kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
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I advise trying Choice pure next, it's after tutorial 4 in the list. I just did this recently, it turns out this has a very generous and easy Platinum you can achieve without spending medals. The tower is not very long and you can massively mess it up and still get a Platinum medal. Might take a run or two to understand the central gimmicks of the tower but they're not difficult to grasp and once you grasp them, a Platinum is pretty much guaranteed.

I got the Platinum on my first serious try (the Silver in the above screenshot came from the first clear spot when doing a scouting run, to give you an idea how easy it is to get a Silver here), and my first serious try had major screwups.

After that, I think you're probably fine to try going for your first Diamond on tutorial 2. I think this works nicely for a first Diamond, it has some things you need to work out but they are entirely work-out-able on your own, unlike a tower like W, which is very unintuitive. Note that you almost certainly will not get a Diamond on your first attempt, but you should be able to iterate over a few runs and get there. P is another tower with a Diamond that is manageable with little or no outside help or hints.

Tactical Pop Lord takes a long time to become manageable. You should probably not try to tackle it until you have like 5 or 6 Diamonds. It's hard. Technically you could probably try it now but it will be really really difficult. Another tower to avoid is Heavy, as I understand it, they screwed up and made a last minute change before release to add a bunch of Defense to the ranger enemies, and apparently it's not even worth trying it until you have about 200 sunstones so you can offset this. But then they didn't bother to undo this change for some reason? I don't get it, maybe I'm mistaken.

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 07-29-2021 09:16 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
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Thanks for the tips!

I just tried going through Choice. I liked it, with the new gimmick of stats swapping throughout. (It felt a bit like changing back and forth between Adam and He-man or something... Not the best comparison, but I don't have a better one on-hand.) Edit: Ikaruga is probably a better comparison.

Yes, getting that silver medal was simple (40 sunstones now!). At the very beginning, it seemed like it would be hard, but then it felt kind of weird breezing through the entire first section. I kept going through the second part so I could see what's in store and ended up at ~92% of a gold medal. There was a funny point at the end where one enemy was inflicting "0+" damage on me (and saying "damage: over 0").

It was a bit sneaky for them to throw in the HP multiplier near the end, but I guess I'm not surprised. Now to figure out how to get that platinum.

Edit: I noticed something right off that I think I can do.

I don't think I see clearly yet how to enter the nexus area. Save up all those keys, I guess? Seems that's a way off for me.

I'll probably need a hint on getting a diamond in Tutorial 2. I went through it 2-3 times last year and ended still shy of a platinum.

____________________________
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 09-21-2021 09:45 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
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mrimer wrote:
Edit: I noticed something right off that I think I can do.

Click here to view the secret text

×Save the eternal potion for later!

Yes, this is one of two big things. The other one, which you should have noticed but just in case you didn't:

mrimer wrote:
I don't think I see clearly yet how to enter the nexus area. Save up all those keys, I guess? Seems that's a way off for me.

You can't enter the nexus area on a pure run, so don't worry about it for now.

mrimer wrote:
I'll probably need a hint on getting a diamond in Tutorial 2. I went through it 2-3 times last year and ended still shy of a platinum.

Here are a series of hints:

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Choice:
I reached pure platinum! Yay! That felt good.

Fascinating how balancing the stats this way and that was crucial in each area, especially with each set of rangers.

Didn't quite make it to platinum at first. To reach 10M points, I needed to

Now to try Tutorial 2. Thank you for the hints. The first was helpful. I'll read the rest if needed.

____________________________
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 08-02-2021 04:57 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
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I completed Tutorial 2 again and reached lvl 86 and 40M points. Platinum!

Your hints were helpful. I think I need confirmation on what to change to get 25% higher. Some of my below thoughts might not be important; I'll ask just in case they matter.




