Today's update re-working Refuel The Homebase (following on from Deliver The Bomb recently) made me think about the mission I want changed the most - Evacuate The Shelter.

The current gameplay loop is probably the most boring out of any mission, bar maybe radar tower missions. You eliminate a few Husks at the start of the mission, then have to wait ten minutes, then defend for another six. It ends up being upwards of 20 minutes every time and it makes the mission a slog to play through.

I came up with two ideas on what they could do with it.

The first would be the easiest and probably the most basic, just reduce the timer on the building phase, or make it so you vote to start the objective after defeating the first wave of enemies attacking the objective when you initially start up the mission instead of needing to wait. I know there is the whole storm data update that happens during the ten minute wait, but is that really a necessity? They could also decrease the time for the defence if they went this route. Realistically what I could see them doing if they felt so inclided to update it is reduce the building timer from 10 -> 6 minutes and reduce the defense phase timer from 6 -> 4 minutes. This would put it more in line with the amount of time other missions take in the game.

The second idea I had would basically be a complete rework of the mission to differentiate it a little. It would now be based on needing to defeat multiple waves of enemies, similar to how the mission starts out, with it getting increasingly difficult with more enemies to defeat each wave. There would be shorter timers inbetween waves to improve or repair the shelter's defense after a wave, and the final wave could have a boss (similar to the mist titan) that needs to be defeated for the mission to end and the survivors to be evacuated. I havent really thought about how exactly this would work in the game or the numbers, but think Storm Shield Defense 'eliminate enemies' waves, but back to back (and obviously on a smaller scale).

To me, Evacuate The Shelter is probably the most forgettable mission type in the game, so I'd love to see some form of rework or change made to it to at least speed it up a little.

I saw both videos of Flutter from u/Key_Possession_9093 and u/Mental_Pop8716, and wanted to experiment with the Flutter build myself.

Spinning around your model definitely has an effect on your DPS, probably because rotating your model rotates the butterflies that float around you, meaning they essentially "complete" their pathways way faster then they would normally if your camera was stagnant.

I increased my DPI to 6400 and my building sensitivity to 1000%. My base sensitivity for both X and Y was 7.2%.

The mini boss was already half HP because of my teammates. However, the clip attached shows insight into how strong this build can be. I think I had like maybe 5-6 butterflies, and If I'm not mistaken the max is 8

I'm not sure if the speed at which your player model turns around is capped to a certain point, but if it isn't, then you can increase your DPS by making your base sensitivity for both X and Y to 100% and try and min-max how much you move your mouse on your desk.

If there isn't a cap on how fast your model rotates, and it is entirely contingent on sensitivity, then that implies damage is only capped as far as your hardware and game settings via sensitivity.

Which again, in THEORY, means if you have a mouse like a Razer Boomslang, which caps at 45,000 DPI, then you could probably push this further.

Either way, this is probably one of the fastest ways to kill a boss, excluding the Nocturno mag dump or Black Metal set (specifically the Black Drum). It makes for a great boss killer but requires lots of setup.

PLEASE LOWER THE VOLUME ON THESE THREE GUNS! I HAVE TO ESSENTIALLY PLAY ON MUTE BECAUSE OF THEM GOING OFF ALL THE TIME WITH DEFENDERS!

WHAT?!? I'M YELLING?! NO I'M NOT! REALLY? I AM?

Ok sorry, my ears just aren't what they used to be after having to listen to Gammatrons and Ground Pounders going off non-stop. Obliterator is just as bad but at least not as frequent.

I love defenders but I am gonna go deaf from those guns. PLEASE lower the volumes.

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Issue: Volume too loud on certain weapons. Defenders compound this problem.

Weapons: Gammatron 9000, Ground Pounder, Obliterator

Platforms: All (My Current, PC and Xbox Series X)

So. Refuel the Homebase (RtH) got the Deliver the Bomb treatment (sort of). I'd say it was about time.

