CDT Update 3 Beta - The Tavern Expansion Discussion

THIS IS FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY. ANY ITEMS OR EXPERIENCE GAINED WHILE TESTING WILL NOT CARRY OVER TO THE LIVE GAME UPON RELEASE!!!  

Merry Christmas!!  

The CDT has been looking forward to bringing you this next update. It comes packed with new maps, more quality of life improvements, more bug fixes and a few requested balance changes. We look forward to getting your feedback as we walk through this beta process with you. 

Note: As specified above, you will not retain items or experience gained in the Beta when it goes live. This beta test branch uses a different Ranked server with a copy of your profile, in many cases an old copy. It does not affect your main Live profile though. You need to switch back to the Live branch to continue your progression. Profile migration requests from Beta to Live will not be fullfilled.

Since the test Ranked server may have an old or really old copy of your save file, you can export to Open. Copy to your desktop, download the beta and then copy back to the win32 folder with the .cbb extension added on to it.

Accessing the Beta

To access the beta you will need to do the following.

• Go to steam library
• Right click on DD
• Select Properties
• Select Betas Tab
• Input code: i2liketesting
• Click on the Check Code button
• Select testingonly_cdt in the drop down box

New Content

• New Tavern Expansion : First floor expansion, All new second floor, Dynamic Theme Selection, Juke Box, Diamond Forge, Exterior Space, More combat dummies, Expanded Ultimate Defender Room 
• New Challenge Map - Temple of Polybius with new rewards
• New Campaign Map - Temple of Water
• New Intermediate Map - Dread Dungeon

Improvements

• Added Hero Info button back to ESC screen
• Added Box to Enter Mana in Trade (ex 5.0b will add 5 billion)
• Max Hero limit raised to 40
• Max tavern limit doubled to 180
• Tavern: Items Dropped by Host Hidden in private rooms should be hidden from guests
• Tavern: Item Recovery added to the void, if something escapes reality, it’ll re-appear by the first floor forge!
• Item upgrade count now visible in trade under Item Info
• Added count of items contained within Folders in Inventory
• Remove items from shop even when Inventory is full
• Auto lock all items going into inventory except when picking up off the floor
• Sped up Summoner casting in Tavern
• Wheel o Fortuna Damage All percentage reported on the tavern dummy
• Added animations to Anamorphic Ember
• Spider and DEW should now find you anywhere on the map if you there is a path 
• Stuck Enemies should now die
• Fixed missing ceiling in Glitterhelm and performed a texture art pass to make Glitterhelm live up to its name.
• Added Santa bracers to Winter Wonderland and Silent Night
• Add new mask and cufflinks to Temple of Love
• New Santa accessory cosmetic set bonus
• New Valentine accessory cosmetic set bonus for male and female
• Added shields to count towards cosmetic set bonus
• Holding down survival wave increase/decrease buttons now works
• Colorized circle component on dropped equipment to match particle beams
• Added profile save event after rewarded equipment
• Fusion Rod base damage display is now the same as all other staves. Now you can compare base damage 1:1 with existing staves (Classic, bloodshot, etc). DPS is exactly the same

Updated Options Menus

You may need to reload the level/tavern for some options to take effect.

• Reordered options to put them under appropriate sections
• Change Voice tab to Sound
• Added Display CD portal
• Added Display Cosmetic Set Bonus
• Added Tower Upgrades Displayed
• Added Significant Digits Displayed
• Added Tower Transparency options

Balance

• Boosted DST projectile speed and damage Added new enemies to targeting system. from Djinns => Wyverns => Mages TO Djinns => Wyverns => Sharken => Copter => Mages
• Adjust Gold Enemy Buff as fixed increase of 200% on NM and Insane, 100% for Hard, 50% for Medium and Easy
• Buffed Tinker’s Lab Blasters on NM to be better than Insane
• Buffed Tinker’s Lab Mega Chicken stats around 30 points on NM and small buff to base.
• Buffed Eternian staff to be closer in damage to Classic Standard
• Buffed Winter Wonderland weapon damage to lower part of high tier weapons
• Reduced Phoenix charge attack vertical damage
• Reduced Copter spawn rate during Phoenix boss fight
• Buffed Fenix and Ember pony to be closer or little better than seahorse due to challenge of farming
• Removed Map exclusive accessories from Lab Assault (ie CD, ToL, GTH, WW/SN and Palantir)
• Buffed Spooktacular 2 accs to Lab Assault levels
• Revert Hyper Rifle elemental damage halving due to 2 projectiles.  
• Ember Accessories ult cap is 600 instead of previous 500.

