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[Astral]

Getting into Perfect Tower II was probably a mistake.

The tower appears pretty limited in what builds "work" too - beyond a certain point, shields overtake health drastically in usefulness, and raw damage is overtaken by % damage and instakill stuff because the cost of raw damage gets outscaled by how many resources you can get quickly. This may just be due to the early access nature of it though.

I'm still using health and health regen, but I'm currently trying to hit M8 and the only way I can figure to hit 100B waves is % everything and letting the game run on Easy Forest for several hours. Presumably there's a far more elegant solution out there, but I'm not sure what it would be. Level 18 anti-everything modules only got me to 2B waves, so even if I grind up T4 blue producers I'm not confident about raw damage chained through the multipliers I've got access to.

The trick I found for damage/sustain beyond that initial wall was:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Soul Harvesting, a module found in region 4, Underground, with a 0.1% drop rate base, does a % of their current health as Darkness damage. Amp this up with Power Stones in the museum and it can one shot things reliably.

Defensively, Daigo Parry, found by entering the Konami Code at the arcade, blocks the next 15 hits (regardless of damage) and refreshes every couple seconds when maximized. It also makes for easy abuse of the Glass Cannon Contract in Headquarters.

Between those two and all the attack speed you can stack, it can carry you pretty much to end of Era.

This is what I was referring to as far as "limited builds" though - feels like there's like one or two tricks for each set of Military rank.

[IronyOwl]

The trick I found for damage/sustain beyond that initial wall was:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Soul Harvesting, a module found in region 4, Underground, with a 0.1% drop rate base, does a % of their current health as Darkness damage. Amp this up with Power Stones in the museum and it can one shot things reliably.

Defensively, Daigo Parry, found by entering the Konami Code at the arcade, blocks the next 15 hits (regardless of damage) and refreshes every couple seconds when maximized. It also makes for easy abuse of the Glass Cannon Contract in Headquarters.

Between those two and all the attack speed you can stack, it can carry you pretty much to end of Era.

This is what I was referring to as far as "limited builds" though - feels like there's like one or two tricks for each set of Military rank.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Soul Harvesting plus Heartstopper Aura (Dark Experiment; 5% max health darkness damage/second aura) and Combustion (Fire Experiment; enemies deal 20% of their max health as AoE fire damage when they die) were what I used. I was wailing on waves for a good few seconds before the whole gaggle died at the same time.

Been neglecting the Arcade, though, so maybe I should get back to that.

I'm getting instagibbed on Era 1, presumably because I've got no defensive or anti-elemental stuff outside what was intended for Forest and haven't figured out which options to replace yet. Which I'm sure I'll get around to at some point, but I've been spending all my time in the factory as of late.

[martinuzz]

Once you've got some hits taken and enemies killed, you can spend some resources in the new ERA tabs in the workshop which will make it cheaper to weaken the ERA enemies in the ERA tab in tower mode.

To get those first bunch of hits taken and kills in ERA, I used a pacifist (colourful/elementalist/trickster) build with soul harvesting (boosted by power stones) as my only offensive skill, basic shield, and shield + barriers + the right kind of resists for forest (neutral, nature, fire, earth). You can use magma foundation to get the fire resist and increase your fire barrier damage at the same time.


But yeah, griding through the ERA waves does take time. I'm still not at ERA 5, mostly because, like you, I spend too much time in the factory and laboratory.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Don't bother making t5 (and gem) producers, or t10 machines, once you get to asteroid mining they will drop for free faster than you can craft them.

[Iduno]

Also Perfect Tower II:
I am perhaps an idiot and can't figure out how to make thick plates to build T1 machines so I can build more advanced ones.

Edit: Also, is there a way to just max out a module in one click instead of 100 (and then 200...)? Yes! On the right side there are buttons for different percentages. 100% maxes out the module. Much faster. Now I just need a faster way to make machines in the factory.

