Greetings, Wavecrashers!
This week introduces Crossroads Beta, a new battlefield with neutral camps, alongside a major rework of tower combat and progression.
Added Crossroads to map selection for Tides and Endless.
Explore new terrain, defend multiple approaches, and venture into neutral camps between waves.
Standard waves now spawn 90 enemies across three portals -30 per portal.
Bosses independently choose their spawn portals. When two bosses spawn, they can arrive together or from opposite sides.
Crossroads is still being tuned. Tell us how its routes, wave pressure, camp engagements, and tower positions feel!
Major tower rework
New tower: Cannon Tower! Replaces the activated Archer mode with explosive shells, visible impact indicators, and upgrades for damage, blast radius, crowd control, and bonus gold, using the old Archer tower principles, but in a better way.
Proximity defense: Archer towers are now by default, and automatically activate while an allied hero is nearby.
Choose your activation: Activate Cannon, Frenzy, or Healing support to suit the fight.
Growing coverage: Each Effort level increases the tower’s base coverage by 10% for all towers.
Reworked Frenzy Tower: Customize its attack speed aura with new movement speed and damage reduction options. Removed Essence scaling and tied range growth to Effort progression.
Tower menus, range indicators, cooldown displays, animations, and tutorial guidance have also been improved.
Neutral camps arrive (Crossroads)
Camp enemies remain passive until attacked, then fight together.
Enemies pursue attackers within their camp boundary and return home when the encounter ends.
Camps first appear when the opening wave starts.
Cleared camps respawn after three waves, with stronger enemies and increased rewards.
Increased camp XP rewards to make clearing them more worthwhile.
Depending on the camp, the player landing the final kill receives potion refreshes or a portal cooldown refresh. Portal rewards do not grant extra charges.
Meet Poison, Frost, and Elder Geckos; Forest Golems; Healing, Haste, and Drain Spirits; retaliating bears; and undead wildlife.
Bear Spearmen grow stronger and larger when hit, unleashing a knockback at full stacks. Bear Casters shrink as they gain damage, then split into two smaller twins. Undead Bears weaken nearby attackers, Boars use dodgeable charges, and Eagles mark targets to take increased damage.
Quality-of-life updates and fixes
Custom keybindings!
Added death recap.
Added potion and portal cooldown texts.
Added boss minimap icons.
Added an alternative cursor.
Improved tutorial.
Improved support for different screen aspect ratios.
Improved end-of-run statistics and support totals.
Improved loading preparation to reduce gameplay stutters.
Fixed edge scrolling.
Fixed attack-move destination handling.
Fixed low-health screen effects behaving incorrectly during health regeneration.
Fixed a victory being declared before a lethal final hit reached the core.
Fixed intro videos ignoring master volume and improved fullscreen behavior during startup.
Carrionfang’s slam warning marks now remain visible if the caster dies before the attack resolves.
Crossroads is only beginning to reveal its secrets. Stay tuned as the map evolves and we uncover what lies hidden in the fog.
Thanks for playing Wavecrashers! Eightfold Team
