The Shrine

Latest coop game Tessian and I are playing on Steam. It's basically an (up to) four person coop tower defense game where you pick one of four classes and.. tower defend. Each class gets its own weapons, skills, and towers which complement each other pretty well. Seems like the kind of game that's easy to learn and difficult to master. Selling for $15 it's pretty cheap and I'd say that I've gotten my moneys worth in the two days its been out.

The game is best when you have four people but you get your usual craziness in open games.

I tried downloading the demo, but it wouldn't run, so I'm not sure if I want to buy the game since there's a good chance that won't run either.

Got the demo working. Tower defense is not my cup of tea, but the game seems pretty high quality for $15. It'd be nice to see more cheap games that didn't look like it was slapped together with some kind of game maker.

It is also out for 360 and ps3. Why'd you guys have to get it for the pc????!?!?!

Yeah I almost put this up with a [PCMR] tag and I would have clarified that it meant the PC Master Race when asked in the thread :P

Any way, the PC had some item deals and it was sold for 10% off if you pre-ordered.. Too many incentives to think about the 360.

I think they should release the demo so you'll have an idea of what you're getting. The title looked interesting but 10% off doesn't seem like enough to buy it blindly on faith since it doesn't have a history. I mean the demo should be ready before the game is ready, right?

I read a preview on PC Gamer, watched the two trailers they had up, and have a keen interest in the genre so it wasn't too big of a chance.

You can get a demo on xbla or psn. justsayin

The demo wasn't out during the pre order period for the PC, and after it's out it's too late to pre order.

The state of demos in the industry is unsatisfying. That said, I'm probably part of the problem since I know the games I'm going to buy a very long time before they're released and rarely stray from that. I honestly cannot recall the last time I played a demo and purchased a game because of it..

If Open Beta counts as a demo, I've played a demo before all the games I've purchased in the last 5 years.

The demo for Dungeon Defender was ready when the game was out. Presumably, it was ready even before the game was out, so why can't they have the demo available before the game is ready? Trailers and Internet are all useful stuff, but sometimes you still have to play the game to be sure.

I got the game but I'm only like level 10. I find it pretty hard to do most maps on normal solo as an Apprentice. The Ogre breaks down the walls too fast. Do you use the profile name or the Steam account name to add a friend?

Steam account for friends. Tessian and I are in our late 20s with our squire (him) and monk (me). We have another friend (another squire) who plays so this should round out nicely. Catching up isn't too difficult and mastering old levels is still pretty fun.

Soloing is very difficult and I don't find it particularly viable except as a way to get associated with the game mechanics.

My account name is Astarica. I made another Squire who seems to be overpowered but I like the Apprentice too.

Yeah squires seem to MVP most games I play. I've seen a huntress beat a squire once but she had like six levels, so yeah. Monk is very powerful at first, too, but settles into support like it's supposed to pretty quickly. I really like playing a monk though. I lead in most kills by my hero often enough that I still feel powerful.

Squire does seem to be the most common though. For good reason - survivability of barricades and power of turrets definitely outpace the functionality of other classes in the beginning.

My profile name says Phantron, and the screen says 'add a friend...' but I've no idea if that's what to use. I listed my account earlier so one of those two got to work.

The Squire seems to be just much more powerful in general. He has a ton of health, does a lot of damage on swings, and his Towers don't have any elemental attribute on them so you don't have to worry about some immune stuff slipping through.

Har good ol Phantron.

I have about 50% success rate in getting a unique handle as Phantron.

Beta the Demon Lord yesterday, this game seems to be pretty hard if you're not an overpowered class.

Adding Phantron on my Steam friends list gave me some guy named Ehrgreiz or something.. Astarica sent an invitation to phantron so I'm going to go with that hah

I guess it needs your steam account, not your profile name.

It seems like The Summit/Glitterhelm on hard, and anything of the tier 3 areas on insane is almost impossible to do solo. The challenges are hard even on medium. Even with Von Wolfenstein pretty much instant killing anything not immune to lightning, I still see a lot of failures since people aren't covering the right places or the lightning immunes slip through.

I just noticed when peopel say 'solo' in this game, they mean you may have up to 4 level 70s characters to rotate around. In that respect I'm sure even most insane levels are soloable though I really don't think any single level 70 character will get very far since there's usually something you can't handle by yourself.