Previous RtH

For those that do not remember Refuel the Homebase mission: previously, you would load up on the map and have several objectives active. The mission ended after 20 minutes, or until there were no more objectives (I never saw that scenario though, I just read it could happen in this platform). You could choose whichever objective you liked, defend it for 1 wave (~1 minute), and then you had the option to defend another wave or collect the "waves". You could defend up to 3 waves per objective, but if you lost the objective in any of those 3 waves, you earned no waves at all (say your objective is destroyed at wave 3, it is as if you did 0 waves). For the mission to be considered successful you had to complete a total of 6 waves, but you could do 20+. You could also do 2 objectives at a time if you had a friend or were crazy enough, though often on public lobbies a bunch of people would defend the same objective even when the modifiers were very easy.

This is a bit of a simplification of the gameplay of the mission. As far as I remember, the general sentiment with the mission was that of abhorrence due to:

• Mission took too long. The mission usually lasted 20 minutes, or collect 6 waves then purposefully fail the rest of objectives.
• Expensive to run. Each objective is 1 tile wide 2 tiles long and 2 tiles tall, to fully cover it you need 14 tiles or 140 building materials. Then you have to upgrade the 6 lower walls and the material cost could rise to +120 (T2) or +300 (T2+T3); for a total of 260-440 building materials per objective.
  • The waves were usually easy and quick enough that T2 structures could sustain the damage if you had the firepower.
  • We are ignoring the cost of traps or structures you place to place traps.

New RtH

Now, Refuel the Homebase has been updated. There is no longer a timer, instead, the mission now ends after 4 in-game days or until you finish 8 objectives. The success criteria is still left at 6 "waves", except this time each objective takes 90 seconds to defend, and each wave is counted for every 30 seconds of defense (so, 3 waves per objective). However, losing the objective does not mean losing all the waves, that is to say, if you successfully defend the objectivefor 61 seconds, and then it gets destroyed, you earn 2 waves instead of nothing.

An important thing to note is that you no longer can do more than 1 objective at a time. Instead, the mission behaves more similarly to Destroy the Encampments, in which you have to do 1 objective and then jump to the next one. At first I was not a fan, but after the 3rd objective I shifted to thinking it could be good.

Supposedly every wave after the minimum boosts your chances of finding a bonus loot cache. I assume this refers to the orbs/triangles that mini-boss drops

Now, this I mentioned is in the update notes: v41.10 StW Update Notes (or if you prefer to read it on reddit). In any case, I decided to check the rework, so I did a PL 124 RtH solo (since I am PL ~130, I was overleveled). Now let's go with a few missing details from the update:

Enemies spawn almost on top of the objective. They spawn roughly 1 or 2 tiles away from each objective. This doesn't break the walls, but it does give you very little space to kill them.

Similar to Destroy the Encampments, the difficulty increases with each objective. However, the first 4 objectives are very easy and with little added difficult between each other. I only got to see a few lobbers and propanes spawn, with maybe 1 or 2 mist monsters (specifically smashers). However, the jump in difficulty from the 4th to the 5th objective is almost diabolical. I got a wave of smashers and propanes, and since the spawn is so close, you don't have much answer for them. I was only able to reach 1 wave before having it destroyed. Then the next objectives kept throwing me propanes with smashers. Since I had the bad experience with the 5th, I was able to prepare a bit more, but I still got close to losing an objective at least twice. I didn't see a flinger wave, but I assume they could happen.

In any case, I was able to finish the mission after roughly 1 in-game day and a half after rushing as much as I could. I thought it was gonna take me much longer. So, with a competent team of players, this mission could be finished much sooner probably.

About the loot cache... Let's just say that I found nothing.

Review

Overall, I think it is better. However, the mission keeps having some of the same issues as before:

• Mission takes too long. While the overall timer to finishing the mission has been reduced drastically (each wave only taking half the time), when you do the math, the mission now ends in a minimum of 12 minutes (90 seconds per objective * 8 objective = 720 seconds = 12 minutes). And this is ignoring prep time, moving from objective to objective, etc. So, the final time is still very close to 20 minutes.
• Objectives are still expensive to defend. While you can mount a cheap defense for the first 4 objectives, the last 4 are brutal.

It also adds a few issues:

• Stall is too strong. Stall is already the meta due to how timers work, but in this reworked mission even more so, as you only have to defend each objective for 1 minute and a half, and even when the 5th+ objective the enemy goes on the hyper-offense, you just have to prioritize eliminating propane husks and smashers (and possibly flingers).
• Purposefully failing. After you get the minimum 6 waves, what is stopping us from failing the rest of waves to finish sooner? No mission should allow for this.

