Smacked's Comments

...and it's now a 30 min cooldown, down from 3h? Interesting... :)

Apparently the winter event started on Dec 20, and is scheduled to end on Jan 15 = 26 days, * (24/3) * 10 winter joy (requires always legendary rewards - though the basic legendary recipies are repeatable) = 2080 F2P MAX/2000 (or less with sticky fingers levels). Small present chests don't give any winter joy, and it even seems unnecessarily stingy from the large winter chests, though you also have a chance of resetting the snomon timer. If you were past a certain threshold of progress you may also have had to deal with a few weeks of the game not loading your account on top of these other issues. Well, not like I can prestige anymore anyways so I guess I'll just save my stacks for next year? What a game...

I hadn't thought of that anti-chronos use. Unfortunately the ad-boosts are still unavailable to me and new ender pearls are impossible to get after reaching max prestige level. Anyone try using the anti-chronos pick to speed up the snowman timer? It doesn't work that way with the unstable pickaxe, but here's to hoping...

Still cannot load main save file on any of multiple browsers. [ Out of memory. If you are the developer of this content, try allocating more memory to your WebGL build in the WebGL player settings. ] Contacted Pickcrafter support on Dec. 7, reply came on Dec 9. It provided some basic instruction on how the standard game loading happens, how to reinstall thePickcrafter App (though Kongregate was stated), and asked for my player ID & instruction results. Unfortunately I cannot login to confirm this player ID. It's also possible the help page is just targeted to the App users, but in any case, I haven't had a further response to my subsequent emails (Dec 9 & 14). It seems others are also having this problem, so I suggest people start marking down their player ID (from the Statistics menu) in case they find the information inaccessible if/when it matters. If it was shown alongside the loading... screen it might help on that support end of the issue...

Pickaxes: only purchase/upgrade pickaxes that are your strongest available atm. Purchasing pickaxes at store (not upgrading an existing one) gives you the pickaxe levelled to your current prestige level instantly. Runic based (typically most green scaled) pickaxes are rarely worth spending all your runic on. You can use the Hot potato/anvil and/or TNT +/- reload abilities to essentially skip the difficult charge of an underleveled, pickaxe (provided the Pickaxe power's cooldown has expired.) Pickaxe powers are generally strong at any pickaxe level. Yogg's Tentacle pickaxe can give basically all unlockable biome blocks randomly (except as noted under crafting above) and can replace one's use of the bucket. Pickaxe lighter you cannot levelup on transcended levels, so it can be valuable stat when encountered on artifacts, esp. with late-game block break multiplier & when power-prestige levelling.

Armor & weapon max out at tier 158 (150=legendary), Max Prestige: 999 -> Max Ender Pearls: 3*(999-(player level when Pickcrafter 3.0 first hit Kongregate)). Main bottleneck in the long run appears to be crafting of Circadian Dust, Refined Waste, Enchanted Book, Magical Book, and the special blocks: Asteroid Shards, Starfish Shards, Tumbleweed since their animations are faster and smaller than they were before. While you mine, try to keep furnace active on the above items as necessary for time efficiency, just plan to finish the item levels you start on before prestiging. Starting an extremely large crafting session sometimes crashes the game, but even if it works the text is too small to keep track of. Picks and excess skill points appear useless after Prestige 1000, spending all Ender Pearls and purchased all available skill upgrades. => Better to skip the idle tree transcending imo (unless banking on future game expansions.)

Just turned on this computer. Pale Moon browser: Error right before my game data can load. Cache & cookies cleared, page refreshed, shift+refreshed, and browser restarted. Error remains: Out of memory. If you are the developer of this content, try allocating more memory to your WebGL build in the WebGL player settings. Google Chrome: Game crashes a second or 3 past loading game data. Previously my progress loaded in Chrome was only a fraction (70% of Pale Moon? less? Can't confirm at the moment...) Is this the same issue that prompted the billions part of 'Lifetime Billions of Picks'? excessively high scores?

