Welcome to Atlas Defense
This guide serves as a quick crash course and refresher on defensive tactics to protect your castles in Atlas. It is designed for both new and returning players.
Castles provide crucial rewards for your team, but effectively protecting them requires coordination. While defense can be intense, executing it correctly makes for an exciting team experience!
Shields and Cooldowns
Shield: Grants total immunity from all attacks and prevents conquers.
Cooldown: Starts immediately after a shield expires. During cooldown, your castle is highly vulnerable, and shields cannot be raised to prevent conquers or troop/guard losses.
Castle Defense & Banner Notifications
To protect castle guards from direct attacks, team members must park Primarchs loaded with troops on the castle.
When enemies attack, a Defense Banner will appear on your screen:
Light Blue Banner: A teammate or castle guard is being attacked.
Red Banner: Your personal Primarch is being attacked.
Passage Mechanics & Strategic Utility
Passage is a core Atlas mechanic that allows designated teams—even those outside of your official 5-team alliance—to move their Primarchs directly onto your castles.
Extended Alliances & Friendly Defense: Granting Passage enables friendly teams or extended alliance networks to land on your castles and assist in defending them when extra firepower is needed.
Strategic Transit: Passage allows external teams to cross directly over your castles to reach specific points of interest on the map, creating strategic corridors for coordinated operations.
Banner Defense: Defend Your Base
For longer defensive engagements, the bases of larger, end-game players are crucial.
Support Big Players: Smaller/lower-level players must learn how to defend end-game players' bases effectively.
Kill Dragons Mid-Flight: Joining the defense banner to help defend bigger players and shooting down enemy dragons mid-flight forces the enemy to lose troops on those high-level Primarchs.
Strategic Supershot Timing: Learn each individual dragon's spell durations and which spells negate specific supershots so you can time the correct supershots at the precise moment to shoot the dragon down. Do not randomly apply supershots—they lose effectiveness if they are not strategically placed and timed as enemies fly through the base.
Defensive Drag-and-Drop Abilities
When defending a base, drag and drop the following icons onto active towers to boost their performance:
Green Shield: Increases the resistance of towers within its radius.
Sword: Increases the attack damage of towers within its radius.
Defense Hammer: Repairs and heals damaged towers.
Supershots
During a base defense, look at the bar located in the top-left area of your screen. This bar fills up with nodes called Supershots.
Note: It is advised that all players have an exotic defensive helmet equipped on an active defense rider to give defenders an extra two supershots.
Importance: Supershots are critical because they unlock tower-specific special abilities that give your towers significantly higher kill potential against incoming dragons.
Tower Type | Supershot Effect
Cosmic Orrery / Earth Flak / Storm Tower: Shields towers and adds extra defensive health to towers after the shield expires.
Ice Turret: Applies a shield like Orrerys, but does not make the tower invulnerable (unlike Orrerys and Earth Flaks). Special Note: Uniquely reduces Hunter dragon ammo regeneration.
Fire Turret: Multiplies the damage taken by the dragon and transforms into a continuous flamethrower beam attack.
Dark Flak / Nexus Tower / Trebuchet Tower: Stuns dragons, preventing breath attacks for a short duration.
Fire Flak: Reduces dragon damage output to towers by 50%.
Drakul Pylon / Soul Drain Tower: Increases the damage dragons take by 75%.
Lightning / Volt Tower: Increases tower damage based on how many are placed on the same island.
Ice Flak: Disables dragon spells and cancels certain active spells.
Crystal Howitzer / Cannon Tower: Shatters dragon shields. (Note: Only the Howitzer stuns dragons; Cannon Tower does not stun).
Nullspire Tower: Freezes dragon rage regeneration and increases damage taken by 20%.
Electro Flak: Empowers other local flak towers similarly to Lightning/Volt towers (Does NOT empower Lightning or Volt towers).
Archer Tower: Increases damage dealt by the tower's shots.
Ballista Tower: Adds a poison effect to dragons.
Mage / Archmage Tower: Drains the dragon's rage and stops rage regeneration for a short duration.
Oculus Tower: Deals damage over time to the dragon and reduces its healing.
Defensive Strategy 1: Standard Castle Defense
Action Plan When Under Attack
Stay Calm: Avoid panicking, as hasty decisions lead to lost battles.
Identify the Target: Click the defense banner and check the top right corner to verify which castle is being targeted and who owns it.
Deploy Primarchs:
End-Game Players: Move a Taunter (loaded with more troops than the enemy) to shield other Primarchs and guards from taking direct hits.
Lower-Level Players: Move a Trapper (with at least 5k–7k troops) to trap the largest enemy force.
Disable Shield (Leadership / Castle Marshal Only): Disable the shield to avoid automatically "bubbling" the castle, which prevents triggering an unwanted cooldown period.
Call for Reinforcements: Immediately send a callout in team or alliance chat using this exact format:
@Group Help! Being attacked [coordinates] enemy is [list enemy teams]
Hold the Fort: When allies arrive to help, do not take the bubble unless the castle falls below 1 million guards remaining.
If guards drop below 1 million, take the bubble and run the cooldown at a reasonable time.
If guards remain above 1 million, keep defending.
