Patch 1.8

[WindStrike]

In an attempt to make a lot of towers suck less and make some high tier towers suck slightly more, we bring you Patch 1.8, which, courtesies of hitting 1 Million Subscribers, we decided to go ahead and add a new mode to the game. Here's the patch notes:

• New Features
  • Challenge Mode has been added!
    • Every wave has two, randomized abilities. However, abilities of the same kind don't stack.
      • For example, things you'll see includes "Undead + Healing, Speed + Shield, Regen + Bulky, etc."
      • You won't see "Healing + Healing, Bulky + Bulky, Regen Regen, etc."
    • Elemental Bosses now have one, randomized ability.
      • It can only be one of the following: Shield, Speed, Regen, or Temporal
    • This mode is possible on Insane, but incredibly difficult, so for those looking for a greater challenge than simply Insane without having to deal with the bullcrap of Rush, try this mode out!
  • You can now buy 1 Lumber, but it's got a restriction:
    • Costs 1 Essence
    • Requires at least three Level 3 Elements
    • This can only be purchased once.
      • In other words, 3-3-3-3 and 3-3-3-2-1 are now viable builds.
  • Chaos Mode now replaces all blank waves with Bulky Waves.
• Bugs
  • Fixed Pure Essence not being purchaseable while having one of each element.
  • Fixed a bug where if you had Autoattack set to off, and you micro'd a tower, the tower would stop attacking forever.
• Co-Op
  • Base HP reduced from 65 to 50.
  • HP Scaling is now a flat x1.18 per wave, instead of being split into multiple scalings. Overall, the game is easier at all stages of the game.
• Express
  • Base Gold increased from 500 to 600.
  • Base HP increased from 150 to 200.
  • HP Scaling decreased from x1.304 to x1.295 per wave.
• Scoring
  • Insane Difficulty score multiplier increased from x4 to x4.5
  • The max speed bonus per wave has been reduced from 90% to 60%.
  • The endgame speed bonus multiplier has been reduced from 2 to 1.5
• Creeps
  • Icefrog HP Scaling increased from x1.2 per wave to x1.3 per wave.
  • Vengeance debuff duration increased from 6 seconds to 7 seconds. AoE debuff increased from 250 to 300.
  • Shield cooldown reduced from 8 seconds to 7 seconds.
• Basic Towers
  • Cannon range increased from 550 to 700
  • Fire range increased from 550 to 700
  • Water ability changed. It now fires a focused attack, dealing full damage in 200 AoE on its attacks.
  • Earth ability changed. It now fires a very wide splash attack with 225/450 AoE. Damage increased from 35 / 245 / 1720 / 17200 to 50 / 350 / 2500 / 25000
  • Nature damage reduced from 75 / 525 / 3700 / 37000 to 70 / 490 / 3400 / 34000
• Dual Towers
  • Blacksmith / Well / Trickery damage reduced from 800 / 4000 / 20000 to 700 / 3500 / 17500
  • Ice AoE altered from 150 to 450, to 200 to 400. Damage reduced from 200 / 1000 / 5000 to 180 / 900 / 4500
  • Quark renamed to Atom. Damage increased from 225 / 1125 / 5625 to 300 / 1500 / 7500. Damage increase per stack reduced from 15% to 12%.
  • Poison ability altered.
    • Old: Every 4th attack deals x3 damage and has 150/300 AoE
    • New: Every 4th attack has 400/800 AoE
  • Disease damage increased from 70 / 350 / 1750 to 90 / 450 / 2250
  • Electricity ability now increases damage per bounce instead of decreasing. New stats:
    • Damage: 180 / 900 / 4500
    • BAT: 1.5
    • Damage Increase per bounce: 20%
    • Bounce Range: 225
    • Bounce Range Decrease per bounce: 25%
    • Max Bounces: 7
  • Life ability altered.
    • Old: Every 6 / 5 / 4 kills, you gain a life. The number of kills needed per life is doubled when you have at least 50 lives.
    • New: Every 8 / 6 / 4 kills, you gain a life. When you're at 50 lives (100 for coop), it gains a 30% damage increase.
    • Damage increased from 420 / 2100 / 10500 to 500 / 2500 / 12500
  • Moss range increased from 550 to 700. Damage decreased from 200 / 1000 / 5000 to 170 / 850 / 4250
  • Hydro renamed to Geyser
• Triple Towers
  • Jinx effect reduced from 6% / 18% to 5% / 15%
  • Erosion renamed to Corrosion. Damage per second reduced from 140 / 700 to 110 / 550. Effect reduced from 12% / 36% to 11% / 33%
  • Polar effect reduced from 12% / 36% to 11% / 33%
  • Enchantment renamed to Incantation. Damage reduced from 575 / 2875 to 550 / 2750. Max effect reduced from 15% / 45% to 13% / 39%
  • Nova damage increased from 275 / 1375 to 300 / 1500
  • Roots damage per second reduced from 110 / 550 to 90 / 450; however, it now applies a damage tick when the debuff hits.
  • Laser damage decreased from 6000 / 30000 to 5500 / 27500
  • Obliteration AoE increased from 50 to 400, up to 150 to 450. Damage decreased from 1200 / 6000 to 1100 / 5500
  • Flooding damage per second increased from 160 / 800 to 200 / 1000; however, duration reduced from 5 to 4 seconds.
    • Total damage is about the same, but creeps should take more of the damage.
  • Haste BAT altered from 1 to 0.66. BAT decrease per attack altered from 0.05 per attack to 0.03 per attack.
    • Base DPS is better, Max DPS is slightly higher, and it winds up faster.
  • Flamethrower damage increased from 500 / 2250 (woops) to 600 / 3000
  • Ephemeral minimum damage increased from 30% to 40%
  • Gold damage increased from 5000 / 25000 to 5500 / 27500. Effect increased from 25% / 35% to 30% / 40%
  • Quake range and ability range increased from 550 to 700. Damage increased from 900 / 4500 to 1500 / 7500. Ability damage decreased from 600 / 3000 to 500 / 2500.

