Why make this shitty tower defense mandatory?  

Essentially, I cannot do ANYTHING to alert the guards or the consequences are either  
A) Run around and look for heralds and officials, which don't spawn if you use them too much during one time or, 
B) keep on playing this tower defense game and losing my areas because the final wave is nearly impossible to kill.  
 
WHY DID THEY INCLUDE THIS. 
 
Does anyone have any tips for making the unbearable tower defense easier? I have only won two, the very first two. Now when I lose, I end up outside the zone I lost - then I go into to reignite the tower, my Templar Awareness goes up, and they attack another den. So it's literally been a fucking moronic cycle of Templar Awareness.

I didn't like that mode much either. I focused on leveling assassin's and getting a master in each den as soon as possible(once a master is in a den it can't be attacked again). I bribed a herald whenever I saw one(unless my awareness was empty at the time) and took out officials when they popped up, and I didn't have much trouble keeping the awareness down. I only had to do the den defense mode 3 times, and that's including the tutorial.

I've only done the 3 defences that are required for the assassin challenges. Dunno it has always been easy for me to keep the awareness down in the first place and by the time I did 3 defenses Master assassins were watching all the cribs.

What is the siege engine you are getting in the 3rfd wave? the tanky thing with the cannon?

If so I pretty much went with my standard mix of archers/gunners up until the end and when the cannon siege shows up I started spamming walls in front of it and using my own cannon shots saved up.

@metalhead87: @xyzygy: Yeah this mode is crap, I believe only the first one is mandatory. If you just ignore the warnings and let your towers get taken back you are given an assassination type mission to get it back rather than the tower defence which is much better until you have a master assassin in there to hold it. I am quite a few hours in and have only done one or two tower defence missions (lost them both!!!!!!!!)

@xyzygy said:

@metalhead87: How do i put Master Assassins in? If they're away on missions can they not currently become the master? And how do I even get them to Master?

After you get an assassin to level 10 you will have an option to install them as Den Leaader.

Having a Den Leader does not guarantee safety. You need to perform a story mission for that assassin to get them past 10.

Then you have to keep leveling the assassin untill they get to level 14 and they will give you a second part of the mission to do with them to become Master Assassin

In both of the above cases the assassin in question obviously has to be available for use and not away on a mission.

@xyzygy: Yeah. It is pretty bad. I knew that going in, and basically I only did side stuff until I leveled every Assassin to max level. So I do not get annoyed with that. However make sure to do your 3 defenses and if you are into trophies and such make sure not to use the cannon in on (second for me. The easiest.)

Here's a tip: When your Templar Awareness meter is solid red, it means you are open for attack. To lower it, find heralds or kill eye-witnesses.
 
How you do this is actually quite simple, even more so than you might imagine. Open the map, find the nearest herald. Go to the herald and bribe him. Now here's where the crazy shit begins. Turn away and run for about three or four blocks. Then, turn around and come back! What do you see? That exact same herald, ready to be bribed again. You can get this done in less than a minute if you move your ass and will never have to worry about your dens being attacked again. And for an unlimited amount of times, as long as your awareness meter needs to be culled.
 
Personally, I like the mode, up until the fucking tank thing comes in and all but literally one-shots my den.

@xyzygy: Thats the assassins faction challenge. You can check up on those in the DNA-Menu->Challenges. It will get you a pretty good sword. Also I think it will factor in the 100% completion of challenges trophy.

i never had to do it besides that first time, once the meter was almost full i'd just keep an eye on the minimap for the guys you could kill for -50% i barely ever had to bribe

@xyzygy said:

@Wuddel: Why do you say make sure to do 3 defenses? I don't see any achievement linked to that, and you can go back and revisit a memory to get the no cannon achievement apparently.

@Wuddel said:

@xyzygy: Thats the assassins faction challenge. You can check up on those in the DNA-Menu->Challenges. It will get you a pretty good sword. Also I think it will factor in the 100% completion of challenges trophy.

You don't actually need to do any apart from the tutorial one. If you install a Master Assassin in each Den to make them immune the faction challenge completes itself automatically.

I kind of enjoyed the tutorial, so yeah I was not prepared at all for how insanely bad the real missions are. Nothing happens for 10 minutes and then the last unit just walks through everything. Holy shit. Did they actually forget to play this after they coded it? Like, is there a typo in some spreadsheet putting extra digits on the last guy's stats, and nobody caught it?

The worst part is I went out of my way looking for this junk. The alternatives (shank a dude/climb his tower or just keep your notoriety down) are basically second nature after 3 and a half games, so I had to actively grind notoriety and then hang around for half an hour until it randomly activated. If I could just hit "retry" at the end I'd probably have another go, see if there's some kind of trick I missed, but no. They've hidden it away like it's a reward to be sought. Lmao.

Update: I tried it again and the same thing happened, only this time there was the added frustration of being on a map with space for exactly 2 barricades, one of which obscured the gates so I had no idea what was going on the entire time. Den lost, I spawned in front of some guards who immediately became hostile and made the captain run inside.

@Aishan said:

You don't actually need to do any apart from the tutorial one. If you install a Master Assassin in each Den to make them immune the faction challenge completes itself automatically.

Oh man, I wish I'd known this several days ago.