Difficulty Change With Update

[Awallllllll]

Has anyone noticed a severe change in difficulty since updating? I've been on an achievement hunt over the past couple weeks and have been playing for a bit almost every day when I get home from work. After updating I went to start a prestige mode game and found way fewer resources throughout the run. Plenty of water but almost nothing else, leading to me scrape by until running out of resources and losing at around 250 points. Today I tried a normal difficulty run on a huge map with Assessor as I'm not a fan of the character (I know, I know) and gave up near round 30 when I ran out of cobalt with 23 water left and no iron.

This could easily be user error, but being that I was just getting to the point of completing runs with no bomb or cobalt used at higher difficulties, and now I'm getting a spanking for Christmas, I felt like it was worth seeing what other people think. Let me know what your experience has been so far.

[Purple]

Relatable. died on prestige wave 5 because THE ONLY RESOURCE i got throughout the whole thing was water.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

Might be a mining pattern thing? If you're really thorough there's a higher proportion of water/cobalt, but if you leave the unmined strips 4-wide (3-wide in the first layer) you'll still most likely see the iron (and expose more in the same timeframe) but the water and cobalt might fly under the radar until you go back and look for it. I find this is a good strat because grabbing water and cobalt seems to increase wave difficulty, so searching for iron exclusively allows me to get the economy snowballing before investing too much in defense.
If it's as out of whack as you're describing, may be a bug though.

[Rithrin]

Well, the most recent update was supposed to increase the amount of resources you can find. I've had a much easier time of Prestige mode than at the previous patch, so I think it worked.

Could be that the wave difficulty was adjusted and that's why you're feeling more pressure. First super monster seems to come around wave 30 and it's a pretty big threat spike.

[ForestDragon]

Same here! Just water.

[Awallllllll]

Tried again today on the recommendation of mining every 4th block (3 unmined between lanes). still an absolute meat grinder until dying at 200 something. Either I really need to git gud or there's some kinda bug going on.

[zimny5811]

Originally posted by Awallllllll:

Tried again today on the recommendation of mining every 4th block (3 unmined between lanes). still an absolute meat grinder until dying at 200 something. Either I really need to git gud or there's some kinda bug going on.

The current resources distribution is really good, to be honest. There is a bit less iron that there originally was, but the difference is not rally that important. Please do not read this as something rude, I just want to help you get better score and enjoy prestige more, so yea, you need to "git gud". If you want some tips, go ahead and ask me :)

So your mining strategy for first 2-3 layers looks good. What are you doing on lower layers? And what dome, starting gadget and battle ability you are using?

[saijanai]

I've informed them that I want my money back.

The latest update(s?) make it so that I can't move my laser, even with the first speed up, and then when it moves, it jumps 30-45 degrees, or EVEN MOVES BACKWARDS before moving forwards. That's on the lowest difficulty in miner mode.

And sometimes even the interface during purchasing mode seems sluggish.

[VinylSole]

As ever, we constantly follow your feedback to help understand play balance and make good tuning decisions. And we are working to get some non-personally identifiable play data to give us even better info to work from.

saijanai - sorry you had these issues. They are most definitely not normal.

[Awallllllll]

To zimny,

No offense taken at all, I'm always open to the idea that I can improve and am maybe doing something wrong. Although I've been out here grinding like Akon, I am still relatively new to the game.

I seem to resort to engineer/shield/laser out of comfort. I've done well with the sword in some instances, still cannot get a grip on assessor. I've completed runs with repellent and the orchard for achievements sake but haven't chosen to learn them yet.

To Garnett,

I appreciate that, my intent in opening this discussion was to ultimately improve the game if there is some kind of issue that isn't PEBKAC. Good to know you have our back!

[zimny5811]

Originally posted by Awallllllll:

To zimny,

No offense taken at all, I'm always open to the idea that I can improve and am maybe doing something wrong. Although I've been out here grinding like Akon, I am still relatively new to the game.

I seem to resort to engineer/shield/laser out of comfort. I've done well with the sword in some instances, still cannot get a grip on assessor. I've completed runs with repellent and the orchard for achievements sake but haven't chosen to learn them yet.

To Garnett,

I appreciate that, my intent in opening this discussion was to ultimately improve the game if there is some kind of issue that isn't PEBKAC. Good to know you have our back!

