Zmann
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 241
Registered: 04-21-2003
IP: Logged

Tactical Nexus
So, uh, I recently discovered what I think is, as of now, an EXTREMELY obscure video game. It has 11 reviews on Steam (one of them is mine), basically no relevant results on Google (other than Steam-scraping sites) and seemingly zero YouTube videos (other than their official channel).

The basic pitch is that it's a Tower of the Sorcerer (or DROD RPG) clone, but with a completely insane scope & business model. Just read the (poorly translated from Japanese) description on Steam:

Puzzle RPGs(Resource management games) that can be played for 10,000 hours by preparing all DLC. You can play for 2,500 hours by purchasing DLC up to the current Chapter-4. First of all, try playing with Mainpackage for hundreds of hours.

To wit: some of the reviewers have 400+ hours of play time on this game, and it only came out a few months ago.

Business Model
The game released around $60, but the developer has apparently come up with some kind of weird reverse discount scheme. It currently costs $15 dollars, and every few months the price of it will go up 5% until no longer discounted.

Their plan for the game is to release 10 chapters, with 60 levels total, for a final price of $300 ($725 after all the discounts run out).



The Game
After that pitch, and not knowing whether this was an elaborate hoax or scam I decided to download the game to figure out what exactly this thing is.

There is a free demo available which gives you access to 4 towers. I played through the tutorial tower, and was pretty engrossed.

The game is a bit rough to look at, and the UI could use some work, but it plays really quickly and fluidly. Each floor in this game exists on a huge 15x15 grid, and they're chock full of enemies and powerups to route through. This is the second floor in the tutorial tower:


Most towers usually have multiple physical locations for goals. There's a goal halfway up, a goal all the way, and a goal that's only accessible via the Nexus. And what's the Nexus you ask?

The Nexus
This game has a metagame system, which is part of each tower in the form of the Nexus. When you complete a tower, you get a medal (bronze, silver, gold, diamond, etc...) based on how well you did (health, attack, defense). These medals can be spent at the Nexus to gain additional power ups.

Each tower has it's own Nexus, but you can spend medals obtained from ANY tower in ANY Nexus.

In addition to medals, you can unlock Sunstones by beating towers without spending any medals in the Nexus. These Sunstones can also be spent on powerups and stats.

Once you've unlocked enough medals, you can use them to unlock a staircase in the Nexus to get the true ending of a tower.



Since the towers are pretty sensitive to initial conditions, this means that you're often going back to previous towers with your newly acquired medals, getting a few more power-ups, and then taking completely different routes to improve your score.

Variety
I'm not sure if I'm sold on spending $300+ dollars on the entirety of this game's DLC, but base game ($15 right now) already has a ton of content. There are 12 different towers available of varying lengths, each have something unique about them or focus on something unique (single floor, limited moves, level ups provide health). In addition, you will want to replay those towers once you get enough medals to get the Nexus finishes too.


(The single-floor tower pictured above)

I've completed about 5 towers now with silver medals and I'm absolutely hooked. I think the base game is a great deal for $15, but I'm still not sold on the full $300 package.

Both the scope of the game and the pricing model are extremely ambitious and maybe ridiculous? But even if they're not successful or don't achieve their goals, the game in its current state is extremely well designed and worth trying on its own merits.

The free demo probably takes 10+ hours to beat by itself. I'd recommend starting there, and if you're still hooked then try to make sense of this pricing model. (Please spend your money responsibly and within your means!)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141290/Tactical_Nexus/

---

[Last edited by Zmann at 05-07-2020 03:02 AM]

Dischorran
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3414
Registered: 09-10-2005
IP: Logged

Holy hoobuffins, they'd be better off using roguelike ANSI. TotSlikes aren't my thing, but I hope they find a solid business model to support a highly tuned puzzle design.

____________________________

Zmann
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 241
Registered: 04-21-2003
IP: Logged

Yeah, it can be hard to parse at times due to the visual density. You sort of get used to it, but usually when I reach a new floor I stop and just take it all in for a few minutes to figure out where all the goodies are and how hard they are to get.

