CDT Update 2 Beta Discussion

@Castamere1 quote:

i just started playing again last week after 2 years of not playing and i was so happy to see that people are still playing. i cant believe this game is even getting updated and more dlc. i think everything you've added is amazing. the only problem i have with anything is that on lab run at the end the evs bosses sometimes get stuck and are kinda buggy but its no big deal.

welcome back my dear friend and yes more ppl are coming back new players in the game and most importantly new update ;)

@Justinmsss quote:

So far my experience with the beta has been mostly good, there are a few things I do feel need balancing. The new mob... if you are caught off guard by one (especially in survival) you are for sure dead, maybe there damage can be tuned back a slight bit but having a new tough enemy to face is always nice.

harbringers so op :D,i totally forgot about them and afked like a boss,went to grab a beer and when i came back i found myself dead....wondering what killed me till i saw it.

the survival starting wave ability to start at higher waves is so cool,no more long runs to farm chickens (havent tried any other surv).

Also,the loot beam,is cool yes, but for someone like me who have the tav filled with stuff on floor...well...it seems a saturday disco now,beams everywhere. Not sure if i missed any post regarding this but a turn off/on in options would be so cool :D (probably the people that will read this thread wont need it, but i have a ton of low-mid tier obsi weapons for starting players to give out (sponsored by myself and Atlas (<3) ). Dont expect high end stuff but feel free to contact me if you need some starting weapons :).

Again sorry for my bad english :armwave:

Big fat wall of text incoming... I'm going to post several times and I'm sure that I forgot something... if anything isn't clear or obscure please ask. Also English isn't my native language as many should know and it takes a lot of time for me to write that much...

New Content

Embermount Tavern Theme
To be honest I like it, but not to be disrespectful I'd also like an option to give players a choice about the Tavern theme. Any plan to realize that? (Haha, good start... derailing)

Embermount Volcano Campaign
First off, this map is a blast, brings back some challenge for higher stat users. Saying that you are not able to carry any people who are inexperienced with certain game mechanics. You stand no chance... either enemies are breaking through (player fault) or the Phoenix makes mincemeat of you and your team. Now I would like to blame my build but playing with more experienced players and soloing a few days ago worked pretty well while yesterday was a mess. The build itself was originally created with stats of ~5.5k. Not tested with 2k yet but I'm down to mythical-geared builders (Level 74) with stats of ~3.3k. Stat-wise this map isn't too hard.

The Phoenix is really tough on Nightmare. I'd like to see a damage reduction for its "dive" attack, mages (4k health, fully upped and buffed staying in drain aura) are literally one-hit if you stay to close to them. "To close" means a range of several units, also its vertical range seems a bit too heavy (standing on bridge, minions below were killed). I suggest a damage value (probably percentages of health taken) which requires two or three hits, to have some room for hero movement mistakes or having a chance to heal defenses. Its second attack, the homing fireballs, are also a bit too strong in my opinion. Sometimes they get fired high frequently and since you are supposed to dodge them, a huge part of the map is covered by fire - sometimes. A less area effect would probably do the trick, especially because Reflection Beams won't work. Less copter Ogres for 3p+ teams during boss fight is probably also a step forward. Don't get me wrong - the challenge is great, I'd say we just need a bit more room for mistakes.

However, the Phoenix comes along with three bugs which I encountered while running the map. I've noted that sometimes the Phoenix kills itself by flying into the lava when you fall down - I doubt sacrificing is intended. Another time (happened once) it was starting its "dive" attack, flying out of the map, never coming back... lost after a couple minutes with 24m health left. Three or four times it collided and stuck either with my minions (on the bridge) or with random flying wyvern.

The Harbinger are awesome, much better than on DDE. A player focused type of enemy which are dealing much more damage to players than to defenses. I like it. Also easy to avoid to be killed by them if you pay attention. Probably intended since Reflection Beams are some kind of "electrical" beam - they won't work on Harbinger' electrical attacks - I like it.

The rewards... the overall question is; How much runs does it take to get a very strong weapon? If we just need to do a handful of runs to own insanely good weapons (damage-wise) then the map gets the "play to win" stamp such as Lab Assault (acc/armor wise), Moonbase (weapon/pet wise). I'm talking about that because I haven't played Ember hundreds of times but weapons are pretty good already (damage-wise). The stats itself seems broken as in I have negative hero damage on almost all ultimate. I do like a variety of weapon choices but making them to drop high frequently while you have to do countless runs to get a strong weapon on other maps is an issue for me.
 
Whatsoever, here my thoughts about the weapons... Ember Cresent (misspelled? missing c) needs a damage reduction, melee and ranged-wise. 4.3k Monk, melee Crescent 70k (330^) is equally to a Obsidian with 83k (380^), ranged Crescent 44k (350^, smaller spread) damage out an Obsidian with 22k (330^). https://imgur.com/a/JxYOs

Ember Flame 46k (300^) seems balanced due to the fact of low range and dealing fire damage. 100k Blaster Rifle does less damage though. Anyways fine due to above disadvantages.

Sword of Embers seems comparable to a Eternian Greatsword. Based on upgrades it would have reached similar base damage and attack speed seems equally too. I only got two so far - if this weapon drops frequently with upgrades of 350+ then I'd say it is too good.

