Balance Update Plus Bugfixes: December 19th 2022

December 19th 2022 Update

This is the final update before the game officially launches and after lots and lots of intense playtesting on the beta branch, we're making the following changes live to the main branch ready for our new players on day one!

New Features

The skill tree branch that focuses on spell cards has been updated - the final upgrade that applied a free spell AOE size boost to your starting Fireball spell has been replaced with two new upgrades that permanently and globally increase the base stats of all spells for every run. This is intended to give the spell cards even more use in the late game once you've gained access to lots of super powerful towers and, in turn, are facing beefed up units.

The Frostwyrm tower has been tweaked so that when an enemy Wizard casts the freeze spell on it, being a creature of ice itself, the Frostwyrm manages to break free of the freeze in half the time that any other tower would.

Save migration has been implemented so that any major changes to the save file configuration (for example, a change to the skill tree or the tower stats) will not disrupt or reset your progress on update.

Bugfixes

• Loads and loads of optimization has been done to the enemy unit code and tower code for better performance

• Hitting space while the Marketplace menu is open no longer starts the enemy turn

• You can no longer accidentally close the Blacksmith window during the tutorial by clicking the dialog box

• Sacrificing two identical cards at the Altar no longer creates a "ghost card" in your hand that can't be removed

• Spamming mouse clicks during the tutorial no longer softlocks you during the enemy spawning phase of wave 8

• Putting a card on the Altar in the Marketplace and then upgrading that same card no longer leaves an out of date version of the card on the Altar that can still be sacrificed

Balance Adjustments

• The Goldsmith will first have a spawn chance threshold of 250, and increase by 250 on each use

• After wave 50, enemies receive a scaling buff to HP

• In Endless Mode, instead of just getting stronger, bosses now spawn in increasing numbers

• The Blinkbeast unit now "locks on" to a target and will focus them down until they leave range or die

• The final boss, the Godking, now spawns normal Knights instead of super beefy ones

Roadmap for Future Changes

Planned features we hope to add in the coming weeks include:

• Mac-Compatible version is on the to-do list!

• Dragon Knight: This enemy is much like the Paladin but wears armor of dragonscale and is immune to damage from lava tiles and dragonbreath

• Warrior Priest: Triggered to start spawning when the player uses a Sacrificial Altar, each time during a run you make a blood sacrifice, this unit's base stats will increase, making it more and more of a threat

• Thief: This enemy will only spawn when you have gold over a certain amount. Like the Assassin, they have a chance to dodge hits, but if they get to the tower, instead of doing damage they steal a portion of your cash.

• Skill Tree Reset Button: This will allow players to go back to the beginning if they'd like to, without refunding their spent Crowns

• Zero Gold, Zero Towers Failstate: If the game detects you spent all your gold and have no towers placed, automatically get a game over

If you have any suggestions, please drop them into the discussion forums! And if you encounter any bugs, please write up a bug report into the Bug Report forum so that we can get it fixed as fast as possible for you and other players!