One More Night: Tuning Pass — Better Gems, Better XP, Better Feedback
Today’s update is all about making the numbers feel right and giving players the feedback they deserve.
Gem Drops Actually Make Sense Now
The gem tier system uses sigmoid-weighted probability curves to determine which XP gems enemies drop. The problem was that the curves were too wide — at wave 1, you’d see 29% Uncommon gems and 6.5% Rare, plus a floor weight that let Legendaries appear randomly at any wave. It looked like broken randomness.
We tightened all spread values by ~30% and removed the floor weight entirely. Wave 1 is now 83% Common, with higher tiers appearing only when they should. Big enemies also had their effective wave shift reduced (from log2(hpMult)*3 to *2) so a big zombie at wave 5 drops Uncommon/Rare instead of skipping straight to Rare/Epic.
XP Curve Won’t Wall You at Level 20
The original 1.5x-per-level XP curve made leveling past night 18 nearly impossible. Last session we added a two-tier curve that tapers at level 16+. Today we flattened that late curve further — from 1.15x to 1.10x per level. Level 22→23 now costs ~7,800 XP (about 6 Legendary gems) instead of ~10,100. You’ll still slow down, but you won’t hit a wall.
You Can See Your Coins Now
Coins used to be invisible during gameplay — awarded as a single lump sum on the death screen. Now you earn coins every time you clear a wave (3 + wave×2), with a gold coin counter in the HUD and a “+N coins” popup that pulses the counter. The death screen still shows your total, but now you can watch it grow during the run.
Other Fixes
- Splash background — No longer stretched on desktop. Uses cover-fit scaling so the portrait art fills the landscape canvas without distortion.
- Auto-aim staleness — On desktop, the auto-aim system now checks if your mouse has moved in the last 200ms. If not, it targets the nearest enemy to the player instead of wherever your cursor was parked.
- Admin panel — Now shows wave config (enemy count, HP/speed/damage multipliers, spawn interval), crit-adjusted DPS, and actual enemy HP values.
Play it now at night.echoforge.games.
— Bruno