Guide ·
Tower defense tips for beginners
The Last Maul is a tower defense game where your towers are also the walls. That one idea changes almost everything you may know from other tower defense games, so this guide walks you through your first game from the home screen to the end of the first act. You don't need an account and there is nothing to install: open the game at thelastmaul.com/play, press Quick Play or Create Room, and you are ready.
If you would rather learn by doing, the home screen offers a guided start the first time you play: a solo game on Easy where the game points at each step as you go. Everything below is what that guided first wave teaches, plus the habits that carry you past wave 10.
Pick a race you can read
There are 8 races and every one of them is free to play. Each race has its own tower lines: a cheap tower you build many of, towers that branch into two upgrade paths, and an ultimate. You choose a race at the start of every game and you have 60 s to decide.
For a first game, pick a race whose job is easy to see:
- Fire hits groups with splash and burns. You can watch it work.
- Frost slows creeps, which gives every other tower more time.
- Storm chains lightning from creep to creep.
All three are on the races page, with every tower's cost, damage and range per tier. You can't get the choice badly wrong: the waves are tuned so every race can clear the first act.
Your towers are the maze
Creeps walk from their spawn to the goal town. They always take the shortest path that is open, and every tower you place is a 2×2 block they have to walk round. You may never block the path completely, so the game refuses a tower that would. The skill is making the walk as long as possible while it passes your strongest towers again and again.
A simple first maze:
- Place a row of cheap towers across the lane, leaving a gap at one end.
- A little further down, place another row with the gap at the other end.
- Repeat. The creeps now zig-zag across the lane, and every turn passes the towers twice.
That is the whole trick. The how to maze guide goes deeper into shapes that work, and the maps pages show every layout's lanes.
Gold, early waves and upgrades
You start with 100 gold. Kills pay gold, and clearing a wave pays more. There is no interest on gold you keep, so a tower now is nearly always better than gold saved for later. Spend it.
| Habit | Why |
|---|---|
| Spend most of your gold between waves | Gold in the bank does nothing |
| Upgrade the towers at the turns of your maze | Those towers see each creep for longest |
| Sell carefully | Selling gives back 75% of what you paid |
| Send waves early when your maze is ready | The early bonus is 6 gold at wave 1 and grows to 25 by wave 20 |
Between waves there is a 20 s countdown. Press Ready (or Space) to start the next wave early and collect the bonus, but only when your maze is done: a leaked creep costs more than the bonus pays.
Building takes time. A cheap tower is ready in about 1 s, an ultimate in about 9 s. A tower under construction already blocks the path but doesn't shoot, so build a few seconds before you need it, not when the wave is already on top of it.
Lives, leaks and bosses
Every creep that reaches the goal costs lives. On Normal you have 20 lives (on Easy 50), and a ground boss that gets through costs 3 at once. When a creep leaks, look at where it slipped through: usually one stretch of the maze is too short or too weak, and two more towers there fix it.
Some creeps fly. Flyers ignore your maze and head straight for the goal, so keep a few towers along that straight line, ideally towers that target flyers first. Each race's page says which of its towers do.
Elements in one paragraph
Fire beats nature, nature beats water, water beats fire. A tower hitting the element it is strong against deals 1.5× damage, and against the element it is weak to only 0.5×. Neutral ignores the triangle. You don't need this to clear your first act, but when a wave keeps leaking, its element is often why.
Playing with others
Up to 8 players can defend together. Each player has a lane, and the lanes meet in a shared valley before the goal where anyone can build. Lives are shared, so help a teammate who is struggling: towers that reach into their lane help them, and a creep killed inside a lane always pays the player who defends that lane, so helping never costs a friend gold. You can also send gold directly. If nobody is online, Quick Play seats you at an open table with AI teammates; see playing with AI teammates.
After your first game
The first act is waves 1–30, and clearing it refills your lives. From there:
- The Daily Challenge gives everyone the same race and map once a day. It is a good way to try a race you wouldn't pick yourself.
- The towers pages list every tower's numbers if you want to plan an ultimate.
- The co-op guide explains rooms, codes and lobbies.
Most of all: watch where creeps leak, add towers there, and make the walk longer. That is what every good player does.