Season 2 officially starts September 1, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. in America/Vancouver (Pacific time).

The season runs through October 31 and closes November 1, 2026 at 12:00 a.m. in America/Vancouver.

These rules apply only when you choose Season 2. Classic and Survival Season 1 remain available with their original rules.

Starting and finishing a run

• Choose your level 1 start. Before a new run, choose Malachite or Silver. The selected special gem's three recipe ingredients are guaranteed among the first five gems.
• Season 2 starts at 4× speed. The speed control can still be changed to 1× or 2×, and automatic performance fallback remains active.
• The map remains visible after a loss. Season 2 does not place the large You Lost banner over the board, allowing the finished maze and towers to be inspected.

How slate crafting works

• Base slates are one-hit recipes. Place the required Normal gem and one of the listed Flawed gems in the same placement round. Gems kept from earlier rounds do not satisfy a one-hit recipe.
• Combination slates have two paths. Make one directly by satisfying both base recipes with four gems in the same round, or combine the two already-built base slates shown below. A combination slate inherits the kills from the slates it consumes. Combining two stored slates consumes only those two entities and does not create a new rock.
• Overlapping recipes remain your choice. When the selected gems can make both a special gem and a slate, use Combine Special or Make Slate to choose the result.

Base slate recipes

Combination slate recipes

Great Gems Rebalanced

Season 2 gives all eight Great standard gems a clearer job. These Great-only stat changes apply only in Season 2; Classic and Survival Season 1 keep the original Great gem balance.

All eight standard gem types, from Chipped through Great, use their restored elemental armor strengths and weaknesses in Season 2. The Great-only profiles above retain their additional stat and projectile-speed changes.

Advanced tower fusion

Great Pink Diamond: in Season 2, Gravity Lock targets the leading ordinary flyer in range every 12 seconds and pulls it onto the nearest valid maze-route square. It follows the ground route as a true ground enemy for 8 seconds before returning to the air route. The landing always stays on the leg of the route the flyer was traveling, so a grounded enemy never skips checkpoints. Bosses are immune, and a recovered enemy cannot be grounded again immediately.

Sapphire Knight = Silver Knight + Great Sapphire. Both completed towers must already be on the board. Select either ingredient and use Combine Special; the selected tower becomes the Sapphire Knight and the other ingredient is consumed.

The Sapphire Knight retains Sapphire splash damage and slow. Its direct hits have a 20% chance to confuse an ordinary flying enemy for 5 seconds. A confused flyer wanders near the place it was struck instead of advancing along its route, then returns to its route when the effect ends. The effect cannot be refreshed continuously, and bosses are immune.

Diamond Trapper = Great Pink Diamond + Great Diamond. Sky Net improves Gravity Lock by targeting the leading ordinary flyer every 8 seconds. The captured flyer jumps onto the nearest valid maze-route square of its current leg and becomes a true ground enemy for 8 seconds. The Diamond Trapper retains ground-only direct attacks with a 20% chance to deal 5× damage; bosses are immune.

Miasma Emerald = Enchanted Emerald + Great Emerald. Its direct attack has a 15% chance to deal 4× damage. Every fourth successful hit creates a toxic cloud at the impact location for 6 seconds. The cloud inherits nearby damage auras, damages ground and flying enemies, builds damage through consecutive exposure, and leaves a 2-second toxin after an enemy exits. Boss exposure can build through three damage steps. Each Miasma Emerald may sustain at most two clouds, and overlapping clouds from the same tower refresh one toxin instead of multiplying it.

