Mar 11 2016

CARDINAL QUEST 2 PATCH 1.18: BOSS BATTLES

Ever since The Tower was introduced in 1.1, it’s been crazy popular. In many ways it’s Cardinal Quest 2’s endgame, something to tackle beyond clearing the Acts and racing up the ranks of the achievement system. I’m super proud of how well the Tower’s worked out—but I feel there’s lots of room to do better, especially in level variety.

This patch is the first step on that path. As you reach boss levels, you’ll find there are a few new layouts to tackle. A few bosses even have their own special levels. I hope you’ll find them appropriately terrifying!

By way of compensation for making the Tower boss levels less predictable (and often harder), Tower bosses will now always drop high-quality equipment as well as their key. I’m hoping this’ll give an extra boost to killing each boss and maybe even propel you further in your Tower runs. Have fun, and good hunting…

Patch 1.18 is now live on Steam and Kongregate. iOS and Android will likely take a few weeks, but I’ll get them to you as quickly as I can. 

Full patch notes below.

THE TOWER

  • Added Spider Queen as a Tower boss.
  • Three Tower bosses now have unique boss levels.
  • Expanded the layouts of “Gauntlet” boss levels.
  • Tower bosses are now guaranteed to drop high-quality gear.

CLASSES AND SKILLS

  • Paladin: “Devotee” perk penalty changed from -1 Attack to -1 Defense.
  • Ranger: “Close Quarters” perk increased from +1 Defense to +2.
  • Thief: “Ghost Run” will now notify you when a level has no chests.
  • Alchemist: Pistol can now use your Attack stat to inflict devastating critical hits.

ITEMS

  • Added a new Legendary potion.
  • Moved Elixir of Time to crafting tier 4.
  • Legendary items can no longer stack.

BUGFIXES

  • Fixed crash when multiple Wisps fireballed the same enemy.
  • Mobile: fixed bug where closing app on item screen could destroy the item.
  • Fixed issue with tab cycling when certain ranged enemies were visible.
  • Mana Potions now correctly fill Classicist mana bar.
  • Antivenom no longer allows even a single turn of poison damage.
  • Spells can now target invisible friendly Scavengers.
  • Allies will no longer spawn in closets on 1-7.
  • Fixed Scavengers turning hostile if attacked while under both Charm and Enslave.
  • Fixed bug where items could rarely spawn invisible or semi-transparent.
  • Mobile: Fixed hitboxes on difficulty select buttons.
  • iOS: Fixed sound issues with playing other music in the background.

 

85 Comments on “CARDINAL QUEST 2 PATCH 1.18: BOSS BATTLES

  1. Thanks for the update! Tower seems so much fresh now 🙂 .. been pouring countless hours to this game, just great work all around man, you should be proud

  2. I thought Ghost run already notified you but something must have been wrong then.

    Devotee change is nice, the pistol change made me lol because people will experiment an attack build on gunslinger.

    Yay for new boss layouts….but a spider queen boss… x_x

  3. Also here’s a bug, the 1st floor in the tower had 1 enemy. This happened 3 times in a row.

  4. yep, theres a bug that causes levels to only have one enemy

  5. Darn I thought the spider queen would have a new skill or something but it’s just the same old dangerous boss with probably more health and a closed space full of spiders.

    My god Mother Wolf’ is scary now because of her layout.

  6. Whoops! Looks like I broke the first Tower level while I was tweaking the enemy counts. I’ll push a hotfix now, it’ll show up as 1.18.1.

    Dan: Restarting can lose you hours of progress, and not in a cool way, so I try to make it a little difficult! Do you find you need to restart often?

  7. yep, a strat for using naked pack with thief is to use treasure scrolls to quickly get a weapon and if yo dont get a weapon in the first two stage quit and restart

  8. One thing I notice is enemies using spells but only the sound is present. Such as a fire mage “using” fireball but you don’t get hurt and not see the fireball, and a dragon knight using charge in melee range which isn’t suppose to happen and also I hear the sound.

