Breaking Endless
By breaking endless, I mean is it possible to set up a trap layout that will stop everything in endless. At least on one map I think I have.
Currently I am at wave 173 on 'Close Cliffs' still have not lost a rift point and since maybe level 90 have not done anything other than lay traps.
We know that at some point (seems like wave 60 or 70) for the most part it is near impossible to kill anything with direct damage. So I set out with a setup that uses no direct damage traps. This setup works with the Sorceress. Can be a little tricky early on until you get a good number of traps out.
Weapon / trap / trinket selection. Polymorph Ring, Vampiric Gauntlets (with Unique 1), Ice Vent (not really needed), Push Trap, Spore Mushroom, Spring Trap, Scavenger Trinket, Trap Reset Trinket, Rift Defender Trinket, Mana Rage Trinket.
Set up Spring traps and Push Traps on most places that throw enimies off the cliffs. Tunnel areas and any other free spot have a spore mushroom, this takes a while to fill in (I am still missing a bunch of places but it does not seem like it is needed). At the last stop wave (25) I relayed all the traps so that I could set them so I could stay back from the rifts when laying new ones.
The tricks on this are until you get the tunnels filled with Mushrooms you may need to use the Polymorph Ring to take out monsters. The biggest problem up to level 100 is Mr Moneybags. He walks to the gate dragging all the charmed monsters with him. So at the gate right now I have about 15 monsters hanging around. At wave 100 it appears mr moneybags does not reappear. The only problem with the monsters at the gate, are the elemental guys, if they split I end with two monsters that are not charmed. To handle mr moneybags you can use the Vampiric Gauntlets with unigue 2 to hold him in place. I need to shot one shot every 1/2 second or so as to not run out of mana. If you hold him for about 30 secs with out him moving the game kills him (Sort of a glitch). But since wave 100 he no longer spawns so he is not pulling monsters to the gate.
Because the elemental guys are a problem with mr moneybags I was trying to always polymorph them into anything else early on, now not a problem. I just stand on the tracks taking stuff out as needed, one shot at a time to keep mana.
Money also starts being a problem in the wave 70 range (always a problem with this set up) it seems that money does not drop as much the later you get into the waves. I run and pick up coins anytime there are monster fighting on the other side of the map.
I use the Trap reset Trinket when I can to keep all the mushrooms reset.
I am going to let it run the next 12 hours or so to see if anything happens. I think you could do this on anymap with out flyers (any only the Ice Bats or an issue), I tried on Cross Fire, but I got a bug with a monsters thrown into a spot that I could not kill him so I was force to quit around wave 70.
I'm not sure if you figured this one out since your post, but if you want to get rid of the enemies around the gate, sell the dark colored mushrooms and the monsters will disappear too. then replace as desired, no money lost. Also, the (new) teleporter is extremely good for playing hands free, because the mushrooms and teleporters reset by the time the mobs make it back to the end.
I got to wave 45 using a combination of push traps, spring traps, tar, and scorchers (as flip traps) and mushrooms. I always seem to get to around 33 on any odd level and 45 on some of the more push trap friendly levels, but those earth lords do not like to move and they just soak damage.
teleporters with mushrooms are key for non-environmentally disposable enemies, like those earth lords. I'm sure I could do without the teleporters with the amount of mushrooms I can buy, but in earlier waves their faster refresh+sending the enemy back to run through the whole level buys more time than just a mushroom's short LVLmonster vs charm monster.
My currently running game: http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/7994/screenshot178xw.jpg
Well so far I've been able to get to level 45 on Close Cliffs and 45 on Servant Entrance in endless (uploading my Servant Entrance video now on youtube).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjS6e9Xwd10 <-- is the strategy I tried to follow; but I just seem to get over run.
I would love to see a video of that set up, it sounds fun just to watch.
How the heck do you guys get that many shrooms!??? I've tried that before, but I never have enough money to keep up with the waves. They always overrun me before I can get to that self sustained point.
The scavenger trinket and coin floor for the beginning, and kill everything you can for maximum earnings. I use dwarves to bomb everything to death until 70 or so. I use coin floor, slowing arrows, tar, and a ceiling mace as a choke. When the baddies go from the coin floor to the tar, the upgrade keeps the bonus. Once it gets difficult to kill the large guys, I start to make mushrooms and teleporters (the income from the teleporter upgrade is pretty small compared to the monsters drop (large) coins feature of the scavenger trinket) behind the non-huge enemy killbox. If you aren't on a level with a bottomless pit, then at some point I think the acid and lava fail to kill.
Of note, around wave 1300~1340, some of the mushroom charmed monsters like the Mountain Troll become invincible as well. They then kill monsters by keeping them from moving for 30 seconds (is that right? or is it 50?). No runners have become invincible, but I'm guessing the charm debuff is a % and eventually all the monsters become impossible to damage.