No luck on an App weapon yet, seems like only Crescents are dropping for me whenever I play Jester, a bug? My major concern is that players will say that you have to beat the map to get a decent weapon in a short time. The best drops should be super rare, even better if these weapons (except Ember Flame) doesn't outperform really good weapons from other maps. So Ember is more a challenge than a map which needs to be done in order for good items.

Rewards on other difficulties seems broken - Insane HC, upgrades are between 20 and 50. I'm not saying they have to be similar and have same possibilities as rewards on Akatiti Insane but current state seems odd.

Album -> here

Embermount Volcano Survival
Played with with Summoner only, reached Wave 22 (I think) on NMHC and completed on Insane HC. Drops weren't impressive on NM but well Wave 22 :) Survival doesn't seem to hard yet, I attempt to run it again within the next days.

I was running into a few bugs. XP seemed to be super high at first then there was no gain at all. I assume the bonuses are working only for Wave 8 to 15 (probably copy paste error from campaign?). I also think XP on Insane is too high... well after all I don't think anything was working correctly... pet rewards was looking like pets from the tavern shop. I've seen a screenshot from Arch about the stat pet... too good! Needs a nerf if that is possible on NM. Challenging, yes - getting more op stuff, no.

Some enemies stuck at certain places (camp & surv), spiders from one side of the map will not move if you stay on the other side of the map, sometimes goblin copters are not dropping their ogres, some kill triggers are missing and there are two spots enemies walk into a wall... Pic 1 , Pic 2 (also Ogres and other enemies seems to stuck more frequently there), Pic 3 (Djinn south-spot, outside of the map), Pic 4

Enemy count seems broken at least on Insane (couldn't test on NM yet)... Wave 40 had 8600 enemies with 4 players but Harbingers and Ogres stopped spawning after a count of 2400-2600... so round about 6000 trash mobs.



Accessories
Ember NMHC, getting lots of cursed accs, many accs have negative hero dmg, seems odd. But I also read some feedback already, some seems to get Ult accs... you know what I will say... challenge yes, more op stuff no... even though I seem to be unlucky then.

I don't care about the cosmetic effect while wearing a full set of certain accessories, nice idea anyway.



Moonbase Campaign
Missing "Bonus: " in front of the campaign selection. XP gain is too high, even though there are other maps which still give more XP but Moonbase already rewards you with quite good weapons and builder pets. Playing Moonbase a single time and you are able to hit Level 74 under best circumstances while getting also a quite good pet and probably a tower weapon. Finally a quick message when you've hit 42 - nice.

Moonbase Survival
Played once, reached Wave 27 sum only... was fine. Nonetheless, more survival testing needs to be done by me.



News Page
Banned <3 :)

Others

Harbinger Icon Missing -> here

Ember, Summoners Overview and Jesters Move Tower ability doesn't allow to build or move towers south of the map.

Improvements

God Beam
The "god beam" / particle effects to highlight transcendent+ stuff isn't as bad as expected. In Tavern it needs to be disabled, can't see anything -> here


Maximum Start Wave
Skeleton / Chicken run 28/35 35mins, 33/35 15mins. That's too fast for my taste. If you want to grind for best possible stuff you should invest some time. Making such runs faster just leads to a shorter overall play-time. What's left if you have no goals anymore? We really don't need to speed up gearing. I would like a complete revert of this change but at least 23/25, 28/30, 30/35, 35/40 as a settlement. -> here


Camera Rotation locked
Finally, and moving while building is now a feature rather than an annoyance... thumbs up.


Tower Dynamic Light
Setting will be not saved on restart. However I don't see any effect on my (8-years old) system. FPS remains low if I'm playing in 4p split screen. Working as intended?


Cursor placed relative to the hero
No clue what has been changed. Anyone wants to enlighten me?


Traps and Auras can overlap spawns
I personally don't like it. The only spawn where it should be possible is south EAST spot of Tinkerers Lab due to map design. I don't see any reason why you would be unable to reduce Aura/Trap range by pressing minus on your keyboard.


Summoner Minion movement
No clue what has been changed. They act equally "stupid" than before.


Traps on uneven terrain
Most useful improvement of this update. Even though the vertical activation range is huge, needs some rework I guess. Enemies are able to activate traps which are placed on another level.


Slow ogre spawns
No change on Kings Game Campaign. Much better now on Akatiti/WW Campaign/Survival.

Bugfixes

Fix health decay rate for proton beam depending on the attack rate
Enlighten me please?


Possible fix for goblin copters forgetting to drop their ogre when the drop zone is reached
Still happening e.g. on Ember -> here


Possible fix for DEW / Spider targeting when there are no target-able players on larger maps
Still happening. Played Kings Game with Summoners, being not in phase and standing at map areas where they are not able to reach you due to missing waypoints, they stuck. Entering phase shift, they immediately moved on. Same happens on Ember if you stay at the bridges. Also on Ember if you stay at one side of the map, spiders on the other side will stuck. You have to walk over to the other side. If spiders have no waypoint to a player they should target something different.


