Best Towers for Beginners in Tower Defense Simulator

Best Towers for Beginners, Ranked by Price

The table below lists every Coin-priced tower our beginner picks come from, sorted cheapest to most expensive, with each tower's solo-mode tier rating. Not every cheap tower is worth buying — several D-tier starters cost more than Militant while performing worse, which is why price alone is a bad way to shop for towers.

Across all 39 Coin-unlockable towers in our database, prices range from 100 Coins (Paintballer) up to 35,000 Coins (Gatling Gun). The picks above skip straight past the cheap D-tier options in that range in favor of towers that stay useful well past the first few waves.

Your First Buy: Farm

Farm costs 2,000 Coins and is rated S tier across every mode on our tier list. It deals no direct damage, but it generates Coins every wave — Farm is the one tower nearly every serious TDS guide agrees to prioritize, because every Coin you spend on a Farm now pays itself back and then funds the rest of your loadout. Place it somewhere safe, away from the enemy path, since it isn't built to tank hits.

Best Budget Damage Tower: Militant

Militant costs only 800 Coins and is rated B tier on our tier list with 68.57 max DPS and no placement limit, meaning you can stack several without hitting a cap. That makes it the best value pick under 1,000 Coins — well ahead of similarly priced D-tier towers like Assassin (800 Coins, 123.64 max DPS but D tier) or Shotgunner (850 Coins, D tier), whose damage output looks higher on paper but falls off fast against tougher waves. If you're still on your first few hundred Coins, Militant is a safer investment than any of the free starter towers.

Mid-Game Picks: Pyromancer, Commander, Electroshocker

Once you have a couple thousand Coins saved, Pyromancer (1,250 Coins) is rated A tier and deals damage through both a direct hit and a burn-over-time effect, making it strong against grouped enemies. Commander (4,000 Coins) is rated S tier overall and A tier for solo play specifically — its passive 20% firerate buff to every tower in range means your whole loadout hits harder without spending Coins on each tower individually. Electroshocker (2,500 Coins) is also A tier and chains damage across up to 6 enemies at once, which makes it efficient against the denser waves you'll start seeing by the mid-game.

A reasonable spending order at this stage: Farm first, Militant as your early damage tower, then Commander once you've got 4,000 Coins saved, followed by Pyromancer or Electroshocker depending on whether you need more single-target or crowd damage.

Long-Term Goals: Ranger and Gatling Gun

Ranger costs 12,000 Coins and is S tier — it deals 875 damage plus 375 splash at max level, is immune to stun, and buffs your team's range, but it only places on cliffs, so check a map's cliff spots before counting on it. Gatling Gun costs 35,000 Coins, also S tier, and reaches roughly 744 max DPS — the highest raw DPS of any Coins-only tower on this list, though it's limited to one placement per player. Both are worth saving for once your Farm income is stable enough to afford them without slowing down your other upgrades.

If you'd rather invest Gems instead of grinding more Coins, our Gems guide covers every method to earn them, and Accelerator and Engineer (both S tier) are the two Gem-only towers worth prioritizing once you unlock them at Level 50.

Detection: What Your Beginner Loadout Can (and Can't) Hit

Price and tier are only half the picture — a tower is useless against enemies it can't detect. Hidden enemies are invisible to any tower without Hidden detection, Flying enemies can only be hit by towers with Flying detection, and Lead enemies resist most damage unless a tower detects Lead. Checking detection before you buy saves Coins you'd otherwise waste on a tower that watches half the wave walk past it.

Farm can't detect anything, which is expected — it's not meant to fight, only to fund your loadout. Notice that none of these eight towers detect all three traits alone; Commander comes closest with all three, which is part of why it's such a strong buff tower to pair with the others. If a wave throws Hidden, Flying, and Lead enemies at you simultaneously, you need at least two different towers from this list working together rather than relying on any single one.

Towers to Avoid Overspending On

Several towers in the same price range as our picks are rated D tier and not worth the Coins: Paintballer (100 Coins), Demoman (200 Coins), Slime Trooper and Boomerang (300 Coins each), Assassin (800 Coins), Shotgunner (850 Coins), Hunter (1,000 Coins), and Rocketeer (2,500 Coins) all sit at or below Militant's price while rated lower on our tier list. That doesn't mean they're unusable — some fill niche roles — but as a beginner focused on getting through early waves reliably, your Coins go further on the towers listed above.

FAQ

Sources

• TDS Hub internal tower database (src/data/towers.json) — 70 towers with verified Coin/Gem prices
• TDS Hub internal tier list (src/data/tierlist.json) — last checked August 2, 2026