Element Tower Defense FAQ by Cisz:

Where do I get info on this WarCraft 3 game?

Short answer: Go to www.eletd.com.

Long answer: First of all, there is much information inside the map itself. Your worker for example has a "tip" button that gives you tips if you press it. Or you could press F9, there are lists off all towers, what elements they are made of, and what they do, in the quest log. Then there is this FAQ. And you could go to www.eletd.com and read the info pages about the creep waves or towers. And in the forums at www.eletd.com/forum you will find many posts and answered questions. After you have checked those sources, you are welcome to ask other players in running WarCraft 3 games as well. But please understand that the third one to ask about interest in the same game will get a "sigh" from the host.

Air?

Short answer: There is no air. (What you breathe is just your imagination.)

Long answer: Only the fake versions of Element TD have air waves. That is, in an official version of the map, all towers hit all targets. Even if the unit representing the creep has the appearance of, say, an Albatross. Root towers will root them. Cannons will shoot them. No air. If you want help on how to deal with air waves, I advise you to play the real version only. Forget air. There never was air.

What is net-worth?

Short answer: It's the sum of your warcraft gold and the worth of your towers.

Long answer: It's the amount of warcraft gold you would have, if you sold all your towers. So all elemental towers are counted in with 75% of their value only. And if you buy elemental towers, your networth will go down. Unless of course you are playing on random, in which case the sell value of all towers is 100%. Consequently it's not a very precise method to measure anything. The networth is greatly affected by the difficulty setting (since higher difficulties have more creeps and thus more warcraft gold), the interest picks (since they increase the income you get from interest), any money towers you build (since they raise your bounty), or the skill of the player (since selling/rebuilding or not spending all your warcraft gold without losing takes skill and creates more interest).

What is interest?

Short answer: You get % on your unspent warcraft gold in Element TD.

Long answer: Every 15 seconds you get a percentage of you current unspent warcraft gold as a sort of extra income. This "interest rate" starts out with 2% and can be raised by 0.75% by spending lumber at the elemental summoning center. There is an interest counter on the multiboard, so you can time your sales and builds to maximize interest gain. Maybe 2% every 15 seconds doesn't sound much to you, but the game usually lasts about 45-60 minutes if you survive to wave 60. So that's like 200 times interest. And having a tower more or less really can save your neck on a map as tightly balanced as this.

Why do you sell?

Short answer: To have warcraft gold ready when the interest is due.

Long answer: There are many reasons to sell and rebuild. One is to have warcraft gold ready when the interest counter hits 0. Another reason is to get rid of towers that have a weak attack versus the next wave and replace them with better ones. And sometimes it makes sense to change the location of the towers. But there are good reasons NOT to sell towers, so you better think twice before you do it. First of all, only cannons and arrows sell at 100% refund. (That is all towers with "cannon" or "arrow" in the name.) All other towers, the elemental towers (that is, all towers that started out as one of the six elements), sell at 75% refund. So you lose a quarter of their cost if you sell them. There is an exception to this rule; if you play random, you can sell all towers at 100%. Another reason not to sell is, that it takes a lot of clickwork to do so. And you have to rebuild fast, not to leak. So to get those single warcraft gold coins you need to actually work for it.

How do I build the tower X?

Short answer: Press F9 and look it up, there are lists of all towers.

Long answer: Building is a little tricky in Element TD. For example: The Acid tower. It's listed as "Fire, Water, Darkness". But what does that mean? First, you have to hunt down a Fire elemental, a Water elemental, and guess what - a Darkness elemental as well. You do that by spending lumber at the elemental summoning center. Once you have all required elements, you can start to build. Select your worker and open the build menu. But there is no Acid Tower on the list. Now, the Acid Tower is created by upgrading a tower. Since Acid consists of Fire, Water, Darkness, you can start acid with any of those. Just build one of the three and upgrade it to the amplified form. Now it has a new upgrade menu. But again, no Acid. Now remember those elements. If you start with, say, dark, you can continue to upgrade to either a Water/Darkness tower (Poison) or a Fire/dark tower (Magic). And those towers finally have the Acid upgrade in their menu. So if you know the elements to a tower, start with one of them and upgrade your way towards your target. Keep in mind, that towers are expensive. A 3 element tower costs about 1300 gold, to be payed in upgrades mostly.

What element should I get? / What element is good?

Short answer: Depends. What towers do you want? (shrugs) Maybe Fire?

