Since Version 1.4's release, we've seen numerous bugs and exploits get reported. Some of these took a little longer to get fixed, but with this hotfix, hopefully they're gone for good! At least until the next time we break things with a big update.
Fixes & More Fixes
Abilities can no longer be cast while a tower is under construction
Fixed a major exploit with upgrade-cancelling that could be used to refresh abilities, like Windstorm tornado, Astral extra shots, etc.
Fixed a bug where you could upgrade-cancel Astral or Runic to refresh their ability cooldowns
Fixed a bug where upgrade-cancel removes Cursed stacks & the Cannot-be-cloned debuff
Fixed a bug where upgrading/sidegrading a tower removes buffs from it
Fixed a bug where an incomplete buff tower will cast its buff before construction finishes
Fixed a bug where towers can be buffed while in mid construction/upgrade
Fixed a bug where loading a checkpoint in Campaign would "break Tesla Trees"
Fixed a bug in Campaign with AMD FSR offsetting spawn indicators
Fixed a bug in Campaign with AMD FSR offsetting everything in Mission 6
Fixed Quake Earthshaker Specialization not increasing shockwave AoE
Fixed Life Altar not recovering your lives over 50 in the Campaign
Fixed Elemental Diversity Achievement in War requiring you to cast all 8 abilities, it now just requires casting each of the elemental abilities once
Fixed tower count on Damage Table being bugged if you did a max-level tower upgrade from tower table
Fixed an issue where increasing the timescale in a replay would be inconsistent with the actual result.
This might be related to a somewhat common desync problem.
Fixed an issue in Ranked where the game could desync and you could still somehow gain or lose MMR
Additional fix in Ranked, in the case you desync but you try to leave to the main menu before the desync detector kicks in and nulls the match, it should no longer count as a loss
In Ranked, if you die first but win by score, you're no longer listed as Rank 2
On the Ranked Leaderboards screen, added a notification that tells you when the current season ends.
On that last point, we're trying to lock down some consistency for Ranked seasons. Each season reset will either line up with a new patch or be released close to one. And the date will always been active. In general, expect about 4-month long season resets going forward.
Regarding Version 1.5, it's going to be a somewhat light patch as we transition into our next goal. Expect a mix of balance adjustments, bug fixes, optimizations and cosmetics. We're intending on releasing it sometime in the second half of February. We'll also have an update on our future plans by then, so look forward to all of that!
Version 1.4.2 - Hotfix
This past week, we released Version 1.4, which introduced Quad Element Towers to the game! So far, they've been received quite positively. However, in our testing for the big release, we overlooked a few interactions, which led to some massively skewed balance. We were expecting various abuse tricks to be found over the next month or so, just not to this extent:
They look like Co-op scores, but they're in fact Pick scores.
Today's hotfix fixes the overly busted interactions, as well as optimizing certain lag issues. Because the fixes will break most existing replays, we had to reset the Score Leaderboards. We apologize for this inconvenience, but we shouldn't need to reset again until the next major version.
Fixes & Improvements
In Teams/Co-op, if a player leaves or disconnects and fails to reconnect, the following should happen now:
Their towers are sold
Their unspent gold is evenly distributed among all allies
Fixed difficulty column showing up as blank for Co-op & Teams Leaderboards
Fixed a bug where you couldn't manually target with Gravity Cannon
Gravity Cannon VFX should look fancier and 50% more performant
Fixed Trickery casting its buff VFX for each clone in a Tesla Tree chain, resulting in both a bright flare and extreme lag
Cast VFX for Blacksmith, Well & Trickery have been updated
Toned down mega-brightness of Tesla Tree, especially when you had a whole lot of them
Drastically optimized Tesla Tree, it was using a laggy shader on its beams, as well as its water effect
Drastically optimized Railgun, it had an issue with its garbage collection which caused the game to get progressively laggier
Optimized Rage, replaced a laggy shader on its lava
Fully updated the Romanian localization
Updated French and Russian localization
Balance
In Teams, solo players no longer have a lower HP scaler than team players
Due to the lower HP scaler, solo players could rack up a massive interest advantage and somehow end up with higher scores, despite the potential team synergy
Dialed down Teams HP Scaler just slightly, regardless of team size
Vapor damage reduced from 1650 to 1600
Railgun has been adjusted:
Railgun damage increased from 75000 to 80000
Railgun passive charge rate increased from 5 to 7 per second
When its Static Shockwave gains enough charge to reach 100 and fire the Railgun, excess charge now carries over instead of restarting from 0
Singularity has been adjusted:
Damage increased from 14000 to 15000
There's now a 2 second pull-immunity duration after getting hit by Singularity
Life Altar can now cast its ability at 1 Life
To clarify, it'll only buff what it has the life capacity to buff. If you're at 1 Life and you try to activate Life Altar, it'll just buff itself because that costs 0 Lives.
