Megadramon

I can't remember exactly, and unfortunately it's impossible for me to find out, but when I played with resell, I got maybe ~370 points. I was able to accumulate like a 223k networth by the end of it. Without reselling I remember I wasn't doing very well, and kind of playing halfheartedly knowing that my networth was in shambles compared to when I had the extra interest.

I personally think it's already mandatory to do well in fruit, though I've only played a couple games so far.

Tower reselling is part of Element TD, especially elemental towers. This change focuses more tower reselling on elemental towers rather than just using ray and grenades, and that's how the game should be played. If you're playing AP, then you may not have many towers to choose from to clear a creep wave with since you're doing a specific build, thus constantly rebuilding the same towers. If you're playing random on the other hand, there's more variety and different methods of clearing waves since everything is random. Find the most effective way to clear a wave and then resell some stuff in preparation for the next level; use whatever positions to your advantage. This style of playing is far too easy, and does not represent a true game of Element TD if you ask me. Element TD shouldn't be that relaxed. I remember back in WC3 games were challenging because you'd always be playing competitive mode against other people. Now in SC2 there's Standard mode which is it's own metagame. You're not competition against other players, nor are you competing against yourself. The creeps in Standard mode start right after the slowest person finishes, or until the timer runs out, allowing you all the time in the world to set up, think, etc... depending on your opponents, or in some cases yourself. With this new change, if you choose to relax, you will lose potential income. This makes the game more challenging as it should be for players who know what they're doing, and let the newer players continue on with what they were doing. Pre-0.84 I felt like Standard was just a knowledge based game. If you had a build capable of lasting to the end, only using ~20% of your total minerals, then you're set. Now with this new change, you'll need reselling skills along with knowledge to make it far in the fruit level.

Oh yeah... as of v0.84 apparently this tower now properly does dark damage. This could explain it's poor performance versus water creeps, or in general. I'll have to try out this tower again.

If you never did any reselling to begin with, the new changes will force you if you want any hope of getting a good fruit score, otherwise if you don't resell, you'll most definitely get a lower fruit score compared to someone who constantly resells for interest. The first time I played, I didn't go for any resells. The second time I played, I took advantage of 100% resell and got a much higher fruit score. I'd say that if you want a good fruit score, you're gonna want to get the two resells.

For those who don't know, interest has been taken out of the game as of v0.84. The option that has replaced it is called resell, which is only available to all pick players. What this does is lessens the burden of tower reselling to 87.5% from 75% at level 1, and 100% at lvl2, meaning you're able to select this option twice during elemental picks. This new change buffs random a little, removing the chance to get interest in late levels. It also makes AP much harder as you're unable to farm crazy amounts of interest by relying on powerful towers while spending only ~20% of your total minerals which I felt was way too easy. If AP players choose the option of 100% resell, they will be limited to 9 element picks, due to their 2 resell choices, from 11 elemental picks. With this new change, I feel random is much more viable to play in terms of fruit level competition. Before 0.84, I never played random due to the fact that it was so much inferior to all pick in terms of fruit level. The only benefit from random was the challenge and that's it; although there was also 100% resell value, the work needed to be done to achieve a high networth compared to an AP player were worlds apart, and even then you wouldn't be able to catchup to their networth due to their interest advantage. AP could afk or minimize often while farming crazy interest while randomers constantly had to focus on each wave. I feel this new change significantly narrowed the skill gap between AP and random. Though this change significantly screws me over since I was an AP whore constantly trying to find new ways to get a higher fruit score, I think this change was needed. I'd always laugh at the randomers working so hard in my games while I sipped my iced tea browsing forums, minimized on all pick. The difference between ap and random was truly unfair and unrewarding for the random player. What do you guys think of this new change? I also believe that this change makes the fruit level much harder, as it's not possible to achieve the amount of networth from pre-0.84 versions anymore, even with the best tower resell skills. Also note that since interest has been removed, we don't start with extra interest either. Interest has been removed completely, with the exception of our starting interest rates.

I might as well put it in my sig fore easier access...

