Defeated by a power cut :( Despite some places I can see I could have optimised, I feel I could have joined some of you guys in the lofty hights of 1200! https://postimg.cc/Z0yXCvwL

@216's point about "hunting" for the Uber tower is exactly what happen during our multitude of changes on Season 2. Gem TD obviously has some randomness to it but the Classic Uber gem is obviously way too much like a lottery ticket to add any fun.

I agree it would encourage players to hunt for it and I think that could make for some interesting strategies although I understand the desire to preserve classic mode as is. Perhaps it would work well as a future season.

I think it should remain as rare in Classic. But in seasons (is s2 it was WAY more likely) I voted for keeping them, but separate rewards (poll is on page 3 of comments). Keep in mind that making Uber more likely may cause players to hunt for it and the leaderboard to be flooded by Uber runs. Unless it will nerfed to point its no fun... Btw, specific Great gem chance is ~1/660

Currently it's so rare to the point of being non-existent. The probability of getting 4 of a specific perfect gem in one go is 5 x (1/80)^4 x (79/80) = ~ 1 in 8.3 million. Multiplied by the 8 gem types meaning it's approximately a 1 in a million chance meaning most people will never see it. Compare that to getting a Great gem: Specific: ~ 1/525 Any: ~1/65 With an 8-combine recipe it would give the option to spend a lot of the excess gold via repicks or at least consider the trade-off between that and buying lives. To clarify I agree that keeping the 4 combine feels natural, but I think there should be a way to make progress towards getting it as well.

Agree with statistic suggestions. The comment with time bonus was mine - it was mostly related to extreme scores. But the point of Uber Stone is being extreme rare, so it practiaclly can't be part of any strategy. Also the recipe is natural - just because 4-perfect combine (tier 7 quality gem(s)) should exist or game fells incomplete. Combining 8 Great gems? - in lvl 1200 there would be 2-5 such combinations...

I'm quite enjoying season 3 currently, the ability to temper the towers gives a lot of flexibility in tower placement which makes it very interesting. I have a few general suggestions. High scores: - Option to display personal bests only - Position indicator / badge for top 3 - Date of run - Sort tied scores by time rather than chronological, I believe I read a comment about giving a time bonus for a run with no leaks, but personally I prefer the idea of a perfect score to aim for. Individual run pages: Could we add additional statistics such as; - Number of leaks - Number of repicks - Number of one-turn special towers With the rebalance of the uber stone is it worth making it more accessible as realistically getting 4 of the same perfect gem is very unlikely - Perhaps combine all 8 Great gems - This would also give the option to create something other than paraibas for hundreds of levels, and potentially increase the max level achievable

Ahh I see, that's a nice feature then, this run is hours long so I'm in fear of the dreaded windows update, I'll join you on legendary when this run is done, its the first long run I've done.

A bit of a bug in classic? I just got asked to submit a score at level 500, but I had loads of lives left, and then once I hit submit, the game continued? As you can see in this screenshot i'm still going after that score i just submitted: https://postimg.cc/FYjC8jfn

Mostly looking for a walk down memory lane, its been almost a decade since I played this and happy to see it revived. I remember making (bad) art and participating in the discussion around slates, probably using the name Staples or similar. I've got to image who ever rebooted this is taking inspiration from those forum discussions and It would be cool to see what made it to production Given some of the comments I have read can i presume you are the one who rebooted this Peter? What made you decide to restart it? Edit: I see the credits at the bottom [Created by Peter Holko] Did you create the first one? A little history lesson or about section would be a nice add. Been liking the Seasons! Still learning the optimizations for slates vs gems, its a very cool addition.

@staples101 I have backups of the old comments. What are you looking for particularly?

I'm astounded this game was revived and actually implemented some of the forum topics from the 2010s. Does that forum still exist? I wanted to go see how much was translated from idea to implementation, and selfishly look for contributions I made from way back when.

Hey Y'all - I was able to cobble together a screen recorder extension for chrome - full disclosure it was made in ChatGPT using about 4 prompts only... https://youtu.be/OaOGziNsqWU It basically records each gem placement and gem keep, and also a screen is captured at the end of each wave (so you can see the combines, combine specials, and slate movements).

@LesserLeaf Welcome, hope you enjoy the changes :)

Hello, sorry for the maybe low quality comment, but I'd just like to say as someone who's played this game since the 2000s. I'm so delighted that you're doing updates and features, the fast forward and save mechanics alone make this amazing. I'm starting a game now and can't wait to try all the new stuff.

To the community, there are certain players that are still attempting to exploit the save & reload. I am proposing including the number of save & reloads in the scores at the minimum and secondly considering limiting the number of save & reloads per game run. Please answer the poll below.