    Also for a very long time the dragon knight who uses berserk and uppercut has a bug, he will use uppercut but nothing happens and it’s almost always used when I’m not even near him. I think another enemy in act 2 uses uppercut and the same thing happens.

    Loving the update, I’m seeing consuming horror a lot now and it’s even scarier now due to the acid blobs nearby.

    In a future update, you will probably have to add new item perks since the thief has 5 and the other classes have 4.
    Also what does the “Merchant’s pack” icon represent?

  9. hey is there a bug with pistols headshot damage not working i see it proc a 12 hit like once an act, if it was based on critical hit rate shouldn’t it proc more than that?

  10. oh and kosh i thinks its a big ol rucksack with all the equipment the scavenger has or something

  11. Thanks again for making the game better and better. I just want to reiterate that I would love to see some changes made to make the Paladin noncombatant more interesting. The Noncombatant Paladin should have a special spell called “Turn the Other Cheek.” It is sort of like enslave, but to be susceptible to it, a monster needs to wound the paladin; perhaps susceptible monsters have a 50% chance of being converted when the spell is cast, and the susceptibility is canceled if the paladin retaliates. The paladin can use it on several monsters at once, but this also requires him to be wounded by all of them, and also encourages him to risk being hurt by more powerful monsters.

  12. I also wanted to officially propose the Stormbringer legendary weapon. Stormbringer works like this:

    -Permanent bleedstrike when it hits an enemy
    -Bleeds the player if a kill is not made in 5 turns (at a faster rate than the Dark Rosary)
    -Heals the player after kills.
    -Can lunge unpredictably at friends and foes alike (not dependent on the player’s chosen direction as with Restless Blade)

  13. Another legendary weapon-

    Saint George’s Lance
    -+2 faith, +1 defense
    -+ 50% chance to crit against basilisks, dragons, and horrors.

  14. Awesomesause: It’s based on your Attack stat. Your critical chance can be really low (or even 0%) if you neglect it.

    knosh: interesting – I’ll have to look at AI spellcasting, thanks! And yes, there’s definitely room for more perks all round…

  15. Ryan: cool, Stormbringer sounds like a fun Legendary! I’ll keep it in mind for the next patch.

    Expanding Noncombatant like that to allow true pacifist runs vs bosses would totally be worth it. I’ll have to think about how boss fights could work with this in a fair and interesting way.

  16. hey random, the bleedstrike from axe of thousands doesn’t make sense since your most likely one hitting most enemies, i would suggest giving the bleedstrike to a legendary dagger and give the axe a different effect that would affect difficult enemies that take multiple hits, like reducing defence or stunning.

  17. oh and since pug can use whetstones, why cat he use armour patches, he could use them like bandaids to stop damage over time or small healing

  18. what happened to your promise to Desura customers who own Cardinal Quest 1

  19. When I enslave the scavenger in the tower, he snaps out of it after several levels. He still has the heart above his head, but seems to spontaneously remember that he’s not on my side.
    During this time, I cannot use enslave, as the scavenger is counted as my enslaved creature.
    Was this intentional, or is it a bug?

  20. Hello, I have enjoyed playing CQ2.
    When I run the game while listening to iphone music, the music stops.
    I want to listen my iphone music when I playing CQ2.
    Please fix this problem.
    Then I will really appreciate to you.
    My iphone is 6s that version is iOS 9.2.1.
    Please fix it. 🙂

  21. hey theres a small freeze when i an some other person tries to exit a level in the tower that lasts about 7 seconds

  22. I’ve also encountered the enslaved scavenger bug. I’m relatively sure he snaps out of it on any level that would normally otherwise have a scavenger. The two certainly seem related.

    I’m not sure it’s a bad thing, as an enslaved scavenger it stupid powerful, but its issue annoying he’s still considered enslaved.

