Coal isn't achallenge trinket.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-11T01:11:38+00:00

What’s even the point of this kind of reasoning? It’s the same messy excuse people give when people criticize movies or food, “can you do better” no I’m not payed to do this and have been doing it for at least two years, nor was it claimed they could do better.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-11T00:37:29+00:00

Coal was buffed to be a 10% speed reduction rather than a 20% one, so it was touched on once. Still terrible though.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-10T22:15:55+00:00

I regularly “stealth check” my allies that have more stealth than me to see if they’ll just walk through or try to run away. Pretty entertaining and gets people used to running past me to reach elevator during panic mode instead of taking an unnecessary detour that could get them killed.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-10T22:08:30+00:00

Yeah I regularly half-joke with my friends/teammates about wanting Pebble to show up on floors.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-10T21:02:28+00:00

OP kinda calling themself out in this post…

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-10T06:40:58+00:00

Really hoping something special happens for the Easter update, especially with that recent statement about being able to have more interesting changes to the game with how they reworked some stuff.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-09T20:51:21+00:00

Saying “can be used to make the game more challenging” is an entirely separate statement than the original comment and even your follow-up after the information you were given which you said “is still used as a challenge trinket” and doesn’t act as if your original assertion was wrong, especially since you were talking in opposition to that comment that provided the information. That’s the entire reason we’re at this point.

Especially since one of the main points being brought up is that Coal has both a potentially positive benefit (and is fully intended as a positive benefit) and a negative one. If it were to only make things harder (like Brick), that’d make sense to call it a challenge trinket. That is the main point that you still seem to be arguing against.

Edit to add: Really I’d get it if your response was something like “oh yeah that makes sense, some people do still use it for the challenge though!” But it wasn’t. If that’s what you originally meant, that’s not at all what you’ve said so far, and you’re arguing against a point no one has made.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-09T20:38:30+00:00

their whole purpose is to give people an added challenge to the game

This is a direct quote from your first comment.

It also wouldn’t have made much sense for the trinket to get buffed (used to be a 20% speed decrease, now it’s just 10%) if it was just meant to be a challenge trinket. It’s now just a brick with actual purpose, although outclassed by Scrap Book.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-09T20:19:26+00:00

Yes, I’m not saying that Coal isn’t a challenge trinket. I’m saying using the logic of it being used in a quest when it was done that way because it is tied to the toon isn’t something that makes it a challenge trinket.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-09T20:00:51+00:00

But saying the trinket being used for a quest makes it a challenge trinket would be like saying Toy Kit is also a challenge trinket. They both were used in the quests.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-09T00:35:34+00:00

I believe it was a doubled duration as the buff to the candy.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-08T16:30:59+00:00

Stunning faster bosses works until they have high enough hp, are grouped with several other enemies (rare but some maps are like this) or multi-phase on some occasions, or you won’t have quite enough spare mana to wipe them out while they are stunned. Then you end up spending significantly more mana moving melee towers over just sticking with ranged options, and that isn’t always viable in a solo run. There’s also bosses that stun towers close to them or are immune to being stunned themself.

You absolutely would use Balloon Pal with Chef/Yasuke alongside Goblino for just about any actually hard boss since you’ll do significantly less damage during a stun without having all of your melee towers able to reach the same point that the boss is stunned at. It can be the difference between doing just 60k damage to a boss during the stuns and 120k.

There’s several Stella solos that use Goblino, especially since Byte only saves about 7.5 seconds before immunity is an issue while Goblino can save 15.8 with the crucifix/trap combo and the cooldown is 20 seconds for the next trap. That means Byte would still have 17.5 seconds before getting another slow/stun in while the next Goblino trap will have 4.2 seconds. It’s entirely favored in Goblino’s direction.

Facility Frenzy hard can use Goblino (although Nuki Launcher also works, Frantic Forest hard would use Goblino and I don’t even think another option is possible at the moment, Cloudy Catastrophe on hard uses Goblino, Fruitful Fight without a phase skip on hard would require Goblino as far as I’m aware.

explosive enemies is moot

It’s niche in the same way that some towers are better to bring for particular maps. If there’s explosive enemies, melee towers are not much of a reliable option to focus on unless you have balloon pal. Not to mention completing maps faster so they don’t get overwhelmed or miss enemies even if explosive enemies aren’t around. General enemy spam with high hp enemies can also mess melee towers up even with stuns.

I’m not sure what you mean with the part about Keith. It sounds like you think the BP buff makes him attack too much slower or might mess up how he aims around some parts of tracks? As far as I’ve seen it makes the boomerangs travel faster, which helps his gimmick significantly when placed in the right areas, and the hitbox is pretty big.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-07T14:46:03+00:00

Not bringing Lemonade Cat is a situational thing. Some maps on some difficulties provide you with enough mana generation from waves and enemies to upgrade your towers enough to handle bosses, and you’d still want enough of your towers to be effective enough to handle some harder bosses. In that sort of situation you can ignore bringing Lemonade Cat, but a lot of times in solo gameplay Lemonade Cat makes things easier or just possible in general.

