This is Part 1 of my personal levelling route getting characters from fresh to 70 in under a few hours depending on how much I focus or what limitations I put on myself. I hope that it will, in turn, help newer players get into the later game a bit faster and potentially keep their/your attention on the game longer w/o losing motivation for the earlier parts with a sense of direction. Takes from scratch up to 6 hours last I ran, but I focused a lot on the early game stats more than I should have and wasted time.

Meant for 4 control split-screen levelling if you want levels promptly, if not then it is best to have your EV levelled before levelling others since when you're off character you have a damage penalty.

With the newer versions, the game comes equipped with an integrated Emulator for us with F2 through F5 being manual selection. F6 brings in the earliest created characters, or the first closest forge-positioned characters, for example, toons 1 through 3 in your character list. F7 removes all characters and finally, F8 gives you full screen while keeping the other 3 characters in where you left them.

A few years ago I created an overall guide with the sole purpose to allow brand new and returning players a way to break into the end game w/o too much time spent and obv not getting help from others. Most guide's say "Here's how to level fast" and then take in an already levelled character, which not everyone has the luxury of.
I'm also going to be looking into a better route, but for now, this is a solid place to start, in this guide, I'm going to teach you a few things to help with the early game.

To start I'll explain this map's purpose and then general stuff throughout this guide.

Firstly the map I chose isn't the correct map... well it is but not the right challenge map we're going to be looking for the mission section for Challenge: Halloween Invasion and how we can use this map to help our early game. Now there are realistically 2 ways you can do this map, for mana or gear. Both are great options but generally, the gear farming is pretty slow IMO for what's offered so I like to stick to mana initially. You should be able to get about 10k-200k mana per 1.5minutes you run this take a jester or EV something that can use multiple weapons, cause that's where the money is at, run around and pop all chests choose to look at stuff or forgo it to increase your mana gained. Should you choose to farm armour here I'd recommend using a summoner because the chests will not spawn weapons, but you'll gain significantly less mana. After you're happy with where your mana stack is at we can proceed to deeper well.

Black Arrow = Running Route

Blue Arrow = Route leading to the roof

Blue Bar = Ramp

Hint: 1 - Player start

Hint: 2 - Access to the roof

Hint: 3 - Rooftop Chests

Hint: 4 - Jump spot to the other building

Hint: 5 - Zone placed chests

That's the main part of this guide and you may opt to continue to Part 2 if you have knowledge of heroes and/or know what you want late game.

In this part, I'll go over classes and general use to help get a better sense of what classes you'll want in the late game.

Series EV - This class can be a few different things but mainly it's used as a strong HP waller w/ tower buff beam capabilities or a Hero DPS class that utilizes proton charge blast. Their most used towers are Tower buff beams > Refection beams => and Physical beams. Their Hero DPS generally revolves around blowing up stuff with proton charge, but in terms of raw DPS there's a variety of useful weapons one can use, a good starter weapon is the fusion rift from Moonbase. They stand as an S-tier class for tower building and an S-tier class for hero DPS, once mastered.

Monk/initiate - This class builds AOE auras along with the ability to be Hero DPS/Utility, as a monk because of hero and tower boost vs what initiates get. Typically I use an initiate Tower builder with the fox outfit for speed, but Ninja is also pretty quick for the monk skin. In terms of hero DPS monk's hero boost just places them much higher as a single DPS over the initiate. Their most used towers are Strength Drain > Ensnare > Electric, there are times when the healing aura is nice to have. Strength drain removes immunities and weakens enemy attacks and is widely considered to be among one of the strongest towers in DD1 They stand as an S-tier tower builder and an S-tier hero DPS, even if it's just for hero boosting your true main hero DPS, summoner hero DPS or as a tower booster.

Apprentice/Adept - This class builds tower-like towers and can be hero DPS on rare occasions with a strong purity bomb you can lay waste to some stuff. Either of these will work fine as a tower builder with their man towers being Lightning Tower > Deadly Striker Tower I've seen at times people use the Fireball tower and it's not bad just generally IMO more niche use. As for hero DPS, I've seen so little it's hard for me to truly say, but it seemed strong when built right. This class stands S-tier for tower building as their lightning towers just clear out a level so fast that their Deadly strikers can focus the stronger mobs with their ability to shoot through walls. For Hero DPS I'm going to say they're B-tier their burst is nice for clearing out mobs IMO, more so than bosses, feel free to check them out if you're interested though I'm sure there are a lot of good Hero DPS guides for them.

Huntress/Ranger - This hero places floor traps that activate from a button press or mob triggers along with being decent Hero DPS. All of their traps have their use and they vary but generally, they used to be used for their gas trap as it negates a lot of dangerous enemies by causing them to stop them in their tracks and choke. they also carry an immunity removal, much like the strength drain aura, through their darkness trap. As far as Hero DPS goes they were one of the stronger DPS classes back in the day with the Ranger's split shot ability allowing for good strong consistent damage, but have since fallen off due to updates. Overall you'll want to have one for the times when they're needed but they're IMO B-tier tower builders and B-tier DPS.

