Base Building

Once you chose a Command Post to defend, you need to begin constructing your base. Choose the fortifications you plan to build carefully; you can’t afford every possible upgrade. Note that barriers have two different costs, depending on the length of the wall—some are shorter than others, and so receive a discount on their cost.

Fortification Costs

Barriers

Walls are divided into four increasing levels of effectiveness, and they come in two lengths: short and long. There is no difference in effectiveness between the two lengths, but longer walls do cost more to build and upgrade.

Level 1: Spikes

The most basic of all barriers, these spike strips provide a minimal delay to all but the weakest enemy forces. Enemies moving through these are slowed and damaged slightly as they pass through. If you can build them at key chokepoints, you can prevent melee enemies from easily getting into range of your team.

Level 2: Razor Wire

Razor Wire is a slight upgrade over first-level spikes. Enemies can still push through it, but the barrier deals more damage and has substantially greater health.

Level 3: Electric Fence

Reaching level three is a significant upgrade. Once you upgrade a barrier to this level, enemies can no longer pass through it, and simply contacting it inflicts damage.

Level 4: Laser Fence

The strongest barrier type, laser fences have significant health and completely stop enemies from passing them. They also inflict damage to enemies that touch or attempt to move through them.

Turrets

Turrets are the most powerful defensive emplacement. Pound for pound, they inflict more damage on Horde forces than any other purchase or upgrade outside the Silverback. Picking a key turret and building it immediately should be a priority on almost any map. Evaluate the terrain and pick the most defensible turret to purchase. Be sure to keep it manned during the wave.

Trade off turret duty to spread the cash around, and to prevent anyone from getting bored from sitting on a turret for multiple waves! Many maps feature multiple turrets that you can purchase at a single Command Post. But one turret usually has a clearly superior position, and another that you should use only as a fallback, if at all.

Level 1: Retro Turret

The lowest-level turret is still very effective, especially in the early waves. This turret is very inaccurate, but if you tap the trigger, you can achieve decent accuracy. Up close, it deals heavy damage to any Locust or Lambent Horde forces in the area.

Level 2: Lancer Turret

The Lancer turret is a significant upgrade over the Retro. With increased accuracy and greater health, you can mow down early Horde waves with little difficulty. Plus, it can take a few hits without being destroyed.

Level 3: Troika

The Troika is a serious firepower upgrade. Once you reach this level, you have maximized the turret’s firepower. Upgrading from here only gives you greater health and defense. Try to get your key turrets up to level three as quickly as possible!

Level 4: Shielded Troika

The Shielded Troika has a front-facing blast shield to protect you from incidental incoming fire. The turret itself has more health than the level-three model. This isn’t a critical upgrade compared to level three, but it is worthwhile once you have the cash for it. One major improvement is that it has no cooldown, so you can fire it continuously.

Sentry Guns

Sentry guns are automated turrets. These guns don’t pack the turrets’ raw power, but they also don’t tie up a teammate to operate the guns.

Levels 1 and 2

The low-level sentries both inflict low damage, and neither has a great deal of health. When you build one of these, try to place it where someone on your team always has line of sight to it. While low-level sentries are largely alarms and not weapons, sentries in general become hugely important on higher difficulty levels, where their stream of fire can prevent enemies from executing you if you’re DBNO. Coupled with a barrier or decoy, sentries can be very effective.

Level 3

The highest-level sentry has one additional effect: its shots slow the enemies that they hit. This slowing effect is helpful, but its effectiveness depends on what the sentry decides to shoot, and if you or a teammate is nearby to take advantage of the effect. It’s worth upgrading to level three once you can afford it, but don’t prioritize a swift upgrade over a key manned turret.

Decoys

Decoys are special fortifications that draw the attention of Horde monsters. Depending on their position, they can be very effective when you use them in concert with either a turret or a sentry gun. If you have a well-positioned decoy in your base, try to build it up fairly quickly—it can help your team significantly.

Level 1

The first-level decoy, a low-budget cutout of Cole as the Thrashball champ, does little to attract the monsters’ attention, and it has relatively low health.

Levels 2 and 3

The second and third levels add more health. More importantly, they add an extra level of ‘taunting’ the Horde monsters. Enemies within a short distance of these decoys are drawn into using melee attacks on them—even if they would normally shoot at your team! Try to upgrade to level two as soon as possible. Level three adds more range to the melee magnet effect.

Level 4

The decoy’s highest level has the greatest health, the largest attraction radius, and it explodes when it is destroyed! Once you build a decoy up to this level, be sure to repair it every wave if it gets destroyed.

The Silverback

The Silverback is a massively powerful armored walker that provides almost total protection to the user from the front and sides. The Silverback boasts a powerful minigun. The minigun is limited by a heat meter, similar to turrets or the Mulcher.

The Silverback can also ‘sprint,’ though doing so causes its heat to build up the same way that firing the minigun does. The Silverback can deploy into a stationary defensive crouch. Doing so causes blast shields on the legs to deploy, allowing a teammate—or you, if you hop out—to use the Silverback as cover. This can be quite useful if you place the Silverback near an area that has no other useful cover for a teammate, and you always want a teammate covering the Silverback.

In cover mode, you cannot rotate a full 360, so choose your position carefully before you switch modes, as the transformation takes a few seconds to complete. Finally, when it’s mobile, the Silverback can use a powerful stomp to smash any enemies in melee range. In general, you don’t want any monsters to get that close to you, but if they do, you have one last defense.

The Silverback is unquestionably a powerful asset in Horde mode. However, it is expensive to build, expensive to repair, draws constant fire, and must be protected to be effective. The Silverback works best when your team focuses on using it as a group. Protect its vulnerable rear from attacks, kill any Tickers that try to get near it, call out and mark important targets, and cover routes that enemies might use to attack it. When you use it this way, the Silverback can have a huge impact on your team’s success in Horde, but don’t expect a lone Silverback charging into enemy turf to last long!

General Tips

When only the last enemy in a wave remains alive, send out your team to gather dropped weapons and ammo to restock. All weapons on the ground vanish between waves, so leaving the final enemy alive gives you more time to collect them.

You can purchase a second (and sometimes third) Command Post near your first to unlock access to another key turret or sentry gun.

You can mark weapons in Horde mode, just like you can in the single-player campaign! Use this to call attention to a power weapon dropped on the field, rather than trying to describe its location to a teammate. Marking a weapon in this way works only at shorter distances, and marking an enemy always takes priority over a weapon on the ground.

Before you spend the cash to respawn, be sure to communicate with your teammates. You can respawn only once per wave, it is expensive, and if your base isn’t clear, it may be suicidal. By all means, if respawning makes the difference between clearing a wave or not, then do so. But if your team can manage without you, stay ghosted and call targets instead.

Remember, you do get bonus cash for spotting targets that die, even while you’re ghosted! You can use the Boomshield to give a turret user some protection by planting it at his or her flank or rear.

The last enemies in a wave often (but not always) rush your position to save you the trouble of hunting them down. Because the last several enemies get markers over their heads, you can track down reluctant enemies, like Snipers, who prefer to hang back at the end of a wave.