When you've got 'em, everybody else wants 'em. Gems, that is. You, magnificent ruler of darkness that you are, have got an entire crater full of them, and the surrounding population has their eyes on them. So how are you to protect your horde from legions of scavenging peasants, heroes, and ne'er-do-wells? Luckily for you, in Cursed Treasure from IriySoft, you've got a steady supply of orcs, undead, and demons. You know, just lying around? In this defense game, you'll need to place towers full of minions to stop the invaders at all costs the old-fashioned way; mainly, with searing lava, explosive ballistas, and mind control. 
I mean, it's about time; this is how I've been solving my disputes for years.
The game ends if people manage to steal all of your gems, and your goal, naturally, is to prevent this from happening. You have three types of towers, each which needs to be placed on a certain type of cleared terrain. Towers automatically fire at enemies that come within range, so place them care to make the most out of roads. Slay enemies to earn cash to buy more towers, and make the use of the three spells at your disposal when your mana is up to the task. At the end of each level, you're granted experience points based on how well you did, and when you gain a level, you'll get upgrade points to sink into the skill tree.
Of course, this doesn't mean the greedy would-be thieves don't have a trick or two themselves. In addition to the clumsy peasantry you'll deal with more competent troublemakers such as ninja, who have the ability to temporarily turn invisible, and bards, who can play a song that temporarily speeds up their allies, to name just a few. Even more dangerous are Champions, superpowered (and enormous) enemies who can take a lot of damage. Get ready to hate that infernally smug laugh those rotten thieves make when they succeed in carting off one of your gems, but don't despair; even if you fail a level, you're still granted experience points, so you can just level up and try again.
Analysis: There are a lot of defense games, but there aren't a lot of them that have that undefineable quality that makes them truly addictive and enjoyable. The Gem Craft series had it, and so, it would seem, does Cursed Treasure. Unlike many other defense titles, where you put your towers really seems to matter, and planning out your strategy and seeing it come to fruition is very satisfying. While the map visuals start to feel a little stagnant after a while (gee, this sure is some nice cloned terrain here that apparently makes up the entire kingdom), on the whole Cursed Treasure is nicely presented. There's no story, but then again, the game doesn't really need one. Presumably the raiders are motivated by greed. I mean, check those gems out. Pretty sweet, right? And I'm sure you got them under totally legitimate circumstances that didn't involve razing entire kingdoms to the ground or making unholy pacts. You would never do that. Again.
There are some minor annoyances; the game starts to drag with longer and longer levels, although the action becomes so thick you'll probably be too preoccupied to notice. It also seems a little unfair that the ranks of your enemies are forever swelling with new types and abilities, but you've got everything you're ever going to have from the get-go. Sure you can upgrade your spells and dens to do more damage, or have different effects, but after a while it all starts to look the same. On the other hand, the limited variety of dens on hand means that each type feels fully developed and can leave you equipped for any situation if you plan ahead. Your opponents never feel stronger than you are; just more varied. Learn to use your trio of towers to their fullest, and you'll never be unprepared.
I wasn't expecting much from Cursed Treasure other than a decent defense title. What I got was a surprisingly addictive time vortex that sucked in my brain and spat it out hours later, leaving me vaguely disoriented and demanding to be called "The Gem Mistress". Unfortunately, at only fifteen stages, Cursed Treasure feels pretty short, and it's over all too soon; once you've sunk enough upgrade points into certain spells and abilities, you're more than ready to mow down all comers. While it lasts, Cursed Treasure is fun, fast, and challenging. Even if it won't keep you busy for days on end, you'll definitely enjoy the ride.
I really enjoyed this game. It was just challenging enough and provided quite a fun challenge.
Just when you think tower defense games are played out, here comes this fresh take on the genre.
I love this game and finished it with complete stats, the amount of features it got remind me the joy of playing warcraft 3 tower defense custom maps.
The only thing about this game that bothers me is that it seems impossible sometimes to achieve Magnificent on every level.
For example,
I'm hard pressed to understand how one can prevent a Ninja boss from touching a gem since after the first hit, they essentially have a free ride to the gem stash before its invisibility wears off. I guess you could try to spam fireball, but it's not exactly easy to do.
@Jayce
There's a talent in the Demon tree that returns gems to your castle after a few minutes. Seems like it's required to get top rank on some of the levels.
Oh, that's too bad. And here I was thinking mastering the level meant nothing could even cause the sarcastic laugh to play from my speakers.
"Ha, ha ha! Ha. . . heh."
I do find that amusing at least.
@Jayce:
Make a lot of freezing towers, if you lucky, the first hit will freeze him and so your other towers will kill him. It is though luck though, I took like 10 tries and grinding to max almost everything to be able to get gold star on the last stage
Odd. I just got a perfect score on the 3rd level, but that only gave me an "Excellent". What's the cut-off between "excellent" and "brilliant"?
@the heat:
You get brilliant if no enemy touches a gem, period. Otherwise you get excellent.
Brilliant:
Kill all enemies before they get to the cave.
Excellent:
One or more enemies grabs a gem but does not escape with it.
Good:
One or more enemies escape with a gem, but you still have at least one.
Defeat:
Lose all gems.
I didn't notice at first that there was a fast-forward button. That made a big difference to the temporary dullness at the beginning of a level, and increased the excitement towards the end of a level.
I haven't played very many tower defense games - this one was my favourite so far. Now that I find there's a Magnificent rating, I kind of want to try it again.
