All Aboard! The Train Defense Express News

Hello everyone!

I've had my head down working hard on a couple of very important features coming in v0.9. I want to make sure these features are perfect when v0.9 launches in a couple of weeks, so I'm opening up the beta branch for anyone who wants to try it out early.

[h2]New Features[/h2]

• Save/Continue Game - If you close the game or exit through the menu, your game will automatically save. You can also save and exit to the main menu. It automatically saves before and after every boss fight, as well as when opening relic chests. There are some limitations:
  
  1) Certain map objects such as gems are not saved.
  2) Due to complex boss behavior, it will not save during a boss fight.
  
  The last thing I want to fix next patch is corrupted save issues, so please test this thoroughly and try to break it.
  
  
• Chest Price Change - The algorithm that drives the chest price up has been simplified. Chests are slightly more expensive early on, but curves much, much more gently as the game goes on. The main beneficiary of this change is the All-In system:
  
  1) All-In is now almost instant at any train carriage level. I can open quadrillions of chests in a second.
  2) All-In is generally cheaper. Keep in mind that v0.8.2 was using a temporary fix to always assume the minimum chest price when opening massive amounts of chests.
  3) All-In's chest price is no longer limited to ~9 quintillion - instead, it can grow forever.
  4) All-In's "Minimum Gold Cost" label is now "Estimated Gold Cost" and gives a reliable estimate on how much gold it will cost to All-In.
  

[h2]Extra Stuff in the "beta" Build[/h2]

• The "Penetrating Rounds" relic, which makes Machine Gun and Shotgun bullets penetrate enemies, now also applies to Bounty Hunter, which means each bullet will be able to increase the gem value more than once. (Tooltip not yet updated.)
  
  
• The projectile for Machine Gun, Shotgun, and Bounty Hunter has been increased in size for easier visibility. The speed of the Machine Gun projectile was slowed a little bit for more reliable hit detection at higher game speeds.
  
  
• Wise Investment no longer has a maximum cap of ~60 quintillion gold per minute (level 14). The cap at level 11-14 has significantly increased, and it continues to increase beyond 14.
  
  
• Fixed a performance issue that can occur dozens of hours into the game where the number of strong creatures that can spawn at once was uncapped. For example, it had the potential to spawn hundreds or thousands of shield-bearing creatures at once. This is now capped at 30.
  
  
• Fixed an issue with Boomerang's explosion not doing damage.
  
  
• Fixed the gold per minute calculation in the tooltip visible when hovering the mouse over the "Miners" label.
  

I'm sure there will be some bugs with these systems, so if anyone is willing to help test it, that'd be very helpful.

If you aren't sure how to get to the "beta" branch:

1) In Steam, right-click the game and select Properties.
2) Select the "Betas" tab.
3) Select "beta" from the drop-down.
4) Click OK. You should see an update to the game.

If you have any bug reports or feedback, feel free to reply to this post. It's always helpful if you copy everything in your config folder, zip it up, and e-mail it to [email protected], especially if serious bugs or crashes occur. (You can click the "Open Config Folder" in the "Advanced" tab of the options to get there.)

Thank you!

• To reduce lag, the Engineer train carriage now has a maximum duration of 30 seconds per turret.
  
• The pop-up damage numbers were causing excess lag spikes and have been throttled to not display too many per frame.
  
• The following train carriages had a bug that caused them to do WAY more damage than they should have, and was also a major source of performance issues (especially Hyper Beam):
  
  Hyper Beam, Sonic, Flamethrower, Boomerang, Energy Disk.
  
  They had an Area of Effect component coded into them, which means each enemy hit also did damage in an area, causing their damage to inflate, and also is probably the biggest source of lag in the game.
  Every carriage listed except for Hyper Beam was given a small buff to base damage to compensate for this fix (Hyper Beam is still amazing). Energy Disk's size scaling was also slightly increased.
  
• Due to the changes listed above, the "level 2" enemies have had their base health and movement speed reduced.
  
• The "Flamer" relic (for the Flamethrower carriage) now applies 3 stacks of Burning instead of 1 per tick of damage. (Tooltip has not yet been updated to reflect this.)
  
• Bounty Hunter now gives a bonus 3 gems per hit per level.
  

Performance-wise, the game runs MUCH better now, but the changes may have some balance implications, so please let me know if you're struggling too much. (Except on the new difficulty, that should be very hard.)

Hello, gamers! I'm excited to bring you a new patch with lots of content! Note that some content must be unlocked by leveling up. The max level for unlockable content this patch is 50.

Let's get into it.


[h2]New Content[/h2]
Jukebox! Want to play any song you want? Or ban certain songs from playing? Go to the "Audio" tab of the Options menu and click the "Jukebox" button.


18 new relics! New placeholder icons have been added for every relic. Expect more relics to be added in v0.9.

5 new Boons! Go to the Boons menu under the Collections main menu item to unlock them.
Placeholder icons are being used for now.

2 new train carriages! They must be unlocked by leveling up.

New enemy type! Once you get far enough in the game, the non-boss enemies become so weak relative to you that they die before they even come on-screen. Now, new enemies will eventually spawn and give you some additional HP to fight against. Once you reach 1,000% scaling, brand new enemy types will appear, replacing the old ones. They're a little tougher, but their gems are worth more.

Boss Damage Report! When a boss is slain, a button will appear near the left side. Press the button to view which train carriages were doing their job properly against the boss. (Default hotkey: Tab or Left Shoulder Button)

New Difficulty! This is a special challenge for hardcore players. It unlocks if you have any Hard mode achievement for defeating Super Bosses.

New "Records" screen! Currently only shows some overall run statistics. Select the "Records" screen from the "Collections" main menu item.

