Nightmare mode. For each of the stages, first hit, if you have more than 1 HP always drop you to 1 HP, then any damage you take while at 1 HP is instakill. May need to nerf heals and lifesteal somehow. Torchbearer mode. You can only play as a torchbearer that needs to light up the night for your fixed number of wall units to defend the castle. Torchbearer respawns after a certain time when killed. Torchbearer has an ability that increases movement speed for a short duration. And maybe one that increases his light radius for a duration. An ability to plant smaller light beacons that lasts for a duration would be cool too.
This new FREE Torchbearer wipes out my 25% off Torchbearer Legendary rune. Ugh... what will I do? Well, my suggestion for Game+ is this, Jackson brothers, that once we've conquered the evil castle, we flipflop roles. We now play the Evil. You can just make the Human/Dwarf/Elf into Skeleton/Ogre/Ghoul.. no need to reinvent weapons, armor, just some name adjustments... then let us launch out evil monsters. That's doable, ain't it?
[I'm assuming you coded HC2 so that it can run just fine without any render...] Since you've done such a great job constructing and balancing Wave scenarios, and the Castle has 3 gates, I'd suggest trying a plus mode where the player has one unified CP production to spend, but is sometimes called to defend on more than one front. Literally don't render the units on battlefields the player isn't currently in or gate-gazing at, but run the sim and include the warning audio announcements (put the left/right stereo balance in 3D) for "X is under attack!" et al. Clearly there is only one Fell Crystal at risk. Clearly a battlefield with an enemy castle is a priority to take down (since you can, and otherwise those attackers keep ramping up). It makes sense to me that the price of Captains and Bannerman is shared (i.e. you might build just one on each of a 3-battlefield but the price escalated and the limit hits as it does now). If a battlefield is complete, the troops there should amble back to castle and then emerge into an active battlefield in the manner they do now, when first built. I'm suggesting a total troop limit, of course, though you'd have some slack, as with your no-outpost scenarios, to play balance that, eh? Likely summoned Dryads and Red Guard still stick with the hero, just as Black Guard stick with the one Fell Crystal. Unlike memories, I believe these challenges need to allow campaign hero rollover (death then next hero). Perhaps play test allowing a hero to strongly approach (pray to?) the Fell Crystal as a UI to switch him to another hero, mid battle. The design center is, you pose the plus player the challenging problem of their hero and resources torn between sometimes overlapping, already play balanced castle defense scenarios, so you'll construct challenges as a new symphony of those, where the resources and player/hero attention become a trickier dance. I'm sure your mind is already running though all the other gotchas this might entail, for feasibility, such as: you are inside the castle, the enemy radar display should be for he direction you're facing. You might want to add voice assets such as "... to the West!" to tack on to the existing announcements of things like: "a catapult has been spotted...!" etc. etc. If you do this, a fun variant might be a scenario of Racial defense, where the Elven hero can only build elves, dwarf hero, dwarves, Human humans, so that changing heroes has a tag-team aspect (or else the challenge of a very limited build set... for that matter, waves where "the dwarves have left to defend their homeland"?). Hopefully you know all this is just my casual suggestion for you to ponder, since I'm sure you four chat and play test before deciding if something is fun, and worth the effort to polish and ship. Great game!
In some ways the history levels already give an aspect of new game +. There might be something simple that involves resetting the map and Waves and amping up the difficulty above real 20. I like the suggestion of the specific-race only waves that Crystalian suggested. That could add a fun wrinkle. You would need some exceptions for Bannermen and Torchbearers and maybe some others. I do like the balance in the update, it seems much more manageable now, but still fun. Thanks for the continued updates on this!
Update Now that you've added an easy mode, can I suggest adding a hard mode? Mainly I'd like you to reinstate the extremely unbalanced outpost defenses in a hard mode. Honestly, I understand that the completely unbalanced outpost attacks were hurtful to lower level players...but losing it actually makes the game less fun for me, and I think that a hard mode would make things more fun for higher level players. With 3 lvl 99 heroes, I loved that randomly crazy difficulty. I'd even lose sometimes, which let me play retake mods - which could also benefit from a higher difficulty in monsters available. I'd also like to see a hard mode with outpost attacks that are a bit longer at times. I felt like by the time I'd got heavy defenses up, the monsters stopped. I also think that Scarwood Keep could benefit from a hard mode. It's really too easy IMO. It can be beaten every time with a redguard, a paladin with holy shield, and a general's rally worth of juggernauts. It would also be a nice addition if the scribe let you replay the pylon missions. This stuff is outside of the game+ mode discussion probably. I think that these are things that would improve the game as it is now post update.