I bet one of the reasons Kara changed it was because of the random interest at late levels, so it'd be counter productive if random was able to choose the resell option. If it was available, it'd probably be a bug. @pyro: thanks, that makes much more sense. EDIT: I think the XP on fruit is based per fruit point, as in VE you get 1 XP per 15 points, which translates in to per kill in the case of VE, and 1 point per 7 points on VH, and etc...

For the XP distribution I don't understand the "Accumulating fruit points" part. Apparently it's 15/13/11/9/7 Very Easy to Very Hard. Do we get that many points per kill? For example 7 XP per fruit kill? Also shouldn't the harder difficulty get the more XP for fruit kills? Also I like the change with the interest. I feel it's more balanced this way as even on VH AP, you would be able to farm a crazy amount of interest with little to no effort. With this change, you really have to work for your interest.

Sweet, I just finished a game on 0.83. Now I'm gonna play again!

I think it'd be really convenient if Element TD saved the last builder used so you don't have to choose the same one every game. Despite the new message on the load screen about different builder options, I forgot to switch builders last game. Also since we're on the topic of builders, the lvl18 builder doesn't display properly, so I have no idea what it is.

Standard mode will lessen the difficulty on harder modes since most of the time you are most likely waiting for your opponents to finish the waves, rather than waves starting right after you finish, or waves starting right after the fastest person finishes. This gap in-between waves reduces the difficulty of a game. If you were to play solo, creeps will start immediately after you've finished your wave, minimizing the time it would normally take to set up in Standard, or if you were to play competitive mode, you might get rushed by your opponents. Standard mode is not the type of mode to provide much of a challenge since your opponents play the factor on the difficulty of the mode. The only way to truly control Standard mode is to always be the last one finishing creep waves which requires a build on furthest double pass (position 8, 9), defense control (purposely leaking creeps to catch further down your defense), or just plain right leaking.

IIRC the Orbit Tower's orbs in WC3 had DPS, and moved along with the creeps. The reason the orbs moved along with the creeps was to allow more damage since the creeps would be moving with the orbs allowing more contact time with each other. I could be wrong, but this is what I remember from some guy telling me way back then. How would the orbs moving the opposite direction output more damage to a creep wave?

Knowing this information can encourage different types of play. For example, if random offered more experience, then I'd be more inclined to play that, or if competitive offered more, then perhaps more people will want to play that. Experience distribution shouldn't be a hidden mechanical thing, it should be open knowledge which will be the deciding factor on what mode you would want to play. If experience distribution is the same all around, maybe it'd be a good idea to start allocating more exp to different modes to encourage different play. Experience is a very influential thing that can be used to encourage parts of the game. It's a bit of a waste if the game doesn't take full advantage of it's potential.

Dunno why, but this tower still seems pretty weak.

So I finally got a chance to play the new version and test out the new poison tower and it's still an amazing tower. I think it's much stronger than the old Poison Tower if you micro it. I combined the poison tower with the hail tower, and basically how it worked was the poison tower weakens the creeps while the hail tower finishes them. By positioning the Poison Tower on a long pass, where it can hit creeps for a long time in a single pass, you use the full potential of the tower's contaminate ability. Also if you micro them to change targets to a different chunk of full HP creeps, you out put maximum damage by allowing the poison towers to stack contaminate on a fresh batch of creeps. If you you leave your poison towers attacking red health units, not only will you not be able to use the full potential of contaminate, but you lose potential damage output on the creep wave where you could be instead contaminating full hp creeps, and turning them red. Once the the creeps are weak enough, a different tower such as hail can clear them out pretty well. The tower was bugged only in 0.82. It was fine in 0.81 (albiet with a different splash radius/attack speed setup) Yeah, that post was made during 0.82 in response to the tweaked tower. I've edited it to include that the post was from 0.82 now.

I witnessed an odd phenomenon while testing out the new Poison Tower at the fruit stage. Around 690 or 700+ points I witnessed a fruit moving backwards from the exit. I think it leaked and then came back out of the exit. I didn't get a good look on what exactly happened. All I know is that a single fruit was moving backwards near the exit. All my towers were Poison Tower lvl3 with 3 Comet Towers and Flooding lvl2 tower at the - position.