It does play very much like TotS, but I find that the scope means that I don't really get analysis paralysis from it because it's so darn complicated that I have no chance to play it optimally, doubly so the first time through.

There are soooo many enemies and the numbers are big enough that they're hard to calculate, and you don't have perfect information until you've played through it once, so you kind of just have to go with the flow.

---

[Last edited by Zmann at 05-08-2020 04:25 AM]

dojo_b
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 36
Registered: 11-14-2017
IP: Logged

10,000 hours of puzzle gameplay as a selling point, I love it. (Subtitle is "Big Volume Puzzle RPG".) Ready to quit my job and stock up on garbanzo beans.

---

[Last edited by dojo_b at 06-08-2020 07:16 PM]

hyphz
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 34
Registered: 01-02-2006
IP: Logged

Am I being daft? I downloaded this but when I touch the first enemy, it displays the stats for the fight and freezes, and there doesn't seem to be any key to press to actually make the fight happen. I can press X, which lets the enemy hit me without hitting them back and ends the game, but no key seems to cause me to fight back?

ErikH2000
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2794
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Laughing at the complicated and ambitious pricing scheme. There is something heroic about it.

-Erik

____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals | twitch stream | youtube archive (NSFW)

Nillo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 548
Registered: 01-04-2004
IP: Logged

I started playing this a couple days ago and it really is something special. It somehow feels less stressful to play than DROD RPG was for me, because usually there's at least one puzzle you know how to beat, and figuring that puzzle out will make the other puzzles easier using more medals.

Something interesting about this system is, because these medals and sunstones change the puzzle's initial conditions, it means that each player will approach the puzzle differently. Maybe you have 2 sunstones when you play a certain tower while I have 5, and this small difference creates a butterfly effect such that each of us is actually playing a different puzzle.

It's pretty genius, and I don't doubt the developer's claims that you could easily play this for hundreds of hours trying to optimize all the towers and squeeze out more medals and sunstones. Even so, the pricing model they announced is insane and I hope they reconsider it; the game deserves more recognition than it would get if such a price tag is slapped on it.

____________________________
“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thanks for the in-depth review, Zmann!

Now that I've come up for air from Twisty Little Passages, I see this review. And, what, ho, and lo, is this?

I've bought the core game to support the developers, because you know I think these types of games are awesome. But now I need to decide how far down the rabbit hole I'll go...

My life has turned into a constant optimization experience.

How well can I peer into the future to balance the finite HP of my time with GOLD acquired through work, ATK and DEF upgrades and multipliers gained through personal and professional study and development, and REP/EXP upgrades (and now medals and sunstones?!) gained by having memorable experiences and producing more cool projects?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 08-18-2020 08:51 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

This game is great, although I do balk at the absurd pricing scheme gimmick, the game will eventually get way too expensive, it's just dumb, I can't support that kind of pricing structure.

Tactical Nexus does some very interesting things with the magic tower formula. I like the continual level ups with choices of stats or keys. I love the meta-progression with medals and sunstones and the way it keeps the starting conditions constantly changing which changes your experience with each tower. The inclusion of an HP multiplier combined with pairing up some stat boosts onto the same items that give you health is very devious. Later towers give equipment with all manner of interesting effects, like boosts that scale with your level, or adding an option you can pick instead of the usual ones when you level up, and the equipment is destroyed if you ever put it down to pick up something else.

If you like Magic Tower games you really need to play at least the demo of this one. It's the only game since the days of Civilization 4 that kept me up until I realised it was 2 AM.

Also, if you are missing DROD RPG's really useful feature to look ahead into future rooms, I made a site with images of every floor so you can remind yourself of what's ahead on future playthroughs of a tower. Spoilers, of course: https://www.kieranmillar.com/tacticalnexus/

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-18-2020 07:19 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Okay, I completely misunderstood how you have to NOT apply any medals in a run in order to receive a "pure nexus" reward at a score point.