  23. Larry: please email me with your proof of purchase from Desura and i’ll hook you up 🙂

    bwrr: A patch is on the way now with a fix for this issue, thank you!

    hmm, the Scavenger issues with Enslave are kinda glitchy but you’re right that it’d be overpowered if it worked. I think I’ll need to review that for the next patch.

    Awesomesause: thanks, I’ll look into the freeze! The Pugilist shouldn’t be able to use whetstones, though; I must be missing something there…

  24. what? he shouldnt use whetstones?! it fits in with their manly persona

  25. well looking at the messages sent i can only expect nerfs;
    removing pugs ability to sharpen his fists
    changing scavenger so that he’s immune to enslave, despite this being more of a novelty since he’s so fragile in later levels.

    however i hope to expect vaults and methods to get in as a reward for these expected nerfs

  26. Speaking of the pugilist, I remember you airing the idea of giving him a venomous strike (like in kung fu movies), which would be cool.

  27. Hi, I found a bug: I enslave a scavenger, then I go up one tower-level and leave the game. When I’m loading the game again, the scavenger is hostile, but still shows the enslaved symbol (the hearts). He attacks me, I can attack him, but I cannot enslave him again. This affects Mobile build 1.17 on Android.

  28. spiritkopf the issue has been addressed already by randomnine and will probably be fixed and i hope that random doesn’t find ways of stopping you having fun with the scavenger

  29. ok so i have a really powerful wizard build, except that even with 70% inspire chance and 40 intellect it takes 100s of hits to kill scavengers and ogres A because spell damage scales so poorly eg 6-22 against enemies that have 200+ health and B 75% of all my shots dont do anything because scaling magic resist and willpower got its cap removed for reasons im not aware of.

  30. I find that damage gets outscaled by health eventually with most characters. The Ranger’s bow is even worse as far as damage goes, but at least it doesn’t get resisted most of the time…

    I think that almost all games of this type end up with this issue in any endless mode. Diablo is a great example. At some point you’re mostly just hammering away at an enemy with millions of hp (not even exaggerating) with the same skills and abilities you’ve been using forever… your basic strategy at some point becomes set in stone, it just takes a hell of a lot more time to kill stuff with it.

    I think about this issue a lot in rpg game theory, and it’s hard to fix. The two most effective methods for fixing this are either making death neigh inevitable before passing that curve, or adding new elements to gameplay that increase difficulty.

    The second one from randoms perspective is a real pain. Coding whole new elements of gameplay just for ultra high levels of the tower seems a lot of work.

    However, it has been done. noncombatant and ghost run are great examples of this.

    I wonder if something that would help would be making the levels tougher to navigate at higher levels. More lava and pits, more wide open fields full of ranged baddies… that sort of thing. Maybe enemies would develop more powerful skills that destroy your armor, or render a skill useless, or prevent you from moving?

    I don’t expect to see any of this stuff, I just love game theory and problem solving how to keep games fun and exciting 🙂

  31. yeah dynamic terrain that would change over time/ when walked over etc would be nice, like walking adjacent to a pit would sometimes crumble the next turn and doors that close behind enemies and the player or fire attacks lighting grass and bushes on fire, destroying them and damaging the player

  32. and also certain items like explosives that would destroy walls that could destroy vaults that i have seen multiple times already in the game

  33. Tried out the new boss levels in tower and they are definitely cooler than before, and the unique levels are especially neat and flavourful. Otherwise haven’t come across any bugs yet.
    As for suggestions for future updates, perhaps Legendary Gloves/Gauntlets to complete the set? Heartseekers with +crit%? Bonecrushers that give X% chance to cripple enemy with -atk or -speed on strike? Or if the Axe of Thousands gets changed, the bleed effect gets put on legendary gloves instead? Or, you know, something entirely different that’s almost certainly better than what I can think of.

  34. I agree legendary gloves and/or helmet would be cool. You could consider giving the Axe of Thousands the ability to frighten enemies you attack (because pain inflicts fear), or making a (scary) mask with this effect.

