The Warden is an advanced ground tower with short range that can be purchased from the store for 4,000 after triumphing Pizza Party. Alternatively, it is obtainable through a gamepass for 337 without having to triumph the map.
The Warden attacks enemies with its baton. The Warden does not deal damage when it fires, it instead deals damage when its weapon contacts the enemy. It also cannot change which enemy it is targeting while swinging it. Because of this, the Warden may sometimes miss the target, or hit an entirely different enemy. Every third swing is a crit, dealing more damage and stuns an enemy for a few seconds. From Level 3, the Warden stuns enemies with every hit. The stun time depends on how big the enemy is; the bigger the enemy is, the shorter the stun time is. Additionally, if an enemy has the Stun Immunity, it is only slowed down by 40% instead of being completely stopped. It can only damage one enemy with each swing.
At Level 4, it gains a riot shield, which it uses to block stuns. The stun block has a 6 second cooldown and the parry itself lasts 1 second. After succesfully blocking a stun, the Warden will grant itself a temporary 100% Damage Buff and Stun Immunity for 6 seconds. When dealing crit damage, the Damage Buff will boost the crit damage by as much as regular damage. For example, for 80 damage and a crit multiplier of 3, an 100% Damage Buff boosts the Warden's damage from 80 to 160, increasing it by 80. Because of this, the crit damage, which is 240, will also get increased by 80 to 320.
The Warden has a placement limit of 12 per player.
Upgrades
Night Shift
Level 1 • Cost: $975
+Hidden Detection
+0.5 Range
+5 Damage
+0.25 Critical Hit Multiplier
Warden, if you want to keep this job, you must spend five waves at Wox's.
Sell Price changes to $941
Heavier Stick
Level 2 • Cost: $1,987
+Lead Detection
0.6 > 0.55 Swingrate
+11 Damage
0.5 > 0.75 Stun Time
Uhm, okay, sounds simple enough... can I bring my Hacker to the location?
Sell Price changes to $1,604
Stunning Blows
Level 3 • Cost: $5,750
0.55 > 0.45 Swingrate
+0.5 Range
+20 Damage
Now stuns enemies every hit instead of every third hit
+0.25 Critical Hit Multiplier
Yes, that's fine. But don't be mistaken, this isn't some kind of Tower Defense Simulator.
A few Wardens can be pretty effective in the mid-game.
By late-game, its Level 4 can also be useful due to its parry effectively granting it permanent Stun Immunity through the parry itself and the actual immunity the parry gives.
Due to Warden's short range, it should be placed at bends or turns on the map to make the most use of its range.
The DJ Booth can be useful at increasing its range.
The Warden will often struggle against large hordes of enemies, as it can only damage one enemy at a time. Therefore, placing multiple Wardens or using support towers like the Commander is recommended.
As the Warden's Level 3 and 4 upgrades are quite expensive, the Farm or the DJ Booth can be used to afford them quicker.
The Warden has lead detection at Level 2, making it fairly useful against Frost Invaders and Elite Leads.
The Warden can parry stuns at Level 4, as it unlocks Riot Shield, making it useful against enemies that can stun multiple towers, such as major bosses.
It also very effective against major bosses, if they stun while in range of your Wardens, due to the 100% Damage Buff.
On a lot of waves, no enemies that stun spawn or only enemies that debuff towers appear, making its parry get triggered less. This can be corrected to some degree by activating Exploding Enemies in match, which will make every enemy stun towers on their death, making the parry trigger more often.
Multiple Level 4 Wardens can quite effectively slow down enemies.
This is very useful for towers with long firerates, cooldowns or spawnrates, as it gives them more time to attack an enemy.
Larger enemies, like the Slow Boss will be stunned for a shorter period of time.
The Warden's stun is very weak against major bosses, as they all have a significantly reduced stun time. Additionally, they are only slowed down instead of stunned.
The Warden has a small placement footprint, meaning that it can squeeze in beside other towers quite easily.
Trivia
The Warden, Cowboy and Saboteur are the only towers that requires both a badge and coins to unlock.
The Warden's Level 4 upgrade name, Class Foxtrot Defense Level, is a reference to the Halloween 2022 Trailer, where the Warden opens a door with its equipment inside. This door has a note which says that it should only be opened in class foxtrot defense level.
The term "foxtrot" may also derive from the titular final boss, Wox the Fox.
The Warden's Level 1 upgrade name, Night Shift, is most likely a reference to Five Nights at Freddy's.
The Level 2 upgrade cost is a reference to the The Bite of '87 from Five Nights at Freddy's, which in the franchise happened in 1987.
The Warden was originally made to act as a permanent stand-in for the Sledger as part of a bigger plan to make new permanent towers based on existing event towers.[4]
The Warden was the only tower ever finished from this plan, with the rest of the towers having little progress done on them.
The only other known tower was a sawblade launcher tower that would've had a similar function to the Executioner.
Update History
For previous cosmetic variations, see the gallery page.
Bug: Shark skin is not affected by certain debuffs.
Bug: Shark skin is unaffected by stuns from legacy enemy if they are fired like a minigun or beam, examples include the Gunslinger, Warden and Minigunner enemies.
337 without having to triumph the map.
