This page summarises a minor year-end update for The Tower: Idle Tower Defense, rolled out on Android first with iOS following shortly after. The patch adds a new Toggles menu, reworks parts of the Labs interface, introduces two permanent tournament battle conditions, and delivers a long list of gameplay tweaks and bug fixes.
The Settings menu's old Hit Texts button has been replaced by a new Toggles menu. Some existing options, including 120FPS and Cinematic of Idle, have moved into this menu, while Sound and Music stay in Settings. New toggles include Auto Pause in Menus, a Stone Confirmation (disabling it removes the confirmation prompt on stone purchases of 100 or more), a Gem Confirmation working the same way for gem purchases of 200 or more, a Ranged Enemy Shooting Line, Show Cinematic Gems, and a Brighter Spotlight. Auto Restart has also been removed from the end-of-round screen and now lives here for players who have unlocked that Vault upgrade.
The Labs UI has been improved. Lab sliders are now real sliders, with minus and plus buttons on either side for incremental adjustments, and a new Slider filter on the Research selection screen lets you view every lab that uses one. A bug where some longer researches failed to tick properly has also been fixed; it was a floating-point issue that only showed up in certain cases.
Tournaments gain two new permanent battle conditions, and the old Enemy Level Skip Reduction condition is being adjusted across all tournaments. The first new condition reduces enemy health and attack level skip chances by a percentage every set number of waves: the percentage starts at 1% and is modified by the generic Battle Condition Reduction lab, while the wave interval is set by the condition's level. The level is fixed per league rather than scaling during a run, working like More Bosses — Legends runs at level 80 (every 20 waves), Champion at 60 (every 40 waves), Platinum at 40 (every 60 waves), and Gold at 20 (every 80 waves). The second new condition multiplies enemy health and attack level skip chances by a factor tied to its level: x0.45 at level 55 in Legends, x0.6 at level 40 in Champion, x0.75 at level 25 in Platinum, and x0.9 at level 10 in Gold. This condition is affected by the existing Enemy Level Skip Reduction lab, now renamed the Skip Reduction Lab, and by both the generic and specific battle condition labs. The previous ELS Reduction condition has been rebranded as Skip Reduction - Subtract and removed from all tournaments, though it stays unchanged on the normal tiers where it already applied, and the Skip Reduction lab still affects it. Tier scaling in Champions and Legends also changes from 1/3/5/8/11/14 to 1/3/5/8/12/17.
Gameplay changes include one additional gem-purchased card slot costing 10,000 gems, and tower immunity to all damage except Vampires while the Wall is active, which prevents future Wall tunneling issues. Second Wind now spawns the Wall and makes you invulnerable while its timer runs, and Nuke activation grants 15 seconds of invulnerability. The Vault's Damage Reduction node no longer applies while Intro Sprint is active, and the Critical Coin card now reliably applies to Black Hole and Thorns. Long runs spawn one extra Fleet every 1000 waves after the first instance, but when Fleets appear at later waves only one of them drops rewards that wave. All three enhancement discount labs now use cost * (1 - %) instead of cost / (1 + %), and Primordial Collapse no longer gives double benefit on the Wall and projectiles.
Quality-of-life updates let you hide pop-up confirmations for the rest of a session, and the Boss Breakdown now includes a Pulsar Harvester stat showing the level reduction applied rather than only damage dealt. The in-run End Round button is now labelled Exit Battle with adjusted messaging, all menus can be viewed (but not changed) mid-run, and the boss stats menu always shows the most recently spawned boss. Card descriptions are better positioned on the selection screen, the Golden Tower VFX has been rewritten from scratch for performance, unclaimed Guild rewards are now mailed to your inventory, and a Support button has been added to the Login panel.
Fixes address tournament notifications not appearing, incorrect tournament ranks in reward declarations, the Pick a Perk prompt lingering after perks are exhausted, an unintended interaction where equipping both Orbital Augment and Pulsar Harvester reduced Orbital Augment's damage, and the Lab notification bubble appearing before Lab is unlocked.
For the following month, featured module banners rotate weekly by module type, boosting drop rates for all Epic modules of that type: Epic Core modules from December 21 to December 28, 2025, Epic Cannon modules from December 28 to January 4, Epic Generator modules from January 4 to January 11, and Epic Armor modules from January 11 to January 18, 2026, with each banner changing over at 4:00 PM.