... Another day.
This game lacks a tower ability to detect invisible enemies. Without it, luck rules all on whether or not you can stop the ninja boss. Is this a game of luck or a game of strategy?
Still, mostly fun (except for the impossible invisible enemies).
Phoenix,
I've found that a rather easy way to deal with ninjas...
Place a tower as close to the entrance as possible. This will trigger the ninja's invisibility as soon as he appears on screen. In most cases, the invisibility will wear off before they can get close to the gems and other towers can pick them off. If necessary, use the Cut Down ability to clear a spot for your tower. I've found that the fire temples work best as they instantly hit the ninja as soon as he appears. The freeze ability of the crypts can also help as they won't be able to move while their invisibility wears off.
Tons of potential for this game. Lots of fun and a good amount of strategery.
Anyone else have towers signal for upgrade before they're actually ready?
Shazbot,
Sometimes the tower are ready to upgraded, but you might not have enough gold to perform the upgrade. If you look at your tower's details and see the upgrade button, but the text under it is red, that means you don't have enough gold.
Probably one of, if not, the best tower defense game that I've played. And I've played them all. It's up there with the first Protector and Bloons TD.
Balance, graphics, level up design, creativity, strategy are all great.
Fun game. The idea of your lives being actual items that are taken off the map really makes you rethink your tower placement, particularly if they're lying around for some time. Unfortunately as you level up this element becomes less important.
Also, with the XP system and the terrain requirements, this game severely limits your choices. I suppose there is some kind of higher level play possible where you make sure the towers you want to advance get experience, but generally speaking there isn't all that many decisions to make. Compared to Desktop tower defense and gemcraft, the strategy is a lot less deep.
Oh, and does anyone have good experiences placing anything but crypts on higher ground? Just doesn't seem worth it.
The game was fun, not as good as gemcraft, but certainly one of the better ones I've played. Though I can't see how to complete level 14; I just maxed all my demon skills and I'm not wanting to redo a simple level over and over again to max some of the undeath skills too :s I give up, I can't get past wave 22 (or so) :/ any tips, anyone?
Thanks, Vince. I thought it was just bugginess in the game.
Great game. I like the balance and the fact that you can go back and retry levels to get the "Excellent" badge. The upgrades a'la GemCraft are a nice touch.
What I don't like is my profile disappeared :( Several hours of upgrades down the tubes.
My profile has similarly disappeared, grr, how annoying.
I too seem to have lost my saves... It looks like jayisgames switched the link, and I don't remember the old site. Oh well, a chance to rethink my skill choices.
Ray Patterson: I've had some pretty good success with hellfire temples on high ground. Since they hit everything in their range at once, increasing the range increases their total damage pretty dramatically. Really, just about anything can work well on high ground depending on the shape of the path, except ballistae which have a tendency to miss at long range (though not too bad).
How does one get a "Magnificent" rating? I thought "Brilliant" was the highest it could go, with the gold star and all... I mean, what better can you do than to not let any of the enemies touch a gem the entire game?
Old link: http://www.bubblebox.com/play/adventure/1783.htm
@Patterson
I usually go with the dens at high ground, if you get them to orcish den with the critical hit and shooting fast as the northern wind they're great
I started with the crypts at high ground, but they just take too much time to get the ammunition ready, so I feel it's not worth it
And the increase of the range of the temples it's not so great on high ground, but if you have a high ground with nothing around it, a single square on the middle of the road that is, then it's cool to place a temple there and evolve it to that area-damage temple thing
:)
@JIGuest Brilliant is the highest rating. People were just using the wrong word when they said Magnificent
@Ray Patterson I feel this is better than Gemcraft, since that was very easy and more of a tedious test of micromanagement to get insane scores.
My save file seems to be gone, and I was on the last level too. >:(
Just got brilliant on every lvl
@everyone else having problems...you can't defeat ninja bosses by hitting them right away and then waiting for it to wear off, they are too fast. you need to meteor strike them to death, you also need to be very quick about it.
Great game overall, just spent an hour finishing up brillanting the bottom row and I didn't even realize it.
oh and
@rosedragon, you don't need to rely on luck to beat the ninja champions! there is a very effective way to do it. Just logically think about what is happening and what you need to happen. They get there with too much health. you need them to be killed before they get there, which tower will do the most damage to them on the first hit so you can bombard them with meteors afterwards? Easy really once you figure it out!
I found a glitch. I had the skill which returns a gem to the cave after five minutes and, sure enough, my last gem that was dropped about halfway through the level did so. But then one of the attackers in the last wave picked it up from where it was before it returned. He got killed and dropped the gem. The next attacker had to go back to the cave to pick it up. He was killed inside the cave. In the next wave, however, an attacker picked it up *right* at the start of the level and ran off with it, even though it had never been that close to the entrance before.
WTF I was playing the final level on wave 48 and I had 2 gems in home, and one very near and then the game ending saying 'defeat' WTF??? What just happened? grrrrr
I need some strategy help with level 14; I've tried a bunch of combos, but I still die early on. Which towers should I put on which high ground? should I upgrade ASAP or build more?
What do I upgrade to Beholder's Temple? that sounds fun!
I have to give this game an almost perfect with a big side of MEH. The almost perfect part is everything right up to the Excellent badges.
