Tower Tea - August 31, 2026

Hi pals, welcome to the Tower Tea! This week we are covering:

* Featured Module Banners and a look into Sentry Protocol 

* A small teaser

* Tournament Information

* A timeline-esque look at the rest of 2026

* A few community highlights

* End of year requests for Sam

Featured Module Banners

It’s only been a few hours, but Sentry Protocol is out in the world and we are (I wanted to put an orb pun here, but I couldn’t think of one…) so stoked to see how you implement it into your Tower’s builds! 

Reminder, this Featured Banner will run for two weeks, and on Monday, September 14, 2026 the Featured Banner will change over from Sentry Protocol to our first farming cannon! 

Here are a few notes for the Featured Banners and how they work: 

* Each Featured Banner will run for two weeks.

* Each NEW Module will have its own in-game banner, so it’s different when they update to the next one.

When a Module is no longer Featured, it will be put into the Standard Banner and the next Featured Banner won’t have the previously featured Modules.

psst (I’m whispering) The Module Ticket sale purchase limits reset at the Featured Banner reset. Okay back to the Tea. :slight_smile: 

Sentry Protocol

Now, let’s take a look at our new module entering the scene! I’ve seen some conversations about what it does, and we wanted to give you more information about it!

Sentry Protocol, when equipped, stops the Orbs from moving or impacting enemies. Instead, it’ll target enemies and fire Mini Orbs. They fire at a rate based on your Orbs speed, with a range equal to the base Tower range. 

Additional Orbs add more “turrets” to your Sentry Turret, which is affected by Perks, Workshops, etc. The Extra Orb card will convert as well, with its firing rate based on the Extra Orb card’s speed. You can still control the distance/speed of the Extra Orbs, letting you adjust your layers of defense!

These Mini Orbs behave exactly like Orbs when hitting enemies:

* Basic, Fast, and Tank enemies are destroyed on hit.

* Elites, Fleets, Protectors, and enemies within the Protector’s radius are still immune, but can be targeted.

* Bosses can be damaged with the Boss Hit Lab.

* Mini Orbs will target enemies based on any assigned target priorities.

* On-hit effects (like Negative Mass Projector) apply with every shot.

* Battle Conditions reduce mini-orb effectiveness.

* Orb Size has no effect on mini-orbs.

Tournament Information

Our first group of Mythic players have been promoted at the conclusion of this weekend’s tournament! 

For our next tournament, our Legends and Mythic leagues will be encountering Fleet Waves. In these leagues, Fleets spawn at the beginning of the wave, and progress is determined by how much health is left on the Fleets. Ties will be determined based on the percentage of health remaining.

For Gold and up, our upcoming fix (29.0.2) will remove the need to have the Intro Sprint card equipped to accelerate your gameplay. This effect can be ended early by pressing the Intro Sprint icon at the top left of your screen! 

This change is meant to bring players up to the point of a tournament where they would take  lethal damage (the first instance of Tower destroying damage) in order to get you to the action sooner. To do so, current activations such as Demon Mode, Second Wind, Nuke, and Death Defy will end this effect early. 

We are listening to feedback about the recent changes, and will continue to monitor incoming feedback throughout the next several weeks. We’ll iterate and make adjustments as needed to ensure that our players are enjoying the competitive scene!

But v30 when?

Let’s look at the rest of the year, ya? We are planning to do one more major update by the end of the year, with some minor updates in between. No date at this time, but when we have a better idea we will let you know. We’ll be looking for some opportunities to improve device performance and stability and community-requested QoL changes to end the year on a high note. That isn’t the only focus, but it’s a focus we can talk about this far out. And also, just to confirm, there will be “*content stuffs*” as Muse so lovingly told me.

We’re also working on a small update to address known bugs and improvements from v29's launch soon. In addition to some known issues before, here are a few other things we’re working on:

* Adjusting the size of the Global Preset icon

* Fixing a Vault migration issue where the Shatter Rare Module upgrade was happening without re-investment

* Adding a one time free Respec for the Vault

Community Spotlights

I am so stoked to share a few new things, two that are already out, and one that is coming next week! 

First up, our pals Crowbarzero and Xepher Gamez. We got to hang out a little bit before v29 dropped, and I had a blast chatting with them. Crowbarzero and I got to yap about a few questions I had terrible answers to, and a note about how communications are going to continue to be, at least for the foreseeable future. Xepher asked me more about who I am and parts of the silly wild life I have lived so far, and it features just how weird I am. 

And speaking of Crowbarzero, I got to meet up with him and a few of our other Tower pals last week for lunch and we ended up hanging out for so long the owner of the place came over to talk to us and then we yapped even longer! The funniest part apparently was me, sitting at the table eating chicken strips while dancing/grooving in my chair to Dolly’s (RIP) 9-to-5 over the radio while writing patch notes WHILE playing my Tower. 

Before anyone asks, no, they didn’t see the patch notes ahead of time, they just got to hear me say “okay Sam, we’ve got this, lock in” at least 5 times (the chicken strips were really good okay!).

So on that note, if anyone is coming out to PAX West this Friday-Monday (Sept 4-7), be sure to hit me up (do the cool kids still say this?) on Discord/Reddit/Instagram and I would love to set up a public group meet-up. Sneak peek, there may even be a few other Tower Devs out in the wild with me!

Last thing, end-of-year Community Celebration, what do you wanna see/do/dream of? We already have a Tower Wrapped in the works, like a real one this time, not the “Canva break your eardrums on Discord version” I made last year, so that’s one thing! Anywho, just let me know if you have thoughts, and yes, those can also go in this thread <3

Alright pals, that’s it for this Tea! I hope you learn a million things today, and your drink is always the right temperature! See you on September 14th for the next Tea!

Sam