Season 3 Alpha

Season 3 Alpha is an opt-in test lane for the experimental 1.0.35 rules. It has separate runs and scores, so testing it cannot change the official Season 2 leaderboard.

Its current experiments include Gem Contracts, tower Tempering, Wave Boosters, and gold-purchased boss-spell casts. Attune makes the first placement your chosen gem type. A Perfect Writ makes the first placement an exact Perfect. A Slate Kit makes the first two placements the exact Normal core and first Flawed option for a slate. Uber Stone is not available in this alpha. Balance and mechanics may change while testing continues.

To join, sign in, enable Pre-Season Testing on your profile, then choose Season 3 Alpha from the Seasons page.

Tempering and economy update

New Alpha runs use revised balance; saved runs retain their original rules. The displayed version remains unchanged.

Chipped through Perfect gems start Tempering at 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 gold; Great gems start at 400. Fully upgraded early specials start at 120, Jade/Red Crystal families at 200, and Perfect-based specials at 320. Sapphire Knight, Diamond Trapper and Miasma Emerald start at 640. Basic Slates start at 120 and advanced Slates at 360.

Malachite starts at 6 gold and Vivid Malachite at 20. Each purchase on a gem with a gold upgrade costs at most one quarter of that upgrade, except Blood Stone: its prices start at 120 and keep increasing. Prices rise by 40% per purchased rank before any cap, using the total ranks on the tower regardless of which path you buy first. Mighty Malachite keeps its 120 starting cost and 25% increase. All starting prices have a tier multiplier of 1, 1.25, 1.5 and 1.75 across levels 1–400. There are five ranks per path and ten ranks per tower.

Crafting, upgrading, downgrading, and forging reset Temper ranks and transfer the gold invested into Temper credit on the resulting tower. Credit pays for its new Temper upgrades and cannot buy other items. Unused credit remains attached to the tower.

Damage improves attacks (including primary burn ticks) by 4% per rank. Separate poison, spell and cloud payloads retain their own damage values. Attack range improves by 6% for single-target towers, including Chipped–Perfect Ruby and other single-target splash attacks. True multi-target towers such as Malachite, Blood Stone, Great Ruby and Topaz, plus continuous area and cloud attackers, receive 4%. Specialty descriptions show the exact effect: Jade improves its poison slow, Wraith improves Boost, and splash-capable Rubies and Blood Stone can increase splash radius.

Every ordinary Opal quality gains one percentage point of Haste per Specialty rank; Great Opal reaches 55% at rank five. Star Yellow Sapphire Specialty improves both its attack slow and damage aura, reaching 30% slow and a 6.25% damage aura at rank five. Great Aquamarine attacks every 0.35 seconds and no longer provides Vitality. Only the strongest aura within each channel applies.

Repicks cost 25, 50, 75 gold and so on across the run. First-tier Contracts start at 75 gold for Attune, 750 for a Perfect Writ, and 200 for a Slate Kit. Each repeat adds 35% of that Contract's tier base price. Cancellations refund the amount paid.

Wave pacing and boosters

Ordinary waves contain 10 enemies through level 100, then 12, 14 and 16 in the next hundred-level tiers. After the initial increase at level 101, their walking and minimum speeds rise gradually each level through level 399, reaching the same late-game limits as before. There are no extra speed jumps at levels 201 or 301. Full-clear base gold is preserved and distributed across the smaller wave; bonus-gold opportunities still depend on combat. Boss counts, rewards and control rules are unchanged.

From level 101 through level 399, ordinary stun durations gradually fall from 95% to 85% of their base duration, while recovery grows from 0.5 to 1.5 seconds. Special waves every 25 levels after level 40 use a four-second recovery window; their ground waves alternate Diamond and Aquamarine weaknesses. Ordinary ground waves retain their Amethyst weakness. Over the same levels, flyers’ grounding durations gradually fall from 90% to 70% of normal. They must return to their air route before a recovery window that gradually grows from 5.5 to 6.5 seconds.

Overcharge grants 15% extra damage, Sky Net slows ordinary flyers by 20%, and Bulwark protects two nonfatal leaks. Booster prices and the one-booster-per-wave limit are unchanged.

Start Season 3 Alpha · Season 3 Alpha scores · Official Season 2 rules