Thoughts on Game Update v0.3.1

[Threid]

Did a quick heroic Misty Forest with the new hero "Tiny." I wanted to try the new electric towers and relics, so I chose them when offered.

Tiny is even more powerful than Silas. Three reasons why, and one why not:

1. Having a rune on every block, especially elemental runes, makes initial setups quite powerful, and scales extremely well into later stages. My favorite thing to do was to cram as many electric, range, damage, or explosion runes onto a 2x2 or 3x3 space for the larger towers.

2. Being able to snake monsters very precisely through a maze is very satisfying, and maximizes monster travel time through the area of the map you've concentrated your powerful towers.

3. Tiny's weakness of not being able to easily plug larger holes to create mazes on later stages can be partially mitigated by both the auto-draw power, as well as chest drops offering you larger blocks. Not at all an issue on Misty Forest, but would be more challenging on the 2nd level.

X. The ice zone will be really tough for Tiny, especially the 1st few rounds where you can't afford to plop towers on all those sweet, sweet runes, while also being pressured to build a credible maze for the monsters. Not looking forward to trying this!

Edit: Did heroic ice, and it was difficult, but doable. Carried by 3x3 electric towers and sniper towers - just save up a few blocks the turn before you plan to build so you can stack a lot of runes under your towers. Treasure chests with extra blocks weren't a big factor - just build 1x1 elemental towers on your runes, do some basic mazing, and you'll be set!

Electricity

- I've always tended to circle around a mix of poison, fire, and frost for my heroic runs, so trying a one-element build was new for me. Having the electricity synergy between all the towers was a fun mechanic. At the end of Misty Forest, electricity was 81% of my damage, with one-tile fire and frost towers contributing the rest (never found the 1-tile poison one!) to maximize the elemental runes.

- The new 3x3 tower and the laser tower were fun to play as well, especially with elemental buffs. Recommend having your laser towers target the highest HP monster rather than most progressed that it currently defaults to, so you can maximize the rate of fire and buildup of electricity. Edit: The fire speed buff will keep working as long as there is a target in range.

- The flexibility of the 2x2 electric tower to give you fire or frost damage increases your relic synergy options, and apply multiple debuffs to monsters. It's great for maintaining an electric focus and completing the elemental penta-fecta if you run into the relic increasing your damage by 10% for completing at least 1 tower of each elemental type.

Overall and General Thoughts

- Had a lot of fun, and was pleasantly surprised to get an update so soon after the frozen zone was released.
- I wish the harder zones gave more rewards, or that levels had more sub-objectives to complete, to make the game a little more challenging and offer more things to unlock. When I get the itch to play, I often choose the 1st two levels since the 3rd one is a significant skill jump.
- Hoping that the last talent unlock is some kind of scaling option so I can start dumping some accumulated talent!
- Looking forward to more content, and thanks to the dev for all the hard work! Love this game, and have almost put 50 hours into it so far!

[devilcukie]

Yeah Tiny is extremely powerful, with single boost block you can get INSANELY powerful tower, and it versatile with any attributes too!

[scaramunja]

I didnt realise an update had dropped, I tried Tiny on Frost Heroic and then all these new electric towers and new relics started appearing I grabbed them to try them and it was possibly easier than Silas with snow, boulder, fireball, decimation and sniper spam. I completed Tiny Electric taking only 1 flame hit on the very last round. So whether Tiny or the electric towers, it seems strong.

[Quardak]

Yeah Tiny is an easy-Mode Char. You get the runes+blocks faster then you can build upon it. Double Posion Sprayer for 52 Damage... or Arcane Missiles that crit realiable for 30 Damage are insane. Maybe the runes for Tiny should also be tiny ->givin you only 50% of normal boost.

[Leninade]

I think the big problem with Tiny is that if every block you put a tower on has a rune (usually elemental or greater), then you have little incentive to upgrade towers. Why upgrade a tower when you can just build a new one and get the same, if not better "upgrade" to it by virtue of where it's placed. And since you can precisely control where everything is placed, it's pretty easy to put it where it's most effective.

Also, electricity is definitely overtuned right now. I've tried a couple maps, but charge synergizes so well with other elements through relics (and itself even) that I think it's possible to pass most maps spamming almost entirely the laser tower. Goes absolutely nuts with the flame that makes every level corrupted. Will try heroic on the ice map next, but so far I've yet to take damage on a run with him.

[dorumon21]

Honestly, giving it more thought on how you could properly balance out tiny a bit but not destroy the char is to just outright remove all forms of elemental boosting runes on its starting cards be a good start, these by themselves is like what, 150% boost?