Tesla Tree has been adjusted:
Damage reduced from 8000 to 7500
This was applied in the 1.4.1 Hotfix, just noting it here for consistency
If Tesla Tree or any of its clones within that chain are affected by Cursed in any way, it now treats the chain as one big tower and purges all clones, regardless of proximity.
Additionally, Cursed AoE now triggers around the Tesla Tree that made the killing blow, not the "first tower" in the chain.
Buff Priority of Level 4 Singles & Periodic raised to be higher than Tesla Tree
Lastly, there have been reports of the servers being a bit wonky this week. Unfortunately, this one's out of our control. Our servers are based in Azure, and something appears to have happened on their end. As soon as the issue is fixed and we're able to make an update, we'll update this post to let you know.
We hope the new Quad Element Towers have been fun for everyone, and wish everyone the best for the holidays! As for what's next, we'll provide an update in January. In the meantime, see you all in-game!
Version 1.4 - Quad Element Towers
It's been 16 years since Element TD was originally released back in WarCraft III. Since then, we've ported it many times, eventually leading to Element TD 2. In all that time, some towers were changed out, but we never truly added new ones.
Until now.
After 16 years, Element TD 2 finally adds 15 New Towers! Combine 4 different elements to form powerful Quad Element Towers! From global ranged snipers, to revamped classics, to chucking creeps forward, we've got a lot of brand new effects ready to change how you approach your favorite builds! Except 3 Element Builds. They've got enough love already.
On top of that, we have a new GPU performance feature called AMD FSR. There's also New Cosmetics, Improvements, Fixes, and a host of Balance Changes (which means another Score Leaderboard Reset). Oh, and we have a fancy trailer for the new Quad Element Towers. Check it out below, and read on for the full notes!
[previewyoutube="7IbG42AGF1w;full"]
Quad Element Towers
Countless amounts of people have been requesting new towers for years, and at last, we're finally delivering on that! Each one requires 4 Different Elements and costs 4000 Gold (or 2500 Gold when upgraded from a Triple). All of them have their unique roles, but in terms of what this overall adds to the game:
Fills out gaps in their associated 4 Element Builds
Expands build orders
Allow "weird element combinations" that rely more on Level 1 Towers to scale into the endgame
And more!
With that, let's get on with the details!
Railgun Tower
Our first Quad is a Light-based hybrid tower! It zaps everything around it with a static field, softening the wave and building charge. The more creeps it hits, the more charge it builds. Once charged, it fires a powerful global-ranged laser, which can be used to cut down Elemental Bosses and pick off creeps that are about to leak.
Technically, you can stick it anywhere, but it's best on peninsulas where it can hit the whole wave with its static field.
Even when it's not zapping nearby creeps, Railgun will slowly build charge and fire from afar!
Singularity Tower
This one was routinely suggested on our forums and in the #tower-ideas channel on our Discord. It's a Light-based tower that hits in a wide AoE, pulling surrounding creeps inwards. It's slow firing, but it can clump up creeps for your other AoE towers, which is especially great when paired with Runic & Windstorm.
If you get enough of them, you can pull the entire wave into a single clump, which can be great... or a giant boon when Healing Creeps are involved.
Clump them together, then blast away!
