Feedback after 85 hrs

[The boy who cried DANGO]

85 hrs played, lvl 175, almost all quests completed, 96/108 victory board. This feedback is not structured in any particular way and almost exclusively single player focused.

Overall balance: The game is extremely fair. Single player feels easy even on challenge 20 with good play. Multiplayer seems to require coordination of every pick and every move to succeed at higher challenge levels which feels a bit tedious and puts me off of multiplayer but I can see why this decision is made. I would suggest that if you are at multiplayer rank 1 and complete multiplayer challenge rank 20 you should get credit for completing 20 and not be moved to rank 2.

Class Balance: Mostly pretty good. "Complexity" seems mostly to map to "balance". Clairvoyant and Chainbreaker just seem weaker than other classes. Fixing that would probably go a long way. Chainbreaker feels like you need to generate combo just to make skills as good as other classes baseline skills - compare chainbreaker S2 and S3 to obelisk's s2 and s3. A small buff would go a long way here - S3 cost to 2 would probably do it.

Area Balance: Surprisingly well balanced. The Barricade channelers are extremely punishing in book 1 when you have no damage to overcome the barrier. The Mimic is much harder than other Guardians, particularly mosscloak - 22 damage direct hits and massive AoEs. The garden and woods guardians also seem a bit harder than the other 3. Of the villains, Cynder is the most annoying (invuln phase seems out of place in this game, and it's never clear how many debuff stacks I'm getting or why), Argolath is a DPS check and Ruhnstone still seems much easier than the other two.

Set Balance: The frostbite vestiges are all pretty bad. The thaumaturge items are ok but not quite good enough for how hard they are to set up. Ambusher would probably benefit from having a couple more lategame vestiges. Overall good.

Victory Board: The item set ones are absolutely brutal RNG. I think the obelisk one took me 20 runs. I don't love having 3 multiplayer ones mixed in here - it would be nice to be able to complete the board single player.

UI: A visual indicator for what augments/ascensions you've taken before so that you don't have to reopen and scroll through the quest menu constantly would be really nice. A "restart" button would also save a bit of time for when you accidentally start with the wrong trinket or attempt to do a challenge that requires a certain draftable skill and don't get it.

Trinkets: Maybe the one place I think the game's balance is quite poor.

• Heart of a Hero is pretty underwhelming. Didn't this used to increase three random sets? Would still be weak at three, unless you can really manipulate it, and even then.
  
• Bounty of Sentient Beings is excellently designed and well balanced imo. A good target for all other trinkets.
  
• Chart of Stars seems pretty bad. I've never felt like using it for any reason. If this was "every time" it would be excellent.
  
• Blaze of Brigid, Everfrost of Arcturia, Talons of Cyn, Essence of Quillion: Is anyone using these? The effects are so underwhelming and only payoff if you can make a specific build happen. To make matters worse Blaze is useless on bosses because it almost always hits adds instead. It seems like these were designed just to make daily runs / victory board objectives harder. I can't imagine how much of a buff these would need before I even thought about running them.
  
• Blessing of Misplaced Nobility is in an interesting place where I've never taken it but it does seem like a reasonable tradeoff. I think at +3 shielding this would be great, or at -10 Max HP this might compete.
  
• Rose of Rubies was fun when I used it for the victory board objective, and I enjoy the risk/reward here.
  
• Emblem of Enterprise is weak in regular play but I've used it hunting for specific legendaries for victory board objectives.
  
• Blessing of Kwills is very strong if a bit RNG dependent, plus useful for completing the augment/ascension quests. I think the design is a bit misleading - because it gives you glyphs, it makes you think the best use for it is rerolling augments, but it very rarely (if ever?) upscales augments.
  
• Stone of Scholars I hate the design for - useless on most classes, does literally nothing if you don't manage to get one of 3 specific draftables, and completely overpowered if you get 2.
  
• Scales of Infinite Potential is in a weird place where it's extremely great for 2 classes and basically useless for 5. Decent to great for weaver.
  
• Dial of Fate - I forgot this item existed. Is anyone taking this ever?
  
• Marker of the Unbound was hands down the best trinket for challenge 8+ when gunkbound starts to appear. I was easily getting 150 omni damage from this alone. The blight immunity is not really relevant since it's pretty easy to play around blight in the first 6 turns. The nerf was well deserved, I haven't tried it since the nerf but I imagine it will continue to be the best choice for challenge runs.
  
• Union of the Needless I haven't experimented with much since I have barely touched multiplayer. My initial thought is this is not much of a buff if you don't build around it but I could see a suicide build being enabled by this.
  
• Clips of Extraction: The 1 stack limit on mitosis hurts. It hurts you on the first turn (the most important turn) in exchange for improving your cooldowns on future turns. I can see this starting to get strong lategame if you can assemble the orb lord set but the endgame is the easiest part of the game so who cares.