Squire/Countess - They sport Medieval-styled towers with a longstanding glory to their harpoon turret that has since fallen from grace. As for Hero DPS, it's gotten better through updates, but it's still regarded as one of, if not the worst Hero DPS. They tend to mainly use the harpoon turret but there's niche use for bouncer blockades and inverted spike blockades. I can't speak for the countess but I know before the squire got the blade spin double attacking they were pretty low on the hero DPS. This used to be one of my favourite heroes to use, but as is, the game is fine w/o them in your arsenal IMO C-Tier tower builder and D-tier Hero DPS.

Jester - They like party gifts and mystery as their towers... oh and other hero's towers and while their towers have some pretty strong attributes, if you can manage to snag the towers you want, they're just too unreliable in serious gameplay BUT very fun to play as a tower builder if you like randomness. Their towers are generally stronger than their class counterparts along with being less DU, in most cases. They tend to be a Hero DPS/Utility and a strong entry Hero DPS at that, with how easy it is to equip them with a fusion rift the Jester can smash some early-game bosses with very little gearing, allowing you farming capabilities to create a strong Hero DPS out of one the other classes. The jester is among one of the most versatile classes for what they can do, firstly their tower move ability can allow for ultra-tight positioning along with being able to get Towers closer to a crystal. Their wheel ability can slow down time, kill a % of mobs, heal allies and towers, and upgrade a nearby tower, this ability seems to have it all. Lastly, they have a huge costume health pool out the gate unlike any other fresh-skinned heroes making them my fav entry Hero DPS on top of being a fast caster making them one of the best mana collectors with a Wolfenstein to upgrade defences. D-tier tower builder S-tier hero-based utility class and A-tier early game DPS B-Tier late game DPS.

Summoner - Currently our only MU user they build minion-based towers and can be used to heal defences around the map along with looking at gear while a map is underway, all while invulnerable. They can do both tower building and Hero DPS/Utility, in terms of towers they tend to build Archers > Mages > Spiders this is because archers are low MU and can make for great walls while a mage heals them and is sometimes paired with a spider on ogre heavy lanes to increase their damage taken by whatever hits the webbed target. As for Hero-based DPS/Utility, the summoner can use 2 pets making them good DPS for split-screen use. Another common use for them is using 2 guardian pers allowing you to buff towers giving towers incredible strength or flash healing around the map during dire times. S-tier tower builder and S-tier Hero DPS/Utility while in split-screen as a single-use Hero DPS killing bosses, they're about B-tier or maybe even A-tier with 2 very strong DPS pets.

Barbarian - Purely Hero DPS, as it stands, in redux they gain totems one of which increases hero damage and allows Hero DPS to be boosted immensely! As they stand now they're still incredible Hero DPS even though I've never been good with them, they were regarded as the best DPS at one point and likely still among the elite who can properly use this hero. They are an S-tier as a solo DPS but when split-screened become insane sustained DPS allowing you to have a monk hero boost among their pet DPS. They are so good when boosted as sustain DPS whereas the series EV is good for bursting.

Hermit - Lastly the newest hero and very hard for me to gauge I'm going to go off personal insight on how I feel. I'm only going to focus on their towers as I've yet to see or play them as a Hero DPS class. Firstly I believe their most used towers will be Golem > Web tower > Pylon mind you this is from very little testing but I can see some of the pluses for these 3 over the mushroom and seed bomb tower. The golem has an AOE heal for players AND defences making it strong on maps where defences take damage along with their aggroing capabilities, idk much about how the aggro works but I know it's given some people grief with wyverns being pulled lol. The web tower is essentially an AOE webbing spider which allows for more mobs to be webbed and dealt with. Lastly, the pylon increases the range and resistance of towers along with providing hero cast and move speed while in it, the main use I can see is to expand auras to be used in various ways. One of the ways I've used this was to expand auras to allow a single buff beam to be used and upgraded or use 2 to expand so I can use only 1 pylon. Very good with auras that's for sure and possibly lightning towers & deadly striker towers. Currently, they don't offer the best of the best for a towering line-up, so I'm gonna say B-Tier tower builder just because I feel like most of their towers are more utility and situational with the exception of the web tower that allows ensnaring along with increased damage taken on the target.

I hope this helps get a better understanding of the heroes and their capabilities to help you destroy enemies with their assorted arsenal.

My hero line-up late game tends to be.

Wall/Buff beam EV (Mandatory) and Hero DPS EV (Highly recommended)

Wheel/Upgrade jester (Highly recommended) w/ hopefully 0 tower range to allow me to place towers closer to crystals

Aura Initiate (Either hero for auras Mandatory), Hero DPS monk, and a Tower boost monk (Both boosters Highly recommended)

Trap Huntress (Recommended)

Adept Tower builder (Mandatory)

Tower building summoner (Mandatory), Hero DPS summoner (Recommended), Tower buff summoner (Highly recommended)

Tower building hermit (Recommended)

12 Standard Heroes with different uses. I do highly recommend getting good on the barbarian unlike myself tho. :)

The ones listed mandatory can get you through most high-end bossless gameplay they will allow you the most versatile building and allow the use of MU. The bottom line I'd say Tower summoner, Aura initiate/monk, and Tower buff beam EV as the shorter mandatory if you want to gear and play less of characters, but you will struggle without strong tower DPS.