____________________________
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 08-04-2021 07:13 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
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mrimer wrote:

Click here to view the secret text

×* Open any other doors on F9 besides the two you mentioned? (I missed two purple keys for the ending by using two here. That probably lost me the majority of the gap I have. Open the top-right yellow door, maybe? I had to obtain 5 digs early from the south end of F10 to complete that floor, costing me 32K HP. Ouch. Opening this door would have avoided that.)

Click here to view the secret text

×* What level were you at when reaching Entrance to Elder and when beginning Master's Temple? (I reached Entrance to Elder at Lvl 32.)

Click here to view the secret text

×* When to open up F1? Is it worth getting the heart crown and 10 digs (and Shield Badge) before working up to breaking into F10?

Click here to view the secret text

×* Pick up accessible atk/def badges before or after clearing out F8-10?

Click here to view the secret text

×* Is it right to use red/blue keys on the south side of F3?

Click here to view the secret text

×* Choose all ATK level bonuses up till HP bonuses? (What about one or more level HP bonuses before the very first HP doubler?)

Click here to view the secret text

×* Is the feather at the north end of 10F picked up right before the Dreamer, i.e., just if needed to get to the next level?

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-04-2021 08:07 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
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Thank you! That clears things up for me.

kieranmillar wrote:
I'm worried about you saying "before the first HP doubler".

Ah, I'm talking about the third one, on 5F, which ostensibly cannot be bypassed. Any HP gathered before it will conceivably become 8x by the end (ultimately ~100K per level at that point, from each ~13K boost). Maybe it's worth getting an early boost or two there instead of ~12-14 ATK?

Eh...in the big scheme of things, it's probably not enough to matter much either way, though having less ATK likely makes the second section more difficult.

____________________________
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 08-04-2021 09:18 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Oh yeah, I forgot that doubler exists. It seems I forgot a lot about the tower.

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
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But also worth noting, that you shouldn't think about HP before that doubler being worth 8 times as much, only twice as much, because almost every other HP gain in the tower is already at x4 value.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
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Wooo! Got my first diamond. 52.65M score at lvl 91.

Now on to try for a diamond on W or P next. Hoping to unlock the nexus section of Tutorial 1.

____________________________
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 08-05-2021 07:57 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
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I remember Tower P now. I was able to get gold previously and reach the Dreamer's floor, but I wasn't close to defeating him.

Thinking of what I'll need to do this time around, my thoughts are:



Does this sound right?



____________________________
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 08-06-2021 02:22 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

mrimer wrote:
* Don't pick up anything in the warp area till lv5+ (etc, for each floor) to maximize scaling medals.

Yes, because P is a glory grid tower, where levelups only get you keys, gaining stats is hard, so holding off on progress in the warp area to maximise the value of the scaling pickups is a huge help.

* Don't dally on each floor in the warp area, opening additional doors -- take the most direct route possible up each floor.

Sort of, but not quite. Long term, the deeper floors give better value from your keys, but along the way you might need to divert a few levels for stats or violet or plat keys. One of the floors has two return keys, getting that spare key is helpful. The absolute best value from your key trades are scaling badges and potions, but that's a very late concern.

* Save as many keys as possible for above F10. Except, use keys to pick up feathers along the way.

Key use is quite flexible in this tower, the main thing you have to care about is feathers, they are all extremely valuable. B24F is the big goal.

* I ended up with a ridiculous number of digs last time, and nothing left to use them on. I should prefer using digs over keys, as long as I have enough.

Yeah, this tower is very much not tut2, digs are much more generous. Digging out stats is very important.

* B8F has a HP doubler in an area that can be accessed once, unless you spend NINE keys to re-enter. I'm assuming the Eternal potion needs to be saved and obtained at the very end? (And the ATK badge too?)

Yes, eternal potions are the single best scoring pickup in the whole game by a gigantic margin, nothing else comes remotely close. You need to keep enough keys to get this later. I can't remember if I also left the ATK badge, probably.

* Not sure what is best to pick out of the nexus... The return key?

The return key is mandatory to reach the nexus stage, after that is feathers, then violet keys. This nexus rewards you getting more and better medals from other towers quite a bit.