Where the big MEH comes in is when you try to go for the Brilliant badge and after 40 waves you get a final boss which goes invisible and gets a free ride to your gems, which you can only kill with frenzied aiming and clicking of 4-5 consecutive fireballs, thereby rendering ALL of your careful strategy completely moot, and turning the game into pure twich and reflex. MEH.
Is there another way to get brilliant on level 12 without spamming fireballs... I scared the boss with Fear and he still made it past the cave... Guess it is either fireball or extremely strong towers near the cave + FEAR.
I know of at least three ways to kill ninja bosses, maybe five, I've not tried the forth or fifth, merely pondered them as possibly viable but too much trouble. One of the first two usually suffices, I've done three, but thought it more an alt backup. I am working on brilliants on two remaining boards at the moment, having taken a casual break for the night.
1. Plan to put a fire tower flush with the entry point, and stack damage towers near the gem stash all game. This is viable only on maps with sufficient pathway for the invisibility to wear off, but works for most early and middle maps and is a good tactic for regular assassin waves anyway.
2. Level up some fear towers, and be prepared, if necessary to sell other towers on the last level, so that a 70 percent chance fear tower hits the boss on entry. The fear bleeds off invisibility time, and either damage + the haste spell, or yet more fears will be able to kill the boss. This doesn't always work, but working 3 out of 4 times utilized isn't too terrible. Possibly freeze works better, I usually go with fear out of playstyle habit; I love the sound fx 'oh noes' - favorite tower.
3. Plan for your highest damage one-hit tower to hit the ninja boss on entry, then click like a lunatic on the meteors spell. This generally requires a map with terrain amenable to the tower, though substitute towers are possible, and greatly benefits from upgrades to mana pool maximum and maxing out the +X damage to the meteor spell slots. This is probably also hard to do on a touchpad.
4. The tower (i forget which, ballista?) that at max has a 25 percent chance to strip abilities might work to strip invisibility off the ninja boss in the first place. I haven't tested this, because the odds relatively suck, but it occurs as a possibility to check. If testing, a regular assassin should work fine for proof of concept.
5. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a fifth way. There's probably some jackass way of using a cluster of x5 max upgraded ballista towers, possibly with a leading fire blast thrown in terrain layout permitting, as I know for sure that fired ballista's with damage invisible assassin in their area. Fire blasts will too, though inapplicable to bosses, as they need a second visible opponent to trigger, they just fry all in range when triggered. So leading blast plus already launched ballistas would probably work, perhaps with a meteor finish, just a pain to setup.
-evoke
*****FOUND BY NECESSITY: [ SHIFT ]*****
Hold SHIFT when setting towers or using spells like meteor to avoid having to press the spell again before casting it.
*****(alt and ctrl have no effect)*****
Spamming meteor with max mana pool and meteor damage is necessary for the ninja bosses at the end of the game.But the problem of excessive meteor usage is the decrease in the amount of experience your towers will gain.
TIPS:
If you are using a touchpad and the game is just too fast to bombard the ninja bosses and you just need brilliant, write some autohotkey scripts to help. (Or slow down your computer with looping tasks (jk))(Or pretend that you got brilliant and move on.)
Build temples for more mana.
Cut trees for money.
All three towers can be awesome.
Experiment. Have fun.
A couple other tips at killing the Ninja boss...as has been said, put a tower RIGHT at the entrance to make him start his 5 seconds ASAP. But then also get as many max level towers right at gem cave as you can. You will need to be patient early on. Don't put any towers at the start of hte path in the first several levels, and upgrade the towers closest to the cave first to ensure that you have the strongest towers at points where the boss will be visible again..Ol after you have them decently upgraded should you put a tower early on. (Dens are best to take out as much of the bosses health as possible.)
Then hit him with meteor showers as much as possible...BUT...save enough mana for a Frenzy just as the boss turns visible as he is entering the area with your maxxed out towers. This will kill him much faster than two meteor showers will. (Of course, max out the Frenzy AND meteor powerups.)
For level 12: Try putting an area flame temple (beholder temple?) on the top right high spot and on the top right magic spot (which is just below the high spot just mentioned). Place a third area fire temple one spot to the left and one spot above the bottom left high spot. I then used a crypt on the bottom left high spot, but I would say that's more your preference. I found those 3 area fire temples to do massive damage. Build a den near each entryway for ninjas, and then just do your normal build. Just make sure you don't build and upgrade too much in front of your fire temples or they won't get experience.
14: I beat 14 using like 3/4 crypts on each side to fear like crazy, and one area fire temple on each side, with a critical hit den at each entryway. But if that isn't your style, try this:
Pick one side to stack defenses on, and leave the other side with just token defenses. In the middle of the map, build an area fire temple at each turn inbetween the two gem caves. This strategy means you sacrifice one of the caves, but I think it would make the map overall much easier if you are just trying to beat it. You won't get excellent, but it's worth a good. Remember if you build crypts at the top middle or the bottom middle along the border between the two paths (or on a high spot), the crypts long range can support both sides of the map.
I beat every map by having 5 or 6 crypts with fear, an area fire temple at key points (esp. on high points where the enemy must walk by), and having a den/temple or two at entryways for ninjas. I never used ballistas, and I put crit hit dens on high points only if I felt I had enough crypts already and a fire temple wasn't viable at that spot. Then I only built enough towers as I could keep upgraded (minus whatever tower I used to trigger ninja stealth). I usually upgraded about 9-10 towers, but if you don't rely on the special abilities of your upgraded towers(like fear), it's worth making more than 9 or 10 towers. I also upgraded lumber cut study and mastery so I could cut trees to make money as needed. I only used meteor/frenzy a few times a map maximum because I was always cutting trees. End skills: 13 in Orc, 22 in UD, and 13 in Demon. Got silver/gold but last 4 maps were bronze, so it seems to have been a working strategy.