Comparing pure fire and pure light is similar to comparing a ray and grenade tower. An elemental grenade tower deals 18dps on neutral elements, and an elemental ray deals 36dps to neutral elements. Just like a pure fire tower dealing 5681.25 and pure light dealing 11362.5, the math is still the same. The single target towers deals 2x more damage then the AOE ones, yet we still find grenade towers extremely useful and effective. The AOE means a lot, and it really does matter on situation.

I'm glad it helped.

The reason why my experience was so bad was most likely because of the bug. I will try out the Poison Tower again, hopefully with better result.

I find there's still a deluded sense of competition in Standard Mode. If people want to compete so badly, let them do it in competitive mode. Let people learn that Standard is purely for solo play, and not competitive. Let them learn through the experience of the creep timer starting right after they complete their own wave. I'm sure once they learn the new change to standard, they will want to play competitive mode. People like competing, and standard mode offers a deluded sense of competition by having creep wave spawns starting at the same time for everyone for no reason at all. There should be absolutely no competition at all. Why do players have to start at the same time as everyone? You're helping them feel it's a competition by having everyone start together. I believe there's absolutely no reason for players to start together. Standard should be solo play, having everyone start together is something done to create a fair environment; it also creates the delusion that we're competing, which we're not. So why is it that standard mode starts us off at the same time? Standard mode isn't supposed to be fair, and it shouldn't be used in competing in any way. Just make it solo. Currently Standard mode does not prove much esteem, though because of how widely played it is, plus the new implementation of saves, it may be regarded as such, when in truth it isn't. People should be able to play games that offer real esteem which is why I believe Standard mode needs to be reworked into a solo type play. At least then, people are able to finish a game with a sense of legitimate accomplishment. I suggest that standard mode should be exactly like Race Mode except there is no winner, and with fruit level enabled. What are your thoughts?

I'll have to agree that it's a bit buggy. You start with 3/4 pressure, but you're unable to depressurize it. Also there are times when it gets bugged. It rarely happens, but sometimes the pressure gets stuck, as in whenever you try to increase the pressure, it won't budge, and there's no option to depressure it. This happens rarely and only when you first build the tower. The way I was able to get around it at the time was when I selected multiple towers and played around with the pressure. Also doesn't the description of the ability tell you what the attack speed and AOE becomes at each level? I'm pretty sure it does.

So you're saying it's ability is a bit OP? I made a thread about it in GD about how it's basically good against any creep but darkness. It'll be sad to see it nerfed as it's my favorite tower now. Have you had a chance to further experiment with the Orbit Tower? I find it too weak.

The MEGA Guide to the uses of Ray and Grenade Towers! By: Megadramon ________________________________________________ i. Disclaimer: This guide assumes the reader has some knowledge and experience on tower reselling, and that in order to take advantage of the Ray and Grenade Towers, as well as this guide, you must be building and reselling the towers in preparation for each wave. It's possible to only rely on Rays and Grenades up until around level 20, after that I recommend you start using your elements. Many of the things said in this guide are based on my experiences. Please do not interpret them as hard facts about the game. ________________________________________________ ii. Preface: Not many people know the technical differences between Ray and Grenade tower, and many of you most likely don’t use these towers properly. I feel that in order to enjoy the game more, you’ll have to be educated in the fundamentals of Element TD, starting with the uses of the Ray and Grenade towers. Knowing this information will allow you to play on Hard or Very Hard, as knowing the technical differences in the towers are necessary for getting through the early parts of the harder difficulties. For Normal and below, you can probably get away with just massing the Grenade tower. By making this guide, my goal is not only to educate players on how to use these towers effectively, but to also create room for discussion about gameplay on the forums, as well as to continue on with more extensive material in the future. All this being said, please look forward to the rest of the guide! ________________________________________________ iii. Introduction: Hello everyone, this will be my first real strategy guide about Element TD, aside from the guide I made about how to download the game on Starcraft II. I have a lot of information about the game I’d like to share with you, and I apologizing for not sharing sooner, as I’m aware there aren’t many guides out there to help those who are looking for help. As a veteran player, I feel some responsibility to help educate players on the proper ways of playing Element TD. I hope that by starting with the basics, I can continue making more extensive guides in the future to help the growth of the game, and to provide some discussion about gameplay on these forums, as well as increasing your general knowledge of the game. Firstly, you may be wondering about who the hell I am. Well as you can see, I’m part of the Development Team for Element TD. I play on the North American server on the ID sVFairyTail#598. sV is just the Vent/Mumble server I go on which stands for Seasoned Veterans. Anyways, I beta tested Element TD for WC3; though because back then I was also a big fan of DotA, I played more DotA than Element TD, thus I was not as active back then. Now that Element TD is back on Starcraft II, I’ve returned here to help out if need be, and excited as ever. I’ve known Element TD for 4 years, but to be honest, I think I’ve been the most active with the project on Starcraft II. Like I said earlier, being a veteran player and all, I feel it’s part of my duty to help players learn in order to develop the map, and to create more discussion. I’m also aware on how very little people are able to play the game properly. Element TD is indeed a hard game, it’s also very unique which makes it so appealing. I know a fair bit about the game, and I’d like to debut with a guide on the fundamental Ray and Grenade towers. Let’s begin! ________________________________________________ Contents 1. Statistics 2. Creeps 3. The Ray Tower 4. The Grenade Tower 5. Summary 6. Final Words 7. Replay/Video ________________________________________________ 1. Statistics Ray Tower Type: Composite Cost: 7 Damage: 2 Speed: 1.5 Range: 12 AOE: - Advanced Ray Tower Type: Composite Cost: 20 Damage: 6 Speed: 1.5 Range: 12 AOE: - Optimum Ray Tower Type: Composite Cost: 57 Damage: 18 Speed: 1.5 Range: 12 AOE: - Elemental Ray Tower Type: Light, Dark, Water, Fire, Nature, or Earth Cost: 168 Damage: 54 Speed: 1.5 Range: 12 AOE: - Grenade Tower Type: Composite Cost: 7 Damage: 1 Speed: 1.5 Range: 8 AOE: 1.5/3 Advanced Grenade Tower Type: Composite Cost: 20 Damage: 3 Speed: 1.5 Range: 8 AOE: 1.5/3 Optimum Grenade Tower Type: Composite Cost: 57 Damage: 9 Speed: 1.5 Range: 8 AOE: 1.5/3 Elemental Grenade Tower Type: Light, Dark, Water, Fire, Nature, or Earth Cost: 168 Damage: 27 Speed: 1.5 Range: 8 AOE: 1.5/3 ________________________________________________ 2. Creeps As you probably already know, creeps have different abilities. These abilities affect what type of towers you want to make. Below are the following creep abilities: Fast - Every 3 seconds, this creep moves 2.5x faster for 1 second. Healing - This creep heals nearby creeps for 20% of Max HP when killed. Image - This creep spawns an image when attacked. Image lasts 5 seconds. Mechanical - Every 12 seconds, this creep becomes invulnerable for 3 seconds. Undead - This creep will revive after 3 seconds with 33% of Max HP when killed. Later on, I will explain what towers to build against which creep abilities. ________________________________________________ 3. The Ray Tower The Ray Tower is a single target tower, effective against single targets. The advantage it has over the grenade tower is that it has more damage, and higher range. The disadvantage compared to the grenade tower is that it has no AOE. Use these towers against single units like bosses, or stray leaks. These towers aren't ideal for killing units en mass. Ray Tower Strengths Bosses: Since a boss is just a single target, you don’t need AOE to kill them. Grenade towers are weak in damage with short range, making Grenade Towers an ineffective tower for killing them. Ray Towers on the other hand have higher damage towards a single unit with longer range, making them ideal. Fast: Because fast creeps gain bonus movement speed every few seconds, they tend to separate, negating AOE damage done by grenade towers. Not only that, but since they are faster, they are able to escape the radius of Grenade Towers more easily due to grenade tower's shorter range. Ray Towers have a longer range, thus lessening the burden of their speed; because speed creeps can separate, single targeting is ideal against them. Mechanical: Since mechanical creeps can go invulnerable, they are able to minimize damage around towers with shorter range. Against towers with longer range, it's harder for these creeps to escape damage. Mechanical creeps also negate AOE by going invulnerable beside creeps that are being shot at, reducing damage output from grenade towers. With longer range, and more damage towards a single target, Ray Towers are perfect against these waves. Healing: Whenever a healing creep dies, it will heal 20% of max hp to near by creeps. This type of creep is tricky. You either want to micro, and focus them one at a time with ray towers, or kill them all simultaneously with AOE, disallowing the chance to heal nearby creeps when they die. Through my experiences, it’s hard to tell which is the most effective method, though one thing I can tell you is that if you’re about to leak grouped up red health healing creeps, you’re gonna want to kill them off with AOE, and not single target towers or else they will be a nightmare to kill, constantly healing each other one by one, eventually getting back to full health. Ray Tower Weaknesses Normal: Though there’s nothing wrong with using ray towers against normal creep, it’s much more effective just to use grenade towers, they out damage creep waves more than ray towers. Since normal creeps have no special features to make them anti-AOE, there’s no reason not to use the grenade tower. Illusion: Because illusion creeps create illusions whenever they’re attacked, it causes the chance of ray towers to waste a shot, essentially lowering DPS towards the creep wave. Using grenade towers ignores the worries of wasted shots through AOE damage. Undead: Undead are basically like normal creeps, except they can revive, so it’s just natural to build grenade towers for these creeps. Not only that, but undead creeps stack more easily since they revive on top of each other, maximizing the effectiveness of AOE grenade towers. Ray Tower just aren't as effective against masses of units. Undead units revive, giving the Ray Tower more creeps to deal with. ________________________________________________ 4. The Grenade Tower The Grenade Tower is an AOE target tower effective at clearing waves en mass. The advantage this tower has over the Ray Tower is that it has AOE which deals more damage to creep waves in it’s AOE, than a Ray Tower does to a single creep. The disadvantage this tower has over the Ray Tower is that it has less damage with shorter range. This is generally the main tower you want to use for killing creep waves. The problem with some waves is that they have special abilities to prevent the effectiveness of grenade towers. Use these towers wisely. Grenade Tower Strengths Normal: Since grenade towers naturally deal more damage to creeps en mass, it’s just more effective to use grenade towers on them. Normal creeps have no special ability allowing you to use the Grenade Tower without worry. Illusion: Illusion creeps create juxtaposed illusions when they get hit. To a grenade tower, this ability becomes futile. Illusions can make all the illusions they want, they'll still die easily to grenades. Grenade Towers are the obvious choice for these waves. Undead: Since undead creeps like to revive on top of each other, and re mass once they die, grenade towers are the recommended choice. If you were to build Rays against these, they will simply just get too overwhelmed. The weakness to undead creep is the fact that they like to die on top of each other, and then revive again on top of each other. The more units in a single area, the stronger grenade towers are. Healing: Like I said before, I’m not too sure about this creep wave myself. I just know that it’s best to kill chunks at once, so they die before they get healed. This wave is up for discussion. Grenade Tower Weaknesses Bosses: Since a boss is just one unit, the sacrifice of damage for AOE is pointless, making the grenade tower ineffective against bosses. Bosses are also able to escape the radius of grenade towers more easily due to their shorter range. Grenade towers have shorter range, and less damage making Grenade Towers a terrible choice against bosses. Fast: Since fast creeps are able to spread out, they are able to avoid AOE damage done by grenade towers. Their speed also allows them to escape the radius of any short range tower more easily, minimizing damage. With fast creeps being able to run past grenade towers and separating to lessen AOE damage, Grenade towers aren't ideal for these creeps. Mechanical: Though these creeps don’t spread out like fast creeps do, instead they can go invulnerable, forcing the grenade towers to target a couple units at a time while at the same time negating AOE. With the ability to go invulnerable, short range towers may never have a chance to even hit them. The lower the range the less chance the grenade tower has to hit them, especially with invulnerability, you have a much lower % chance to hit them. Even if grenade towers do hit them, it wouldn't do as much damage to them compared to a ray tower, especially considering that the creep(s) next to it may go invulnerable. ________________________________________________ 5. Summary With different types of creeps, it’s necessary to cycle between the uses of grenade and ray towers to kill them more effectively and efficiently. The ray and grenade towers have their different uses, and this is important if you want to be able to play competently in the early stages of the game. On the easier difficulties, you can survive well without this knowledge, but if you’re planning on trying to tackle hard, or very hard, you will need to know what towers are good against which creeps, and how to effectively/efficiently defend against them. Also keep in mind that grenade and ray towers are not just for the first 20 or so levels. They are still great towers to build later in the game to add more DPS to your build. They are cheap towers with 100% sell rate. If you want to throw money at a specific wave, but don't want to suffer from the 75% refund in all pick, mass a bunch of grenades or rays and upgrade them accordingly. Once you are able to kill creep waves effectively and efficiently, you will become more comfortable with selling most of your towers during waves to get the most out of your interest rate. ________________________________________________ 6. Final Words I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to read this guide. I hope this guide has helped you understand the differences between grenade and ray towers. My goal for this guide was to help players further understand the game; to encourage proper play, as well as encouraging discussion. Please, if you disagree with anything I've talked about in this guide, post your comment here, and I may correct some things. Because there aren't many guides about the game, most of the information in this guide came from hours of experience playing on Very Hard. Thank you for your time. ________________________________________________ 7. Replay/Video I've uploaded a video of me playing on Very Hard for the first 15 minutes. The quality is not great, but I don't think it's terrible either. I just found out that Procaster is able to capture your screen, so I used that to record. I've uploaded a different game but of much higher quality! Here's the second part of that game of a somewhat better quality.

How to Download Element TD for Starcraft II Preface: So there's been a lot of people asking on the forums about the whereabouts of the map, and how to download it, so I've decided to create a guide with pictures to help users successfully download the map. This guide also offers help on how to play the game offline. If you're wondering about that, please skip ahead. ----------------------------------- Contents: 1. Downloading the Map 2. How To Play Offline 3. Past & Present Versions 4. Final Words ----------------------------------- 1. Downloading the Map: In order to download Element TD, you must go on Starcraft II, Battle.net 2.0 to get it. You cannot get it anywhere else, not even on the forums. Download Instructions: Note: Element TD is only uploaded on the following servers: -North America/Latin America -Europe -South East Asia If you are in China or Korea/Taiwan, you will NOT be able to play this map until Karawasa finds a suitable uploader for those respective servers! Step 1: In order to successfully download Element TD to play on Starcraft II, you must log yourself onto Battle.net 2.0: Step 2: You should now be on the main screen. Click the "Multiplayer" button at the top of the screen circled in red: Step 3: Click the "Join a Game" button under "Custom Games" to the right of the screen circled in red: Step 4: You should now be in the "Join Custom Game" screen, listing all the available custom games on Battle.net 2.0. In the search bar near the top right, under your username, circled in red, type in "Element Tower Defense". It's imperative that you spell this right, otherwise, I cannot guarantee that your findings will be the same. Hit Enter on your keyboard: Step 5: Once you've hit Enter on your keyboard, Element Tower Defense made by Karawasa should now be in the list. Double click the game and you will automatically download it. We recommend that you bookmark this game for future uses. End! ----------------------------------- 2. How to Play Element TD Offline If Battle.net 2.0 is down for maintenance and you're wondering how to play it offline, luckily I've also prepared some screenshots so you won't have to go looking elsewhere. WARNING! In order to play Element TD offline, you will need to have already downloaded the map. Offline Instructions: Step 1: In order to play offline you will have to login; if Battle.net 2.0 is offline, play offline. Once you've logged on, you should automatically be at the "Single Player" screen (if not, click on the "Single Player" button near the top left corner of the screen circled in red). Near the right of the screen, under your username, circled in red, click the "Play Versus A.I." button: Step 2: Once you've clicked "Play Versus A.I", search down the list for Element TD. Element TD is a 12 player map. Find the map, and join it: End! ----------------------------------- 3. Past & Present Versions: For more information about latest versions and changelogs, please visit the Past & Present Versions. ----------------------------------- 4. Final Words: Hopefully this guide has helped you successfully download the map, or play offline. If you have any questions, comments, or see any mistakes, please don't hesitate to comment here to inform me. I'd also like to thank Karawasa for making this wonderful game for Starcraft II. Cheers!