Late-game waves and milestone bosses

• Wave tiers: Season 2 uses a new tier every 100 levels: tier 1 covers levels 1–100, tier 2 covers 101–200, tier 3 covers 201–300, and so on.
• More enemies: non-boss waves use 10 enemies at levels 1–100. From level 101 onward, the population rises by two every 50 levels: 15 at 101–150, 17 at 151–199, 19 at 201–250, 21 at 251–299, 23 at 301–350, and 25 at 351–399. Milestone boss waves contain only the boss.
• Stronger ordinary waves: regular enemy health ramps smoothly from 1× at level 30 to 1.5× at level 50, then grows on one gentle straight line instead of compounding. The multiplier is about 1.82× at level 200, 2.04× at 300, and 2.25× at 400. Ordinary armor and speed also rise each tier past level 100. Every 50 levels, ordinary enemies are stun-resistant: the first stun lands normally, but after recovering that enemy shrugs off further stuns for 10 seconds. Milestone bosses use their separate health multipliers and control rules instead.
• Faster reinforcements: the interval between spawns is one second divided by the tier, with a minimum interval of 0.25 seconds. Tier-four flying waves instead use 0.4-second spacing so sequential anti-air and grounding effects can participate. Every defeated enemy, including the extra enemies added in later tiers, pays its normal gold and can qualify for Lucky Asian Jade bonus gold.
• Ordinary leaks: each non-boss enemy that escapes costs 1 life through level 200 and 2 lives from levels 201–389. The final stretch rises from 3 lives at level 390 by one each level, reaching 12 lives at level 399. Milestone bosses remain fatal if they reach the exit.
• Lucky Asian Jade: through level 200, its bonus-gold chance works as before and pays floor(level / 4 + 5) gold per proc. From level 201 onward, an eligible enemy that was damaged by one or more Lucky Asian Jades receives one combined bonus-gold roll when it dies, no matter which tower gets the killing blow. Each distinct contributing Jade adds an independent 10% chance, so the combined chance is 1 − 0.90^Jades, and a successful combined roll pays 5 × floor(level / 2 + 5) gold. Each enemy can award at most one bonus.
• Boss control resistance: most milestone bosses take slows at 50% strength and cannot be slowed below 40% of their current walking speed. Stuns begin at 30% duration and build temporary tenacity when applied repeatedly, so a timed control hit matters without permitting a permanent stun lock. The Prismatic Colossus is tougher to control: slows apply at 40% strength, its minimum speed is 50%, and repeated stuns build tenacity faster.

Each milestone boss replaces the ordinary wave, grants 1 life when defeated, and ends the run immediately if it reaches the exit. The Splitter's four fragments use the same must-defeat rule. Milestone bosses are the gates between tiers: each carries more total health than the ordinary waves around it, so a board that only barely clears its tier's waves is not ready for the boss.

Late-game gold sinks

Season 2's tier-scaled purchases use the same 100-level bands described above; Buy Life is the exception described below. These prices and features do not change Classic or Survival Season 1.

• Buy Life: each life costs 10 + lives purchased² at every level. Its price still rises with every life bought during the run, but no longer gains another multiplier after level 200 or 300.
• Extra Chance: use the Extra Chance button before placing your first gem to target a Perfect gem for 175 × the current tier or a base Slate for 125 × the current tier. Each prior Extra Chance purchase in the same tier raises the price by a further 35% of that tier's base price, and the count does not reset within the tier. A first-attempt Perfect target has about a 26.4% chance for Extra Chance itself to provide at least one targeted Perfect across the five placements; ordinary gem rolls can raise the actual total. Both target buttons display the same metric — the chance of at least one targeted result across the round's five placements — plus the pity level. A gem target increases all qualities of that type and increasingly favors its Perfect quality, but it can never lower the quality produced by your normal upgraded chance table. At maximum gem chances, Extra Chance therefore cannot produce a Chipped gem. A Slate target increases the Normal and Flawed recipe pieces for it and its combination partner. The five weighted slots are fixed when the round starts. You may switch or clear the target before placement begins. Repeated attempts build extra chance; the stored boost falls after a success and decays when left unused.
• Prismatic Forge: during a safe build phase, select a permanent Perfect standard gem and forge it into a different, deterministically chosen base gem type. The tower keeps its location, level, and kills. The Forge costs 1,000 × the current tier + 250 × previous forges² and may be used once in each tier.
• Slate moves: select an existing slate between waves and use the Move Slate button. A translucent preview snaps to the destination: green is legal and red is blocked. Press Escape, right-click, or Move Slate again to cancel. Each slate may be moved up to three times. Its first successful move is free, the second costs 500 × the current tier, and the third costs 1,000 × the current tier. An invalid move or a move you cannot afford consumes neither gold nor a move. A newly crafted combination slate starts with all three moves available.