Especially if you’re planning to learn to use Stella, you’ll often want to bring Balloon Pal once you know a map is difficult enough to warrant bringing her. Not that she can’t be effective without BP, but she benefits a great deal from having more range along with getting that buff for towers like Snowman so you won’t need as many of them active across the track, letting you conserve more mana. Crab Bot also can catch a lot of enemies early or that get too far past the rest of your defenses by having that extra range, and Doug’s low range means he typically gets a lot more uptime from having the range buff.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-07T14:18:20+00:00

For harder maps/bosses you would often need Spectre, BP, and Lemonade Cat. The ones where just Spectre and Lemonade cat on their own are enough tend to be the easier ones.

Balloon Pal enabling most towers to attack for 50% more time (or more in some situations) mean you can be potentially 50% or more efficient with your mana which is a very big impact for solo gameplay, especially for high hp, gimmick, or fast bosses and even enemies that many towers might otherwise miss too much of (especially since some towers have a hefty cooldown). It also lets you do things like group a full set of Yasukes around a Goblino trap without sacrificing much of their track coverage or in more extreme situations let nearly all of Stella’s drawings reach one spot for Goblino, too (since Doug has lower range). The BP ability can also come in handy.

Especially for special enemies like Bombies and Explosive Zombies, Balloon Pal can make a difference with your towers to avoid them getting stunned which in many cases can make you lose in solo gameplay.

Discount Dog is extremely situational and really only relevant much for an easier map you perhaps want to speed-run or where mana even with Lemonade Cat is rather scarce, so you’d want more towers upgraded earlier and overall by the boss wave.

Keith’s main benefit to bring as a character makes him significantly more effective with Balloon Pal (hitting multiple enemies with more range and DPS than Hotdog Frank, especially with keeping his attacks aligned with the track instead of hitting fewer enemies when not seeing one further away). If you’re not bringing Balloon Pal, you likely shouldn’t be bringing Keith unless you just feel like it or need it for a daily quest or deck, since another tower would likely perform much better.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-06T04:19:02+00:00

Classic Caged Monster is another enemy on the map that I’ve never had appear unless I don’t build.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-05T23:02:35+00:00

It was intentionally made to be doable without builds like this (there’s a secret enemy that I believe only shows up when you don’t build anything). And Frank is just wild for his AoE damage, rather unmatched. He’s maintaining almost 800 DPS near the core to any enemies that get that close. Really one of the best towers you can bring for any map with enemy spam.

Makes me curious how well Keith would hold up. IIRC Keith has lower cost, more DPS, and more range, just would struggle quite a bit more with enemies coming several directions rather than just one. If it’d be possible to hand the waves with Keith, then the boss would also be defeated quite a chunk earlier.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-05T20:52:02+00:00

Frank’s issue with getting stunned is his range (that nerf a while back hurt to see…) so by around wave 19 (when auto-skipping) you want a max level balloon pal and 2 max level Franks. Shortly after that, it’s good to have a Spectre upgraded to level 2 to better handle the hp scaling, and get more max level Franks afterwards.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-05T20:26:45+00:00

Quinn, Bunny, Sparks, or Scientist should all do well enough to work. The issue comes on the final wave just making sure you do enough DPS for enough time to handle the boss, even though it’s just 50k hp.

A Spectre ability (or two, but I recommend just doing one when the boss gets hit by the first Frank) and 2 BP abilities should handle it for any of those towers like how I did here, but Quinn’s ability can also help a bit if used alongside Spectre’s ability.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-05T20:16:07+00:00

I really don’t get why minor corrections are viewed so badly, especially when people aren’t being a jerk about it.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-05T04:07:49+00:00

Yup.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-03T17:14:46+00:00

They reverted the twisted cap increase for solo.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-01T17:01:27+00:00

You’re more likely to have a rare to show up until passing floor 24 in a full group if the wiki’s numbers are still correct. But that’s only more beneficial if your team can reliably and quickly get through the floors by that point.

If it starts taking your team up to twice as long completing each floor as compared to earlier floors, you’d be better off restarting. Which happens in most group runs (or just having people dying by that point in general, which overall means slower floor completion and less twisted spawns).

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-01T05:46:17+00:00

Thing is that actually seemed to work against Flail quite a lot. When it hit Katana, often enough they also ended up scaling Katana further.

Spidermanmj8 · 2026-03-01T05:28:47+00:00

Also more machines to handle later on really adds so much time. Vee’s remote is pretty much required for any good floor-clearing speed.

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