New guide to revolutionize Tier 1 farming up to wave 8k easily (new strategy from patch 24) Video link included

I want to start off with a disclaimer that this guide works only for Tier 1 (T1), so for those of you who are in that bracket where you farm T1 to high waves (3000+) then this is the guide for you because it will help you almost instantly get to 8k waves with very little investment. With a bit of investment, this works possibly in T2 up to 4000 or even 4500 (untested) but falls flat hard in any tier above that unless you got a mythic level mod or better. For those way past farming T1, this guide is not for you. However if you typically farm T1, today is your lucky day.

[edit] Second disclaimer: This guide definitely will NOT work if you have the wall. If you are at the stage of farming T1, do NOT buy the wall even if you can afford it. It will only be a detriment to your tower until you can farm 500b+ coins per day.

I got the idea for this when I met up with my gf who also plays the tower but is farming T1 and was sad having lost waves in the patch because of the elites (vampire) mass change. Her record in T1 before patch was 5000 but had dropped massively after patch, but with switching around her tactics and rerolling her mod just a bit, boom instantly she jumped up to 8000 waves cleared. From 5000 wave max to 8000 wave max having literally spent only a very few hundred reroll shards. Total coin earned earned by the end of the t1 farm run was now 4 times what her previous earnings would be.

Anyway, the TLDR is this: This tactic revolves around Absolute defense. The reason why this tactic works so good now after the patch is the absolute defense perk, and to a lesser degree the cash perk which will help you max out (gold box) the defense stat. Theres also another thing unique thing to this tactic which the enemy mass change got me realize, but we will get to that later.

What you need:

  • Perks. This is an absolute must, because the combination of def% and absolute defense is what will get you so far.
  • Enemy level skip. This is less of an absolute must, you will probably still benefit from trying this tactic without it, but please know that without level skip I dont see you going past wave 4000, maaybe 4500.
  • A minimum of 6 card slots, but 7 recommended. The cards needed are def%, absolute def, coin, cash, enemy balance and free upgrades (6), health (7) if you have the slots, in that order. To max coin gain youd also want wave skip (8), wave accel (9) and critical coin (10), in that order. Then anything more than that is just fluff that can help push a few more waves, such as recovery package or death ray.
  • A health mod preferably of epic quality or better (dont need it to be unique, we only need the substats) and put def% and absolute def on it. If you have 3 slots for stats (level 41+) then thorns will greatly improve your coin rate, because you can never do 1% damage with bullets on even regular enemies. With over 100% thorns, everything just deletes itself upon touching your tower. Below 100%, sometimes enemies hang around your tower a bit. Trust me I thought at first her thorns was bugged until I rerolled thorns to be over 100%. At 99% it definitely still works but a bit slower.
  • What you dont need: A lot of investment in workshop absolute defense. She only has like 300 levels in it and even that was grudgingly leveled up because of the event mission. Even then we could max it during the run.

How to play it:

As you might have noticed above in the requirements, we put on exactly ZERO damage cards. Especially you want to be without the attack speed one. Just let everything crash into your tower. Since the real part of our survivability is the combination of def% and absolute defense, I would focus on getting these perks maxed early. My gf accidentally died at wave 4500 ish because she focused on all the coin perks, had bad luck and didnt get perk wave requirement, and a combination of being afk from wave 2500 up until her death (lol). This is a very LOW maintenance playstyle and you hardly need to do anything, but that doesnt mean you can neglect what makes the build work in the first place. Also, since we arent doing any damage, the purple perk reducing both yours and enemy damage is also vital.

Final point, and this is important: We take the purple perk that reduces our knockback by 70%. This will be the key. After getting this perk and once you are beyond wave 5000 when enemies move so fast, it is FUN watching every enemy live for exactly 0.1 seconds before deleting itself upon touching your tower. Even vampires arent alive for more than a full second if they are lucky. To show what I mean, I have uploaded a video of how it looked on her screen here. If you look closely in the video there are at least 2 vampires coming from the top and top left absolutely deleting themselves almost instantly. Also here is her proof of completion.

Final thoughts**:** Since it is likely that your absolute defense lab is really low, I recommend that you research that up for the duration you continue farming tier 1. However, since this tactic is not viable much past tier one, best way to approach this tactic is to use the time while you farm tier 1 like this while also researching all the stuff youll need progressing through the other tiers too, and that includes damage, economy and whatnot. That way, once youre done with tier 1 farming youll be a massive buff tower that can handle tier 5+ farming.

Enjoy.