  35. On a separate note, I’d love to see a skill that takes like 200% exp to charge. Not sure what skill would be good enough to validate such a long cooldown. maybe Sharpen Blade?

  36. kill all enemies on screen, regardless of stats

  37. Feels a little too similar to nova scroll and wrath of God though

  38. A skill that takes 200% exp, if it’s a sharpen blade or other permanent boost is also quite similar to alchemist’s tinker

  39. Did I really lose everything?

    I had to do a factory reset on my phone today and when I went to reinstall and play cardinal quest 2, Everything was gone. I had unlocked all levels, and the tower, all characters, including the alchemist the hard way with the 3 vials, and had a bunch of points stocked up. Am I just SOL or is there some sort of way I can get my stuff back? 🙁

  40. sorry you probablhave lost everything since Cardinal quest doesn’t have cloud save

  41. This is probably the finest game on a phone. To bad it only has 3 actual levels. Still I love it none the less

  42. “sorry you probablhave lost everything since Cardinal quest doesn’t have cloud save”

    That is extremely disappointing. That was about a year of progress lost. It would be nice if cloud save could possibly be implemented in the future. It’s going to be a while before I attempt to get back into it abit starting from scratch. 🙁

  43. you could support the dev by buying morale… If you’ve been playing the game a year or would be a good way to show support 🙂

  44. “you could support the dev by buying morale… If you’ve been playing the game a year or would be a good way to show support :)”

    I have already. I did the $5 donation once simply for the sake of support. But I would have to drop $20 to $25 to have enough morale to unlock the characters again and purchase the alchemist outright. But I still wouldn’t have all my achievements or levels unlocked like before. I may purchase the alchemist, thought it’s still a bitter pill to swallow after having earned him the hard way.

    It’s still a great game and I will start it up again. But just trying to say it would be very nice if cloud support could be added in the future to avoid such a thing for anyone else or myself again. If I did decide to spend $25 to get all my characters back and had to reset my phone or get a new one again, it would all be lost and the money thrown away without cloud save right?

  45. You guys should definitely consider multi-player or co-op that would be awesome 😝

  46. that’s been talked about on the kongregate forums and some hard to work out points like how would the turn based system work out in multiplayer, if each player took a step the that would slow down gameplay considerably, or technical costs like how much it would slow down further update or the costs of servers to host these multiplayer games.
    if you want the competitive aspect that co-op/multiplayer would bring then dailies would be a far easier and less costly alternative, sure servers would still need to be bought, but it cuts to whole question of dealing with each players turn out of the question, and because dailies often involve lots of people it would treat the best people as well and the less skilled, where as if a worse player had to personally compete with a good player then there is a good chance that neither player enjoys the experience

    oh thats alot of word sorry

  47. I was thinking of a class (or an enemy) called the Jester, who can build “walls” like a mime to block or even cage in enemies. The player would have to concentrate on speed a lot to outrun and box in opponents. Maybe he can even have another skill whereby he sings the Bard’s Song to put multiple enemies to sleep, jiggly puff style.

  48. I like the Jester idea. He could also temporarily swap appearances with an enemy so that enemies attack it rather than him.

  49. Hey guys, really enjoying the game here.

    I’ve got a question about the ice blast spell being used in the Tower.
    I tended to get really high (floor 95) by upgrading the fireball skill to the ice blast skill and then, i usually found another fireball spell just a few floors from there.
    This way i got myself both the fireball and the ice blast spell and rocked everything.

    Is this not possible anymore?
    Because I’m now floor 63 with just my ice blast. Gonna die soon if I don’t find me that second one though.

  50. I feel Hellhound should make the dog not polymorph and instead: Start with +1-0 damage, go into stealth when you use animal bond, and have a small chance to lifesteal.

    The polymorph just only changes the dog’s damage and health, plus you have to be lucky to get a good polymorph.

  51. nah i like the random aspect of autopolymorph, because occasionally you get ogres and horrors

  52. I found a problem (or at least I think it’s a problem): when I enslave the Spider Queen, her offspring still come out hostile.

