This Monsters Are Coming! Rock & Road Beginner Guide walks you step-by-step from a brand-new account to a strong early- and mid-game setup. You’ll learn which mythics to pull, how to farm your first secrets, how to unlock Yukiota, and how to generate a steady flow of Trait Rerolls every week.
Hard Mode can feel unforgiving when you’re starting out, especially in Mirror City where leveling up buildings is slow. The upside is that minion-focused builds scale incredibly well if you lean into what Mirror City does best: doubling every building placement. Once you see how it snowballs, runs become much more manageable.
The entire strategy below works even if you only have a few hours in the game.
Mirror City
Mirror City gives you two buildings per placement. That alone makes minion towers busted because each placement instantly doubles your active summons. Instead of trying to upgrade towers in the early waves, the goal is simple:
Get as many minion-producing buildings down as fast as possible.
Quantity beats quality here.
If you do it right, by the time you hit 40 minions active on the map, most waves melt before reaching your path, and only the bosses remain a threat.
Towers
Everything in your build revolves around these two categories:
1. Any tower that summons minions (mandatory)
- Decaying minions (every 9s)
- Explosive minions (uncommon)
These produce the raw numbers you survive with.
2. Towers that gain massive bonuses from active minions (mandatory)
- Cursed Ballista is the standout
It gets +10% damage for every minion on the field. With 40 minions active, it becomes your boss shredder.
Once you have those two pieces, you’re set. Everything else is optional.
Optional Towers
Use these only if they appear naturally. Don’t chase them.
- Freezing minion towers
- Worker-summoning buildings
- Buildings that generate decaying minions passively (Servant Crypt, Reliquary District)
- Weapons that generate minions
These help, but the build works perfectly fine without them.
Do NOT buy minion damage boost buildings (+7% or +14%).
They sound useful, but early on they actively slow down your run. In the beginning, you don’t want stronger minions—you want more minions.
Every placement that isn’t a summoner tower is one less pair of minions on the field. Early damage upgrades only pay off much later, and by then numbers matter far more than the strength of each minion.
Gold, Water, and Money Management
A few buildings are surprisingly valuable because they convert resources into gold reliably. Early rerolls are rare chances to buy more minion core towers, so gold matters more than it seems.
Good economy buildings:
- Bookstore: 20 water → 1 gold
- Wandering Market: 5 wood → 1 gold
These help you hit more rerolls, which means more chances to buy minion generators.
Don’t overdo it—one or two is enough.
Level-Up Choices
When you see a Level-Up choice that gives 3 buildings, take it immediately. In Mirror City that becomes 6 free buildings, which is extremely strong.
But if you see these same buildings in the shop, skip them.
Buying them costs 30 gold for 6—which is worse than simply saving gold for more minion towers.
Once you have harvest-based minion weapons unlocked, you can generate extra minions while gathering wood or stone. This only becomes strong once you have:
- Harvest speed bonuses
- Harvest weapons
Good to use during the second-to-last wave or right before the boss.