The final point I'd note is B18F, you really want to avoid opening the huge multi-coloured door chain, and farm as many of the burgeoners as you can when you have a load of feathers. But this means leaving this room as long as possible, and it has loads of stats you have to wait on. How well you manage to delay this is a big determiner of how well you do on the tower in the end.

After all that, P is largely about just playing well. I enjoyed this tower a lot.

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-06-2021 07:27 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you!

Very helpful. I obtained diamond in Tower P!

All in all, I liked this tower too. I did indeed need to play well to reach the 30M threshold, with intent behind each of my decisions. I had some minor sloppiness here and there, where I threw away tiny amounts of HP, but I don't believe I made any major errors. I didn't collect all of the goodies on the Dreamer's floor, which might have been due to some shortsightedness (it's hard to keep track of all the keys coming and going) but with careful endgame play, and a few re-routings when I noticed something sub-optimal, I just made it.

So next I loaded up a save at the end of Tutorial 1 and entered the nexus section. Couldn't reach the final room. Seems I'll need a substantially different build to make it work. Interesting! I like how the level designers apply a twist to how the nexus sections need to be approached, which often necessitates playing the entire rest of the tower a bit differently from the beginning with some additional constraints in mind.

Edit: nope, I don't think I'm even close to reaching the final score point. More medals might help...

____________________________
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 08-09-2021 09:47 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Congrats on the second diamond! A lot of towers need you to have 2 diamonds instead of one so this opens up a lot of stuff.

Tutorial 1's nexus stage is tough. I assumed it was on purpose because it's the easy first tower so doing that is memorable. The enemies have huge amounts of stats compared to the main tower. At least the main tower is really short. I've managed to get a diamond on it but it was close. But if you get to the end, a diamond is pretty much assured.

I now have 7 diamonds, here's quick thoughts on each in the order I got them:

- Tutorial 2: Centred around some main ideas on how to maximise the main resources. Need to optimise well but the tower is short.

- P: Nothing sneaky or hard to figure out, just play well. Has a lot of freedom in how to spend resources, which is nice.

- W: Figure out the unintuitive main gimmicks or you will only barely get 3/4 of the way to a diamond. I had to get hints to the level of basically being told what to do. Almost no resource flexibility, deviate at all and you fail. But once you know what to do, it's an eye-opening experience that will change how you look at magic tower level design.

- NEW: Good fun, got it on my first attempt with no hints, just play well. The main tower gets cut short, you aren't allowed to go past clear 1, which is appreciated because the main tower is otherwise quite long.

Tutorial 1: Hard nexus but overall short compared to other towers. Didn't need any hints but took a few attempts.

G: Complete hell. Main tower is already quite hard, the burgeoner before clear 2 comes from some reality-warping dimension where every time you undo and try again, you do worse. Nexus stage is simplisticly designed but will beat you mercilessly if you don't know what's coming and don't prepare properly. Had to redo the entire tower first time round. Only barely beat the Dreamer by the skin of my teeth after multiple undoing and resequencing, but diamond is basically guaranteed if you can do it. Even if you think you're playing the early parts of the main tower really well, the latter half will always be a struggle, and the struggle never stops.

Hitofude dojo: lol. I refuse to play this awful tower properly and followed a walkthrough to get diamond and will never touch it again. You need 6 diamonds to get this.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

kieranmillar wrote:
Tutorial 1's nexus stage is tough. I assumed it was on purpose because it's the easy first tower so doing that is memorable. The enemies have huge amounts of stats compared to the main tower. At least the main tower is really short. I've managed to get a diamond on it but it was close. But if you get to the end, a diamond is pretty much assured.

That's what I was hoping works out here. I think I need a hint; to my (possibly untrained) eye, there's not too much to think about in the main area besides grabbing the multipliers asap. And then the nexus areas flogs me, and I need to farm rangers just to survive and keep up. Once they're gone, I don't make it much farther. Maybe my build is wrong... What I'm doing is spending ~15 level-ups up-front acquiring keys, and then I pour the rest into ATK. I think I need the ATK upgrades in order to even damage most of the enemies I'm approaching at the end. Am I misguided?