Fix accented ‘U’ in Uber maps being incorrectly formatted and not showing as an accented ‘U’
Uber was correct to me... German umlauts are usually not used in English... just my 2 cents.

Others

Other fixes seems to work for me.

Balance Updates

Before I'm going to comment any balance chances, I would like to known when we have received the nerf on tower rate? I discovered that change after I've tested the new DST - I remembered much better rates so I switched back to 8.1 but nope, rates were still not as good as I'm remembering. Testing more towers and well, across the board tower rates has been changed to the worst either with v8.0 or v8.1.

Examples:
Harpoon Turret was spec'd to hit a rate 0.09, now 0.14
Bowling Ball Towers had either 0.07 or 0.08, now including change same.
Deadly Strike Tower had for sure 0.5x (0.53 IIRC), now including change 0.75.



Tower Buff Beam -> here
The TBB was always too strong, now you have also removed the requirement to upgrade them. Scaling of a TBB was as noticeable as now. You just increased the base value for non-upgraded Buffs... wrong decision in my opinion. Upgrading has to be more important for TBBs than stats.

If you want that stats have an higher impact on TBBs I'd say stats must have an impact on upgrading.

Example... (reference -> here )
old TBB, stats 0, non-upgraded - boost values 1.03 / 1.05 / 1.05 / 1.05
old TBB , stats 0, 3-star'd - boost values 1.82 / 1.76 / 1.53 / 1.59

This is too good for stats of 0, now let's say stats of 0 will change a boost value by 0.05 / 0.04 / 0.03 / 0.03 per upgrading
my new TBB, stats 0, 3-star'd - boost values 1.28 / 1.25 / 1.17 / 1.17

old, stats 5k, non-upgraded - boost values 1.55 / 1.38 / 1.15 / 1.26
old, stats 5k, 3-star'd - boost values 2.33 / 2.07 / 1.61 / 1.77

This would fit a change at late game of 0.15 / 0.13 / 0.09 / 0.09 per upgrade.

Just a rough example which probably needs more and clearer explanation. The positive side affect if stats have an impact on upgrading... you can build your TBB to your liking e.g. if your tower rate is higher than tower damage then you gain more on rate than on damage by upgrading your TBB.

Slice'N Dice -> here
Too strong... I guess you tried to balance them compared to Harpoon Turrets... Turrets were always too strong compared to other towers. Nerfing them is no option though. However, my turret does 1.7m DPS while the snd does 5m. I see the point of low-range and that these towers are legitimate to deal more damage but that's over the top. I'd say reduce it to 2m first and lets see if its still underpowered. Probably it is already overpowered. Small changes please.



Lightning Tower -> here
Slightly too strong... I guess you tried to balance them compared to Electric Auras since they do have a similar area effect. Similar stats, electric aura deals ~300k, would like to see a drop of the Lightning Tower too a DPS of 300-350k. However the most balanced huge change you've done.



Bowling Ball Tower -> here
Well considering the ninja nerf of tower rate, this tower gets almost its old rate. Bowling Ball towers were always fun to use and nothing else than a fun tower. Harpoon Turrets are just superior.

Deadly Strike Tower -> here
Most disappointed change to me. Lowering tower rate once again (ninja nerf) makes this tower even less effective. The DST was pretty much fine, used it regular on lots of maps. Decreasing fire rate makes a few builds not working for me anymore, probably the most popular since included into my guide... Kings Game.

Before the ninja nerf I've shot 550k projectiles every 0.53 seconds killing 151k wyvern. That was already overkill... now I'm shooting 1704k projectiles every 0.75 seconds killing 151k wyvern. Doesn't seem a huge change but in fact it is. We are wasting way too much damage. It's like you are going to change harpoons to 1075k damage per 0.6 seconds and poons still pierce enemies... 

Instead of decreasing the fire rate I would have increased it. A slight damage buff is probably fine but I would have decreased DU costs from 8 to 7 to bring them on par with other towers. After all DST is a special tower for special usage since it has wall pierce. Placing them similar to other towers is already a waste of their potential, just saying.

So, keep the old damage scaling, increase fire rate and reducing DU costs brings them closer to other towers. A better change than a 310% damage boost.



Magic Missile Tower -> here
A small change and absolutely fine with it.

Darkness, Inferno, Gas traps -> here
Nope, reducing trigger radius is meh. My first thought was you wanted to balance them but I've heard rumors. Well I don't see any issue reducing trigger radius by pressing minus on the keyboard if needed. If you actually wanted to balance them I'd say instead of reducing trigger radius change how tower rate affects these traps.

On above traps, Tower Health should only affect detonation. Effective Duration such as Detonation Reset Time could be affected by Tower Rate. Currently my effective duration reaches 69 seconds non-upgraded and 89 seconds upgraded. That makes number of detonations literally unimportant. I would like a massive nerf, on NM even more. Instead of 89 seconds a fully upped Trap could last only 15-20 seconds. At the end this is still overpowered if we consider 300ish detonations... so maybe an even higher health nerf on NM for these type of traps. As higher your tower rate as shorter will be the detonation reset time and as longer will last an effect.