Improvements

The biggest improvement we could add to this is reducing the total amount of objectives to 6, with the first 3 being easy, and the last 3 being brutal. This would reduce the minimum time to 9 minutes, and total time is closer to 14-16 minutes. It is still too long (IMO), but definitely much more doable. This would also reduce the building costs of finishing the mission.

On that same concept of reducing time, add a kill count threshold per objective. That is to say, if you kill a certain amount of enemies, the objective is finsihed, you get your 3 waves, and you can move on to the next objective. You can increase the required enemies to be killed for each objective. This would not only reduce the time spent in the mission, but should also encourage the use of more offensive strategies, instead of just relying on stall. At least for the first few waves.

Loot caches should be guaranteed after the minimum amount of waves is reached. This incentivizes actually doing the mission instead of failing it just to get it done. I think 1 loot cache every 3 waves above the minimum is good enough. That would give us a maximum of 4 loot caches per mission.

TL; DR: I like the new RtH, but I think there is still a lot of room for improvement.

So half of the time I simply can't place structures anymore (option is completely gone from my game, its like theres no such thing as building mechanic) and I just finished my dailies for the 4th time. They simply do not save progress like at all. For now it seems like it is impossible to finish any daily on my account.

I really feel like an idiot reporting this, because a player should not have to. This and many other things are something that will and ABSOLUTELY SHOULD be found if you actually have tested changes you did on your game for once BEFORE you push updates.

If you delibarating try to sabotage your game epic, please just say it. Like at some point one cannot handle this circus anymore.

Tried to place base and all it would do is turn, same with floor traps.

I saw a vedio by @Key_Possession_9093 showing someone dealing high DMG with the Flutter and ive noticed him spining while using it so i thought that this might be why he is dealing high DMG because the butterflies are around u, so ive tested it out and it seems true , what do yall think ?

Dungeons is pretty fun as a late game player who did most of the stuff, I like the replayability and quests, if they had more quests and things to do I would like it even more

Hexsylvania's unique Lobby Music hasn't played in the last 4 years ever since they updated how Lobby Musics work in the game.

This video is from 4 years ago from when the bug first appeared.

And this is what should be playing:

https://youtu.be/naxnt_uE8qk?si=4rDvZrEl0sTXcbRe

Imo best solution would be to just make it a Lobby Music we can select ourselves in our inventory.

I can't switch to save the world without it crashing the game completely. No amount of restarting is fixing it either. I saw that the bug was supposedly fixed earlier today but that clearly isn't the case.

I've tried queuing into a few missions today and have ran into zero people, 160 missions, dungeons, even right after a daily reset, and when playing the latest vbuck mission as well, zero players. Also have tried "play with others" but keep getting no results apparently.

I've done this in the middle of the day and now much later in the day and still nothing. Is anyone else experiencing this? I've been looking for other posts similar to this recently but have found nothing.

if you try to place a trap on a structure, it only rotates when you press the place button and it doesn't place

Can't I use weapons with a level lower than 130 on the defenders?

i recently just switched from xbox to pc, i logged into my account and went to go change my binds, i noticed that some keybinds were missing and even some sections were missing, worse part about it is that the reload bind and the use bind is missing, so now when i try to change my edit bind to e i cannot pick anything up or open chests, and when i set my ramp to r i have to place a different build first and the place a ramp, the ramp bind being the same as my reload bind is fine, but my edit bind being the same as my use bind makes it totally unplayable because for some reason it unbinds the use bind. I tried everything to fix it, i have uninstalled the game, tried deleting the config folder in local app data and relaunching, i tried see if maybe the game is thinking im on controller or something, but nothing ended up working, and im really not trying to get used to new binds man, and weird thing is this problem only happens on one account, when i switch my accounts the binds are all there like their supposed to be, i would just switch accounts but i dont want to since the account i play on has a ton of skins.

It's been (maybe) 4 or 5 days since I've been able to research any schematics I find in missions. Have any of y'all experienced this?

Saw some people thinking trap placement is broken, and so did I at first. Nope, the bindings were changed but the on-screen prompts weren't.