 

Patch is live!

[DBX_5]

awesome looking forward to a new patch!

 

there some pretty weird buffs/nerfs this patch though! cough gold and obliteration tower

[WindStrike]

Obliteration is actually a buff. Without slows, it goes from hitting 1 to 5 targets (min to max), to 3 to 7 targets. Regarding the renames, that was in preparation for a later content release.

[DBX_5]

Ill have to see if thats really that much of a buff for obliteration tower, I have always found that tower to be ridiculously underpowered for the gold cost in comparison to others primarily because of AOE size over all damage and horrible attack speed/projectile speed.

[DogBollocks]

How does this challenge mode work? The score multiplier and the bounty multiplier are the same as the mode you choose?

[WindStrike]

Yeah, at the moment, challenge mode doesn't affect your score or bounty. Reason being that's technically in beta on this patch while I try to figure out what all the most busted combos are, and once I do, I'm going to be implementing a static wave order instead of forcefully randomized, and that'll get its own leaderboard, which'll be for 1.9. In the meantime, it's just a fun mode that amps up the difficulty of the game.

[Kon Roy]

Awesome ! Can't wait for the update !

 

Thanks team !!! 

 

[Noya]

Patch is Live!

[DBX_5]

bug with icefrog levels :'(

 

https://forums.eletd.com/topic/95554-18-frogs-dont-spawn/

[GoatAss]

well, based on one game so far

 

1. i still find earth underwhelming.. but i had no decent slows. so earth is reliant while the rest arent so much so. i still prefer the 1.7 ability. it makes it unique, and i feel its better against undead. it had its purpose.

2. i still prefer old water. new water is reliant on slows. just like invoker. however, i have no doubt new water is great with slows and amps. i still think we should work around the 1.7 abilities and improve it

3. haste tower... i still do not like it, even with blacksmith3 i didnt find it strong aginst frogs, it did fare fair early on though.

4. fire is good now

5. bulky creeps is a good idea

7. scoring -- people need to get scores from somewhere. previously it was speed. now its insane. the speed bonus nerf should be reduced. quick clearing is a considerable art.

[DBX_5]

did you find the buff to atom towers was sufficient haven't played enough with them yet to really tell...

[GoatAss]

ive not tried but i think there are other more rewarding towers at the moment.

[Kpop fangay]

The tooltip for score multiplier in the 'game mode' selection menu still shows 4x for insane. Nice interesting patch as per usual changing things up.

[Califax]

Poison ability altered? DansGame

So bbaadd.. I was the one saying Hail Tower "buffs" made it even worse than before.. And now you do some "ohh.. but it scales with slows now BrokeBack " things to Poison..

 

These patches are going IceFrog status soon.. Can you please add scan ability in 1.9, so I can scan creep's elemental resistances?

 

[WindStrike]

Ehh, reasoning behind Poison Tower rework was so that A, it was no longer an over-glorified Cannon Tower, and B... why would a tower has a Powershot be a Poison Tower of all things? So yeah, that's a tower that'll be getting tweaked for sure, lol.

 

And yes, we shall totally add scanner sweep, complete with Terran voiceovers- I mean what?

[holepercent]

You'll need to spend resources to unlock the upgrade for the elemental summoning centre to be upgraded into an orbital command.

 

That aside, who will be the first player to succeed in defeating the challenge mode on insane difficulty?

[GoatAss]

Poison tower -- why not make it do dmg over time? somewhat like fire tower...... but maybe with a small difference 1% stacking slow? 300 aoe, poison3 doing slightly more dmg than fire3 perhaps. right now, as it is, its pretty similar to hail.