The reason i don't like to nerf though is just that if other chars get a proper set instead of just "here's this small boost" then tiny will just become a bit more average vs. other builders, we only have truly one other good builder in my opinion and the rest is kinda... harsh as it is to say, pathetic in starting set if you look at the overall starting power vs. what will counter them.

I wouldn't judge based on if you can do a heroic no damage cause I done that before with other another builder that isn't tiny so that not a good way to tell. Its really just that you start so well with tiny that its almost impossible to get screwed over when you need to make more blocks/runes/relics in the run cause you are already pretty well set, anything you get just adds to what you already have. No other builder has that going for them, where normally you got to start little and work on making it better somehow before you end up in trouble. This is probably why tiny feels so good when I gave it more thought for a few days.

[Morphic]

Originally posted by Leninade:

Also, electricity is definitely overtuned right now. I've tried a couple maps, but charge synergizes so well with other elements through relics (and itself even) that I think it's possible to pass most maps spamming almost entirely the laser tower. Goes absolutely nuts with the flame that makes every level corrupted. Will try heroic on the ice map next, but so far I've yet to take damage on a run with him.

I've yet to take damage with anyone after my first 2-3 runs ever since I was still seeing how things worked and what towers/relics there were.(Granted I'm a TD and Roguelike junky so...)

I think the primary reason why Laser Tower is so good is simply because it scales really well. Higher HP monsters let it ramp and a good maze will see said monsters loop around lasers; letting lasers really shine. Ball Lightning has a similar deal when you can create straightaways with a ball on each end.(bonus points for making them constant upgrade with a slow tower/effect supporting them) Though, I do agree Electricity is really good too since its effect is great and doesn't need synergy, and its towers are pretty great regardless of your situation. Same can be said with fire towers.

IMO, the thing that makes Tiny really strong is the fact that most maps make mazing difficult with larger pieces. So you can make absurdly efficient mazes right from the get go... and your pieces all have runes. It's the opposite effect for Chunk where most of your pieces are massive and practically unusable in a lot of maps.

If I had to nerf Tiny, I'd either add more "open" maps to the pool; thus making his small pieces inefficient and possibly dangerous the first 1-3 waves on a map.(or drop the Endless Tome, making it difficult/costly to establish a maze initially) Alternatively, drop the runes on the 1-tile pieces in his loadouts, so only the 2 and 3 tile pieces get to start with runes. Overall, I agree with the sentiment that the Runes are what's making him very strong.

Personally, I still think the Merchant Builder is the most OP of the builders since you can snowball exponentially compared to everyone else that scales linearly. Who needs strategy or RNG favoritism when you can just throw money at the problem lol.

[Flakstruk]

I found that i was buying tiles for tine. If i was looking to scale him back, i'd make 1 block a 1x1 without a rune drop each round. And the length of you maze is the constraint

[Doc Savage]

I would double the price of big towers for Tiny. I have had a blast taking only small towers and Missiles. As soon as you throw any large tower into the mix, EZ button ensues. I mean it's still EZ... But not as easy... ?B)

I think I would also take away the single tile runes as mentioned above. You can go ham on poison bars everywhere and never fire a shot. Watching mid tier baddy health bars turning instantly green and watching them just fade away is wild.

What I'd really like to see is a global, scale-able %% on the bonus settings for towers so you can Jack or Nerf your towers at will and really tailor the experience for yourself. People who want insane difficult could drop every bonus into the negatives if they wanted, while those wanting some fun would be able to jack the %% through the roof.

Character has been very much fun to play though.

Cheers..!

[NMP]

> What I'd really like to see is a global, scale-able %% on the bonus settings for towers so you can Jack or Nerf your towers at will and really tailor the experience for yourself

All for that as well. Could be enemy HP also or some parameter to scale enemy strength up or down in a smarter way. Whatever is most convenient I suppose (I assume there may be some wave scaling parameter already behind the scenes), this sort of option would definitely make the game more interesting, and let players have fun with both stronger and weaker builds, reducing the need for balance.

[Doc Savage]

Absolutely should include enemy strength as a parameter.

Any and or all anything that can have a number should have a box I can type a number in (...I hate sliders and scrolling....) that allows me to make the game as easy or hard as I want.

It's right up there with modding in my book and I'd like to see it become standard for all games.

Cheers..!

[Dscaper]

Tiny is great, with Roulette and the +5/-10 he really motors. Had a really small maze on Heroic Ice, all 2/3 size towers except for the little AOE ice for CC - they stood no chance.

[Doc Savage]

Tiny on the hardest frost is really a run. Win a few, lose a many.... Good stuff..!!

Cheers..!