Spike trap -> here
Absolutely overpowered... dealing 10x the damage a proxy deals. Gas traps are obsolete now, even for Djinns. They would need a health of 19m for my non-upgraded spike to be dangerous, almost 29m for my upgraded and 51m if they want to try to desummon a buffed one... broken!!! I wouldn't exceed a damage buff of x2 compared to a proxy. The Spike trap has no disadvantage compared to a proxy except much lower detonations (electrical damage doesn't count to me because a Drain is build anyways). With the fixed effective range they also explode in a chain reaction (they always did, just not with huge traps).

Actually I wouldn't want a buff at all if DU costs remains steady. Increasing DU costs probably leads to builds where you miss units suddenly, so that doesn't seem an option. However if you decide to give the spike trap a damage buff, I'd say x1.5-x1.7 of a proxy while DU costs has to be increased to 4 from 3.



Mana / Purity Bomb
A nice change and makes the ability a bit more useful. However the CD of 45 seconds is too long considering other heroes abilities. A barb does much more damage such as Jesters wheel. Also cat and hero boost has no impact on the bomb.

That's it for now... I'm still playing beta to test and probably discover more issues.

Edit: Finally I want to admit that I already did minion-less runs on all maps, middo went a step farther and did minion- and aura-less runs on many maps. So balancing really needs minor changes to start with.

RE: "ninja tower rate nerf"
This didn't happen. What did happen between 8.0 and 8.1 was a fix to the tower reported rate (ie. the text that tells you how many seconds between attacks) so that it covered the entire time between attacks. Previously animations weren't factored into this in any way and so the number was reported low for most animated towers (primarily projectile towers).

tl;dr You can compare reported numbers between 8.1 and 8.2, but comparing to earlier versions will be misleading. The training dummy the only "accurate" measure pre-8.1

Continuing on...

"Cursor placed relative to hero" - if you have move while building enabled, the cursor stays at a fixed offset to your hero, rather than a fixed position on the map (moving either the hero or the cursor moves the tower)

"Summoner Movement" - put a minion on the wooden platform/ balcony area behind the highest xtal in Aqua. Give a move order to another point on the platform. Previous versions the minion would moonwalk off the side, because it had no idea what it was supposed to do (probably applies to the tav keep bench as well)

"Traps on uneven terrain" - example where triggering on the wrong floor is an issue please

"harbinger icon" - fixed for next beta release

"phoenix bugs" - suicide phoenix is fixed, still trying to pin down the cause of the lost phoenix, stuck phoenix is an easy fix

"settings not persisting" - issue with steam builds that needs a bit of effort. Aiming to resolve befre end of beta

@CrzyRndm quote:

RE: "ninja tower rate nerf"
This didn't happen. What did happen between 8.0 and 8.1 was a fix to the tower reported rate (ie. the text that tells you how many seconds between attacks) so that it covered the entire time between attacks. Previously animations weren't factored into this in any way and so the number was reported low for most animated towers (primarily projectile towers).

tl;dr You can compare reported numbers between 8.1 and 8.2, but comparing to earlier versions will be misleading. The training dummy the only "accurate" measure pre-8.1

Continuing on...

"Cursor placed relative to hero" - if you have move while building enabled, the cursor stays at a fixed offset to your hero, rather than a fixed position on the map (moving either the hero or the cursor moves the tower)

"Summoner Movement" - put a minion on the wooden platform/ balcony area behind the highest xtal in Aqua. Give a move order to another point on the platform. Previous versions the minion would moonwalk off the side, because it had no idea what it was supposed to do (probably applies to the tav keep bench as well)

"Traps on uneven terrain" - example where triggering on the wrong floor is an issue please

"harbinger icon" - fixed for next beta release

"phoenix bugs" - suicide phoenix is fixed, still trying to pin down the cause of the lost phoenix, stuck phoenix is an easy fix

"settings not persisting" - issue with steam builds that needs a bit of effort. Aiming to resolve befre end of beta

Is there a plan to implement a toggle for loot particle beams? 

A setting and a hot-key would be nice.

@CrzyRndm quote:

RE: "ninja tower rate nerf"
This didn't happen. What did happen between 8.0 and 8.1 was a fix to the tower reported rate (ie. the text that tells you how many seconds between attacks) so that it covered the entire time between attacks. Previously animations weren't factored into this in any way and so the number was reported low for most animated towers (primarily projectile towers).

To be clear this change had no effect on our tower DPS, the shown numbers were just not correct? Aight.

@CrzyRndm quote:

"Traps on uneven terrain" - example where triggering on the wrong floor is an issue please

Not a major flaw, just wondering if it's intended like that since the vertical distance seems huge. -> here I guess, you've created a cylindrical entity and on touch with an enemy it executes the script.

"setting/toggle for beams" - see current issues with settings not loading for why this isn't a thing yet
"no DPS effect" - correct
"vertical dist seems huge" - Enemies underneath are triggering the thing with their heads... (I'll tweak this a little but unless it's working through multiple seperated levels (eg. kings game) I don't think it's a huge issue

I'm really digging the new map and the new changes.  