  53. I picked this game up about a week ago and have been absolutely hooked. So much so that last night I read all of the patch notes and comments from the very beginning!

    I surely have no expectation for you to implement these as I know you are quite busy, but I’m going to spitball a couple ideas here just for the sake of conversation.

    1.) Gunslinger: Instead of obtaining a second pistol skill perhaps make the second pistol on the skill tree into “Dual Wield”. Instead of two separate skills with two separate wait timers, the skill would be Inspiration-esque. After firing a shot, the skill gets immediately “inspirationed” (chance of inspiration 100%). After the second shot, the 3 turn wait timer starts. While this requires you to wait the full three turns before firing another two shots, it at least allows for another skill to be obtained and perhaps would lead to more interesting gunslinger builds.

    2) Paladin Perk – “Self-Immolation”: Casting a magic spell strengthens the Paladins faith by either a percentage or set integer during the duration of Mana Burn.

    Any who, keep us the great work and I’ll definitely be getting the Steam version of this game too! (And I’m very exciting for the game you and Terry are working on!)

  54. Picked up deluxe version on Steam today to show support (even though I’ll probably still just play it on iOS). Please keep doing what you love — you’re good at it

    Cheers

  55. The Tower just keeps getting better and better! I would love to see some more diversity between 20-level blocks of the Tower as well. Also, here’s a suggestion for the Paladin’s “Judgement”
    Instead of it being an active spell which takes up a slot (and requires a round to use, often making it too costly when fighting bosses or tough enemies) Judgement could work as a passive talent:

    When hit by an enemy, mark them for judgement. Kill it before Judgement expires to gain HP (based on the enemy’s HP when marked/ maximum HP). If a different enemy hits you for more damage, then he is now marked for judgement instead.

  56. Just a suggestion, but could you consider adding an autocaster? I find my Paladin builds using buffs consecutively and it would be easier if they were automatic. Just a suggestion, love your game! Keep up the great work c:

  57. yowasap, you can use hotkeys if your using spells repeatedly over a short period of time, wasd/arrow movement, 1-5 for spells, 6-0 for consumables an i dont really find using spells over and over to be a pain, “unless it starts to take 3-4 seconds per turn i think there might be a memory leak bug because this doesnt happen in the early game and I’ve had 1 turn cast time with paladin with no probs before.
    on another note i think some of the characters need better choices for talents, since thief’s talents you can really consider for a time while wizard you’ll always choose inspiration, not because leech is garbage, its just not as good as inspiration, so my suggestion would be to make wizards heal skill on its separate tree like regeneration or the thing pug has for his heal and then give wizard a new choice equivalent to inspiration, for example clicking a spell then clicking the spell again without selecting an enemy would use a turn and overcharge the spell, increasing the potency of the spell however it doubles the cooldown and adds three turns (to stop people spamming it with 30 intelligence, which i think is enough the cast some of the shorter spells i with one turn like freeze, fireball and enfeeble).

    I also think flash bomb is rather odd and doesnt fit with how thief plays and a good change in my opinion would be to make it a targeted splash spell that would always work rather than it be hit or is against targets 2 or more away, i understand that its a close rage spell but its uncomfortably so. another suggestion would be to apply smoke terrain that blocks sight and lowers speed inside to a targeted area

  58. Wow! Hey everyone, there are way more comments here than I ever expected.

    Endless modes really are tough to balance. They have to keep getting harder, and at some point it’s going to feel unfair. There can’t be limits on how unfair it gets either, because there’s always a chance someone will figure out a strategy that overcomes those limits – and then it just gets easier over time instead of harder.

