The Tower Currencies: Where Each One Comes From and What It Buys

All ten currencies at a glance

• Cash In-round

  Temporary money that only exists inside a run. It buys workshop levels that reset when the round ends.

  • Main source: Kills, Cash/Wave, interest
  • Spent on: In-round workshop upgrades
• Coins Core

  The permanent currency behind almost all progress. You carry them out of every run.

  • Main source: Enemy kills while farming
  • Spent on: Workshop, labs, enhancements, module levels
• Gems Premium

  The slow, steady premium currency. Free sources add up, and almost every account-wide unlock asks for them.

  • Main source: Tournaments, missions, ad and floating gems
  • Spent on: Cards, card slots, lab slots, modules, lab rushes
• Power Stones Premium

  The currency of Ultimate Weapons. Tournament placement is the main faucet.

  • Main source: Tournaments
  • Spent on: Ultimate Weapon unlocks and upgrades
• Medals Events

  Earned from event missions and kept between events. They never expire.

  • Main source: Event missions, weekly boxes
  • Spent on: Event shop: bots, relics, themes, songs, currencies
• Elite Cells Labs

  Dropped only by elite enemies. They turn farming time into faster research.

  • Main source: Vampire, Ray and Scatter kills
  • Spent on: Lab speed boosts
• Keys Endgame

  A tournament-only reward for the top two leagues.

  • Main source: Legend and Mythic tournaments
  • Spent on: The Vault
• Bits Guild

  The Guardian currency. Supply is capped by weekly guild chests.

  • Main source: Guild weekly reward chests
  • Spent on: Guardian unlock, chip slots, chip upgrades
• Tokens Guild

  The guild store currency. Unspent tokens convert to gems when a season ends.

  • Main source: Guild chests, weekly boxes
  • Spent on: Guild store: chips, relics, themes, bits, gems, shards
• Shards Modules

  Two kinds. Module shards (one type per module slot) level modules up. Reroll shards reroll sub-module effects.

  • Main source: Daily missions, shattering, boss drops
  • Spent on: Module levels and effect rerolls

Cash

Cash is the in-round budget. Each enemy is worth a base of $1, and that value rises by $1 every 10 waves until wave 200, then by $1 every 20 waves. Your Cash Bonus multiplies it.

At the end of each wave two more payments arrive in a fixed order. Cash/Wave is paid first. Interest is then calculated on everything you are holding, including the Cash/Wave you just received, up to the Max Interest cap. Sitting on unspent cash early in a run is therefore not wasted: it compounds until you hit the cap.

Cash has one sink: in-round levels of the workshop stats. Free Upgrades and Starting Cash reduce how much of it you need.

Coins

Coins pay for permanent workshop levels, every lab, Workshop Enhancements and module levels. They come from four places, and one of them dwarfs the rest.

Coin multipliers multiply with each other when they are active on the same kill. The wiki example: a maxed Black Hole bonus of x11 and a Golden Tower bonus of x20.75 give x228.25 together. That is why players sync Ultimate Weapon cooldowns so the bonuses overlap, and why adding a new multiplier usually beats pushing an old one higher.

A higher tier pays more per kill, but only if you survive deep enough for the valuable enemy types to spawn. The Battle Report Analyzer tracks coins per hour across runs so you can compare tiers on real data, and the Enemy Coin Weight Curve shows how enemy mix shifts with waves.

Each mission also pays 3 gems. The Daily Mission Shards lab adds up to 50 shards per mission.

Gems

There is no way to farm gems quickly, so the useful question is how many small sources you are collecting.

The wiki Gem Guide orders the early purchases like this: the second lab slot first, then alternate cards and card slots with lab slots 3, 4 and 5, then one epic module of each type. After that gems are split between cards, modules, event shop relics and lab rushes. Slot and card prices are detailed in the Cards guide and lab slot prices in the Labs guide.

Power Stones and tournament rewards

Power Stones unlock and upgrade Ultimate Weapons. Later they also buy the assist module slot and bot abilities at 1,250 stones each. Tournaments are the main source, and the payout grows sharply with league.

Tournaments run twice a week with 30 players per bracket. "Last" is the lowest reward bracket in that league.

Finishing last in Champion pays the same 20 stones as winning Copper, and first place in Legend pays 375. Moving up a league matters more than your rank inside one. For what the stones buy, see the Ultimate Weapon cost reference and the Tournaments guide.

Medals

Medals come from event missions. Every mission has three tiers paying 10, 15 and 20 medals, doubled if you buy that event's booster. Weekly mission boxes add up to 135 more per week, and a Guardian with the Fetch chip can find some.

Medals are spent only in the event shop, which stays open between events. They do not expire, so saving across events is allowed.

Prices reset at the start of the next event. Buying one shard type raises the price of the other shard types too.

Bot prices and upgrade paths are in the Bots guide, and the event structure is in the Events guide.

Elite Cells

Elite Cells drop only from the three elite enemies: Vampire, Ray and Scatter. On Tiers 1 to 13 each elite drops between 1 cell and the tier number. From Tier 14 the minimum jumps, which lifts the average far more than the maximum suggests.