• I love the new "God beams" when running a map but in the tavern, they are a bit much.  They over power the natural beauty of the items.  It would be nice to have a hot key toggle (like hold right-shift) to see the beams since they are nice quality reminders if I'm running a floor shop.
• Embermount Ogres seem to have trouble getting out of their spawn points.  Not a big deal since I never saw any get stuck but it looked weird to see them "dancing" in their spawn caves for a while.  They take a step out, hit a trash mob, turn around walk to the back of the spawn cave, hit the wall, repeat.

-i've played on the beta abit and it looks great so far, but i am not sure if it is my connection or not that sometimes i start to build a map and when i press start/g, i get kicked from my own game. this have happen to me a few times in the last days.

- i realy like the new light over the items

-it were going to be a new pet from survival MB, but it wasnt. havnt u added this yet or is it a bug?

I played through some maps on my mythical characters with stats in the range 3 - 3.5k and one thing I noticed on Moonbase was the golden enemies. Although I support the idea of making the difference between golden and normal enemies in late game bigger I think this only makes it harder for people to enter nightmare. Paired with the gas trap range nerf I think some would have a harder time. I could be wrong of course.

Additionally I support the illumination over items of certain quality. It's a nice touch.

btw while your Fightning the pheonix sometime when you hit him he doesent come at you just shotting Fire balls from far

i posted my feedback in the first page

@CrzyRndm quote:

"setting/toggle for beams" - see current issues with settings not loading for why this isn't a thing yet
"no DPS effect" - correct
"vertical dist seems huge" - Enemies underneath are triggering the thing with their heads... (I'll tweak this a little but unless it's working through multiple seperated levels (eg. kings game) I don't think it's a huge issue

Thanks for your response CrzyRndm,

The OP lists "Option settings not being retained" under current issues.

Is this just an issue with persistence between game launches or in game persistence? I think that even just having a key toggle for the beams during gameplay (not an actual setting, just a hot key) would suffice. If the only problem is persistence between game launches, I don't see what is preventing implementation.

Persistence between launches, but it's rather a major issue (there's atleast two more settings that currently have no in game method of changing, hence can't be modified from the defaults...) so the priority is to get that fixed before any more is done with settings

"Phoenix not charging when hit" - intended

"Golden enemies making it harder to enter nightmare" - Enemies in earlier parts of nightmare can be less powerful when golded than before. The major change is once you get past about W20 in survivals (earlier for harder maps, later for easy ones). Lesser difficulties also use lesser boosts, take longer to cast the gold beam, and have a longer cool down between casts.

While I haven't played to much of the beta these are the things I've noticed:

Likes:

• The new item upping system with shift and Ctrl is great
• Raised damaged to make all towers relevant i.e mage towers
• Ogres spawning faster- makes KG much nicer to play

Dislikes:

• Health on proton beams is far too low- with 6.8k health I had to repair them a fair amount on aka. This is how I had the defence set out which had problems.
• Ofc spike traps need to be nerfed

Not really an issue for the CDT but Personally I also don't like the way traps are now upgraded. I have relatively low health on my traps as compared to my auras so I would like to up them before the auras. I solved this with remapping my keys to use the scroll wheel to re-size stuff so now when you upgrade you can use the scroll wheel to select  traps pretty easily.

I have one major complaint. There are no harbingers on every map. Deeper well easy needs at least 50 of them.

Embermount Drops

Not sure if anybody else was having this problem, but every drop from Embermount NMHC survival (no MM) was absolute crap. Did waves 10-30 with monk and only get ult and supreme weapons. Got about 15 ults and 10 supreme. No supreme had more than 400 tower attack and no ult had more than 500 tower attack. The rest of the stats were so terrible I'm not entirely sure how it spawned ult. I switched to summoner for the last 10 waves and immediately stopped having ult drops and supreme drops were rare. In the 10 waves, I had 3 supreme with meh stats. 

The final reward is pretty good. Stats are nice for such a hard pet to get and the lack of speed boost makes it not OP. I think it's fine where it's at. All my accessories and weapons have been total trash with a few nice high stats, but I assume that's just due to bad RNG.

Waveskipping

Not entirely fixed, but the window to do it has definitely been lowered. Went from skipping all waves in BB to only being able to skip 3. 

Annatar Set Bonus

First thing I noticed was an annoying black box around the circle next to the weapon that can only be seen on the right side

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/494646452319676167/74DD8B7EC55B3A7C9142BC53AD0BD3F21DB6D426/

It was a great idea in gerneral to buff towers which had mostly no use in nightmare. This brings back the games variety to end-game players along with new content. Looking forward to build with more bowling ball towers and magic missile towers. Steam trading cards are also something I always missed in the game. I am wondereing what kind of cards there will be. If the cards are the different classes I think it would be a nice addtion to add bosses as well.
Updating this once I found time to play the beta

I never got any guardians in the beta yet, however,

Has the 5 tower limit been removed?  I think if this is done, it might make these pets a viable alternative over a buff beam.

The ones you get at low level and start game typically don't have enough upgrades usually to get even 4 towers so it shouldn't make intro/low end OP.  And I find 5 towers end game just doesn't cut the mustard.