@WGW Exactly, well put. And thank you for the compliment. I can do better if I get lucky with an early GO. Only had 17 LAJ in that 1244 run.

bruuuh ended w/ 360k score because i forgot i could buy more lives on a air wave. first ancient at lvl 7, and great opal at 42 thats crazy. (copied someone else's map, I forgot who, lmk if its ur design)

@216 Yes, I see your point, totally agree on your suggestion. I was really talking about the cliff in difficulty killing flyers at 44; I didn't know what the cause of the cliff was (what stats), just that there's a cliff. So I thought of HP first. But I can definitely see how a jump in speed could cause the difficulty spike, even if HP increase is reasonable. On a side note. . . I've figured out a way to archive all the comments and all the high scores for GTD going back to 2007. Still working on it, and (data comes from Wayback Machine), I'll say more later-- already have all the data!

The problem with lvl 44 is not jump in hp, which is ok. But combined with huge speed jump it makes lvl 44 flyers hard to kill. Before lvl 41 enemies use manually chosen stats, after they have same speed for rest of the game - flyers are as fast as grounds, resulting minimum speed 1.56x higher than on lvl 40 ofc, lvl 44+ flyers are main difficuly in the game, so they can't be nerfed too much. However i agree that little nerfing them and adding difficuly after lvl 100 is good idea So, my suggestion is: -keep current hp -reduce (minimum) speed on lvl 44 by ~20%, then on lvls 48,52,56, .. by less and less untill around 80-90 -reduce the initial lives amount to about 2-3, on all difficulties (explained reasons some time ago) For classic and future seasons (starting form s3) @PastaJawn after some balancing S2 is generally very nice, many possibilites even in early lvls

I used to play a lot, and took a few years off. Glad to see all the work this year, Peter. The game is better than ever! The save function is great.

I've got a good game going, but i'm afraid it's all for nought...every level, the crafting bug seems to get worse.

@Peter Yes, i explained the reason in eariel comment (as one of suggestions) and You responded "those are good suggestions" (final maze stat is interesting, though) Other (minor) problem: the Downgrade button recently changed position. It's even not always in same place - it may lead to missclick and one really happened to me: After placing gems (lvl 100+) i realized if i downgrade 4 of them ( or 3 ?) i can get Ancient Slate, so started downgrading them (too) quickly. Sadly, the last gem (NR) i needed to downgrade had also slate recipe - i did not realize i'm cliking "make slate" on time (despite color), resulting with (useless at that) point range slate. Tried to recover form this mistake by closing game quickly and load save, but was too late Ofc fitting 5 possible buttons in place where was 3, naturally cause UI problems

Yep

@muellesx Oh I see, you want to know your current path length after placing a tower or removing one?

@peter you misunderstand the ask. The point of a path metric is so we have a very clear indicator that we have injured our path during a turn's setup. It has to be a live metric, that updates even as stones are removed and added

@_G_ Path has been added to season 2 under the score.

Path length metric would be amazing. I am fully supportive of this addition to all versions of the game.

I am strongly in favor of an indicator for your path length. Seems like something that could be implemented intra-season

hmm. I have a game that is unfortunately coming to an end at level 350. But I cannot submit this score. The "Submit" button remains greyed out.

Hey pros - does not one of you want to make a yt video on how to get to lvl 100+ on seasons? If there is already one, I haven't found it.

Hi @Peter, it looks like the web version has roll back to previous version.

@tony_nguyen Sorry that was a bug. Ultimately to be eligible for the Season 2 badges, we want it to be a fair playing field and the last 0.44 change was significant enough that @216 should have a more difficult time getting to level 400. Again my apologies season 2 hasn't been handled properly, I should have opened it as "Alpha Testing" to a small group then we could have opened officially once testing was complete.

I think a scoreboard reset is necessary. The strategy I used to reach 364 will absolutely not work now.

@muellesx Yes no more changes for Season 2. @216 Yes those are good suggestions, I'll incorporate them into Season 3.

@MrHappyGem I sent a password reset email to you. You should be able to change your password after clicking the link in the email.

Hi There, I can't remember my password and can't see how to reset it thanks for your help Rob

Speaking of lives, there is 1 more question that i always wanted to discuss (related to classic, but affects seasons as well) >> the starting amount of lives Back in flash version we had 9. However leaking a early game flyer - lvl 16 was costing (already) 5 lives , making them effective as 2 lives. In JS version we start with 10 lives. In addition buying first ~7 lives is really cheap, allowing some early game mistakes (still worth to reset after early leaks, but many players continue with inefficient build, leading to loss in ~50) I seriously think the starting lives should be reduced to maybe 3 (?), as it should be more obvious that we are not supposed to leak before 44. It will also affect later game difficulty, by little. @Peter increasing live cost at 201 do not prevent it, jades change do it. In fact it's now needed to accumulate gold (and 50 lives) before 200 to use any repicks after. Life cost is escalating so quickly that with extra multpier or without it is matter of 20-30 lives (which is very few air lvls with few lekas each)

@Peter Did you noticed my edit about s3 tag? Mixing s2 and s3 comments is not a good idea, waiting with my s3 feedback now

@carlhr the invisible usernames in the comments should be fixed now

Ok. labels are there and they're not transparent. Their color is set to be very close to the dialog header. https://imgur.com/a/RdGIiHw

I forgot to mention I use android and chrome on mobile.