Doom Tower
A Darkness-based tower that initially deals no damage, instead placing a debuff on creeps. Over time, the debuff grows in its own damage, and if it becomes enough to finish the creep off, it instantly triggers and kills the creep.
In a way, it's like a focused Flamethrower tower, but with the goal of tagging creeps and building damage over time for a big finish. It's best to keep the debuff active for as long as possible, so get a few more Doom Towers to keep refreshing the duration.
When combined with Flamethrower, it can make for some great chain reactions.
Phantom Zone Tower
Welcome to the void! Phantom Zone is a Darkness-based tower that temporarily places a creep in stasis, storing all incoming damage. After a few seconds, it's released from stasis with an explosion, spreading the stored damage into an area.
Effectively, it can convert your single-target damage into AoE damage. It does have a cooldown before it can stasis the same creep again, so it can't be used to stunlock, but it can buy you time and separate the creep wave out, allowing for towers like Laser to dish out major damage with Phantom Zone.
Let the void consume all.
Plague Tower
A Darkness-based tower that deals damage over time to its target. If the target dies within 20 seconds, the debuff bounces over to another target, refreshing its duration.
Not only can this stack up and eventually clear the wave, but if you're behind, it may even jump into the next wave, powered up from the current one.
It's like a cross between Poison & Lightning. As creeps succumb to its damage, the rest continue to fall, faster and faster.
Crystal Spire Tower
A Water-based tower that spawns spirits over time, rotating around the tower. When a creep comes in range, they seek in and explode. It's a finisher tower that can build up over time, then unleash everything at once!
It's kind of similar to Bloom, but it's more focused and can reach across lanes with the same flexibility as 1150 range towers.
As fancy as it looks, it's surprisingly more performant than some of our basic towers.
Tsunami Tower
Anyone remember the classic Tidal Tower? Well, it's back and better than ever! Tsunami is a Water-based tower with a single-target attack, which builds charge over time. Once you gain enough, you can manually activate it to unleash a powerful Tidal Wave, hitting all creeps in range.
It's got 4 Charge levels, and at its most potent, it can even deal significant damage to Boss Waves. With proper timing, you can alternate a pair of Tsunamis and delete most waves in the mid-game.
Just wait for them to get in range, and ta-da, they're all dead!
Obelisk Tower
A Fire-based tower that fires a continuous beam at a creep. Upon switching targets, it triggers an explosion with more damage and AoE based on how long it channeled. Multiple Obelisks can trigger explosions on the same creep, allowing it to deal some serious AoE damage.
Pair it with some slows like Nova & Windstorm, and you can trigger some insanely large and powerful explosions!
Whether the creep dies, goes out of range, or even pops a Shield, Obelisk will still trigger an explosion.
Rage Tower
This one's a simple Fire-based tower, but effective at its role, nonetheless. Rage sets a creep on fire, dealing damage over time and amplifying damage taken. However, it also drastically speeds the creep up, which can be used to intentionally separate creeps out and benefit from Incantation's solo bonus.
Before you ask, speed buffs from multiple sources do stack.
Archdruid Tower
This Nature-based tower may seem counterintuitive, as it chucks creeps forward at the front-most creep in range. However, it can be used to clumps creeps really tightly together, pairing great with Solar & Vapor.
Of all the Quad Towers added, Archdruid has the potential to be the most game-changing. The conventional rules of tower positioning go out the window, as it's capable of turning "bad spots" on maps into fast kill zones. Just be careful not to accidentally chuck creeps from the start to the end in your defense.
Launch 'em high and slam them into another creep!
Life Altar Tower
By popular demand, Life Tower is back! Well, with a sacrificial twist. Life Altar is a Nature-based tower capable of buffing all nearby towers in range, giving them a damage and attack speed bonus for a short duration. They even recover your lives back for every few kills.
However, the more towers in range, the more lives it costs to activate the ability. Time it right to get as many of your lives back as possible!
It can reach up to 2 Tiles out, letting it get around Cursed creeps.