Dislikes / Things that would be nice to see done/fixed if possible

-lvl 100 not having enough mana to do two 3-star upgrades (2440 mana)

-guardian pets 5 tower cap  grrrr arggg

-having HC checked for easy, med, hard, for intro maps spawns lvl 70 pets (probably a bug)

Likes

Most of the changes so far, as some others mentioned gas trap diameter a bit small, etc.

Other

Would be really awesome if there was a way to upgrade gear in trial mode, be able to reset, test before accepting.  I know you can export to ranked, but it's a bit of a pain, especially when you want to try about 4 different ways to upgrade 1 piece of equipment.

Cheers

Tavern theme looks nice. I don't like really like the whole light coming up from weapons and stuff. That is just my personal opinion. When getting into DD (or when you are selecting local or whatever) The Dungeon Defenders sign has kinda lost redness. I love the new scaling on the apprentice for mana bomb. Probably a viable character now. These could just affect me, but other than that these are some notes.

First, I'd like to point out a bug when upgrading items - specifically those with set bonuses applied.  The numbers are ... a little weird.  This is most notable when upgrading resistances.  Shown below, is a transcendent chestpiece with set bonus.  When upgrading from 36% resistance (with set bonus applied), the next resistance should be 38% (with set bonus applied).  However, when hovering over the upgrade, it shows 37% as the next upgrade.  After applying the upgrade, it changes to 38%.  Perhaps this is due to inconsistent rounding formulae? Other places this occurs: hovering over 24% (with mythical set bonus), hovering over 23% (with transcendent set bonus).  It doesn't happen as often when upgrading armour stats (or maybe because of higher numbers?), but occasionally does happen.

http://imgur.com/a/hhn0n

Now, onto other areas.

• I enjoyed the enemy path highlighting on Embermount, mainly because it lets you get an idea of where wyverns will be coming from, which usually isn't very clear
• Higher survival start waves certainly help with end-of-survival runs, however I do agree with EagleOne in that maybe the start wave shouldn't always be max - 2 for the 35/40 wave survivals
• God beams are a nice way to easily see trans+ drops, but as others have pointed out, can be excessive in player taverns.  A toggle button would be nice
• As expected, auras/traps overlapping spawns breaks many maps, most notably Raining Goblins.  In other maps, if you place auras/traps close enough to enemy spawns, they can extend PAST the enemy spawn protection area, allowing you to kill enemies even before they enter their spawn protection.  Talk about a new level of spawncamping!
• No more camera rotation when building - great change
• Jester's abilities working in tavern - great.  Now if only there was an easier way to break presents in the tavern...

@Hardened Defender quote:

• Higher survival start waves certainly help with end-of-survival runs, however I do agree with EagleOne in that maybe the start wave shouldn't always be max - 2 for the 35/40 wave survivals

This change was made to treat all maps equally concerning the max start wave.  If the community wants to change it back, we can do that.  My question would be why treat certain maps differently than others?

@Hardened Defender quote:

• God beams are a nice way to easily see trans+ drops, but as others have pointed out, can be excessive in player taverns.  A toggle button would be nice

A toggle is incoming

@Hardened Defender quote:

• As expected, auras/traps overlapping spawns breaks many maps, most notably Raining Goblins.  In other maps, if you place auras/traps close enough to enemy spawns, they can extend PAST the enemy spawn protection area, allowing you to kill enemies even before they enter their spawn protection.  Talk about a new level of spawncamping!

What maps does it break?

@ddace quote:This change was made to treat all maps equally concerning the max start wave.  If the community wants to change it back, we can do that.  My question would be why treat certain maps differently than others?

Because not all survivals have the same number of waves, so already not all maps are equal.  While part of the difficulty of survival is the stronger monsters, another part is the sheer number of monsters and the time you invest into into it.  Plus, I think there might be no copters on the first wave of survival? Whatever is so special about maps that have more than 25 waves should maybe warrant extra time invested too.  Although with 40 wave survivals, going from 28->40 is excessive given that not everyone has multiple hours to spare with no disconnects.  While it is more difficult to build on higher waves, and higher waves naturally have more monsters, perhaps 1 no-copter wave and 1 full wave isn't quite enough?

@ddace quote:What maps does it break?

Deeper Well, for an example: http://i.imgur.com/DN3wl22.jpg

New Content

Embermount Volcano campaign map with Poenix Boss:
If a stand at the south core ogres likes to get stuck at the spawnpoint here
the boss ... first boss your meleechar is absolutely useless (unless i miss something obvious)
i was not able to kill or even  make any good dmg at the boss with my dps monk the boss was always out of my range
means that you are restricted to use a dps ranged char what i personally dont really like if you are forced to use a special class
would be very nice if the boss stops for some seconds at a specific position where you can actually melee him
second point about the boss ... its doing way too much dmg to the defenses but this was already mentioned before
and third ... boss has no icon on the map so its kinda hard to find out where he is if you lost him once and you dont know his routes

the map itself is simply amazing i really like it

Embermount Tavern Theme:
really nice work with this and good to see something different again

Phoenix feather plaque when beating Embermount:
Not implemented yet but yey achievements :D

New enemy - The Harbinger:
92k dmg with 81% electrical resistance seems a bit op imho
but still nice designed

4 New weapons (1 for each class):
all realy nice designed and finally a possibility to get a monkweapon as good as an obsidian clava/gladius

Two new pets in Embermount Survival:
the lavacorn (ember pony) looks nice but i havent tested it on dps so dont know how strong it will be
the animorphic ember ... well i just think it spawns too frequently with amazing stats.
It's okay that it is possible with such great stats but think it does too often spawn better then a magicite

Moon Pet added to Moonbase Survival:
Moon ... dont know what to say about this. It's a moon i guess ^^

3 New accessories - Brooch, Mask and Bracers :
Nice design and nice that they can be Ultimate. I'am happy with more Ult accs but one thing, why is there no shield?

