Patch 1.4

[WindStrike]

After some shenanigans with an April Fool's Patch, we're fixing up the actual issues from Patch 1.3, including some degree of balance and some bug fixes. Below is a preview of what's coming soon. I'm guessing within the next day or so, but I'm not positive. I believe there's a few things missing from this list that need to be confirmed, but when Patch 1.4 releases, I'll be sure to fix the list up. Anyhow, here's the preview!

• Fixes
  • Numbers for Russian Tooltips should now be up to date, which should address the majority of the tooltip discrepancy issues. The text itself, though, is still WIP.
  • Fixed the scoring on the waves, causing them to be worth 5 Score (per creep) less than intended, so each wave is worth a total of 150 Score more. This was a change that was supposed to make it in back in Patch 1.1, but it was bugged.
  • Fixed an issue with Gunpowder Towers attacking too early with Attack Ground.
  • Fixed Interest breaking after restarting in Sandbox Mode.
  • Scrolling up/down on the In-game Leaderboard no longer causes you to also zoom in/out respectively.
• Balance
  • General
    • Classic & Express Bounty Formulas were tweaked. Nutshell, they were flattened out a little, so you'll get a little bit more gold early on, allowing you more flexibility and the ability to accrue interest better. However, roughly 10k to 20k gold has been lopped off the last 10-15 waves (or about 3-6 in Express), which incidentally, makes it harder to kill the Icefrogs due to a weaker end-game defense... and a lot less gold in reserve. Aka, you no longer receive 50% of your networth from the last few waves alone.
    • Speaking of Icefrogs, guess what, we're not reverting last week's change. Instead, the point multiplier has increased from 15% per wave to 25% per wave.
    • Express Mode starting hp has been increased from 78 to 90. However, hp scaling has reduced from x1.336 to x1.329 per wave. It's similar to that change we applied to Classic sometime back, where the end-game hp is still the same, it's just a higher starting hp and a lower curve.
    • Endgame Score Bonuses of Total Networth and End Speed are now multiplicative with each other instead of additive.
    • Rush Mode now gives a +25% Bounty Bonus up from +20%.
  • Creeps
    • Regeneration has been altered. Regen itself reduced from 3% to 2.5% per second. Regen cap has been increased from 75% to 100%. Overall, this is a nerf and shouldn't steamroll low efficiency builds nearly as bad.
    • Time Lapse jump-back time increased from 3 to 4 seconds.
    • Avenger damage reduction duration increased from 5 to 6 seconds.
  • Towers
    • Nature Tower ability altered. It now has the Force of Nature ability. For every creep near its target within 125 AoE, its damage is increased by 10%. This has little impact early game, but with slowing, it now scales a whole lot better.
      • BAT reverted from 0.66 to 0.31
      • Damage reduced from 115 / 750 / 4860 / 48600 to 70 / 455 / 2960 / 29600
      • Aka, its pretty much where it used to be back in Patch 1.2, except now it has an ability that makes it scale better.
    • Water Tower ability tweaked. Its splash now reduces by 40 (Full & Half) with each bounce.
      • Damage increased from 17 / 111 / 720 / 7200 to 22 / 143 / 930 / 9300
      • Bounce Range increased from 150 to 550
      • Tower should now be about where it used to be in Patch 1.2 and is no longer OP as heck early, but it should also scale better than before.
    • Light Tower tweaked. BAT altered from 1 to 0.66. Damage decreased from 150 / 975 / 6340 / 63400 to 100 / 650 / 4225 / 42250. Ability Damage also decreased from 6 / 39 / 255 / 2550 to 4 / 26 / 170 / 1700
      • DPS is about the same, it's just more usable like this.
    • Fire Tower buffed. Damage increased from 8 / 52 / 340 / 3400 to 10 / 65 / 425 / 4250. Ability Damage increased from 2 / 13 / 85 / 850 to 3 / 20 / 130 / 1300.
      • Should be about where it was in Patch 1.2, but scales better.
    • Hail Tower critical damage increased from 350% to 400%
    • Tidal Tower range reduced from 900 to 700

 

Annnd that's it for this version! There's a number of towers that are iffy on balance; however, due to a major balance issue with the game, I'm not going to touch those towers yet, and instead focus on that balance issue for Patch 1.5, which may take up to two weeks to apply. By the time it's done, it may end up coinciding with some major much-needed content release, depending on how things go. We'll see.

[SrslySirius]

Are water towers really OP? By my calcs it's still one of the more mediocre towers at level 1, even with bounce factored in. Maybe my math is off though.

 

Also I haven't seen anyone bothering to build them. The leaderboard is 80% life tower spammers.

[Califax]

Only if you could do 2-2-2-3-0-3.. So you have Tier 2 Hails with Tier 3 Blacksmiths.. Make Hail towers great again.

[kerb]

Is it intended that ones score shrinks in between wave 55 and boss waves?

And in general game got much easier now, whcih is not bad as it will appeal more to newer/less good players and by that make the palyerbase bigger, i think.

[WindStrike]

There's an endscore speed bonus and an endscore networth bonus that affects your total score after wave 55. It's incredibly improbably for the networth bonus to decrease it, but if you took a while to beat through wave 55, then it's probably coming from the speed bonus. Taking longer than 40 minutes will reduce your score.

 

 

I usually play on insane, and yeah it does feel like the game got a little easier with the recent changes, but at the same time, frog hunting got harder due to getting less gold in the late-game.

[kerb]

Just played an insane game where i had 100k+ networth, clearing speed on 55 was shitty (leaked), gave me negative bonus as well. And tbh, pretty much every build i played atm gave me negative score bonus on insane (did not play the 25 minute rush build some people do). Haven't played on any other difficulty, i guess there you will see it being positive.

Weird question: "Endgame Score Bonuses of Total Networth and End Speed are now multiplicative with each other instead of additive. "

How does it behave when one is negative and the other one positive?

[WindStrike]

Unless you somehow magically take 80+ minutes to clear through Wave 55 on Classic (or 40+ minutes on Express), you can't possibly get a negative multiplier. The bonuses initially add or subtract from 1. Admittedly, we don't have a thread somewhere that explains exactly how all the score bonuses work, and we should, so I'll see if I can get that up within the next day or so.

[kerb]

It was 54:37 on my highscore (Classic/insane) and i got a negative score there (both clear speed and networth wise) and i do in all my games as i said. Reaching wave 55 with a ~300k score and having 200-230k afterwards before bosses (and ~400k in the end).

 

Edited April 7, 2016 by kerb

[ArthurDent]

Rush mode doesnt give endgame multipliers, would be pretty imbalanced otherwise.

You need to find ways to play either really fast or rather slow with lots of gold saved for interest to get an overall positive bonus at the end.

Im trying to get speed and gold bonuses both in positive numbers atm and its quite difficult.

 

Btw. Chaos mode seems easier than the normal mode to me, unless you get really hard waves at the first 5 levels or waves which heal the level 3 elements upon death if you cant kill those elements in one round.

You often get like 3-4 easy waves in a row which allows you to save lots of gold for interest.

[kerb]

Did a bit of testing and with 24k in the bank and slightly under 100k networth i had -3% networth bonus in the end, combine that with having no good killspeed (easy -27%) and +200k score shrink to ~150k^^. (Did a really weird build for that one to get to where i wanted with the networth bonus).

So what happened in the games i wrote about above was me not going for any networth at all and having kinda slow killspeed on 55 (no leaks still)