Ok, then try to switch to: Repellent with Laser. And from Repellent go for Withering, it is current meta. And the best set up by far. Aim at getting probe, teleport and stun laser as gadgets.
If you want, there is official Dome Keeper discord, on which we have Prestige section, where few players from top10s are shearing ideas, strats and so on. So you are most welcome to join us :)

[Ace]

Originally posted by Rithrin:

Well, the most recent update was supposed to increase the amount of resources you can find. I've had a much easier time of Prestige mode than at the previous patch, so I think it worked.

Could be that the wave difficulty was adjusted and that's why you're feeling more pressure. First super monster seems to come around wave 30 and it's a pretty big threat spike.

The issue is that difficulty scales with resources gained, but doesn't take into account if those resources are being used for upgrades or if they even CAN use the resources they're getting.

You can have "Supers" spawn CRAZY early if you mine too effectively, and you can SUPER screw yourself if you try to use the scanner early on.

[zimny5811]

Originally posted by Ｃｙｐｈｅｒ:

Originally posted by Rithrin:

Well, the most recent update was supposed to increase the amount of resources you can find. I've had a much easier time of Prestige mode than at the previous patch, so I think it worked.

Could be that the wave difficulty was adjusted and that's why you're feeling more pressure. First super monster seems to come around wave 30 and it's a pretty big threat spike.

The issue is that difficulty scales with resources gained, but doesn't take into account if those resources are being used for upgrades or if they even CAN use the resources they're getting.

You can have "Supers" spawn CRAZY early if you mine too effectively, and you can SUPER screw yourself if you try to use the scanner early on.

I'm not sure if I understood you correctly, but scanner does not change much in terms of that, since only resources you mined are counted, not resources you found. So the only case when resources can screw you up, is if you mine a lot, lot of resources and then you just leave them in the mines.

[Awallllllll]

Zimny,

I'm guessing what Cypher means is if you use the probe effectively early on you'll shoot yourself in the foot by ending up with too many/too many useless resources i.e. me ending up with an ocean of water and nothing else. Granted my issues aren't due to the probe as I prefer to mine my own pattern regardless for my brains sake, I'm assuming it's a similar situation.

I'll give a shot with repellent, but maybe what used to be an effective mining strategy for me is now actually hurting me. I tried another run last night leaving pretty much all water/cobalt I found alone, and it was significantly easier in the early game. Still ramped to unmanageable levels near round 30.

I hope I can figure this out. Not a lot of games have made me feel worse than this one after putting an hour and a half in only to realize I'll have no achievement and I'm going to die in the next 5 rounds.

I'll report back after blowing fat clouds at the aliens. Subaru owner out.

[VinylSole]

"Fat Clouds" could be a great withering ultimate :D

[zimny5811]

Originally posted by Awallllllll:

Zimny,

I'm guessing what Cypher means is if you use the probe effectively early on you'll shoot yourself in the foot by ending up with too many/too many useless resources i.e. me ending up with an ocean of water and nothing else. Granted my issues aren't due to the probe as I prefer to mine my own pattern regardless for my brains sake, I'm assuming it's a similar situation.

I'll give a shot with repellent, but maybe what used to be an effective mining strategy for me is now actually hurting me. I tried another run last night leaving pretty much all water/cobalt I found alone, and it was significantly easier in the early game. Still ramped to unmanageable levels near round 30.

I hope I can figure this out. Not a lot of games have made me feel worse than this one after putting an hour and a half in only to realize I'll have no achievement and I'm going to die in the next 5 rounds.

I'll report back after blowing fat clouds at the aliens. Subaru owner out.

The current pro start for Prestige is: after wave 5-7 get the probe and teleport and grab all resources as fast as possible, so you can clean the whole map in about 35 waves. So I guess issue it is not about mining a lot of resources fast, probably as you said mining strategy and/or upgrade order is the issue (it is not that there is one correct upgrade order, but I saw people do a lot of weird things that should never work - like not upgrading carry capacity at all, and testing new stuff is fine, but they never adjusted after failing).
I think the only thing that can put you in some trouble is water. Iron is used for keeper and dome weapon upgrades, so getting it fast and a lot of it is super important and a pro strat. Cobalt is used for repairing, so getting a lot of it lets you repair any additional damage you would get from rise of difficulty caused by collecting it. Only water has only few uses, so collecting a lot of it early on can lead to some issues.

Good luck with Fart Clouds :)