SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Walkthrough IS A LIE:
DON'T ARREST THE CAPTAIN. You need the Gold Statue.
The Gold Statue is stolen from Frankenstein, in the Philosopher Party, the Ticket is in the Tavern, in the Castle, after solving the Troll Riddle with the Monkey's Banana. If Frankenstein can't stop Walking, you didn't debug him enough, which must be how you get the Magic Potion somehow!
DON'T PAINT THE DOOR: The Fake Wizard can't help you get the Magic Potion!
DON'T GET THE HERO DRUNK = You need the Medal from a fair fight. Try the Sword in the Stone! To get the Sword: You need to get in the Castle for both the Hero's Lube and the Blacksmith's Gloves. DON'T use the Princess at the Tavern to poison the Hero's Beer during the distraction. The Monkey's Banana solves the Troll Riddle, the Blacksmith has Gloves, and the Hero has Lube. DON'T tell him to actually Drink the Poisoned Drink after stealing it!
if it's a bad "game" it might still be an emotional experience, and i like emotional experiences. because sometimes there's no plot, no winning, and even unfinished. and sometimes it's nice to be honest and confused.
if you can make me go 'wtf was that', i probably want to 'play' your 'game'. :) i keep getting worried i've seen everything, i need to stuff to keep life interesting. and i literally don't know what i want before i click, you just have to hope that whatever you did is different from what i've seen before.
please, if you're a game dev, and you think most people would probably hate your game-- it might not be able to make you rich and famous if it's not able to catch mainstream, but i like the stuff that is really unexpectedly definitely not what i was even expecting even after years of Kongregate Addiction. this stuff makes me rethink what games can be and they become as free and creative and thought provoking as you can imagine.
it's true enough to say that even ''visual novel'' is too limited a label, they're not always games, they're not always visual novels, they're always something *new*, something *different*. and that's interesting to me.
if anyone knows any games like those that some people think are ''bad'' because they're so different from what people expect or demand from a game, those can be really hard to find, because they scare or disturb some people or just upset them. but I like feeling disturbed emotions a lot, it it makes me feel more alive to think, and get drawn out of the haze of the same old same old. all kinds of games i never would have begun to notice if I hadn't started getting into kind of edgier stuff on Kong that started out safe but devs started making darkier and weirder shit.
you know how some people will get heavily critical and say some books or movies or games are 'badly written' because they heavily grate against expectations?
by far my favorite category on Kongregate is the opposite of my most heavily played category-- the ones I replay the most have an 80's-90's 8-bit vibe, but all the ones that are my favorites are almost impossible to play twice and be as fun the second time. they're just like books, once you've played them, you've played them and that's pretty much it, but for 15-30 minutes they give the strangest thoughts and a person who doesn't normally dream at all in their sleep might actually have a dream that night after playing.
whether the game is roughly coded or drawn, laggy, buggy, or anything, any of the vague mysteries with artistic moods and themes are....like art movies. they're nothing like the blockbusters that exist to repeat all the expectations. the entire reason to play is to be surprised and engaged.
lolloso the game speed is weird--- sometimes if you speed up to x6 it makes some things harder, but sometimes if you slow down to x1 it makes other things harder. bosses are good on x6 and waves are good on x1 i think
16 Million Batteries is enough to bring Aura levels up to:
1. 40 Max
2. 25 Max
3. 96
4. 20 Max
5. 50
6. 1 Max
7. 50
I can tell 20 Million isn't going to be enough. 20 Million, from 0, would have gotten the 96 one to 100, Max. It's about 10 Million for each of the ones with 100 levels, so, 40 Million total Batteries, from a default of 0 Auras, SHOULD be enough to Max them out.
At level 61 they make 7k Batteries every 10 seconds. You'd need about 6000 production bars to fill up, or, 60,000 seconds. 1000 minutes. 16 hours.
If you want to quickly get up to Maxed Batteries in much less than a full day or 2 but you don't want to over level you Production buildings, Batteries you should only need to upgrade to level 80-100.
If you want to make your 40 million all in one go, Production of Lumber is 750k at Level 130, so maybe level 200 would be 40 million in a single produce bar.
On your 4th or 5th day you should have a high enough enough production to have Max Auras, Production Levels at 65-70, Max Resource Drop buffs, and Max the other Buffs too. figure about 10-20 Million wood for the Damage Buff, 10-20 Million Iron for Critical Damage, 10-20 Million more Wood and Stone for Additional Damage.
You are looking at 40 Million of your 3 basic resources for most of your upgrades. Because Technology points cost 10K of each resources, and you need 100s of those, and you are trying to Max them too, budget in 5 Million more Resources for those, and it's like 25-45 Million Production Resources for Buffs and Techs up to Tier 2-3.
If you make 500K resources a day as an -average- per day across a week (less the first 2 days, more the last two days), then in 5 days you have 2,500,000 Resources
Eh, if you do other stuff to speed it up you can get Buffs Maxed in under a week which is a great pace. If you take 2 weeks to Max your buffs don't sweat it.
I think it takes approximately 1M Wood to buy 100 levels of Buff in Mineral Heart Amount Drop, Blueprint Amount Drop, and Battery Amount Drop each.
So 3-5 Million Wood is an important Benchmark for grinding Buff Passives.
