Rise to Ruins Tips and Tricks
Each entry below is one mechanic, what it costs you, and the update it was last checked against. Filter by category or difficulty to narrow the list, and use the anchor beside any heading to link straight to a single tip.
Defenses
#Curtain walls stopped blocking Specters back in Update 1
Crylithium is the usual answer, but it is not the only one: Crylithium curtain walls and gates, Crylithium firepits, natural crystal, rock, forest, and the God Wall spell all block them too. None of it is absolute, because a Specter with no route attacks the weakest point and breaks through.
Checked against Update 2
#A curtain wall stops your own towers as well as their attacks
It blocks projectile line of sight in both directions, and that is what shuts down Fire Elemental blasts and also what silences your defenses. Only the Ballista and Attract towers shoot over one. Sling towers cannot clear any wall, though they do shoot through gates.
Checked against Update 2
#Ice damage is a tier-4 tower upgrade, not a building
No Ice Tower exists to hunt for in the build menu. Against Fire Elementals, do not try to funnel them with water either. They never walk into it and will demolish whatever stands in the way instead, so leave a clear dry route and cover it properly.
Checked against Update 2
God Powers
#Banish cannot dump enemies onto your weak flank
It costs 500, hits an 8-tile radius for around 17 seconds and not one target, and teleports what it catches to a random low-desirability tile outside your village. The reason to aim it carefully is the confusion Update 2 added for friendlies caught in the radius.
Checked against Update 2
Golems
#Crystal golems are fragile specialists, not the ranged default
They have very low health even at maximum tier and shatter under direct fire, and a fully upgraded Stone or Wood golem gains a ranged attack anyway. They also cannot shoot over curtain walls, which block almost everything in both directions.
Checked against Update 2
Hydration
#A stalled purifier in winter is starved, not broken
Lake water freezes in extreme cold and stays unharvestable until it thaws, cutting off the dirty water your Water Masters were carrying in. Wells keep running, Rain Catchers still catch rain, and stored buckets and bottles are untouched. A large or deep dug lake may not fully freeze.
Checked against Update 2
#Wells produce almost nothing, and that is not the point
They generate clean water year round at a very low rate, so judging them on output makes them look skippable. Their real value is that they never freeze, which turns a handful of them into your fallback for the weeks the lakes are locked up.
Checked against Update 2
Corruption
#Fire pits stopped pushing back corruption, so build Outposts
The developer removed their corruption resistance during Early Access, first for ordinary pits and then for large ones, and introduced the Outpost with the old Large Fire Pit's range explicitly to replace them when expanding. Pit-based corruption control has been gone ever since.
Checked against Update 2
Hydration
#Rain Catchers are not dead all winter, they follow the rain
They fill whenever it rains and not on a seasonal schedule, and you can force a fill with the Storm spell. Capacity upgrades too, running roughly 320 at base and around 480 fully upgraded by community measurement.
Checked against Update 2
#Water Bottles exist so defenders stop leaving the wall to drink
The station takes stored clean Water Buckets and not raw resources, and packages them into bottles that villagers carry in their own inventories. Water Masters do the distributing, not organizers, so staff accordingly before a siege instead of during one.
Checked against Update 2
God Powers
#Grab is free for 120 ticks and always costs faith
It opens at 40 influence, holds free for 120 ticks, then drains 1 influence every 2 ticks at a flat rate, so a 130-tick hold totals 45. The cost nobody mentions is that it lowers the faith of whatever you picked up, and faith now feeds your influence cap.
Checked against Update 2
#Recall moves faith in either direction, unlike Grab
It costs 200 and covers an 8-tile radius for about 17 seconds. It does cause confusion, but the faith change depends on where the subjects left and where they arrived, so pulling someone out of danger can raise it. Swapping to Grab to be gentle gets it backwards.
Checked against Update 2
Golems
#A golem reserves its summon cost for as long as it lives
That is 270 against your maximum bar for a Labor Golem and 500 for a Holy Golem, held and not spent. Casting Dispel Golem hands it straight back, and so does the golem dying, which makes your standing army a budget you can rebalance before a siege.
Checked against Update 2
Hydration
#Water Masters ignore a lake until you mark it for harvest
Use the Harvest Food and Water tool or they stand around doing nothing beside a full lake. The other half people miss is that adding more Water Masters only speeds up collection. To raise actual output you have to upgrade the purifier or build a second one.
Checked against Update 2
Logistics
#Harvesters deliver by priority, not to the nearest building
Each building carries a per-resource priority, and harvesters walk to the highest one even when a closer option exists, while organizers move goods from low priority buildings to high ones. Use placement to shorten walks and priority to choose destinations.
Checked against Update 2
World Map
#A fallen region is gone permanently, with nothing left to loot
There are no ruins to pick over and you cannot even visit it again, which the developer has confirmed directly. It does not end your run, though, because you hold many regions at once and your perks and God Experience are untouched by the loss.
Checked against Update 2
Corruption
#Walling the corruption in makes tonight's wave bigger
Wave size runs on Corruption Threat, which reads the current day and how much space the corruption wants but cannot have. Counting corruption buildings did predict waves once, but only between 2018 and 2019. Denying it room is now the thing that feeds it.
Checked against Update 2
#Destroying a Corrupted Graveyard does not shrink tonight's siege
Wave size comes from Corruption Threat and not from building count, so the monsters that were going to spawn still spawn. What you have removed is a focal point, so they now appear on a random corrupted tile instead of a predictable one.
Checked against Update 2
#Jailing drones does not throttle the corruption's spawn rate
Drones keep spawning even on blocked tiles, and there is no live-entity cap to exploit. The only way to stop them is reducing corrupted tiles to zero. What jailing genuinely buys is one high-level drone removed for good, and one outside the corruption still gathers resources you can Attract away.
Checked against Update 2
Influence
#Your influence cap is not population multiplied by 40
That figure circulated because the developer gave it on the forums in 2018, alongside a hard ceiling of 5000 that no longer applies either. Update 1 cut the per-villager value and Update 2 rewrote the calculation outright, so any build order budgeting from the old number is over-spending.
Checked against Update 2
What to Read Next
- Corruption Ecology. Corruption Threat, what actually pushes corruption back, and what jailing drones really does.
- God Powers. Every spell, its influence cost, and the faith price nobody mentions.
- Hydration Logistics. Water Masters, purifiers, wells, and surviving a frozen lake.
- Tower Defense and Mazes. Curtain walls, Specters, Fire Elementals, and which towers shoot over what.
- Golem Typology. Every golem type and the influence each one holds while it lives.
- Village Management. Jobs, priorities, and why placement is not what routes your goods.
- World Map and Progression. The 45 maps, perks, and what losing a region costs.