[The RDM]

I think the item sets are the worst part of the game to interact with. It's fine on paper, but in practice it's more random than the old stat-room based progression, just it's more 'exciting'. I also think the trinkets are very boring after the recent changes. I just slot the Rose every run for the sake of speed. I really don't like that they took away the ability to force a build with trinkets.

Originally posted by May contain traces of DANGO:

UI: A visual indicator for what augments/ascensions you've taken before so that you don't have to reopen and scroll through the quest menu constantly would be really nice. A "restart" button would also save a bit of time for when you accidentally start with the wrong trinket or attempt to do a challenge that requires a certain draftable skill and don't get it.

They thought of this and implemented it poorly! There is a small yellow triangle in the middle of the 'cards' that only appears if you haven't taken the Augment/Upgrade. Took me way too long to even notice (hope this helps someone lol)

The UI all over the game needs work. Everything is built from the perspective of a single-player experience. Either they don't see it as a priority right now or the UI people haven't played the game very much at all (certainly not as a team).

My biggest gripe now is that runs drag in the early/mid game and I spend less time with a 'complete' build overall. Instead of thinking about what I want to build next run the answer is always the same... you play what you get.

[Yoga Fire]

Originally posted by The RDM:

I think the item sets are the worst part of the game to interact with. It's fine on paper, but in practice it's more random than the old stat-room based progression, just it's more 'exciting'. I also think the trinkets are very boring after the recent changes. I just slot the Rose every run for the sake of speed. I really don't like that they took away the ability to force a build with trinkets.

Originally posted by May contain traces of DANGO:

UI: A visual indicator for what augments/ascensions you've taken before so that you don't have to reopen and scroll through the quest menu constantly would be really nice. A "restart" button would also save a bit of time for when you accidentally start with the wrong trinket or attempt to do a challenge that requires a certain draftable skill and don't get it.

They thought of this and implemented it poorly! There is a small yellow triangle in the middle of the 'cards' that only appears if you haven't taken the Augment/Upgrade. Took me way too long to even notice (hope this helps someone lol)

The UI all over the game needs work. Everything is built from the perspective of a single-player experience. Either they don't see it as a priority right now or the UI people haven't played the game very much at all (certainly not as a team).

My biggest gripe now is that runs drag in the early/mid game and I spend less time with a 'complete' build overall. Instead of thinking about what I want to build next run the answer is always the same... you play what you get.

Thank you for bringing up the UI indicator, I had no idea that existed. I wish you could rotate the camera, or highlight usable items better. A lot of orbs and character abilities get lost in big enemy bodies.

There is a way to almost guarantee completing any item set victory board condition. Run quick battle, and all you do is take Pilfer binding, rush some form of defense like Shielding/Vigorous + Kwilling Hunter 3 + any vestige that has active cooldown effect. Stall as long as possible each battle to pilfer as many enemies you can without being hurt too badly. Should aim for Kwilling Hunter 5 before Act 3, and if you manage to achieve KH5, temporarily skip the 2 chests in Act 3 to open shop and double your kwillings. Should have 5-20k kwillings after doubling. Roll Act 3 shop for whatever legendary item you need, and then if you haven't seen a specific blue/purple item, go back to the two chests and roll for the necessary blue / purple vestige you need, since you are able to see 3 items each roll rather than hoping for 1 blue/purple item at the shop. By doing this, I was able to get item set wins in 1-3 tries.

[Kisama]

Disagree that you need to coordinate every move and pick to succeed in high tier multiplayer. A single strong build/class can carry even a 20 mp.

Agree that MP requirement for victory board is annoying, agree that if you are pushed into a level 20 mp run, your level should upgrade to 20. (that would remove a lot of the artificial ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grind though, so I get it).

Mimic is definitely broken.

I disagree about some of the trinkets but don't care enough to get into it.

As bottom post said, the item victory boards aren't that bad if you go kwilling hunter. Unlike bottom post said, you don't need to go nearly as extreme as "stall as long as possible"

Ambusher is already very OP. If you sac the first few you find and keep the ones like crit, attack boost and being able to cast the same spell 5 times in a row, by the time you get 9 you are obscenely broken on most builds. You simply have to use a few double sac rooms to pump your ambusher. More would be nice, but would absolutely break the game (especially with the drop rate of ambusher stuff).


Creds : 100% achievements.

My personal biggest gripe outside of what you said is that anything is tied to resetting difficulty. Difficulty shouldn't be tied to seasons whatsoever.

[Cheshire]

The difficulty of challenge ranks desperately needs to ramp up way more, and way faster. I'm on challenge rank 17, and I've literally only ever died when I've intentionally taken 25+ damage from a sea breach. At this rate, rank 20 will barely be on par with "normal" difficulty on any other roguelite game.
I'm very thankful that the game starts out extremely easy, since there are a lot of inexperienced players who just want to enjoy themselves. But the challenge ranks should serve to allow everyone to find the difficulty that's most engaging to them.