Animoca’s iOS game, Crazy Defense Heroes, has got us hooked so far. With its simple mechanics, you can set up your defenses, play a variety of cards before and during a battle, and defeat all the enemies that pop up in your screen in a game that’s described as a combination of tower defense, RPGs, and collectible card games.
As we explained in the first guide, it’s a deceptively simple, yet deep game and there are more than 500 levels where you can test your ability to come up with the right strategy and place towers where they need to be placed/play cards at the time they need to be played. You can also join or create a clan, teaming up with other players and helping each other achieve your respective goals.
Not too long ago, we brought you a list of ten tips that you need to keep in mind if you’re trying to three-star levels as a beginner player — three stars, as previously explained, means completing a level without losing any hearts, or without allowing a single enemy to get away from the battlefield.
But as you reach avatar/player level 4 to 6, meaning the point of the game where you’re an intermediate player, you’ll notice things getting more difficult as you unlock new campaigns and move forward into the game’s universe. Read on, as our second Crazy Defense Heroes strategy guide is designed especially for you if you’re an intermediate player looking to sustain the success you reached as a beginner!
1. Open Up Those Four-Hour Chests And Video Chests
As we explained in the first guide, Crazy Defense Heroes offers chests aplenty. This game is not shy about giving out rewards to players and helping them add to their card collections and inventory, and you can also do this by opening four-hour chests, which, quite fittingly, become available once you reach player level 4.
As the name suggests, these are chests that you can open every four hours, thus giving you another reason to turn on your notifications so you can return to the game at any time and unlock those chests. Rewards, as they always do, may include coins, gems, materials, or cards, though you shouldn’t expect rare cards to come along too often.
Also at level 4, you’ll start getting random offers to watch 30-second ad videos, and these will allow you to open Video Chests, which again offer you the same general rewards, but with a focus on gems and Automation Charges. The reward-earning potential in this game is off the charts, as you’ve got Treasure Chests for practically everything in here!
2. Improve Your Avatar
Opening chests also allows you to collect weapons and gear for your character, or avatar. So while he may be a generic part of your defense, as compared to the different cards you can play in the course of a level, you also need to make sure that he’s well-prepared for any battle.
That would mean upgrading his equipment cards just like you do the other cards in the game, and switching from one weapon or piece of armor to a stronger, rarer one if the opportunity arises. You should, however, upgrade the cards presently assigned to your character to their full extent, until something better comes along.
3. Stick To The Cards That Work For You
It may sound like a good idea to have a lot of cards handy for various situations, and that does make good sense at first. But if you’re an intermediate player at this point, you should already have a solid lineup of cards that you regularly bring with you to battle. That means there’s no need to focus on other cards that you don’t use too often, if at all, unless they’re of a higher rarity than the ones you have.
So if you aren’t able to unlock any two-star cards at the moment, stick with the one-star cards that are currently working for you, and just as we had advised you in the tip above, upgrade them as far as you can until better cards are available. Other cards may provide a cooler effect that you haven’t seen before, but unless those new cards do more damage, they’re best kept in reserve for the meantime.
4. To Auto-Battle Or Not To Auto-Battle?
If you’ll notice, each level has an option for auto-battle, where the game takes care of all actions in a level, may it be placing the towers, or moving your character/another controllable fighter to the right position. To be fair, the auto-battle AI in Crazy Defense Heroes is quite smart. In some levels, we even noticed the game’s AI making better decisions than we did.
Better yet, auto-battling is only going to cost you six energy potions, the same cost as a regular battle, albeit with the additional cost of one Automation Charge. However, we would only recommend using this feature if you’re grinding, meaning replaying a level you’ve previously completed in order to gain more resources.
The reason behind this isn’t even the possibility that your strategy may be better than the AI’s. While it is possible to let the AI take over while playing in auto-battle, you can also override some decisions, i.e. if you want to build a tower or cast a spell if you’ve got enough mana.
Instead, the main reason behind this is the fact that you won’t get any experience points if you complete a battle on automatic mode. Should you still choose to use auto-battle, make sure you’re doing so on a level that you’ve already completed manually. Otherwise, you’ll come away with the same rewards, but no XP so you can level up, access more features, and win more goodies.
5. About Scavenge Mode
Scavenge Mode becomes available once you reach player/avatar level 4, and this allows you to claim some loot automatically — this would usually be coins and materials, with better rewards becoming available as you complete more campaigns and level up further.