    What I’d like to do is make the game more complex at higher levels. So far that involves rising talent caps after the 20th floor and the +1/+2 etc gear you find, which helps keeps things interesting from 20-60. To go further I think I’d like to give enemies new, more dangerous abilities as you get higher besides just more damage, speed, hp and resist; there need to be new challenges in the higher floors beyond regular enemies with stat buffs. More dangerous levels would be nice too. I’m not sure super-enemies like this would feel any less unfair, but they would be more fun 🙂

    As for a 200% exp spell, that could be interesting. I’d want it to have the same kind of impact as the tier 4 consumables—Potion of Invincibility, Tome, Elixir of Time—so either giving you a big step up or helping you kill a boss. Any effect like that would be hugely overpowered in The Tower, of course!

  59. I think the flash bomb makes sense for the thief in terms of making an escape. You use it when you’re cornered.

    One thing I think would make sense for the thief is some kind of distraction skill, like a whistling arrow, which will draw enemies away from a place (who haven’t detected the thief already).

  60. The Jester class sounds fun! There isn’t anything that modifies terrain at the moment, so that’s something I’d like to do more with.

    Calabiyaur: You’ll still be able to find Fireball, though I did tweak this a patch or two ago to make spell drops less predictable – so there are no guarantees. I hope you find it soon!

    Ryan: Thanks, I need to fix this in the next patch.

    Mugatu224: The fact that you’re enjoying the game makes it all worthwhile. Thank you for your support <3 That's a very cool Paladin perk, too! I'll have to see if I can fit that mechanic in somewhere...

  61. Alienslayer: That’s an interesting spin on Judgement. The healing talents have often been a bit weak, and making it a passive would certainly help. Or maybe I could give it another function, like debuffing the enemy…

    Yowasap: Thanks, I hadn’t considered an autocaster. I’m wary of adding complexity to the UI, but I can see it would be useful for buff spells. How would you want it to work?

    Awesomesause: hmm, I’ll have a think about removing the lockout between Inspiration and Leech; again I think this is a case of me being too hard on healing talents, and opening it up could be fun.

    I’m quite fond of Flash Bomb as another way to activate Shadow Walk and sneak attacks, but maybe it should be more consistent at long range. I’ll have a poke at it 🙂

    Ryan: yep, that’d be nice – it’s a standard stealth tool, and the more I think about it, the more luring enemies in for sneak attacks makes sense. Maybe I’ll try something that pulls in the nearest enemy and lowers their awareness briefly…

  62. I was thinking something to draw enemies to a particular location. It be used to draw them in for sneak attacks, or it could be used to get them away from a place (like when you’re doing the loot=XP mode and you want to loot a chest surrounded by enemies).

  63. Regarding the autocaster concept, maybe a long-tap, like tap-and-hold, on a skill would set it to recast on each available turn. An overlay of an “A” to indicate as such. Repeat to disable.

    Of course, given the long cooldown on Paladin buffs, you might be constantly casting it too early and end up losing your buff mid-fight, so maybe a contingency-style auto-cast that takes effect when an enemy alerts?

    Dunno. I find the best Paladin build is the Warrior with a set of holy spells =) All the high-end Paladin skills are to high risk for my blood.

  64. I’ve had good results doing a noncombatant paladin with stealth spells (glide, shadow walk), blink, and a consecrated dagger. Basically a paladin assassin. The problem is being able to find these skills soon enough. Also, a Paladin with heal + Storm and Thunder can be pretty devastating.

  65. One other bug I’ve noticed (I play on iOS by the way): When the Shimmerling casts frost breath on me, there is no animation. I hear the sound and see the effect but the ice ball doesn’t fly out.

  66. Seems steam achievement “Frugal Spender” cannot be done because “Discount” is no longer available.

  67. @ryan
    Shimmerling’s frost breath was always like that, don’t think it’s a bug.

  68. This game is amazing and I have spent a lot of time on it, but I recently found a bug. If you enslave a spider queen then the spiders she spawns will be hostile. It is fun to watch the spider queen die by her own minions, but I was thinking this probably counts as a bug. You could just make it so that when the spider queen is enslaved she no longer produces spider minions. Keep up the great work, this game is perfect as a pastime between classes.

  69. I have enjoyed your game so much! The love of simple and straightforward design, almost no hidden mechanics, strategy and complex tactics built from simple components, simple UI, complementary music and graphics. Honestly an all-time favorite that keeps getting better.