But applying sunstones is okay, i.e., they won't invalidate a pure nexus run, correct?

I had it the other way around in my mind -- thought you couldn't use sunstones, but you could use medals. Hmm...

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 08-18-2020 08:55 PM]

Gordius
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 95
Registered: 12-16-2008
IP: Logged

I long ago reached the point where I much prefer RPG to traditional DROD, so I tried this out. It's...umm...vast. The various comments in this thread were clear about it, but even then I underestimated the extent to which this was going to be a game focused on the minutia of optimization in a very, very large and wide open space.

I think the most frustrating thing for me is that if you complete a tower, but don't have a high enough score to get the bronze medal, all that effort was wasted. Tactical Tower G, for example, was exhausting, but an extremely interesting and fun challenge in trying to climb both a fight tower and a reward tower concurrently. But I got to the end about 10% short of the goal (and reached what I think (based on the appearance of rainbow floor tiles) is the last floor of the Warp side, but couldn't do much there). I know lots of you really enjoy going back and solving the same puzzles again to see how to shave a few more points out of it. I largely don't.

And to the extent that I can get a bronze medal and sunstone or two, it seems like they barely help. Some of the other commenters said that it means trying a completely different path through the towers, but what I see is me doing exactly the same thing as last time with mildly lower costs. By the end, maybe that's translated into enough gain to kill something I couldn't the previous run, but it's a lot of repetition to get to that point.

tldr: I'll probably try to finish each of the towers and see where that gets me, but the replay value here is better suited to heavily optimization-oriented RPG players than to me.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

I hear you. I've been going through these dungeons to see what there is to see in this game, and after an uncountable number of hours doing primarily pure nexus runs, maybe I'm finally figuring out what in the world is going on. Is it worth it?

My first impressions of some of these dungeons is that they are, well, messy. I like the clear structure and progression featured in places like tutorial 1. Elsewhere, it's just like stuff is strewn all over the place like so much spilled (or blown) chili. On subsequent runs, perhaps I'm now starting to see more method to the madness. In time, I'll probably learn to respect the clever intricacy of the designs as I unlock their secrets.

I like the nexus concept in theory. Leveling up and feathers appears a tidy way to manage gold, altars, and lucky items. I miss having some kind of story or theme in these games beyond floor titles, however, and I also miss special items. I've only played one dungeon with weapons, and they were interesting, though deciding when to pick them up is somewhat annoying. I can't decide whether I'd be more annoyed if the player could swap weapons or not. I think I've heard rumors more items are featured in future dungeons, so I guess there's that to look forward to.

I think I had the same issue of completing one dungeon a few percent short of a medal. That was a sad day.

It seems using a combination of sunstones medals to unlock more content is also a thing. From another forum, I found a list of what appears to be the key to unlocking the way to the "bonus" (?) score point in each dungeon, copied below verbatim. Who knows how long it will take to satisfy the requirements for more than one or two of these...


Walkthrough notes

Edit: My antivirus is detecting the game as APC malware. Not sure whether that's a false positive or not.

Edit2: Developers say this is due to the programming language and libraries they are using. Hmm...

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 10-05-2020 11:03 PM]

Nillo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 548
Registered: 01-04-2004
IP: Logged

My recommendation to those struggling with the puzzles is to do a regular run first before attempting a "Pure Nexus" (sunstone-only run) on each tower. Assuming you have at least some medals, this will result in an easier run and, hopefully, allow you to reach deeper areas of the tower and get a better understanding of its layout - especially how many keys you will need to collect useful items. Once you have gathered this information, you can try beating it using only Sunstones.

I had planned to play this during my summer vacation earlier this year, but much to my chagrin the game seems to require an internet connection to play. I am confused as to why the game is online-only despite only offering single player content, but somehow not surprised either. Everything about the game is uncanny and strange, a product of eccentric minds. I think this is also a part of what makes it so fascinating to play and try to figure out what the developers were thinking while making it.

mrimer wrote: It seems using a combination of sunstones to unlock more content is also a thing.