A game+mode? Well what about a mode where you could customize your units with the equipment you own. Of course there are exceptions like dryads, knights, giants,etc. Also, there would be limits like footmen can only have up to uncommon equipment.
Woah... I dunno if this has been brought up yet or not... but I've come across a pretty bad bug. While trying to take over the land Swamp Of Sorrow, the game crashes and resets my phone. It's happened 6 times in a row now. Here's a link to the crashlog... https://docs.google.com/document/d/19WOLfP6w8SEp0a4J7T_Fq4GVLkXOUnBF4abiJreWco0/edit?usp=sharing
I've often felt that also. There are two different cases... 1. When, as Sir Marcus says, the battle ends just when you feel "is that all you got?!" 2. When you get "ready" before all the programmed waves and final spawn ramp up, so it is then anti-climatic as they spawn, sorta insta-die, and you wait wait wait for next spawn. So perhaps either a hard mode, or an in-battle act-of-defiance to cause the spawn to speed up, no-gaps, and go an extra finale spawn set? Act-of-Defiance could be summoning a War Bannerman (in single player this would be added just to declare defiance--it doesn't have to affect anything else). ... Apropos of Hard Mode, a note regarding the current (excellent but eventually "easy") play balance of Waves (memories)... My Dwarf hero with no-skills (unallocated, unused, no XP twinks, just great twinkie gear) is now level 28 by completing the first 35 waves (in order) on normal difficulty. The trickiest so far was wave 32. Finally won with research: Mages, General's 200CP, Human, Elf and built 3 Torchbearers, 3(or 2?) Bannerman, 4 Fire Mages, 1 Knight, Pathfinder... and later human wall repair, Elven Snipers, more Fire Mages, some dryads, Elven healer, Priest. I'm using a 15% unit discount +100CP rune for most waves, which is a huge edge (and not quick to roll as a rune forge!), as otherwise those Fire Mages wouldn't get into play soon enough to save my walls and Crystal from the early savage Orc rush. Edit update: no-skill Dwarf is now level 38, and has completed all 50 Waves (Wave 32 was still the trickiest, imo)
This is a strong suggestion and I endorse it. I would also like to see more endless options, like patrol. The play-as-darkness option could also be fantastic, and if taken a step further revitalize the Versus multiplayer. You wouldn't necessarily have to try balancing the current sp enemy list, reskins of the current player-unit list could get the job done. I would also like to resubmit request for some other castle building & customization options. Turrets are cool, but what about a limited number of construction slots we can use to buff/emphasize certain units or play styles? And give treemen/dryads poison-on-hit.
Hi, just got some questions: I am at wave 32, with 78% map conquered (missing 5-6 of the northern lands) and I have 2 heroes, my main one is a human knight lvl 33, with most skills in knight and some in paladin. My secondary hero is a human with some paladin and knight and magr an its horrible, its only good for healing my units and extend the combat a little, dies very quick. My questions: 1 - how can I get good equipment? Treasure I find is normally not good. Must I buy and keep on buying at the blacksmith, selling everything I buy thats bad, until I get epic or legendary stuff? Is buying from the blacksmith the main way of getting stuff? 2 - now that I am at an advanced part of the game, how can I level my secondary characters? How to grow a new character from lvl 1? I read something about 'grinding in siege waves', how can I do that? 3 - i do not pay much attention about stats or calculate much, but, is it good for my knight to dual-wield a rusty double-sword (30 dmg) and a rare shadow axe (19 dmg, 23% crit)? I havent found weapons in treasures with better dmg than those two... Thanks!
To answer your questions: 1. Finding good equipment from treasure is very rare. I have played the game since it first came out and I have gotten only 2 legendary equipments from treasures so far. This means that your best bet is crafting equipment. I had 200 crystals once and I spent them all in the blacksmith and I got 5 legendary equipments. 2. Grinding in siege waves just means to keep replaying castle siege waves because they give the most XP. For example, wave 6 is a good place to start. 3. In my opinion, for a knight build I would rather go for a sword and shield rather than dual wielding. I use dual wield only for my elven grandmaster and my dwarf runesmith.
Thank you for your answer! About grinding wave 6, you mean go to the scribe, and replay wave 6 over and over? I really dislike using the shield, are shields worthy to be used even if you dont parry much, just for the stats? I love using two weapons!