Now that I took a closer look, the interface is weird. This is how it looks like to me: https://imgur.com/a/wfwDSfm Aside from not being able to scroll, I cannot refresh the page, by dragging from the top of the page, to the bottom with touch. Clicking on 'Close', and opening the comments page from Season2 'More -> Comments' button doesn't refresh it either. Usernames do not appear, just their badges. But if I hold the touch over where it should have these labels, it looks like the label is there. Is it transparent?

I got curious and tested it. Mobile UX made this game much more playable on that platform. But I still can't scroll up/down on comments page. I can resize the page, but not scroll.

@Parson 2nd slate move costs 500 gold. Elder= poison+spell. @WGW: the frustration with early RNG happens mostly in speedruns attempts. I don't agree that PAq is needed early. But I want at least 2 EGs(3-5 best)before 44. Extra chances mechanic is still not fully clear for me, espec how it affects Flawless chance and normal rolls.

At level 250, I completed the walkers and didn't have enough lives. Do they take more than 1 life?

after 200 they don't give gold?

Devourer at level 303, what kind of boss is this, flying or walking?

The point was the chance of rolling naturally 3rd and 4th perfect is very low - but already many uber runs My mistake was thinking that 5 is cap of pity - in earlier comment i mentioned 26/million chance of Uber with "max" pity (with 3rd and 4th natural roll)- I meant 5 pity Those 1:8000 (P0) and 1:204 (P5) chances are obviously related to pre-1.0.24 version ,which was confusing

@216: Yeah, 1.0.24 is working. The confusing part is that 5 isn’t actually max pity. At 5, Extra Chance is being applied to all five rolls, but pity can still go up to 10 and keeps pushing those rolls toward the Perfect you picked. The 2 Perfect limit is only for Perfects forced by Extra Chance. You can still naturally roll a 3rd or 4th one, so seeing more than 2 in the round doesn’t mean the cap is broken. And yeah, the other changes are active too. Uber scaling is 5% per 10 kills now, and every Extra Chance use in the same 100-level tier adds another 35% of the base cost.

So... the 1.0.24 update actually works or no? I thought 5 is max tier of "pity bonus"

@216: The natural chance is about 0.000097% per eligible round — roughly 1 in 1.03 million. But the Extra Chances / Pity Bonus which appears to have been a real mechanic in the original Gem TD: Using Extra Chance for a targeted Perfect improves the Uber chance: Fresh target, no pity: about 1 in 8,000 Pity bonus 5: about 1 in 205 Pity bonus 8: about 1 in 136

I decided to vote for option 2 as I had an idea where it could be interesting to change the recipe for the uberstone to where you would have to craft it using the 5 great stones that aren't yet used for a recipe, aka GAQ+GT+GAM+GR+GO=uber. That said, I would also be fine with option 3, separate rewards.

I voted for separate rewards. This along with the uber badge effectively addresses my complaint. When you accept an Uber stone, you are electing to compete in a different bracket. I think the high scores would be better separated too.

@kotik, the slates (light grey stones) allow enemies to pass over them. For uberstones, my vote is to keep it. For me, having a broken/hard to get gem kind of makes the game more interesting with the caveat that it should still be possible for a normal run to reach a comparable level with proper placements. On that note, what if you were change the recipe for the uberstone to officially require 5 of the same perfect gem in season 2? I would also be fine with having an official game ending boss at maybe level 500 if it were possible to reach without an uberstone. basically, it would be a ground, unkillable boss where the main part of your final score is to do as much damage as possible to it? In fact you could even make it so that boss is immune to the uberstone (or it gets disabled completely), for when the final score gets calculated. That way we can still have a broken, hard to get gem that makes the game easy to reach the final boss level for the lucky few, while having it not actually contribute very much to your final score.

TTJ, https://imgur.com/a/KM2FuSN You don’t have a path to Point 1 in your maze, so how do they reach it?

@216 I would rather nerf the uber stone or remove it if we want a fair season 2 run.

It's just pixels @tony, just a few more pixels on the screen... That's how I see all cosmetics on any game, judge me how you want

Will the Season 1, 2, and 3 badges remain permanent after the season ends, or can they change if someone later surpasses your rank?

Even more simple than removing - Uber runs do not count for 1st 2nd 3rd rewards. For best lucky score can be separate badge. Nice Uber Icon display, but its only for s2? As well as aura bug, we shouldn't neglect classic.

@muellesx that is one option, we can remove it from season 2.

I would be in support of simply removing the uber. I can spend time arriving at and tweaking a great strategy and push the limits further than anyone... until someone lucks into an uber and blows away my strategic masterpiece. When I see a score above a certain threshold I know it's a freak uber run and disregard it. I'm not sure I wouldn't reject one right now, just so I could keep my run reputable.

@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.