Developer Comments:
Skills felt too 1 dimensional. Sometimes you wouldn't have enough useful skills to put all your willpower into, so you would put the rest into extra starting lives which didn't actively help you win the scenario. Now that the damage skill is unlocked from the start you will always be able to use your willpower to actively help you destroy enemies. If you can't put it towards buffing a tower in a unique way, you can always just get 10% extra damage. This change did make all the scenarios easier, so enjoy the reduced difficulty while it lasts.
The reason why I added the skill caps was because without it some skills felt far superior to others. Now I can gate the power of skills and allow the player to unlock more potential in those skills as I see fit.
I really want to get the scenarios to all be solid, from start to finish, including through all the challenge levels. This update broke things more than it fixed them, but I do feel like its heading in the right direction. Each challenge level is a significant increase in overall difficulty
Changelog:
New features:
* added baseline boss skill: heals for 1% of its missing health every second
* bosses now always have armor
* added skill caps to almost all skills
* skill caps can be increased through unlocks
Polish:
* reworded the tooltips for the challenges
* rearranged some skills in the skills menu
* reworded some skill unlock tooltips
* renamed some skills
* reworded boss ability that deals less damage based on health
* added visual effect for boss heal ability
* slightly changed intensity calculation for vision quest
* boss damage visibly changes with their health
* slightly changed the layout of vision 12
* optimized towers a bit (framerate performance)
Balance:
* increased the difficulty of each challenge
* reduced wind attack speed skill step to +0.5 per (was 1)
* changed freeze duration skill step to +0.2 sec duration and +5% dmg (was 0.1 and 10%)
* reduced corrosion skill bonus damage to armored per level to 0.5 (was 1)
* changed lightning chance skill step to +2% chance and +6% armor ignore (was 4% and 10%)
* reworked essence boost skill: now gives +10% essence for defeated enemies only
* reduced attack speed skill step to 5% per (was 10%)
* "potency" skill no longer increases damage based tower abilities
* "potency" is unlocked at 1 willpower, "healthy heart" is unlocked at 75 willpower
* increased fire tower suppressed bonus to 4 (was 3)
* increased victory bonus exp
* increased consolation exp gain to +10 per wave survived (was +2)
* slightly reduced enemy exp scaling per wave
* adjusted boss armor and regen multipliers
* increased iron health and armor to 130/40 (was 120/20)
* reduced the difficulty of vision 4, 5a, 6a, 7, 8, 10, and 11
* increased the difficulty of "coil"
* reduced the difficulty of "ziggy"and "roll"
* increased the difficulty of nightmare I and II
Bug fixes:
* "refocus" is no longer an option after you lose in endless mode
* no longer gets stuck during the tutorial if you press play too quick