Humans can easily wield 2 weapons, but are only really effective later on when you have high level skills, or at least a high enough armor. Other than that, the other classes can easily surpass the human classes when dual wielding. A shield with +damage and a few other useful stats (armor, hp, etc) could be really useful when just starting out. You can easily switch weapon classes later on when you get components of a character build fulfilled. Some viable human builds to consider: 1. Sword Striker - This needs a high base damage weapon like a 2-handed sword. Since you'll be spamming this skill much, you'll also need Arcane Magic to keep your mana up. 2. Taunt Tank - This requires a good knowledge of which units to use, coz your character will mostly be focusing on keeping your units safe. Sword and Shield is best here since you wont be attacking as much, so it's beneficial to use a shield with a good perk instead. Use unit buffing skills and defensive skills like Heal, Holy Shield, Taunt and AOE stuns to give your units time to attack freely. 3. Gunmage - this is a fun build that ended up being one of the strongest builds i have played with. Ranged weapons like guns (i use repeater for the attack speed) can proc debuff skills and other on-hit effects like Magi-blood and Silence, so using these skills with Ice Shards is a good early strategy, while the later strategies require Time Shift abuse. With multiple passive skills that reduce mana costs, spamming skills is easy. 4. Dual Wield Mage - Another fun build which i derived from the gunmage. They are almost similar, except this one makes use of both Time Shift and Juggernaut to deal damage safely. Go for crits, and high atk speed weapons. Hope these help. Cheers!
I would also not recommend branching into multiple classes until you've hit the tier 4 skills of your initial class. Ymmv but those top-tier skills are usually game-changers. Good equipment is pretty important, and yes crafting is generally your best bet b/c you can now specify your preferred weapon type. I have no experience with double sword + another weapon but I can tell you using any 2h weapons as part of dual wielding has significant penalties, and some classes are better suited by certain animation types. I'm not sure how your equipment measures up stat-wise but if you are still using commons with "rusty" in the name, that's not a great sign. Holding lands that reward +crystals per x battle will help grow your wealth for crafting, as will replaying memories with Alts and completing challenges. Foursaken are awesome devs, so a couple of your hard earned dollars for crystals would also not be remiss. If you're struggling with completing defense waves with your current equipment (and 32 is a known doozy) you might try using skills that de-emphasize direct hero involvement or don't rely on %weapon damage. Mage has direct damage skills with set damage, and paladin can make your army do most of the hard work.
A few notes... the drop rate for good equipment is different in the paid vs free version, FYI (not sure which one you own), and the chances to get better equipment grows as you complete main campaign waves and conquer the map. Heres an under the hood secret as well... the more you craft at the Blacksmith, the higher your chances get for better equipment. This is supposed to kind of act like a natural progression guarantee, so that you are ensured better equipment as you progress through the game. Btw, the best way to guarantee upper level equipment is by competing in the arena... the higher you make it, the better equipment you get
You've gotten a lot of good answers to your questions, so I'll just whip out a few short observations and questions for you, that might be generally helpful... The first question is: why are you playing? The usual answer is some variant of: to have fun. In that case the original question should be re-asked as: what do you find fun about the game? I'm serious. Fun is a serious business! It's worth both money and time... as well as a bit of reflection! Only if you know what you find fun about this game can you make good choices about how to play. And, if we're to be helpful in advising you, since there are so many possible answers to almost any "how do I...?" question, it helps for us to know what's fun for you, what's easy for you, what's hard for you. Otherwise, everyone is just fumbling around in the dark. Like a bad make-out movie (am I supposed to be PG-13 here?!) If, say, what you find fun is mostly finding out things for yourself, you probably wouldn't have posted your questions here, and we shouldn't spoiler reveal too much. So I'll assume you want to get through all 50 waves with your primary, and then have some fun with other characters, without too much pressure or grind... 1. Good equipment is relative to what your hero needs. For example, good armor for a Dwarf hero might not need to be as high on Armor as an Elf hero, because a Dwarf hero has skills that boost Armor, and 95 total is a cap. You're asking about a dual wielding Human hero, and whether he frontlines or blocks (or stops dual and uses a shield) or Juggernauts etc is very relevant to what a good armor would be. A Human hero at your level can learn to use Juggernaut to harvest decent legendary equipment from the arena (13+ rounds, iirc). That's possibly fun for you, or possibly a boring grind--try it and see! 2. All of the memory Waves that have enemy castles are potentially quick for leveling your secondaries. For example, waves 6, 9, 15, 21, 28, 41, 48? Easy enough to check for yourself. The key is, catapults or other assaults on the enemy castle finish the wave quickly, unless you die or fail. When you succeed quickly, you earn good XP for your time expended, compared to other methods. 