Equipment
- Damage core
- Dispenser
- Support cards
- Vault, Beacon; optional Blacksmith or Quarry
- Enchantments / tome actions
- Defense on Mercenary or a replacement screen
- Board state
- Developed plan; adjust to actual draws
Skills
- Card access
- Palace, Mercenary, Dispenser, Vault and Beacon belong to Greed. A draw does not guarantee the whole set; place the income-sensitive tower early when combat permits.
- Effect condition
- The baseline is nine held gold per Mercenary unit, subject to current modifiers. Do not treat total gold earned as spendable reserve or reproduce patched Vault leveling exploits.
Best for
Gold receipts develop a placed Dispenser while held gold maintains a Mercenary screen.
Avoid if
Repeated rerolls shrink the Mercenary screen; a late Dispenser has missed earlier income; too many Vaults consume combat space.
How it works
Dispenser uses gold earned, whereas Mercenary count uses gold currently held. Vault now levels yearly. Those three relationships form an economy engine only when the resulting army survives.
Equipment priority
| Priority | Equipment | Instruction |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Stabilize | Dispenser | Place Dispenser early only if a Mercenary or available troop can keep the army fighting. The tower benefits from receipts after it is placed. A large wallet accumulated before the placement is not evidence that the new tower already received those earlier gains. |
| 2 · Connect | Vault, Beacon; optional Blacksmith or Quarry | Keep two separate checks after every shop or reroll: how much gold has been earned for Dispenser, and how much remains for Mercenary. Vault can develop the income route, but purchasing it can simultaneously reduce the screen. Inspect the resulting troop preview before treating that purchase as free scaling. |
| 3 · Develop | Defense on Mercenary or a replacement screen | Beacon at B3 has a direct connection to the B2 Dispenser. Vault at B1 supplies the economic role and A2 Mercenary supplies troops. A functioning economy core converts future receipts into tower contribution while keeping enough held gold for contact time; another Vault is worthwhile only if that combat chain survives. |
Build order
- Place Dispenser early only if a Mercenary or available troop can keep the army fighting. The tower benefits from receipts after it is placed. A large wallet accumulated before the placement is not evidence that the new tower already received those earlier gains.
- Keep two separate checks after every shop or reroll: how much gold has been earned for Dispenser, and how much remains for Mercenary. Vault can develop the income route, but purchasing it can simultaneously reduce the screen. Inspect the resulting troop preview before treating that purchase as free scaling.
- Beacon at B3 has a direct connection to the B2 Dispenser. Vault at B1 supplies the economic role and A2 Mercenary supplies troops. A functioning economy core converts future receipts into tower contribution while keeping enough held gold for contact time; another Vault is worthwhile only if that combat chain survives.
How to play
If a Dispenser is active but weak hits leave enemies healthy, stop stacking speed and find damage support. If the tower barely has time to fire, stop adding income plots and repair the screen. The patched Vault-leveling exploit is not an alternate route when ordinary growth feels slow.
What can break the build
Spending most of the reserve on repeated rerolls can improve tower speed through the economy while shrinking Mercenary enough to expose the base. The improvement to one metric does not compensate automatically for the lost troops. Keep the next purchase only if its combat value outweighs that population loss.
Evidence limit
Mechanics checked against the official card reference and developer Patch #29, #30 and #31 notes on 2026-10-13. Layouts and priorities are editorial recommendations for 0.9.8; no fresh-run clears, win rates, damage benchmarks or universal difficulty guarantees are claimed.