Realm Siege

Realm Siege (RS) is one of the most important game modes and daily activities of this game, as it is the only way to earn Awakening Tokens on a daily basis, which is needed to awaken Heroes to their true potential (while Campaign unlocks heroes and Tournaments use their power). It is unlocked after Campaign lvl 40.

For more tips on how to make the most use out of this game mode, see also the Realm Siege Strategy guide - e.g., number of plays, how to make effective use of scalable hero power, blessed tower spots, etc*.* - while this page is designed instead to cover the basic descriptions.

## Entry

Each day **two RS maps can be played for FREE**.

* *Tip: always, Always, ALWAYS do these 2 free plays! There is never a reason to skip them intentionally. Even the absolute worst choice is far better than choosing to skip them!*

In addition to the initial two free games, **each additional play** will cost **one RS Key**. It is common for newer players to stop after the first two plays, while saving up gems to buy another hero, while more senior players typically buy 1-2 keys per day. There is quite a bit of strategy that involves when & how often you buy & use these keys.

## Realm Siege Keys

Each day up to 5 additional Keys can be bought for progressively increasing gem price.

* First 2 Keys for 80 Gems each - *these are by far the most efficient keys, and one of if not the absolute best use of gems in the entire game, e.g. to take advantage of "easy" maps whenever they come along (see many more such tips at Realm Siege Strategy guide)*
* Next 2 Keys for 160 Gems each - *not recommended unless during a specific Event in progress (then highly recommended, under certain conditions - see Event Guide), or if you spend real-world money to buy gems to speed your progress*
* Last Key for 320 Gems - *not recommended, unless during an event to reach the highest rank for a F2P, or anytime for a P2W high spender to slightly speed up progress beyond the first 4 keys*

Keys never disappear, and thus can be saved for later use. However only up to 10 Keys can be stored at a time.

* *Tip: only victories will consume a free entry or Key, while if you lose nothing is lost except your time and you can retry again, on the same map or perhaps choosing an easier one. So you can try without any fear at all of failure.*

## Gameplay

### Maps

Each day a player is presented with several options to choose from, one for each Hero owned (unless they have reached their maximum number of tokens). To help the player choose, the right-hand-side of the menu shows the number of tokens remaining until the next awakening rank (also from there you can go directly to the Hero Camp where you can Awaken a hero). Upon playing a map, another (random but predetermined) takes its place. In any case, the next day will also cause *all* map options to be refreshed.

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Each level that you enter will look similar to the basic Campaign maps (e.g., same tappables if applicable), but the enemies will be tougher, and certain tower spots will be blessed - both explained below. Replaying the same map (e.g., upon failure) will feature the same blessed locations, but the next time that you play the map on a different day, they can be in different locations - so these are both random, in general, and yet with a single offering being deterministic. As you progress through the game, it becomes increasingly more crucial to make effective use of these blessed tower locations, and to have heroes whose power scales well with increasing difficulty (see Realm Siege Strategy guide). In this way, RS adds a unique style of play to the game, which differs greatly from other game modes like regular campaign, tournaments (where heroes are blessed rather than towers), and others like Shattered Realms and Arcade.

It is also worth noting that a world will not appear in RS until you have completed it in the campaign. e.g., immediately after beating level 40 and RS becomes available, you will only ever have to play in W1-2 maps (the easiest ones). Once you unlock W3 and reach its' end (level 80), W3 will then appear in RS, and so you must be able to handle those at higher difficulty. Thus, you can cripple your game by making unwise hero choices (which lowers your income but still lets you progress - so don't restart just because of this!), or conversely you could also use this to your advantage to make sure that you go slow enough to rank up your heroes early on in the game. Though each world offers its' own unique challenges - strong fliers in W3, uncrossable gulfs in W4, enemies that spawn more enemies in W5, etc.