[WindStrike]

5 hours ago, GoatAss said:

Poison tower -- why not make it do dmg over time? somewhat like fire tower...... but maybe with a small difference 1% stacking slow? 300 aoe, poison3 doing slightly more dmg than fire3 perhaps. right now, as it is, its pretty similar to hail.

 

That'd actually be pretty decent, minus the stacking slow (late-game, just yoink 10 level 1 poison towers, it don't cost that much, and you have silly amounts of slows). Instead, twould rather do some sort of on-death effect, based on the number of stacks on there or something. Won't be able to apply it for at least a week though, the devs are busy with other stuff for a little while. Plus, along with Poison Tower change, we'd probably also apply a change on Vapor to make it somewhat calculatable, and then overhaul Hydro with... something, though I got no clue what.

[GoatAss]

1% stacking slow that lasts 1/2/3 (levels) second each stack, not that bad i think. 10 lvl1 towers would only do 10% slow, not worth it. 10lvl2 would do up to 20% slow, quite costly i think. 10lvl3 would do 30% slow, and it does cost money.

 

or 1%/2%/3% stacking slow that lasts 1 second. perhaps restrict it to a single unit. i would need to really sit down and count good balanced values.

 

well the idea is there, but the numbers are to be tweaked

 

i think its easier to begin with an overpowered tower and then nerf it as necessary than produce something underwhelming and then buff it.

[Califax]

You could make something like..

• Every 4th attack splashes enemies in acid -> acid deals DoT.

 

• Normal attacks places a debuff (only main target or everything that the splash hits?) (Specific targeting system so the debuff applies to multiple targets automatically?)
  • Every 4th attack triggers the debuff and deals damage.

 

I agree that raw crit damage and poison isn't best combination, but just having larger splash every 4th attack is pretty lame..

GoatAss also had nice ideas, but I think keeping the 4th attack thing is necessary.. Since it fits this Poison -> Hail Tower category, u know?

[DogBollocks]

• The earth tower has great improvement on the animation and speed. The earth tower should have its ability back for it to have its purpose back just like GoatAss said.
• The fire tower has great improvement compared to 1.7. I reckon the fire tower is balance for now.

Overall, the speed wave and frog wave is good. The speed wave have the speed which gives a little challenge and the frog wave really acts like a boss instead of testing the defense of the tower.

[WindStrike]

Alrighty, twill bring Earth ability back for next version. It might help if its AoE is reduced and then damage increased. Part of the issue with having too high of an AoE is too much dependency on slows, so that should help it out.

 

 

I'm actually not against the stacking slow on the Poison Tower, it's just that it gives it a partial support ability, which messes with the balance structure of the game. So, if Poison Tower gets it, then, at the very least, all the other non-support Dual Towers should get something like this... or deal hilarious amounts of sheer damage. Yes, I'm aware Life Tower technically falls under this category, but adding more than that could be very messy on balance. Odds are, this probably won't happen next patch, or heck, anytime soon.

[GoatAss]

Better to create something overpowered right now, than have the same old towers dominate. We can always nerf it later.

 

Right now, minor updates I guess, small damage tweaks. Tower remakes later on. Perhaps implement big changes in 2.1 or 2.2.

 

To some degree, I think versioning should follow x.y.z rather than x.y to imply big/small changes.

 

lightning tower appears very weak, not sure if its stronger than before even. can someone confirm it? wasted about 30 seconds using this tower, kinda ruined my current high score.

[WindStrike]

I had issues tweaking with the bounce range on electricity due to issues with the engine, might've tweaked it down a little too much.

 

 

1 hour ago, GoatAss said:

To some degree, I think versioning should follow x.y.z rather than x.y to imply big/small changes.

 

That's actually what I wanted to go with, buuut the overall vote from the devbase went with x.y, so blarghity.

 

 

1 hour ago, GoatAss said:

 

Better to create something overpowered right now, than have the same old towers dominate. We can always nerf it later.

 

 

I'll give the policy a shot next patch, which'll probably make every tower that gets buffed completely slaughter the early game without even trying, which... I guess is alright... for now.

[GoatAss]

regarding scoring. one of the two would work

 

1) buff speed bonus 5% , frog+endnetworth bonus 10% otherwise higher increment on frogs per level to scale with hp increase.

2) buff frog, endnetworth 5%

 

essentially the same thing actually. reward 10k score for perfect life game.

 

as it stands, the main source of score is speed -- no different than before. furthermore since frogs are harder now, 4 levels of frogs on insane doesnt give you very much points compared to speed

 

also, perhaps revert frogs hp, so that players can last frogs a little longer. it makes it interesting. right now, on average, we last till lvl57-58. once again its a matter of scaling. buffing doesnt buff certain players, nerfing doesnt nerf certain players. everyone gets to last frogs a little longer.