SMAX Devo

SMAX Devo

<p>Before attempting SMAX Devo you need Black Hole and Golden Tower firing together (Multiverse Nexus works for this), Smart Missiles synced to that pair, a workshop heavily devo'd toward defensive options, and enough economy to cash-max your damage stats early in a run (workshop Damage around 5k or higher). If you run Wall, set Shockwave to roughly 1.65-1.75 so it juggles basics to the bottom of the stack; without Wall, around 1.4 is the optimal shuffle distance.</p><p>The point of a workshop devo is to strip out anything that kills enemies too quickly, so that kills happen only when your multipliers are up. Keep these workshop stats at zero: Attack Speed, Multishot Chance, Rapidfire Chance, Bounce Shot Chance, Knockback Chance, Orbs, Shockwave Size, Landmine Chance, Landmine Radius, and all three Free Upgrade lines. Thorns also starts at zero but gets raised with cash during the run to trim basics, climbing toward roughly 34% as spawn rates increase (a Thorns substat works if your workshop is at zero). Optional devo targets include Crit Chance (extends how long you can run damage devo strategies), Range (leave at the 30m base unless your strategy says otherwise), and Landmine Damage if you use Land Mine Stun or want a Spotlight orbless setup.</p><p>Required cards are Coins, Crit Coin, Cash, Enemy Balance, Health, Extra Defense, Berserker, Damage and Crit. Wave Skip and Wave Accelerator cover economy. For defence, take Regen if you use Wall or the Wormhole Recombinator mod, otherwise Recovery Package Chance (especially with Galaxy Compressor). Nice-to-haves include Ultimate Weapon Crit and Land Mine Stun — but only bring Land Mine Stun once landmine damage is irrelevant, because you want the stun, not the kills, and it needs Mythic or Ancestral Land Mine Radius to shine.</p><p>Helpful labs and unlocks: maxed Black Hole Coin and Black Hole Damage labs, Death Wave for its HP, coin and cell gains, Spotlight for its coins, a 25-second Black Hole duration with perk (so protectors die in two cycles once you move to Orb Devo), the Extra Black Hole lab, Garlic Thorns, lower cooldowns on Black Hole, Golden Tower, Death Wave and Smart Missiles, the UW crit card, and a synced coin bot if you are not running Galaxy Compressor.</p><p>The core loop is to hoard enemies and eHP-tank them until Black Hole and Golden Tower fire together, pulling everything into the Black Hole so Smart Missiles can clear the bricks. Offset Smart Missiles by a few seconds after Black Hole so the pile has time to ball up, and offset further as your Black Hole Damage grows so the stack keeps clearing for longer. During the run, spend cash on offence first — Crit, Crit Factor, Damage, Super Crit, Super Crit Factor and Enemy Health Level Skips — then on defence: Enemy Attack Skips, Wall if you have it, Health, Regen (with Wall or Wormhole Redirector), Defense Absolute and Def%. Micromanage Thorns to trim basics, since they are worth fewer coins. Once Smart Missiles can no longer clear the stack in one volley, transition to Orb Devo, and when death looks likely, cash-max Free Ups and ride the Blender strategy to the end.</p><p>Because this is a damage-based build, progress depends heavily on stones, labs and enhancements, though protectors bother it less than they do Orb Devo. To push further, improve both survival and damage; Smart Missile Amp lab (plus some radius and quantity) usually beats pouring stones into raw SM damage, and lowering cooldowns helps as long as Black Hole, Golden Tower and Smart Missiles stay synced.</p><p>Perk priorities on the economy side: Perk Wave Requirement, Coin Trade Off, Golden Tower Bonus, Black Hole Duration, Coin, Extra Death Wave Wave, Cash, Damage, then Damage/Boss Health Trade Off. Defensively: Regen Trade Off (skip it if your Wall health or fortification is too low), Regen, Defense%, Max HP and Defense Absolute.</p><p>Survival priorities shift with your lifetime coins. Below roughly 1T, Defense Absolute is your friend — push it to about 1000 in the workshop if you are devoing in T1 or T2, then lean on Health, since large package recovery tends to be the best early survival tool. Regen only really pays off with a Wormhole mod once you approach 5000 levels in it, as it scales poorly before that. Aim to get workshop Health near 5000 so you can cash-max it in run. Lab goals for survival: Defense% to level 23 (so you cap def% with an ancestral substat and maxed Standard Perk Bonus), Death Wave Health, Health to level 50, maxed Standard Perk Bonus, and Enemy Attack Level Skips.</p><p>In the early-mid game (around 3-200T lifetime coins) you should have mod options. Wormhole is generally the strongest pick, and you always want the highest-rarity Def% substat you can find. Landmine Radius on a Mythic-or-better armour mod makes Land Mine Stun excellent at the tail end of runs by stunning huge groups, and a Thorns substat helps both with Wall Thorns breakpoints and with extending blender at the end.</p><p>On thorns trimming: between activations (pre-Wall), you want as few basics around the tower as possible so you collect the maximum number of tanks. Shockwave naturally shuffles tanks to the back of the pile, but you need to raise thorns gradually to keep pace with basic spawn rates — around 15-20% thorns is a good starting point.</p>