    One very important request: we need at least one separate save slot for the Tower. I have been past floor 300 with Alchemist, and suicided just so I could play the game again (I mean other Acts and characters). It’s fun to see how far you can go, but without extra slots it basically ruins the experience to be trapped in an endless grind. Now I was immensely enjoying my tower run and the feeling of accomplishment, but it became a grind when I couldn’t enjoy the game as a whole until I gave up my run.

    Given how successful I have been with the tower, I feel qualified to make some comments about it and the game.
    1) the Mage ability Classicist is cool for allowing bursts of magic, but has a drastic flaw in the way it recharges. A large portion of in-game time is spent waiting on a recharge. This is entirely inevitable with that perk, and effectively kills the fun. If no enemies are aware of the player, then we should be able to wait less turns to recharge. Maybe 3 turns resting triggers full recharge?
    1-A) the recharging mechanic basically means you are charging at as low as 1/5 the rate you normally do (normally you could use up to five spells and charge all at once). In fact, you generally need to wait more than one turn for one point of recharge! This is a critical, experience-ruining flaw. You want people to be playing, not constantly looking for a corner to go sit in and tap their screen 20-40 times so they can fire a single spell off (forget fully charging the meter!). The trade off for this skill is already extreme, since your escape/utility spells are on the same meter and thus almost never available. Clone+poly? Charm? Teleport? Forget it.
    2) enslave and hire are not useful. They are moderately to minimally fun, but they do not reach “practical.”
    2-A) enslave’s one-at-a-time mechanics are punishing. The ability of enemies (tower bosses) to “resist” clinched the spell’s status as junk. Also, you can’t disengage and kill for experience. Most players don’t seem to know that ally death grants no experience, so in both the ordinary game and the Tower, Enslave actually cripples your XP gain. It ends up as a one-trick pony with which you can awesomely take over the Act boss.
    2-B) hire is worse. It costs the player severely just to take the perk, and then its only use is to get your now-underpowered character out of a bind when under attack. Arguably you can attempt to amass an army, at least in the Tower, but it suffers from the same problem as Enslave: your minions were supposed to be your XP. Meanwhile your army is generally non-healable, and always scales badly.
    2-C) Charm is far, far better and puts them to shame. The last thing a thoughtful player wants is a permanent ally! If there are 5 dragon young on a level, then you want to temporarily charm only full-health Dragons to finish off the weakened ones. You don’t want to create a doomed, non-healable ally at the cost of the XP it would have given. Charm one, let it fight enemies, charm wears off before it dies, rinse and repeat. Applies to everything.

    To drive it home: I have had more than 20 charmed allies at one time in the Tower, which I then ate for XP. Hire is crap. Enslave is slightly better in the Acts, and worse in the tower.

    3) the tower could use some sort of ultra-shop. Players can modify their character with consumables and equipment, but it’s limited and rare. If you clear a block of 20, then perhaps you could be allowed to choose a reward? It could be very simple. A multiple choice like the scavenger now, perhaps. Easily implemented with a few doors and one key. 2+ tomes, or an unknown legendary item (super exciting and rewarding for players, possibly exclude consumables), or some whet stones, or some armor patches, or a survival pack room with two of every tier 1-4 potion (can’t have scrolls and dry goods without making Alchemist OP). The important thing here is giving the player a more meaningful choice about developing their character for scaling the tower. Take the tomes hoping for a boost to a critically needed stat? Take the patches for guaranteed defense? Roll the dice for a legendary which will become useless in 20-30 floors when it fails to scale? Maybe you can buy whetstones for it later if it’s good! You decide. You can even make the keys purchase-able. Maybe 1000 gold per key, and boss drops gold? Make gold uber-valuable and desirable in the tower, and thus add weight to the player’s choices about perks and purchases. Make marginally useful money perks more exciting.