Aftermath
Post-Battle Watch: Leave the shield disabled for at least 1 hour after the enemy leaves, ensuring players remain online to guard and keep watch.
Cooldown Planning: If the castle was bubbled, coordinate with your alliance and team to schedule a suitable cooldown time using the reference sheet above.
Defensive Strategy 2: Advanced Defensive Tactics
Note: This strategy is to be executed simultaneously with Defensive Strategy 1 after calling allies for help.
Breakdown of Micro Trapping
Micro trapping is a technique designed to delay enemies from landing an attack. This creates a critical window for an ally to attack first and secure the kill on the enemy Primarch before they can strike back.
Not an Exact Science: The suggested 3-second intervals are not an exact science—they are simply baseline numbers established through trial and error.
Enemy-Dependent Timing: The timing is completely dependent on your enemies. If you feel your trap timing is not successfully delaying the enemy, adjust your timing on the fly to compensate.
Action Plan (Micro Trapping)
Deploy Primarchs: Move both a Taunter and a Trapper to the castle.
Taunt: Allow the Taunter to taunt incoming enemies.
Wait & Trap: Wait approximately 3 seconds after the enemies land, then immediately trap them with the Trapper (prompting the "You were trapped" message).
Hold & Disengage: Wait another 3 seconds, then move the Trapper off.
Adjust Timing: If you notice the enemy is not being delayed effectively, adjust your wait times to compensate based on enemy reaction speed.
Defensive Strategy 3: The Counter Wave
Note: This strategy applies during consistent, ongoing attacks from enemy forces.
Action Plan
Organize Retaliation: Plan and organize designated members from your team and alliance to launch counter-attacks on enemy castles in retaliation.
Force the Choice: Force the enemy team into a dilemma: defend their own castles or maintain their attack on yours.
Escalate Pressure: If the enemies continue their attack, apply increased offensive pressure to their castles until they retreat.
Fallback & Cut Off: If the counter-wave fails to stop their advance:
Pull offensive players back to the defensive line.
Stage them on nearby castles.
Use Trappers on those nearby castles to trap and cut off the enemy's movement.
Protect Your Neighboring Territories
The absolute best defense is to never let the enemies reach your castles in the first place!
Defend Gate Castles: Focus specifically on protecting neighboring castles that act as "Gates" to your territory—not every random castle they own. Enemies must bubble or undergo delay waits on Gate castles before they can cross over to reach yours.
Prioritize Nearby Areas: Always prioritize defending the area closest to your own castles first. Protecting key choke points nearby builds a far stronger defensive buffer for your territory.
Early Preparation: If defending neighbor gate castles is not possible, or if you do not have any, prepare to defend your own castles before enemies land. Call allies early and alert them to possible incoming attacks as soon as movement is spotted.
Fortify via Positioning: Holding castles near allies and securing alliance zones helps "fortify" an entire region. Having allies nearby ensures teams can respond and reinforce much faster during an attack.
The Fallout: Emergency Response Guide
If your castle reaches 0 guards remaining, it enters the Conquest Phase. This is the absolute worst-case scenario and what you ideally want to avoid at all costs.
Conquest usually happens when a castle is on cooldown, but in rare cases, a team may choose to fight until the very last guard is killed before attempting to raise shields.
Action Plan During Fallout
If you find yourself in this Fallout scenario, you only have two choices:
Hold & Regroup: Load Primarchs with as many troops as possible to hold off the enemy and wait out the cooldown timer, or enable the shield to buy time for your team to regroup.
Abandon Ship: Flee the castle and allow it to be conquered.
Strategic Decision-Making
Deep / Safe Castles: If the castle is in a safe location deep within your territory, try your absolute best to defend and maintain it, even during Fallout.
Exposed / Outer Castles: If the castle is not deep or safe, it may be best to cut your losses and retreat. Fleeing spares your Primarchs, troops, and allies from undergoing unnecessary losses.
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is both a preventative measure and an aftermath/damage control tactic that can prevent endless conflict and save your team countless headaches.
Leadership & Ambassador Role: This job is strictly reserved for Team Leadership or a designated Diplomatic Ambassador. Outreach should always be handled by individuals who represent your team's official stance.
Direct Communication: Diplomacy involves reaching out directly to opposition leadership to negotiate terms. Outcomes vary widely depending on both teams' philosophies, underlying politics, and context.
Forming Agreements: Successful diplomatic talks can lead to:
No-Hit Agreements: Mutual ceasefires under agreed conditions (e.g., "Don't attack us, and we won't attack you").
Territorial Compromises: Yielding or trading a specific castle to allow an enemy to fall back, removing offensive pressure from your core territory.
Consequences of Failed Negotiations: Failed agreements can quickly spiral into full-scale Atlas wars—resulting in massive troop losses, conquered castles, and broader conflicts involving larger alliance webs. While full wars introduce added stress to a team, they are a completely natural and thrilling part of the Atlas experience!
Note: Because diplomacy involves complex negotiation strategies, alliance management, and political leverage, it will be covered in its own dedicated, standalone guide.
Authors Note:
This is Verison 1 of the Atlas Defense guide. If you feel as there is other information that should be added, please leave a comment and the author will update the guide with the information. If you feel as something needs expansion or clarification also please comment!
Happy Flying, hopefully this guide helps!