[IronyOwl]

Once you've got some hits taken and enemies killed, you can spend some resources in the new ERA tabs in the workshop which will make it cheaper to weaken the ERA enemies in the ERA tab in tower mode.

To get those first bunch of hits taken and kills in ERA, I used a pacifist (colourful/elementalist/trickster) build with soul harvesting (boosted by power stones) as my only offensive skill, basic shield, and shield + barriers + the right kind of resists for forest (neutral, nature, fire, earth). You can use magma foundation to get the fire resist and increase your fire barrier damage at the same time.


But yeah, griding through the ERA waves does take time. I'm still not at ERA 5, mostly because, like you, I spend too much time in the factory and laboratory.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Don't bother making t5 (and gem) producers, or t10 machines, once you get to asteroid mining they will drop for free faster than you can craft them.

Good to know, on both spoilered and unspoilered accounts.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just now got asteroid mining, but I haven't gotten anything but shard conversions out of it so far. Well... that and... 0.58 town resources, I think? That was odd.

Also Perfect Tower II:
I am perhaps an idiot and can't figure out how to make thick plates to build T1 machines so I can build more advanced ones.

I couldn't figure this out either until I looked it up. You put stacked plates in the presser and they make thick plates.

The fuck are stacked plates? Ah, well... if you check the parts tab, there they are. If not, because it's not really a useful tab for anything else until you need motors or cubes... yeah. It's rather unfortunate that right clicking to show recipe doesn't work for processed bits, it'd make it a lot easier to work back to what you need.

[martinuzz]

Asteroid mining does not give town resources directly, but the +0.58 town resource symbol you saw means it increases resource drop rates by that percentage. Similarily, you can get %boost to damage, and to mining rewards. Check out the 'treasure' tab in the asteroid mine screen. It adds up nicely eventually. Currently I am at 2792% mining rewards, 8545% town resource drop rate, and 3915% damage boost.

Also, note that you can automate asteroid mining in the workers screen.

The hard part is keeping enough inventory space in your factory, which is especially painful if you have not yet unlocked the second floor of the factory.
Keeping 1 piece of good drops in your inventory is a good way of reserving a space for that particular drop.

EDIT: Hah, I just went from Era 1 to wave 86B Era 3 while watching some Netflix series.

[IronyOwl]

I did some testing, and it doesn't look like Soul Harvesting, Heartstopper Aura, or Combustion benefit from anything except resistance reduction. Power stones, anti-neutral projectiles, normal or fire/darkness crit, and magma foundation all appeared to have no impact. Neither did Incineration/Unholy Missile (+% fire/darkness damage per %HP remaining/missing) or Taste modules. The numbers were also about where you'd expect them to be from the description, which would seem to indicate lab bonuses don't work either.

Related, Reflect seems to trigger off actual damage taken rather than initial damage put out, or at least module-based resistances/division. Without any modules to that effect, it looked more like they were taking damage that ignored my lab/power stone resists.

On the bright side, Unholy Aura magnified damage as expected and Combustion can trigger off Heartstopper Aura kills.


That's for normal play, though. I'm dealing flat nothing to Era 1 foes and I don't know why.

[martinuzz]

Have you tried disabling their Era shield in the Tower Testing Era tab? IIRC you can unlock that after having taken some hits.

[beorn080]

Era foes initially take /e20 less damage, and have that much extra attack power. Focus on forest easy, use stuns turn off software, and go as slow as possible to get enough kills and hits for research

[Iduno]

I don't think the Fire experiment in the lab quite works right. My next goal is 500 million degrees, and my heaters currently add over 500 billion.

Edit: There's a temperature max? And you need to buy prestige to get it to work? It's good that they game tells you anywhere you'll see. I wonder if anything else *requires* buying prestige?

[IronyOwl]

Have you tried disabling their Era shield in the Tower Testing Era tab? IIRC you can unlock that after having taken some hits.

