⚔ New: Veterancy & Perks
Towers now earn ranks from combat — Rookie → Recruit → Veteran → Elite → Master → Champion. Hit Elite (Tier 3, 150 kills) to unlock a perk slot.
Two perks per tower: a safe stat boost and a rare behavior-changer.
Paid rerolls: gold cost scales with tower investment (100g–1000g).
Utility traps (Synapse, Phase, Toxic, Molecular, Wellspring, Resonator, Midas, Pyre, Sigil, Aeon, Void) track their own progress counter — stuns, phases, marks, heals — so they tier up too.
🔫 New: Charge Bank System
Multi-shot traps now bank discrete charges instead of one-shot cooldowns. Burst when you need it, regen between waves.
🎯 New: Plate Filter Targeting
Walkable traps can be set to trigger only on:
All — legacy behavior
Boss — save the punch for the big guy
Elite — pop modifier-tagged enemies
Carrier — only fire on enemies carrying a pollination debuff
📜 New: Wave Event Banner
Milestone wave events now telegraphed with an animated banner so you stop missing them.
⚖ Balance
Soul Reaper: killStack damage now capped at 2000 stacks. Prevents marathon runs from overflowing damage into Infinity (and quietly corrupting saves).
Prism Beam: ramp damage now caps at 3.5× (was uncapped). Locking on a tanky boss for 60+ seconds no longer NaNs your save.
Aeon Sanctuary — "Eternal" perk reworked: now grants +5% slow magnitude on any attribute roll, plus ignores Antifreeze halving when GLACIER. No longer a dead pick for non-GLACIER Aeons.
Skeleton nerf: HP 21 → 18, speed 1.5 → 1.35, spawn rate 0.6 → 0.5. Boss Skeleton scaled to match (HP 240 → 200, speed 1.13 → 1.05).
🐛 Fixes
Reroll cost mismatch: sidebar quoted price now matches engine-charged price exactly (was off for low-cost traps).
Save integrity: uncapped damage scalars (Reaper, Prism) could NaN saves on long runs — both now hard-capped.
Thanks for playing. Bug reports & balance feedback welcome on the Steam Community hub.