MrMunkeepants,
The "Beholder's Temple" is the fully upgraded form of the "Evileye Temple". It adds the "Corpse Bomb 20" ability which, if the Beholder's Temple" kills an enemy, causes the enemy to explode doing 20 damage to nearby enemies.
What level is the fastest to beat and gives a decent amount of exp at the same time? I need to know so i can totally max out my skills FAST.
I recently beat the game with brilliants in every level... 11,12 & 14 gave me the most trouble... this was the strategy I used for those... Might be a little long so bear with me
Level 14 - This was the hardest one for me to get the brilliant award. I put a temple in the high ground in the bottom right and top left and upgraded to a burning temple. (keep in mind, you want to place the towers that you think will bring down the ninja boss as soon as possible so they have a longer time to upgrade) following that I put 3-4 dens as close to the entrances as possible and before lvl 50 they were all upgraded to the max ballista tower...looks like a catapult. Then I filled the rest in with well placed towers near the entrances and choke points. I only had to use my meteor once or twice on the lvl 50 ninja. Granted I attempted level 14 at least 5 times.
Levels 11 & 12 (Very Frustrating) - The only way I could beat these was to have both meteor study & meteor mastery via demons maxed out. 500 mana/5 shots of meteors did the trick for me on those two ninja bosses.
GENERAL - *I tended to load up on fearful crypts. Very Good chance the enemy runs backwards/gets lost into other towers you build.
**When I needed more experience for better skills, I found level 10 to be the easiest/fastest way to gain XP. Fill that entire middle/top row with towers (high ground I used crypts) and right above the turn from the middle row I placed two dens.
*** What I found to be a turning point in the game for me was when I maxed out cut down study and cut down mastery... You get 100 gold for cutting and it only takes 50 mana once you're fully upgraded. Add some fast mana regeneration and really get the gold coming.
**** When you get to a point where you are cutting for gold, make sure to conserve mana for any oncoming ninja waves in case you have to meteor. Whenever a deeper ninja wave came through I made sure to slow down the game speed right before they got to the cave so I had plenty of time to meteor if needed.
***** My last tip is Don't forget the SHIFT button. Really came in handy for me on fast multiple meteors for ninja bosses and quick cutting for gold.
I have answered my question from before. I think that level 13 is really easy and gives a alot of exp. I just stack three cyrpts and three dens by the entrance and you can customize the rest. If your not as far as level 13 then i would suggest level 10. If you still are not that far then go with level 7.
Also I think that the game is very fun other than the fact that the towers are not very equal in power. The crypt seems to be the best in range, fire rate, and power. The temple seems to be very suckish because of its low damage and very low range. Even though the game has some bad things about it it still was very addicting and was alot of fun.
just finished lvl 11 on excellent
with a total of 5 towers build (2 temple, 2 crypt tower and one ballista) and being level 14 regarding stat points (but have way many useless talents^^ so lvl 7/8 would have done as well)
if i had been more careful (one more spell, had 480/480 mana left...) it would have been brilliant...
found that temple are one of the best ways to kill ninjas :) since with their ground attack they hit the first ninja and when they hit the 2nd/3d ninja they hit the first one again as well. Putting them on high ground (and putting all stats into crypt upgrades ->more range for your tower) makes them incredible strong vs everything except boss. And vs boss you just get 2-3 upgraded crypt tower, since you put your stats into crypt upgrades anyway they are pretty deadly :) ("oh nooooh")
Really a great game. I'm currently stuck at Level 14,but I'm sure that I'll make it eventually.
What I hate are those Ninja bosses and the guys who can block attacks (50% probability). Once I was going for Brilliant on a level,I had great towers placed on the map who took care of every enemy,but then there came that enemy,blocking every attack and taking a gem,just to be killed one or two seconds afterwards...
If your having trouble getting the last few levels to brilliant here is a tip that makes it easy
invisible guys
place tower right near every exit, that way their cloak runs out just before they reach the gems, have some guns there ready to finish them off, fast firing ones are good
Big fast guys
Put points into meteor when leveling, hold shift when you are using it and you can fire repeatedly until out of shot
It takes about 2 days to play.
When playing this game I suggest playing each level twice. This will get your stats up so you do not have to spend needless time restarting
later to get a perfect score. It is frustrating that you need to level up by playing the levels more than once and not realizing it needed to be done until much later in the game.
Nothing seems to change once you beat the game.
level 14 seems impossible :/
Great defense game!! Been playing on and off for the past week and a half; finally got "Brilliant" on all the levels.
This one seemed to have an unusual amount of depth for the genre.