Note that unlike Campaign, there are no stars awarded: you just need to survive the level with at least 1 health left to gain the **full reward**. This, coupled with a lack of penalty for failure, makes RS an easier mode of the game, even though it is also simultaneously harder in other ways. Thus:

* *Tip: It is generally not recommended to use Power Items to beat a RS level (except during events). Rather, try again or even choose a different map that is easy enough to complete without using up any items.*

### Skip Play

Although it will greatly diminish your rewards, if you cannot handle the difficulty of playing through a given level, and you refuse to use some other option (storing up keys to play on easier levels, or work on a different hero that day), then you can skip the play by watching an ad. Especially during events this may be the only way to proceed, once you've reached the point where you cannot handle increasing the difficulty setting any further. You must dial the difficulty setting (explained below) to zero for this option to appear, then start the battle as normal, and choose the option in the dialog box that appears to indicate whether you want to play or skip the battle by watching an ad (as shown in picture).

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### Increasing Difficulty Setting

Each map can be played at +0 to +5 difficulty. Choosing the +0 setting will reveal an option to watch an ad instead of playing through the level - though this is recommended only as a last resort, since you will gain far less rewards this way, especially over time.

Choosing +1 through +5 will **permanently** increase the overall strength of enemies on that RS map, which accumulates over time and across different heroes (although purchasing a new hero also reduces this slightly across all heroes). The enemies' attack, armor, and most unfortunately their speed will all increase along with the difficulty setting, but the number of waves and total number and type of enemies will remain the same.

* *Tip #1: It is strongly recommended to always play every match at +5 difficulty, as it offers better rewards - i.e., increasing your overall gem income level by ~50% above that of the Daily Trial alone (see below).*
* *Tip #2: It is also highly recommended to have several heroes to choose from (at least 2-3, though 5 would be ideal), so that you may play a different map if you have problems finishing one that you initially chose. (See also *Realm Siege Strategy guide** for tips on how to use time via your bank of stored keys rather than have to settle for a different hero - e.g., do as many maps as you can for your hero of choice, and then switch to storing up keys for the future, although this only applies to someone buying keys at least some of the time).

Interestingly, the effect of this difficulty setting is not uniformly applied across all worlds, but rather increases in later-world situations. e.g., a W1 level powered up to +200 can be less difficult to complete than a W2 level at +100, or a W3 level at +50, or a W4 level at +30. Though other factors also influence the true "difficulty" of completion, e.g. the number of exits, whether flying enemies are present, and/or bosses, whether heroes are prevented from traversing a gulf that separates parts of the map (common in W4 situations, and less so in W3, but found nowhere else), etc.

### Blessed Tower Locations

These locations, indicated by a glowing yellow effect on the tower build spots, make any tower placed upon them more powerful. Very importantly, the increased strength that they provide keeps up perfectly with the difficulty setting. So if you have played a level ten times already, each time at +5 difficulty (starting at difficulty=1), and thus its' final difficulty is raised to +101, then a tower placed on a blessed location will do the same relative damage amount in the next play as it would have on the first play. Conversely, a tower placed on a non-blessed spot will only do something like a tenth of the damage (or however it scales underneath - which is unknown like so many other numeric aspects of the game), as will your heroes themselves.

* *Tip: towers placed on non-blessed locations are not absolutely useless though: they do lack a blessed bonus for their direct damage, although many secondary features do not require that - e.g., a W1 Wizard tower's beam will be less effective, but its' teleport and haste aura will be identical to one placed on a blessed spot. Hence, consider placing such towers on non-blessed spots, and save the blessed spots for ones that you want to primarily do damage.*

## Rewards

Reward #1: the main reward for each RS map is **1 Awakening Token** of the hero you chose to play the map for (or **1 Meteor,** 1 substitute or 1 soda).