Long answer: No element is good by itself. If you must play with only one element for weird reasons like a bet or to impress the ladytypes, go for Earth or Fire. They will do the least horrible, but still a single element is a bad strategy. Element TD is not played that way. A better question would be "What towers should I build?" And my answer is: Go for acid (Water, Fire, Darkness), storm (Water, Fire, Light) and ice (Water, Light). They need only four elements altogether (lfwd) and you can use Water towers (w), or Fire towers (f), or Tidal Towers (wdl) to do the damage. Acid will reduce the armor of the creeps and make all other towers do more damage by this. Storm and Ice will slow them down to give your towers more time to do damage.

Where do I get lumber?

Short answer: You get 1 piece of lumber every 5 waves.

Long answer: Every time a player finishes off all creeps of a 5th wave, all players that are still alive get 1 lumber. Wave 60 doesn't give lumber, since it's the last wave. That's 11 lumber in total. In addition to that you get 2 pure essence for free after wave 51 and 56, so you don't have to buy that if don't need more than 2.

What is that lumber for anyway?

Short answer: You can spend it at the "elemental summoning center" to get elements.

Long answer: Lumber (or wood) is used to buy things at your "elemental summoning center". It is a building located between the entry- and exit-area of the creeps, at the top border of your part of the map. You can make three different types of purchase there. Most of the time you will summon an elemental. That is, you will select one of the 6 types of elements and summon it, to gain it's power. The elemental will then enter the map as a kind of boss, a single creep of considerable strength. After you have successfully conquered this elemental boss, you can summon a higher level of the same type with the next lumber you get. Elements can get as strong as level 3. Be careful not to summon an elemental too soon, because if you leak it, it will cost you 3 life. A level 1 element can be killed with 2-3 super arrow towers. A level 2 element will require about 2-3 Magic towers or Electricity towers, or maybe 4-8 Elemental Arrow Towers to conquer. And a level 3 elemental will take about 3-5 level 2 multi-element towers to take out. If you pile your wood to use it later, you could summon several elementals at once or in rapid sequence, but keep in mind that to summon the higher levels, you need to have flattened the lower ones. So you can't immediately summon Earth 1, 2 and 3. You have to kill the smaller, to get the ability to summon the higher. The second type of purchase is to raise your interest rate. It starts out with 2.0% on your warcraft gold every 15 seconds and each lumber gives you +0.75% on that. So with, say, three lumber, you will get a total of 4.25% every 15 seconds. The third type is to buy a pure essence. This is an extra resource that you need to build the most powerful towers of Element TD. Those "pure" towers are hard to get. You need level three in an element to build the pure tower of that kind. The pure tower is an upgrade of a level 4 single element tower. This upgrade costs about 15900 gold, and you need 1 unit of said pure essence to build it. Pure essence is technically the same as food in WarCraft 3 The Frozen Throne, so selling a pure tower will free your essence again, to be used in a different way. The periodic tower of the elements also requires a pure essence to be build. Pure essence can only be bought if you already conquered at least one level 3 elemental, so this is more like a late game option. After wave 51 and 56 you get a pure essence for free, so if you can't afford more than 2 pures anyway and have no problem with waiting till then, you don't have to buy essence at all.

What's an "lfwd-n"? What's "wfd" supposed to mean? Why do they tell me to "F9"?

Short answer: The letters are abbreviations for the six elements. (L)ight, (D)arkness, (W)ater, (F)ire, (N)ature, (E)arth. F9 is the quest log, it has lists of the towers

Long answer: If you ask other players questions during a game, they will be busy and maybe not exactly keen to assist you. So they will sometimes try to deal with your quest for information in a very hasty manner. A questions like "Please, dear Sir, how do I build Acid towers?" could be answered with "wfd", short for "It consists of the elements Water, Fire, and Darkness.". Such information can be found in the questlog, which is opened with F9. There are lists of all towers and their elements, damage type and special abilities. And "lfwd-n" is a build, a set of elements a player is planning to use. That would be an answer to the question "What are you going to build?".

My life tower isn't working?

Short answer: It is working, you have too much health.

Long answer: The life giving towers only work on certain targets. Undead gives life for killing undead creeps, Tech gives live for killing mechanical creeps, and Life gives life for killing living creeps; that is, creeps that are neither undead nor mechanical. They give one life per kill but only if you don't have full health already (50 life or more). Above that, you only get 1 life per 5 kills. So an entire wave of 30 creeps on very hard will give about 6 life if you make all kills with life giving towers of the correct type (or 7 if you have some kills left over from earlier waves). Oh, and of course the life giving tower has to make the actual kill, so it won't do to build one between your other towers and hope for the best.