I now have 7 diamonds

Wow-whee! Congrats! It's cool to see the diamonds in the medal line-up. That's quite an accomplishment.

...But once you know what to do, it's an eye-opening experience that will change how you look at magic tower level design.

This sounds fascinating and I'm looking forward to experiencing that.

...The main tower gets cut short, you aren't allowed to go past clear 1, which is appreciated because the main tower is otherwise quite long.

Sure is. Good to hear there's a short-circuit here.

G: Complete hell.

Yikes! That certainly sounds unpleasant.

Hitofude dojo: lol. I refuse to play this awful tower properly and followed a walkthrough to get diamond and will never touch it again. You need 6 diamonds to get this.

Heh, good to know. That's probably the only way I'd want to go through this one again too.

____________________________
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 08-10-2021 06:58 AM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

mrimer wrote: That's what I was hoping works out here. I think I need a hint; to my (possibly untrained) eye, there's not too much to think about in the main area besides grabbing the multipliers asap. And then the nexus areas flogs me, and I need to farm rangers just to survive and keep up. Once they're gone, I don't make it much farther. Maybe my build is wrong... What I'm doing is spending ~15 level-ups up-front acquiring keys, and then I pour the rest into ATK. I think I need the ATK upgrades in order to even damage most of the enemies I'm approaching at the end. Am I misguided?

That is slightly more key levels than I took, but I'm sure it's fine. The big thing with key levels here is that in the nexus stage, the most common use for yellow, blue and red keys is to trade them in for lots of stats. So you are essentially taking key levels early when the level up bonus for stats directly is weak in order to get bigger payoff later. But how much you get to do that will depend on your starting sunstones or medals spent on stats, so you can spend longer offsetting the lack of early stat levelups.

The main thing is:


The next big thing is:

scrooge
Level: Roachling
Rank Points: 10
Registered: 08-10-2021
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mrimer wrote:
I have a line in the sand for myself that I'll be actively completing publication of the pending DROD releases before playing any more TN. Maybe that will be a motivator - win/win!

Huh.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

scrooge wrote:

mrimer wrote:
I have a line in the sand for myself that I'll be actively completing publication of the pending DROD releases before playing any more TN. Maybe that will be a motivator - win/win!

Huh.

Yep. RPG 1.2.8 was released. Enjoy!

TSS 5.1.1 is blocked on the citizen/puff quagmire.

____________________________
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 08-10-2021 09:11 PM]

skell
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3771
Registered: 12-28-2004
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mrimer wrote:
TSS 5.1.1 is blocked on the citizen/puff quagmire.

I know it's not the thread but there are quite a few othe things that need to be looked into before 5.1.1 can be released:
- Transparency issues [fixed]
- Updating holds that are broken by the update
- Running the test spider again after all these changes to ensure no more breakage has happened (especially after the citizen/puff changes)
- I believe there were a few more newly introduced bugs that were reported for 5.1.1 [fixed]

____________________________
My website

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[Last edited by mrimer at 08-21-2021 01:14 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
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I tried and failed to complete the nexus stages in Tutorial 1 and NEW. I got to what feels like the floor prior to the Dreamer, but I feel like I'm really far from completing either.

I also tried Life Lord and made it to about floor 15. Interesting design! I got my life multiplier up to 90 or 100% but ran out of health.

Tutorial 1: I followed the DEF strategy to get the base atk/def enemies to 0 damage, then switched back to ATK. I started the nexus with ~150 def less than you had, so that's probably an issue, but I'm not sure exactly how big a deal it is in the grand scheme of things. Also not sure how you got all that def at the same level I was. Maybe I just need more than my 13 medals and 42 sunstones to start out?

