@WC2_UNC This is what has worked for me. It's a variant of one of WGW's old maps so credit to him. It can be optimized more but you can give it a try. https://imgur.com/a/KM2FuSN @Peter The new towers seem OP. Flying waves don't make it past the top right part of the map. May need to be tweaked? Ancient slates also seem stronger than EE but easier to build.

Not every change require reset. But i can see another 2 Uber runs - something might be still bugged with chances. Uber nerfs will require reset, but it can be done in few weeks. Meanwhile tried to test new gems on phone - ME is dissapointing, fells weaker than EE+GE. It don't need to have as much base direct dps as sum of those(311+275), but something comparable, shouldn't it crit?

Anyone have any maze guides, the ones on google are all for the og

@scgmeister Yes I hear you that's why there has been only 1 reset on Season 2 considering all the changes. Before the season 2 closes out and the awards are handed out, I want to do a reset because the last few changes have caused completely different viable tower selections.

I'm there with 216. making too many changes too fast, especially when it involves resetting the scores kind of alienates those of us who have very limited time to play in a given day, and there isn't much that is more frustrating to have a good run going, only for the scores to be reset a couple days later with big changes forcing us to have to cancel our run early just to test out new features. Speaking of which those new advanced tower fusions are kind of a blast to experiment with and quite amusing sing the flying waves go off in random directions here and there. It would be interesting to expand this more with all the great gems instead of limiting it to 3, with their own unique powers.

Do not change for now - score reset would be needed. The current version of Uber likely is ok for classic(that 0.5s version can't stay in classic...), for s2 it might need little more nerf We might need sanbox mode with an option to force Uber to test it - 3 players already got lucky,but i doubt i will I can't test it now, will be at home in few days(unplayable on phone) Btw, little request on scores - now the only way to check if someone got an Uber Stone is clicking on every score and check 1 by 1. Maybe good idea is displaying icon near score or differet backgrond color for Uber runs. Similar can be for GO (or rather confirmed no-GO run)

@Peter ur the goat man, i love this game it's so goated, like man ur actually the goat

@216 Do we need a change to the Uber Stone?

what does Uber stone do?-

@216: Should be fixed now, for season 2 only: 1. Armor and speed auras are now fully calculated before any tower attacks, eliminating tower-order-dependent damage loss. 2. Grounding abilities resolve before auras and targeting. 3. Paraiba Frost Nova now uses its configured 100/125 damage and 29-radius area.

dang, only took 50% of sky warlord, i realized too late the bosses got reworked so they can actually be stunned now. regarding the sky net affect, i think it would be an improvement if the flyer spawns back on the air path where it was when it got netted.

Seems fixed. Thanks @Peter. Finished my first full run. Was not expecting the difficulty jump at level 201! I over-prepared for the sky lord. I like the changes!

@Peter what's with armor aura issue? In S2 is more annonying - many damage burn gems causing it. No proff that is not only display issue, but i afraid it lead to dmg loss. While most ppl will talk about new gems, i'd like discuss about Paraiba - In flash version i felt it need little buff , cause 4 components. In 2021 it got slightly nerfed instead: 30-420 /0.75 -> 125-204 / 0.6 and frost nova damage got halved. Other gems base dps: EG 180/0.75 x 1.3 = 312 (before amethyst weakness) EE ~311 ABS 325

@muellesx Thanks I fixed it now, please try again. Sorry about your run.

Newest version of Season 2 gameplay is a great improvement, lots of fun!

Me either, i think we should have a remove Tower button.

The wandering flyers feature is quite broken. If I flyer gets confused and starts wandering or following the maze, it seems to still know where is SHOULD be on the road. When the confusion ends, it pops into existence in it's predicted location... usually at the very end of the path. I wish I could start this run over and not build these towers.

@jonathanA Season 2 is suppose to be the unstable experiment, that's why I handed out beta testing. Once, the game settle on a stable ruleset, I'll reset the high scores for a proper Season 2 run.

I spoke to soon... tier 2 seems to be difficult enough. I don't understand the charge/cast mechanic, or maybe i never accumulated enough for it to do anything, or maybe i didn't see if something happened.