A nice thing about the coins dropping from enemies and teleporters, you get some feedback on where the monsters are dying or reaching, say, when you go afk for 150 waves.
Madness! Wave 1365!!?!?? How long have you been running this map? There's 18h between your wave ~600 post and this last one. You must have a pretty good computer to leave it AFK with all those coins lying around.
About the acid/lava incapability of killing, don't the mobs die anyway if they don't move for 30 seconds? I assume they don't move around or at least stop once they get to a wall or corner...
The game sat at around 1GB of RAM and 50% processor on a dual core with a Radeon 5770, windowed, lowest settings possible (after doing the first 100 waves at 1080p full screen). Sometimes, the game would lock up for around 10 seconds, but I stopped worrying about it crashing after the first day. I was impressed it didn't crash as well.
I worried the gnolls would run around in the lava, and being impossible to kill, I'd be SOL. Plus an extra 30s per wave for 1180 waves isn't a small chunk of time =).
At 1350, I gave up because progress was chaotic. The strong monsters on either side only died when beaten into stillness for long enough. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't micro by selling the mushrooms in the 3 seconds between waves because of the choppiness. Switching to the sorceress wouldn't solve the issue on this map, because the charmed monsters will fight beyond the entrance force field, so you can't charm the orcs they're fighting. http://www.robotentertainment.com/forum/topic/Tower.-Endless.-wave-1350-and-Madness.-Orcs-Must-Die-2-they-dont.-Can-I
Those are about my system specs. How many days did it take?
My guess is it's a bug along the lines of
mushroom health = (base health - mushroom factor * wave number)
At one point, ((mushroom factor * wave number) > base health) < 0, except that health is probably an unsigned integer, meaning a small negative number interpreted as unsigned is a very large positive. It will decrease eventually back to a normal level... might be a few thousand waves before it gets to something killable.
The endless health doesn't seem to roll over though. Maybe it's not big enough yet (later wave still), or maybe it's protected against overflow.
Another issue is the damage from either mushroomed or non-mushroomed enemies doesn't seem to be enough to kill anything. Vampire gauntlets would have helped with later progress I think, but choppiness would make it tedious anyway.
I would love to see a video of that set up, it sounds fun just to watch.
I'm unclear who you're talking to; if you're talking about MY servant entrance video, here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPlDveBlZio&feature=plcp
If you're talking to Moysturize, then I can't help you :-)
Those are about my system specs. How many days did it take?[...]
Another issue is the damage from either mushroomed or non-mushroomed enemies doesn't seem to be enough to kill anything. Vampire gauntlets would have helped with later progress I think, but choppiness would make it tedious anyway.
Well, I had another issue which was that if I played with 2 screens on (one was a TV), then the game would only run when the TV was on (despite any combination of fullscreen, game paused, tv powered off, or tv disconnected via control panel/CCC). I didn't solve that until I used the extra HDMI input on my monitor to pretend it was 2 screens. So I played 3 days (sunday, monday, tuesday), but it was more like 40 hours. I tried to start Saturday, but my first setup failed around wave 80 when gnolls ran over barricades and killed me multiple times while I was out hiking, lol. That led me to snaking teleporters into the rift all the way from the entrance to the rift to behind it and then hiding in a line with like 14 teleporters in front of me, so the gnoll pathing would run them right on top of them. Then whenever I would afk, that would be my spot and I never found a coin even in the rift room, so chances are nothing got in.
I imagine you're right about a flaw in the prediction of how long "endless" would be when they designed the mushroom behavior (or did endless not even exist then?).
I could still use the stone staff to petrify enemies until they exploded, but with the lag and the long time investment for each monster, that was no fun the few times I did it. Vamp would be even more difficult because of the group of charmed enemies that would surround the lone wave monster.
After level 10, they get harder and harder to kill, so its going to get to a point some time where theyre going to be near impossible to kill. It'll most likely get to the point where even normal light orcs will need the poly ring to kill. I don't think theres a limit to how strong they get i just think it goes on and on and on, but hey, i might be wrong.
I havnt checked how high of a wave people on close cliffs get, but 173 is flippen high, so gratz! :D
Oh and you said you had a bug where monsters was thrown into a spot which you couldnt kill, but you answered how solve that earlier. You know about the 30 seconds explode thing, the point of that is to automatically kill orcs in unkillable places, 30 seconds go, and they explode. With the Vampire Gauntlets you can do that, yes, but that isnt the use of it. So next time an orc is stuck dont restart, wait a bit and it should work. Another thing i did (may just be i did it when it got to the 30 seconds, or it did kill it) is i placed a lightning storm where its stuck, and it died, so that might work too.