New Boss: ??? - Buffs his allies, healing them and granting them more max HP and a movement speed boost.

New Boss: ??? - Fires a laser at the Infinite Power Generator from a distance. The longer it channels, the more damage it deals.

All-or-Nothing! You want to keep using All-In to upgrade your train carriages to level 20, but you don't have enough train space. Now, if your train doesn't have enough room to attempt to All-In, you can choose to go All-or-Nothing! If you succeed, you get the upgrade. If you fail, you get nothing, and you lose the gold spent.

5 new achievements! Mostly about leveling, the new bosses, and the new difficulty.


[h2]Changes[/h2]
Some of these changes were implemented in earlier minor patches, but will be listed here for visibility.

• All-In speed-up: All-In has been given another speed-up. It now takes me about 30 seconds to open 250,000,000 chests. However, it can still take a few minutes when you need to open billions of chests.
  A text label indicating progress has been added to the All-In dialog when there's a long wait time.
  NOTE: Due to technical limitations, the price of each chest is maxed out at 2^63 - 1. I plan to change the chest price curve and algorithm next patch, but for now, enjoy!
  
  
• Several pop-up windows, including the Options dialog, have been re-designed to be bigger with easier to read font.
  A note has been added to the bottom of the in-game Esc menu that tells the player that EXP and Tickets are saved if you Exit to Menu or Exit to Desktop before the game session has terminated.
  
  
• The menu sound effects have been updated. I'm just trying them out - tell me if you like them more or less than the old ones.
  
  
• The damage done by Bleed is slightly nerfed. In 0.7, Machine Gun with Serrated Rounds was the only way to apply Bleed, which did max % HP damage every 0.5 seconds, and by the two hour mark, it was responsible for 99% of the damage dealt to any boss. Now, it's still good, but needs more stacks to be as good as before. (Also, there are more ways to apply Bleed this patch.)
  
  
• Necromancer: Increased max HP a small amount. Super Necromancer is a little more difficult.
  
  
• Summoner: Super Summoner is more difficult.
  
  
• Werebear: Slightly reduced Werebear's base HP.
  
  
• Boss health bars and the Infinite Power Generator's health bar is now much more visible in general.
  
  
• Reduced health/movespeed scaling on Normal mode after 2 hours. This is a great difficulty to select if you like truly endless runs.
  
  
• Slightly increased health scaling on Hard mode after 2 hours.
  
  
• Grenade Attachment Relic: Now upgrades your strongest Sniper on pick-up.
  
  
• Napalm Relic: Now upgrades your strongest Cannon on pick-up.
  
  
• Turret Offense Relic: Now upgrades your strongest Turret on pick-up.
  
  
• Assassin Relic: Now shows which train carriage received the last upgrade in the tooltip.
  
  
• Goo Launcher: Reduced area of effect scaling. Slightly reduced damage scaling and slow scaling. This carriage grew a bit too strong, too fast, so I'm adjusting it.
  
  
• Saw Blade: Reduced attack speed and attack speed scaling. Increased damage and damage scaling. This is meant to reduce the number of saws on the map, but not the damage it deals. It's a nerf if you prefer to use Saw to target the nearest creature, but a neutral change for using it against bosses. The default targeting of the Saw Blade has been changed to Strongest.
  Also, a bug was fixed that caused Saw to deal area of effect damage beyond its normal collision circle. As far as I'm aware, Saw is mostly used against bosses anyway, so the only thing you might notice is that it does less damage on the Damage/Second meter than before, but this combined with attack speed reduction will also make it less laggy to use Saw at high levels.
  
  
• Bazooka: Damage scaling increased.
  
  
• A significant amount of EXP/tickets are added from defeating the first super boss. Defeating super bosses after the first one are worth more than average.
  
  
• The sound effects indicating that you've received a power-up are now silenced when you've maxed out both power-up related upgrades.
  
  
• An "Open Config Folder" button has been added to the "Advanced" tab of the Options menu for PC players.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
Again, some of these were fixed in earlier minor patches, but are listed here for visibility.

• Various relic bugs fixed.
  
  
• Fixed chest price not increasing from skipping chests during All-In in hard mode.
  
  
• Fixed Controller/Keyboard focus issues on the "Buy Carriage" screen.
  
  
• For keyboard-only players, you can now press SHIFT + ENTER to buy 5 upgrades at a time. (You can already hold SHIFT + left mouse button, or use Right Shoulder button + the accept button on controller, to do this.)
  
  
• Fixed performance issues with carriages and relics that generated gold too often, such as the Pillage relic and the Hand of Midas train carriage.
  
  
• Fixed a bug where the Ice & Fire relic did not show in the Relics menu after obtaining it.
  
  
• Fixed a bug where the game could crash if you failed an All-In but found a large number of carriages during All-In.
  

That's all for now! I greatly appreciate all of the feedback and bug reports from everyone that have helped make the game more stable and enjoyable.

The next patch, v0.9, is coming 5/30/2025 (American hours). I want to add more interesting things to spend money on in the late game, so look forward to that.
The game will be released from Early access (v1.0) on 6/26/2025.

Thanks, and enjoy!
- Likadev

OK, last patch before v0.8, I promise.

• Fixed a buggy interaction between gold-generating relics (especially Pillage) and frequently-hitting area of effect towers (especially Energy Disk) that can cause serious performance degradation or even crashes in some circumstances, especially against creature-spawning bosses such as Satyr or Necromancer. Players who go to 2 hours and beyond will notice a performance improvement in general.
  

Patch v0.8 is coming out this Friday (during America hours), and I'm really excited for everyone to see it. See you then!