To be precise, you need a combination of Medals to reach what is known as the "Nexus Stage" of each tower. This final area is hidden within the Nexus itself, behind numerous doors that can only be unlocked with Medals, and are meant to be challenged only when you have made considerable progress through the game.



____________________________
“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

Gordius
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 95
Registered: 12-16-2008
IP: Logged

Nillo wrote:
My recommendation to those struggling with the puzzles is to do a regular run first before attempting a "Pure Nexus" (sunstone-only run) on each tower. Assuming you have at least some medals, this will result in an easier run and, hopefully, allow you to reach deeper areas of the tower and get a better understanding of its layout - especially how many keys you will need to collect useful items. Once you have gathered this information, you can try beating it using only Sunstones.

I think this advice misses a key difference between "struggling with the puzzles" and "struggling with optimization techniques." I can finish most of the holds (not the dojo, what is that nightmare?). But beyond that, the copper and even silver medals only just barely improve my runs. And, frankly, the sunstones help even less. I have 5 copper medals, 2 silver medals, and 5 sunstones, and no combination of ways to use those is helping me get past a copper medal on the first tutorial.

To the extent that I've identified a problem, it's that there are as many (that I've seen) as four different directions you can be advancing at once (up, down, Warp, and Nexus) and knowing when to give up on one and focus on just the main direction (usually up) is utterly incomprehensible to me. So I frequently end up expending a bunch of resources trying to make progress toward multiple checkpoints. Sometimes I even succeed (two silver medals), but mostly I end up washing out back at the easy checkpoint with a far lower score than I would otherwise have. But if I try to focus on just heading for that checkpoint, I find myself not strong enough at the end, and have to go back in the other direction to get back on track, worse off than if I'd been managing both paths all along. There's clearly a balancing act at play that I lack the skill for and have largely lost an interest in pursuing.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

File: nexus tutorial 1 build.jpg (341.5 KB)
Downloaded 67 times.
License: Public Domain

Thanks for correcting me on medals vs sunstones.
Still mixing my terminology.

I haven't tried any non-pure runs, except to boost my score at the end to see what it's worth, which is of course the wrong way to approach medal usage.

Gordius wrote:
I think this advice misses a key difference between "struggling with the puzzles" and "struggling with optimization techniques." I can finish most of the holds (not the dojo, what is that nightmare?). But beyond that, the copper and even silver medals only just barely improve my runs. And, frankly, the sunstones help even less.

I can see your point. Let's say an added ATK or DEF point at the beginning may optimistically translate into a few thousand more HP by the end. That's still not that much relative to the scores you need to get a higher medal.

I have 5 copper medals, 2 silver medals, and 5 sunstones, and no combination of ways to use those is helping me get past a copper medal on the first tutorial.

I can share my build for Tutorial 1 if it helps with strategy. (Within 3% of gold on pure nexus!)

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 09-11-2020 04:53 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

File: mini platinum.jpg (154.4 KB)
Downloaded 67 times.
License: Public Domain

Woo hoo! Got my first platinum medal, on a Mini pure nexus run.

Wow, it really is possible to do that if moves are ordered the right way. I finally figured out the trick to that one. There is definitely a trick, and it makes perfect sense in hindsight.

I used 20 sunstones on DEF, but based on the margin I ended up with, I'm fairly confident I could reach platinum w/o using any.

Edit: Never mind, I forgot how hard the beginning of Mini is to progress in along the optimal score path without sunstones.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 09-12-2020 03:19 PM]

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

Congrats, understanding the trick to Mini is key to optimizing many other towers.

Getting platinum without using any sunstones (called true pure on Discord) is likely impossible as nobody else reported achieving it. Due to how fast Mini scales each sunstone early on can have a dramatic effect on the final score. Someone had achieved it using 12 but with 0 my best score is around 3.7M.

There are 3 towers so far where it is possible to achieve true pure platinum.

