CDT Update 2 Beta Updated Once More

Based on the feedback we have recieved from the community we have once again updated the Beta for Update 2.  Here are the list of changes you will find in this Beta update.

Fixes and Changes

• Added Embermount Achievement (will be live when Update goes live)
• Added pet (Fenix) to wave 35
• Added story line cut scenes to Embermount
• Progressive survival starting waves (25 - 1. 30 - 2, 35 - 3, 40 - 4)
• Reduce SnD damage output further
• Reverted Tower Buff Beam
• Reduced bias on weapon stats so they dont roll so good as often
• Fixed Console key back to F1

Hope everyone enjoys.  Please feel free to provide any more feedback on the changes.  We are hoping to be close to finalizing these with you so that we can all enjoy it on the live server and start looking at Update 3.  :)

Not a bad changes at all compared to the last one 

Please fix the Reflection Walls copter rockets letting through, bug.

Just let an ogre stand inside (intersecting) the wall while it's hitting a tower.

Best reproduced on KG topfloor.

How is the update 2.2GB though? 

Because they can't update the game without making you download the whole game.

@ddace quote:

• Added Embermount Achievement (will be live when Update goes live)

Annoying achieve hunters the world over lmao

gonna take me a long time to get that one

@Caimen0 quote:

@ddace quote:

• Added Embermount Achievement (will be live when Update goes live)

Annoying achieve hunters the world over lmao

gonna take me a long time to get that one

why is it annoying ???

you simply have to complete the map or something like that :P

@kg4q quote:

why is it annoying ???

you simply have to complete the map or something like that :P

Embermount is a rather significant step forward in terms of difficulty, and acheive hunters always do the bare minimum to complete achievements, then move onto the next game. They're going to have their work cut out for them to get Embermount done, since most likely haven't played DD in a while.

@Caimen0 quote:

@kg4q quote:

why is it annoying ???

you simply have to complete the map or something like that :P

Embermount is a rather significant step forward in terms of difficulty, and acheive hunters always do the bare minimum to complete achievements, then move onto the next game. They're going to have their work cut out for them to get Embermount done, since most likely haven't played DD in a while.

still achievement is going to be easy to get -____-

but i understand ;)

Looks like the SnD change didnt make it into the build after all.  We will work on adding it.  Please let us know if any other issues arise.

will there be a update for mac coming soon or is that just a lost cause?

Okay, I've finally tried out the beta.  I'm probably too late to give any feedback, but I'm going to do it anyway :-)

Purity bomb:

Before the update, I made a purity bomb adept to run Great Turkey Hunt.  I'm up to rank #20 on the leaderboards, but I wanted to try for #1 eventually.  I got the purity bomb stat to 5.2k, which increased the range enough to kill every turkey on the map with each bomb.  It's not good enough for Greater Turkey Hunt on the live version because it doesn't do enough damage to kill turkeys (needs to be about twice as high), but it's amazing for the original hunt.

With the update, though, the purity bomb range is greatly decreased, so it doesn't cover the whole map anymore.  In fact, it doesn't even cover the center room, even increasing the stat to 6.2k.  I think you can still speed run the map by placing 6 proxies (two on each of east, south, and west) and purity bombing near the center with multiple adepts, so adept is still a useful character to get the costumes.  But I won't be able to get any higher on the scoreboard once the change goes through, so I'll probably quit playing the map. 

The damage is much, much higher now, though!  Almost two thousand times higher.  It's basically a completely different skill now.  I'll have to spend some time figuring out where it's useful.  I thought it might kill the Kraken tentacles, for example, but it turned out to be useless in that battle.  For now, I'm enjoying purity bombing on the final wave of Moonbase.  Fighting Old One is much more fun now, too.  But I wish I could use it on Lab Assault :-(  I think that would be really fun and useful without unbalancing things.

Too bad hero boost and propeller cat don't work on purity bomb.

Mana bomb:

Like Purity Bomb, this is not allowed on assault challenges anymore.  In 8.1, mana bomb is very useful for speed running assault, and this won't be possible anymore after the changes.  That makes me a little sad.

Lightning towers:

These are great now!  But I imagine it'll take everyone a while to figure out how good they are and how to use them.

I just shot down the dragon on Boss Rush with a ballista, and my four lightnings in the center of the map all targeted the dragon when it landed.  It took a little damage from the lightning and flew away, but they kept targeting it while it flew around the outside of the map until it died (about 20-30 seconds of lightning).  Kind of funny.

Beam placement:

It's great that the camera no longer turns unexpectedly while placing beams.  That helps a lot!  It'd be nice if you could use the key/button for turning the camera while you're placing beams, though.  It feels weird not being able to turn the camera even if I want to.

Upgrading items:

This is great!  The only thing is, it shouldn't really go up by 9 for armor.  It should go until the next time a level ends in 9, so if you're at 22, you can shift-click to get to 29 instead of 30.

Tavern theme:

It's cooling seeing a new tavern, and I'm glad we finally have gravity again, but it really would be great to have a way to set it back to the default tavern.  I miss it.

It's kind of weird that you can walk on lava in the tavern without dying.

