Campaign Guide

The ladder

Campaign stages are procedurally authored: each has a biome, a wave plan, events (elite rushes, boss gauntlets, genome caches, mutation choices) and milestone bosses. Depth is the master progression gate — new towers, cards and systems unlock as you clear stages.

Battlefields

Every stage is fought on one of 13 battlefields — twin lanes, an open maw, a maze-like coil, broken walls, flank funnels and more. Stages 1–3 use fixed maps chosen to teach; deeper stages roll a battlefield that suits their biome and never repeat back to back. The stage preview names the map before you deploy: split lanes want towers that cover both mouths, mazes reward long range, funnels reward splash.

Replays, Threat and Hive Intelligence

A stage you have cleared becomes a replay: it still pays progression, Hive Intelligence can run the routine Biomass purchases for you, and the Threat picker lets you climb 10 rungs of named difficulty for titles, profile frames and a little more reward. Your frontier stage is always yours to play by hand.

The opening, and the Hive that adapts

A run is no longer decided in its first thirty seconds. Fliers stay out of wave 1 and arrive only in small numbers in wave 2, a stage’s Mega surfaces with wave 3 rather than on top of your opening build, and on deeper stages your free first organism is one that answers the stage’s opening threats.

The pressure comes later instead: from wave 4 (and from Stage 4 on), and on every boss, the hive answers your snowball. It reads your whole board — your Power, what you have invested in it this run and how many towers you have fielded — and answers with waves that are tougher, denser and faster, so a strong board meets a real fight without the wave dragging on (the briefing shows ▲ ADAPTED ×N). Part of that answer is a probe: the hive grades every tower you field on reach, area damage, armour pierce, burst and control, and sends the enemy role your board is thinnest against — artillery that outlasts weak burst, sprinters past thin control, flier packs past missing area damage, armour against low pierce — and the briefing names it before you launch (⌖ ARTILLERY · lacks burst). Your drafted gene cards never make it adapt harder, so a good pick carries the run. It only ever pushes up; a board that is behind is never propped up.

Confident in your board? Press ⏩ Call early (or Space) mid-wave to launch the next wave now for bonus Biomass. Waves overlap, and every called wave still pays its gene draft: it arrives the moment that wave's last enemy falls, and you go straight back into the fight after your pick.

When you hit a wall

The stage card warns you as under-powered only below 70% of its recommended Power — that is where runs are usually lost, and Home then suggests farming Infinite. Above it, the stage is within reach: push it.

A wall is information: it names the axis you have underfed. Check the recommended Power, bank a few genome tiers, star up your core towers, then re-attempt. Mutation-choice events are the campaign’s biggest swings — read both options before picking.

Milestones worth planning for

Every tenth stage is a Mega Boss raid — arrive with sustained single-target damage and a living hero. Boss stages telegraph their chassis on the map card: a juggernaut wants massed fire, a controller wants hero pressure, an artillery chassis wants your line spread so one shell can’t erase it. First-clear rewards are the campaign’s richest single payouts, so when you are close to a new stage record, spend your banked currencies BEFORE the attempt, not after.