Tesla Tree Tower
Over the years, we've received many tower suggestions, but there was one that was suggested every single year by numerous people: the "Prism Tower" idea. Towers link together and "fire through" one another, in a sense. It's a ridiculous idea, so of course, we added it.
Tesla Tree is a Nature-based tower. When you place them in range of other Tesla Trees, they chain together, combining the damage, attack speed, range, buffs and debuffs together.
If you get enough of them in a long chain, it can hit the whole map! You'll need a lot for Co-op though.
As you add or remove Tesla Trees in range, beams automatically connect between the towers. They also have a particularly fun interaction with Trickery Tower.
Gravity Cannon Tower
An Earth-based tower with really long range, drastically speeding up its target. However, if it the target passes other creeps, it slows them down.
A multi-purpose tower that can target the back, clumping creeps together, or target the front to separate them out. Works great with Incantation and other finishers.
Drag 'em down, or push 'em forward! Either way, they're going to die... hopefully.
Nuclear Tower
An Earth-based tower that mutates its target, doubling its HP while also slowing it down and dealing heavy damage over time. This is a permanent effect, and as thus, it can only apply it once per creep.
This tower can be used as a slow, or a means of separating creeps out, while also dealing heavy damage.
Bulky creeps not big enough for you? Just add some Nuclear mutations!
Shredder Tower
And lastly, we have Shredder, an Earth-based tower that splits creeps in two new creeps, each with half health, bounty and score. Cannot split a creep more than once.
The split acts as a "kill", which can preemptively trigger on-death effects for Flamethrower and Ethereal. And by doubling the creep count, towers that scale off creep count can have a field day. Just be careful of Cursed and Healing waves.
Its attack strikes right after the split, so it can kill the newly split creeps in the same attack that splits them.
AMD FSR
This is a new feature under Graphics Settings. In a nutshell, it'll reduce visual clarity in exchange for a performance boost. If you're familiar with DLSS, it's similar to that. At the lower end, the visual clarity loss is barely noticeable while FPS goes up by 10-20%, and at the higher end, the visuals are definitely less clear, but we've gotten reports of performance doubling on that option.
Do note, turning on AMD FSR requires Anti-Aliasing to be turned on, which has also been improved to higher quality.
New Cosmetics
5 New Trails have been added! All of these are based on the new Quads.
Level 75 - Phantom Wave
Level 80 - Static Shock
Level 85 - Spiritual Trifecta
Level 90 - Singularity
Level 95 - Tsunami
Elemental Master Trail is now the Level 100Trail.
5 New Wings have been added! Based on a mix of new Quads and updated effects.
Singleplayer now has a Replays tab, which contains:
Ghost Mode against Leaderboard Replays
Ghost Mode against Local Replays
View Local Replays
Profile has been renamed to Customize, and now contains the following menus:
Customize Builder
Customize Towers
Tower Table, which now lets you directly select a tower from here to customize it
Stats
Achievements
Credits has been moved to Settings
Attack & Ability VFX for numerous towers have been updated. This should result in less "glow stacks" while also looking more visually consistent and more performant.
This includes Blacksmith, Well, Trickery, Poison, Ice, Vapor, Geyser, Nova, Runic, Flooding, Wisp, Polar, Flamethrower, Haste, Root, Muck, & Periodic.
Adjusted options for Damage Number Pop-ups:
On Towers: Replaces "Primary Target", this now places damage number pop-ups over towers instead of creeps
On Creeps: Relabel of "All Targets"
Off: Same as before
War Mode has received some adjustments:
Summon Swarm now requires at least 3 Different Elements before it becomes available
Summon Mega now requires a Level 2 Element before it becomes available
HP scaling increased from 20% to 21% per wave, and 25% starting from Wave 45 onwards. That doesn't sound like much, but by Wave 44, it's roughly 40% higher than before.
Composite + Healing moved from Wave 45 to Wave 44, replacing Composite + Regeneration
Boss Creeps now start at Wave 45
Bounty now caps at Wave 44's bounty amount of 482 per creep
In Ranked, if the opponent has died and you overtake them in Score, you now get the victory instantly instead of having to play the rest of the game out.
