Defense Derby Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Unleash Your Strategic Prowess

Of all the tower defense genres, the one that gets overlooked the most is the competitive tower defense. Yes, cooperative TDs are nice especially if played with friends, but competitive tower defenses challenge each player to bring their A-game to a level playing field in a bid to see who’s the best at strategy, guile, and skill. At long last, there comes a game that puts all that – and more – together.

Defense Derby is a glorious mishmash of many mobile game elements. Merging, TDs, PVP, cute characters, card games, bluffing, and guile – all of them are important parts of Defense Derby, and it is glorious fun.

Defense Derby is a competitive tower defense where you go head-to-head with 3 other players in a bid to outlast all of them. To trump your rivals and come out on top, you’ll need to not only hone your tower defense skills, but also outbid, out bluff, and out build the other players. Those looking to rise to the challenge and rise above all others can get Defense Derby on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.

In this beginner’s guide, we’ll be going over the basics of Defense Derby and tower defense games so that you’ll have a better chance of winning. To be more precise, we’ll be discussing:

• The game’s mechanics: turn flow, derby chips, victory, your rivals, and more.
• The different towers in the game: factions, damage types, formation bonuses, skills, heroes, and everything in between.
• Strengthening your towers – levels, duplicates, armies, talents, artifacts, and so on.
• Tower defense tips that will apply not only to Defense Derby but may also help you in other similar games.

Note that in this article, I’ll be referring to units as towers, out of force of habit.

Playing The Game

When everything hits the fan, you can always fall back on the basics. This is very true in Defense Derby’s gameplay, and if you can’t keep up with your rivals, you’ll lose. Now, while Defense Derby does have a passable tutorial, it doesn’t teach you all the basics and doesn’t touch on some of the game’s finer points, such as how exactly you earn derby chips, the bidding system, and so on. Hence, this section.

Quick Tips:

• Your goal is to outlast your 3 rivals in a tower defense game.
• Each player has their own playing field with 9 (functionally 8) tiles where they can place towers that automatically attack mobs.
• Each “round” consists of 4 stages; every 4^th stage has a boss.
• Each mob that completes the circuit and makes it to your castle door causes you to lose HP. The bigger and stronger the mob, the more health you lose.
• Each player has the same wave composition and number of mobs in each stage.
• Bosses spawn on every 4^th wave. These are powerful foes that will heal at certain checkpoints and will thoroughly test your defenses.
• Once a player has cleared all their mobs, any remaining mobs (and spawns) on their rivals’ boards become enraged, gaining a massive move speed bonus.
• In the 1^st round of each set, players will draw a random tower from their deck. On the first turn, they will draw two towers.
• Each cleared wave nets a player 2 derby chips.
• Players get towers via the scouting phase and bidding system. Every 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th round, a tower will be offered to all players. Players must bid on this tower with their derby chips, with the tower going to the highest bidder.
• Note that scouting phase cards are random copies of those in any player’s deck.
• In the case of a tie, all winners receive a copy of the tower.
• Players receive bonus derby chips depending on how close they were to the winning bid, with closer placements earning more bonus coins. The 4^th placer gets no bonus coins.
• You can tap a tower during the scouting phase to get a quick readout of its stats and skill. You can also see what the next tower will be during a wave by paying attention to the top of the screen.

Basic Rules

Defense Derby is a tower defense game, a genre that entails defending against mobs that seek to destroy your core/castle/giant tree/whatever. To protect yourself, you’ll need to build (what else) towers that fire on enemies that pass by. But that would be too easy by itself. In Defense Derby, you not only have to fend against mobs, but you’ll also be competing with 3 other players who will attempt to outlast you. The last player standing wins the derby!

Stopping these mobs is simple. By placing towers (units, actually) on the 9 (functionally 8) tiles on your castle roof, you’ll be able to mount a successful and automatic defense!

Mobs and Waves

To give the game some structure and to help players prepare accordingly, Defense Derby is organized into rounds of 4 sets. This information appears at the top of the screen every so often. The higher the wave number, the higher the stats of the monsters you fight.

As you play the game and deepen your understanding of how enemies work, you’ll be able to determine what kind of mobs the next waves will spawn, as well as form a strategy against the upcoming boss.

Once a wave begins, mobs will come from the lower left of the screen and will have to walk around each side of your castle before they reach your castle doors. If they make it there, your castle will sustain some damage – if your castle’s HP hits zero, you’re out of the derby!

Note that all players have the same mob composition per wave.

