The Great Finale

Stats

Developer

Your_Adversary

Difficulty

Event

Length

Long

Level Requirement

5

Mode

Event

Waves

No

Description

The Great Finale was the event map for the third act of the Lunar Overture Event. Like other event maps, this map had a specialized wave structure with special enemies. Players started with a varying amount of cash, based on how many players there were in the match. In solo it was 7,500 in duo it was 6,000, in trio it was 5,000 and in quad it was 4,000. If you were in the Paradoxum Games group, it was increased by 100. This map had the HP Locked modifier, which set the base health to 500. It also had Mutation which increased the enemy health by 10% of their regular health. Both these modifiers increased rewards by 20%, which is a total increase of 40%. This map had a unique system of giving players cash for killing or damaging enemies. You only got cash from them if they were killed, or in some cases, damaged by a specific amount of health. Additionally, the amount you got was a set amount of cash, which was not always equal to the enemy's health. In solo, you received 100% of the cash when an enemy was killed or you damaged it enough. With each additional player, this decreased by 25%, which means that in a quad, you only got 25% of the cash. This amount was distributed between players based on how much damage they dealt. However, if a player did not deal any damage, they would receive a percentage of the enemy's full cash upon its death or when it was damaged enough, which was 12.5% in duo, 16.7% in trio and 18.75% in quad. If it was a decimal, it got rounded up.

Design and Path

The Great Finale took place in the same theater as A Dark Tale and The Haunted Past, however, the entire theater was in ruins. Brown rubble and spikes could be found on the walls, alongside what appears to be white light. There were also multiple collapsed rusty metal supports there. In the center of the map there were multiple purple paths, which were surrounded by brown ground. There were multiple holes in the path, where the path was replaced by a purple translucent path. Multiple black spikes and purple floating platforms could be found. On the sides, there were three Spotlights which could be used to confuse enemies and damage the Left Hand and Right Hand. The paths started at the five portals and ended at the God Cube in the middle of the map.

Story

Unlike A Dark Tale or The Haunted Past, The Great Finale lacked cutscenes, so all of the plot was relegated towards dialogue given by the Narrators on this map. There was also little connection to the previous two acts; for example, there was no mention of The Umbra, a heavy focus of the plots of A Dark Tale and The Haunted Past. All of these issues stem from multiple cuts made during gameplay, which removed most of the story from it. The cut aspects can be seen in its Story subpage. While The Great Finale was supposed to happen in the story, a "glitch" happened which prevented it from occurring, leaving it as a fading memory of a battle that never happened. However, the story would go down like this if it were to happen: when the game began, the Narrator revealed that they had been around for years behind the scenes since the Halloween 2020 Event, highly suggesting that they are the same person as the Narrator from Trick or Threat Town. This is the only backstory The Great Finale provided; the rest was a stand-alone plot where the Narrator exclaims directly to the players that they were ruining their plans, then attempted to defeat them in a fury using their army of actors.

Rewards

The game calculated how many Coins Coins and you received based on how many waves were survived and if the match was won. During periods of 50% more (08:00 UTC Friday – 08:00 UTC Sunday), any earned was multiplied by 1.5x. The VIP gamepass also multiplied any earned by 1.25x. Any reward that ends in a decimal point is rounded down, no matter the first figure of the leading decimal. Rewards were calculated as: For a brief period of time, was calculated as: ( ÷ (1 + [(14 ÷ Current Wave) - 1])) × 1.2 It was possible to randomly get these three accessories upon triumph of the third act: It was also guaranteed to get this accessory upon triumph of the third act

Gates

Gates were an enemy obstacle that was available for purchase by the player that could block a potential path. Despite having only five points from which enemies could spawn, the map branched out into many different paths, which caused enemies to approach from many different angles if none of them were blocked. On several paths, however, a translucent outline of an arch shape was visible, and when built, the gate solidified into a barrier that prevented that path from being taken. On the various paths, there were nine total gates which could be built for 1,200 each. Each gate, when bought, blocked a single path from being used. Any enemy that was heading down that path would be teleported to a different one if the gate blocks its path, though if the gate did not block it the enemy would continue to use it. Any enemy that was originally directed on a specific path but was not yet on it would be directed to a different path.

Wave Structure

The formula for calculating wave bonus on each wave was: (800 + (Waves Completed - 1) × 200) × (1 - 0.05 × Players) The wave clear bonus appeared when you had killed every enemy in the wave. It is half of the wave bonus. The waves in The Great Finale could not be skipped. They followed these timings: After enemies stopped spawning, there was a delay before the wave is looped. This will make the exact same enemies spawn again, before the cooldown starts again. The wave structure below only lists the base number of enemies, it does not account for the wave looping. On Waves 1 to 9, the delay before the wave looped was 10 seconds. On Wave 10, the delay before the wave looped was 60 seconds, but because of how long it took for the wave to stop sending enemies, this never happened. On Wave 11, the delay before the wave looped was 10 seconds. On Wave 12, the delay before the wave looped was 7 seconds. On Wave 13, the delay before the wave looped was 15 seconds. On Wave 14, the wave did not loop. Instead, random enemies would spawn, which had their health increase the longer Wave 14 lasted. ---- Wave Structure

Strategy

Early on, multiple cheaper towers with decent DPS like the Golden Soldier or Ace Pilot can be very useful here. As these have flying detection, these can also be used against Voodoo Dolls later on. More expensive towers like the Minigunner or Golden Minigunner are also viable here, due to the high amount of starting cash. All these towers can also be quite effective throughout the whole act, especially when boosted by the Commander and DJ Booth. Do note that you cannot completely rely on Golden Soldier or Ace Pilot, because of the lack of DPS and enemy health increasing with time on Wave 14. Stalling towers like the Sledger, Warden or Electroshocker can be quite useful at slowing down enemies and giving your towers more time deal more damage to them. The Pursuit can be quite effective here, but it is expensive. If you want to use it, you should not place any other towers. Towers that spawn units like the Elf Camp or Military Base are ineffective here due to the high amount of paths. There are multiple barriers that can be built around the map, blocking a specific path from being used by the enemies. If an enemy is on the path and gets blocked by the gate, it will be teleported to a different path. If the enemy is past the gate and is not blocked by it, it will not be teleported. Do note that the gates when built will block the Spotlight's beam, so it may not be worth building a gate.

Patch history

This is the only map in the Lunar Overture Event without any cutscenes. Cutscenes were meant to appear in this map, but were cut due to issues during development. These also contained their own lore, which due to never making it into the game, is not canon anymore. This is also the only map in the Lunar Overture Event without any voice lines. A corrupted version of the Penumbras was meant to appear here, though that was cut. Oddly, The Great Finale has less waves than The Haunted Past and even less than A Dark Tale. The Great Finale appears to have been extremely rushed, due to its lack of cutscenes, lack of proper balancing testing which made the event impossible and multiple bugs that came with the update. This is the first map to have a mechanic that permanently disables pathways. This is the third Defend the Center map, the first being D00M's Revenge, while the second was Cold Ambush. However, unlike these two, The Great Finale does not have any plots, passive income or health regeneration. It instead has gates and Spotlights. The paths and entrances on this map are also apparent. Despite the God Cube being quite large, enemies only dealt damage to the base health at a small point in the center of the map, allowing some enemies to enter the cube completely before dealing damage to the base health. The portals that the enemies spawned from are identical to the portals in the lobby that the player used to access the event statues. A laugh track would play when losing on Wave 14.