After prestiging, I kept my harvest season blocks, but lost my hoard of other seasonal blocks including rare spooky candy (runic was spent in the attempt, but the opportunity was still narrowly missed in Kongregate version's abbreviated halloween season :/ ) Carrots, and clovers gathered from other seasons previous to this one were also lost. While this might affect your decision, there is a ton of value in pursuing Ender Pearls and associated items & upgrades. This should also make future seasonal items faster/easier to gather, unless the upgrades don't directly apply to them for some reason. As a completionist, I hope the rare spooky candy items won't forever be locked on the gear screen.

Had the correct option appear twice. Failed by clicking the 'wrong' one.

3. Enemy attack - your defense = max damage taken - elements are calculated independently. (You can be immune to an enemy's attacks.) With optimal defense gear, escape from battle leaving one attack's worth of enemy HP, and switching to an attack based load-out with max *MP regen/item drop chance/exp bonus/HP regen/gold bonus gear and make the one final hit on the enemy. (Starting attacks land first, so your low defense stats can be ignored, esp. with your higher attack.) Transmute/forge items to avoid MP bar reaching capacity. Admittedly, employing this strategy will slow your floor progress down considerably (when fine tuning enemy attack vs your def stats), but it can reduce your 'Runs to beat the game' Kongregate statistic. 4. **Be aware that it is possible that too many transmuted items can glitch the screen if you click the 'loot' button (blank, black loot screen persists in covering map), but the game can be saved (escape for menu) and page refreshed to restore playability.

Some tips: 1. Regarding some other comments about the forge: you can craft an equipment item with only one of two slots filled for half the cost. Repeat to use two of the same ingredient on an item. (Does not apply to crafting potions) Note: you can only select a single stat option per crafting ingredient used. Remember to select/confirm both crafting properties. 2. If you switch equipment regularly, you can save a bit of time having one set of your equipment (less rings - they usually replace the wrong ring slot) on your action bar to speed up your load-out changes, and you can alternate between two sets back and forth. (changing rings manually)

Missing a fullscreen mode, but browser zoom in to flash area + game zoom out fully works pretty well.

Custom levels are available at http://www.gamezhero.com/games/tentaclewarsthepurplemenace#levels if ppl are interested. unfortunately, not available for kongregate

Well for a game to essentially require juggling, then to stall when buying/selling towers as game ends (no remaining enemies) is a little disappointing. Seemingly small glitches like this and the more common one second long untouchable ghost glitch mentioned in top comments... both versions of bubbletanks td need more polish... Yet I still can't stop playing...

@ guyfromnowhere: Nice. This is a great generic way to handle the annoying 'begging for upvote' comments. If you don't care enough to upvote, just downvote them instead

I enjoy listening to my own music, but even when I'm not its still rather annoying to have music turn on even after turning it off in a previous level. This should be a remembered setting. Other than this, great game. It's kept my interest for a good while so far anyways...

7th difficult level: "This level isn't as hard as it looks"? Well that's enough to make me think it should be simple/quick... (ugh) Even after I figured out a block jump trick, the three block vertical reflections are too blurry to gauge corners and edges well. Sorry for the 3 rating, and I know I just ragequit, but if you figure out the trick, should it still be this difficult to pass a level? The subtle moving background also didn't help my focus for the duration I kept it on...

Well, finally got the 3rd level up to 88%/80%, thanks to the percent noted by Wildwanderer

My totals: 3 slice: 1971%, 2 slice: 1961%. Achieved 100% on all, except level 3 (80%/80%) and level 4 (91%/81%). I'm quite sure these are the best scores possible, except perhaps level 4 (but have fun with that). Thanks to mkmkmk1337's 2-slice 100% walkthroughs for levels 14, 19, and 20, which i began running out of patience for. If this post gets enough interest, maybe I'll try macroing my solutions to make a video walkthrough with these %ages.

I'll bet 95% of ppl who read these comments are waiting for the hint