NEW: I used the first 8 levels to get red keys, then pure ATK. I got all the multipliers on the way up asap, and I felt like I entered the nexus way below the stats I need to survive. I saved all the yellow/blue/red keys I could prior to entering the nexus, and they all seem to be useful in there, but I feel like I run out of HP super quickly. I start with about 900k HP, 3628 ATK and 1528 DEF, and I cleared out all enemies that wouldn't be a waste of keys from the first area.

Any hints you can provide?

____________________________
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 08-14-2021 08:00 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

I beat Life the last couple of days and got a Diamond +3. It was first time beating the tower. It was a lot of fun, but I restarted a whole bunch in the early part. Eventually if you can stabilize, I think you'll easily go all the way. The tower gets easier and easier the further you go, I felt. I actually did a Pure run until clear 2 and got a pure Gold with 3 sunstones, then opened up stuff in the nexus with medals and went all the way, so in the end I got 6 susnstones out of it too. I felt like the medal spends in the nexus seemed really low power.

Hints for Tutorial 1:






Hints for NEW:

---

[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-14-2021 07:05 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you!

kieranmillar wrote:
I beat Life the last couple of days and got a Diamond +3. It was first time beating the tower. It was a lot of fun, but I restarted a whole bunch in the early part. Eventually if you can stabilize, I think you'll easily go all the way. The tower gets easier and easier the further you go, I felt. I actually did a Pure run until clear 2 and got a pure Gold with 3 sunstones, then opened up stuff in the nexus with medals and went all the way, so in the end I got 6 susnstones out of it too. I felt like the medal spends in the nexus seemed really low power.

Ah, wonderful!

Hints for Tutorial 1:

Click here to view the secret text

×After my initial key levels, I took only DEF until level 72, where I took my first ATK level up and remained ATK for the rest of the way.

Whoa! I can see an issue here...I've only made it up to level 50, and I switch to ATK after level 45. Seems I simply need to have more feathers at the beginning. I got the one in blessed sanctuary 2 but don't have enough medals for blessed sanctuary 1 also. Seems I might come back to this later.

Hints for NEW:

Click here to view the secret text

×I took 12 key levels...

Looks like we're actually pretty close to each other on entering the nexus, but I'm ~60 DEF stat points behind you. That's not much...maybe I simply routed the nexus area poorly. I did get that late crown, but it may make sense to skip it after all, because there isn't all that much HP in the nexus area. I couldn't get the extra nexus feather you got and I think I'm about one xp level behind you. Maybe getting 3-4 more key levels early on and opening more doors to stats may be a better choice for me overall.

____________________________
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 08-14-2021 08:57 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

NEW:

I had a "derp" moment. For whatever reason, I had a mental blindspot, overlooking the feather and loot behind the platinum door near the end of the first area. After picking these up, and opening rooms behind red doors on F0, I confirmed I matched your stats and I was able to keep going. That made all the difference!
(I had previously assumed you had obtained an additional feather from the nexus loot rooms.)

Now I have three diamonds! Maybe this will help with Tutorial 1 (shortcut into nexus)? I need one more bronze to get the first feather in the nexus loot rooms. (Edit: yep, still not enough... need that feather...)

____________________________
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 08-16-2021 05:05 AM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Trying out Petit to get a bronze. Using my medals, I barely made it through the first room, at 35lv. Second floor looks nuts!

Seems there's a careful balance between ATK/DEF here while levelling up. I tried DEF first, didn't know what I was doing, and didn't get very far. Then I tried ATK. ATK served better at first, and I switched to DEF on completing the first floor. I grabbed the violet accessory asap. Looks like I should probably pick that up later, as there's another item that gives violet keys on the second floor, but I'm not sure how to beat the first floor without using it (i.e., all the tricks at my disposal). Interesting game!