So,I've finished all Levels,14 and 15 are still only "Good" (grr,14 ninjas after a ninja boss who takes the game almost halfway through the map isn't fair...),7,9 and 11-13 are "Excellent" and the rest is brilliant (I'm sure that I'll get 13 to Brilliant soon,it's just that Assassins reach the gems sometimes). I found Dens to be very useful. And I didn't think that those Ghost Crypts (those who drain Mana) are useful when maxed out. They can remove the specials of enemies,which is very useful against Assassins. And can anybody please tell me what special Beholder's Temples have? So far I know this:
Hunter's Den (maxed Orcish Den): Double Shot
Catapult Den (maxed Ballista Den): Tripple Shot (3 stones)
Fearful Crypt (maxed Chilling Crypt): chain attack
Banshee Crypt (maxed Ghost Crypt): remove enemy's special
Those maxed Burning Temples: slow down enemy
tip:
mana is the most valuble resource, and so the undead tree, mana towers of the crypt line and all the mana relevent skills are paramount
start with those in the undead tree and then reaserch orc and lastly demon
the idea is this:
use ghost line crypts
the thing that the crypts lack most is fire rate, with the frenzy fully researched and used frequently they fire almost x5 as fast,
in all other respects they are far superior - range and style (they aquire new targets if the original is destroyed chasing enemies far out of range)
since the ghost line recharges your mana FAST! frenzy will be availble for every wave and sometimes even more then once
mana managment:
with +50% regenration rate from the undead tree, reduced cost for frenzy>cut down>meteors and ghost crypts as primery towers you will be swiming in mana
at first while you are still reaserching the undead tree you will only have enough to maintain frenzies, as the game progresses and you gain levels you will find yourself with a surplus of mana but not much to do with it (not needing meteors yet and not gaining anything from cutting wood)
then you delelve into the orc tree for the woodcutting skills, suddenly every extra manapoint transters into 2 gold - cutdown costing 50mana yealding 100g. suddenly you will be able to build and upgrede OBCEANE amount of crypts giving you insane firepower
lastly for the endstages you reaserch into demon tree to pick up the meteor skills, with your 500 manapool and regenerating mana by the hundreds. you can litterly rain those metoers. so anything that doesnt yeild to your arrey of towers will be mawed down from the sky - mostly those pesky invisible waves
to sum it up, you can translate surplus mana into many towers, alot of gold, more mana and meteor damage. so the more mana you have, generate, stockpile and use effectivly the better
@Hangman
The special ability of Beholder's Temple
Corpse bomb - enemy explodes when he dies
Doesn't seem much efficient to me. But it makes a cool green splash.
Just finished all brilliants.
For ninja bosses... just have to make sure the first tower hitting all creatures as they enter the screen is a crypt. When the crypts are freezing and fearing, you have a great chance that the ninja boss will be feared or frozen in place, at which time you just pelt it with meteors.
For level 14, I had crypts on all four high grounds. Cleared all spots where placing towers would up your mana and had the appropriate towers in place. Also cleared the single strip of land in between the northern pair and the southern pair, and had towers on those cleared squares.
Finally finished beating Cursed Treasure with all Brilliant titles. I will agree with Matt when it comes to the later levels, use Crypts on all high grounds and make sure they are the fear towers, combined with 25% freeze, they are quite a decent tower. Combined with maxed fireball skills, almost all bosses and ninjas are easily taken down.
For those of you having trouble on level 14, here are my suggestions:
14:
I found that even with fireball, the final boss still has too much HP and gets a free walk to your gems. To solve this I knew I needed 6 fireballs + 100 dmg. There is a skill that allows you to get 20 mana when you build a temple. Have a crypt tower at the entrance that can fear. Hopefully you get a freeze or a fear. Make sure you have cut down 5 spots for temples and enough money saved up. As soon as the ninja boss enters, drop 5 fireballs on him, build 5 temples and drop the last fireball.
15:
Use crypts with fear again on this level and put them on the upper 4 high grounds. Fill the lower two mana spots first, and then fill the two lowest high grounds with dens. Balance both sides of the bottom and sit back and upgrade the 4 crypts. Add more defenses near the gems if you wish. Cut trees for 100 gold if you have the skill to raise money.
Level 14 was absolutely the hardest one for me to get Brilliant on. It didn't matter how well any of my strategies worked throughout the waves, it all came down to how to beat the wave 50 Ninja boss with 2500 HP. Even with the skill sets to get meteor cost down to 100 mana, and a 500 max mana pool, you've only got 5 meteor shots. At 400 damage each, it would take at least 6 shots to kill the boss. On a laptop, there was no way I'd be able to drop 5 meteors, then place 5 more temples to drop one more meteor, all before he reached the cave. (if you have the skill set, each temple placed adds 20 mana). So I had to find a way to do the most damage I could to him immediately upon entry.
The Maxed out Level 7 tower skills and damages on low/high ground are as follows:
Den - Orcish - Hunter's = critical hit; extra shot; 80/108
Den - Ballista - Catapult = splash damage; triple shot; 180/244
* all dens offer poison cloud if you've chosen the skill for it
Crypt - Chilling - Fearful = fear; chain hit; 120/162
Crypt - Ghost - Banshee = mana drain; disarm; 120/162
* all crypts offer freeze if you've chosen the skill for it
Temple - Evil Eye - Beholder's = radiance; corpse bomb; 80/108
Temple - Burning - Hellfire = scorch aura; daze; 180/244
* all crypts offer blaze if you've chosen the skill for it
So if you can set it up so that several of the high damage towers hit the boss first thing, you might be able to finish him off with less than 5 meteors.