Other Season 2 rules

• Repick: after placing five untouched gems, you may reroll all five for 50 × (repicks purchased in this tier + 1) × the current tier. The purchase count resets at levels 101, 201, and 301. No gem is retained. Repick becomes unavailable for that round after a current gem is downgraded, upgraded, combined, or otherwise committed. There is no cooldown or per-round limit beyond the escalating gold cost.
• Placement-round crafting: newly drawn gems cannot be crafted before all five placements are complete. During selection, Combine Special can use the selected current gem with matching current or stored ingredients; Make Slate can use a valid current-round recipe. Choosing a craft commits the round, so one placement round cannot be chained into several retained specials.
• Combine Three: three matching gems of the same type and quality combine into a gem two quality levels higher. Combining two still raises quality by one level. Three Perfect gems produce the corresponding Great gem. Season 2 does not offer a four-Perfect combine or Uber Stone. The combined result remains selected so it may be downgraded before Keep starts the wave.
• Slate pathing: slates are subdued, neutral-grey translucent effect entities rather than maze walls, so ground enemies pass through them and the path remains visible. Selecting or moving a slate temporarily makes it clearer. Their visible footprint still cannot overlap another tower. Combining two stored slates creates no rock because it is not resolving a five-gem placement round.
• Anti-stacking: a slate cannot overlap the aura footprint of the same slate type or of its direct combination/component. The two sibling base slates used in a combination may still be placed near each other.
• Speed aura channels: the strongest slate Boost, strongest Opal Haste, and strongest Great Aquamarine Vitality bonuses stack multiplicatively by multiplying their remaining cooldown factors. Multiple sources with the same aura name use only the strongest bonus. For example, 25% Boost, 50% Haste, and 10% Vitality leave 0.75 × 0.50 × 0.90 = 33.75% of the original cooldown.
• Damage aura channels: the strongest Viper aura stacks with the strongest Black Opal and Star Yellow Sapphire bonuses. Viper reaches 40% at 100 kills, then gains diminishing returns that approach but never reach 60%. The combined damage-aura bonus is capped at 100%.
• Elemental damage: standard gems, special gems, and slates use their assigned elemental armor matchup and show that element's color on the Damage line. Opal and Aquamarine both use Water damage and therefore share the same Damage text color.
• Ancient Slate: gains 20 damage per kill through 100 kills and 6 per kill afterward. Every landed attack attempts a fresh 3–7 second stun on its 5-second attack cycle; it cannot refresh an existing stun. A successful stun reduces ground armor by 6 or air armor by 3 for the same duration and taunts every tower within 86 range onto that enemy. Its restored level contribution is bounded at a 1.5× multiplier so it continues to scale without returning to the previous unbounded growth.
• Ancient Blood Stone: keeps the same flamestrike damage and duration, but its Season 2 impact radius is widened from 10 to 24 so it can reach a moving enemy group. Flame Strikes inherit nearby damage auras when cast.
• Uber Stone: is not available in Season 2. It remains available under the preserved Classic and Season 1 rules.
• Deterministic autosave: placement choices and random results are saved so resuming produces the same committed outcome instead of a new roll. Starting another run while a progressed save exists asks whether to resume or deliberately abandon it, and an older copy of a replaced run cannot keep submitting saves. Extra Chance state, Forge progress, tiered Repick counts, slate kills, and slate move counts also resume exactly.
• Safe build boundaries: upgrades, downgrades, combines, removals, life purchases, chance upgrades, and slate moves are made before combat. During a wave, only combat controls remain available, so a reload can replay the saved wave launch without granting a stronger starting board.