I haven't bothered trying anything solo since I failed the second level on my first hour playing the game :P

I wish I'd put points in my auras striking faster than their radii sooner. I didn't bother until I saw another monk who had put way too many points into them. Starting to make MVP again here and there which is nice. The bonus level was kind of fun but I got my ass kicked at the last wave since my team left me with two ogres at two different doors and I got overwhelmed just trying to keep my auras and Tessian's blockades up..

I'm reading the aura tick frequency isn't that important because it only affects electric aura and for hard summit/insane anything you'd have other people doing the DPS. Ensnare/Strength Drain is always on. It'd certainly make soloing easier though monks don't seem to be very good for solo (as in one person only).

I can probably do hard summit but I don't have a character that can damage the dragon and kill it in a reasonable time. Hard glitterhelm seems doable with some practice, but you have to really know where the ogres are and you need a character that can dps the ogres down fast because towers alone usually won't be enough.

Yeah monks can't solo purely because it's impossible to be quick enough in later waves to cover guys who are getting through ensnare/lightning combos.

I don't have that many points in ticking. ~20 or so is doing more than enough with my equipment adding 15+. Night and day compared to the 5 or so I had earlier.

Did some more testing again, the harder maps seem basically impossible without Ensnare for kobolds and Strength Drain aura for the ogres. While you can try to DPS or tank the ogre, that won't work if there's more than one ogre like the case with Glitterhelm. You can sometimes get away with clever placement for kobolds but there's really nothing you can to stop an ogre if it spawned in a short corridor since it has way too much HP for your defenses to take down.

I'm not really convinced people are even beating it solo or in their own secret games like they claim online. I can see how it's definitely possible if you got 4 level 70s to use but that's got to get pretty tiring swapping characters constantly. If you actually have 4 players, it's arguably harder since the ogres get 4X the HP so you need a lot more DPS to stop it on time, and unless you got a bunch of Godly Von Wolfensteins it's not going to be enough, and it also doesn't solve the problem of having multiple ogres even if you can kill one really fast. It's one of those thing I'm sure is possible if that's all you practice all day, but I have a hard time seeing people able to do it casually. You'd need at least something like 200 hours+ played just to have the right characters to pull it off. I'm reading the Insane solo guides and they expect like 150+ on your Tower characters and DPS characters, so that's pretty much a full set of completely upgraded godly equipment for 2-3 characters (Tower guy, Huntress, Monk).

Now that I mess around more with trying to solo a map it's very clear that it's way easier to solo most maps then have 4 players. If you have 4 players, you might not even be able to stop an ogre even with VWs since it's got 4X the HP, whereas you can pretty much always do this solo. In most games it's practically impossible to try to rebuild towers in combat phase so you basically don't need any Tower-oriented characteres for combat phase. Note that combat-oriented characters tends to have higher casting rate than Tower characters, and definitely higher speed because you don't have to put any points in Tower. For example, a Tower apprentice, monk, or squire literally contributes nothing in combat phase. Sure it's a pain to swap them quickly in build phase when you've limited time on insane, but it's doable with some practice.

Even if your team works together perfectly, it's unlikely you'll have 4 DPS characters at the same time, whereas going solo you will always have your DPS character for combat phase, and even if you've 4 DPS characters, you're not gaining any advantage because ther are 4X the number of mobs (and ogres/boss have 4X HPs but same numbers). Of course, that's why team games are more fun because they're more challenging, but soloing isn't harder at all. It's in fact a lot easier once you get at least 3 characters to level 70.

Got 3 of the challenges beaten on Insane (though granted I did nothing on Assault), and beat Ramparts on Insane.

The monk is way overpowered for the higher difficulty due to Ensnare Aura. Really anything moving at 20% (or less speed) might as well be taking 5X the damage and move at full speed, and it'd actually be better because at least you can't hit 50 mobs with one piercing shot that way. It's not that monk by itself is powerful. You'll pretty much never be able to kill Ogres or even lightning immunes with just a monk, but Ensnare Aura pretty much removes anything besides Wyverns, Ogres, and lightning immunes. An Insane level with or without Ensnare Aura isn't even the same kind of game. It's not clear to me if the Insane levels are even doable without Ensnare Aura.

