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Spoilers ahead. Achievement entries describe build requirements and late-wave milestones. Guides contain solutions and may reveal encounters and progression.

Pyrewarden · Wiki

Minimalist

Wave 35 with only two tower types, and the ledger that proves it.

Minimalist achievement emblem

Minimalist
Reach wave 35 using at most 2 distinct tower types.

The word that catches people out is "distinct". Twenty Radiance path A towers are one type. A type is a school plus a path — Radiance A and Radiance B are two different types. And the game counts every type you have ever built this game, not the ones standing now, so selling a mistake does not undo it. One stray third tower ends the attempt for the whole run.

The two to take

Radiance path A (the path is itself named Radiance), and Chronomancy path A (Stasis). The pairing is not arbitrary:

  • Radiance is the only school that can shoot a stealthed enemy. Stealthed enemies can appear from wave 20. Radiance targets and reveals them, letting the rest of the line fire too; splash damage can still hit hidden enemies.
  • Their combo stops enemies. Radiance + Chronomancy is Eternal Vigil: its combo stuns the target for 2 seconds. Its advertised tower-speed buff has no effect in this version. Side-by-side towers separately gain +3.2% attack speed and +0.5 range.
  • Radiance A brings area damage and support; Chronomancy A brings the crowd control that a two-type defence has no other source of.

The run, in order

  1. Start on Wanderer's Waypoint, the starter map. 150 gold, two routes and plenty of buildable ground — a map that is short of space will beat you long before wave 35.
  2. Alternate the two types as you build, and keep them orthogonally touching where you can. Different-school neighbours grant a permanent adjacency bonus, and with two schools every join is the good one.
  3. Spend on the three slots every tower has — Damage, Attack Speed, Range — before the path's own slots. The recorded run levels the weakest tower first each wave, which keeps the whole line growing rather than building one hero.
  4. Keep building. The run below finished with 86 towers; a two-type defence wins on quantity, because it cannot win on coverage.
  5. Clear wave 35. The writ is checked when a wave completes, so reaching 35 and dying in it earns nothing.

Expect it to be tight. The recorded run was down to 9 lives by wave 4 and held on at 8 from wave 10 until wave 35.

The recorded run

One game on a fresh profile on Wanderer's Waypoint, played by the game's built-in AI limited to these two builds, through the game's normal mouse and keyboard at a person's pace; your enemy draw will differ. When wave 35 cleared it had 83 towers and 504 combos on the counter. It cleared wave 36 and ran out of lives in wave 37, ending on 86 towers, 726 kills and 589 synergy combos, with exactly two tower types on the board the whole way.

A screen recording of the whole game, from the main menu to the achievements screen. The match is played back at 4× speed — the badge in the corner says so on every sped-up frame; the menus and the ledger run at normal speed. The game's own music and effects, no commentary.

Wave 5 on Wanderer's Waypoint with a handful of Radiance and Chronomancy towers
Wave 5. Two shapes on the board and nothing else — that is the whole discipline of this writ.
Wave 20, the wave stealthed enemies first appear
Wave 20, where stealth enters the pool. Radiance can target hidden enemies and reveal them for the rest of the line.
The in-game achievements screen showing Minimalist unlocked and the rest locked
The same profile's in-game ledger afterwards. Minimalist is lit; the other eighteen are not.

What breaks it

  • A third type, ever, at any point in the run — including one you sold.
  • Dying in wave 35 rather than clearing it.