Professor Tio
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 100
Registered: 01-30-2019
IP: Logged

File: Current-Situation.png (90.1 KB)
Downloaded 56 times.
License: Public Domain

So, I've been playing this kinda on and off (been starting into college work stuff), and I'm past the point of having 100 hours logged already - with only 8 medals/10 sunstones, no 2nd gold or platinum+ yet. I do have the Ch. 3-4 DLC and I've already gotten one of my bronze medals from one of those towers. My main question is this: I'm stuck again (had this happen before while hunting for my 7th medal), so, what tower should I be working on from here? I have 3 ideas for what to do:

- Tower K: About halfway between bronze and silver. Just getting bronze on this one had me stumped for a long while, haha.
- Tower G: I'm a little over 30k short of bronze, I ended up falling flat near the end of the basement section. I feel I could achieve bronze there, I just need a bit of aid ironing out the last few bits.
- The Dojo: I've been told that you're basically guaranteed silver if you can get to the Tier 2 score-point here, but my efforts continue to fizzle out at the beginning of the glass-floor section due to either not enough HP or just not enough moves to progress anymore.

I really want to try and get a 2nd gold somewhere so that I can work on more Tier 3 score-points but I'm not entirely sure where I could feasibly do that right now. I appreciate any guidance!

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

Generally speaking the best source of Tactical Nexus advice is on Discord.

Even with no medal and sunstone it should be possible to get gold in the first 6 towers and silver in the next 6 although this requires very optimal play. The exceptions are K which is capped at silver and Dojo where platinum is possible. Try upgrading medals with pure runs as much as possible then use medals when things slow down. Getting platinum in mini should be possible right now and a few more sunstones allow you to score it pure.

The big goal is to enter Nexus for Tutorial 2, W, or P since D and K do not reward diamond medals.

Nillo
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 548
Registered: 01-04-2004
IP: Logged

greenscience wrote:
Generally speaking the best source of Tactical Nexus advice is on Discord.

Yup. Though it might also be demoralizing to hang out on the Tacnex Discord and watch the conversation there between the big brain geniuses who have beat every tower with godlike scores. I joined it myself and it's a bit awkward having like... 8 bronze medals.

____________________________
“Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the 'Ellie May,' a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.”

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

File: k silver not pure.jpg (433.6 KB)
Downloaded 80 times.
License: Public Domain

Professor Tio wrote:
I do have the Ch. 3-4 DLC and I've already gotten one of my bronze medals from one of those towers.

I haven't picked these up yet. Wanted to ensure I could play through the first set before acquiring more. I have just Pop tac lord to play through to a checkpoint at least once now.

My main question is this: I'm stuck again (had this happen before while hunting for my 7th medal), so, what tower should I be working on from here? I have 3 ideas for what to do:

- Tower K: About halfway between bronze and silver. Just getting bronze on this one had me stumped for a long while, haha.

Yeah, this one was tricky for me too. I did manage to eke out a silver by applying medals to get my score up to 456k. Here's my build for that one (attached) in case this helps. I'm optimistic you could get a pure bronze on K now that you understand the layout.

- Tower G: I'm a little over 30k short of bronze, I ended up falling flat near the end of the basement section. I feel I could achieve bronze there, I just need a bit of aid ironing out the last few bits.

Happy to help. The basement was a bit tricky. Lot of keys needed to get through it. It seems the best approach to the basement is to advance through the floors by beelining for the return keys as quickly as possible. Otherwise, it seems I'm just wasting level-ups to pick up less effective power-ups on the early floors.

Recommend keeping careful track of which keys you'll need to advance through the later basement floors.

- The Dojo: I've been told that you're basically guaranteed silver if you can get to the Tier 2 score-point here, but my efforts continue to fizzle out at the beginning of the glass-floor section due to either not enough HP or just not enough moves to progress anymore.

Yeah, I've noticed that getting from the first to the second checkpoint in many of these first towers is necessary to progress from copper to silver. I've only played to the first checkpoint once on Dojo. I couldn't get further in the second part either on this run. I'm not sure I want to try this one again

I really want to try and get a 2nd gold somewhere so that I can work on more Tier 3 score-points but I'm not entirely sure where I could feasibly do that right now. I appreciate any guidance!

