If you’ve reached the point in Evo Defense Merge TD where enemies stop feeling forgiving, gear and totems suddenly stop being “extra systems” and start feeling like the backbone of your account. This guide breaks down how to actually use them properly, what matters early, what matters later, and where most players quietly waste resources without realizing it.
Evo Defense Merge TD Gear & Totems Guide Build Teams)
Totems slot directly into your gear and provide passive bonuses that affect specific hero classes, mechanics, or sometimes your entire team. Early on, most players make the same choice without even thinking about it: equip the highest rarity totems you own and move on. That’s fine at the start, because you’re still unlocking systems and your hero pool is limited anyway.
Once you start collecting higher rarity totems consistently, especially purple and gold ones, the whole system changes. Totems don’t disappear, they don’t bind permanently, and merging duplicates is always an option later. This means you’re expected to treat them like modular build pieces, not permanent upgrades. You’ll be swapping them in and out depending on what kind of team you’re running that day.
Archer damage totems only matter if archers are actually doing work for you. Warrior-focused totems lose all value the moment your lineup shifts. The system isn’t about finding a single “best” setup, it’s about aligning your totems with what you’re deploying on the field right now.
There is one exception to the “everything is build-dependent” rule, and that’s the Owl totem. Even at blue rarity, it has a chance to create an attack speed platform that boosts a hero’s attack speed by a noticeable amount. The trigger is RNG-based, but when it procs, the impact is immediate and obvious.
What makes this totem special is that it doesn’t care about class, comp, or playstyle. Faster attacks help every damage-dealing hero in the game. That universality is rare in Evo Defense Merge TD, and it’s why this totem stays relevant long after other low-rarity options get replaced. If you have it, it deserves a slot in almost every setup.
Unlocking Totem Slots and King Level Progression
Totem slots aren’t all available from the start. They unlock based on your King Level, which is essentially your account level. You raise it simply by spending stamina, whether that’s in main stages or other activities. There’s no shortcut here. Play the game, spend stamina, and the slots open naturally over time.
New players often worry they’re doing something wrong when they see locked slots, but this is just a progression gate. Once you reach higher King Levels, especially around level 30, you’ll have access to all gear slots and the full totem system opens up properly.
How to Get Totems
Totems come from the totem summon system. Basic summons guarantee lower-rarity totems and use silver hammers, while premium summons guarantee SR totems and require gold hammers. The premium option doesn’t just give better rarity, it also saves time because you’re less likely to pull duplicates you’ll immediately dismantle or merge.
That said, merging is always part of the long-term loop. You’re going to accumulate extras no matter what, so don’t stress too much about “wasting” pulls early. Focus on building a flexible collection rather than chasing one perfect roll.
Gear
Gear matters more than most players expect, and nearly all of it comes from Co-op. Co-op isn’t optional content in Evo Defense Merge TD. It’s where your best gear will eventually come from, period.
Every ten main stages you clear unlock a new Co-op floor, but you still need to defeat that floor’s boss before you can farm it properly. Each floor introduces higher rarity drops. Early floors cap out at SSR gear, but later floors unlock UR, LR, SP, and eventually Rainbow gear.
What trips people up is that gear level doesn’t increase with rarity. A UR piece might still be level 20, just like an SSR. The power difference comes from base stats, rarity bonuses, and rerollable sub-stats, not raw level.
Gear Drop Rates and Floors
As you climb Co-op floors, drop rates gradually improve. UR gear starts appearing at lower percentages, then increases as you go higher. LR gear doesn’t even enter the pool until later floors, and Rainbow gear sits at the very top with extremely low chances.
This is intentional. The system is built around long-term farming, not quick upgrades. If you’re chasing top-tier gear, expect repetition. A lot of it.
Refining Gear and Rerolling Sub-Stats
Sub-stat rerolling becomes available starting at SR gear, but that doesn’t mean you should do it. SR gear doesn’t roll bonus effects, which makes investing forge stones into it inefficient. The real rerolling game starts with gold-tier gear and above.
Gold gear can roll bonus effects that fundamentally change its value. Each gear piece has its own pool of possible bonuses, and some of those bonuses are exclusive to that item slot.
One standout example is the necklace bonus that adds an extra totem slot. That single effect can outweigh multiple percentage-based damage bonuses because it opens up more build flexibility across your entire team.
Another consistently strong bonus is stage damage increase, which helps push main progression rather than only affecting niche modes like Arena or specific hero classes. Vitality-based bonuses are also strong because they offer survivability that scales across content.
Many bonuses look good on paper but are extremely situational. Class-restricted damage bonuses only matter if your comp matches perfectly. Arena-only bonuses are useless outside that mode. In general, broader effects outperform specialized ones over time.
Bonus Rolls
The bonus percentages you see in the preview are maximum values. When you reroll, you’re rolling both the effect and the strength of that effect. Getting the right bonus isn’t enough. You also want a high roll.
A 6% bonus where 10% is possible isn’t bad, but it’s not ideal either. This is where long-term refinement comes in. Perfect rolls are rare, and chasing them too early can drain your resources fast.
Forge Stones and Gear Dismantling
Forge stones come from dismantling unwanted gear. There’s no trick here. If you’re not using a piece and it’s not part of a future plan, dismantle it. Holding onto weak gear “just in case” usually just slows progression.
Set dismantling filters to target lower-rarity gear once you’ve moved past it. As your account grows, your standards should rise with it.