For anyone else having trouble on Level 14:
Place the 4 corresponding mana towers first, then place crypts on all 4 high ground points, and then place 4 dens close to each of the entries. On the top left, that's 2 at the top of the left edge and 2 just to the left of the top cave. These 2 will also help guard the gem cave. On the bottom right, that's 2 at the bottom of the right edge strip (to the left of the Attack button) and 2 on the single strip between the bottom 2 high ground crypts. These 2 dens will also help guard the gem cave.
You'll need to cut trees for gold, and place towers as you're able. For the first waves, don't bother with the dens on the the edges. Place the ones that do double-duty with the entrances and the caves when you have the gold. Don't upgrade anything. Let them keep shooting and accumulating experience. In the beginning waves, if you're able to stock up on gold, feel free to place more towers wherever you want along the routes or close to the caves. Hold on to enough mana for frenzy and meteor spells if necessary when assassins (dancing blade) and ninjas (disappearing smoke) come by. Keep cutting for gold when you can afford to lose the mana.
I found the last towers to get the experience needed for level 7 are the 4 dens doing double-duty at the entrances and caves, so upgrade them to level 3 when you can. They'll keep the quick rate of fire while doing slightly more damage so they can up their experience. Upgrade the crypts to chilling crypts (level 4) when you can also, since they'll frighten the enemies and make them run back into other towers, giving more experience.
I didn't fully upgrade all the dens and crypts until after wave 40 or so. Dens became ballista/catapult and towers became chilling/fearful. If you're lucky, the ninja boss will get frozen, but if not the catapults will still do enough damage to allow you to take him out with your 5 meteors.
Finally got everything to Brilliant. Level 14 was the most difficult and on Level 15,the enemies were often just about to take a gem.
I will continue playing until I've got every skills.
Hey, I just played, and fell in love with this game... does anyone know of a tower defense game even close to as good as this? If so please let me know!!
Finally finished on Brilliant for all levels.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, but did want some dancing pirates to celebrate my success!
...and when I shouted...''YES...FINISHED!!'',
the family commented that they don't have to listen to those damned shouts all night.
...so I had a couple more shots before stopping!
Excellent, fun game...looking forward to follow up????
Thank You.
Dodger.
I must say that this game is anything but short. I've been playing over the course of 5 days now, and for me, that's a long time span for a flash game. The strategy and intelligence to attain "Brilliant" rating in all the is my goal now that I've done all the levels, and for added challenge you certainly *don't* have to *use* your talent points when you level. Good idea to though.
I've been playing for the past couple days, trying to get all Brilliants. Naturally, the ones I'm missing are all ones with the Ninja Champion as the last wave. I'm throwing in the towel, since at this point it's pure luck whether I get him or not.
To wit: even at maxed meteor and mana pool skills you can only get five shots off at 400 damage each, leaving 500 hp to go. That means your towers have to score at least two hits, but at the speed he moves it's less than 5 seconds between the entrance and the gem cave on each of those levels. So there's no way around the fact that you have to get a freeze/fear/disarm/daze on the very first hit. Even if you max out every skill, that's still a dice roll you'll miss an awful lot.
Missing a special effect on that first shot means flushing the previous 39 or 49 levels down the drain. And having played this long, those aren't challenging in the slightest due to my knowledge of the maps and advancement of my skill tree.
Longevity in this game would be better served by some way to make the Ninja Boss beatable that's not dependent on pure luck (I'd suggest a 500-mana flash freeze spell), and just giving us more maps. One very nice thing about this game is that the maps are pretty well designed, which is necessary given the terrain restrictions on towers, so that's a bit of a tall order. But as it is I'm done with a game that's got a lot more potential.
I have repeatedly encountered a glitch which is making me very sad. My gems which have been returned to their base can still mysteriously get picked up where they were lying before they got teleported back, thus ruining the match. This presents itself as an enemy mysteriously turning around right on the spot where the gem previously teleported from, running back and scoring a point (or winning the game). You might not notice it if you didn't lose more than the teleported gems, but when that is all that is left, you lose the match inexplicably (with gems left in their homes). I suspect this is what other people have encountered when they think the enemy has teleported to the gems, because I haven't seen an enemy with that ability yet. Is there any way to get this fixed?
Great game, I really enjoy playing it.
I am stuck on 11, 12 and 14. I have the same issues as everyone else on the board.
With 11: I hit the ninja with a crypt and den and still nothing...I have the area around the jems loaded and he still makes it JUST into the cave :-(. Just that one boss is making me lose the Brilliant.
With 12: I have the evil eye towers near the opening on both and yet the ninja makes it through to the cave and again...dies right there. BOO!!! :-(
With 14: Again...the ninja (theme here)...I get everything with a den maxed out at the opening (2 to be specific) and he still makes it to the cave and out just a little bit.
I am using the fireball spell repeatedly (with Shift) and literally have all my stats maxed (currently level 43). I don't get it, I think the ninja is a bit over powered with the fast and 5-second invisibility powers.
Great game, really kept me going for about 2-weeks as I played it on a leisurely basis. Thanks guys for developing and I look forward to hopefully another great edition!
This is a great game... except for the ninjas. You might otherwise have a great plan for taking out [almost] every possible bad guy that comes your way... then the ninjas come, take 2 pixels of damage and rush straight for your gems unhindered. After all that planning, there goes another brilliant medal.
Result? You don't plan to do the most damage with the fewest towers [which is what you do in every other tower defense game]. You instead plan specifically for the ninjas: dens/temples near the entrance to trigger their invisibility, then 3 dens + a few other things next to the gem cave to pwn them once they lose invisibility. Incidentally, the towers level up fast enough to do enough damage, so no additional accommodations are necessary for the other minions.
