Fellwood attack buildings

Physical attackers are the left plateau’s mundane row: axe throwers, archers, and ballistas, with cannons promised among the later 17 buildings. They do not ignite, shatter, or chain lightning. They throw mass. After the additive patch they are not obsolete — they are the reliability layer under Wizards. This page ranks the physical row and tells you when to stop buying ricochet. For unlock gates, use How to Unlock Buildings. For the overall ladder, stay on the Buildings Hub.

Axe throwers

Axes are the tutorial weapon and a legitimate endgame citizen. They fire often, they are easy to drag-aim, and their upgrade tree (weighted axes, balance, deadly aim, ricochet) is readable. Ricochet chance soft-caps near 90%. Ricochet count soft-caps near 8. Allerton Apps printed those caps in community notes after people tried to buy the moon. Past the cap, buy luck, log value, or another building.

Axes want a front slot. Manual shots that bounce into a second tree are why extra pines eventually become good. Until then, one evolved tree plus bouncing axes is enough. Population assigned here is rarely wasted. If DPS says axes are behind ice, that is fine — ice is allowed to win. Axes still print reliable hits for Events clovers. Getting Started is an axe story on purpose.

Archers

Arrows curve. New players miss. Eagle-eye / pierce nodes are the reason to keep the building at all. Automatic fire is a drizzle. Manual fire is a skill shot. If you hate drag-aim, do not staff a row of archers “for diversity.” Staff ice. If you like the bow, put it on a slot with pull-back room and take pierce when the tree line grows. Archer crit received a small bump in the same patch that buffed Electro and Fire — they are not abandoned, they are just picky.

Archers pair with extra trees better than axes do, because pierce wants bodies. That still does not mean plant five trees on prestige one. Logs and Acorns explains the acorn tax.

Ballistas

Ballistas look like a joke until a manual bolt goes through everything. Automatic interval in playthroughs sits around twenty seconds, which is an idle eternity. Pierce on the auto shot is not guaranteed even when the manual pierce is. Treat the ballista as an active ability with a building attached. If you are AFK, one crew is plenty. If you are hunting clovers or a fat stack, a well-aimed bolt is why this page exists.

Upgrade gold into attack speed before you fantasize about a ballista-only camp. Additive math will not save a weapon that fires three times a minute. Active Abilities is required reading. Controls matters more here than on axes because a short drag wastes the bolt.

Cannons and the rest of the 17

The store copy lists cannons beside axes, ballistas, and magic. Live ranking waits until the portrait is a normal purchase rather than a grey tile. When cannons land, expect slow, fat projectiles and a pile-disruption fantasy that may overlap lightning events. Until then, do not theorycraft a cannon shrine with demo numbers.

How physical attackers spend prestige

Buy start gold and mill pull before “extra starting axe throwers.” Extra bodies on a starved mill is how first runs die. After pull exists, a starting axe worker is a fine quality-of-life node. Ricochet prestige that duplicates the 90% cap is a trap. How to Prestige and the Prestige Planner keep that order honest.

Sibling pages: Collectors and Sawmill because physical camps overproduce logs; Wizards because you should add a color rather than a fifth axe hut; Patch Notes for the cap values. Mix the plateau. The additive patch is not a suggestion.