* *Tip: choosing a Meteor, Soda or Substitute instead of a hero is **extremely unwise** - these can be crafted far more cheaply elsewhere, and hero tokens are far too valuable to waste the opportunity to gain them in this way. At worst, if you cannot complete any of the maps, lower the difficulty setting to +0 to reveal the option to watch an ad to skip the play, but never use up a RS play (free or via a key) on this option.*

Reward #2: **Elixir**, the amount depending on the world and on what difficulty setting the map has accumulated up to (see table below). Each +1 increase of the difficulty setting permanently increases the amount of elixir by 15 (+5 difficulty => +75 Elixir), up to a maximum of **3000 Elixir** per map.

* *Tip: this is a major source of Elixir and even more of a reason to always play at +5 difficulty.*

On special event maps the Elixir reward can accumulate above the cap, but this could potentially vary per event.

Reward #3 (optional): each +1 that you add to the current difficulty setting will award 1 Realm Siege Medal upon completion (so up to 5 per RS play, either free or via key). After 10 RS Medals are earned, the player may claim **50 Gems** from a chest (which glows to let you know it is ready for collection, though you have to go back into the RS menu to see it). This additional source of income can *greatly* speed up your progress through the game, and help you afford awakenings once you have collected enough tokens for a hero, buy new heroes, etc.

## Events

Some Events are tied with RS and offer bigger rewards

* **Hero Release Event** - during this event a new special map is offered (and is highly suggested to do so, but you can also choose to ignore it and play normally if you want). These usually follow the same rules as other RS maps, with several notable deviations: the normal elixir cap can be exceeded, no RS medals are awarded, and instead of a hero token you get an "event token", as described in the link. *Tip: whenever a Hero Release or Hero rework event comes around, drop everything and work on it exclusively because the rewards are fantastic and rare.*
* **Divine Star Event** - during this event no new map is added, and you will play exactly the same way, with exactly the same rewards, but get extra rewards on top of the usual ones in the form of Divine Stars, which offers several random tokens, meteors, Hero Skins, etc.

## Brief tips

* Depending on where you are in the game, buying up to 2 keys a day makes sense to reduce the time it takes to Rank up your heroes. That would mean up to 4 Tokens a day.
* **Always play +5 Difficulty** whenever you can since this increases your income dramatically (e.g., +50-100% above the Daily Trial and helps you afford to buy the keys, heroes, awakenings, or event purchases that you need.
* The most important thing is to balance TIME and GEMS.

### Key costs vs. Medal Income Table

* Using the table, you can see the cost vs. benefits of doing various RS strategies - e.g., 2 runs/day to maximize gem income, or buying up to 2 keys at very low cost (so adding that to the 2 free runs is 3-4 runs/day total), which especially if you can handle the runs at +5 difficulty each time, helps to offset their cost almost to being completely free.
* These are "average" costs though - e.g., you don't actually get 25 gems per every play, but rather 50 gems per every 10 RS medals, so you can get at most +50 gems *every other* play (or every tenth play, if you do +1 difficulty each time, etc.), though this averages out to 25 per play in the long-run.
* Remember that you can save up 10 keys in RS, thus allowing up to 12 plays on a given (special) day without needing to purchase keys, or if you go all-out, 5 more by buying 5 keys that day. Though the only time this is recommended is for a very senior player to reach the R5 milestone during an event.
* Beyond the first two keys (e.g., an average of 4 RS runs/day), the keys get more expensive and thus it is almost never worthwhile for a F2P to consider this (EXCEPT DURING EVENTS). Even a P2W player is advised to avoid this in general (e.g., other things such as events offer a better return for the cost), though a P2P player can use this to gain a significant advantage over other players by gaining and awakening the Meta much more quickly than normal.

Many more tips for how to handle RS by beginning, advanced, and end-game players, and during new-hero events, are available in the Realm Siege Strategy guide. Also a cost-benefit analysis and many detailed conclusions from it is demonstrated at https://www.reddit.com/r/RealmDefenseTD/comments/g1mmg5/advice\_about\_awakening\_existing\_heroes\_vs\_buying/ (information from 2020, but maybe still useful for some players).