Bug Fixes

• Possible fix for trade glitch where both players lose their items (needs lots of testing)
• Fixed max upgrade count not shown in trade on item info
• Fix for armor being removed more than weapons (weapons were rated higher in quality)
• Fixed Talay and Moonbase survival start waves
• Fixed EST traps on Assault maps not damaging
• Fixed Hero Info tower stat overlap so numbers aren’t hidden
• Sealed off Tavern Defense secret room
• Fixed not being able to build on left bridge in Tavern Defense
• Fixed Tavern Defense Snowman not attacking
• Mini Map icons same color for ult+ and Ult++
• Fixed Imp stat prediction
• Fixed gobler shield handle positioning
• Commented out K key binding to killme command
• Fixed opacity scaling
• Fix for items removed during build phase
• Evil Hero bosses on Winter Wonderland and Silent Night no longer despawn after 2.5 minutes
• Fixed Tower Wars Spider Queen health overflow causing them to never act or be able to take damage
• Fixed spelling of "marshmallows" on Anamorphic Ember

Items still being worked

• Cosmetic Set bonus for original boss accs
• Mid Survival Pet and End of Survival Pet for Templet of Water - Fairy and Seahorse currently.  Suggestions anyone? Will likely have to already exist in game though.
• Preview images for Dread, Temple of Water and Temple of Polybius
• Adjust color of Male Valentines Cosmetic set Bonus

Current Known Issues

• Temple of Water and Temple of Polybius will randomly crash on startup (cause known, will be fixed)
• Temple of Polybius enemy DSTs erroneously affected by the player DST buff (faster projectiles)
• Temple of Water east crystal does not move with the water level like the others as intended
• ToW/ToP Copters/Ogres can get stuck on the south wall and some other places
• Polybius: After completion of challenge, far door teleports you a short distance instead of returning you to the main map as intended
• Some memory usage issues loading into the Tavern prevents full character detail
• Tavern Minimap does not show when level is loaded, changing floors or stepping outside briefly will fix this
• Tavern Mini map is off scale a little.  
• Barb Battle Leap sped up for internal testing but wasnt reverted. Have fun with it. :)

This map seems absolutely mind boggling and hilariously fun. BTW great job Nexius on the tavern redo...looks great...Thank you.

You're welcome! 

Over all, loved the patch notes! Thanks for the update!

Not happy with this particular targeting priority --

Boosted DST projectile speed and damage Added new enemies to targeting system. from Djinns => Wyverns => Mages TO Djinns => Wyverns => Sharken => Copter => Mages

I've maintained that DST targeting priority should be in this way(direct copy paste from the DST thread) -- 

1. Copters.
2. Djinns.
3. Mages & Spiders.
4. Rest.
5. Ogres.

Reason I include Mages and Spiders over Rest/Others is simple -- these 2 tend to get stuck the most on almost all maps.
Reason I did not include Wyverns in top 3 priority is simple -- there's way too many of them in end game to justify the DST wasting its shots in killing them rather than Copters, Djinns and others. Besides, right now Auras and other towers are more than enough for Wyverns. (end copy-paste)
In between Copters and Djinns i can be comfortable if either is swapped. But those 2 should be the top 2 priority.
DST can't keep up with the high number of Sharkens, Mages & Wyverns that spawn at end-game. And IMO end game is where this tower is supposed to shine -- high DU, high damage, accuracy, most likely 1-hko. So yeah if it is prioritizing 10 Sharkens or 15 Wyverns over 4 Copters then there is a problem in justifying its use & high DU, which has been the biggest issue so far.

Anyways, will keep the feedback coming especially with Golden Enemies and Survival armor drop rates(quality needs to be worked on though).

Also, pin the thread please! :D

 loving the update so far :) you guys did a great job, will let you know if I find anything that can be improved while testing

DSTs definitely need to keep targetting wyverns, unless you want to break my builds.  (which wouldn't bother me personally since I'm not actually playing at the moment, but I'm just pointing out that targeting wyverns isn't useless, speaking as someone who has used DSTs for lots of different things in NMHC builds)

"Let's not change something for good becasue it will break my build", lovely argument. (NOT)
Please tell me why my DST should consume 8 DU and not target something that is obviously a real threat in NMHC, i.e. Copters, over something that can be easily dealt by a tower that consumes almost half that DU.

Either way, not the appropriate thread for this. If you are so concerned about DSTs, maybe come over to the actual DST thread.