Bosses

Every 4^th wave in a set contains a powerful boss enemy, an elite mob that has a ton of health, will do a gigantic amount of damage to your castle if it leaks, and has powerful skills of its own!

We’ll discuss bosses and good counterstrategies for each of them in the “TD Tips” section.

Enraging Mobs

So, you’re plodding along, slowly cutting down mobs with your towers, confident that none of them will make it to your castle doors. But suddenly, the screen shakes, your mobs started running at double speed, and you’ve taken a huge chunk of damage. What just happened?

Someone finished first is what happened.

Mobs become enraged as soon as one player clears all their mobs. When this happens, the first clear bonus triggers which empowers all their rivals’ mobs, causing them to run faster. Thus, the pressure is on to not only survive the TD section but also excel to make your opponents’ defense trickier and potentially win you the derby!

Getting More Towers

Now, the last question – how do you get more towers?

To answer that question, we’ll need to go back to the “4 waves per set” mechanic. Each wave gives each player both guaranteed towers and a chance to earn more via the scouting phase.

On the first wave of each set, players will draw cards from their deck as guaranteed towers. The first time this happens, all players will draw 2 towers while they’ll only draw 1 tower for the rest of the game on every first wave. This means that you get 2 free towers on wave 1, 1 tower on wave 5, 1 tower on wave 9, and so on. Cards you draw are removed from your deck, so you can’t redraw the same card.

In between every wave is the scouting phase. During this time, a tower will be offered to all players, who will then have to make a bid on it using their derby chips. Derby chips are awarded at the end of each wave, with each surviving player getting 2 derby chips.

The scouting phase not only gives you more cards but also allows you to get sneak peeks at your opponents’ strategies. Cards during the scouting phase have a much higher chance to be a copy of a card that already exists in a player’s deck, so pay attention to the types of your decks your opponents are running.

You’ll have 10 seconds to make a bid during the scouting phase and to get the tower, you’ll need to outbid everyone else. There are a few tools to help you with this process:

• The Average Offer button will automatically bid for the card, based on the game’s evaluation of its strength. Expect most players to bid within this range.
• You can manually add or remove 1 derby chip from your bid by tapping the plus or minus buttons.
• If you change your mind about your bid before entering your wager, you can hit the refresh button to reset your bid to 0.

After 10 seconds have passed or if every player has confirmed their bid, each player’s bid will be revealed, with the highest bidder getting the tower and paying derby chips equal to their bid. In case of a draw, all the highest bidders will get a copy of the tower and pay derby chips.

However, there are times when you don’t want to win a scouting phase. Whether it’s because you don’t care for the tower on offer or because you have a specific strategy in mind, you’ll sometimes want to make a bad bid. Here’s where the scouting system’s second advantage comes in: any player who bid but didn’t get the tower will receive derby chips depending on how they placed in the bid ranking. The second placer gets 2 bonus derby chips, while the third placer gets 1 bonus derby chip. If you’re not planning on getting the tower, it can be a good idea to deliberately make a bad bid to try and snag the bonus derby chips. Watch out though – your rivals may be doing the same and you might end up with a tower you don’t want!

Note that once you’ve placed a bid, you can’t take it back. Thus, it’s a bad idea to go into scouting phases blind. To help you make your decisions, you can tap on the tower on offer to read its stats and skill. You can also see what tower the next scouting phase will offer by paying attention to the top of the screen…

…though do note that you’ll need to be able to identify towers by portrait to make optimal use of this feature.

Tower Basics

You -could- play caveman tower defense by just playing towers from your hand to wherever, but frankly, that won’t get you very far. Victory in Defense Derby comes not only from understanding the game’s rules and mechanics but also from a thorough understanding of the many towers and the systems around them.

Quick Tips:

• Towers have stats. Knowing what a tower can do is key to picking the right tower for the job.
• Towers have passive skills. These passive skills are very important as knowledge of a tower’s skill can greatly help you during scouting phases.
• Hero towers have an active skill that can be fired at your command. These active skills regenerate as you clear waves.
• Towers have factions. There are three factions in the game: human (blue helmet), beast (orange pawprint), or spirit (green wing). Towers provide a 20% damage bonus to towers of the same faction in a 2×2 area around themselves.
• Towers have two damage types – physical and magical. Towers gain a 30% damage boost if they form a 3-member line (think tic-tac-toe) with towers that deal the same damage type.
• Similar towers can be merged for a massive boost in stats.
• You can redeploy a tower to any other tile on the field, though this will incur a cooldown.
• Your deck of towers comes with 8 cards and one hero. The hero is automatically placed in the central tile of your castle. Because of the 20% square damage boost, it’s ideal for beginners to run a deck of only one faction and bid for cards from that faction.

