Nice to see the test server back again, I gotta say.

Anyways, I ran the Tier 3 Compounds mission with some guildmates just now. My loadout for the set usually remained the same - two swords, one of them being a Leviathan Blade and the other being a Brandish descendant or Thorn Blade, a Valiance, and an Ash of Agni. Here are several sizable sets of sentences about my experiences and thoughts.

Re: The Compounds ---

Fun, challenging levels. I enjoyed the sections that were based around traps, particularly the snaking spike floors with respawning explosive blocks that could be used to open up shortcuts through. It's also nice to see some new wisp setups, and some hidden buttons that opened up health caches. The mixes of enemies I saw were a lot of fun to fight, especially having to keep the "correct" weapon equipped to deal with different families. I think Normal-damage weapons will be a boon here.

However, I was disappointed to see that the levels all used the same layout for the last room. Running the keys to the gates while swarmed by horde monsters that are bolstered by some normal enemies is a good challenge, but it got old fast having to run it 9 levels in a row. Though, I'd assume that these levels won't be run marathon-style like they are for the test server.

I also feel that the payout for these levels is a bit low. At the end of the run of 9 compound levels, I had earned slightly over 6,000 crowns, as well as a couple of high-quality materials. From my experience in doing Arcade runs, that seems to be similar to what you'd earn for running 9 clockworks levels starting from Emberlight. (If I'm wrong on this, please correct me!) I think that, given the added difficulty the mixes of enemies and horde monsters present compared to other Clockworks levels, the payout should be increased slightly to compensate.

Overall, I'm glad to see these new levels appear, as I've been feeling that the Clockworks have been needing some more variety for quite some time. However, I think that unless the payout gets raised, and I saw one of these levels in an Arcade map, I'd still rather go to an Arena or regular Clockwork Tunnels level if I was given an opportunity to, particularly if I was focused on squeezing out as much money as I could out of the run (which is most of the time). The tunnels at least offer a chance at a good challenge themselves, with Danger Room appearances - which have their own set of rewards for completion.

Re: The new enemies ---

In the earlier depths, I was fighting these enemies in a party of 2. Up until Depth 25 or so, these enemies were pretty much popcorn to a maximum-damage 5* brandish descendant or Leviathan Blade. At depth 26 onwards, the party had grown to 4 members and the horde enemies took at least 1 more damage-boosted sword hit to defeat, which I felt made fighting them more interesting. Their overall damage output seems fair enough - one hit stings a bit, and getting swarmed by them seems like it would drop you very fast if you can't escape. (Thankfully, I was running with partners and this didn't end up happening. Not that I didn't die to those little guys, though.)

The other weapon I used most against the hordes was the Ash of Agni, and I found it a bit cheap. The Fire damage it inflicted made short work of the horde enemies at earlier depths, and effectively removed that extra necessary sword hit against the later-depth, higher-health ones. I ultimately found the fire-typed hordes more challenging compared to the other varieties, because of this. I didn't try any blast-type bombs against them - I'll be trying that in another run of the mission, and I'll see how powerful they are / aren't in comparison.

I can't say much for using guns against these enemies - the only handgun I took was a Valiance. It was very useful for picking off lone horde enemies, but I wouldn't want to be stuck with just a Valiance in a mob of those things.

The Grave Scarabs and Glop Drops were very interesting and fun to fight. The Scarabs forced me to avoid a head-on sword attack if they were in flight - I either had to dodge and attack from the side, or wait until they set down again - or else I would get hit by their continued flight, especially so in the later depths when they were able to take more damage. Likewise, the Glop Drops are also set to punish close combat. When they flatten, they become very hard to shove out of the way (and shields will take damage from doing so, because their "shove-able" area is much smaller than their hitbox) and sword attacks from any angle are fairly unsafe unless you can utilize your sword's maximum reach. As such, I usually took out my Valiance or AoA to deal with Glop Drop crowds. Having to change up my usual, aggressive tactics of "Equip Sword And Mash Button" versus these enemies made them a blast to encounter.

I felt that the Dust Bunnies didn't have much of a challenge to offer in comparison to the Scarabs or Drops. Their attack pattern was more like a Zombie lunge, which I already knew how to deal with, and they seemed to be safe to be near touch more often than not. Perhaps I'm missing something with regards to them, but I much preferred fighting the other horde monster types. Perhaps I'll give them another whirl.

As I said earlier, these new enemies make the fights they appear in much more hectic, and I appreciate that quite a lot! I'm excited about them, and I'm very much interested in seeing what other tweaks are made to these enemies before they get released in the main build.

Re: The UI (in point form!) ---

Things I like:

• Clearer visualization of how much health your teammates have.
• You can see when your teammates have been afflicted with a status effect.
• Monster health bars (though I would like to have options to toggle the different kinds of health bars - the ones you see over monsters in-game, and the one that appears when you lock-on to a monster).
• The weapon carousel - helpful for seeing what weapon you have queued up next if you aren't using dedicated slot buttons.
• Tucking away the various sets of buttons.
• The existence of a shield health bar.
• New end-of-level and end-of-run screens - very cute! Though I don't know how much running a knight can do on those little elevators.
• Slick animations throughout.
• Pop-ups indicating what you're picking up (statues/keys/minerals).
• Health percentage display, if only for the novelty of having 0% health while on your last legs.

Things I'll need to get used to:

• The locations of all of the buttons, the health bar, and the status timers. (The status timer location really threw me off the first time! It's tucked so close to the heat meter...)
• The giant portrait of my character. Yes, it's a quick social feature / party control access button, and it does match the size of the minimap porthole, but it's still quite a big portrait of something I'm already looking at.
• The new vial icons seem to clash with the style used for the other icons in the game.

Things I don't like:

• No indication that a party member has been downed, other than an empty health bar. I think this is really problematic. In the normal client, having the knight's health pips disappear and be replaced by a skull was a very clear indicator as to what had happened. Now, the knight's health bar is just empty, with no other effects applied to the bar or portrait. I think that there should be a more prominent indicator of death - even something as simple as the word "Downed" where the status effect indicator would normally go would be very helpful.
• The minimap symbols that indicate where teammates are no longer match their personal colours. If someone's in trouble and I'm far away from them, I'd like to see a clearer indication of which player is where in the level.
• The player's health bar is a bit harder to read, as the old "pip" appearance is used but vertical segments are removed when the player takes damage. In addition, the "old" health bar had a small gap between every 5 pips of health, whereas the new one doesn't. This makes it more difficult to count how much a health capsule might heal, for example. I'd like to see that little gap make a return to the new health bar.
• Shielding makes the health bar "squish" so that the shield's health takes prominence. I found this distracting, especially while I was attempting to attack monsters by shield-cancelling.
• It's harder to tell from a glance at the quickbar what types of vials you've collected. I think this is because the background of the quickbar remains the same shade of blue, no matter what kind of item was in it. I think that adding a coloured glow around the vial icons would make identifying them easier, both in the field and in the quickbar.
• Crowns and Energy totals are hidden from view unless the Arsenal is open, or something that requires either resource is visible. I'd rather be able to see both at all times without having the Arsenal pane open.
• I miss the gear motif! It was cool.

The new UI certainly looks nice, and has some nifty new features, but it still needs some work - it's a step down from the current interface in some respects.

To sum up - The new enemies are very interesting and force a change of tactics when they are present, the new levels are fun but are lacking incentive to play them, and the UI needs a few tweaks to be presentable. I'll be doing a couple more runs tomorrow, probably trying out different bombs and guns against the hordes and seeing how used I've gotten to the new interface, and I may write some more words down.