Then you get the boss ninjas, which throw even that out the window: they're faster, and have a ton more hp. Your only recourse is leveled up meteors and a fast mouse. As everybody else pointed out, the 2500 hp boss ninja at the end of level 14 officially makes that the hardest level to get a brilliant medal on.
I finally got the brilliant medal for that level when I was ~ level 36 (probably don't need to do that much powerleveling, but it took a long while to find a good counter for him).
Several people above have suggested the 5 meteors, build 5 temples, meteor trick, but unless you have phenomenally good mouse skills, that's near impossible. You can try using shift to do the same action again, but for some odd reason that lags my laptop to no end. At my skill level, even throwing 4 meteors at him is a challenge, so this plan is out the window.
I deforested the whole map to get a ton of gold [yay captain planet]. This allowed me to fill the entire left entrance with maxed out fear crypts. If he comes this way either
a) he gets frozen/fear and gets pwnd in seconds
b) he takes 2 pixels of damage, goes invisible, and I just wasted an hr playing the last 49 levels flawlessly (except for the exp grind)
On the right side, I had a hellfire temple, a catapult, and an almost maxed out den. Together, they can actually do a surprising amount of damage to him with that first and only shot they get before he goes invisible. This then leaves me to send 3-4 meteors his way, after which he dies from blaze (~1% total hp/second).
Despite the difficulty of getting the medal on level 14, it's probably the best place to grind for exp: ~2000/run, with only 1 boss ninja at the end that you don't care about if you're grinding. Level 15 is only ~1500/run, and has 2 boss ninjas in the middle of the game. This is more annoying, because if it's in the middle of the game, it's less obvious whether you can afford to lose a gem or not.
Again, great game, but the variety of the monsters is lost to you planning the whole game for ninjas.
I find this game fun I got 1st 9 levels brilliant and rest excellent except 15 which is still at good the map seems to big to place towers adequately at the beginning any suggestions? If so please leave comment.
My general strategy thoughts:
1) Use the cheap-chopping tree talent +gold for chopping trees + Mana for dropping temples +100 Mana at start of mission to generate a strong starting tower layout. This should be the first talents you pick up.
2) Always build your first towers closest to the gems so they can level up. Otherwise your inner towers will be too weak to kill ninjas fast enough later. After a few waves, then expand outwards. Make sure to add 1 tower at each entrance before your first ninja wave though!
3) Temples are the best towers to be next to entrances. They attack ninjas very quickly to force them to go invisible. Also, upgrade them to the attack-everything towers. This ensures that they still force invis quickly but also that first attack hits very hard. You want to drop a temple at each entrance if possible
4) Higher level towers kill faster but receive about the same XP gain. Thus, upgrading towers can actually cause less XP to go around, or at least cause the upgraded ones to hog all the XP.
5) I tend to stick to building basic towers for about 1/2 the game. For 30 waves, I wait until about level 15 to start upgrading my towers... except for the inner-towers close to gems and a really important tower such as a temple tower next to the entrance so I can make it an attack-all tower.
6) Farming XP is more important than getting that brilliant rating. Do the highest level map you can easily with max speed boost to level up and get the talents and also tower-boostage.
7) Hold down SHIFT to queue multiple things such as Meteoring the Ninjas and chopping forests.
Check out how huge my defense is here on level 13, nearly 50 towers - had to amass over 13,000 gold coins to achieve it!
http://twitpic.com/2gmvkt
If you have a ballista tower you can hit the ninjas when they are invisible.
Great game. I have just finished - quite addictive and funny screams.
For those who don't know how to kill the Ninja Boss before he touches a gem, here is how it should be done:
Upgrade your skills that gives Meteor spell more damage, reduce the Meteor mana cost, and uprade your maximum mana pool.
When the Ninja Boss arrives, select Meteor spell, HOLD SHIFT, and bombard him with meteors. While holding shift you don't need to re-select the spell after each mouse click. The Ninja Boss can be killed while in stealth mode.
I got all of the levels at brilliant, BUT 14. I think they should either make 14 into 15, or tone down the ninjas. they flank you, so you have NO IDEA which side you should prepare for and before you even get to that you have 5 different waves of ninjas before that to contend with. I use the numbers strategy. "They don't have to be good, there just has be a lot of them." I got to level 39 and I'm hoping it will unlock some secret Ninja-Killer upgrade. But I got to say it SO MUCH FUN the light ninjas on fire. If you laser the ninjas with, say, 8 temples when they uncloak, you have a NONJA. or a pile of ash. One of those. Splasered ninja. sounds like a dessert. I really shouldn't write when I'm hungry. (Splasered: Spartan lasered, from Halo 3)
To beat level 12 (Level 40 Ninja Champion) and get brilliant:
Use crypts on the high ground and make sure they are the only thing with the range to reach the entrance. Make sure the experience is at maximum. When the level 40 ninja comes out he will get hit by a blast of the crypt and get frozen. Then you tag him twice with the meteors and he is toast.
Although I was eventually able to Brilliant levels 1-13 and 15, I had to follow meowwoof's spoiler for level 14: I have to say it's amazing; I only needed one meteor. If you can't do level 14, just read his spoiler!
Comparison of towers:
Den: This tower has a reasonable compromise between speed and damage. The Poison Cloud skill is useful in that it has no defence. However it can inadvertently trigger a smoke bomb before you get a clear hit on a Ninja.