Edit: Going with an all-DEF build works much better for the first floor. Made it through easily on my third try. At lv36, I swapped my stats on entering the second floor to 1531/1031 and had 234k HP with the two doublers. (I used one level up to gain 20k x 4 = 80k HP just before that.) Left the violet accessory, life sword, and shuriken behind. I still barely broke into the second quadrant. I'm not sure whether ATK, DEF, or HP upgrades work better on the second floor. Seems like ATK is a good long-term choice, but that's not getting me very far, with the enemies doing 30-50K damage each...

Edit: Ah! I found the cheese way to complete this with a bronze medal. I now get that the point here is basically to get as far as you can, and then you can tap out. Interesting! On to Tutorial 1 again with a second nexus feather. Hopefully it will be enough this time...

Edit: YES! Finally completed Tutorial 1 diamond. Phew...that nexus felt tough. I juuuuuuuuuust managed to squeak by on the nexus 5th floor, with something like 10k HP to my name when reaching the immortal potion. I started out with stats a bit lower than yours, but turned out I was close enough.

I obtained my first bonus sunstone! I think I needed all 14 of those medals and both nexus feathers to be able to reach the end (with 2-3 continental potions remaining for HP at the end).

____________________________
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 08-16-2021 03:21 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

kieranmillar wrote:
- W: Figure out the unintuitive main gimmicks or you will only barely get 3/4 of the way to a diamond. I had to get hints to the level of basically being told what to do. Almost no resource flexibility, deviate at all and you fail.

Now, I'm fairly confident it's possible for me to score diamond on Tower W, a tower I obtained platinum on last year.

Naturally, I'd rather not go through the whole thing and make a single deviation from a non-obvious route and fail, as you say, as it's rather long. I'm guessing the three main gimmicks might be


and


and


Do I have the gist of it?

____________________________
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 08-17-2021 04:35 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

mrimer wrote:
Now, I'm fairly confident it's possible for me to score diamond on Tower W, a tower I obtained platinum on last year.

It's definitely possible. It's possible for W to be the first diamond you get, however it's definitely more knowledge gated than many other first diamond possibilities.

Click here to view the secret text

×* Have enough keys for all five of the yellow/blue/red/purple/platinum key caches and the return route from the nexus. After carefully adding up all the keys, mandatory doors, plus doors to multiplier items (I can provide the list of these on request), I conclude this would require skipping all the optional door shortcuts and hp/atk/def loot rooms along the way, everywhere. Also the two feathers on F14, unless these are paid for via keys from the nexus (that aren't on the path to acquiring the return key).

Exactly how much leeway is there? If I counted correctly, there may be one extra yellow and red key somewhere along the way. Also, one blue key must be acquired in the nexus (which is along the usual path to the return key, or elsewhere if using diamond medals). Of course, picking up even more keys in the nexus could soften this constraint.

and

Click here to view the secret text

×* Skip the continental potions (even desirably on 5F) till 32F. Also the eternal potion on 20F. Get it after all the continental potions, when the platinum keys are needed to finish clearing out the cache on F32.

and

Click here to view the secret text

×* Pick up HP levels at the end. Maybe before, maybe after, fighting the boss enemies on F32, or both.

However, none of these are the main unintuitive gimmick of the tower, which you haven't stumbled across, and to be fair, you won't by just planning ahead on the tower. I'll try and drop a series of successive hints, but it's hard to hint without just spoiling it.

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-17-2021 11:46 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you!

I think I really needed your hints on this part of the strategy...these consequences would have completely eluded me until it was far too late, and I probably would have not had any idea how to remedy it.

Some play notes from my first attempt at diamond:

In the nexus, I grabbed the feather on 1N so far, will use the diamond shortcut to the return key, and now I'm waiting till the third nexus floor to pick up anything else, i.e., the loot cache and keys.

I went up to 15F and beat the area boss...but I needed the continental potion from 5F to survive the fight, and then my HP was only 25k after that point. I felt sad using an eternal potion at that point.

Though I picked up xp and HP from easier rangers all along the way, I had rushed through the third area to 15F nearly as directly as possible. I reached lv23 and ~1000 ATK on defeating the boss.