Few suggestions for the pets for temple of water - 

an electric eel dps pet (since there are already good fire/poison dps pets)

a starfish on a rock tower pet

a propeller catfish with a water bowl on his head (maybe boosts your defense or resists so its not just another prop cat)

@Black Mamba quote:

Either way, not the appropriate thread for this. If you are so concerned about DSTs, maybe come over to the actual DST thread.

You brought it up here.  It was okay for me to state my opinion.

And yeah, I just want the CDT to know what my opinion is: "I think this change is bad. Please don't do it, CDT." I think I've used DSTs a lot more than most players, so I think it's okay for me to say so. And I've made my voice heard now, so I don't need to say any more or have a lengthy debate in this thread or any other.

I may even give my opinion about other stuff in the future, too, if the CDT doesn't get tired of me :)

All angles and opinions on an issue are of course welcome. We do have an ongoing thread abotut the DST subject. That thread is still relevant so I think it would be best to focus that discussion there. However, nobody should be criticized for merely offering their opinion. That's part of what a forum is for.

First impressions post :D

First, the new tavern looks amazing! I did notice slightly longer load times (1s - 2s more) for the tavern.

on the water temple level, enemies clumped close to their spawn point at the northern end. They stayed there for the entire wave until I killed them manually. I only did a the first 3 or so waves, then it crashed. I'll finish a game tomorrow hopefully. Screenshot: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=823910757

I got 'an ogre has arrived' on dread dungeon, even though I turned that off in my settings. I checked in foundries and forges, there I did not receive the message.

The cd portal does not re-appear if you had the option off when loading the tavern and then changed it in the settings. You have to re-load the tavern. I could not find CD in the map lists anywhere. How are you supposed to start the map when you have it turned off, some friends or randoms join and you suddenly feel like doing cd?

The fenix pet is now waaaay op for my liking:

Apprentice, SL, 4376 hero damage:

37k chicken - 3.8883M

34k ember pony - 3.9216M

21k seahorse - 4.28965M

42k fenix - 5.0267M

cavalry - 6.1027M

Jester 5230 hero damage:

34k ember pony - 3.9994M

21k seahorse - 4.3742M

37k chicken - 4.8509M

42k fenix - 5.12925M

cavalry - 6.2227M

Monk, SL, 5086 hero damage:

34k ember pony - 6.7171M

21k seahorse - 7.3637M

42k fenix - 8.60335M

cavalry - 10.45515M

37k chicken - 11.41375M

Now when you consider that a chicken can do damage to 4 mannikins at once it is still clearly the best option, but that's not the point. The fenix is now better than the seahorse  by a margin I think is too high. I should have written down what the numbers were on patch 8.2 before getting the beta... oh well.

P.S. I estimate that I spent about the same time farming ponies, seahorses, and fenixes (and way more time on chickens, chickens often drop with high damage though), so I think these should be more or less comparable. I'm obviously not taking any ult specimens into account, because I don't have any. Maybe someone else can comment.

Yay Poly is here! \o/

Now its time to get brutally rekt by mischief monk over and over again.

Ok, so couple of quick things -- 

• New Tavern is lovely, but sadly it feels very lonely and empty in there for some reason. :-/
• Getting lots of stuttering &  minor FPS drops while outside the Tavern. (PC Specs at the end of this post)
• Temple O' Love surprisingly doesn't go below 30FPS anymore for me if I'm solo, even in combat wave. (Stealth performance fix?)
• Temple O' Love new Accessories are stunning -- STUNNING! Love the Bracers even more than the Mask becasue of how it appears on the Characters, doesn't feel too "overly big".
• Absolutely love the effect on the ToL Mask. However, it seems that the effect is only tied to the Mask + Hat or Bow at the moment. Ideally it should be with all 3, i.e. Bow / Hat + Mask + Water Bracers(can we seriously get a better name for this please?).
• ToL Acc Effect timing should be increased by a wee-bit like a second or half a second earlier. Either that, or the duration till which the hearts appear should be increased.
• Please elaborate more on certain options in the Video tab and what do they do exactly, mainly these -- http://i.imgur.com/cM8pm0e.png I'm not understanding what that is supposed to do. Also the "Significant Digits Displayed", what is that for? Banked Mana or something else? Changing it doesn't show any changes on the Mana value displayed, so a bit of clarity on that as well.
• Tower Upgrades Displayed works perfectly in the Tavern no upgrade levels show up if the setting is kept at 0. Love this! Will test later in an actual map as well.
• Are the new Tavern Doors accessible only by Host or everyone? Mainly the ones that let you out of the Tavern and wander outside.
• Bit more clarity on what the "Summon Guest" does. Does it bring people currently in your Tavern into the Tower?