New update is really cool. I like the new towers. Feel free to keep adding towers in future seasons, the possibilities are endless! Seems like The Splitter was easier this time, and air is definitely easier thanks to the new diamond spell. Maybe too easy. But it depends from person to person I suppose, with difficulty levels that could be addressed. Some tower tooltips are overflowing (Viper slate, Miasma Emerald for example). Maybe there should be a sort of "unstable" game edition where new features can be introduced whenever, while the seasons remain intact apart from bug fixes, that way you won't have to reset the high score. The upcoming season could be tested during the current season.

Am I outdated, old school maze without the GA spam this time seems useless.

https://ibb.co/ZzL8TRyh nothing new, just a normal run. as always i like classic up until level 200 it gets lame. regarding slates again, yeah i dont mind making the maze more spacious it just came as a surprise.

If I'm being honest, the spells are a pretty lame mechanic. At least the relic mechanic gave you an incentive to limit lives lost. The spells are marginally impactful and require no planning or skill.

"no chance" - likely possible to kill boss 200 by optimizing middle GAs, but that's not the point. -40 GAs on map and no maze means lose, if not to grounds then surely to boss 300 - spending all gold on extra chance spam for 40 GAs fells like an exploit, not intended way to go Current difficulty of it would be ok for final boss - need go all in amethyst, no fun to continue. But i like idea of boss 300, which likely is unbalanced too, i couldn't test it without uber. I reported in early testing that those bosses may be hard to beat even with uber(after nerfs) so they got nerfed by... 10% hp I suggested before to nerf speed of flying boss, so we can use that spells at least...

yeah, no uber = no chance. Looking forward to Season 3!

I think I am done with ss2. Good luck guys.

Ah drats, very dis-heartening but thanks for responding. I will try out season 2 once i recovery mentally from my loss, haha.

@tony, click on the score for the maze you just did, and you should see a screenshot of your maze there. Then copy the url for that maze and past it here in the comments.

Very close to kill the boss at 200 (1/5 left). How could i attach the image?

I just played version season2-1.0.27 and my high score saved to the beta test archive instead of the current season 2 leaderboard

Reching level 200 went a good bit better after seeing what muellesx did with his maze and adjusting my maze. Still it only took out about 1/4 of the level 200 boss. Still the final maze looks kind of cool I guess.

@JonathanA I don't really care about slates being ethereal; Here's why: - Maze corridors just need to be more sparse (able to fit a rock inside) - Maze walls need to be twice as thick (so you can build slates and it won't open holes) You don't need to worry about conserving spaces for the late game, as now you can choose to skip a turn by placing a rock. If you play thinking that classic and season2 are the same game, you're half right; the game mechanics do change.

One other suggestion is I would love to see the beginning cost of repicking gems brought back down to 25 as I sometimes need to do a repick on the early stages to avoid having to scrap and restart if I get a bad draw. With the cost starting at 50 instead now, I'm no longer able to afford to do that, resulting in me having to restart the game that much more often. After that,, then it can go back to scaling up as what you have it already.

shoot, lost to level 100 boss. season 2 is really awesome, the game feels fresh again.

@bonannoslam apologies, your long-running game was using an older save protocol, and a server update caused its save requests to stop being accepted while the game itself continued. That left the recoverable save far behind the level you actually reached. This bug has been fixed in the latest version of Season 1, which uses the current save/reload system and records wave checkpoints. I'm sorry your run was lost.

I still don't really agree with the pathing of slates, although maybe I just have to get used to it. Again, picking a slate breaks the maze. If slates were possible to place on top of rocks or gems, that wouldn't be an issue. And in order to position the slates well, the path needs to be double width. I can adapt, just seems unintuitive that it's the intended behaviour. On the other hand it looks very neat and not messy which would be the case if overlapping. Just looking for confirmation if it will stay this way rather than how it was in wc3. The screenshots in the comments are very handy, although idk how u attach it. And my idea was to generate them automatically on each specific run page, but maybe it's better this way.

Oh no, I had a game where i was over 400 and there was no stopping me. All of a sudden my game disappeared. Did this happen to anyone else!?