    4) ideally every character should be able to play the tower well. Right now it’s Alchemist and no-kill rogue for fun, no-kill Paladin in theory but he sucks in practice, and wizard and ranger pointless grind-fest (they don’t scale; they can just survive by being incredibly lame from a distance). So two characters scale for the tower. Am I wrong?

  70. Sorry for the wall of text, but I promise it’s worth 5 minutes of your time. Thanks again for the awesome game that I have enjoyed for years!

  71. Last post. I have reached level 50 in achievements and am not myopic in my view of the characters, only playing tower or whatever. But I do believe the tower is where the game has the most potential growth.

  72. I disagree about Enslave. It’s definitely my favorite spell with the wizard, especially if I can get a hold of mana potions, which allow you to enslave more than once at a time. I’ve had a ton of fun enslaving several bosses- the General, Archmage, and Consuming Horror work really well together. Watch out for Dark Paladins, though, and make sure you kill them ASAP. You’re also wrong about the XP- enslaving an enemy gains XP, so killing the ally is superfluous.

  73. my only problem with enslave is that it gets resisted way to often and can be dispelled

  74. I wasn’t aware that mana potions allowed more than one slave. That sounds unintended, and possibly classifies as a bug. Archmage is definitely the best slave, and without him the rest are useless -no healing. Changing the spell to allow multiple slaves would definitely fix it.

    Enslave is said to “permanently” make someone your ally, so it should not be possible to Dispell. That needs to change. The fact that it can be resisted is a big problem as well, because of the way it recharges. It becomes virtually useless just a few blocks in, when enemies gain resistance. Even a small chance of failure makes the spell tedious, unless you have stocked mana potions.

    For one moment, ignore the bug allowing multiple slaves. Isn’t Enslave crap then? Perhaps it should be upgradable in the tower, with +1 max creature per upgrade. Act upgrades would cap at 2 or so, and maybe then it wouldn’t be total crap in the Acts?

    Even with multiple slaves, Charm is better the further you go. Enslave will still be inferior by 80, and just about totally worthless by 140. But at least it wouldn’t suck if it didn’t fail constantly, get dispelled, and only work on one creature. (Bug is a bug)

  75. Just a suggestion, why not add a “hardcore mode” for Tower? That every time you die, you make the Floor alot harder in the next run, and getting worse every Floor, because it’s not really easy to kill that tasty Merchant at level one on second floor… Anyway, it should be cool, cause with lots of hours in the game, it only get really challenging at F80+ or when i manage to don’t get any spell or stat my build requires. Thx if read, pls read if not xD

  76. Can we have separate scoreboards for different tower characters? It would be good to see who can do the best with Fighter, Mage, etc. separately. Maybe a top 3 for each class. It is so lame to see only one high score slot with a cheater dinking around level 36 all day with Ranger. I still almost passed him with over 12m points but he just keeps cheating and running up his score. He’s also been doing this for years on acts, JZFlying or whatever.

    I also deleted the game from my iPhone because RL. That is a compliment to how addictive and enjoyable your game is.

  77. Whoops – sorry everyone if you tried to post in the past day or two, the comments got closed automatically. I’ve extended the comments window on posts to six months to stop that happening. I guess I need to write new posts more often!

    Ryan: yep, the distraction skill does sound good! I’ll see if I can fit it in.

    Trihex: wow, thanks – good catch!

    Archillect: this is awesome feedback. It sounds like I can upgrade a few skills, and maybe see about Tower boosts for some characters. The Tower shop is a great idea, if I can find the space… maybe just a rare high-grade Scavenger would do the trick.

    Enslave shouldn’t be dispellable, for sure.

  78. Wester: I’ve seen other games do advanced starts, so maybe I’ll add the ability to unlock starting at floor 20+/40+/60+ once you’ve got far enough past them (with some character boosts, obviously!…)

    Archillect: Separate scoreboards per character might make sense at this point, but I think I’m going to stick to trying to balance the characters better for now. Sorry to hear CQ2 was getting too disruptive!

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