their objectives often overlap with harder Quests, say, "Kill 35 Enemies" and "Kill 350 Enemies". It makes sense to wait until all the Quests reset to spend Energy on the accomplishment efficiently. It also makes sense to abandon Beginner/Easy Quests if they do not fall in line with your plans and harder Quests.
A Nightmare Quest is where the rare valuables are; it resets once per 22 hours. Beginner/Easy Quests, on the other hand, are not worth bothering about. The same is true for a 4-hour Chest: sure, the devs want you to open the game as often as possible throughout the day and there are all kinds of hooks to force you to do so. They are the masters of psychology with their short-term and long-term goals, social motivation, and visual reinforcement; they are the dealers of serotonin and dopamine... I wish I could grind my job the way I grind this game for Jade and Aquastone...
The bottom line is, don't be their junkie. The game is designed to keep you involved indefinitely. Enjoy the process. There is nowhere to rush. Stop the moment you feel an obligation to watch every ad and open every digital chest for a handful of garbage resources. Grind is counter-productive in this case.
Gold and Gems best sources in Crazy Defense Heroes
- Scavenging brings roughly 1350 Gold for each point of Energy spent (on Gold-yielding locations).
- Check the first map of every available Raid. If the rewards include Gems, go for it.
Every other source of Gold or Gems is either worse or inconsistent. You get some substantial sums from Chests but it's rather like a slot game, to spark that, 'Wow, I want some more' moment.
To summarize...
The game appears to be more about time investments than skill. A few golden rules always work in battle tactics (diversify the damage types, consider the enemy and map specifics...) but you can always win with few heavily upgraded overpowered tower cards. Some campaign missions are challenging but the recipe of beating them is still the same.
If you're in it for TOWER tokens, you have to earn XP quite aggressively so playing at your own pace won't do.
If you're in it for fun – after two months of playing I can confidently state that Invasion events and Clan Quests are fun, challenging, and dynamic enough to get you interested if are, like me, a fan of Tower Defence games.
Dropping you a ref link for some Gold freebies right here:
https://crazydefenseheroes.gsc.im/88eqzkfT2d
Yeah. Now I'm done.