Tower Stats

Not all towers are built the same. Some are dedicated single-target killers, others prefer to splash their attacks, while still others exist to augment your other towers. To understand a tower’s use and get an idea of how to use it, you’ll need to learn about tower stats.

A tower’s stats can be accessed by tapping on it while in battle. If the tower is in your hand as a card or in the scouting phase, you can tap it to reveal its stats. Tower stats are as follows:

• Attack Power: the amount of damage this tower does per shot.
• Attack Speed: how long an interval must pass before this tower fires again. The lower this number is, the better.
• Attack Type: how many targets this tower’s attack hits.
• Attack Target: which enemy this tower will attack. “Front” means it’ll hit the enemy furthest along your path, “Max HP” means it will prioritize the foes with the most HP, while “Random” means it’ll pick a random target each time it attacks.
• Distance: a tower’s attack range. Ranged towers can attack from much further away while melee towers can only pretty much hit in the immediate area around themselves.
• Critical Chance: the chance that an attack will land a critical hit.
• Crit Damage: how much bonus damage a critical hit does.

Tower Skills

Each tower also has a passive skill that improves or even defines its role in combat.

It’s very important to read and understand each tower’s skill not only to build your deck but also for nabbing missing key pieces during the scouting phase.

Hero towers are an exception to this rule as they not only have a passive skill but also a very powerful active one that can be fired on your command.

Hero skills are incredibly potent and often serve as the first consideration a player must make when assembling a new deck. Scarlet, for example, summons a hail of cannon fire that deals a massive amount of splash damage, while Elgry calls forth totems that force enemies back down the path, giving his towers more time to do their work.

While hero skills are game changers, take note that using them incurs a cooldown. Pay attention to a hero skill’s Wave count as that shows how many waves you need to clear after using the skill (the current wave doesn’t count) before you can use the skill again. Use your skills tactically to push for advantage and secure victory!

Factions

Each tower in the game belongs to a faction. There are three factions in the game: humans, beasts, and spirits. Humans use a blue helmet for their icon, beasts use an orange pawprint, and spirits use a green wing.

You might think that factions have a bearing on how each tower operates, but no. Each faction has a full set of basic TD tools – single-target snipers, AOE mages, debuffers, and so on. Where factions matter is in formation bonuses.

When towers of the same faction are placed in a 2×2 grid, they give each other a 20% attack buff that can stack up to 60%. This is a powerful and simple buff, so don’t forget to pack your towers together to ensure that all of them enjoy this power boost!

To help you manage your faction formation buff, a tower’s faction will appear to the lower left of its chibi.

Damage Types

There are two damage types in the game: physical and magical.

Just like factions, you might think that damage type has a bearing on the different mobs, and if you thought that, you’d also be wrong. What damage types do have is yet another formation bonus – get three towers with the same damage type in a line and each of them gets a hefty 30% damage boost!

Unlike the 2×2 faction formation bonus, this buff is a bit trickier to manage since you can’t move your leader from the center tile. Build this bonus if you can, but I’d suggest not sweating it.

As with the faction icon, you can see a unit’s damage type to its lower left. A sword indicates physical damage, while a staff indicates magical.

Merging

You know all those annoying mobile ads about merging towers? You can do that in Defense Derby, too.

If you get a duplicate of a tower you already have on your board, you’ll instead merge that card with the tower on the board. This increases its star rating to a maximum of 3 and gives it a massive boost in stats.

Note that you can’t choose to deploy a duplicate as a separate tower – it must be merged with a tower on the board if played.

Redeployment

Bad positioning? Don’t fret. You can move your towers at any time with the sole exception of your hero.

To move a tower, just long press on it, then drag it to its new location. This is an excellent tool for catching leaks and adapting to boss gimmicks, so be sure to use it liberally!

While you can always move a tower, be wary that moving it causes it to go into redeployment cooldown. A timer will appear to its right, and while that timer is up, you can’t move that tower again. One exception here is if you’ve already cleared your wave – moving at that point doesn’t incur the cooldown penalty, so be sure to reset your formation if you need it back to the way it was.

Decks

Each player in Defense Derby goes into battle with a deck, a collection of 8 units plus a hero to lead them.

During a derby, your guaranteed cards during the 1^st wave of a set will be drawn from your deck. Remember, too, that cards that show up during the scouting phase have a much higher chance of being a copy of a card in any player’s deck, so if you see a copy of one of yours, it might be a good time to overbid to get that 2-star power.