This is a quick, painless, effortless way to add to your inventory or currency totals, but it doesn’t come without a price — you’ll need to spend some of your energy in order to scavenge for loot, and since energy can get scarce at certain points of the game, you shouldn’t get carried away just because this feature allows you to earn loot without effort!
6. Save Up Your Gems For A Premium Battle Chest
Gems are hard to come by in the game, as we’ve noticed. As previously mentioned, these are Crazy Defense Heroes’ premium currency, and while you can get gems by opening chests or leveling up, for instance, we’ve noticed that this can be a rather long and arduous process. So instead of spending gems to get more energy (which we absolutely do NOT recommend), we suggest you save up that premium currency for a Premium Battle Chest as one of your first, if not your first, premium purchase.
What can be found inside the Premium Battle Chest? Aside from the usual goodies, you get a guaranteed shot at a 2-star Battle Card, with odds of also earning a Battle Card of up to 4-star rarity. That’s not too shabby at all, though the price you need to pay to unlock such a chest is, well, rather premium — a whopping 400 gems.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any discounts for bulk purchases either, as five chests cost you 2,000 gems, and 10 chests cost you 4,000 gems. Hopefully, this is something Animoca can fix with future updates, as it would certainly be nice if the game gave out even a small discount to those who would rather buy in bulk. (Making the cost per Premium Battle Chest lower would also help, but we’re probably asking for too much.)
7. Joining A Clan
Crazy Defense Heroes is a great game, but we’d be lying if we said that the clan system is perfect. Joining a clan allows you to “connect with friends and make new ones,” as you exchange strategic information with each other and, we presume, get to know each other. (There’s more than just that, don’t worry.)
But the process of joining a clan is a bit confusing, as tapping on the Clans tab on the bottom menu will initially open a window where you will be asked to enter your player name, then click on Create. This makes it appear as if creating a clan is an option, but not joining, but on the other hand, you will have an option to join any one of the many available clans once you’ve hit Create.
The maximum number of members per clan is 30, and with that in mind, we recommend joining those that have more members onboard, as opposed to the ones with less. We don’t seem to see any option for joining clan-based events, but you can, at least, trade resources, and gain more energy without having to deal with that excruciating wait time.
8. Buy The Daily Gems Package
If you’ve come to the point where you’ve decided that paying real money for gems is your best option for having more premium currency, then we can’t blame you. But it also pays to choose the best possible package, and in this case, that would be the Daily Gems package, which allows you to earn a total of 2,500 gems in 30 days for a cost of only $3 USD, or its local equivalent.
That’s an average of about 83 gems per day, which means you may be able to afford your first premium chest if you log into the game for at least five consecutive days. (Just to reiterate an earlier, and important point, you don’t get any bulk discounts for buying multiple Premium Battle Chests.)
If you’d rather get those gems ASAP and not have to wait 30 days until you earn everything that has to be earned, the Handful of Gems costs $5 or its local equivalent, and comes with 1,200 gems as a special offer. Fortunately, the game gets it right for the most part, as paying more real money usually (but not always) means a better value. For example, the $10 package comes with 2,500 gems, which means you’re essentially getting 100 gems free by paying twice as much as you would for the 1,200-gem package.
9. Click On A Material To Go To The Place It Can Be Found
Trying to upgrade your cards but unable to move forward because you lack a certain resource? There’s no need to fret, as Crazy Defense Heroes can make this process easier for you. Just tap on the magnifying glass next to the material you’re lacking, and the game will point you to the campaign, scavenge, or raid levels where you can get more of that material.
Take note that this is not a guarantee you WILL be getting that material in question, though there’s certainly a chance that you might score some of that material if, for example, you go to a Scavenge level as suggested by the magnifying glass.
10. Duplicate Cards Are Not An Issue
Eventually, you’ll encounter a situation where you’ll end up with a duplicate card of something that you already have. But that’s not a problem in the world of Crazy Defense Heroes, as the game comes with an option where you can transform your duplicate card into free materials or other resources.
That’s not a bad consolation prize at all, because you’ll need more materials as you collect more cards, or as you’re simply trying to get your existing cards to a higher level so that you can remain competitive in whatever mode you’re trying to play!
And that wraps up our second guide for Crazy Defense Heroes. If you have discovered any other tips or tricks for the game, feel free to share them with us in the comment area below!