Crownfall: An Incremental Defense

Another round of changes just went live, driven almost entirely by this comment. Thank you — genuinely.

Monster spawn locations — fixed. Bosses now always spawn from the far right edge (no more materializing inches from the wall via an unlucky top/bottom roll). Minion top/bottom spawns also pushed deeper into the field with a minimum 90px distance from the wall. Even surprise-angle spawns give you a beat to react.

Merchants too expensive — prices cut ~40%: Healing Tonic 40g→25g, Sharpening Stone 75g→45g, Lucky Charm 60g→40g. Affordable even on a commander-drained purse. "Automate events" is a good idea I'm still sitting on — might ship as a prestige bonus down the line.

Screen flash spam during swarms — was a real bug. 100+ enemies whaling on the wall every frame kept re-triggering the flash before the previous one faded, locking it into a solid red strobe. Now rate-limited: only re-fires when the previous is nearly gone. Still impactful on first hits, no longer strobing.

Scholar's Mind exploit — 100% broken, you nailed it. Kill one goblin, reset, claim +5 RP, repeat. Fixed: the flat prestige RP bonus now requires at least 1 cleared wave OR 20 kills before it unlocks. Legit runs still get it; kill-and-reset returns zero.

Skills costing gold — agreed. Pulled the one-time equip fee entirely. Skills are now free to equip and free to cast, cooldown-gated only. Research unlocks them once, then swap between slots as your build needs.

Prestige grindy / redoing not fun — Ancestry (new prestige bonus) exists specifically for this: preserve 1/2/3 of your favorite research nodes across the wipe so you don't re-climb the same ladder every time. Still tuning baseline shard yields.

Bonus rounds of polish you'll also notice:

• The war wolf now walks with a proper leg animation (was ghost-gliding before), has double HP (60 → 120), and bards heal it from anywhere on the wall for 2 HP/sec each.
• Range indicators are color-coded per hero class now — archer rings are reddish-brown, crossbow purple, mage green, cleric gold, bard pink. Overlapping rings are finally distinguishable. Bards also show their aura ring (was invisible before).
• Bard chapter got four new research nodes (Double Time, War March, Extended Refrain, Healing Chorus) — strength, range, and wall regen. Fully-researched bard grants +70% fire rate, +55% damage, +90 aura range, plus wall HP regen.

New patch is live on itch. Keep the feedback coming — this is how the game gets sharper.

Thanks for the detailed write-up — you flagged four real problems and they all got addressed in subsequent updates.

Save loss on restart. Added visibilitychange / pagehide / beforeunload flush handlers so progress writes to localStorage on tab close, page hide, or browser shutdown — not just at run end. Also added a one-time Save Backup nudge that fires after 3 runs pointing you at Settings → Export Save, which copies your full save to a paste-anywhere code. That's the real safety net — browser storage can still get evicted under disk pressure or by clearing site data, and only an export survives that.

Grind. RP yield up +25% per wave, you now start with 3 hero slots open (was 1) so you build a real team from run 1, first skill is way cheaper (5 RP + 15g to equip Smite, was 12 RP + 25g), and the skill bar is visible from your very first wave so you know skills exist. Plus a 1× / 2× / 3× game speed toggle in the top-left to chew through the slower stretches.

Units useless even with upgrades. Root cause: heroes were firing at where enemies were, not where they'd be. Arrows landed behind moving chargers basically every time. Fixed with full intercept-quadratic target leading on every projectile-firing class (archer, mage, crossbow, cleric). On top of that:

• Cannons now always splash — shells detonate on a timer at the predicted impact point, so even if the target dodges the splash still lands.
• Projectile lifespan now scales with range so upgraded mage / cleric / crossbow bolts don't vanish mid-flight.
• Mage / Crossbow / Cannoneer / Cleric base damage all nudged up.
• New: Hero leveling + crits — every hero earns XP from kills, levels up, and gains crit chance scaling 0% → 30%. Crits hit 2× and inherit through splash/chains.

Auto-clicking. This is now a first-class feature, no external tools needed:

• Hold-to-damage — press and hold your finger / mouse on an enemy to chain-tap them.
• New Restless Hand research node (Command chapter, 4 stacks) scales the hold-tap rate up to ~5.5 hits per second.
• Sentry Marksmen research auto-taps the closest enemy automatically while you focus on upgrades.

Bestiary, hero panel DPS / KILLS / LVL / Crit% display, range indicators, and a real commander rebuild also shipped. If the artwork pulled you in originally it might be worth another shot — appreciate either way.

Honest feedback like this is what actually moves a game forward — every single thing you flagged was real, and they're all fixed in the current build.

