Neon Fortress guide: waves, upgrades and boss battles
Aim and defend
Move the pointer or your finger to aim from the castle and click or tap to fire. Enemies approach from the right with different health, speed, damage, and coin rewards. The round ends when every enemy in the wave is defeated. The run ends if attackers reduce the fortress health to zero.
Know the enemy types
| Enemy | Base HP | Speed | Wall damage | Coins |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grunt | 20 | 55 | 10 | 3 |
| Speeder | 14 | 105 | 8 | 4 |
| Tank | 80 | 30 | 25 | 8 |
| Flying | One hit | 75 | 12 | 5 |
| Shooter | 22 | 35 | 8 on contact; 6 per shot | 6 |
These are starting values. Non-boss health rises by 15% per round and movement speed by 7% per round. Speeders become available on round 3, shooters on 5, tanks on 6 and one-hit flying enemies on 11.
Spend wave coins in the Armory
Coins earned during the current run buy permanent-for-that-run upgrades between rounds. Arrow Power adds damage, Draw Speed reduces the firing cooldown, Arrow Speed shortens travel time, Multi-Shot adds arrows with a small spread, and Reinforce Fort increases maximum health. Repair Fort restores 30 health without raising the maximum.
Costs rise with each level, so spreading early purchases can be more efficient than rushing one expensive maximum. Repair always costs 25 coins and cannot raise health above the current maximum.
Boss rounds
Every tenth round replaces the normal wave with a boss. Bosses have much larger health pools and stronger attacks, and later cycles scale their health further. Enter round 10 with repaired walls and enough arrow damage to finish the fight before attrition becomes overwhelming.
The sequence begins with the 600-HP Ogre Warlord on round 10, the 1,400-HP Shadow Dragon on 20, the 2,400-HP Iron Golem on 30 and the 4,000-HP Chaos Titan on 40. Later ten-round cycles reuse the final boss definition with additional health scaling.
Persistent cosmetic coins
Defeated enemies also contribute to a local bank stored in your browser. That bank unlocks visual skins and cursor styles from the lobby; it does not buy combat power and it is not a real-money currency. Clearing browser site data removes these locally saved cosmetic unlocks.
Upgrade priorities
- Buy enough Draw Speed to avoid waiting while a fast enemy closes the final gap.
- Add Arrow Power before tank-heavy waves and bosses.
- Use Multi-Shot when waves become dense, but aim the spread so several arrows still connect.
- Repair before a boss rather than carrying a nearly empty fortress into the fight.
Target rule: remove shooters before slow ground enemies when a projectile is already being prepared; ranged damage ignores the time you thought the wall still had.
Upgrade values and complete costs
| Upgrade | Effect per level | Maximum | Successive costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arrow Power | +2 damage from a base of 8 | 5 | 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 |
| Draw Speed | −88 ms from a 580 ms cooldown | 5 | 15, 30, 60, 120, 240 |
| Arrow Speed | +80 from a base of 420 | 4 | 12, 25, 50, 100 |
| Multi-Shot | Add one arrow; 2–4 total | 3 | 50, 150, 300 |
| Reinforce Fort | +25 maximum health | 4 | 30, 60, 120, 240 |
| Repair Fort | Restore up to 30 health | Repeatable | 25 each use |
Draw Speed never goes below a 120 ms cooldown. Multi-Shot spreads its arrows across a wider angle at higher levels, so a four-arrow volley is most efficient against a dense wave or a large boss rather than a single small target.
Plan the first nine rounds
Early coins have competing uses. Arrow Power reduces the number of hits needed by healthy ground enemies; Draw Speed increases the number of attempts available; reinforcement creates a larger error budget. Buy what addresses the failure you can already observe instead of following one fixed build.
Before leaving the round-9 Armory, compare current wall health with its maximum. A damage upgrade survives between later waves, but it cannot undo the health carried into the first boss.
Two coin systems, two purposes
Wave coins exist only inside the current combat run and purchase Armory effects. Bank coins are saved locally in the browser and unlock visual archer or cursor styles. Bank purchases never change damage, health, enemy behavior or leaderboard order.
That separation keeps the public result comparable: somebody with an unlocked cosmetic starts a new run with the same combat values as a first-time guest.
Ranking and common questions
The public leaderboard compares the highest round reached, then defeated enemies as the tie-breaker. A player name is optional; guest play does not submit a result. Combat upgrades reset on a new run, while cosmetic bank coins and owned styles remain in local storage on the same browser.
Can I pause between waves? Yes. The Armory waits for you to buy upgrades and choose when the next round starts. Are there paid upgrades? No. Every combat and cosmetic item uses coins earned only by playing.