Welcome to the game! This guide will explain the basics of how to play.
1. THE MAIN MENU
Before starting a game, you must choose your settings:
- Game Mode:
Campaign: Play through structured levels with a set number of waves.
Endless Survival: Survive against infinite waves for as long as possible.
- Faction Selection: The faction you choose decides your available towers and grants four permanent passive perks.
- New California Republic (NCR): A massive military force trying to bring old-world democracy, laws, and taxes to the wastes. Benefit: Excellent economy and logistics. Towers are 15% cheaper to build and attack 15% faster. Their forces rely on Perception for increased range and threat intel, Charisma for deployment discounts, Agility for faster firing rates, and Luck for better loot drops and critical hits.
- Brotherhood of Steel: A techno-military order hoarding pre-war technology to save humanity from itself. Benefit: Raw firepower. Towers deal +15% damage and you earn XP and Tech upgrades much faster. Their knights utilize Strength for massive damage bonuses, Intelligence for accelerated research, Agility for faster firing rates, and Endurance to constantly repair the base.
- Minutemen: A ragtag citizen militia dedicated to protecting Commonwealth settlements at a minute's notice. Benefit: Survival and stalling. Towers are 15% cheaper, the base heals over time, and units have better range and detection. The militia uses Perception for extended range, Endurance to heal the base over time, Charisma for cheaper deployments, and Luck to find extra supplies and land critical hits.
- Raiders: Chem-fueled gangs of cutthroats and scavengers who thrive on chaos, violence, and explosives. Benefit: Maximum combat aggression (+15% Damage and +15% Fire Rate), but no economic discounts. These gangs rely purely on Strength for heavy damage, Agility to shoot incredibly fast, Perception to spot incoming threats, and Endurance to withstand retaliation.
- Difficulty:
- Easy: Enemies have less health. Great for learning the game.
- Normal: The standard balanced experience.
- Hard: Enemies have much more health and spawn in larger numbers.
2. HOW TO PLAY
Enemies will spawn and walk along the path toward the exit. Your goal is to stop them by building towers. If an enemy reaches the exit, you lose HP. If your HP reaches 0, it's Game Over.
3. BUILDING & UPGRADING TOWERS
Towers attack automatically once they are built.
- Building: Click a tower from the panel at the bottom of the screen, then click an empty spot on the map to place it.
- Researching: Before you can upgrade a tower in-game, you must unlock the upgrade in the Tech Tree using Skill Points (SP).
- Upgrading: Click a tower on the map to open its menu, then spend Caps (money) to buy the upgrades you researched.
- Path Limits: Towers have two upgrade paths. You cannot max out both paths on a single tower. (For example, upgrading Path 1 to Tier 3 will lock Path 2 at Tier 2).
4. MONEY & PROGRESSION
Caps (Money): You earn Caps by defeating enemies, collecting dropped loot, and clicking "Start Wave" before the timer runs out.
Leveling Up (SP): As you survive waves, you will naturally Level Up. Leveling up increases your max HP and gives you Skill Points (SP) to spend in the Tech Tree.
5. V.A.T.S. & ITEMS
V.A.T.S.: The V.A.T.S. button fills up as you defeat enemies. When full, click it to start a timing minigame. Click again when the shrinking ring is as small as possible to temporarily supercharge all your towers!
Items (Consumables): Enemies occasionally drop items like Stimpaks (which heal your HP) or Mines. Click on them on the map to pick them up, then use them from the bottom panel when you are in danger.
6. TOWER TARGETING
Click on any deployed tower to view its control panel. From here, you can change its targeting priority to better manage threats:
- First: Targets the enemy closest to the exit.
- Last: Targets the enemy furthest from the exit.
- Closest: Targets the enemy physically nearest to the tower itself.
- Strongest / Weakest: Targets enemies based on their current HP. (Note: Requires tactical Intel, gained from the Intelligence perk).
- Flying: Anti-Air capable towers can prioritize airborne threats over ground targets.
- Closest to Base: In Siege Mode, towers can prioritize whichever enemy is closest to the central objective.
7. SPECIAL UNITS
MR. HANDY: RobCo Industries' finest multi-purpose robotic unit! A marvel of pre-war engineering, this nuclear-powered assistant can be deployed from your standard tower menu. Every time his chassis is destroyed in combat, he can be repaired, but the cap cost to rebuild him increases with each destruction. He will be very valuable when the screen is full of towers, enemies, explosions, etc., as his automated gathering helps you manage the chaos of the wasteland.
MYSTERIOUS STRANGER: A heavily-armed guardian angel of the wastes. Occasionally, he may appear out of nowhere to lend a hand when you are fighting for your life, instantly eliminating a target with his .44 Magnum before vanishing again. You cannot control him, but you will definitely appreciate him. Finding and equipping the Luck bobblehead will increase the chances of his sudden arrival.
