Things To Know Before Playing Thronefall

November 1, 2024

Key Takeaways

Use hotkeys for troop selection – crucial for quick commands in critical moments and specific troop selection.
Stay behind towers and walls – enemy focus shifts when you’re hidden, allowing for safer attacks.
Gold is vital – without enough gold, guaranteed failure; focus on gold generation for strong defenses.

Thronefall takes the tower defense genre and reduces it to its core components, while adding modifiers and uniquely shaped maps that make each game feel exciting. With this comes specific interactions and mechanics that aren’t obvious to new players until after completing a handful of maps.

Split image featuring two fully built kingdoms and the world map in Thronefall.

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These nuances are significant enough to be the difference between victory and a fallen castle, or could make your playthrough much less frustrating without having to discover them yourself. Finding new ways to play Thronefall is what makes it feel refreshing even after completing every challenge.

8

Use Hotkeys For Troop Selection

Not explicitly shown until a random tooltip on maps past the tutorial, you can use hotkeys to command and control your troops. This is much faster than riding your king to troop buildings and holding R to fill up a progress bar and select them.

Using these hotkeys is essential for certain bosses and final waves, so that you can quickly move all of your troops to critical defenses that are close to falling. You can even select specific unit types or individual troops without having to ride over them, or even being on the screen.

7

Stay Behind Towers And Walls

As you will quickly discover during waves containing ranged and flying enemies, is that they will focus their attacks on your king, regardless of if you attacked them first. This is a sure way to turn into a ghost, floating around waiting for your respawn timer to finish.

However, those enemies will focus their attacks on towers and walls as long as you are behind them, allowing you to pick off enemies while remaining untargeted. You can also use this to your advantage, forcing enemies to target you instead if your tower is about to fall.

6

Gold Is More Important Than You Think

Gold in Thronefall is the only resource you have, and is used for all upgrades, buildings, and troops. If you don’t have enough gold you are almost guaranteed to fail, even as early as mid-game, if you can’t ensure you have enough to build strong defenses.

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Every round you should use some gold to build houses, mines, harbors and farms, or upgrade them, so that you are always increasing your gold generation. At least one of your perks should also be focused on increasing gold from specific sources, which can allow you to shift focus to building towers and troops.

5

Diversify Your Defenses

No one map uses just a single type of enemy to throw at you, and will ultimately test your ability to cover as much ground as possible. Without ensuring you have defenses that can fire at range, attack whole groups at once, and have enough health to survive initial waves, your castle will quickly fall.

Even just the starting upgrade for a melee unit can be enough to slow down siege weapons or refocus their fire, allowing your towers to destroy them. Overall, you should avoid having all of one troop or tower type, as there will always be an enemy that counters it.

4

Plan Around Your Research Timers

Both the Royal Forges and the Blacksmith are building types that allow you to upgrade yourself and your defenses, which makes them deal more of a certain damage type or make them more likely to survive. Each upgrade takes between two and three days to finish, and doesn’t progress if the building is destroyed.

This makes timing when you research upgrades important, as you can reach the final night with an upgrade in progress, and are essentially throwing away gold that could have been used to buy defenses. You also want to be sure you can protect those buildings long enough to finish researching.

3

Retrying Days Affects Your Final Score

A mechanic that isn’t clear until after you finish your first map after retrying a day is that doing so gives you a score penalty. This affects your ability to reach the minimum score for certain challenges on almost all maps, even if you only retry once.

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You should always avoid forcibly restarting the day if you are going to survive the night but lose important buildings, as it could force you to have to restart the whole map if you fail the challenge anyway. If your castle falls early on, it’s always best to just restart the map and attempt a new game right away.

2

Ranged Weapons Are The Best For Your King

While some weapon choices like the Battle Axe or Heavy Sword are great for clearing out groups of enemies on the ground, they can’t allow you to damage or even target any flying enemies. If your towers are poorly placed, this will quickly lead to a fallen castle.

With ranged weapons equipped, you are better able to defend important buildings, such as harbors on Frostee which always get targeted by flying enemies that spawn nearby. You can also keep yourself safe while still dealing damage, allowing you to avoid respawn timers and still direct your troops while sprinting.

1

The Right Perks Are Essential For Surviving

With over 70 perks, weapons, and mutators, each new attempt on the same map can feel wholly unique, making it a challenge to create the right combination that ensures your survival. Many perks work especially well together and can create combos that make you incredibly powerful.

You shouldn’t be afraid to experiment with perks either, as many have unexpected uses that are perfect for some maps. For example, using Sustainable Mining on Durststein will allow you to use mines as your only source of gold, saving you to build up your kingdom much quicker.