In part one of this article, I discussed general gameplay strategies. Now, let’s take a closer look at the game’s individual towers. For your convenience, I’ve also created a printable pdf quick reference guide. Yeah, it’s really ugly – I know.

Arrow Tower

The only tower in the game (other than a hive) that can hit both flying and ground enemies, the arrow tower remains useful throughout the game. It’s especially useful at the beginning, as it’s the only way you’ll prevent waves of spiders from getting through. They also work very well when placed near your village as a last resort to pick off wounded monsters that have made it past your other defenses.

Every upgrade except the final upgrade to black is merely a range upgrade, so it’s generally not worth it to spend the gems or the time dancing in upgrading an arrow tower.

Cannon Tower
Cannon towers are the only power weapons you’ll have available early in the game, before fire and mortar towers become available. Later in a level, although they’ll do less damage than fire, tesla, or mortar towers, they’ll still be the backbone of your defense since you’ll have so many built. The greatest flaws of cannon towers is their short range and slow rate of fire.

You have to be very careful when positioning cannons. If they’re too close together, they may both fire at a single monster that could have been killed by one attack, thereby wasting a shot. Since their rate of fire is so slow, other monsters can then sneak by before the cannons can fire again. Also, cannons must be placed as close as possible to the monsters’ paths. Ideally, you want to place them where their area of fire covers a place where the monsters spend the most time. Corners tend to be good places to place cannons, since the cannons will attack the enemies the entire time they’re going around the curve. Every level of upgrade on cannon towers increases power, so upgrade them as much as you can.

Anti Air Tower
Until you can get laser towers, the anti-air tower is the absolute best defense against flying monsters. They’re fast and they have very good range. Although they don’t do much damage, they fire so quickly that the damage will add up. Unlike arrow towers, it’s definitely worth it to upgrade anti-air towers, since every upgrade increases the speed at which they fire. If that means a tower fires at a monster six times as it passes instead of only three, you’ve doubled the damage. The final upgrade is power, and as such is very useful. Unlike cannons, anti-air towers work well when grouped together.

Fire Tower
The fire tower is everyone’s favorite tower, and with good reason. They’re incredibly strong. They’re great for mowing down acorns and golems, and are even fairly effective on fast-moving spiders. They’re also an excellent way to attack bosses. But more so than many other towers, you’ve got to carefully consider where to place a fire tower. The fire comes out in a line that damages any monsters in the stream. The fire keeps coming out for a few seconds, and will continue to do damage to any monsters in the stream, but once it fires it will not change direction. This means that you’ll want to place the fire tower in such a way that its stream will hit as many monsters as possible. You should also never put fire towers right next to each other.

Upgrading fire towers is important, and it’s especially important that you get them to red as quickly as possible. The first upgrade from green to yellow increases the tower’s range, and the second upgrade from yellow to red increases the fire tower’s power, or damage. Going from red to purple increases the fire’s spread, and going from purple to black will give you extra range. Getting fire towers to the red level is critical, and the purple and black levels make it even better.

Ice Tower
Aah, the ice tower. If only Pixeljunk Monsters’s ice towers were as good as the freeze towers in Desktop Tower Defense. Alas, they are not. They don’t slow down enemies nearly as much as they should, and do close to no damage. As a result, the ice tower is easily the most useless tower in the game.

If you do use ice towers, focus on upgrading them to red as quickly as possible, since the first two upgrades increase the damage they do. The final two upgrades to purple and black only increase the spread, or area of effect.If you didn’t need to spend gems to unlock ice towers, I’d probably use them from time to time. As is, I never use them.

Laser Tower
The laser tower is at the same time one of the best towers in the game, and one of the most difficult to use well. Proper placement of laser towers is critical, because one of their greatest strengths is the ability to hit many monsters at once. Lasers have unlimited range. What? What’s that? Yes, let me say it again. Unlimited range. Laser towers will not fire until enemies come within their marked range, which is about the same as an anti-air tower. By itself, that’s good. But once it does fire, the beam continues to the end of the screen, hitting any flying monsters in its path, even if they’re all the way across the screen. So it’s critical to place the lasers in a location such that when they fire, they’re firing along a path of monsters, hitting as many as possible. If you place a laser tower poorly, it may fire across the line of monsters, hitting only one or two.

The laser tower’s first two upgrades are speed, which is good because the tower starts with a very slow rate of fire. The third upgrade to purple is range, which helps the tower fire earlier. The final upgrade is power, so it’s in your interest to fully upgrade the laser tower as quickly as possible.

Mortar Tower
At first, mortars may seem like no big deal, but in the end they’re just bigger cannons, and as such they do have a use. They’ve got great range, and the blast area of their explosions hits everything in a very large area. Upgrading a mortar is a bit of a mixed bag, as upgrading to yellow, red, or purple only increases the area of effect. But that final upgrade to black doubles the mortar’s speed, which is like having two mortars. Mortars aren’t as important as fire or laser towers, but they’re definitely useful in the right situation.

Tesla Tower
There seems to be a consensus in the online community that tesla towers are mostly useless. I’d like to disagree. In the right situation, I’ll use them in place of fire towers, and they do a good job. For example, in “Hard 1”, the level is constructed in a way that makes fire towers very difficult to use – it’s tough to place fire towers such that the flame will hit more than one monster at a time. But there are a number of places where two or three grouped tesla towers can wreak havoc when upgraded.

Tesla towers begin with a terribly short range, and usually must be upgraded to be useful. I’d suggest only upgrading them as much as you need to reach passing monsters, as every upgrade only increases range, and the fully upgraded range can sometimes be more than you need. There’s no point in spending gems so that you can reach forested areas where monsters can’t walk.

When fired, a tesla tower will attack every monster within range, which is fantastic. Not just enemies within an area like cannon or mortar towers, but every single monster it can reach. This is the power of a tesla tower. Once that range gets big enough, you can hit lots and lots of monsters at once.

Hive Tower
You can only build one hive tower on a level, but it can reach anything on the screen, including flying monsters. I’m not a big fan of the hive, primarily because it requires you to aim for it. The bees that fly out of the towers head directly for you, attacking any monsters along that path. In order to do acceptable damage, you really need to upgrade the tower fully.

The first two upgrades make the bees come out more quickly, and the second two increase damage. If you plan on using a hive, you really should upgrade it fully as quickly as you can.