Ayr

Mildew and Disease.

You really don't want to play this game with some of us. =D And now Kara is gonna reset my score. Bah.

Always good to see more mazers! And Kara is right: 4 element model is better to go from. To stay with your EF picks, some other good options are: 1) EFLN - As Kara said, this gives you slow (Nova) and damage (Incantation) bonuses 2) EFLW - Gives slow (Ion - FLW) and damage (Polar - ELW) bonuses 3) EFDN - Gives slow (Barb - EDN) and damage (Jinx - DFN) bonuses 4) EFDW - Gives slow (Muck - EDW) and damage (Erosion - FDW) bonuses I left out the other combo of EF because it just gives you more DPS towers. While those are good, towers that slow and increase damage have a multiplicative effect. Part of the fun of the game is experimentation. Try some 4 element combos out and see what you can come up with. Enjoy!

Mazing. Forge.

Nice maze. Appreciate the shout out. Good luck on beating the score though!

I am down. Ayr #155

Figured I'd share my collection here: (Note/warning: the waypoints aren't always in the correct/ same location) First is my 3-pass maze. I was able to get some pretty high fruit scores with this one. All-around versatile, but as stated, only 3 pass. (Colored for ease of reading. The rest won't be.) Next is the Cross - Blitz. Located near the entrance. I used this in the tourney against Windstrike, for the win . Moving the Cross down to the normal spot, you can build a pretty good maze, especially for Quake. If you wanted to use Flamethrower, I made a maze for that. Perhaps not the best maze, but it can be useful for team games, as it gives enough room for a teammates maze. (although ideally in team games, one maze should be shared) Next is the Oval maze. Quite useful for many things. It is intentionally shorter than the next maze, to try to minimize time off target for short range towers. And finally my go-to maze, which I refer to as the Snail. I would say that this is just about the ideal maze for most towers. 4 pass, spiral, tight, and most towers can maintain target on creeps throughout. Feel free to share your own mazes. And if you think you have a maze better than the Snail, I look forward to seeing it. Enjoy TDing!

Advanced Topic #1: Design your maze for a tower Using a good condensed maze you have a good amount of time to attack the creeps. But some towers work better in a generalized maze than others. Take the Mildew and Ice towers. Their attacks hit every creep along a designated path, but with a standard maze this doesn't maximize their effectiveness, as most of the time there are no creeps along the line of attack. The following maze allows for solid utilization of the tower's potential. (credit to WindStrike for this maze) In this maze the Mildew or Ice tower is placed at the green location. The "T"s represent the target spots for the 'attack ground'. Using the tower in this manner, the attacks hurt all the creeps along this path, on both sides of the wall. If you placed three towers at the "T"s targeting the center (green), you cover nearly all of the maze, which would receive constant damage, wasting very little of the tower's potential damage.

Basic Principles: 1) Block the creeps path between way points (WP) 2) Use the longest path in the smallest area a) This allows for your towers to have the most time-on-target Advanced Concept: 1) Customize maze to fit specific towers 2) Make a multi-pass maze (one which the creeps have to pass through multiple times while making it from WP to WP) ----------------------------------------------------------- Basic #1 - Block Creeps Here is the location and order of the waypoints. The creeps spawn along to the top, to the left. They proceed down to 1, then 2, and 3. From 3 they move straight up to the exit. Lets look at what would happen when you lay a few horizontal lines down in the middle: So, looking at this setup, the creeps would spawn at the top, moving down to WP 1. With these basic lines in place, they would have to go thru them to get to WP 1. Then to get to WP 2, they would have to go back through. And to WP 3. And to the exit. In the end, the creeps have to go thru the maze four times to reach the exit. Plenty of time to bring some pain. ------------------------------- Basic #2: Condensed Mazing So blocking the creeps path gives you more time to kill them. But if the creeps are out of range of the tower, then what good does that extra time give you? What we want is for the longest time on target. To do this, we make a maze that is the longest path in the smallest area. Here is one of my first and favorite corner mazes. Placing a tower right above the waypoint gives a lot of time to attack the wave of creeps. With even a basic splash tower like fire element, you can usually kill off an entire wave using a single tower (early on). Move up to a AoE tower like Quake, and you can hit nearly all 30 creeps with one burst.

Well, you could do a 5 WP maze by adding a WP along the same line as 1 and 2. (for 4-2). Not ideal, but it could work.