Orcish Den - Hunter's Den: The critical hit and extra shot are very useful against Paladins who are nigh on invulnerable to the other tower's special attacks. They are also the fastest firing tower, so they have a good chance of killing Ninjas as they appear or at least leaving them very weak so that they are easily killed when their smoke bomb wears off.
Ballista Den: These are generally too slow to fire to be of general use, but they are handy if you have other towers that can slow down enemies a bit.
Catapult Den: This tower has a triple shot which can be quite powerful against a champion or a wave of slow enemies so it may be worth deferring the upgrade until your Den has 5000 XP.
Crypt: This temple starts with two (three with skill upgrade) charges, which makes it useful against a champion but against a wave of enemies its recharge rate is a little slow. It also has the greatest range of any tower which tends to make it try to overreach itself. Its charges also take a long time to reach the enemy but the two mitigating factors is that charges can divert if another enemy is in range and experience is gained by firing even if the charges are wasted. Their special attacks have an extra advantage against Assassins whose swords can only avoid the damage component of the attack. The Freeze attack is useful if there are other towers that can make use of the opportunity, as it even prevents Ninjas from using their smoke bomb.
Ghost Crypt - Banshee Crypt: This temple is handy if you use a lot of mana. The Banshee Crypt is also occasionally able to disarm Ninjas and Assassins.
Chilling Crypt: The fear effect should be harnessed to make the enemy run back past your other towers. They are usually less useful at the entrance to the level, as the enemy has nowhere to run.
Fearful Crypt: The chain hit is equivalent to a second attack (including chance of fear and freeze attack), but does require there to be two enemies within range.
Temple: At low levels it has the fastest firing rate which makes it useful to finish off enemies worn down by your other towers. The Blaze skill is useful against Assassins and Ninjas.
Evil Eye Temple: When you have another nearby tower able to take advantage of it, the radience effect can significantly enhance the damage potential. However I find it is the slowest tower to gain experience; I have yet to earn 5000 XP with an Evil Eye Temple.
Beholder's Temple: I have yet to see the extra effect but it sounds like a gimmick.
Burning Temple - Hellfire Temple: The low firing rate of this temple makes it less useful except on high ground when its range can often catch the same enemy twice, even Ninjas, if there is a visible enemy around to trigger a second blast in time. The Daze effect of the Hellfire temple usefully slows down enemies to allow your towers extra shots.
So which tower should you build on high ground? At the entrance, Evil Eye temples work quite well, as do Orcish Dens, unless you have the Poison Cloud skill which may accidentally trigger smoke bombs. Near the gems, Crypts tend to work best, because of their excellent range. Burning Temples can work well if there is plenty of space. Otherwise my preference is for Orcish Dens.
For BOSS NINJAS: As long as you have your mana pool maxed to 500, cost of meteor down to 100, and damage upped to 400 per shot, you'll be able to kill every boss ninja that you'll encounter, except for the wave 50 final boss in The Secret Passage (Level 14). He's 2500 HP, which is 500 HP more than you have. I posted a strategy back on May 24th (glad to know I could help, Neil, thanks for the shout out!) that allowed me to finally beat him, and the game.
But playing again recently, I think I've found a better, more reliable way to do it. My old strategy relied on 4 catapult dens at each entrance, and I found that I had to utilize frenzy often to give all the dens the experience they needed for a full upgrade and sell off some other towers to afford all the upgrades. I also found the rare occurrence where the ninja took the crypt hit, but still ran quickly past the towers and completely missed my catapult shots.
My new strategy is a temple upgraded to hellfire on both entrance high points and 2 dens upgraded to catapult near each entrance. This way, the high ground hellfires deliver 244 damage along with daze that significantly slows the ninja down, and usually blaze (if you've chosen the skill for it) that continues to burn away at him while he stumbles. The 2 catapults together deliver another 360 damage along with a poison cloud (if you've chosen the skill for it) that continues to eat away at him while he's dazed. The daze from the hellfire ensures that the slowed-down ninja will receive the full brunt of the catapults. I've found this method to be much easier, and have been able to finish him off with my meteors every single time.
In order for that to work, it helps to have the Demon Lord skill set maxed, (since temples upgrade the slowest) and all 3 entrance towers placed by wave 10 or so.
Another note about the Demon Lord skill, for Neil. The only way I was able to see the Beholder's Temple was to have that skill maxed. Beholders upgrade slower than all the other towers, so I've only been able to get it when placed at the entrance, and placed very early, on levels 13, 14 and 15. Once you get it, it's pretty powerful and can kill quite a few of the enemies entirely on its own. It's not good for waves, since it still only locks on to one enemy, but it will fry him. The best way to see it is to put only a high-ground temple, and no other nearby towers (they could dilute the temple's experience), on one of the level 14 entrances first off. That way it'll hit every enemy that enters, and will have a full upgrade some time after wave 40. I put it on the bottom right, and covered the top left entrance and cave with long-range crypts, while covering the bottom cave with short-range temples and dens.
I wanted to do something other than spam fireballs when a Boss Ninja came. :P So, on level 12, I stacked Dens 3 pairs deep (allowing for all six to be leveled up to Triple and in range of the entrance) in front of the entrance. It was extremely satisfying to kill Boss Ninjas with 18 ballistae AoE before they got three steps in.
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