Defense Grid: The Awakening is a unique spin on tower defense gameplay that will appeal to players of all skill levels. A horde of enemies is invading, and it’s up to the player to stop them by strategically building fortification towers around their base. Beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack bring the world to life. The controls are intuitive and the gameplay is deep — the special attacks and properties of each tower work together to provide many ways to succeed.
Defense Grid Cheat
All cheat codes start with ‘=’ or ‘4’ (if = doesn’t work, try 4), and can be typed in anywhere. (Type them slowly if you are having trouble getting them to show up) Many of the cheat codes mark you as having cheated. Your save games will be marked as ‘cheated’ You will be unable to post into leaderboards or get achievements. If you restart the game and don’t load any cheated save games, you will be able to post to leaderboards and get achievements again.
Cheat Signs: Your profile will not save if you cheated. Save Game reflects “Cheat”
To remove cheat: Restart game to get into highscore boards / get achievements.
=enzyme – Must be typed from main menu – unlocks all missions (Note: =enzyme does NOT count as cheating)
=dnamuse – gives 100k resources (adradis)
=chezanator – kills all aliens on the map (adradis)
=kristalithan – kills all aliens with cores (adradis)
=jeanmarie – turns on/off the ability for aliens to pick up cores.
=indesilvermoon – floating cores get mean (Amrynel)
=indesilvermoon – cores returns to power station, kill passing alien.
=hideui – Toggles the UI for better screenshots
=hidecursor – Same
=everythingsfine – Instant build
=railboyrules – All mobs are half speed
=oscarwenger – All enemies are swarmers
=riotmod – Free cam
Ten Types of Defense Grid Tower
There are 10 types of towers in Defense Grid, each has strength and weaknesses.
Gun (Usefulness: 10/10)
Upgrade Cost : 100/200/400 | Strong against shield and fliers. Weak against groups.
Solution: Build temporal that slows down groups and build many gun tower where each gun tower does not obstruct the other tower shooting sight (building them in a line instead of clustering them together) Cheapest offensive tower but powerful in mobs. Commonly use to set up a maze by blocking path or extending path or juggling.
Temporal (Usefulness: 10/10)
Upgrade Cost : 300/300/300 | Strong against all. Useless against fliers.
Does not attack but slow enemies movement speed by half. Great assistance for all towers except laser tower. Does not slow air units. Level 3 upgrade does not increase range much. Level 2 upgrade is best. Slowing them provides ample time for primary attacking towers to defeat them before enemies goes out of sight.
Laser Tower (Usefulness: 7/10)
Upgrade Cost : 200/400/800 | Useless against shield and fliers
Deals damage overtime after enemy walks out of laser tower range. Laser tower targeting an enemy replenishes the burn damage expiry instead of stacking more burn damage. Best to build each laser tower far from each other (approximately 5 tiles away from another Laser Tower). Great to use when there are many towers obstructing one another, build this behind. It just need to hit an enemy once to set burn effect.
Laser Tower proves handy when you have last through long waves (20 and more enemy waves) that has many Racers and Boss Racers. Spread the laser towers out where those racers have to pass those laser towers twice (to obtain a double tower burning effect) This applies well for Borderlands Forge with 25 towers max.
Command Tower (Usefulness: 10/10)
Upgrade Cost : 300/300/300 | Strong against all | Resource Salvage Per Kill : 125%/135%/145%
Does not attack but helps to expose stealth units, allowing nearby towers to attack them without having to wait for enemies to reach at point-blank-shot. Also salvage more resources when enemy is killed within its range. Build command tower in early stage at the killing zone to earn more money quickly and earn more interest with the money saved in bank (with non-escaped cores). This allows you to win the game with gold medal easily!
Tesla Tower (Usefulness: 1/10)
Upgrade Cost : 175/350/700 | Useless against fliers.
Does not target air units. Deals massive damage with the power charge up during there are no monsters within range. Great against escaping enemies or enemies reaching closely the base.
