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Vaults towers guide: what each tower is for

Vaults gives you up to six towers, and each is good at one job. Knowing what that job is matters more than memorising numbers, but the numbers explain the reasons, so both are here. Every tower can be upgraded twice, and selling one refunds 70% of what you paid for it unless a relic changes that.

Spark Coil (cost 50)

The cheap, fast workhorse. At level 1 it fires about 2.5 shots a second for 7 damage each, with a range of 2.4 tiles. Its weakness is armour: armoured bugs shrug off its small hits. Coils are the right first purchase in almost every vault because they are cheap enough to cover several spots before the first wave.

Prism (cost 70)

The Prism does very little damage on its own (2 at level 1), but every bug in its blast is slowed for a second and a half or more. Slowing is worth a lot: a slowed bug spends longer inside everyone else's range. Put a Prism where several towers overlap and it makes all of them stronger.

Overclock Mortar (cost 100)

A slow launcher: about one shell every two seconds at level 1, but 24 splash damage with a wide blast and a long range of 3.2 tiles. It is best against clumps of bugs and against armour. Because it is slow, pair it with something that holds bugs in the blast zone, such as a Prism.

Chain Coil (cost 110)

Its lightning jumps between bugs, three jumps at level 1 and up to five when fully upgraded. It rewards crowds: against one bug it is average, against a pack it hits many at once.

EM Pulse (cost 130)

Pulses out from the tower and hits everything in range at once, 16 damage at level 1. The range is short (2.1 tiles), so it belongs at a corner where the path bends around it. Like the Coil it is weak against armour.

Laser Lock (cost 130)

The boss breaker. Its range is the longest (4.2 tiles at level 1, 5.0 fully upgraded), it ignores armour completely, and a single shot does 45 damage at level 1 and 140 at level 3. It fires slowly, so it is poor against swarms, but it is the best answer to armoured bugs and to the two bosses in the Gauntlet.

Choosing a build

• Open with Coils. They are cheap, so you can cover the first stretch of the path before wave one.
• Add a Prism at an overlap. The slow is worth more where more towers can see the same bug.
• Add Mortar or Chain Coil once packs appear. They turn a crowd into a few seconds of work.
• Save for a Laser Lock before a boss. Armoured bugs and bosses are where cheap towers stop working.

Upgrading versus building

An upgrade raises a tower's damage, range and speed without using up a spot. Spots are limited on every vault, so when the board is full, upgrading is how you keep growing. Selling a tower early to fund a better one is also a reasonable move late in a run.

For how all this feeds into your score, read the Daily Gauntlet scoring guide.