Element TD 2 News

After not one, not two, but three bloody delays, Version 1.03 Version 1.1 has finally arrived! We apologize for the bad time estimates; we got delayed by some bugs, and we have yet to figure out how to time travel so that we can release a patch on-time even after its due date. In the future, we'll go with a "it's done when it's done" approach.

Anywho, in today's patch, we've got definable hotkeys, definable targeting priorities, a new co-op map, a bunch of quality-of-life improvements, more bug fixes, and nearly every tower in the game receiving a 5-10% buff or nerf. Onwards to the patch notes!


[h2]Features[/h2]

• You can now define your own Hotkeys in Settings!
  • This extends to all of the single-button keyboard inputs.
    
  • As a result, the old "By Element" or "MOBA" hotkey option has been removed. If you were using the latter option, we recommend redefining your hotkeys.
    
• You can also define your own Default Targeting Priorities in Tower Customization!
  • This also lets you define whether each tower has Focus On/Off by default.
    
• On the Scoreboard, you can now Mute other players, preventing certain players' toxicity from ruining the game.
  • Or you can just mute everyone and enjoy the sounds of silence. You monster.
    
• 5th Co-op Map added, Pinnacle!
  • If you've played all the way through the Campaign, this is the map from the final mission.
    

An expanded Tower Customization screen!

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Blacksmith, Well, Trickery, & Runic Towers can now have Auto-cast turned off by right-clicking their ability icon:
  • Left-click the ability icon to Manual Cast their ability.
    
• You can now press 7 (default hotkey) to revert a tower's priority back to your defined default priority.
  
• Pressing F5 (default hotkey) selects all of your towers.
  
• Targeting priority hotkeys will now work without first opening the targeting menu.
  
• In Co-op, players now start near one of the existing portals.
  
• For the Balanced Paths option in Co-op, changing the player slot will actually change what path is active
  
• Co-op Builder Movespeed increased by 15%
  
• On Volcano Co-op, the long paths now move at x1.5 speed (down from x2 speed), but have x1.5 HP
  
• On Tundra Co-op, flipped the Start/End positions for the 4th Path
  
• When drag-selecting or double-clicking towers, Trickery Clones will no longer be included in selection with the original towers.
  
• Default tab on Damage Overview is now Current instead of Total
• Adjusted MMR Search Range such that if you've played 10 or more matches, it'll expand to 375 up or down. If you've done less than 10 though, it'll stay at 225 up or down.
  

Welcome to the Pinnacle! Coordinating on this map will be quite the challenge.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a time format issue that was breaking the game for certain players.
  
• Fixed an issue where searching a Ranked Game by Queue would have a shorter MMR Search Range than by Notification
  
• Fixed Timescale resetting to x1 when Player 1 dies while viewing replays
  
• Fixed Essence Upgrade showing up in the Scoreboard before killing the Essence Boss
  
• Fixed Minimap Offset on Tundra
  
• Fixed Right-Click Indicator getting swallowed by the high ground way on more vertical maps
  
• Fixed Astral's extra projectiles ignoring its targeting setting
  
• Fixed a bug where if a tower gets too many Cursed stacks, it'd stop attacking for a while. Cursed is now capped at 15 stacks, which shouldn't affect actual balance, given it's negligible at that point.
  
• Fixed Temporal not triggering its ability within the first two seconds of it spawning
  

They can't all be blue now, can they?

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Level 3 Elemental Boss & Essence Boss HP reduced by about 10%
  
• Bulky Creeps now move 10% slower
  
• Wave Times starting from Wave 56 onwards are now 3 seconds, matching the rest of the game
  
• Level 2 Dual Tower gold cost reduced from 800 to 750
  
• Level 3 Dual Tower gold cost reduced from 3300 to 3150
  
• Light damage increased from 100 / 600 / 3600 / 43200 to 110 / 660 / 3960 / 47520
  
• Light consecutive bonus reduced from 5 / 30 / 180 / 2160 to 4 / 24 / 144 / 1728
  
• Darkness damage reduced from 280 / 1680 / 10080 / 120960 to 270 / 1620 / 9720 / 116640
  
• Water damage increased from 85 / 510 / 3060 / 36720 to 90 / 540 / 3240 / 38880
  
• Water damage bonus reduced from 40% to 30%
  
• Fire damage reduced from 32 / 192 / 1152 / 13824 to 27 / 162 / 972 / 11664
  
• Fire damage stops growing after 60 seconds now, down from 120
  • You probably won't notice this anywhere now, outside of Extreme.
    
• Nature effect duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
  
• Atom adjusted:
  • Damage increased from 300 / 1200 / 4800 to 330 / 1320 / 5280
    
  • Consecutive damage bonus increased from 10% to 13%
    
  • Now only carries over 30% of its stacks when switching targets, down from 50%
    
• Lightning damage reduced from 150 / 600 / 2400 to 145 / 580 / 2320
  
• Poison duration increased from 15 to 20 seconds
  
• Poison duration extender has been removed
  
• Ice damage reduced from 800 / 3200 / 12800 to 550 / 2200 / 8800
  
• Ice range increased from 900 to 1150
  
• Infernal damage reduced from 650 / 2600 / 10400 to 600 / 2400 / 9600
  
• Bloom adjusted:
  • Damage reduced from 550 / 2200 / 8800 to 350 / 1400 / 5600
    
  • AoE increased from 0 to 200
    
  • Range reduced from 900 to 750
    
  • Default targeting priority changed from Front to Near
    
  • Attack is now a Beam, meaning it hits instantly (it's a Laserplant now)
    
  • Attack speed now increases by 1 per second while not attacking, and decreases by 0.5 per second while attacking.
    
