LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight – Towers and Ace Chemicals Guide

For 100% completion in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, treat Towers and Ace Chemicals as two separate jobs. Towers are Gotham map-reveal points you activate with Batgirl, while Ace Chemicals is a collectible-heavy story level with exactly 11 items to find. The reason people waste hours here is that Batman searches constantly surface Arkham Knight results, which use the same location names for completely different mechanics. This guide sticks to how the systems actually work in this game.

The short version

• Towers need Batgirl. You unlock her after the Firefly mission in Chapter 4. Until then, towers do nothing.
• Activate a tower with the Hackarang. Throw it at the flashing panel, clear the short hacking minigame, and the tower reveals every icon in that district: collectibles, side missions, Riddler and Cluemaster puzzles, WayneTech caches, and escaped zoo animals.
• Ace Chemicals has 11 collectibles across the level and its Factory Meltdown back half: 5 Ace Cards, 5 WayneTech Caches, and 1 Red Brick. It is the story mission “The Red Hood Gang.”
• Jim Gordon’s foam gun is your key tool here. It blocks toxic pipes, slime jets, and wind vents so you can reach hidden rooms.
• Work top-down, room by room. Upper ledges, vents, and side detours hide the items; the objective marker pulls you past them.

Do not use Arkham Knight logic

This is the first thing to get straight. In Batman: Arkham Knight, towers and Ace Chemicals are mission-critical story beats tied to scanning, militia networks, and worker rescues. In Legacy of the Dark Knight, they are different systems entirely. Towers are an open-world map-reveal tool, and Ace Chemicals is a linear LEGO collectible level. Copy an Arkham Knight route and you will be hunting for objectives that do not exist.

The practical takeaway: do not treat Towers as story triangulation, and do not expect Ace Chemicals to play like a mission checkpoint. Use Towers to light up the map, then sweep Ace Chemicals as a self-contained collectible run.

How Towers work in Gotham

Towers are the tall red-and-white radio masts on top of buildings, one per district. They are not pickups—their value is information. They are also gated: nothing happens at a tower until you unlock Batgirl, which you do after the Firefly mission in Chapter 4. Try one earlier and the panel simply will not respond.

Once Batgirl is in your roster, the sequence is the same every time:

• Find the radio mast in the unexplored district.
• Switch to Batgirl.
• Throw her Hackarang at the flashing panel.
• Complete the short hacking minigame.
• Wait for the activation cinematic—the tower pulses out a scan and fills in the local map.

The last step is the whole point. A tower only does its job after the scan resolves and the district’s icons appear: collectibles, hidden missions, Riddler and Cluemaster puzzles, WayneTech caches, and the escaped zoo animals you need for unlocks like the Absolute Batman suit. Hit the panel and walk away early and you are back to manual scavenging the game was ready to handle for you.

The fastest way to clear Tower districts

The mistake is activating several towers in a row and promising to clean up later. Tower scans are local, so that just spreads your map out into a mess. Go district by district instead: activate one tower, clear what it exposes, then move on.

• Start with the nearest unexplored tower from your spawn or fast-travel point.
• After the scan, sweep rooftops before dropping to street level.
• Clear side missions and collectible clusters in the same pocket of Gotham while you are there.
• Leave only icons that obviously need a different character’s ability, and come back for them.
• Move to the next tower only when the current district looks done.

Batgirl is effectively your map-completion character, so let her set the pace for the open-world cleanup. If you want her early to make this whole phase faster, see how to unlock everything early.

Ace Chemicals: the 11 collectibles

Ace Chemicals is the back end of the story mission The Red Hood Gang, and it carries 11 collectibles total: 5 Ace Cards, 5 WayneTech Caches, and 1 Red Brick. Eight of them sit in the Ace Chemicals factory itself (4 WayneTech Caches, 3 Ace Cards, and the Red Brick); the remaining three—two Ace Cards and the fifth WayneTech Cache—are in the Factory Meltdown escape that follows, so do not switch to pure sprint mode when the place starts blowing up.

