Good news, everyone! The open beta weekend for the Mastery Expansion has begun! Right-click Core Defense in your Steam library, go to properties, select the betas tab and then choose the beta branch. To allow you to test all the content, you immediately have access to 30 mastery points without having to level up and beat all difficulties first. After the beta, your mastery pages will be reset, but you keep all progress. Please join the Discord server if you haven't already and do share your feedback with me! I can't wait to hear what you guys think about the expansion! Here's a list of everything that's changing with this update:

Added

• MASTERY: a permanent progression system with levels and mastery points
• SUPERCHARGE: optional difficulty modifiers on top of the normal difficulty levels
• DAILY CHALLENGE: daily run with fixed seed, difficulty and supercharge and an online leaderboard to show off your skill
• OVERLOAD 21-25: Added five new difficulty levels
• RAINBOW: after beating Overload 25 you can choose any primary color
• New tower BERSERKER: Loses health when attacking and deals percentage of maximum health as damage
• New mob POWDER KEG: Deals considerable AOE damage upon death
• New mob KAMIKAZE: Flying mob which ignores walls and goes straight for towers or the core
• New achievement MASTER: Reach the maximum level.
• New achievement SUPERCHARGER: Beat each supercharge modifier.
• New achievement PAIN TRAIN: Beat the game on difficulty Overload 25.
• New achievement ABSTINENCE: Beat Overload 25 without masteries.
• New achievement GROUNDHOG: Finish a daily run.
• New achievement APEX: Finish a daily run with a score of at least 5000.

Changed

• Moved highscores to the compendium
• Run infographics now have color coded tower positions and rarities
• Removed the reward order from infographics for now
• The reset build button has a different icon and is now on the core
• Mob damage to the core is now capped at 25% maximum health
• Rearranged unlock thresholds for rewards
• HEALER now grants all adjacent allies a 20% frenzy buff for 2s on hit
• SHIELD GENERATOR now grants all adjacent allies a 20% frenzy buff for 2s on hit
• SNIPER DAMAGE upgrade no longer grants bonus damage, instead inceases kill bonus cap
• ENDLESS MODULES bonuses 1% 0.5%
• Random zones no longer spawn on towers
• Reworked the range indicators for better legibility

Fixed

• Mobs stuck at 0 health no longer occur when using the Cleaver
• The device's visual scaling setting no longer affects the game
• The add wall stack icon is now displayed in your chosen color
• The ion cannon rotation arrows are now displayed in your chosen color
• You no longer get a win streak warning when abandoning an endless game