Difficult Stages - Stage 57

2 main things make Stage 57 difficult to deal with: High health pink enemies and the heavy-hitting mini-boss that decimates everything in front of it mid-range.

In my opinion, there is only one opener viable for this and it's powerleveling minerals right away. The pathway is long, and you only contend with 3 enemies at the start. It should buy you at least 6 levels of upgrades before the first zombie kid gets close to your tower. 

In terms of team, the easier way is to go is definitely to include a lowbie in your team. The lowbie has a shot at taking the random hits from the first blue mage as well as keeping the mini-boss busy. Fill the rest of the team with one health, 2 ranged attackers, and your choice of splash, balance, or even a second lowbie. This will allow you to spend more minerals on your ranged attackers while not

worrying about your front line being pushed. Ellin is a great ranged ranger for this level. She attacks relatively fast and she's not terribly expensive to deploy. All variations of Cony are fine. They're squishier and slower, but they're also cheaper to deploy. Boss can do in a pinch but be aware that Boss has a slightly shorter range than Cony, Ellin (and Sindy if you are lucky enough to have her), so he can get dangerously close to being slammed by the trash can.

The high health pink enemies are a pain, especially when the mini-boss is present also. In all likelihood, if your ranged attackers are not very high level or they are very slow attackers, you will face them together with the mini-boss. Your priority is to keep them from moving forward. If you find yourself unable to deploy ranged attackers because your front line is being pushed, consider putting a second lowbie in your team. If minerals are not the problem but they're just not dying fast enough before the mini-boss overwhelms you, consider employing a splash damage ranger. Jessica rangers are ideal for this because she moves fast and attacks fast. Vlad, Pew and others like them attack much too slowly to be useful here. By the time they get there and prepare to attack, they're probably dead. If you are very lucky and have Sorcerer Cony, absolutely use her. She's too powerful in the game right now to ignore. If you have a decently leveled Clara, consider trying her for this, too. The cons of her are her cost and attack speed. Depends on how comfortable you are with your minerals to put her in the deployment rotation. If she's just too costly and not doing enough damage, stick with a ranged attacker who is cheaper.

If you don't like the lowbie idea and want to use a traditional team, you can try any 2 rangers, one health unit, 2 balance or 1 balance+1 splash. It will be tougher, and will tax your minerals more heavily, but there's a good chance the pink enemies will die faster since your melee rangers are doing legitimate damage. Once the pink enemies are dead, however, focus more on the health unit and ranged attacker production. The mini-boss will pop out soon!

In all honesty, I took some convincing before I came to grips with reality and realized that using lowbies as boss fodder was not only necessary in some cases, but the only option for me. I came to this conclusion because I had terrible rangers to choose from in my team until stage 70+. It takes some getting used to and maybe some practice, but lowbies will help you a lot, especially in stage 60. Start practicing now! If you don't have a lowbie, go farm one! Most people use Bella and/or Scott.