The prettiest map you'll ever see: ... regardless of the fact that it failed at 200

@JonathanA: just realized i currently don't have any decent lvl 150 - 300 run submited , but my best times are: Lvl 60 - below 2000 Lvl 100 ~4200 Lvl 200 ~13000 Also had failied attempt , lost in 180 (or 184?) at ,~11k time. I likely won't play in next 11 days ( i don't even try on mobile) , but later can do some speedruns @muellesx why so many slates ( especially wiper, which is usefull just for damage buff)

@Peter Haha I would NEVER have guessed; I always surrender and start again

Yes perfect Peter!

@Peter, you are truly the man.

@carlhr Go finish a game and click on your score.

What is this sorcery?

@jonathanA Like this?

Also I couldn't type the letter R in the high score text form field at the end

Just finished a classic run. No great opal until level 752.

Not enough: https://imgur.com/a/gSO1pWg

Thumbs up Peter. I have started speedrunning now, my best record so far is level 180 by 15000 seconds. I welcome anyone to challenge me. Maybe a game mode for speedrunning could be set up. Or somehow sort scores by time. It could be interesting to, at the submit score screen to be able to upload a screenshot which would be shown on the run page. Idk if it's possible to automatically generate a "screenshot" and submit it without any user interaction, if so that would be even better. Nice to see that season 2 allows to pick between silver and malachite, it would still be very useful to me if I can pick flawed diamond haha.

@carlhr Sorry shortcuts fixed in Season 2 now.

Meant to say season 2, thankfully can still play classic.

@wgw nope. In season 2 its not working.

@JonathanA: The R hotkey is still working for me (to remove rocks).

R hotkey removed? Unplayable xD

Thanks, Peter. I don't suppose it's possible to change the high score text. . . I mean, it's fairly absurd that a level 1101 score says "aborted at level 500". ;) No big deal if not. Have you been able to fix the intercepted R keystrokes? @216, at best it would have killed one more ground enemy per level if I'd closed off that path directly from the final checkpoint to the exit. I did have it closed off until the final 10 or 15 levels. Good eye on spotting that the maze could have forced one more short loop. But by the time I was leaking 3 or 4 ground enemies per level, I just wanted to end the run, knowing I was going to run out gold long before running out of spaces anyway!

@wgw Thanks for the report on the submission bug, it has been fixed for Classic. Your high score wasn't lost, it has been displayed correctly under: "WGW 1200+ run ruined! Aborted at level 500"

@tony, the only way to get an uber stone right now is to get extremely lucky with 4 of the same perfect gems. The extra chance button did massively improve the chances to get one, but that recently got nerfed only to only improve chances to 2 gems max. Personally, I think 1 of 2 things needs to change or be improved on for season 2. 1: If an uber stone is mandatory for being able to get past level 200, then the chances of getting one before level 200 should be comparable to, or only slightly less than the chances of getting a great opal in classic mode by level 100 (maybe either increase the extra chances benefit to 3 max, or possibly have a diminishing returns system for each pefect you get for that you're trying to fish for?). or 2: the bosses, specifically the flying bosses should get nerfed making it possible to reach higher levels without the need for an uber stone. Personally, I would love to see the chances for getting an uber stone increased a little more during season, especially considering how much easier it is to get great gems. Also, I would agree with muellesx with those suggestions. It would save a good bit of time in having to restart several times to get the gem you want right away if you run into a string of bad luck. On a side note, I noticed that that range slate is surprisingly strong on its own if you manage to get one early enough in a run on previous runs.

Hi all, is there any formula to get Uber stone? I played like 30 rounds with many variety of strategy but stopped at 200 (season 2).

I totally agree with you @muellesx. It is pratical feedbacks.

A couple more quality of life ideas: - when starting a survival (season or not) game - let the player choose malachite, silver, or none. - start the game out at 4x - Remove the big "You Lost" banner that hides the screen at the end of a game. I want to analyze my map

@WGW This number is related to rolled gems (even repicked) I can see the main reason you leak as much before great opal - maze with rocks than must be reserved to remove later, blocking good EE spots. Other reason is lack of damage in the middle. Using EGs just to armor reduction in some places(around c4 for example) is not nessesary About ground units: why they got shortcut from c6 to exit?

Peter, one more note, regarding the run stats: It says for this run "Normal Amethyst led the build with 234 placements," but that can't possibly be true. I only ever built ONE bloodstone this run, which means I only ever placed a single normal amethyst to build it. The most common gems I placed must have been the components of the paraibas, which I built a couple hundred of.