Towers that are in-construction can no longer be buffed by Blacksmith, Well & Trickery.
Damage Chart now has an "Average Damage" checkbox.
Selecting a tower now lists the total damage it's ever done, right below total kills.
Trickery Clones are no longer nuked when you build over them
Variant Map selection in Lobby moved to be below Map
Boss Hunt game length starting gold increased from 120k to 125k
Fixes
Fixed a bug in Ranked where both players could end up in the same slot
All range & AoE related values have been changed back from Floats to FixedPoint. This should reduce the frequency of desyncs.
Variant column on the Leaderboards removed. Replaced with a Difficulty column.
Fixed Jinx doing the Michael Jackson when rotating
Fixed Transference tooltip missing in Status Bar
Fixed a bug in Ghost Mode where, if you outlast a ghost during the Boss Waves, the game freezes instead of going on
Fixed a rare nullref freeze error with the Boss Hunter achievements in Teams
Showing off some of the new VFX in action. It's a bit cluttered here, but it'll get blown up soon anyways.
Balance
General
Starting from Wave 46 to the end, the game now scales up by 19% HP per wave, up from the usual rate of 15.7% per wave.
For reference, in Version 1.3, we made it so it'd go up by 20% HP per wave starting from Wave 51. In general, the late-game scales up to be up to 10% harder than the previous version, since most builds are now better equipped to handle it.
Wave 56+ still goes up at a rate of 25% HP per wave.
Level 3 Elemental Boss HP increased by roughly 4%
Income Upgrade passive gold bonus increased from +5% to +6%
Slows applied from AoE attacks won't be reppalied through Shields
Fast creeps no longer ignore other speed boosts
Temporal creeps can no longer trigger their ability and survive through an attack that would kill them
Periodic damage reduced from 56000 to 55000
Single Element
Light damage increased from 110 to 120
Darkness adjusted:
Damage increased from 280 to 300
Bounce range increased from 500 to 750
HP Removal increased from 7.5% to 8%
Water adjusted:
Bounce range increased from 100 to 125
Bounce damage reduced from 45% to 40%
Nature damage increased from 85 to 90
Dual Element
Atom damage increased from 300 to 315
Lightning adjusted:
Damage increased from 145 to 180
Bounce count reduced from 4 / 5 / 7 to 3 / 4 / 6
Ice default priority changed from Near to Front
Infernal damage increased from 650 to 700
Solar damage-per-second increased from 105 to 110
Bloom adjusted:
Damage reduced from 375 to 350
Recharge delay is now affected by Well Buff
Recharge delay increased from 1 / 0.66 / 0.33 to 1 / 0.7 / 0.4 seconds
Geyser adjusted:
Damage increased from 1000 to 1050
Ability AoE reduced from 300 / 350 / 400 to 300
Triple Element
Astral damage increased from 1900 to 2000
Runic ability AoE increased from 250 to 300
Wisp reset time reduced from 7 to 6 seconds
Polar HP Removal reduced from 12% / 24% to 11% / 22%
Haste attack speed gain per hit increased from 6% to 7%
Impulse damage increased from 2400 to 2700
Quake shockwave damage increased from 2500 to 2600
Muck damage increased from 650 to 1000
Periodic got some love on its visuals this patch in the form of blinding rainbow blasts!
This patch has been in the making for quite a while, and we'd like to put out a special thanks to certain community members that went above and beyond to help us pull off this monumental release:
Taencred - For always being there to test each alpha build, post bugs, and confirm when things are finally working right
wadebbqwall2 - For making the fancy trailer as well as helping on GIFs and presentation
Minacious Grace - For constant balance input and testing
Scamper9 - For joining on test sessions, and finding a way to break the game with the most unlikely element combination
And everyone else that chipped in on testing and giving us feedback!
We hope you all enjoy trying out the new Quad Element Towers, plus enhanced performance options and all the other things we snuck in. With 15 New Towers at your disposal, you'll have all the tools in your arsenal needed to conquer your friends and foes!
Or get confused when you have all 6 Elements.
That's a lot of towers. Have fun learning them all!