The step from Tier 13 (average 7) to Tier 14 (average 10.5) is a 50% raise, the biggest single jump on the table. After that the gains are small except at Tier 15 and Tier 19.

• Farm deeper waves and higher tiers: more elites spawn and each drops more. The Elite Spawn Rate chart shows the spawn curve.
• Death Wave Cell Bonus lab: up to x3.00 on enemies hit by effect waves.
• Cells/Kill Bonus enhancement: up to x3.00.
• Cells card: up to 14 extra cells per kill after multipliers, according to the wiki.
• Enemy Balance, Wave Skip and Intro Sprint masteries, and the Golden Bot and Bot Bot abilities.

Cells have one use: lab speed boosts, priced from 15 cells per hour at 1.5x to 1,000,000 per hour at 8x. The full price table is in the Labs guide. Track your cells per hour with the Battle Report Analyzer.

Keys, Bits and Tokens

Keys

Keys are paid only in Legend and Mythic tournaments and are spent only in The Vault. In Legend the bottom bracket earns none. In Mythic every rank earns at least 8.

Bits

Bits unlock the Guardian (100 bits, including its first chip slot), the second chip slot (200) and the third (300), and then upgrade chips. A fourth slot is listed as currently unavailable. Supply comes from guild weekly chests, up to 185 bits per week, plus three guild store purchases of 25 bits per season for 25, 50 and 75 tokens.

Tokens

Tokens come from guild weekly chests (up to 150 per week) and weekly mission boxes (5 per box, 35 per week). The guild store sells chips for 200 tokens each, relics for 75 or 150, themes for 100, a Guardian skin for 150, and limited purchases of bits, gems (100 per purchase) and module shards (250 per purchase). Whatever is left when the 8-week guild season ends is converted to gems at 5 tokens to 1 gem, rounded up.

Coins are multiples of your daily mission coin reward. Contribution is earned from weekly mission boxes. See the Guilds guide.

One box for every 5 daily missions, up to 35 missions per week. Coins are multiples of your daily mission coin reward.

Module shards and reroll shards

Module shards level a module together with coins. There are four types, one for each module slot (Cannon, Armor, Generator and Core). They come from daily missions (see the tier table under Coins), from shattering spare modules at 5 shards per common and 10 per rare, and from the event shop and guild store at 250 per purchase. Restoring a module refunds every shard and coin spent on its levels.

Reroll shards are a separate currency used to reroll sub-module effects. Bosses have a 15% chance to drop them, and the amount depends on the tier you are playing. The Reroll Shards lab adds up to 100 more per drop.

Before the Reroll Shards lab. Tiers not shown follow the same pattern.

Plan module level costs with the Module Shard Calculator and test reroll odds in the Reroll Simulator. The Modules guide covers the system itself.

Frequently asked questions

What is the fastest way to get gems in The Tower?

There is no fast way. Gems come from many small sources: 6 per ad gem, 2 per floating gem, 3 per daily mission, 185 per week from mission boxes, 60 from guild chests, and 10 to 900 per tournament depending on league and rank.

How do you get Power Stones?

Mostly from tournaments, which pay 5 to 475 stones per event depending on league and rank. Weekly mission boxes add 45 stones, the event shop sells 15 per medal purchase, and milestones and store packs give more.

How do you get keys for the Vault?

Only from Legend and Mythic tournaments. Legend pays 25 keys for first place down to 1 key for ranks 16-24 and none for 25-30. Mythic pays 50 keys for first place and at least 8 for every rank.

How many elite cells does each elite drop?

On Tiers 1-13 an elite drops between 1 cell and the tier number. From Tier 14 the range is 7-14, rising to 15-21 at Tier 21. Lab, enhancement and card bonuses multiply that.

Do medals expire when an event ends?

No. Medals carry over and the event shop stays open between events. Carried-over medals do not count toward the next event's relic thresholds, which only track medals earned during that event.

What are tokens used for?

Tokens are spent in the guild store on chips (200 each), relics, themes, bits, gems and shards. Unspent tokens are converted to gems at 5 to 1 when the 8-week guild season ends.

Sources and credits

The numbers on this page come from the community-maintained The Tower - Idle Tower Defense Wiki and were reorganized and rewritten for Towerstats.org. Wiki text is available under CC BY-SA.

• Currency
• Currency/Cash
• Currency/Coins
• Currency/Gems
• Currency/Power Stones
• Currency/Medals
• Currency/Elite Cells
• Currency/Keys
• Currency/Bits
• Currency/Tokens
• Currency/Shards
• Gem Guide
• Medals Guide
• Coin Guide - Basics
• Tournaments
• Tickets
• Daily Missions
• Guilds
• Events
• Modules
• Cards
• Lab Upgrades
• Laboratory
• Workshop Respec
• Interest
• Lab/Death Wave Cell Bonus
• Workshop Enhancement/Utility/Cells Per Kill Bonus
• Module Labs/Reroll Shards
• Module Labs/Daily Mission Shards