Hello, young Dragon Lord and welcome to War Dragons!
War Dragons is a multiplayer tower defense game that blends strategic base defense with dragon-based aerial assaults. This guide is to walk you through the logic behind base building.
Quick summary about our bases:
· Your base is made up of the Home base + 8 islands that will be cleared of fog and forest as you grow.
· Types of Towers:
Resource Buildings:
· Sheep Farm,
· Lumber Mill,
Defensive Towers:
· Damage Towers – Deal direct damage to attacking dragons.,
· Rage Drain Towers – Reduce the dragon’s Rage, limiting spell usage.,
· Shielding Towers – Protect nearby towers by absorbing or reducing incoming damage.,
· Spell Negation Towers – Counter or negate dragon spells, preventing or limiting their effects.,
· Totems - lower dragon's damage based on totem's element matching the dragon's element .,
Core Base Buildings:
· Town Hall,
· Builder’s Hut,
· Breeding Castle,
· Dragon Den,
· Hall of Research,
· Incubator,
· Storage Hut,
· Starting from the Home Base, the islands are numbered as follows:
· Islands 1–2: The first long island adjacent to the Home Base.,
· Island 3: The first connector island.,
· Islands 4–5: The middle long island.,
· Island 6: The second connector island.,
· Islands 7–8: The third (outermost) long island.,
Attackers begin their assault from Island 8 and progress toward the Home Base, ending at Island 1.
The elements affecting our ability to build towers:
· Your Player level (caps your tower level)
· The Tier of Dragons you have (caps your builder hut level)
· The Builder Hut level (caps your tower level)
And now that we’ve covered some of the basics, let’s talk about how to build your base!
The cardinal rule in base building is: “Build up, not out.”
What does that mean?
It means that when building an attack tower, it’s better to maximize it (build up) before you build a new one (not out). Similarly, it's better to have one max'ed island (build up) before branching out to other islands (not out).
Why? Because it means that instead of diffusing your base’s defense power over many small level towers, you are focusing its damage over fewer towers that are max level (a kill island). This leads to better defense power (dp) and a much easier ability to defend your base.
Having said that, there are two factors to consider when building a base:
1. The layout of the base (how do you want it to look like at the end).
2. The type of towers you want to use.
For 1. the layout:
Younger players are encouraged to start their base with farms and one attack tower on island 1 (the one closest to the home base), then more attack towers on island 2. Can expand to island 3 when island 2 is maxed and put one low level mage on the furthest island when the fog/forest is cleared there. This is beneficial for several reasons:
· It delays any enemy attacking from reaching your 70% on base and winning the attack quicker (check notes at end of this guide on base %).
· It focuses your maxed attack towers on a specific island (we call it the kill island) so that during defense, your supershots can be focused on those specifically, making it harder to damage the towers and easier to kill the dragon.
As you grow, your base will naturally expand towards island 4, then 5, and so on. Again, max one tower at at time and let your tower level caps guide you as to when to start a new tower (if you're breeding the appropriate tier at your player level -mentioned below).
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For 2. the types of towers and tower progression:
When starting a new account, your tower options are very limited. As you level up, you gradually unlock stronger towers through different tower sagas, allowing you to replace older defenses with those that fit the current meta.
Early Game Towers:
At the beginning, you only have access to the basic Lumber Towers:
· Archers
· Cannons
· Storm Towers
· Mages (blue and red)
· Lightnings
· Trebuchet
· Ballistas
While most of these will eventually be replaced, Lightning Towers and Blue/Red Mages remain useful well into the late game. For this reason, we strongly recommend prioritizing these towers at the start of your game instead of investing heavily in the others.
Tower Sagas:
As your account progresses, you’ll unlock additional tower families through the various tower sagas:
· Flak Saga (earth, ice, dark, fire, electro),
· Turret Saga (ice, fire),
· Electrum Saga (volts, howi, cosmic orerry, pylon, archmages, oculus),
· Bloodstone Saga (soul drain, nexus, nullspire).
**Current Meta Towers (as of July 2026):
At the time of writing, the strongest and most commonly used defensive towers are:
· Ice Flak – The cornerstone of almost every competitive base. (Link to Ice Flak mechanics/effects.),
· Cosmic Orrery,
· Nexus/ Dark Flak,
· Soul Drain,
· Crystal Howitzer,
· Charged Volt (or Lightning if Charged Volt is unavailable),
· Archmage (or Blue/Red Mage until unlocked).
These towers form the core of most high-level defensive layouts. They require special resources and not just lumber. Please check WDscripts/ WDneon to know what resource is needed for each.
P.S. You can also check the required player level, dragon tiers, or hut levels for any tower on WDscripts/ WDneon.
Important Tip: Upgrade one tower at a time to maximize its effectiveness + Avoid merging or transforming towers during the early game, as your resources are better spent expanding and upgrading your base (more on this later).