What awaited me next: Enemies in the 4th (night) layer were so incredibly strong...I couldn't even discern anything useful I could accomplish in the area at that point. I continued to clear out all the mid-level stuff in the third section that I'd largely skipped past. After that, 4th layer enemies still are doing 10k+ damage, and I have 50-100k HP in total. Not sure how to proceed. (And I see your point about the Final Rangers still doing 70-80k damage at this point. Yikes!)

By this point, I'm already using continental potions and I haven't even entered the night layer yet for all practical purposes. This route feels quite difficult. Either I routed very poorly, or maybe it's simply difficult going all the way through without picking up any loot behind doors.

So, where did I go wrong... maybe it would make more sense to level up more in the third area, because rushing the boss doesn't really yield much (just the feather, because the crown isn't really a benefit for area clean-up if the eternal potion is wasted). Maybe it's better to defer pursuing that feather reward and first be better prepared to approach the boss.

I realize I don't know what to do with 7F. Do I open the 8-9 yellow doors and pick up the ATK/DEF cache early on (probably in the third zone) or leave it completely till after opening the yellow door cache on 19F? Well...I might not have a choice; seems I need that extra +20 ATK/DEF just to survive the third area more efficiently and continue onward. Then I could also defer more rangers till later and pick them up when they do a bit less damage.

Edit: I've been thinking about what you said about violet keys being in short supply. Maybe it's not worth saving the continental potion on 5F, or opening the two violet doors on 12F. I just realized they can be bypassed, though it's expensive. Maybe alternative goodies along the way will prove more useful long-term.

____________________________
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.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 08-18-2021 10:29 PM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 3081
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

Because W took my a number of attempts, my memory is not so clear, so I've decided to go back through my saves to get some hints about what my successful run looked like.

I did the same for the nexus, took the feather at the return key shortcut and then only took keys and the loot cache on the 3rd nexus floor a lot later, when it was time to open the yellow key chain.

One thing to note is that in the first 2 layers, enemies give poor EXP and the forced eternals are useful to hold off on guzzling continentals early, so I farmed a load of enemies and hoovered up every normal potion I could as delaying enemies for later gave little reward and HP multiplier does not increase very fast early. In fact in general, I think as soon as an enemy type became free, I just killed them all.

I did not spend a violet on 5F to skip the continental. Before picking up the continental I had:


On 7F I spent 5 yellows and a violet ASAP to get one of the two feathers. The one with DEF potions was a little cheaper so I got that one. I left the other feather for a long time, to take it via killing the shadows.

Before killing the burgeoner on 10F I had:


Before killing the two Burgeoners on 15F I had:


At some point when tackling the third layer, I went to 8F and spent 3 violets on the continental and the feather! No wonder my violet keys were so tight. However I did not open the two violet doors on 12F, yes that means I went the other way to reach 15F. So I also took a continental before killing the 15F burgeoners.

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Understanding my saves after this point gets harder because of all the annoying back and forth in the tower, but overall looks like your problem is being underlevelled. Despite the feathers being big 50% feathers, looks like farming enemies for precious levelup stats is the way to go.

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[Last edited by kieranmillar at 08-18-2021 11:33 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Thank you!

Helping me understand the stats I should attain in each of the first areas was just what I needed. That made the fruit and night layers soooo much easier!

I got diamond+3!

____________________________
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.

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

Rank Points: 5184
Registered: 02-04-2003
IP: Logged

Tower W was satisfying to play, in the end. So much payoff at the end for planning ahead. I like the overall design, though the build trick would have been lost on me (though I did see a pic of someone with 17 medals get diamond with a pure attack build), and running back and forth over and over was annoying.

That said, the new map function makes play soooo much nicer than before! I find myself stopping my old muscle memory of running up and down stairs in order to look at things, now using the map instead.

Details on my differing play choices if you're interested:


____________________________
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.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 08-21-2021 01:34 AM]