Soul Charm grind is seriously excessive

[Cartography Dee]

I'm not saying there's a problem with having grindy elements in the game, but tying all of the character customisation and power progression behind this system is a really miserable experience.

You do a demonic run, handicap yourself by reserving hundreds of souls and 600 gold for the final stage, and then you're rewarded with a whole 5 Wooden charms (maybe one of them is stone if you're lucky). That's also assuming you actually clear the whole run, otherwise you'll probably get nothing. A run is around an hour, so if someone plays flawlessly it'll take them around 3 hours to get the 16 wooden charms needed for a single jade charm.

Again, I'm not saying there's a problem with having something take a large amount of time to do, but it doesn't make sense to have the power progression in a roguelike be tied behind anywhere near this much of a time-sink. What's the point of getting a stronger character after you've already mastered the game? Soul charms should be a lot more accessible and a time-sink this large should be reserved for for some 'fluff' stuff like cosmetics or anything much less impactful.

[Path]

The grind is excessive, agreed, but your math is off -- you should be running at least 10 tokens on demonic to make it worth your while, which means you only need 400 souls to get the maximum benefit (8 charms); that should allow one or two relics from the jubilant, unless you're rushing the bosses, in which case you'll get a lower finish time instead. Save 200 gold for a store charm and that's 9 charms with one possibly being stone for a run.

The weaker charms are much easier to access, though, and good enough. If anything demonic is too easy once you've gold and/or jade charms, but that's a different problem.

That said, there should be more of a reward for failing runs to encourage pushing players beyond their comfort zone.

[Darkfiro]

Further more if you get coupon you just need 300 gold yes coupon affect soul charm store.

[Whatever100500]

As far as i understand, Soul charms are meant as kind of infinite post-end-game, not something you actually can reach within a reasonable time.

As you noted, by the time you get Jade ones, you don't really need them due to having mastered the game.

[Slayer Slayerson]

I can do quick runs for some charms or get more charms but the run takes twice as long.
I think i'll step down from demonic, just to gurantee charm drops for now....

[Path]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2487822861
To illustrate why 400 is a good breakpoint to aim for. You get 1 charm for clearing the game, 1 charm per 5 trial tokens active (as there are 14 tokens, 10 active give you the highest reward) -- and these rewards are doubled on Demonic -- and 1 charm per 500 converted souls, so you can potentially get 8 charms from a run before considering the ones you can obtain from the shop.

If you are looking to maximize your returns, the question is mainly how quickly you can clear and whether you can safely do so; if you goal is to farm then it's probably better to play on normal unless you very rarely die on demonic, as the returns are very poor for runs you fail to clear (and yes, I believe it should be more rewarding than it currently is to push yourself and fail in chapter 5 or so rather than just opt for safety first).

What the game won't tell you is that it's always possible to find combinations that'll allow you to change a charm to one of the same tier by fusing it with a wooden one, which can save you a lot of charms. This means that once you have a Jade charm you can use wooden ones to change it to the one you want, although this may take a few tries as there's unfortunately currently no list of valid combinations.

[SaiColors]

The only problem is you need to victory a run to get the charm.

Player should get some reward earlier like you can get some charm once reach stage 3, something like this.

This will get worse once chapter 7 open.

You can save your game by copy it to other slot, personally I don't do it in every other roguelike game, but I save my game in this one.

So yeah I think this system need some tweak.

[Cartography Dee]

While I'm not a fan of meta power-progression in rougelikes to begin with, isn't the point of it so that a player will be likely to make some sort of progress even if their skill isn't improving? This system even do that properly since players who don't full clear get no benefit.

It's a rougelike, people will do runs as long as they like the moment to moment gameplay and there's a certain degree of challenge. There doesn't need to be a big mechanical reward for playing that long.

It feels really backwards that to efficiently become stronger (or as efficiently as the game will allow at least) you have to consistently clear the hardest content. It's like getting some overpowered ultimate weapon in an RPG after you have nothing left to use it on.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Originally posted by Cartography Dee:

While I'm not a fan of meta power-progression in rougelikes to begin with, isn't the point of it so that a player will be likely to make some sort of progress even if their skill isn't improving?

No. That is sometimes the purpose, but mainly just a condescending caricature rather than how most games do it. People just demand games give them something in-game for their time nowadays, and games without progression get criticized for it. The best designs are balanced to be enjoyable with metaprogress included, and the progression is mainly sidegrades and caps out on its power, not just inevitably trivializes the game. The charm system is a special case, though, as it was added later than the normal metaprogression system, and created specifically just to give some reward to people who kept on playing past everything and were already really good at the game. It's also designed rather in a vacuum, as so few players have ever tested its basics, even besides its advanced forms.

I'm not saying that justifies it, just that's the context: it exists only to amuse people who already win easily and have everything unlocked, so they can get some sense of reward rather than being told they got even more soul crystals that will never matter. Yeah, it kind of drives the rest of us nuts, because it has the exact opposite effect on the "normal" player, highlighting our failures by denying rewards when we don't get a clear, and trapping us on lower difficulty because demonic, while more fun for its intensity, is useless for getting charms. I do wish we accumulated soul crystals towards a charm drop every few hundred or so, just so there was some consolation reward for runs that aren't clears, instead of the all-or-nothing aspect of it, but that won't do much for the ridiculous grind or the painfully gacha style mechanism.

Also, there's no excuse for having possible failure on upgrading to jade tier. That's just a chance to throw away a large time investment to create meaningless tension, and that's a bad, anti-player idea.

Look at the achievement stats: 80% of players don't have a clear. A similar, but larger, percent of players don't have charms unlocked. If we had "got a charm of X tier" achievements, I think it would look pretty dire.

[Path]

Originally posted by Tyrian Mollusk:

Also, there's no excuse for having possible failure on upgrading to jade tier. That's just a chance to throw away a large time investment to create meaningless tension, and that's a bad, anti-player idea.

You do realise that the game will tell you exactly what charm you'll end up with as a result of any given combination? Unless you willingly choose to, it's difficult to see how you could fail.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Originally posted by Path:

You do realise that the game will tell you exactly what charm you'll end up with as a result of any given combination? Unless you willingly choose to, it's difficult to see how you could fail.

I realize that, but someone above said upgrading a charm to jade tier has a chance to fail. I don't know how that exactly works, as jade charms are way out of my league for a while yet.

[Cartography Dee]

Originally posted by Tyrian Mollusk:

Originally posted by Path:

You do realise that the game will tell you exactly what charm you'll end up with as a result of any given combination? Unless you willingly choose to, it's difficult to see how you could fail.

I realize that, but someone above said upgrading a charm to jade tier has a chance to fail. I don't know how that exactly works, as jade charms are way out of my league for a while yet.

I didn't try myself but it's mentioned ingame in the tips window while in the 'soul charm refining' menu.

[Path]

Which is why it's a good idea to confirm things, especially in indie titles where the translation isn't necessarily to be trusted. Failure in this context means that you won't get the desired result, e.g., your two silver charms won't combine to a gold charm but another silver, but there's nothing forcing you to accept those outcomes; you can merely try other combinations.

Two wooden charms will always produce a stone charm, and two stone charms will always produce a silver charm, but after that it seems to be about 50/50. Wooden charms can be used to change the charm within the same tier, though -- or downgrade if you actually want to do that -- so there's never a good reason to refine a jade charm with a gold charm.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Ah, if failure merely means some refinement options aren't useful, that's not so bad. Thank goodness they let us see results first, although I think the game should store all the refinement options we've seen, so we can see our options clearly from a given charm, rather than dump it on players to build a list or have to keep searching and checking.

[Quanthula]

Pretty sure they give you some lists in the game. It's actually part of the logs you pick up. There are quite a few having to do with Soul Idols.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

I mean, you look at charm X, and you can see what you would combine with it to get various outcome charms, based on what you had so far tried/seen. Having that conveniently visible in the crafting UI would be nice.

Hmm, I don't think I've seen any soul charm recipe lists, at least that I remember, but I haven't spent nearly as much time with idol-upgraded characters as with those grinding up to unlock idols. I'll be curious to see how that's presented.