Observations

[KellyR]

So a few observations now that it's been out for a few days, and I've played a bunch.

1. First and most important: Research costs increase exponentially, for anything that has multiple levels. Monster health and damage *also* increase exponentially. This means that any multi-level research that doesn't give exponential benefits is a bit of a trap and should be avoided.

What I mean by this is, if you take say, the weapon damage upgrades... They apply a 30% increase to the damage your weapon does, and that appears to be an exponential improvement (In other words, if you buy two levels of damage increases for a given weapon, the damage is calculated as base*1.3*1.3, not base*1.6. That's a good thing.

On the other hand, things like the shield powerup give a flat 40 points of damage resistance each time you buy it, which drops off to meaninglessness rather quickly, and since the cost of the upgrade roughly doubles each time you buy it, the cost *far* outstrips the benefit in very short order.

Things like that, you only want to buy a couple levels of at most.

2. The Piggybank is an absolute requirement if you want to get through the 20s and past. The prices of your upgrades in stars spiral massively out of control, to the point that I've spent over a million stars on a single upgrade in the later game. No matter how many points you put into the Scientist upgrade, you'll never get more than a few hundred stars per night from actual drops. The ONLY way to fund purchases like that is with the Piggybank. That means you need to get it early, and hoard your stars like Scrooge McDuck hoards money.

You can get to a point where you're earning thousands, even tens or hundreds of thousands of stars every night, if you maintain your principal hoard.

The Piggybank may seem underwhelming in the early part of the game when you have like 50 stars in the bank. Sure, you only get 5 stars from it in that case. But if you have 1000 stars you get 100 a night. If you have 10,000 stars you get 1,000 a night. If you have a million stars, you're pulling in 100,000 per night.

So what you do is you never spend more than you're making in interest, at the absolute maximum (And even that's really too much, because you'll stop increasing the principal, and at that point you're stalled and will soon be overwhelmed). Ideally, you don't want to spend more than a tenth of the interest you're making. But as long as you're not spending more than half of it, you're probably OK.

What this means is, try not to spend any stars in the beginning of the game that you don't *absolutely* have to. Spend your suns on powerups, ammo, and walls and turrets, things that cost no stars. Hell, use the "Do Science" research item to buy stars with them.

The faster you build up a large balance, the more interest you'll earn, and the faster the interest will build up.

To survive later waves (Past about 25ish) you're going to NEED those thousand+ star upgrades, so the Piggybank is the only way you can manage.

3. The Soaker is the best weapon. Just, full stop. It's the best. Range isn't great, but it works like a flamethrower, every enemy in it's "beam" takes damage, so when the enemies pile up at your walls, this will wreck them. In addition to that, it's special ability (Once you buy it) is that it puts a debuff on any enemy you hit with it that causes them to take +500% damage from all damage sources other than the Soaker. That *includes* your turrets, pulse bursts, etc.

Hose down a big group of baddies at your walls and your turrets will wreck them.

And despite all those bonuses, it actually does damage pretty competitive with all your other weapons, at any given level. Its upgrades cost slightly more, but it's absolutely worth it.

You can also combo it with another weapon like the Gatling gun (Highest single-target damage in the game, plus it slows any monsters you hit with it) or the Launcher (Just good for AoE), by splashing a monster (Or group of monsters) with the Soaker, and quickly switching weapons and hitting them with your other gun for that 500% damage bonus.

This is sort of an expensive thing to do though, as it requires you to keep two weapons leveled up, so generally I would advise anyone to choose the Soaker as their weapon. Particularly if you're going with turrets.

4. Certain upgrades are traps:

-Barbed Walls: This does 25 damage to any enemy that hits a wall. It's *maybe* worth getting one level of it in the early game, but successive levels only add another 25 damage, which is simply worthless compared to the price increases.

-Scientist: Getting 1-3 levels of this in the early game isn't a terrible thing. 2 levels will make most enemies give you 2 stars instead of 1, and only costs about 105 stars altogether. Beyond that though, it's worthless. I haven't done the math on whether it's an additive or exponential bonus, but it doesn't matter because the base it's working on is ONE. The benefit you gain from it is just too small, don't do it.

-Thorns powerup: Same deal as Barbed Walls. Damage increase is linear. It's useful in the early game, but you're better off just banking those stars for the Piggybank, honestly. It becomes utterly useless by day 15 or so, I'd say.

-Kaboom (Or whatever the exploding couch upgrade is called): 600 damage is amazing in the early game, but absolutely useless by day 30. I'd say to maybe get it if you have nothing else to spend your suns on and your Piggybank income is so high that you won't notice the star cost, except that by that point it's already useless. So just don't bother.

-Overshield/Health upgrades: These are sort of a trap. You'll probably want to get a couple levels of them in the early game, but try to only get enough to keep from being one-shotted. The benefits are strictly linear, so you absolutely, 100% cannot possibly keep up with monster damage over the long term with these. The ONLY way you're going to make it through later nights is by hiding behind walls, which have many, many MANY times the HP you have, because the Built To Last and High Caliber upgrades grant exponential bonuses. Every time you take the max health upgrade you get 200 hp. Every time you take Built To Last your walls get +50% of their *total* max health.

Having 3000hp is great, but meaningless when you're fighting things that can bash down your 300,000 hp walls in just a couple hits.

-Ammo Scavenging: Now... I'm not going to say this is a *total* trap. Putting in 1-6 levels can really help you out later... But... It's a linear upgrade. You're better off taking the Collector and Synergy powerups and relying on ammo drops to keep your ammo levels topped up. I might put in one or two levels early in the game if I'm struggling with ammo, but even in the late game I'd never bring it past 6 (Which is the point where you're getting 100 ammo per sun at the toybox).

5. And certain upgrades are godly:

-Piggybank: I've already pointed out why.

-Memory Foam: If you're using walls or turrets AT ALL, you need this. Period.

-Quick Build: Reduced sun cost of all walls and turrets. The earlier you get it, the more it pays off.

-Sample Collection: Doubles the number of stars you get from Do Science. Do Science becomes meaningless in later stages, but in the early game this will get you your Piggybank faster and let you ramp up your interest earnings more quickly, while you're still at the point where a few hundred stars makes a difference. This should probably be the very first thing you get. (And then dump the rest of your suns into stars).

[Mak]

I never got far than night 37 but I also never played with piggybank. I'm gonna try that.

[Drimble Wedge🐉]

I wish I could make my own observations BUT I CAN'T BECAUSE THEY STILL HAVEN'T FIXED THE WINDOWS 7 PROBLEM!!!!

[KellyR]

Originally posted by Mak:

I never got far than night 37 but I also never played with piggybank. I'm gonna try that.

Keep in mind, if you're Piggybankin' it, you're gonna need to go as long as possible without spending stars in the beginning of the game. Basically, the longer you can hold out without spending stars, the further you'll get in the long run.