The Tower Guardian and Chips: Every Upgrade, Bit Cost and Loot Table

How the Guardian works

The Guardian lives in the Guild menu, so you need to be in a guild before you can buy it. Guilds open at the Tier 3 Wave 10 milestone. Unlocking the Guardian costs bits and comes with one chip slot and two chips, Ally and Attack. The other four chips are bought in the guild store for 200 tokens each.

A chip is an ability on a cooldown. When the timer runs out, the Guardian picks the enemies nearest to itself and fires the chip at them. Three details matter in practice:

• The Guardian has a limited reach. If nothing is close enough when the cooldown ends, the chip does not fire.
• A multi-target chip still fires when fewer enemies are in reach than its target count.
• Chips ignore your Target Priority setting and do not look for the best target for their effect. They take whatever is closest.

The wiki's Bits page lists the Guardian unlock at 100 bits while its Guardian page says 200. The 100 figure is the more recently edited one and matches the stated 600-bit total. A 4th slot is shown in game but cannot be bought yet.

All six chips

Each chip has a cooldown and two other stats, and all three can be upgraded with bits. Base values below are what you get at purchase.

• Ally Free with Guardian

  Turns one enemy into an Ally Recovery Package. It heals the tower and can push health above the normal Max Recovery limit. Ally packages are not regular recovery packages, so they do not trigger effects such as the Galaxy Compressor module.

  • Cooldown: 120s to 30s
  • Recovery Amount: 1% to 50%
  • Max Recovery: x1.1 to x10.0
• Attack Free with Guardian

  Hits enemies for a percentage of the health they have already lost, so it favors targets that are already hurt. Bosses take half. A red sphere circles the Guardian just before it fires.

  • Cooldown: 120s to 30s
  • Percentage: 1% to 20%
  • Targets: 1 to 10
• Bounty 200 tokens

  Marks nearby non-common enemies so they pay extra coins when they die. The bonus is the coins the enemy would pay with every active multiplier applied (Golden Tower, Black Hole, Spotlight, Death Wave, Golden Bot and so on), times the chip's multiplier.

  • Cooldown: 120s to 60s
  • Multiplier: x0.01 to x1.00
  • Targets: 1 to 10
• Fetch 200 tokens

  Rolls for hidden loot each time it fires: coins most of the time, with small chances at gems, medals, shards and modules. A second stat gives a chance to double the find.

  • Cooldown: 120s to 60s
  • Find Chance: 10% to 50%
  • Double Find Chance: 2% to 50%
• Summon 200 tokens · Season 5

  While active it spawns two extra enemies per second (Basic, Fast, Tank or Ranged) and applies a cash bonus to every enemy killed, not only the summoned ones. Summoned enemies never become Ultimate enemies from a battle condition.

  • Cooldown: 140s to 70s
  • Duration: 5s to 35s
  • Cash Bonus: x1.0 to x10.0
• Scout 200 tokens · Season 7

  While active, every enemy on screen counts as farther from the tower than it really is for damage calculations. The wiki does not list which stats read the inflated distance; Damage Per Meter is the workshop stat that scales damage with distance.

  • Cooldown: 105s to 35s
  • Range Bonus: x2.0 to x6.0
  • Duration: 5s to 35s

Where bits come from

Bits have two sources. The main one is the weekly guild reward chest track, which pays out at four contribution thresholds. The second is the guild store, which sells three packs of 25 bits per season at rising token prices.

Bits per week (chests)

185

Bits per 8-week season (chests)

1,480

Bits per season with store packs

1,555

Weeks to unlock all 3 slots

4 600 bits

At 185 bits a week, the 600 bits for three slots is about a month of full chests. After that, every bit goes into upgrades, and that is where the real wait is: a single chip takes over a year to finish. The store packs add only 75 bits per season, roughly 5% more, so they are a low priority next to chips and skins if tokens are tight. See the guilds guide for the full token budget.

Upgrade costs at a glance

Every upgrade track is linear: the cost of the next level goes up by a fixed step. That makes cheap tracks very cheap at the start and the last levels of any track expensive. Target counts and the Summon cash bonus are the exception, starting at 100 bits a level.

Totals are summed from the wiki level tables and match the totals printed there. The wiki describes these as values observed by players, so a track could extend past the last listed level.

Tracks are in the same order as the table above. Weeks assume a full 185 bits from chests every week and no store packs.