The single most important thing to bring is Jim Gordon and his foam gun. Most of the level’s hidden rooms are sealed behind toxic pipes, slime jets, or wind vents, and Gordon’s foam is what blocks them. The other tools you lean on are Batman’s grapple gun (to pull doors and fan covers), gliding (to cross gaps to ledges), the Batarang (to hit the switches that turn the wind tunnels and turbine on and off), and crawling through vents. If you are missing Gordon, the level becomes a partial run.

Ace Chemicals one-pass route

Stop treating the objective marker as the route. In a LEGO level the main path pushes you forward faster than the collectible design expects, so use room discipline: high ground first, then side interactions, then vents, then the foam-gated detours—and only then advance the story.

1. After the elevator, grab the first cache before the bridge

You drop into the factory by elevator. Before you build the bridge to cross, turn around and head up and to the back-left, then glide across to the first WayneTech Cache tucked behind your entry point. This one is easy to walk straight past because the objective is pointing you across the bridge. Get it first, then cross.

2. Use the wind switches and the turbine room

Inside, several rooms are built around wind vents and a central turbine that pushes you upward. The trick is that the wind is a toggle: hit the side switch with a Batarang to turn the fan off, drop to the bottom for the cache or card hidden there, then press the button to turn it back on and ride the updraft to the higher collectible. Pull the giant fan cover off with Batman and have Gordon foam it to open the path up through the top.

3. Foam every pipe and crawl every vent

Whenever you see toxic pipes or slime jets, switch to Gordon and foam them—this is how you open the crawlspaces that hide WayneTech Caches. Several Ace Cards sit up on rafters and pipes above the main floor, so look up before you press the next button. The pattern repeats: foam the hazard, crawl the vent, climb the pipes.

4. The Red Brick needs Gordon twice

The level’s lone Red Brick (the Red Hood Gang “Toxic Waste” brick) is gated behind two foam steps. Head through the crawl space, have Gordon gunk the two pipes so Batman can pull the cover down, then foam the last hole to reach the brick. It does not appear at the end of a room—it is behind the obstruction you would otherwise ignore on the way through.

5. Don’t sprint the Factory Meltdown escape

Once you chase Red Hood and the plant starts collapsing, three collectibles are still out there: the fourth Ace Card sits to the right just after you break through a damaged path, the fifth WayneTech Cache is up a side platform you reach by gliding past a fire jet and grappling a door open, and the final Ace Card is off the main route near the “B06” wall marking. The meltdown looks like an escape-only sequence, but it is still part of the same collectible set—so slow down at every fork instead of running for the exit.

Follow that order and you are not memorizing 11 isolated spots. You are running a repeatable sweep that matches how the level hides them. If you want the full collectible picture across the game, our all Red Bricks guide covers where every modifier brick lives.

Common mistakes

• Using an Arkham Knight guide. Towers and Ace Chemicals are different systems with different goals in this game.
• Trying towers before Chapter 4. They are dead until you unlock Batgirl after the Firefly mission.
• Skipping the hacking minigame reveal. The panel interaction only matters because of the district scan it triggers.
• Leaving Jim Gordon behind in Ace Chemicals. Without his foam gun you cannot reach the foam-gated caches and the Red Brick.
• Dropping off catwalks too early. Several Ace Cards are on upper pipes and rafters; the camera pulls your attention to the floor.
• Sprinting the Factory Meltdown. Three of the 11 collectibles are in the escape—two Ace Cards and a WayneTech Cache.

Practical takeaway

Unlock Batgirl in Chapter 4, then let her towers light up each district before you hunt anything by eye. For Ace Chemicals, bring Jim Gordon, grab the first cache behind the elevator before the bridge, use the Batarang wind switches and the turbine updrafts to reach the high-up items, foam every hazard, and stay disciplined through the Factory Meltdown escape. Do that and the file closes at 100% without a single blind mission replay. New to the game? Start with what to do first.