While towers in Defense Derby have factions, there’s nothing stopping you from putting cards of any faction in your deck. However, because of the aforementioned faction formation bonuses, it’s generally better to stick to a single faction as this ensures your guaranteed draws will always give you a bonus and you’ll have a better chance of seeing mono-faction cards during the scouting phase.

Note, too, that if you don’t fill out all your deck’s slots, the game will pull random cards from your collection to fill in the holes, which can lead to undesirable outcomes. Always make sure your deck is complete.

Building A Strong Army

I’m always fond of saying that strategy alone isn’t enough to overcome any challenge; you still need brute force to execute your plans. A sound plan will get you very far in Defense Derby, but without the raw power needed to carry out your vision, you’ll just be stuck. And let’s face it – your opponents will be seizing every advantage they can, so you should do the same!

Quick Tips:

• Towers can be leveled up by spending gold and elixir. The higher a tower’s level, the higher its base damage.
• If a tower is pulled from a deck during the scouting phase, it will copy that tower’s level.
• Elixir is earned from competing in derbies or via AFK gains. Always try to clear as many blitz stages as you can in each playthrough to boost your AFK elixir gain. If you have the gems to spare, you may also want to improve the amount of loot your AFK gains can hold.
• You can use your army level to boost the level of towers to the lowest among your 8 highest-level towers.
• Your army level also affects your hero level. If you rely heavily on your hero, try to spread resources evenly among your 8 highest-level towers.
• Towers can be fused with identical copies to increase their rarity, which boosts their stats and skill levels.
• Do note that you can pull higher-rarity base towers from the gacha.
• Artifacts provide sweeping effects on your army. You can equip up to 3 at once.
• Artifacts are strengthened by fusing them with duplicates. You can get more artifacts from derbies and missions.
• Talents are passive skills that always apply, no matter your deck.
• You can get more talent points from blitz mode.

Leveling Up

The simplest way of strengthening a tower is by leveling it up.

To level a tower up, you’ll need to feed it both gold and elixir. Both are easy to earn – just play derbies, blitz mode, or harvest your AFK gains to get more. A fair warning though: leveling up is slow, so you may wish to budget your elixir.

Finally, note that a tower copied from a player’s deck during the scouting phase inherits both its level and rarity!

AFK Gains

AFK gains are intimately tied to leveling up your towers. By default, Defense Derby accumulates up to 8 hours of AFK gains while you aren’t playing, with the rest vanishing into the void.

The rate at which your AFK gains accumulate depends on how far you’ve gone in blitz mode, a quick single-player game mode. Thus, I strongly recommend playing blitz mode before logging out. Who knows, you may clear the stage and thus get more gold and elixir faster!

You can also spend gems to increase the maximum capacity of your AFK gains. To do this, tap on the castle in the main menu to collect your gains, then tap the green “Max Up” button.

Army Level

The army system allows you to train up low-level towers that you may want to use but don’t want to dedicate resources to, as well as buff up your heroes.

The army system works like the level sync system in other games in that it allows you to give a unit temporary levels. Your army is formed by your 8 highest-level towers, and your army level is the level of the lowest-level member of that 8. If you have 7 level 20 towers and 1 level 19 tower, your army level will be 19. Thus, it’s ideal to only spend gold and elixir leveling 8 towers at once.

Below your army screen, you’ll notice a number of slots. This is where you put in towers that you want to temporarily boost. While a tower is in an army slot, it will automatically be leveled to your army level.  You can buy or unlock more slots; each locked slot shows what you need to do to enable it. Do note that the temporary level is constrained by the tower’s rarity!

Finally, note that your heroes cannot be leveled by feeding them gold and elixir. Instead, their level is determined by your army level. A higher army level means a much stronger hero, so go balance out your top 8!

Rarity and Skill Level

There are only so many towers in the game, so you’ll inevitably run into duplicates. Since you can’t put more than one copy of a tower in your deck, you’ll have to fuse these duplicates.

Fusing a tower gives it a significant power boost not only in terms of raw stats. Each fusion also increases that tower’s rarity, thus increasing both its level cap and increasing its skill level by one. The higher a skill’s level, the better it gets, so get fusing.

Note that it’s possible to pull towers with a higher base rarity in the gacha – this may be why some of your towers have, for some reason, a higher skill level than usual.

Artifacts

As you earn rank points in Defense Derby, you’ll eventually unlock the artifact system. Think of artifacts as equipment for your army.