Well, finished my first long run in classic mode run without benefit of the combine special bug or glitched enemy movement in late levels. I was prompted to re-enter high score text, but again, there is no button to submit the score. So this run is showing up with the text I entered at level 500, "WGW 1200+ run ruined! Aborted at level 500". I tried entering the new text "WGW Stop the Madness", but it didn't take. This run ended with me leaking so many ground enemies once I had to shorten the maze, that I ran out of gold to buy lives long before I ran out of space. I lost at level 1101, but space-wise, should have made it to around level 1242. And this was with 24 jades, 40 enchanted emeralds, and 2 great opals. I had close to 200 million gold before I had to start leaking ground enemies around level 1075, and within 25 to 30 levels, all that gold was gone, lives costing almost 1 million gold at the end. I was leaking only one enemy per air level, maybe two, but leaking 4 enemies per ground level. You can't sustain that kind of leakage no matter how many jades you have. But no crash-- and the memory usage stayed under 300MB to the end. Screenshot of no high score submit button: https://imgur.com/a/yzDfbbX Boring screenshot of final layout: https://imgur.com/a/mqYuG1J

39 GAs and still not enough to kill boss 200... Normal flying wawes were dying fast, no much stun was needed

I'm at level 885 or so and it's interesting playing a long classic mode run with the game optimized and without the bugs, particularly the old combine special bug where you could build towers off of a single perfect gem forever. I've already mentioned that there's a lot more tedium due to having to repick to get a perfect aquamarine for every paraiaba now, but I don't see a way around that without classic mode being rebalanced so that filling in the whole map isn't really acheivable. Having overbuilt jades due to not getting a great opal until level 228, I'm earning an insane amount of excess gold, over 90 million at this point. Since there's now a "Surrender" button and you don't need to intentionally leak enemies to end a long run anymore, and with so much excess gold, there's no reason not to just max out lives to 50. At some point soon I'm going to have to drastically shorten the ground enemy path due to running out of room for new towers, but I figure there's no way I'll end up leaking enough to matter with this much gold already. By this point, before Peter patched the memory leak, the enemy movement was glitched out, making levels take 5 to 10 times longer than the 1x speed we used to be limited to. But the glitched movement also meant it was essentially impossible to leak any ground enemies, since they would freeze in place. So again, I think the improvements in the game (like fixing the combine special bug), in this case the memory leak being fixed and the late level enemy movement no longer being glitched, means you need to have a lot more gold now, to cover lots more repicks, and potentially lots of leaked ground enemies in the very late game. I decided to take a second great opal, costing 3 levels, and misclicked building paraiba number 3,427 (slight exaggeration) and had to build a malachite at level 850-something as a result, costing another turn. But I think this should still get to level 1241. Hoping I can re-enter high score text at that point. Running this at 4x speed, without the glitched enemy movement, it's only taking 2-3 days, instead of a couple of *weeks*! Maybe after Peter has solidified the Season mechanics we can get him to tweak the classic mode game. Lots of good ideas have been suggested here over the years!

I attempted one more season 2 run to give the new updates a chance, but quit after level 133 as it didn't look like I would survive much past 150. Personally, I think the increased cost of both the repicking and extra chance is now too expensive making being able to handle the waves of 15 flyers even more challenging and rng based than it was before (not to mention that by making everything more challenging without resetting everyone's score, you effectively gave anyone who started a run before the update an unfair advantage on the leaderboard). When I play this game, I do it as a way to relax. Making the game too punishing and rng based is anything but relaxing. On the plus side, I do appreciate that classic is back and with all the bugs fixed, as that seems to be a bit more my style as much as I like testing out the new updates on occasion.

How big difference? - pre-nerf Uber Stone was ~16.8x stronger than EG, making it quickly scoring kills and grow to game-breaking power,. Current version is "only" ~7.8x stronger than EG (6.5x stronger than GA) and has halved effeciency of lvling - still kills are 3.25x more effective than on GA (which hardly is getting kills due to air only attack). Also Uber Stone's range is very helpfull for boss. Range - that's why i tried to take as many GAs and even PAa as possible to maximize damage to boss - effect was good, but still 30-40% hp left. Maybe if stack 20+ GAs in mid( and some for new armor reduction) there is small hope to beat it without an Uber Stone, but honestly i think boss need some nerf

I failed in 200 around 3 times. I will do with another layout.