Era foes initially take /e20 less damage, and have that much extra attack power. Focus on forest easy, use stuns turn off software, and go as slow as possible to get enough kills and hits for research

These aren't quite right.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've taken enough hits to unlock the "+25% random elemental damage" thing under the neutral sword icon in the analysis tab, but I can't seem to do anything with it. I can't kill a single enemy so I'm unable to unlock the shield thingy. I have stopped bursting like a grape, however.

There's health and damage dividers in the Era tab, but they cost 100,000xp. The "disable powers" list is all grayed out. Am I supposed to start from Wave 1 and leave it idling for another 100B waves to build up enough xp to buy one of those? Farm up blue cubes and power through with really high level modules? Leave it running overnight?

I don't think the Fire experiment in the lab quite works right. My next goal is 500 million degrees, and my heaters currently add over 500 billion.

Edit: There's a temperature max? And you need to buy prestige to get it to work? It's good that they game tells you anywhere you'll see. I wonder if anything else *requires* buying prestige?

Electricity. There's only so many coils, so prestiging your voltage up or resistance down is the only way to progress past a certain point.

That's somewhat academic, though. Everything realistically needs prestige to keep going.

[None]

Y'need to take the stairs up in the workshop- you can spend hits taken/kills to understand what abilities each cube has, and when you've done both, you can disable their powers for a nominal sum of exp when you're tower testing, like 1000 at base research. The price goes up by like 1000 after the first disablement, so effectively you get to decide that one cube type gets to stop being lethal. I usually pick earth or darkness. Price/disablement resets when your testing run does.

The health and damage dividers are from the second or third tab of the upper floor of the workshop- you spend cubes and gems to increase the efficacy/reduce the exp cost of era suppression, which is only really meaningful once you're past era 1.

Once you've reached era, I think there's a technology that lets you start at wave 1 era 1, and on Forest Easy, they're still super simple to knock over. I'd advise turning off the wave surge/endurance ones so you don't surprise yourself with wave something million.

[Iduno]

I read that you can improve ores in the factory, but you need one of the ore quality you want to create. I think you mix the powder with like 8 of the next tier down, and you get several out? I know crushing ore into dust before you melt it in the oven gets you twice as many bars. But anything else that gets me a higher-tier belt so I can refine faster, so I can build better belts is great.

Edit: Also, Colorful, Elementalist, and (currently) Glass Cannon are a nice early-ish way to make some resources. 3x3x4=36 times as many resources for 10 minutes for 60 headquarters cubes? All day long. Especially on Endless (probably set it to an hour each for that) preparing to idle over night, or throwing myself at a high difficulty for 2 minutes at a time to grind modules while also grinding resources.

Edit2: I'm liking the combination of Daigoparry and Death Wish. Oh no! Now I'll take increased damage if I get hit by these enemies who can one-shot me anyway.

[martinuzz]

I read that you can improve ores in the factory, but you need one of the ore quality you want to create. I think you mix the powder with like 8 of the next tier down, and you get several out? I know crushing ore into dust before you melt it in the oven gets you twice as many bars. But anything else that gets me a higher-tier belt so I can refine faster, so I can build better belts is great.

Somewhat further down the line you get an upgrade so that you only need 1+4 instead of 1+8 powder to craft higher tier powder, so don't go crazy on upgrading it until you get that. Just only make what you need until then.

Focus on getting higher tier belt ASAP, and use town perks once you unlock them to increase factory machine (including belt) speed, and power plant boost to increase overall factory speed (HINT: upgrade yellow batteries. Use yellow batteries. Fully upgraded they are the best batteries)
I remember how happy I was to get my first piece of tier10 ore!

[Iduno]

Somewhat further down the line you get an upgrade so that you only need 1+4 instead of 1+8 powder to craft higher tier powder, so don't go crazy on upgrading it until you get that. Just only make what you need until then.

Yeah, but how do I do any of the upgrading? I can't build the next tier of belt for like 2.5 more days, because I need to wait on more refining.