Tutorial UI overlap. The coachmark placement code used to fall back to "below the anchor" and clamp into viewport, which sometimes pulled the explanation box ON TOP of the very button you needed to click. Rewrote it: now it tries 8 candidate spots (4 sides + 4 corners), each clamped to viewport AND rejected if it would overlap the anchor rect. Worst case it lands in an opposite corner — it can never sit on the target.

Enemies attacking from off-screen. Archer enemies used to park at their stop distance which on narrow phone screens (and for boss archers) could be past the visible edge. arriveX is now capped at W - 18 so any ranged enemy that's shooting at the wall is guaranteed to be on-screen and tappable.

Bad aim — the big one. Heroes were firing where enemies were, not where they'd be. Arrows landed behind moving chargers basically every shot. Fixed with full intercept-quadratic target leading on every projectile-firing class (archer, mage, crossbow, cleric). On top of that:

• Long-range bolts no longer vanish mid-flight — projectile lifespan now scales with range / projSpeed.
• New hero leveling system — kills grant XP, levels grant crit chance scaling 0% → 30% (crits hit for 2× and inherit through splash + chains).

Cannoneer "even worse." You called this exactly right — slow shells + moving targets = the splash never fired. Now cannon shells detonate on a timer at the predicted impact point. Even if the target dodges or dies before the shell arrives, the splash still lands and damages whatever's nearby.

Constant clicking with no automation. Three new features, all built-in, no external tools:

• Hold-to-damage — keep your finger / mouse pressed on an enemy to chain-tap them.
• Restless Hand research (Command chapter, 4 stacks) scales the hold-tap rate up to ~5.5 hits per second.
• Sentry Marksmen research unlocks wall auto-tap so the guards chip at the closest enemy automatically while you focus on upgrades.

No time to manage upgrades. Same root cause — once auto-tap and hold-tap exist, your hands are free for actual decisions. Plus a 1× / 2× / 3× game speed toggle in the top-left to chew through the slow stretches.

Slow progression. RP yield is up +25% per wave, you start with 3 hero slots open (was 1), first skill is way cheaper (5 RP + 15g vs the old 12 RP + 25g), and the skill bar is visible from your very first wave so you actually know skills exist.

The artwork still pulled you in. If you've got it in you to give it another shot, the rough edges you hit are gone. Either way — appreciate the receipts.

Brutal but every single point was real and they're all fixed in the current build. Receipts:

"Bosses are immune to clicks with no explanation." They weren't immune — your taps were just landing invisibly against a huge HP pool with a hitbox sized for goblins. Boss tap radius now scales with sizeMul (a 2.55× ram had the same 9-pixel hitbox as a normal goblin), and every tap spawns a floating damage number so you can SEE it landing.

"Archer aiming and arrow speed makes no sense." This was the worst bug in the game. Heroes were firing at where enemies were, not where they'd be — arrows landed behind moving chargers basically every shot. Fixed with full intercept-quadratic target leading on every projectile-firing class. On top of that, projectile lifespan now scales with range / projSpeed so long-range bolts don't vanish mid-flight, and there's a new hero leveling system with crit chance scaling 0% → 30% per level.

"Enemies spawn off screen / Archer enemies stay entirely off screen damaging you." Ranged enemies' stop position is now capped at W - 18 so any archer goblin that's actively shooting the wall is guaranteed to be on-screen and tappable.

"The skill menu covers part of the screen." Shrunk #skill-panel (narrower min/max width, tighter padding, smaller font) plus a mobile-landscape override that goes smaller still. The battlefield stays visible.

"Browser zoom moves enemies around." This was a real bug — resize() re-derived canvas W/H from innerWidth on every zoom tick, which visibly shifted the simulation. The handler now short-circuits when visualViewport.scale !== 1, so Ctrl-+/− is a no-op for game state.

"Super grindy / spent an hour, can't afford the first skill." RP yield is up +25% per wave, you now start with 3 hero slots open (was 1) so you can field a real team from run 1, the first skill is way cheaper (5 RP + 15g for Smite, was 12 RP + 25g), and the skill bar is visible from your very first wave so it doesn't take 2-3 runs to even discover skills exist. Plus a 1× / 2× / 3× game speed toggle in the top-left.

"100 upgrades but the archers keep missing what's the point." This was the heart of it. Lead-targeting fix means archers actually hit moving things now. Affordable research nodes pulse gold so you know what you can buy at a glance. And there's a new Bestiary in the Pause menu that explains every enemy + boss including the Goblin King, Bull Champion, Iron Vanguard, Master Archer, High Priest, Coven Matron, and Siege Lord boss variants.

Polish was the part you said was already fine. The balance and bugs you called out are the ones we burned through this update. If you've got the time to take another run at it, the rough edges you hit are gone. Either way — your write-up was concrete enough to actually act on, so thank you.