Garden Tower Defense All Enemies Guide

Every enemy in Garden Tower Defense resolves to one of four checks — swarm volume, flat armor, flight, or burrow — and the fastest clear comes from having one answer to each of those four by wave 10 rather than pouring every sun into a single tower. In practice that means a Beehive stack for air, a Mulch Mortar for armored ground, a Static Bloom for swarm packs, and a Bramble Vine plus Marigold Beacon pair that converts marginal kills into safe ones. This garden tower defense all-enemies guide catalogs every unit with its base health, movement trait, and the exact tower upgrade path that beats it.

All base stats below are the values listed in the game’s in-game bestiary on Normal difficulty. They scale with wave number and difficulty setting, and balance patches have moved several of them, so treat the numbers as ratios rather than constants.

Garden Tower Defense enemy roster at a glance

How enemy HP scales — the number that changes every counter

Per the game’s wave-scaling rules, every non-boss enemy multiplies its base HP by roughly 1.15 for each wave past the first. That single exponent is why a tower that clears wave 5 comfortably can leak at wave 15 without any change to the enemy’s behavior.

Bosses use their own fixed values listed above and do not inherit the 1.15 exponent, which is why wave 20 feels like a step down in raw HP from a stacked wave 19 Beetle line — the difficulty in boss waves comes from adds and auras, not health pools.

Ground enemies in detail

Aphid Swarm

18 HP · 3.2 tiles/s · 0 armor · Ground

Aphids are the cheapest enemy in the game individually and the most dangerous in bulk, because 20 of them at 3.2 tiles/s cross a lane faster than most single-target towers can cycle. Static Bloom’s chain hits four targets per volley, so it clears a pack roughly four times faster than a Sprinkler of the same tier. A Sprinkler Mk III (38 damage per shot) wastes a full 12-damage shot on each 18 HP Aphid — chain and splash towers do not.

Slug and Snail

Slug: 90 HP · 0.7 tiles/s · 6 armor · Snail: 140 HP · 0.5 tiles/s · 12 armor

Both are armor checks dressed up as slow, tanky enemies. Flat armor subtracts from every individual hit, so the Pesticide Sprayer — which applies damage over time and ignores armor entirely, per its upgrade panel — is the cleanest answer to both. Snails specifically resist slow effects below 50% of their speed, so Bramble Vine is a poor investment against them; spend that slot on Pesticide instead.

Caterpillar and Grub

Caterpillar: 60 HP · 1.1 tiles/s · 0 armor · Grub: 25 HP · 1.0 tiles/s · 0 armor

The Caterpillar’s death split means a single-target tower effectively fights the same enemy twice. Splash damage kills the parent and both Grubs in one shot, which is why Mulch Mortar is worth its slow 0.5 shots/s fire rate here. Killing a Caterpillar at the back of a lane leaves two Grubs with a full lane of runway — kill them at the front.

Beetle

220 HP · 0.9 tiles/s · 18 armor · Ground

Beetles are immune to knockback and to Bramble Vine’s slow, so the usual crowd-control answer does nothing. Their 18 flat armor is the real threat: it removes a fixed chunk from every hit, which punishes fast, weak towers far more than slow, heavy ones. Thorn Wall’s armor shred (-5 armor per hit, stacking) is the enabler — see the armor math below.

Rabbit

75 HP · 2.4 tiles/s · 0 armor · Ground

Rabbits leap straight over Thorn Wall barricades, so maze-style builds that funnel ground enemies through a corridor do not hold them. They die fast to anything with real burst, which makes the short-range Venus Flytrap (140 damage per shot) the efficient pick — the Rabbit is in its 2.5-tile range long enough for two shots.

Mole

120 HP · 1.6 tiles/s · 4 armor · Ground

Moles burrow for 3 seconds out of every 5, and while underground they cannot be targeted by anything except a revealed unit. The Marigold Beacon’s reveal is the only reliable way to keep damage on them, and without it a Mole line walks through a fully upgraded defense. Pesticide’s damage-over-time keeps ticking through the burrow window, which is why the two are always paired.

Flying enemies in detail

Wasp

45 HP · 2.8 tiles/s · 0 armor · Flying

Wasps are the standard air check and the enemy most builds fail on first. They ignore Thorn Walls and most ground-only towers, and at 2.8 tiles/s they cross a Beehive’s 5-tile range in about 1.8 seconds. See the worked example below for why that window matters so much.

Locust

30 HP · 3.0 tiles/s · 0 armor · Flying

Locusts arrive in packs of 8–14 and are individually weaker than Wasps, so the failure mode is volume, not toughness. Static Bloom’s chain covers four of them per volley and scales far better than adding a fourth Beehive. If you see Locusts, build chain; if you see Wasps, build single-target.

Crow

55 HP · 2.2 tiles/s · 0 armor · Flying

Crows retarget your Sunflower economy towers before anything else, which turns a leak into an economic collapse. They are slow enough for a single Beehive to handle, but only if that Beehive has range coverage over your economy block — a Marigold Beacon’s +15% range aura is usually what closes that gap.