Getting a gold on Tutorial next made the most sense to me. I couldn't do it pure, but with ~6 medals, I was able to get over the line (see my above build for inspiration).

Happy to chat specific strategy on any of these. I'll probably hop into Discord to start reading material there.

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 09-12-2020 03:11 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Okay, I just popped into the Tactical Nexus discord and, um, maybe I'm in the wrong place, but the channel organization makes no sense to me. They appear to have a bunch of random content that has nothing to do with the game. Can someone provide me a link?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 09-12-2020 03:13 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Here it is: (Link removed because I don't understand how to create permanent links for Discord.)

It has few channels, so the discussion tends to pile into two channels, General and Newest Tower Discussion.

As I tend to find with most other Discords, there's way too much discussion to follow when I come back the following day, so I've only read small bits here and there.

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 09-15-2020 11:19 PM]

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

For K it is worth getting more DEF levels. The one who got first got silver with no medal and sunstone originally alternated ATK and DEF levels after key levels.

For G you want to beeline for golden feathers as well as return keys. Although if there is a path that allows you to get noticeably more resources by taking an extra level compared to straight bee-lining it is worth it.

You also want to read through the strategy-posts channel and consider memo-guides. Strategy-posts channel describes the general strategy for most towers (nothing tower specific). DROD RPG players know some of this already but there are tips about TN unique features.

Memo-guides contains walkthroughs for specific towers. Memos are a system of notes written on tiles and you can copy another person's memo file to your memo folder to view their notes. They're not full walkthroughs but give general strategy for the tower, notes on how to approach a floor, resource/stat checkpoints, etc.

Search helps with narrowing down on tips for specific towers although it helps to know which abbreviations the community has developed for game terms. For example the tutorial towers are called tut1, tut2, etc and Celestial Coliseum is called coli. Using has:image is also useful for finding screenshots of ending scores.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you for the Discord link and guidance.

Just got a platinum for W at the Nexus score point. Yay!

This should crack open more Nexus options.

Anyone have a sense for what's the first tower to attempt a diamond run on?

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

---

[Last edited by mrimer at 09-12-2020 05:46 PM]

blorx1
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 920
Registered: 07-18-2009
IP: Logged

I got my first diamond in P, but it's very much a tower where you need to use some specific and important tricks to have a good time of things.

The other good choices are Tutorial 2 and W but I feel like both of those are on the tight side even with the right strategy and are much easier if you have more than the 12 medals from the base game.

____________________________
If you need to think outside of the box, then you didn't build a good enough box.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3019
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

File: tn progress 50hrs.png (50.9 KB)
Downloaded 2812 times.
License: Public Domain

Here's my progress after just over 50 hours:



I should probably start actually using medals at some point, but I'm addicted to earning Sunstones.

The towers in this game always start off seeming so intimidating. Requires a big leap to just decide to get the ball rolling on tackling a new tower.

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 09-15-2020 12:11 PM]

Professor Tio
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 100
Registered: 01-30-2019
IP: Logged

Hey just a quick note, I tried to join the TN server, but the invite provided here seems to be down? Just wanting to bring that up real quick.

____________________________
Hold stuff I guess!
I had an avatar at some point but then the thing stopped cooperating, ah well-

greenscience
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 148
Registered: 02-27-2015
IP: Logged

The original invite https://discord.gg/BYTegrg still works.

Also check out the original forum for TN at https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3920507. The information on that is outdated compared to Discord but it contains a directory for TN related websites.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5166
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

kieranmillar wrote:
I should probably start actually using medals at some point, but I'm addicted to earning Sunstones.

Same here

The towers in this game always start off seeming so intimidating. Requires a big leap to just decide to get the ball rolling on tackling a new tower.

I can definitely relate to this feeling!

____________________________
Gandalf? Yes... That's what they used to call me.
Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.