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How to play
Lanternfall is a tower defense roguelike. Foes walk a winding trail, you build lanterns beside it to snuff them out, and every run pays out embers you spend on permanent upgrades. Each run carves a brand-new random trail, so no two nights play the same.
- The goal
- Your first run
- The run screen
- Building lanterns
- Upgrading, ascending and merging
- Waves
- Gold and lives
- Boons
- Controls
- Pausing, saving and quitting
- After a run
- The camp
- Beginner tips
Foes walk the trail from one end of the board to the other. Every foe that gets through costs you lives (most cost 1, bigger foes cost more, a boss costs 8). Survive 40 waves to win a campaign run. Then end the run, or keep going until your lives run out (everything past wave 40 pays ×0.25). If your lives hit zero, the run ends, but you still keep everything you earned.
- On the home screen, tap Play.
- Pick a world. You start with only the Surface level (Whisperwood). Win a run to unlock the next depth.
- Pick a difficulty with the slider. Normal is the intended challenge.
- Tap Start. You begin with 120 gold (plus 10 for every depth) and 15 lives on Normal.
- Drag a Spark next to the trail, near a bend if you can.
- Tap Send wave. Build more lanterns as gold comes in.
On your very first run a short tutorial walks you through this: hanging two Sparks (a pulsing tile shows a good spot), sending a wave, opening a lantern, buying an upgrade, building a Cinder and picking a boon. You can skip it at any time. To play it again, tap the Tutorial card next to Whisperwood on the world list (it saves separately, so it never replaces a campaign run in progress), or turn it back on from How to play or Settings.
- The board is a grid. The dirt trail runs through it; grass tiles are where you build. In portrait the trail runs top to bottom, in landscape it runs left to right.
- The top bar shows your gold, lives and the wave number, plus buttons for Send wave, speed (1×, 2×, 3×), Auto and the pause menu.
- The tray holds your lanterns, grouped by role: Damage, Area, Control and Support. Each one shows its price. Greyed-out lanterns cost more gold than you have.
- Boons opens the list of boons you've picked this run and shows your boon XP bar.
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Drag a lantern from the tray onto a grass tile. While dragging, the tile glows green if it fits or red if it doesn't, and a dashed circle shows the lantern's range. On a phone the lantern floats a little above your finger so you can see where it lands.
- In portrait, drag up from the tray. In landscape on a phone, drag sideways from the lantern column.
- Or tap a lantern in the tray to pick it up, then tap tiles to place copies. Tap the lantern in the tray again (or press Esc) to put it down.
- You can't build on the trail, on decorations, or on top of another lantern.
- You can build at any time, even mid-wave.
Range is measured in tiles from the lantern's center. Most lanterns target the foe that is furthest along the trail.
Tap a lantern on the board to open its panel. From there you can:
- Upgrade two of its three paths. Each path has 5 tiers, and the third path locks once you use two. Every tier also gives a small core boost on top of its own effect.
- Tap the i for a full guide to that lantern: how it works, what it's good and bad against, a tip, its current numbers and every upgrade.
- Sell it for 60% of everything you spent on it (camp upgrades and some boons raise this).
Some tiers are locked until that lantern reaches enough mastery (see Lanterns): path 1 tiers 1–3 are open from the start, path 2 opens at mastery 10, tier 4 at 20 and tier 5 at 30.
Ascending. Once both paths are at tier 5, the lantern can ascend. Pick one of up to three ascension types (unlocked at mastery 30, 50 and 70). Ascending costs 3× the lantern's build price and gives it a powerful new ability.
Merging. Ascend a second copy of the same lantern, then tap the first one and press Merge. The two combine into an Ascended II. Two Ascended II lanterns of the same type merge into an Ascended III. Each merge gives ×1.75 damage, ×1.2 fire rate and ×1.12 range.
- Press Send wave when you're ready. Nothing moves until you do, so take your time between waves.
- Foes come in clumps of eight with short pauses between clumps.
- Halfway through each wave you get half of the wave's clear bonus, and the rest when the wave is cleared.
