Starting Note

It's time for another tower dev log, and what better way to end summer but with Aquatic Gem? This water tower is bound to cool everyone off, and add some fun and exciting twists to the gameplay, so let's get right into the second water tower of the game!

Base, Up To Tier 2 Upgrades and The Ability

So, before getting into the upgrades themselves, I should start off with some general changes to Aquatic Gem. If you recall from previous towers, all explosion effects now have a pierce cap. And this hit Aquatic Gem too, pretty damn hard might I add.

Now, this isn't to say it's unwarranted, since it was really damn strong in the original, especially for how cheap it was. So, while it's still good, it won't be anywhere near as powerful as it was in the original.

Additionally, Aquatic Gem breaks the norms that would usually come from these updates, if I were to stick to the original v0.3 plan. In v0.1 and v0.2, the 4 towers that were added came in 1 per category, and while that would've been the case here, I decided to move Aquatic Gem from the Magic category to the Support category. It just felt way more fitting, since this ultimately is a tower focused purely around helping towers out, either by way of stuns and reveals, or by boosting projectiles.

• Base - $800

  • Reveals up to 40 nearby enemies every 3 seconds.

• Stronger Glow (1/x/x) - $500

  • Increases attack range by 30%

• Surprise Attack (2/x/x) - $1000

  • Revealed enemies are stunned for a second

• UV-Attack (x/1/x) - $1200

  • Now deals 1 damage to nearby enemies

  • Damage pierce is separate from reveal pierce

• UV-Blasts (x/2/x) - $2000

  • UV-Attack damage is increased to 2 if the enemy is within 50% range

• Denser Glow (x/x/1) - $1000

  • Increases pierce by 20

• More Pulsing (x/x/2) - $1250

  • Pulse cooldown is reduced by 33%

• Focused Light Ability (2/2/2) - 30s cooldown

  • Gains 100 charges of Focused Light, shooting beams of light that pierce through 4 enemies, dealing 2 damage each

  • Focused Light deals +1 damage to stunned enemies

There are some rather massive differences you may notice from this list, but overall the goal with Aquatic Gem here is to keep it more on the support side. Similar to Brewing Station, while Aquatic Gem can deal damage, it won't do a whole lot on its own, so it'll be there as a bit of clean up or additional damage.

Now, while it may be pierce capped, 40 pierce is plenty to get what you need done. The only issues may come from later rounds, such as 76 and 78, but besides that there shouldn't be any issues with base Aquatic Gem, if you're only using it for anti-Hollow purposes.

As for the bottom path upgrades, if you played the original, you might know that Aquatic Gem gave a bajillion buffs to projectiles that passed over it, and that's seemingly absent here. But, I'll spoil the surprise now and just say that the concept isn't gone, just moved to the tier 3 onwards, since it really didn't feel like a base-upgrade benefit.

Whether you use it towards the front to clear Hollow status as quickly as possible, towards the core of your defense to take advantage of the Surprise Attack stun, or towards the end to clean up stragglers with the UV damage, is ultimately up to you. It has a lot of potential for strategy and plenty of use cases. And this is just its base upgrades!

Before moving onto each individual paths, let's look at the ability, Focused Light. Similar to the original, this ability gains a ton of charges that rapidly release at nearby enemies. There really isn't that much to say about it compared to the original, as it's largely the same. It even still has that little quirk about extra damage to stunned targets, for a small bit of self-synergy.

Top Path - As Blind As The Sun

Top path focuses on stunning enemies.

• Blinding Glow (3/x/x) - $3000

  • Stuns nearby enemies for somewhere between 1s and 2s, depending on how close the enemy is

  • Bosses are stunned for a shorter period of time

• Solar Stone (4/x/x) - $40000

  • Stun duration increases to between 2.5s and 5s, and now slows by 40% for an additional 2.5s-5s

  • Bosses are slowed for a shorter period of time, and high-tier bosses are only slowed by 25%

  • Ability stuns the field for 5s, which is doubled for up to 100 enemies within range

Similar to the original, this upgrade path focused on providing a massive crowd stun that also relies on distance as its major downside.

Blinding Glow is pretty much the same as the original, but the stun duration is much more linear instead of being in chunks, so it drops in a more nature manner. This is the main path you'd want to use if you aim to keep enemies stunned in range of more powerful attackers. Especially useful if you need to keep crowds in Octo's kill-zone, for example! Also, you get to utilize Focused Light's self-synergy with this upgrade, so it's a win-win for the Aquatic Gem itself.

Solar Stone, unlike the original, has traded the damage boost it gives for a slowness effect instead. It felt more in-line with what the stun path should do, especially since it covers a rather wide area, and can keep a lot of enemies permanently stunned. The main downside, however, comes from its very high price - so only use it if you're willing to invest a whole 40 grand onto a support tower, and make sure to bring some high single-target for Round 100!

