Hi Mineral Defenders!

This is the first major update to Mineral Defense. It introduces a new, more difficult icy world with a new set of enemies to defeat and structures to unlock!

Major Additions:

Ice World Glacian:

Disembark from the familiar hot world of Infernis and set your ship's warp drive to Glacian, the brand new Ice World!
Glacian features a new soundtrack, and an all new set of enemies ranging from polar bears, mutated fish, ice golems and many more! Progression on Glacian will unlock new structures to strengthen your arsenal and make you more powerful whilst you are defending your minerals.

New Structures:

New structures have been added that play into the idea of the upgraded elemental system with direct synergies!

Oil Tower - Sprays blobs of oil that stick to the ground, slowing all enemies that walk through it, and inflicting them with an Oiled debuff that greatly increases the damage from Fire elemental damage.

Ice Tower - Launches area damaging Ice projectiles that are strong against armor, inflicting the Brittle debuff. Enemies inflicted with Brittle have a high chance to do an enormous critical damage bonus from Heavy Kinetic weapon types, which not only increases the damage by multiple times, but also makes it effective against health as well as armor!

Bomb Tower - Lobs an area damaging bomb, this bomb can be configured at any time between Explosive, Fire, Corrosive or Electric elemental types, changing the specialty of the bomb tower to deal with different enemies! The Explosive specialization will deal less damage than the other options, however is effective against both Health and Armor. The other specializations do much more damage, but are only effective against Health, Armor or Shields, respectively. (The Bomb Tower in Fire mode will of course synergize with Oiled!)

Flamethrower - Sprays a stream of deadly Fire, damaging all enemies inside its cone of effect. Directly synergizes with the Oiled status effect to deal greatly increased damage!

Solid defined Elemental types for weapons:

Elemental types are now solid guidelines for weapons, rather than just cosmetic suggestions!
Their elemental strengths are as follows:
Fire = Health
Corrosive = Armor
Electric = Shield
Energy = Health, Armor, Shields
Explosive = Health, Armor
Ice = Armor
Light Kinetic = Health
Heavy Kinetic = Armor

Some structures currently do not use an elemental type and have unique effects without a damage guideline (such as the Sniper tower), but most structures now use elements!

Structure Elemental Types:

Gatling Tower = Light Kinetic
Cannon Tower = Heavy Kinetic
Laser Tower = Energy
Railgun Tower = Energy
Flamethrower = Fire
Acid Tower = Corrosive
Ice Tower = Ice
Missile Tower = Explosive
Bomb Tower = Explosive, Fire, Corrosive or Electric
Electric Tower = Electric
Taser Tower = Electric

There are many more direct elemental synergies planned in the upcoming weeks, with multiple new status effects. These combinations will reward strategizing and careful planning and allow for very powerful playthroughs.

Milestone Based Research Unlocks:

Many research unlocks are now gated behind milestone progression! This means you will unlock them during standard gameplay, removing the need to spend precious research points on them. Structures unlocked via milestone research during an ongoing game will be immediately available during that game, mitigating the need to draw its card. This will provide a much more beginner friendly progression system, and provide a more satisfying

Greatly Improved VFX:

The weapon VFX for the entire game have been improved!
- Most turret projectiles now physically travel to their target over time rather than faking the projectile movement in an effect, greatly improving the feel of weapons when they hit enemies.
- Improved/Added projectile trails.
- Added distortion effects to explosions.

Many New Achievements:

Of course, new content means more achievements!

Full Changelog:

Added:

- Added new world Glacian
- Added new ice world enemies
- Added new elemental structures
- Solid defined elemental guidelines with UI text formatting
- Direct elemental and status effect synergies
- Milestone Research Unlocks
- New weapon VFX
- Physical projectiles rather than fake projectiles
- Loading screen on startup to load steam stats to prevent race conditions where it takes a moment to load your steam account values (for progression)
- New soundtrack for Glacian, with dynamically blended layers depending on if a wave is currently active or not
- A basic world select menu

Changed:

- Laser tower is now 2x2 in size
- Changed the main menu music to be more chill
- Audio can now play while the game is not focused
- It is now easier to place platforms on steep ledges
- Optimizer tower will now check distance by 2D, ignoring height
- Improved railgun shoot sound
- Railgun now has a long range stat, and the effective range of its projectile is 2x its actual range stat.
- Missile tower is now strong against both Health and Armor
- Acid tower is now strong against Armor rather than Health
- Slightly increased the width of research entries in the research menu
- "Traps" such as the Acid Tower's acid pool and the new Oil Tower's oil pool will now stack. Previously enemies would only activate one trap that they were touching, now they will activate all of them simultaneously.
- The slow tower is now 5% less effective at slowing enemies.
- Sniper tower base (non-crit) damage efficiency increased
- Sniper tower critical damage multiplier increased to 3x
- Improved CPU performance
- Increased the cost of Laser Towers
- Increased the cost of Railgun Towers
- Increased the cost of Optimizers
- Drill tower upgrades will now each increase drilled minerals by 25% instead of 10%, making their upgrades far more worth it
- Reduced the cost of Electric Towers
- Increased the chance of receiving base tower unlocks in the card draw

Fixed:

- Can no longer open a supply cache and a card draw at the same time
- Fixed a bug where a structure blueprint that you haven't placed yet would be incorrectly saved, then loaded as a real structure
- Fixed saving supply caches that have already been claimed, preventing an exploit where you can claim supply caches multiple times
- Fixed the cannon tower shoot sound being too loud
- Fixed the music
- Fixed drill towers destroying performance
- Enemies will no longer continue spawning after the game is lost
- Fixed the laser tower audio effect remaining after selling the tower
- Fixed some structures materials not glowing
- Fixed the laser tower damage multiplier resetting after reaching 200%