Requests:

• Can we have the beta/main updates from here on to not change the current controls & custom key-bindings and make them to default? While I always keep a backup of the configs it can be of annoyance to someone who didn't back it up. (Assuming this is possible to do in current Engine)
• Rework the Default XBOX Controller bindings to include "Press G"(Activate Crystal from anywhere)? Ideally to the XBOX B key. Currently XBOX B key does the Callout, which can be swapped to something else like Select Key which currently shows the Hero info.
• Increase the spawn time for DEWs in ToL. At a moment, only 5 DEWs spawn from each of the ToL Spawn Points. So At the most you can only have 30 of them in the map. With even 1 player it takes quite a long to clear that wave compared to all other waves it is the longest. Probably longer than the final wave itself(excluding Bosses). So y suggestion would be to increase their spawn limit from 5 to 10 per spawn point.
• Add the Tavern Theme change table in the Basement as well. Takes awful lot of time to get up there to just change the theme. Put a small Arcade Machine in the basement that allows to change the theme.
• Since you asked for pets in the ToW, I'd say add a pool of certain pets and any 1 of them can be awarded randomly(in higher qualities of course) -- All 4 Animus, Hamster, Rainbow Unicorn & maybe some other rare vanilla pet or the Djinnlet/Cupid(would prefer better quality Cupids to drop if you complete ToL Code though). Also, IMO QFTLES pets should be kept to maps that fit their lore. But with that said, Shroomite & Donkey could possibly be used on some other map since these 2 are the weakest QFTLES pets.

Will post more feedback later.

(Specs: AMD FX-6100 @4.0Ghz, 16GB RAM, GTX970)

Have to make a new post for this since this was one of the things I had requested.

Did a bit of testing on the SPoL on a variety of different ones with all over 400^(Ult+/++). Unfortunately in my testing it can't register hits of the 2 center projectiles at ranged at the same time from short to long distance. Mainly becasue of how projectiles works -- the bigger they are the more area they cover in their hitbox. So with the base damage not scaling on the SPoL, the ranged projectiles stay very tiny and can't hit the targets unless you are at point blank ranged.
The melee damage I care slightly less about since there are plenty of Monk Melee Weapons already. However, the Melee swing speed is very very slow(has been since the beginning) so to slightly compensate that I'd request to please swap the SPoL Fire damage scaling for Ranged to Generic Damage. And if the Generic damage with the current scaling gets too high, we can discuss on reducing it a bit.
Either that, or staying true to the weapon's description of it adding heroic fire damage, how about adding one more projectile in the center and keeping the current damage as elemental?

Also any chance of reducing the "fire" effect on these to manageable levels? Right now the fire animation on the weapon while its being held is just -- quite a lot honestly, it covers the entire character in flames. A 25-30% reduction on the intensity of the fire effect would be nice.

Santa's Snowball Launcher now seems like a very worthwhile weapon from what little testing I did. Only minor thing I'd like in this is to very slightly reduce the spread of the projectiles. Overall this seems like a fun weapon to use.

Frost Blade(only had 2 of these to test) seems like a good beginner sword.

Coming on finally to the North Pole Staff. I like its damage increase makes it viable for beginners. The North Pole I had went till 47k, it did ~358k damage per projectile at 4.8k hero damage on a Jester. However, it feels like just yet another Staff. The weapon description says it adds heroic lightning damage, and it doesn't spawn with any additional elemental damage(from my experience). So what I'd like to propose for North Pole is that how about we convert all the generic damage dealt to lightning damage(like the Lemurian) and give it a tighter spread -- kinda like the Gambler's Polearm, so a tighter horizontal spread but it only does Electric damage as a trade-off. There is a staff called -- Forest's Sorrow(from Mistymire) which has a very nice and tight horizontal spread. Perhaps that can be used a base for the North Pole's projectiles. 
Luckily I had a Forest's Sorrow, this is how its projectile spread is, its not completely flat, but its tighter:

 I'm not understanding what that is supposed to do. Also the "Significant Digits Displayed"

Significant digits are the number of digits after the decimal point. Basically, how precise do you want the displayed values to be (e.e. 321.23 M vs 321.2342 M). More precision also means more space required to write the text so some ppl found it annoying.