7) Eight WP Waypoints Possible Maze And done. Let me know which ya like (if any).

6) Six WP - 3 Waypoints Possible Maze

5) Six WP - 2 Waypoints Possible Maze

4) Six WP - 1 Waypoints Possible Maze

3) Four WP - 2 Waypoints Possible Maze

2) Four WP - 1 [inspired from GemTD] Waypoints Possible Maze

Forewarning: I am going to break this up into multiple posts. Mazing mode is a personal favorite of mine. But the current pathing is both simplistic for experienced players, and too fast for new players. Adding new way points and potentially changing the start/end positions could alleviate these problems. I did some reworkings to the waypoints and pathings, specifically increasing the number of waypoints from 2 to 4, 6, or 8. In addition, I did some quick outlines of what typical mazes might look like. The designs here focus on being multipass mazes. These designs are NOT ideal; they just give some rough idea of what maze each change might result in. 7 Maps total: 1) Current 2) Four way points (WP) - 1 3) Four WP - 2 4) Six WP - 1 5) Six WP - 2 6) Six WP - 3 7) Eight WP - 1 1) CURRENT Note - Entry point is in green. Exit is in red.

You, sir, are a bastard. Is it possible to get to 0.005 fps?

Fully concur. I too was a 'long maze abuser'. If the purpose was to prevent abuse at fruit level, then move the 4% back to fruit only, and go with Wind's 2% for the rest of the levels. If it was to prevent long mazes, well, I can still build a long maze that works for this mode. Only that it limits my options and is quite irritating in VHAR games.

Ok, with many still not fully embracing the glory which is mazing, I decided to take a quick swing at breaking it down. Design: 30 creeps start from the top left portal, move straight down to the first Way Point (WP) below, then move right to the second WP, and finally up to the exit. Objective: Build a maze to protect your WP, slowing down the creeps and giving time to kill them. First step: Build a foundation. Below are a few basic setups that I either came up with or stole.... I mean saw. Broken down into two 'basic routes': A ) start your maze at the beginning and work from there B ) protect a WP (usually the first) A ) MAZE AT START A.1 ) Maze from Spawn to top left corner A.2 ) Maze from Spawn to top right corner The basic idea here is for a large maze that continues to grow, usually in a box-spiral. B ) MAZE AT WP B.1 ) Spiral around WP1 B.2 ) Box outside WP1 B.3 ) Box close to WP1 B.4 ) Best Box close to WP1 (guess which one of these 4 I made) ************** Second stage: Build your maze Like with the first stage, there are two fundamental splits in philosophy when it comes to the late game: C ) Build Big - Take up all the room you have available to make the longest maze possible D ) Build Focused - Concentrate fire for fast kills C ) Build Big: I won't shy from it; the former route is my preference. I have spent most of my time building these mazes, and some of them I am damn proud of. If you want to find out what they are, you'll have to play me. Every time you win, I'll show you my next, better maze. The fundamental idea of my mazes revolves around 3 passes: 1 ) From spawn to WP2 - This should be a fast transition. In essence, WP2 should be your starting point. 2 ) From WP2 into the Maze - Here is the meat. In this design style, the creeps transition should be as long as possible. The aim should be to give your towers the longest time-on-target as possible. 3 ) From Maze to WP1 / Exit Notice WP1 and Exit are paired. This maze will play out: Spawn --> WP2 --> Maze --> WP1 --> Maze --> WP2 --> Maze --> Exit Three 'Maze's = 3 passes I started one maze, just to show you a basic idea. Bear with me, since the maze wasn't complete, and I can't zoom out enough to encompass the entire picture. SpinStylecmt.bmp D ) Build Focused Karawasa has frowned on my preferred style, so he has added healing to all creeps in Mazing. This moves the balance of the game from long damage-over-time mazes, to short focused-fire mazes. Due to the low amount of time-on-target, splash towers are probably best here for cost/benefit, especially EL, DW, FW, and even EN. Otherwise, aim for large-damage towers. While I don't have the passion for such mazes, I can only present two basic ideas for how to try this style out: D.1 ) Large corner Pretty much just an expansion/combination of B.2 + B.3 D.2 ) Column corner While this column is focused on WP2, it can just as easily be moved to WP1. Hope this helps, and happy Mazing! Ayr