Survival starting waves:

Easier to get skeletons and chickens if your stats are high enough to start on later waves, and you can't cheese the Transcendental Survivalist achievement anymore.  It's also easier to get kobolds, I suppose, but fish made those obsolete.  I guess that's all fine.

Jester:

Because lightning is now more useful, tower jesters that use presents are now better / easier to use.

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Being able to fight the Old One with ecannon is great, I love it! (Ecannons aren't really great weapons, but I love them.)
• No more breakpoints for attack speed on my countess.  I got so tired of figuring out the new breakpoints every time I equipped something new that changed the stats on my evie or my countess. 
  
• The item beams are good. 
  
• Adept is completely rebalanced.  It'll be fun figuring out ways to use the new Purity Bomb skill.  Instant Upgrade is usable now.  The new Lightning and Strikers seem fun, but it'll probably take a while to figure out how to use them.  Adept is my favorite character, so I'm excited :-)
  
• The item upgrade thing is great. 
  
• The red color for ult+ and ult++ is awesome. 
  
• The tavern dummy improvements are great. 
  
• If Moonbase explodes, it no longer makes that annoying explosion sound over and over.
• Embermount
• Better frame rate with fireballs
• Unsummoning fix
• Copter ogre fix
  

Thing I'm NOT looking forward to:

• Gold enemies being buffed.
• Reduced drop rates for good weapons.  Does this mean even more CD runs to get a ++?  Worse items on survival?  Both?  (I did just get the worst ecannon I've ever gotten, with only 4 ups, but maybe that's a coincidence.)
  

Unfortunately, I'll have to play a lot more to figure out how significant those changes are, and I don't really want to pour that much time into the beta.

Things I would like in the future:

• Better damage/upgrade on estaves.
• Ability to hide pets, or make them transparent, or smaller, or something to deal with the major visibility issues caused by giant pets.  In particular Treadmills on Treadmills are way too huge and often cause visibility issues.  (It's funny that Moonbase gives you ToTs, and they end up so large they make the Moonbase dancing game significantly harder!) Very large chickens sometimes block the entire screen as well.
• Make the moonbase dancing game buttons trigger more reliably and give more obvious feedback about whether you're pressing a button successfully.
• Fewer stuck enemies.
• Make "Damage All" hit the dummy too.  Pretend it has 100,000 health, so you can see how much damage the skill does with various points in wheel.
  

Thanks for taking the time to try it out and providing this feedback to us.  Much appreciated.  Couple of notes for you.

@Plane quote:

Upgrading items:

This is great!  The only thing is, it shouldn't really go up by 9 for armor.  It should go until the next time a level ends in 9, so if you're at 22, you can shift-click to get to 29 instead of 30.

Well Shift is for when upgrading DPS armor so that you dont miss the resist bonus.  Holding CTRL will apply 50 points at a time if you want to apply points faster.

@Plane quote:

Thing I'm NOT looking forward to:

• Reduced drop rates for good weapons.  Does this mean even more CD runs to get a ++?  Worse items on survival?  Both?  (I did just get the worst ecannon I've ever gotten, with only 4 ups, but maybe that's a coincidence.)

The reduced frequency of good drops only applies to embermount since it was mentioned previously they were dropping too good at first.

@Plane quote:

• Make "Damage All" hit the dummy too.  Pretend it has 100,000 health, so you can see how much damage the skill does with various points in wheel.
  

It's a percentage of enemies' health, so it's pointless.

Make the moonbase dancing game buttons trigger more reliably and give more obvious feedback about whether you're pressing a button successfully.

Yes please. I've already asked for a similar thing though.

@Akasame quote:

It's a percentage of enemies' health, so it's pointless.

That's why he suggested the dummies to have 100k health, when using the wheel.

RE: Mana/Purity bomb being locked out in assault and the range limit for purity bomb

Short version is that these abilities cover such a wide area with a huge chunk of damage that you could:

a) Take out xtals without ever getting close
b) Take out multiple xtals at once (and in one example, the defences off a third)

This may be revisited later (eg. a short range limit or something similar), but we are aiming not to add more "ez mode" where its not required ;)

The range scaling/limit for purity bomb is still notably higher than mana bomb. It's just not 290 units anymore (thats >3x more range than any projectile can travel...)

@CrzyRndm quote:

RE: Mana/Purity bomb being locked out in assault and the range limit for purity bomb

Short version is that these abilities cover such a wide area with a huge chunk of damage that you could:

a) Take out xtals without ever getting close
b) Take out multiple xtals at once (and in one example, the defences off a third)

This may be revisited later (eg. a short range limit or something similar), but we are aiming not to add more "ez mode" where its not required ;)

The range scaling/limit for purity bomb is still notably higher than mana bomb. It's just not 290 units anymore (thats >3x more range than any projectile can travel...)

People are already doing that with mana bomb in the current version, but I suppose with the upgraded skills in the beta you could do that on all the assault maps.

Anyway, I totally understand the design decision.  I've taken some time to try out purity bomb on the beta on various maps now, and I'm really very pleased :-)  Both bomb skills had extremely niche, unintended uses before that have been taken away, but in return we've got something that's useful (and fun!) on all sorts of maps.

Now if we could only get eternian staves to be useful somehow, I'd start running CD with adept more often.