Some bugs & feedback related to Dread Dungeon:

• Total Wave counter for Surivial Mode stuck is at 10 -- http://i.imgur.com/66fvWwN.jpg
• Wyverns getting stuck 100% of the time in the spawn when playing Survival on Mix Mode -- http://i.imgur.com/aaD9G3u.jpg
• Item drops in Survival NMHCMM is comparable to Deeper Wells on Medium. Is this intended? I know this is supposed to be a low-end map, but it is only dropping flat out Cursed, Torn, Worn, Amazing, Epic and similar items. No Myths or even Godly items so far. Also, NMHC Campaign reward the stats of the bracers is no where near comparable to even Lab Assault Medium/Hard bracers. Single digit stats on the Bracers, again, intended?
• Survival Wave 8 starting mana is very low compared to even Alchemical Lab -- 160 on Dread Dungeon vs 280 on Alchemical Lab.
• Couple of Orcs getting stuck almost 90% of the time at this location -- http://i.imgur.com/9Z3KcR3.jpg
• Finally, major game-breaking bug -- non-kill-able Skeletons in Survival Mix Mode NMHC. They are not de-spawning either. So you can't progress anymore if that happens. Check the video below for this, recorded after 10mins of AFKing to see if they eventually de-spawn or not but they don't. (Video should be uploaded & processed in a few minutes)

  
  

Will update this post if I find more bugs or if I have any feedback related to Dread Dungeon.

Tavern bug -- Themes keep getting reset the moment you leave your tavern and load any map or go to the main menu.
(Also notice how the FPS is all over the place while inside the tavern)

The themes reloading is always going to happen right now. CDT doesn't have a fix to that from our end (it's a save game thing.)  But the theme activation will be available in the basement and possibly the tv room in a future update. As far as the frame drops that's another issue by itself that has to be addressed that isn't controllable from our end either.   Some optimizations are already being made to address some of the fps issues else where around the level though and like anything else that you all report, the CDT will do what it can to make everything solid before the updates release. 

Dang there is a lot to read. :)

Good stinkin' job.

Thanks so much to the whole CDT.

Not exactly intended more just overlooked while trying to get the beta out in time for the winter break. If it did not get out yesterday then i would of been delayed a few more weeks and we wanted to give people the extra time to test and give feedback. 

@Black Mamba quote:

• Item drops in Survival NMHCMM is comparable to Deeper Wells on Medium. Is this intended? I know this is supposed to be a low-end map, but it is only dropping flat out Cursed, Torn, Worn, Amazing, Epic and similar items. No Myths or even Godly items so far. Also, NMHC Campaign reward the stats of the bracers is no where near comparable to even Lab Assault Medium/Hard bracers. Single digit stats on the Bracers, again, intended?

Cheers, thanks for clarification on that!

Yeah it was basically a now or never thing. Would probably have been at least 2 more weeks when we were already taking longer than we really wanted and we desperately needed feedback before we could proceed further. :)

only found one thing not mentioned so far, djinns kept getting stuck under the bridges on the dread map

Might have missed it but has there been an upgrade to how many items you can have in your bank? I'm a hoarder :(

only found one thing not mentioned so far, djinns kept getting stuck under the bridges on the dread map

I've encountered this as well. But it mostly slips under the eye since the Djinns die quickly, but yea they do get stuck.

Also, I have a question --

Suppose I were to switch back to the actual Ranked game and not Beta, would it delete the additional Beta files that were downloaded on my PC? Mainly I want to switch back and forth between v8.2 and v8.3 beta without having to download the entire beta content again and again. Please let me know if this is possible. If that it not possible then are there any local files I can backup to copy-paste later when I want to re-switch to beta? Right now I'm in v8.3 beta.

One more thing I've noticed -- did a few WW runs on NMHC to farm the Candy Bracers(love the name!) but the map drops on the floor were the same as Dread Dungeon survival NMHCMM i.e. everything that dropped was Cursed, Torn, Worn, Polished etc.

BTW -- is the Top Hat & Bow rolling will be made to Santa Accs standards? Also, any update on whether the Pirate Hat will be included in Buc Bay or Pirate Invasion?

Finally, I loove the Snowfall effect on the Santa Accs, although my feedback for it would be make the snowflakes slightly larger or intensify their glow/brightness and volume(total no of active snowflakes). If only I was a fan of the Beard and the Hat I'd use this more often! Nevertheless, very nice & subtle effect! 

So yea, these are the 2 new effects if people haven't seen them: 
Santa Effect:

Temple O' Love Effect: