YMMV / Cursed Treasure

• Awesome Music: While the games have a lack of variation in music, it's still good enough that it doesn't become too tiresome to listen to.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Ninjas. They're very fast, and can use a Smoke Bomb to make themselves invisible for five seconds, meaning they can run past most of your towers unharmed. Game guides jokingly divided the enemies into two categories separated by threat level: Ninjas and non-Ninjas. The art for the expansion pack features a ninja running away with the gem while his comrades explode around him. While you can put towers at the begining of the stage to make them use their smoke bomb and then place lot of towers at least five second further to greet them, many maps are too short for this, leaving you with Splash Damage Abuse as the only way to quickly get rid of them.
    • The second game Nerfs them by quite a bit, as well as giving you a Fear Spell which can push back Stealthed Ninjas... Until the Ninjas got buffed back again with extra health and longer invisibility time. Still, a Fear spell is very effective at ruining their day.
  • To a lesser extent, Assassins. They have a 50% chance to evade any attack. If the Random Number God has a bad day, this is very nasty. ^note Fortunately, there is the Frenzy spell, which makes your towers spam projectiles and can effectively counter that ability. And they cannot evade Status Effects, either. And just as fortunately, their evasion ability was changed to reduce damage by a variable percentage instead of completely evading it.
  • Iron Guards in the sequel. These Champion robots are basically slower Ninjas (Stealths on first hit) with a load of health and they can fly over water, taking a short cut to your gems! They can't be inflicted with fear either, so no pushing them backwards. Which means the only way to get rid of these in the final boss fight is via Meteor Spam, as the gems are very close to the entrance for flying foes. Alternatively, one can utilize the chicken spell to be able to inflict fear and prevent them from using Stealth, but this necessitates having that scroll there to begin with.
  • Cursed Treasure 2's Wizards after the update. These guys now have a lot of health, and their special ability gives them a speed buff... which they can release in a burst, boosting the speed of AND healing all nearby allies. When a huge number of these appear, they'll pretty much heal and speed buff each other unless you can damage them faster than they can heal.
  • Engineers are this in numbers. As soon as they hit half-health, they launch smoke bombs that conceal any enemies in them for a few seconds. Lone engineers are Goddamned Bats instead.
  • Amazons, also when they appear in numbers. As soon as they lose at least half their health, their armor gets knocked off. When this happens they charm all towers in a huge radius around them, making those towers unable to attack for 8 precious seconds. Sure, you can use a Fear spell to get rid of the charm, but this costs your precious Mana. If you don't have any mana to spare, you're helpless as these bitches run past your charmed towers! They were nerfed^note Charm lasts for 5 seconds now, and a tower hit with fear becomes charm immune for 2 seconds in the update, thankfully.
  • Divers, in Stage 20, due to their shortcut being very near your gems. These guys traverse water by going under, becoming invisible to towers^note Splash Damage still hits! They also have quite a lot of health to boot. In stages 19 and 21, they're Goddamned Bats.
• Designated Villain: The only evil thing the player is shown as doing is killing the people who are trying to steal his/her gems.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Chilling Crypt & third charge combo. The Chilling Crypt has a chance of scaring the enemies for a short time, which increases greatly when they get a third charge. It's worth noting that the hardest levels in the game also reduce the amount of crypts you can build.
  • Heck, the entire Undead tree in general. It reduces cost of Frenzy and and increases Frenzy Speed, helps with mana regen (Use in conjunction with Orc's Cut Out Study and Cut Out Mastery for fast gold and clearing of areas), increases chances to fear, reduces Crypt costs and finally, increases Fear chances as well as giving a Freeze chance!
    • The Undead Skill tree is no slouch in the sequel either. It now trades Frenzy for Fear (which can be upgraded to take away 1/5 of an enemy's Maximum health when it affects a foe), allows Crypts a small chance of instantly killing an enemy (works on Champions but not bosses), and has the usual cost reduction and freeze chance ability^note Combine the Freeze Chance and the Instant Kill chance with the very fast firing rate of the Lightning Crypt to destroy champions. For larger groups of mobs, see below. Furthermore, it also gets a skill which makes undead orbs circle around your gem cave- useful for finishing off weakened foes who somehow make it through. Not to mention the maxed out terror tower's shot can rebound infinitely as long as there's new foes near the last bounce, and each bounce can apply the usual effects, which can utterly destroy large mobs as they clump together due to being terrorized.
  • The Orc Skill tree is a Boring, but Practical variant of this... invest in some mana recharge from the Undead skill tree, then master the Cut Out spell and Lumber Camps, with Die and Deliver (which increases the gold enemies drop) for good measure. In essence, this gives the player the ability to convert their mana directly into gold (so long as there's a tree somewhere on the map), which in turn pays for more towers, while simultaneously creating more options for putting them out and making it easier to dismantle enemy spawn points. In a wave or two, the entire path becomes pincushion lane, killing just about anything that comes through it with raw damage. This can be done as early as level seven.
• Goddamned Bats: Cursed Treasure 2 brings us flying enemies like the Valkyrie and the Kite Druid. These can fly over water, taking a shortcut to your gems!
  • Healer/buffer enemies tend to use their heal/buff skills very often, compared to the previous game.
  • In the sequel, Rogues can be this in the early waves. Not only are they fast, but they now have a Sprint ability that temporarily makes them even faster.
  • Smugglers in the last levels of Cursed Treasure 2 take a fair amount of punishment, and when they die, they release two parrots and a monkey that can also take your gems. Until you get enough upgrades to dispatch everything quickly, they'll at least be able to touch one of your gems and breaking an early attempt for a Brilliant rating.
  • In the Steam version, the Dwarven Drill Masters. They launch bombs that create dust clouds around your towers, blinding them temporarily so that they can't attack. A Fear spell can still ruin their day though (since Fear in the Steam version removes all ailments from towers).
• Funny Moments: Truly there is no greater joy than having multiple fear crypts then watching those little bastards run backwards screaming like ninnies. Repeatedly.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The terrified "No! No! No!" and "Aaaaaaaah!" screaming as the heroes run, pursued relentlessly by even more fear-causing orbs.
• That One Level: Stage 20, "The Two Towers◊" (before the redesign), if you're going for a Brilliant. It got so bad that they redid the level a bit and made it easier.
  • Mana is very hard to come by thanks to a lack of mana pools. The redesign gave the player one to make it less frustrating.
  • Not enough spaces for the very powerful Crypts (read: only two)
  • 2 Lighthouses that give a speed boost to 3 foes within a large range (See yellow circles), each requiring 7 uses of Cut Out . Taking over these will cause them to damage up to foes in the radius.
  • 2 pirate ships that spawn enemies, each requiring 10 uses of Cut Out.
  • Divers (spawned by Pirate ships) are invisible while submerged, and the route to your gems has loads of water, giving very few chances for your towers to attack before they touch the gems. (See the red routes)
  • The Divers tend to appear with Cooks. Cooks will heal the divers, making it harder to kill them before they reach your gems. You'll be forced to use the Fear Spell many times, which reduces the Mana you need to Cut Out the lighthouses and ships!
  • You'll probably be forced to use a Fear Spell against the Smuggler Bosses, and maybe even a Meteor Spell against the Iron Guards (who get a very nice shortcut to your gems).
  • Ninjas and Engineers will appear with Cooks in later waves, making you use up even more Mana to keep them away from the gems.