Guide to Setting Up and Using the Effective Paths

In this guide we are diving deeper into a topic that has been heavily requested: The great Effective Paths spreadsheets.

And, if you’re completely new to this, let’s just first briefly recap on what the Effective Paths spreadsheets are: Well, it’s basically an ever-growing tool for tower optimization, which evaluates your current build and suggests next upgrades to complete. It’s pretty amazing!

And do note that the Effective Paths was created by Mattew with the involvement of many more, including 1410c, Andy, Đ4ЯK3И5TØИ3, Audacious, Keizhac, QuietFanta, IGotSlain, zAlpha, Nykola, Phil, Shiriru94, Solaaar and more. And if you see these guys around on Discord or Reddit, be sure to thank them for all their hard work!

Table of Contents

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PS! While I (J Plays) like the tool and have written up this guide, note that I have had no involvement with the creation of this great resource. This is simply an unofficial guide to it all, which hopefully some will found helpful. But, while I will keep this guide updated and include various FAQs and Troubleshooting tips, be sure to engage with the dedicated EP Discord Channel for discussions and queries.

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Video Guides

You can check the video if you prefer that over reading. The written guide also includes screenshots, etc. though. Video published Aug 5, 2025.

Another Effective Paths tutorial video, created by ‣. Video published Apr 16, 2025.

Starting Out - The Main Effective Paths Spreadsheet

So, starting out, you simply want to navigate to the link where the spreadsheet is shared: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YwZtKP6B4WYhRba5T6APJ1YxKNdfnIGQnprgnxmO7zc/copy (the URL for this sheet will never change)

Once you have accessed that link, you want to make a copy of it. Save this wherever you want on your Google Drive. I recommend making a folder for Effective Paths, because you’ll soon see that you will end up with a handful spreadsheets. And so this ensures that you got things easier organized.

And then, let’s just briefly cover what the main tabs are in this Effective Paths spreadsheet, though we will cover these in greater details later on:

Home Page: First we got the home page tab which primarily shows the version history, and some key Frequently Asked Questions and answers. Importantly, you’ll also see listed here if there are newer updates available, and in cell A4 you can click the link to grab the latest version.
IDS: Then there’s the IDS (or, technically it’s short for “Identifiants”) but we can call it IDS for simplicity, which we’ll get into in more details later. But, basically, over time, as the whole resource grew in terms of its calculations, inclusions, and complexity, the various Tower inputs, such as workshop, labs, modules, relics, etc., got moved to separate sheets documents (”child sheets), and we’ll go through each of these later. To some, especially those that were used to the old spreadsheet that contained everything, this may be confusing, but it is ultimately something that will benefit you and the continued growth and enhancement of the Effective Paths and all the sub-tools that are being created within the IDS child sheets.
Master Spreadsheet: If you used the Effective Paths sheet long time ago, you may know that this Master Spreadsheet used to be the main place to input data. And it is still optional to do so. But as you will see, I recommend using the separate IDS child sheet, because this gives you access to a lot of additional sub-tools as well. So, for most of this video, we will be ignoring this tab and data will anyways auto-populate here later.
eHP, eDamage, eEcon: And then, there’s the main output of the Effective Paths spreadsheet, the effective path recommendation for your health, for your damage output, and for your coin income. And we’ll analyze these in greater details once we have covered everything that you first need to input and setup.

The Effective Paths structure

PS! TreASoN has created the following to help visually map out what the Effective Paths consists of and the “whys” in terms of setting things up (click to expand the toggle):

Connecting the sheets

So, we technically could have inputted some data directly into the Master Sheet tab in the Effective Paths spreadsheet, but most would recommend utilizing separate IDS documents for a better modular approach - and it also ensures that you get the best and proper use of various sub tools as well. So, before we even get started with any actual Tower data input. Let’s link all the IDS sheets!

Now, before we get started, there are essentially two different approaches you can take to this.