Boss enemies

Hornet Queen (wave 20)

4,200 HP · 1.2 tiles/s · 10 armor · Flying

The Queen spawns 3 Wasps every 6 seconds, so her real difficulty is a sustained air-pressure check rather than a burst check. Kill the adds first — a defense that can handle continuous Wasps will out-damage the Queen’s health pool long before she crosses the map. Ten armor means Pesticide’s armor-ignoring DoT is unusually valuable here.

Locust King (wave 30)

11,000 HP · 1.5 tiles/s · 0 armor · Flying

No armor, but a +25% speed aura to every other flyer, which turns a normal Locust pack into a genuine threat and shortens every tower’s engagement window. Bramble Vine’s slow applies to flyers in this fight and effectively cancels the aura. Static Bloom’s chain handles the adds; Beehives focus the King.

Mole Baron (wave 40)

24,000 HP · 1.0 tiles/s · 25 armor · Ground

The hardest single enemy in the game on raw stats: 25 armor deletes a huge fraction of every hit, and he burrows for 4 seconds out of every 7 while summoning Moles. The only reliable build is Marigold Beacon coverage for the reveal, Pesticide for armor-ignoring damage, and Thorn Wall shred to bring his effective armor down for everything else.

Worked example: can one Beehive hold the wave 15 air lane?

Beehive Mk II deals 34 damage per shot at 2.5 shots per second — 85 DPS — with a 5-tile range, per its upgrade panel. At wave 15 the 1.15 exponent puts a Wasp at 45 × 7.08 ≈ 319 HP, and at 2.8 tiles/s it is inside that 5-tile range for 5 ÷ 2.8 = 1.79 seconds.

• One Beehive Mk II deals 85 × 1.79 = 152 damage per Wasp pass — 48% of 319 HP. It cannot kill even one Wasp alone.
• Two Beehives: 170 DPS × 1.79s = 304 damage, about 5% short. The Wasp leaks with a sliver of health.
• Three Beehives: 255 DPS × 1.79s = 456 damage, a 43% margin. Safe.
• Two Beehives plus a Bramble Vine’s 40% slow: Wasp speed drops to 1.68 tiles/s, time in range rises to 2.98s, and damage becomes 170 × 2.98 = 507 damage — a 59% margin from two towers and one slow instead of three towers.

That last line is the core economy lesson of the game: the slow effect is worth more than a third Beehive because it multiplies every tower’s damage, not just one. It also shows why a build that leaks by 5% is not “nearly working” — it is a rounding error away from failing on every single pass.

Armor math: why rate of fire decides the Beetle fight

Flat armor subtracts from every hit, so the same 18 armor costs a fast tower far more than a slow one. Against a Beetle:

• Sprinkler Mk III: 38 damage − 18 armor = 20 damage. A 47% loss.
• Beehive Mk III: 52 − 18 = 34 damage. A 35% loss.
• Mulch Mortar Mk II: 95 − 18 = 77 damage. A 19% loss.
• Pesticide Sprayer: ignores armor entirely — no loss.

Add one Thorn Wall hit (-5 armor) and the Mulch Mortar jumps from 77 to 82 damage per shot, a 6.5% gain; three stacked hits bring armor to 3 and the Mortar to 92 damage, a 19% gain from a barricade that costs a fraction of a tower upgrade. That is the argument for placing Thorn Walls where Beetles actually walk, not where they look tidy.

Which tower to build for your situation

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best tower for flying enemies in Garden Tower Defense?

Beehive is the best single-target anti-air tower and Static Bloom is the best anti-swarm one. Against Wasps and bosses, stack Beehives; against Locusts and Aphid-adjacent packs, chain damage clears the group far faster than adding another single-target tower. Bramble Vine’s slow applies to flyers and is usually worth one slot in any air lane.

Do enemy health values change between difficulty settings?

Yes. The base values in the bestiary are listed for Normal difficulty, and higher difficulties apply an additional multiplier on top of the per-wave 1.15 exponent. The relative toughness of each enemy stays the same, so the counters listed here hold — you simply need more of them, or the same towers upgraded one tier higher.

How do I stop Moles from burrowing past my defense?

You cannot damage a burrowed Mole without a Marigold Beacon’s reveal, so the Beacon is mandatory rather than optional. Pair it with a Pesticide Sprayer, whose damage-over-time keeps ticking during the burrow window, and place the Beacon centrally so its reveal covers the whole lane rather than one segment.

Which tower should I upgrade first in the early waves?

Upgrade a Sunflower economy tower to its second tier before wave 5, then take Beehive to Mk II by wave 8. Economy compounds while tower damage does not, so early sun spent on income pays for every later upgrade. Skipping the economy step is the most common reason a run stalls around wave 14.

Is the Hornet Queen weak to any specific damage type?

She has 10 flat armor, which makes armor-ignoring damage unusually strong against her — Pesticide Sprayer’s DoT bypasses it completely. Otherwise the fight is a sustained air-pressure check: clear the Wasps she spawns every 6 seconds and the Queen’s 4,200 HP pool falls quickly to a stacked Beehive line.

Does Bramble Vine work on Beetles and Snails?

No. Beetles are explicitly immune to slow effects and Snails cannot be slowed below 50% of their speed, so Bramble Vine is close to wasted against both. Use Thorn Wall’s armor shred for Beetles and Pesticide Sprayer for Snails instead, and save Bramble slots for Wasps, Locusts, Aphids and boss waves.