- Every 5th wave brings the world's own boss: 1 until wave 15, 2 from wave 20 and 3 from wave 35. Each world's boss has its own tricks; see World bosses.
- Speed: tap the speed button to switch between 1×, 2× and 3×.
- Auto sends the next wave for you as soon as the last one is cleared. Wave 1 always waits for you to press Send wave.
- Each world introduces its own new foe, and you meet it in the first wave.
Foes get tougher every wave. For the exact numbers, see How foes get tougher.
Gold comes from:
- every foe you snuff,
- the halfway and end-of-wave clear bonus (about 6 + 0.7 per wave),
- Interest and some boons.
Gold resets every run. Spend it: gold sitting in the bank doesn't defend anything.
Lives start at 15 on Normal. Easy gives +5, Hard -3 and Nightmare -7. Camp upgrades and some boons add more.
Every foe you snuff, every lantern you place and every upgrade you buy fills your boon XP bar. When it fills, you level up and pick one boon from a hand of cards. If a wave is running, the pick waits until it ends. Each level needs a bit more XP than the last.
Boons last for the rest of the run. They come in five rarities: Common, Rare, Legendary, Mythic and Exotic. Rarer boons are stronger but show up less often. Lantern-specific boons only appear while that lantern is on the board. See Boons for all 53.
At the pick screen you can also Skip for a bit of gold, or Reroll the hand if you've bought the camp upgrade for it.
Touch
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Place a lantern | Drag it from the tray, or tap it then tap tiles |
| Open a lantern's upgrades | Tap it on the board |
Keyboard and mouse
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Send the next wave |
| 1–9 | Pick a lantern to place |
| U / I | Upgrade the selected lantern's path 1 / path 2 |
| M | Merge |
| F | Change speed |
| P | Pause |
| Esc or right-click | Cancel |
Open the pause menu with the menu button (or P). From there you can resume, toggle sound and music, or Save and quit.
Runs save automatically after every wave. You can keep one campaign run, one Endless run and one event run saved at once. Continue them from the Play page. If you quit mid-wave, you replay that wave when you continue.
Win or lose, the run pays out:
- Embers for waves cleared, bosses beaten and a win bonus, multiplied by depth and difficulty.
- XP, which raises your player level and your Pass tier.
- Mastery for every lantern you used.
The summary shows your level and each lantern's mastery with progress bars. During a run, tap a lantern to see how many foes it has snuffed this run and a live bar of its mastery.
- Moonstones for any level ups, and for clearing a world for the first time.
Winning a campaign on your deepest unlocked world opens the next depth. See Progression and rewards for the formulas.
The home screen is your camp. From there:
| Page | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Play | Pick a world, mode and difficulty, or continue a saved run. |
| Lanterns | Unlock lanterns, see their mastery, and buy and equip skins. |
| Upgrades | Spend embers on permanent camp upgrades. |
| Pass | The Season Pass and event passes. |
| Shop | Hourly featured skins, premium skins and lanterns, and ember packs. |
| Boons | Browse every boon in the game. |
| Profile | Player level, rank, stats and recent runs. |
| Settings | Sound, music, layout, menu theme, saves and codes. |
| How to play | A short in-game version of this page. |
| Updates | What changed in each version. |
- Bends are gold. A lantern at the inside of a bend covers the trail twice.
- Start with Sparks, then add a Cinder for groups once broods show up around wave 6.
- Upgrade before you spread out. A few upgraded lanterns usually beat many bare ones.
- Beetles have armor. Small hits barely scratch them. Use Venom (poison ignores armor), Spark's Armor piercer, Lance's Armor breaker, or big hitters like Comet.
- Spend your embers at camp after every run. Kindling (more starting gold), Whetstone (damage) and Hearthstones (lives) are great early picks.
- Play the lanterns you like. Mastery unlocks their later upgrades, so lanterns you use often get much stronger.
- Losing is part of the loop. Every run makes the next one stronger.
Play Lanternfall · Project page · These pages are generated from the docs folder in the repo.