Season 3
Season 3 officially began Vancouver time. It runs through December 31 and closes Vancouver time.
Season 3 grew out of the Season 3 Alpha test that began with 1.0.35; the current version is 1.0.38. The official season started on a fresh leaderboard, and Alpha scores are kept in the Season 3 Alpha archive.
Season 3 features 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 Season 3.
New towers in 1.0.38
Inferno Ruby: fuse a placed Fire Star with a placed Great Ruby, like the other advanced fusions. It burns up to ten ground or air enemies within 114.4 range every 0.5 seconds for 110–130 Ruby damage, and each burn sears again for half its damage before armor and weakness. The sear ignores armor and weakness and grows with the tower's level, damage auras and Tempering.
Paragon Stone: combine three or more identical Perfect gems of any color. It attacks ground and air within 171.6 range every 0.5 seconds for 250–350 Amethyst damage, with a 20% chance to deal four times the damage. Like the Uber Stone it cannot be downgraded, so the game asks before forging it.
To play, sign in, then choose Season 3 from the Seasons page.
Tempering and economy
Runs keep the balance they started with, including when saved and resumed.
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, Miasma Emerald, Inferno Ruby and Paragon Stone start at 640. Basic Slates start at 120 and advanced Slates at 360.
Malachite and Silver start at 6 gold, and Vivid Malachite and Sterling Silver 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% for each rank already on the tower. Each rank already in the path you buy adds another 25% to that path, so every path shows its own price. Each Temper rank on your other towers of the same gem (the same special, or the same color and quality of ordinary gem) adds 2%; for example, 20 Egyptian Golds with 10 ranks each make the next one's Tempering five times as expensive. These increases apply before any cap. Mighty Malachite keeps its 120 starting cost and 25% increase. All starting prices have a tier multiplier of 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75 and 2 across levels 1–425. 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 attackers, receive 4%. Miasma Emerald receives 6%: range lets it reach farther targets but does not change its clouds. Specialty descriptions show the exact effect: Jade improves its poison slow, Wraith adds 0.2 percentage points of Boost per rank (26% at rank five), armor-reduction auras gain 0.2 armor per rank (1 more at rank five), 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, 16 and 18 in the next hundred-level tiers (18 from level 401). 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 50% of their base duration. A new stun refreshes one that is still active; once a stun wears off, the enemy shrugs off further stuns for a recovery window that grows from 0.5 to 3.5 seconds. Special waves every 25 levels after level 40 are immune to stuns; 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.
Ordinary enemy armor is unchanged through level 150, then rises by one every 50 levels: 5 from level 151, 6 from 201, 7 from 251, 8 from 301, 9 from 351 and 10 from 401. Ordinary enemy health keeps growing at its level 30–50 rate until level 60, reaching 1.75 times normal, then rises steadily to 2.75 times at level 400 and keeps rising past it. Boss health, armor and control rules are unchanged.
The Devourer, the final boss, now waits at level 425, and its Tower Aegis spell moves with it. Level 400 is an ordinary wave. Levels 401–424 are tier-5 waves, with every fourth wave flying as usual, and a run ends when the Devourer at level 425 is defeated. The Splitter, Warlord and Prismatic Colossus stay at levels 100, 200 and 300.
An ordinary enemy that gets through costs 1 life through level 200, then 2 lives from level 201, 3 from 251, 4 from 301 and 5 from 351. Buy Life prices are multiplied by the same amount. A boss that gets through still ends the run.
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 · Season 3 scores · Season 3 Alpha scores · Season 2 rules