Steam Trading Cards (will be released when Update 2 goes live):
Not implemented yet and of no interest for me

Cosmetic Accessory Set Bonuses: Crystal, Embermount and Palantir:
I really like the palantir one but if you play with more then one char it gets bugged like this
The Embermount set is not my favorite in cosmetics as its only some glowing footsteps
amd havent tested the crystal set because i hate that map :D

News page updated:
its nice to bring maybe new players to the forum


Improvements

Items rated as transcendent or above have a particle beam showing over the item to make picking them out of the pile easier. Beam only shown on items not filtered from the minimap by quality:
The Beams are really nice to find the items in a bunch of crappy ones
Filtering the beams also works as intended but the beams for ult+ are orange and the ones for ult++ items are red. It would be really nice if they would get the same colors on the minimap

is it possible to make an option to disable those monster cards on the map (where it shows how many of them spawn at one point)
they are just annoying when i look at the map to check what dropped
okay back to the beta :)

Electric aura’s can damage the tavern dummy:
works as intended

The highest damage dealt to a target by chained proximity mines will be dealt instead of the first to deal the damage:
cant really test this at my tavern as the dummy get damaged from both traps
while testing i realized that it is now required to stand on a trap to activate them manually i liked it more when it just activated all traps existing
think this way this feature is now a bit useless imho

Maximum starting wave is now set per map (23 on 25 wave maps, 28 on 30 wave maps, 33 on 35 wave maps, 38 on 40 wave maps):
works as intended
but it would be amazing if the last setup would be saved and not always set back to starting wave 8
and if i choose a new map with less waves then selected it should just set startingwave to max but still keep the value in mind
that, if i switch back to a map with more waves it just sets it to the old value :)

Camera rotation is locked when in top down placement mode (building / repairing / upgrading):
works as intended

New Setting - Can move while building (disables movement while in top down placement):
i cant move with my squire when i placed my tower and then have to chose a direction
its nice to move now while building. This can speed up some build a bit.

New Setting -Enable tower dynamic lighting (significant performance benefits when disabled.) Affects traps and projectile towers (most notably inferno traps and fireball towers) Requires restarting DD after enabling to take effect. Disabling requires a new tower of that type to be built.:
cant say anything about this as my computes has no problems with that even if i have the game open twice with 8 chars in total in and all staring at a aura/trap stack
so sorry but i cant evaluate this one :)

Cursor placed relative to the hero in the placement casting state:
sorry but i dont know what is meant with this one
my cursore while building has still the known behavior

Removed slight frame rate dependency from many damaging towers. All projectile towers, Lightning Tower, Slice’n Dice, and Proton Beam. Every point in tower rate counts. There are no breakpoints.:
think i cant test this. at least i dont know how to :)

New item comparison calculation for armour and accessories:
hmm sorry but i cant see any new things there
thought something like its now shown with setbonus if i look at the same pieces but noipe thats not it
or is it meant like when the items are shown as green (better) and red (worse)?

Items can be renamed when at their maximum upgrade level at the cost of one upgrade:
kinda an amazing feature but i would somehow prevent to change event item names
they are unique and they should be always unique! could make it easier to dupe items then :/

Item naming character limit has been increased to 36:
yey longer item names! (works)

Added a report issue button to the pause menu:
yeah i see the button

Palantir, Greater Turkey Hunt, CD, Temple of Love, Winter Wonderland, and Silent Night accessory multipliers now match those awarded by lab assault:
Palantir agreed
Greater Turkey Hunt 10 tries got some sups with equal stats
CD ... sorry i wont test this :P
Temple of Love stats are equal on a supreme one even if i only got 1 in 10 runs (dont know if ult is possible like in lab)
Winter Wonderland way better accs then before
Silent Night havent played it before the update so can evaluate

Moonbase now has a survival mode:
Happy to see this map on a survival but got 3 issues there
First mobs keep getting stuck on every staircase
wave 14 seems bugged in the mob amount 13 and 15 all about 1.5k (mm) 14 has only 700-800 to see here
and the last one. If i play on a one core defense there are 12k mobs on about the last 8 waves ... WTF!? Orges only spawn up to about 3k mobs and everything else is only trash

Added confirmation message when hitting 42 on Moonbase DDR machine:
Like this one :)

Initiate Enemy Drain ability, Spider Minion web, and Wheel of Fortuna buff/debuff enemies resistance factor applied to the training dummy:
wheel and minion works as intended. Dont got an initiate so cant test this one

Jester’s Move Tower and Wheel abilities can be used in the tavern:
Yey

Trap/Aura selection priority is identical for repairing. Selection will be based only on current health percentage.:
Nice Feature finally repairing what is most important first

Trap/Aura upgrade priority favours traps when upgrades are equal, otherwise whichever tower has the least upgrades.:
wished this for a looong time now and it works like a charm

Instant upgrade will favour towers that can be upgraded over repairing towers that are at their maximum upgrade level.:
works as intended

Traps and auras can overlap spawns and show a warning when doing so:
finally i dont have to constantly unequip my monk for maps like tinkerers lab and aquanos. lovly feature :)
would love if it could overlap the cores aswell

BucBay - Repositioned the hero spawn points to face the main crystal and open area instead of the dead end.:
wohoo i see now where to go!