If compared to a normal Gun Tower, a Gun tower that uses the same amount of money spent for upgrade deals more damage per second, and targets fliers as well. So Tesla isn’t practical. If there were escaping units, might as well use ion cannon laser satellite to kill them.
Missile Tower (Usefulness: 7/10)
Upgrade Cost : 225/450/900 | Useless against ground units. Strong against fliers.
Only targets air units. Building masses of low level 1 missile tower deal more damage then having one Level 3 Missile Tower if you have many vacant slots to build them.
Inferno (Usefulness: 7/10)
Upgrade Cost : 150/300/600 | Strong against groups. Weak against shield and single enemy.
Deals more damage than concussion but has shooting sight weakness.
Concussion (Usefulness: 7/10)
Upgrade Cost : 275/550/1100 | Strong against groups. Weak against shield and single enemy.
Similar to Inferno. The only difference to Inferno is it does not rely on shooting sight but randomly explodes enemy within range. Just cross your fingers and hope that grenade it throws randomly hits the enemy. Best to build many of these clustered together in an area dense with enemies. Deals no damage to groups which are protected by the shield-emitter enemy if you only used 1 concussion.
Cannon (Usefulness : 10/10)
Upgrade Cost : 200/400/800 | Strong against shield. Weak against groups.
One of the few towers that can attack enemies from different platform level. The difference of Gun and Cannon is their attacking range and attacking abilities. Cannon are unable to attack enemies in close range, but Gun are able to kill them. Cannon does not have shooting sight weakness. Just think that a cannon shoots cannonball in a curve way like how arrows flies up and comes down. Have great attacking range. Best to use these towers when your map is very large with many different platform level. They will deal far more damage compare to guns since they keep attacking while gun towers have to wait enemies to reach them at their platform level. Great against fliers as well. Weak against groups.
Meteor (Usefulness : 7/10)
Upgrade Cost : 250/500/1000 | Very Weak against Racers, Racer Boss. Useless against fliers.
Great asset when you have little strategic spot for gun and cannon tower. Similarly to Cannon, it does not having shooting sight weakness. Unable to target enemies at close range. Has the broadest attacking range compared to all towers. Similarly to Missile Tower, build these in bunch like mushrooms, just make sure their attacking boundary reaches many enemy path. Once you lack strategic position, then upgrade these towers.
The fireball shot from this tower moves a little slowly, so when it reaches to the ground, most of the racers have moved out from that explosion location, unless you slow them down with Temporal. It is commonly used to clear out groups if your concussion, inferno and laser doesn’t do their job well in a particular map that has roads far from the tower grid.
Defense Grid Strategy, Tips and Tricks
Use Cheap Towers
To score higher than the pre-requisite gold medal, use cheap towers such as Gun Tower (Level 3 $700). Cannon (Level 2 $600), and Laser Tower to assist with the racer. Build very least amount of towers to win the game (example: 15-25 tower limit). Establish Command Tower early in game to salvage more resources from early waves.
Avoid Obstructing Line of Fire
Don’t obstruct Gun Tower shooting sight. This will greatly reduces their damage per second when enemy is within their short range.
Tackling Shield Units
To destroy groups that are shielded by shield quickly, have a few gun towers before laser tower. This allows the creep that has its shield destroyed burned easily by laser tower.
Use Laser Over Flame Attacks
Use laser tower instead of inferno or concussion because both of them costs more than they are valued compared to laser tower.
Tackling Mobs
However, if your map has lots of groups with an enemy shielding them, its best to use concussion over laser tower. Concussion tower is good for allowing the enemy spawner (that warps more enemies through its portal) to warp all its friends in, this will generate more money for you, and increase high-score.
Optimizing Area Effect Towers
There are 4 area of effect towers that kills groups easily: Inferno, Concussion, Laser, Meteor.
1) Use Concussion when all 8 adjacent grids is passable by enemies!
2) Use Laser when enemies passed it twice!
3) Use Inferno at tight corner of the road.
4) Use Meteor when tower grid is far away from the road.