Just a few days left until christmas and of course we have some presents for you!

Highlights:

While version 0.9.4 doesn't introduce new big features like the previous releases it focusses on improving the existing features and adding some requested new ones.

Christmas Gift

As christmas gift all of you that play until the next update in two weeks will get the treasure map as an exclusive item for Hero Mode. This item won't be unlockable outside christmas time.

Target Modes

The target modes are a feature that was often requested so far. Previously the behavior for normal towers (those without any status change) was locked, so they always chose the target closest them when their previous target was killed/out of range. Now you also have the option to change that behavior and prefer the enemy in range that is closest to the end portal. For towers with status changes the behavior was different. They always ignore the target you set in first place and try to give their status to every enemy that doesn't have it yet. While this should make sense in most cases, you are now also able to disable this behavior. By doing so, the first two target modes are always respected.

Balancing

With this update we changed some first parts of the balancing. This will be a steady process of tweaking here and there. The main change in 0.9.4 is that the time between two spawns of a wave isn't fixed to two seconds anymore. Instead the time is reduced with every spawn. This will make also the first waves a little harder as you can't rely anymore on your old tactics. As you will have to spend some more gold in the base towers we also slightly reduced the price of the first element tower and increased the damage of the Ballista. Feel free to leave your opinions on these changes and what else might be necessary to change.

Full changelog:

Enhancements:

• shortcut for accepting to sell a tower now has the same shortcut as triggering the sell process
• gold for sold towers is shown above them now like for killed monsters
• benchmark now is in the video settings menu (just in the main menu)
• drastically improved optics of element tooltips
• drastically improved optics of tower upgrade tooltips
• for towers with a target it's now configurable whether they shall attack the monster closest to the tower (that's how it actually is) or the one closest to the end portal
• towers with status changes now can be configured to behave like normal towers instead of spreading their status on as many monsters as possible
• added hint for players that are logged in but not in alliance so far, that there is the possibility to found/join alliances
• added hint for players that are logged in but don't have chosen a region yet that it's possible to do so now
• new item is exclusively unlocked during the Christmas version
• added visualization of Mole tunnel event
• added visualization of Phoenix respawn
• added visualization of Resurrection ability
• added visualization of Earth Golem respawn
• added visualization of Hydra respawn
• water orb now looks more like water
• by Hydra respawned monsters now are smaller than the original
• added more interesting background to character portraits
• added better highlighting of hovered/selected monsters/towers
• improved tooltips

Balancing:

• reduced price of first element tower (155 => 90)
• in Classic and Hero Mode the time between spawns is reduced with every spawn per wave (reset to two seconds when the next wave starts)
• in Survival Mode the time between two spawns is decreased with every spawn
• reduced speed of very fast monsters (> 3) to 3
• increased cooldown of Sacrificer ability (15 => 25 seconds)
• speed bonus of Flight Instinct now is limited
• Teleport and Crasc now also have a minimum distance to the end portal they have to respect
• reduced bonus of Gregarious Animal (3% => 2%)
• reduced bonus of Double Time (5% => 2%)
• monsters respawned by Hydra or Resurrection now always give a minimum of 1 gold
• increased damage of Ballista (level 1: 25 => 40, level 2: 50 => 100)

Fixes:

• "Start challenge" text is now not longer anymore than the button is wide
• Newsticker isn't shown anymore when trying to exit the game
• rank per game mode in alliance tooltip isn't displayed anymore when at least one player already played the game mode
• Elementals and special monsters now are ignored by Quicksand event in Desert environment in Hero Mode
• tooltip for play challenge button in Play menu now also shows the current challenge ranking
• accepting/declining entry request now correctly reduces the markers
• when trying to join the same alliance multiple times news for it isn't generated multiple times anymore
• alliances that accepted a challenge but didn't play then now are respected for the scoring in the end
• unified score calculation so display and sometimes upload error of scores should be history now
• game now can not be paused anymore while highscore is displayed
• fixed monsters sometimes being stuck in their animation or not being removed anymore
• Creating challenges should work for all languages now properly
• set threshold for rotation with right click now is ignored when selecting target for a tower
• restarting game from highscore panel now works also when message box is used for something
• tower placement marker now has the same color as tower hover/selection marker
• founding an alliance now works again
• tree in Forest event only blocks enemies when falling down
• after finishing/aborting the quest for the Life Essense the flask now is removed
• after leaving Forest level the falling tree now is correctly removed
• portals now fade in and out smoother again
• slightly improved The Maze
• improved selection of towers and monsters
• UI now also works for ultra wide resolutions like 3840x1080
• it's not possible anymore to give alliance an empty display name
• fixed animation of mine spawn
• selling multiple towers at once works now properly
• sold towers shouldn't pop up anymore after their animation
• if elemental spawn is triggered during shutdown of a game elemental won't spawn now afterwards anymore
• when equipping an item with a single mouse click while in the next inventory slot an active item is placed, the active item isn't triggered anymore
• when hovering monsters in a group elementals are always preferred
• in case a button is enabled directly underneath the mouse it gets hovered now
• map list now can be scrolled with mouse wheel
• added scrollbar (readonly) to level select menu do indicate that there are more levels than visible at first glance

We hope you enjoy the new update and are looking forward to get your feedback, either here in the discussions or in our Discord at https://discord.gg/bwnuXq9. While working on the next update we'll also start to work on the multiplayer part of Elemental War! It will take a while until you can play it and we will provide other features/fixes/improvements during that time, but that's the new big feature coming in 2019. Merry christmas from Clockwork Origins!