Each deck has 3 artifact slots that you can fill with any artifact you’ve acquired. Artifacts provide powerful passive effects, such as more castle HP, castle healing in between waves, or simply more attack power and speed for your units. I personally lean more towards offensive artifacts such as the Blade of Salvation and Infinite Gauntlet. The best defense is a good offense, right?

Artifacts are dropped as unidentified artifacts from missions and derbies. To identify them, head to the castle screen, then select “Artifacts” to identify your loot. Note that duplicate artifacts can be fused to improve their efficiency!

Talents

Artifacts aren’t the only source of passives. If you want to fine-tune your army’s performance, you’ll need to invest in the talent tree.

Talents are divided into two – faction and battle talents. Faction talents are specific to each faction and contain the same bonuses; in descending order, these bonuses are faction combo boost, faction hero attack power, faction unit attack power, and faction unit redeployment cooldown.

Battle talents are divided into physical, magical, and monster. Physical and magical improve the abilities of towers with that damage type (respectively) no matter what faction you’re playing. Monster talents, on the other hand, directly affect the mobs you fight, with passives that lower their health and attack power.

Note that talents must be unlocked in sequential order, though you only need 1 level to unlock the next tier. Talents can be bought with talent points, which are primarily earned by playing blitz mode.

TD Tips

Finally, here are a few tips I’ve learned from my many hours of playing tower defense games – and not just Defense Derby!

Quick Tips:

• Powerful towers need a lot of space to do their work. Place them in the upper left, upper right, and lower right corners for maximum exposure.
• Don’t underestimate the power of status effects. Slowing enemies before a powerful single-hitter or AOE can make a huge difference in your clearing power.
• Redeployment is your friend – it costs nothing, so use it freely.
• Defense Derby currently has a small pool of bosses. I’ve listed a few ways to counter them.

Corner Exposure

The four (well three) corners of your castle aren’t just for show. These are the most potent places to put powerful towers as opponents will spend more time exposed to fire in a corner than on a straight path. The choice is yours whether to place high damage nukers or status effect towers.

Note that the bottom left tile doesn’t count as enemies don’t need to wind around a corner here.

Status Effects

Speaking of status effects, don’t underestimate the power of a good debuff. Sure, these towers may not do the heavy lifting – but they make the job easier for everyone.

Slowing effects are incredibly noteworthy because not only do they make it harder for mobs to reach your castle, but they also allow you to clump enemies up together, thus improving the damage output of your AOE towers and skills, if you have them.

Redeployment Is Your Friend

Seriously, redeployment is your friend. Most tower defenses require you to sell towers to move them, but in Defense Derby, all it takes is a little time. If you see one of your sections flagging, don’t be afraid to move a stronger tower to assist that area. You can always put your towers back afterward!

Boss Counters

Bosses can quickly spell the end of any derby. By knowing exactly what a boss does, you’ll be able to mount a better counterstrategy, and hopefully, your opponents will pay the price for their lack of preparation!

• Greed is a tough opponent with enormous health reserves. When Greed spawns, hearts will appear on the upper left and upper right corners of your path. If he touches them, he’ll recover health. Fast-firing, high damage towers coupled with poison, slow, or stun towers are your best bet to nuke Greed down.
• The Blocker is a heavily shielded adversary. He’ll spawn with a shield icon above his head, indicating how many hits it takes to destroy his protection; while the shield is up, he’ll only take one damage from attacks. Use fast-firing, low damage towers like Archers to whittle away his defenses and move your heavy hitters further away from the frontlines.
• King Slime splits into more enemies when he’s defeated – which will then split again into smaller, faster slimes. Pummel him with high damage, single-target towers at the beginning, and move your AOE towers further down the line to prepare for King Slime’s splits.
• The Summoner is a tricky foe that will constantly harangue your defenses with his (guess what) summons which will cover his advance. Put your AOE towers in front to quickly eradicate his minions and use a slowing tower to buy the rest of your units more time to focus the Summoner down.
• Are you feeling lucky? Because if not, Ping and Pong will ruin your day by putting all your towers in random spots every few seconds. Place all your heavy hitters in front to burst down this delinquent duo as much as you can, and if you can afford it, use your hero skill too. Note that once Ping and Pong use their skill, almost all strategy flies out the window!

To The Top!

The road to the highest leagues in Defense Derby is long and challenging. But remember – not every battle can be won, so just give it your all in every round, and don’t forget to have fun!

That concludes my beginner’s guide to Defense Derby, and I hope I was able to give you a solid grasp of the basics. If you have any suggestions on how to make this guide better or would like to share some of your own tips and tricks, make yourself heard in the comment area below!