• Mushroom adjusted:
  • Damage increased from 125 / 500 / 2000 to 135 / 540 / 2160
    
  • Effect reworked so that it now deals 100% more damage if the creep's health is above 50%
    
• Geyser adjusted:
  • Damage increased from 900 / 3600 / 14400 to 1000 / 4000 / 16000
    
  • Range reduced from 900 to 750
    
  • Ability now triggers every 4 attacks, down from 5
    
• Howitzer damage reduced from 170 / 680 / 2720 to 160 / 640 / 2560
  
• Ethereal damage increased from 900 / 3600 to 950 / 3800
  
• Ethereal stack duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds
  
• Runic ability search radius reduced from 300 to 250
  
• Wisp damage increased from 750 / 3000 to 800 / 3200
  
• Flooding damage increased from 400 / 1600 to 420 / 1680
  
• Flooding consecutive AoE bonus reduced from 15 to 12
  
• Windstorm damage-per-second increased from 550 / 2200 to 700 / 2800
  
• Windstorm AoE reduced from 600 to 400
  
• Polar damage increased from 1400 / 5600 to 1500 / 6000
  
• Haste attack speed gain rate reduced from 7% to 5%
  
• Haste attack speed now decays over 5 seconds, down from 7 seconds
  
• Impulse damage increased from 2200 / 8800 to 2300 / 9200
  
• Quake shockwave damage reduced from 3000 / 12000 to 2500 / 10000
  
• Quake shockwave now triggers every 8 attacks, down from 10
  
• Money damage increased from 3000 / 12000 to 3200 / 12800
  
• Money effect damage bonus increased from 15% / 30% to 20% / 40%
  • Damage cap remains unchanged
    

I reiterate. Laserplant.


That's it for Version 1.1! As per usual, since there were a bunch of balance tweaks, Score Leaderboards have been reset.

From now on, if we do a small patch, it'll increment by 0.01, and when we do a larger patch, we'll round up to the next tenth. Speaking of, up next we'll be aiming to overhaul War Mode into something more competitive and scalable to 8 players. We're also getting close to locking in Quad Tower Design, so hopefully in the coming weeks, we'll be able to start sharing those with you soon as well!

The weekend is gone and past, and many of you were probably wondering... where is Version 1.03? Well, we're ironing out some bugs and balance still, and we decided to delay it a week. ... we just forgot to put up an announcement over here letting you know until now, so apologies about.

One more thing, we're adjusting how we're doing the version increments. Previously, we incremented by 0.01 because we wanted leeway prior to Version 1.00, but now that we're past Official Release, we're making a little tweak:

• If it's a small release, it'll increment by 0.01
  
• If it's a larger release with more content and features, it'll round up to the next 0.1
  

That said, Version 1.03 will in fact be Version 1.1, and it'll arrive for absolute sure by this Friday!

We know it's been quiet here, but fret not, we've been working on a new version. Coming in Version 1.03, expect to see:

• 5th Co-op Map
  
• Specific starting positions in Co-op
  
• Define your own Hotkeys!
  
• The ability to set your own default Focus/Priorities on towers
  
• Manual Cast for specific towers
  
• Balance shenanigans
  
• And more!
  

As this is a balance patch, expect the Score Leaderboards to be reset. If you want to preview the patch, hop onto our Discord and check the pinned post in #testers to gain access to the alpha branch.

Version 1.03 will be released this coming weekend!

EDIT: Sorry for the delay, Version 1.03 Version 1.1 will be released this Friday, on the 18th!

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Game engine changed from Unity 2018.4 to Unity 2020.3
  • As a result, this patch has an abnormally large download size, so just be aware of that.
    
  • The game now loads much faster than before.
    
  • This should also result in some degree of performance improvements. For some, it's minimal; for others, it seems like it may help more. In the off-chance it got worse, please let us know!
    
• Added Vsync graphics option, which is set to Off by default
  • Turning it On may or may not result in a performance improvement for you, give it a shot and see.
    
  • Additionally, this will override the Frame Cap setting, so if you want to rely on that instead, keep Vsync turned Off
• Turned off some useless debugs in the output log
  • FYI, this is now known as player.log, instead of output_log.txt
    
• On the final wave of M28, score moved from the creeps to the bosses, so technically, waiting will no longer be more beneficial for score
  

[h2]Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed Ranked Mode issue where you could load into a blank screen
  
• Fixed Replay Browser being broken
  
• Fixed some tooltips on some settings
  
• Fixed Temple Variant infinite loading bug in War Mode
• Fixed Self Leaderboard only listing yourself
  

Although this patch comes with some degree of performance improvements, the game is still unfortunately intensive on the GPU. To that end, we've got more things we're going to try out over the next few months that will hopefully tone it down.

Now that we've gotten some backend stuff updated and out of the way, we can return to adding some content and other quality-of-life features! Coming next patch, we'll be adding some long-requested features, like customizable hotkeys, the ability to mute players, and more Ranked Mode fixes, as well as the 5th Co-op Map! For those of you who have completed the Campaign, the map in question will be from that last mission.

We've made some changes to break existing cheat trainers and make future ones harder to develop. THIS IS NOT DRM.

As an added bonus, there is actually a small CPU performance improvement!

Also the Swedish localization was improved.