At level 65 it takes 10 seconds to make 5,000 wood. in 1 minute that's 30,000 wood. in 1 hour that's 1,800,000. in 2 hours that's 3.6 Million Wood. in 4 hours that's 7.2 Million Wood.
I am Idling at Level 170 after 3-4 days of derping around.
Figure that your reach should probably be 60 Levels every 1-2 days.
400 Levels to get the last Artifact, make it 7 days to get to Level 400 if you've got the time to be active 50% of the time or more.
If you want a very conservative estimate, figure 4 weeks, or, 1 Month, to click at least 1 level into everything that can be bought. For an Idle Game that's nice.
I've played Idle Games for a year or more before. I think if you spend a year on this one you should be Maxing everything, it doesn't look too hard. Even the 100 Levels of each Medals.
Remember you can spend Artifact Points to skip Rebirthing and replay from the level you died on!
You won't have enough near Boss 1 for this to be good deal, but around Boss 2 you start making enough it's good deal!
Mineral Hearts and Blueprints should almost entirely be spent on Tier 3 Masteries-- Per Rebirth you should only Mastery the Tier you have all guns unlocked for. You might feel like playing around and Mastering cheap stuff but you won't be using 2 out of 3 gun types for each tier-- by Tier 3 that's 6 guns you won't get any worth from Mastering, which eventually adds up in wasted Resources spent to Master them. I don't think any of the Masteries can be Maxed before Boss 4. They are expensive.
But between Boss 3 and 4 you should be able to get many 1000s of Stat Points and start Maxing out Passives in the bottom left corner.
I prioritize:
1. Fire Rate
2. Range
3. Critical Damage
4. Production
5. Damage
6. Area of Effect
7. Click Crit Chance
8. Click Crit Damage
9. Click Filler
10. Click Damage
You should spend your entire 2nd Week of Play between Boss 2 and Boss 3, and focus on making sure you can Max out the Passives that cost Production values. All of them, even the ones that go to 10,000. You'll be spending Billions on building Death Rays, so you should now be thinking of managing Rebirth Points and Stat Points to bring the Production Timer down and get more bang for your buck. You get to Production Level 75+ or so before Boss 2 is put on Idle, and even though cost of upgrade increases fast, you should still try to get to Production Level 200+ on all Resources except Batteries. (You only need a couple million Batteries per Rebirth)
This isn't just a normal Tower Defense game, it's also an Idle Game, bear that in mind. You should probably budget a week of on-and-off play to upgrade to the point where you can leave it on Idle Grind at level 200 at 6x Speed.
You can race to Level 200 much faster than that but you'll never survive wave after wave of level 200 Bosses on Idle without getting very strong.
Things to have Maxed before attempting 3rd Boss:
Technology Column 1 and 2. It's a lot of Gold but worth it. Get Zappers and Catapults, plus the ''make Passive Permanent'' techs.
The "Unlock" Researches, including buying All 5 Ability Points. The Abilities seem bad at Speed x6 (too much lag to use them) but I think at Speed x1 they work.
Under Passives, you should try to get a total of at least 10,000-100,000k Rebirth Points distributed, with most of the first page of Rebirth options maxed. (the ones that all cost 1 to start and only go up to 25 or so)
Auras take 1M Energy or so to Max out.
There are 3 Artifacts in the first 150 Levels that use (?) Red Bolt Points to upgrade for very powerful effects: Double Turret Damage, Double Click Damage, and you'll have to get to Level 150 to see the 3rd Artifact.
I assume it is every 100 Levels is 1 Boss, so you will only have at most 2 new artifacts per Boss Battle.
Right now the end of Story Mode is the End of the Bestiary, which goes past Level 400 I think.
Also, the 2nd Research Tab, for TIER DMG increases, you can buy 1 full round of All Research for 1.4 M Gold, or 1.4K Research Points. It might be more useful to get 3 levels of everything here instead of the 2nd Tier 3 Turret, it would cost about the same. 4.2 M vs. 5 M
The Researches are relatively cheap and fast once you are at level 99, so it would make good sense to spend 5M Gold on each tab over the course of an hour or two of active grinding.
Your first half of your first day should be spend on Rebirth Points for your Permanent Passives, your second half of your first day should be spent on Research and Production and Grinding on Level 99, and you probably shouldn't attempt Level 100 Boss Battle until Day 2.
Consider getting some Technology Points for your Catapults. Mind all of your Passives and start MAXING as many things as you can on your Passives screen before veturing into the BOSS.
You get approximately 5 Stat Points per level and level up about every 100,000-200,000xp in a few hours you can get hundreds of Stat Points, and just before the Boss you should start putting a few dozen into Click Bonuses. Click Damage, Click Critical, Click Crit Chance.
You can also get a feel for Production Management. My experience is you get way more Stone than you need and are always Short of Wood, and somewhat Short of Energy because it's expensive to upgrade and because there are many things to buy with Energy in the Aura tab.
It takes a few 100k- to a few 1M Energy to max out Aura, but less than 10 Million easily. Depending on your Energy Production and how many hours you want to leave it Idle for Level 99, you can probably Max out Energy in one Idle setting and come back to it.
 "Oiligarchy"){kind=icon}
 "Escape THE GAME"){kind=icon}
 "I woke up next to you again."){kind=icon}
 "Exit/Corners"){kind=icon}
 "Defender Idle"){kind=icon}