The easiest fix should be to make everything on Insane immune to Ensnare Aura since messing with the % is dangerous (it might be too weak at lower levels then). Strength drain aura at least uses 6 DUs and it's still pretty much impossible to deal with Ogres with only towers even with the aura (though it gives you time to get there to deal with the Ogre). Lightning Aura appears to be overpowered simply because everything inside the lightning aura is moving at 20% speed so it might as well be doing 5 times the damage. Alternatively they could give everything snare resistance kind of like Diablo 2 stuff resists lifetap effects on Hell, or EQ stuff resist slow. But I never really liked the fact that because you'll never die in Diablo 2 with full drain or that a mob slowed 75% in EQ basically is incapable of killing anybody, so you put in some secret modifier that makes life drain work about 1/6th as much as it claims, and slow only slows the mob 5%, because that means anyone new to the game is going to be wondering why nothing seems to be working as advertised. You could make some of the units immune (Ogres are already immune) but again that's just confusing if the rule suddenly changes. You can simply make it so that you can't use Ensnare Aura at all if the game is on insane. It'd be no different than how cores do not heal on Insane but heal on any other mode and there won't be any confusion as long as you pop up a message like 'cannot summon this on this mode'.

Dark Elf Warriors are really hard to deal with since they randomly run past all your defenses without taking damage. I think they're probably at least somewhat bugged. Overall, I don't like to solo on insane because it basically goes like this:

Wave 1: monk frantically put down auras and switch back to DPS character before time runs out.
Wave 2 + 3: Tower character build defense through the entire wave(s). Hope you memorized the exact layout of the map because getting an extra Tower up at the right place can be the difference between winning or not.
Wave 4+: DPS character is mandatory because you can't possibly deal with Ogres otherwise. If Ogres show up when you're on your Tower character, it's pretty much game over, but they usually don't show up until wave 4 or so.

Since auras basically last forever, there's really no point for a Tower monk to appear at any time other than the build phase of Wave 1. Auras aren't like Towers as there is no remote possibility you'll lose them unless you're in a map like Glitterhelm and fell asleep for 2 waves and forgot where your weakest aura was. Of course most of the time there is no reason to have any Tower-based character to stay in combat phase either. The real problem is that since Tower stats do not give hero speed or hero casting time (obviously), that means a character specialized for Tower isn't even very good at repairing/building Towers in mid combat compared to one specialized for DPS (who will at least have speed maxed, and usually a decent amount of casting since HP isn't too useful). I suppose it'd not make sense to gain hero speed from Tower stats, but the other Tower stats should at least let you repair/build Towers way faster than someone who only has points in hero stats.

Anyone still playing this game? I have like 3 or so really hard achievements left to get all the achievements done (have a bunch I don't have but those are easy).

The biggest problem I have is that this game is actually too group-oriented. Realistically speaking you're not beating Insane Glitterhelm, Insane Summit, most likely Insane Throne Room, Monster Fest anything, Insane Zippy Terrors by yourself no matter how good you are unless you have like 8 level 70 characters each geared for a different purpose (it's not enough to have 4 because you'd need characters who can say build tower quickly and well, not just build towers well like a normal builder. You can have 4 characters of almost any arbitrary power and you're probably not going to beat Insane Glitterhelm just because there's going to be a spot that you cannot cover. While playing with other people is fun, given the FFA looting environment you don't really want to do something where really good gear can drop on the ground with total strangers unless you don't care about gear at all. Insane Zippy Terrors is literally impossible without 4 people no matter how powerful you are, but it's actually pretty trivial with 4 players. In fact, 4 players shooting straight with autofire can clear it, but 3 players have almost no chance since you'll be missing a lane and the kobolds pretty much one shot your crystal.

Right now survival is the best loot and that's also not remotely soloable because you can't repair and attack at the same time unless you have ridiuclous weapons (like, 200K+ at least) which drop from the said mode to begin with. Of course you can buy it from someone else but I don't really think it makes sense to require gear drop from an event to beat that event in the first place. Given the lack of scaling (4 players survival is 10% harder than the base player of 1 player) I guess you should team up. If you even have 2 people it's quite doable, because you just need a guy to repair while another guy deals with the ninjas.

Electrical Aura got nerfed twice and it's still pretty overpowered, though to be fair once you get good at this game, the only thing that poses a threat at all is the ninja (Dark Elf Warrior). If you can kill the ninjas you pretty much will never lose. The best way to get gear right now is do mixed + survival and hope you don't get unlucky and draw 500 ninjas from the RNG. Or just have two players.