Chip upgrade tables: Ally, Attack, Bounty, Scout and Summon

Level 0 is the chip as purchased. Each row shows the stat value at that level and the bits that level costs; a dash means the track has no further levels listed. Fetch has its own section below because it also has a loot table.

Ally chip

Ally is the survival chip. Recovery Amount sets how much health the Ally package restores, and Max Recovery sets how far above full health it can stack. The full chip costs 14,470 bits, which is 79 weeks at 185 a week (the wiki text quotes 71 weeks, which does not match its own totals at that rate).

Attack chip

Attack deals damage as a share of health the target has already lost, so it does nothing to a full-health enemy and the most to one that is nearly dead. Bosses take 50% of the listed value. Percentage climbs in 25-bit steps and Targets in 100-bit steps, which makes this the chip where cooldown is by far the cheapest stat. Full cost: 13,345 bits.

Bounty chip

Bounty is the coin chip. Because the bounty is calculated from the coins an enemy pays with all active multipliers, it is worth the most when it lands inside your Golden Tower and Black Hole window. It only marks non-common enemies. The multiplier track is one of the cheapest on any chip at 1 bit more per level, with 99 levels to reach x1.00. Full cost: 13,110 bits.

The wiki table lists x0.41 twice in a row; the first of the two (39 bits) is shown here as x0.40.

Scout chip

Scout arrived in guild Season 7 and has the shortest base cooldown of any chip at 105 seconds. While it runs, enemies are treated as farther away for damage purposes, multiplied by the Range Bonus. Duration is the expensive track here at 10 bits more per level. Full cost: 13,850 bits. If you want to see how distance feeds your damage, try the tower range simulator.

Summon chip

Summon was added in guild Season 5. It has the longest cooldown (140 seconds at base, 70 at the end of the table) and adds two enemies a second for its duration, so it is a way to put more bodies on screen during a coin window. The cash bonus applies to every kill while it is active. Full cost: 14,200 bits.

Fetch chip upgrades and loot table

Fetch is the only chip that brings back gems, medals, shards and modules. Each activation first has to pass the Find Chance roll, then the item is picked from the table below. Gems, medals and modules have daily caps; coins and shards have none listed.

Chances are per successful find and add up to 100%. Each of the four module shard types has its own 1% entry.

At base, Fetch fires every 120 seconds with a 10% find chance, so most activations return nothing. Find Chance is what turns the chip on, and Double Find Chance is the most expensive track on the chip. Full cost: 14,480 bits. Medals from Fetch are spendable in the event shop, and shards feed module upgrades.

Guardian skins

Guardian skins are sold in the guild store for 150 tokens and rotate every season. Like every theme, each one you own adds a permanent passive coin bonus whether or not it is equipped: 0.6% per Guardian skin, additive with your other themes. The wiki lists 15 Guardian skins across the first 8 seasons, and none has been rerun so far.

How the theme bonuses add up across tower, background, menu and Guardian skins is covered in the events and themes guide.

Frequently asked questions

How do you unlock the Guardian in The Tower?

Join a guild (guilds unlock at the Tier 3 Wave 10 milestone), then buy the Guardian with bits in the Guild menu under Guardian. It comes with one chip slot and the Ally and Attack chips.

How many bits do you get per week?

Up to 185 bits a week from guild reward chests: 10, 25, 50 and 100 bits at 100, 250, 500 and 750 contribution. The guild store adds up to 75 more per 8-week season for 150 tokens.

How much does it cost to max a Guardian chip?

Between 13,110 and 14,480 bits depending on the chip, based on the levels documented so far. At 185 bits a week that is roughly 71 to 79 weeks per chip.

What does the Fetch chip drop?

On a successful find Fetch gives coins 86.5% of the time, gems 4%, reroll shards 3%, medals 2%, each of the four module shard types 1%, a common module 0.4% and a rare module 0.1%. Daily caps are 20 gems, 10 medals, 5 common modules and 2 rare modules.

How many chips can the Guardian use at once?

Three. The first slot comes with the Guardian, the second costs 200 bits and the third 300 bits. A fourth slot exists in the menu but cannot be purchased yet.

Do Guardian chips follow Target Priority?

No. When a chip comes off cooldown the Guardian targets the enemies closest to itself, within a limited reach. If nothing is close enough the chip does not activate.

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.

• Guardian
• Chips
• Chips/Ally
• Chips/Attack
• Chips/Steal
• Chips/Fetch
• Chips/Scout
• Chips/Summon
• Currency/Bits
• Currency/Tokens
• Guilds
• Seasons
• Themes Menu