Golding an enemy (by Djinn / Wheel) increases its power by a percentage so the power boost scales into higher level games:
good feature but dont golden up an ogre with 130M+ hp :D

Djinn ability casting durations depend on difficulty (enemy gold beam and tower desummon). That is to say, buffing/desummoning takes more time on a lower difficulty:
works as intended

Summoner minions can move sensibly over short distances with no pathfinding mesh present (ie. when placed on walls, they won’t always jump off before moving along):
cant agree with that. Tested it on deeper well and placed them on the handrail thingy, they always ran of instantly

On Nightmare difficulty, the 50% of loot that was not receiving wave/difficulty multipliers has been replaced with fully scaled items:
seems linke trashmobs now drop more trans sup and ult stuff (but with suprisingly low stats) like this one

Party Popper tower animation scaling reduced so it doesn’t spaz out with only a few points in tower rate:
dont know what it was before never seen this tower spaz out to be honest

EV beam collision is now much more consistent between pre/post placement:
I can place the buffs before the physical walls, AWESOME!

Armour vs. weapon comparison skewed more in favour of armour to bias the drop removal priority:
dont know what is meant with that

Traps on uneven terrain can now trigger on any walking enemy inside its radius:
works but it works a bit too good. I could place the trap on the roof and mobs in the cellar would activate it :D

Slow ogre spawns on some maps on NM difficulty are much improved in many cases:
WW Campaign they start to spawn faster at wave 12 on the early waves they still spawn slow

Armour type drops rates boosted by 25% for random equipment drops.:
while running moonbase survival i had almost only weapons lying around on the floor so i cant really agree with that

Character health over 1 million is displayed using the high value format to 4 significant figures (eg. 1.234 M) to prevent the health value running off screen:
not a fan of this change as i like it more to see big numbers instead of some letters (same for the exp bar). But if you really want to do this you should consider localizing this!

Excess equipment removal function has been rewritten. Fixed an unconfirmed issue which removed many more items than intended under some circumstances, and it is much faster.:
dont know how to test this

Excess mana removal function rewritten. Introduced a biasing system to keep tokens with a larger value around for longer. Large tokens will still be deleted eventually. This is not a bug, but a design decision that was made to prevent players waiting until the end of the round to collect mana and not being significantly penalised for doing so.:
nice feature for those who dont own a swirljester ;)

Multiple upgrades can be applied to an item in a single click when using “pro mode”. No key down - 1 upgrade per click. Shift down - Applies up to 9 upgrades per click. Ctrl down - Applies up to 50 upgrades per click:
wow this one is really nice while upgrading armor!!!

Predicted stat value will account for the number of upgrades to be applied:
dont know what this means sorry

Invasion shows the current phase number in the UI:
works

Inferno trap damage and attack rate updates for (de-)buffs in real time:
nice feature and works :)


Bug Fixes (only those that i could test)

Items with all negative stats no longer show as an upgrade if no equipment is present to compare to:
works

Fix for other heroes banked mana being displayed incorrectly in the pause menu:
works

Old One’s belly crystal can be attacked by all weapons:
works

Fixed south west doors on Buccaneer Bay that wouldn’t animate on wave start..:
works

Fixed unintended increase in high level armor dropping:
hmm dont know if that really worked had 1 sup armor in Embermount nmhc up to wave 40 (only summoners)

Fixed Ogres dropped by Goblin Copters damaging crystals in CD and WW.:
works

Phase shifted summoner can no longer be killed by explosive attacks exceeding 100,000 damage:
works

Possible fix for goblin copters forgetting to drop their ogre when the drop zone is reached:
nope still happens at least in Embermount

Possible fix for DEW / Spider targeting when there are no targetable players on larger maps:
no spiders still just dont move on Moonbase and KG

Bugs Found:
Hyperrifle now uses 2 ammo per shot.
That means my 1 bullet tower rifle cant shot a single time (it is not needed but its still a bug :P)

if i rename my char at the tavern keeper i can put a max of 18 letters in
when creating a new one i can only put in 12 letters

could not reproduce this bug but
i had on a mage stacked on a spider
those were standing on a buffbeam and a aurastack + a proximity and a gastrap
while staring at the edge of the spider the forus was constantly switching the target between all auras and traps

sorry for this malformed text but after formatting it once and getting logged out ... i was too lazy to do it again -.-

If anything is not clear, english is not my native language, feel free to ask :)

nijoX