Did a wave 200 seasonal run. Completely forgot about the greater gem changes, will need to adjust my layout to compensate. Has anyone beat 200 without an uber stone? I have yet to see one so not sure how big of a difference it is

I thought the fame* *game Also, just wanted to mention how much I love the stats on the runs and on people's accounts-- great update! [And thanks, humbly, for the badge :) ]

@Peter, I've got a good run going, at level 628 now and on track for a level 1243 high score in Classic mode without the combine special bug. I thought the fame had ended prematurely at level 500, when I was prompted for high score text, but I see now that this is a sort-of "pre-registration" of an ongoing run's high score, as of level 500. (1) I assume this is the cause of the delay after a level ends-- the game is saving? It's not a problem at all, but sometimes the delay can be up to 10 seconds, which feels like a crash. Maybe a pop up saying that the game is saving? (2) Will I be able to change the high score text I entered at level 500? Because I didn't understand what was happening, I entered the text, "WGW 1200+ run ruined! Aborted at level 500". :) This is obviously not the text I'd want on the run when it completes-- will I be prompted again to overwrite the high score text at the end of the run? (3) The "R" keystroke bug is only partially fixed; Capital "R" keystrokes go through, but lowercase "r"s still do not. (4) Memory usage is still very low, around 200MB. Looks like the memory leaks are plugged/under control! It takes a lot of repicking now to have to draw a perfect aquamarine for every paraiba, which means needing a lot more gold, so I really doubt that it'd be possible, outside of brilliant lucky picks, to get to level 1300 now, without the old combine special bug. It's really a joy to be able to play this again, in a form I still recognize ;) and with so many bugs fixed and the game code optimized and the site upgraded with account verification and such. I'm genuinely grateful for all your work on this!

Here: https://imgur.com/a/lcwodcF I also added the .html on my github

@216 There was a small bug in storing the undefeated bosses remaining hp so unfortunately the data was lost for your run. It has been fixed now.

Do it as I do @muellesx, two words: "JS injection". When the site lacks something you really want inside it, do it yourself. Btw @Peter, I was thinking of creating a browser extension to add code on the page every time I enter the site, but if you're gonna add grids on future updates, I won't lose my time with this.

Agree, also extreme max scores should be sorted by time Decided to spend almost all gold on Amethyst extra chances -a lot PA/GA on map, did much damage to boss 200, but still missing a lot to kill. Some observations: -PA got 3rd most rolled gem for this run -while it like Extra Chances (solves unluck problem for GO) i fell like it needs little nerf. At lest they cost something now. -LAJ gold chance could be little nerfed in S2 - since towers shots faster and extra ground enemies increase fight time, resulting in more gold generated (but i dont like idea of stopping at all at 201) - It diplays spell is usable 3 times - but The Sky Warlord is moving as fast as it takes about 40s to reach end, so 3rd use is impossible - maybe allow us to slow this boss more?. -As some players noticed jump form 10 to 15 enemies is quite high; ideally it should increase it 1 by 1 at manually chosen lvls. 11th enemy can by already somewhere around 70-80 . For me 15 flyers in 104 is not a big problem, just few leaks. - Got 3 PAs before last gem pick THREE times (once it was first 3 gems - 4 real chances for Uber) - really that 3rd is regular 1/80 roll now? - no boss kill attempt % progress in highscore anymore? - no highscore text option in s1/s2

This may have been mentioned before, but it would be awesome to have the different difficulty levels for classic as their own high score pages. Right now everything that isn't survival gets lost at the bottom.

Is there any chance we can get the slate recipes on the front page along with tower recipes?

@216: Easy fix, check now.

Great Opal statistics are nice! But Uber Stone is not displaing yet The only problem with special gem stats is counting upgraded version as different gem.

you have to be a super-brain with thermonuclear calculations to reach 300

Just did a quick run up to wave 100, the new slates are interesting, the new extra chance mechanic is very good. Can't wait to sit down and grind out a high wave run

I do wish there was some sort of sandbox where we could plan out our maze

Haven't gotten to experiment with the new season but hopefully will in the next week or so! Thanks again Peter for all of these new updates

@scgmeister Yes apologies for all the changes, Season 2 had some major mechanic changes and some very old bug fixes.