3. What makes for a good weapon is even more complicated than good armor/shield/rune. Try... fun, yes/no? Ranged, yes/no? Hits multiple enemies, yes/no? Magic damage, yes/no? Once you have your personal bias down in trying all those possibilities, then you can see what works best with your choice of skills for your hero, in supporting your preferred battle role. When you've nailed all that down, blow some crystals over time trying to roll (costs 5 per) an epic or legendary of your chosen weapon type. You could get lucky, or, this might be a long term project in search of perfection. Bear in mind that all of these factor into beating a "hard" wave or outpost battle... whether your useful units are all unlocked and upgraded to the max whether you know which units are useful, or not, situationally (lots of scissors, paper, stone in this!) whether your castle walls, Crystal and towers are upgraded; what is a threat, vs what is easily repulsed whether your rune promotes a fast start (eg +100CP) whether your hero skills are better for defense or offense; do they synergize well? whether you personally (hero) can "solve" an enemy problem that your units can not (or too costly) etc. The point is, the game isn't so hard that all of those have to be perfect. Wave 32, for example, is quite challenging, but can nonetheless be done with a hero with no skills whatsoever, if the other factors are all good. Most waves can be done simply by choosing appropriate units and defending them with your hero if they are threatened. Human hero skills are quite good at that. For example, it's not the easiest method, but possible to win wave 32 primarily with Elven Hunters & Snipers, if your hero can keep them alive. Try some things. "Failure" can be fun too!
Any tips for wave 47? I have a lvl 76 runesmith. He is slow but tanky and hits like a cannon. This wave in particular though is very difficult for me even though the past 46 were a breeze. The enemy blunderbuses knock me all over the place. The cultist drain my mana to the point I can't even use any skills. Finally, those goblins that die randomly when hit annoy me the most because my hero is built to handle every enemy quickly.....except those abominations.
I do have a level 92 Dwarf, but since I also had a level 39 Dwarf (now 40) pure Runesmith (to have fun with 2h hammers) I gave Wave 47 a few tries with him before finally cracking it. As always, ymmv since I have very good gear... Even with 95 armor I found I needed to stay near the castle gate to rinse aggro or panic heal. This Dwarf is slow, so basically he killed a few things close to the wall. Summoning more than two bannerman was a waste of time (only towards the end did I have enough strength to keep Elven Healers and Bannerman et al alive and at full health). One benefit of being at wall was rarely getting knocked back by blunderbuss gobs (and not moved out of position much). This also meant I wasn't bothered by cultists (when the occasional one got close, a single hammer blow killed em). Assuming you have free torch bearers (level 6 cost nothing!) I'd put them on auto-build for the whole battle, as cheap distraction. I built footmen a lot, as they are cheap distraction and an effective counter vs goblin berserkers (which die randomly, so lots of fast hits are key). One early knight and one early paladin both survived and were very helpful. In particular the knight would occasionally take out an entire cluster of blunderbuss gobs. I also did one dwarf miner, but I don't know how well he did (I think he died after a while). I didn't put anything on the wall until 75% through the wave... I built some rifleman and they took out the late rush of skeleton swordsman. My first test attempts at this wave I lost every single Elven archer on the wall, so I assume they were shot by skelie longbows. I did 2x dwarf research and also built a forgemaster because (siege units!) dwarf plainsman are very very effective here. I do have an anvil, so everything close to me at the gate gets a huge +60% damage bonus, and all dwarves get +30% from my Dwarven inscription skill. In short, cheap and effective and replaceable ground units, because after General's 200CP you're never gonna be rich again. Look for opportunities (tricky, since you're always near the gate) to cast steadfast defense to save money by increasing unit defense rating for a time. This may be the only Wave where a mass fodder strategy is almost required (due to the berserker gobs cheating death). Needless to say, with other hero builds different tactics are viable. Edit: to be clear, the only active skill I ever cast was Steadfast Defense. Nothing stopped me from casting Tremor or Forge, but I either didn't think of it or just never needed to.
Don't forget there is a research that allows you to become immune to knockback (Lead Foot, I think its called)
