Almighty Mango

[Mangoat]

After seeing which strategies are making it to the top of the leaderboards consistently, especially after the buff to pure towers, I strongly feel the almighty mango may be simply too desirable. The fact that the higher tier a tower is the more cost efficient it is means that you want to play as minimalist as possible, with level 2 tri-element or pure mono-element towers being covered by level 3 dual element support towers (because level 3 dual element DPS towers all seem to underperform). The benefits of having a wide variety of elements available only really come into play if you're playing a slow game, stacking multiple buffs/debuffs/slowing effects and forcing waves to clump up in a kill zone.

Because the road to the leaderboard is always going to be through the added multipliers of chaos and rush mode, combined with the inherent score benefits of finishing waves fast, playing a slow game is already suboptimal; but when you add in the almighty mango it becomes a total non-option in my eyes. Even before the pure tower buffs the top scores still took two pure essences and utilized them, and now it seems to be an even better option. But I don't think the pure essence itself is the issue; the fact that it comes hand in hand with a huge chunk of gold is. More gold means more towers and since you already have the most efficient towers available due to your extra pure essences and level 3 dual-element support towers the extra gold goes even further than it would normally.

But on top of all that, frankly it detracts from the strategy of the game when skipping even one elemental choice in favor of mangos is a given. Even with a build focusing exclusively on 3 elements, what you do with the spare lumber is a key strategic decision for milking that extra bit of efficiency out of your build even if it's with level 1 blacksmith towers. But again given the inefficiency of lower level towers, just taking more gold is always going to be the right call, even if you don't use the essence at all.

Maybe I'm wrong; it is a bit early to call it definitively. But it just seems to me that unless something major changes with the way the game is scored the best strategy will always be chomping down mangos and neglecting variety.

[Noya]

Good points, perhaps we should remove part of/all the bonus gold that is granted when a Pure Essence is purchased. Purchasing extra pures should be an option, not a must-do of any strategy (same problem that ended with the removal of Interest increase purchase)

[Karawasa]

Yes, good points. We will be addressing this soon.

[Karawasa]

We halved the gold bonus. Let me know how it plays. I was always in favor of no gold bonus but we'll see.