@216 lucky you for getting an uber stone. Even with spamming the extra chance as much as possible and getting it up to 59% in multiple instances before seeing at least perfect, it still refused to give me more than 3 perfects of a gem. Now with the extra chance nerfed down to 2 max, and more expensive, I decided to end my current run a little early without bothering to submit my score (it wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway due to leaking too many flyers and spending so much gold on extra chances after level 100). Anyway, with my hopes of ever getting an uber stone and having fun with it back to being a pipe dream, and with the constant changes going on in season 2, I think I'm going to go back to messing around in normal survival for awhile.

Thanks Peter, but to be honest, I think you need to slow down on updates. Let a season run for a bit and collect more feedback, or just pull the plug and start a new season. Your amazing responsiveness may be a bit of a liability! :)

@216 @muellesx: Version 1.0.24 reduces Uber Stone's kill scaling from 10% to 5% damage per 10 kills. Extra Chance can now produce at most two targeted Perfect gems in one round, and its repeat price rises by an uncapped 35% of the base price per use within each 100-level tier.

Extra-chance is sooo out of balance.

Uber Stone with ~2700 kills allowed me to kill boss 303, then lost many lives on ground level - didn't notice important gap in maze... Fresh Uber Stone wasn't too op, it was fun to looks how it's growing in power. But as it grows it gets more and more kills per lvl, eventually(at ~2000 kills) it kills enemies in like 2s and gets almost all wawe kills. So nerf suggestion: instead +10% per lvl, make this gem to gain olny 5%. maybe even 4% Attack speed might get futher, but minor nerf - nerfing too much may remove the intended fun of getting it

I thought it was a feature of the season that a tower is assembled from two

For instance, I wasn't able to test it before due to several factors in real life: work, health and mostly laziness. And it seems that I am magnetic for bugs and crashes :) If more time was given, I would report a lot of stuff back then. Heh.. weeks ago.

I voted 'yes', because I think that this season should be put on hold for the time being. The game is too unstable. But I also think its fair to let people submit scores regardless. Some here find it rather fun; while I enjoy the thrill of playing a tower defense, others want to publish encouraging messages, or submit high numbers. That's fine. So, why not open a new tab called 'Beta Testers', and let people submit scores there. Even if the game is bugged, prone to exploits, people can still post scores in there. If the game version changes, exploits are found, you can just dump scores in there on the future. No need to erase them. The real season 2 was scheduled to start later anyways. I think its fair to archive everything and start fresh. But give it time for us to test the game. Only when its stable, release it. Otherwise this will happen again.

@Peter - huh? He died in the same place - level 303. With only a dozen points less than me.

No way, that Extra Chance must be nerfed - another Uber Stone ,4 PA and 1 FA in one round after 5 failed attempt, displayed chance raised to 65% which mean's about 19% for PA and 0.5% chance for 4 ones(maybe little more with "regular" rolls). Also the price should go up little faster each use, without cap Maybe gettting 2nd targeted Perfect should instantly disables this to prevent getting Uber Stones to easilly

@muellesx Nope... check's TTJ's high score right now

So... I guess level 303 is just a kill screen?

About the poll: I think few more rebalances will be needed in next days and its too fast for reset, only that's why i vote "no"

@216 I'm annoyed that the Slate/Combine Special fix accidentally opened up and relaxed Combine Special in Season 2. I should have caught that. It has now been fixed in 1.0.23.

Still is possible to combine special with 1 existing gem and 2 round gems What about armor aura instability issue? - cant't see that fix in updates Suggestion for high scores stats: "top towers" should shows actually made special gems, not all rolled gem (even repicked ones). Also it should clearly state if run contains an Uber Stone and level when it was construsted Similar stats would be interesting for Great Opal (especially for classic/S1) as GO and Uber Stone are TOTALLY game-changing gems, so existence/ lvl contruction(of first, if multiple) of them are most interesting stats for me besides total score/lvl

@tony_nguyen Boss spells available to help defeat the boss, use them wisely.