The ultimate ability, Solar Glow, is pretty much like the original. Stuns every enemy on the field for 5 seconds, and enemies within range for 10 seconds. Unlike the main attack, however, the drop-off in duration for bosses is far less harsh.

Middle Path - Sunblock Recommended!

Middle path focuses on melting enemies... and melt it does!

• UV-Contamination (x/3/x) - $6000

  • Pulse rate is tripled and damage scaling increased to +1 per 33% range

  • Ability covers the surrounding area in contamination, that slowly spreads around nearby water towers over time

• UV-Destruction (x/4/x) - $30000

  • Pulse rate further increased, damage boosted significantly, and damage scaling increased to +1 per 20% range

  • UV damage is doubled for Shelled and Crushers

  • Ability can spread to an additional tower and spread penalties are reduced

This upgrade path is built up from what the original UV path had going on, even the ability builds on the original idea!

UV-Contamination builds the path further into being a damage-focused tower, increasing the pulse rate and building up the damage a small amount. In a sense, this upgrade is also good if you want to use the Aquatic Gem for revealing enemies, since the increased attack rate makes it much more consistent.

UV-Destruction is not something to scoff at. It deals a significant amount of damage - so much so that Shelleds and low-tier bosses may not even survive, and bosses past that WILL not be unscathed! I won't give specifics on stats for this path at the moment, as I'm still not 100% certain, but just know that these two upgrades are really strong.

The ability, UV-Eradicate, is a bit of an experimental one. It takes what the original UV-Eradicate did, but makes it far more localized - but still really strong if used to its full potential. It's just something that requires a heavy amount of water towers to really utilize, due to the spreading nature of the ability.

To give an idea of how this ability works: When activated, a contamination area surrounds the Aquatic Gem. Shortly after it triggers, nearby water towers within its range gain their own contamination areas, albeit smaller and slightly weaker. This process repeats one more time, spreading the ability out a fair distance away from the original Aquatic Gem.

This ability is still meant to keep the support nature going on, just instead of it supporting others, you need other towers to support it in absolutely destroying the enemies! Do note that contamination areas stack up their damage, so you're really going to want to get them up close and personal with the enemy!

Bottom Path - Time For A Glow-Up!

Bottom path focuses on improving nearby projectiles and heroes.

• Projectile Glowup (x/x/3) - $5000

  • Projectiles within attack range, when the Aquatic Gem attacks, gain the ability to damage Hollow and Metal enemies, as well as +25% projectile speed

• Heroic Glowup (x/x/4) - $15000

  • Projectile Glowup effect now also gives +3 pierce and +1 damage

  • Heroes within range of the Aquatic Gem gain +50% XP per round

  • Ability gives an additional 50 charges, and charges deal 8 more damage, with an extra 1 stunned bonus, as well as having 6 more pierce

This upgrade path essentially serves as a simplified version of the original's bottom path, but it's still really useful.

Projectile Glowup is a decent, albeit slightly inconsistent support option, moreso for the anti-Metal aspect than the anti-Hollow aspect of the tower, as there aren't many occasions in which towers would need the Hollow detection on their already-shot projectiles. The main benefit of this would be for towers that can't really damage Hollow Crushers - see it as a water alternative for Aura Booster's Bypasser upgrade, as it provides a counter to Hollow Crushers are a slightly cheaper cost, just requires water and is a little inconsistent, due to its slow attack speed.

The main reason for this being a "all projectiles in range" effect, and not a "must cross-over" effect, is that the latter is far too restrictive, simply put. While I do like the idea of cross-over effects, it feels more fitting to cover everything it can within its limited range, as that provides a more easy-going cover for an already decently-expensive upgrade path.

Heroic Glowup - on the other hand - is likely the star of this upgrade path. While the Projectile Glowup effect giving damage and pierce is extremely useful, same with the ability being stronger and lasting for more shots, the Hero XP boost is what really shines amongst this tower's variety of effects! As the only hero right now is Aerolyte, this provides a much needed boost to her XP gain, allowing her to reach Level 25 by round 100, if you can get this upgrade up in time.

Ending Note

I hope you all enjoyed reading over the latest devlog for TDTest Unity! This tower was a lot of fun to make and try out, so I'm excited for you all to get your hands on it.

Now, I do actually have a release date in mind for v0.3 - but it's to be seen as to if I'll have the update ready by then. Just know that it'll be a while after Silksong comes out, as I want to give people a bit of time to play through it - and releasing this update during the period shortly after Silksong's release would be a guaranteed way to have no one notice it's out.

Anyways, there will only be 2 more devlogs left until the update's release!

The first, and likely the next one, will be about the new enemy modifiers, the Magic Crusher, as well as the tower skin system.

and the second, and final for v0.3, will be about Cannon... which I'm dragging down from v0.4 due to the extra time Silksong's giving me. Partially because Cannon was actually closer to being finished than I initially realized!

That's all for now, I'll see you for the next dev log early next month!