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!
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 100 Trail.
5 New Wings have been added! Based on a mix of new Quads and updated effects.
- Level 80 - Burning Wisps
- Level 85 - Tesla Branches
- Level 90 - Star Rose Wings
- Level 95 - Wings of Doom
- Level 100 - Eternal Blaze
Ride the wave into battle!
Improvements
- Unity Version bumped from 2020.3.11 to 2020.3.21
- Localizations updated for: German, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Portuguese
- Main Menu reorganized:
- Extras menu has been nuked
- 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!