Beneficial Tower Combos:
1. Orrery + ice flak + mages
2. 2/ 3 lights or Volts or mix
3. 2 / 3 lights-Volts + mages
4. Ice Turret + Storm
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The next question becomes how do I choose where to put what?
This relies on three factors:
1. Range of attack tower (shows when you press on the tower)
The longer the range of a tower (think volts/ howi/ blue mages) the further you can put it on an island. The shorter the range, the more early on you want it on the island.
2. Size of tower
Some towers when put next to each other enable the attacker to one-shot them, ex: two flaks next to each other. Sometimes it's unavoidable but when you notice this on defense, you can switch up the positions till you find the one that gives attackers a harder time to one-shot two towers.
3. Projectile Speed and Wind-up time
Towers with a high projectile speed and a short wind-up time (like volts) can also be put at the front of an island because they take less time to fire at an incoming dragon.
**Keeping these factors in mind, tower positions is still subjective and can depend on the current most used dragon. Make sure you defend your layout and see what works for you and what does not.
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Some of the more basic layouts younger players can have:
Example 1:
The base owner here is a level 53 player who is breeding orange tier dragons with tower levels 18-21 (good scenario). Notice a few things:
1. The base owner chose to build mages more so than attack towers to level up. This is ok at this level as mages can be handy at higher levels.
2. The placement of towers here. Long range towers such as howi and blue mages are at the back of island 2. There are two mages on island 6 and 7 to increase the time of the flight for an attacker.
Example 2:
Island 1:
The base owner could switch the howi with a totem.
Island 2:
The base owner could put the howi in place of the blue archmage (if totem is on island 1) and the blue archmage in place of the dark flak.
Perch
Island 3:
The base owner can switch the volt with a red mage at the center and the other volt with a dark flak.
The base owner in this example is level 669 breeding revenant tier dragons with tower levels 183. Their towers can go to 184 at their level (which requires 2 titan dragons only so the base owner is ahead on breeding and slightly behind on tower levels; this is a good scenario).
Again, this will depend on your player level and the resources you have for these towers. Shield towers like orerry can be substituted by earth flaks or storm towers if low on electrum bars.
Mistakes that are very common:
1. Over leveling. Meaning your player level is high but your tower levels are low.
How does that happen?
When you level out, not up. ie you build many low level towers that extend to island 4,5,6,7,8 which makes you gain xp. The xp then makes your player level goes up but your tower levels are low and so your towers are weak and can't kill the on-par attacking dragons.
When does this commonly happen?
a. At the start of the game, some players get frustrated at how little resource they can farm in order to max a tower, so they start building new towers instead to help speed up leveling the base.
b. When you don't breed the appropriate tiered dragons for your player level because you're low on tokens, which then limits your builder hut, which then caps your tower levels so you end up leveling out not up again. It's important to be mindful of your breeding tier when leveling your base. Some players elect to skip a fort when they are behind on breeding. You can check what dragon tier and builder hut level you need at each player level by checking any tower in WDneon and the requirements to level it.
2. Ignoring perches, defensive riders, gears, and, runes. Please see next guide for this.
Notes:
· If you are just starting the game, there will be a quick in-game step by step on how to build towers. It starts with farm -> archer -> lumber mill -> cannon, clearing fog/forest, etc.
· As you build up a tower, you gain player xp (can be seen if you press on the bar next to your player level). When the bar fills to the end, your player level goes up by 1. The xp required to level up is effected by merging and transforming towers, which if done badly can create an xp debt. That means it will take more xp than normal to level up one level. This is why it is not advised for younger players to transform/ merger unless under the guidance of an experienced mentor.
· Your dp (defense power in your profile card) is not the best indicator of how strong your base is, but is ok to keep in mind as a very general guide when you want to improve your base.
· Tower placement and tower types are highly subjective choices. There are some basic standards to follow (mentioned above) but, in essence, there is no one template of a 'correct' base. Experiment. Defend your base and see what works and what does not and change and test again! Ask others for advice, especially if they defended your base.
· Reviewing your layout every few is a big part of the game. As new dragons get released, it is recommended you check what their weaknesses are and play around in your layout to capitalize on that.
· Base Percentages in attacks – In regular PvP, an attack is considered successful once 70% of the base is destroyed, and it awards the same victory as a 100% attack. However, the attack is only fully completed when 100% of the base is destroyed. In Atlas and Crystal Caves events, achieving 100% destruction with a single dragon is usually the preferred strategy, as it maximizes efficiency (in atlas; troops killed vs troops lost and revive rates, in CC; better point score) and overall performance. This is relevant to base building as many players want to delay when attackers get 70% on their base.
Credits: Thanks to Eff for review, recommendations, and edits.