Game too easy, even on nightmare with 0 sins?

[Scion]

I realize that this is going to be an outlier in the feedback, but I'm finding that the game is way too easy so far. I am playing on nightmare and doing a 0 sin run as well. So that is even with all the handicaps from the Chorts.

I am almost done with the Aspen lock. I run a 13-card waste + piety deck and only twice, at the big bosses (Cat and Famine Demon), have I needed to change my deck setup to be different.

The puzzle-battles are fun and decently challenging though. Only issue is that they need to reset faster.

I was hoping that I would be forced to switch up my deck a little more, based on the type of demons I'm facing. As of right now, there seems to be little reason to use anything OTHER than waste for damage, especially with the waste-boosting trinkets.

Edit: Oh right, having an option to NOT always add new cards to your deck would be greatly appreciated. I always have to remove a new card after a battle.

[warlorddaslayer]

Curse/bless deck also is pretty mad.

[Hesmah]

I'm about at the same place as you in the story and I have the same feelings. Going bless + aoe/firm nukes.

Maybe if we're not supposed to be able to remove pages while outside the house? Would make it bit harder in long journeys I guess.

[WhyNotZoidberg]

Originally posted by Hesmah:

I'm about at the same place as you in the story and I have the same feelings. Going bless + aoe/firm nukes.

Maybe if we're not supposed to be able to remove pages while outside the house? Would make it bit harder in long journeys I guess.

That would be stupid for newcomers, since depending on your deck, you can ace pretty much every battle and then die to creatures like the hunter spirit because you just can't deal damage. That's a recipe for frustration. I mean, if you'd restrict it to nightmare mode, I guess it'd be OK though.

[Kekuy]

It's just that buffing is OP.

Stacking buffs that buff passively(e.g. going ham on Piety(with minimal Ward) or Prayer instead of Ward and Bless) gets even more retarded. It's not uncommon to have 50+ Bless at turn 3-4 with 2 items and 1-2 casts of Prayer card in early chapter 4, all the while having respectable armor from Ward + Piety. You can throw in 10+ regeneration into the mix as well.
Before that you just stack Bless manually, and you actually can outdamage easily the, say giant fish' regen even if you don't dispel.

And then you can do some fun stuff like nuking the enemies with 400+ per turn dmg with multihit cards.

Either the devs made this intentionally(judging by the bosses superinflated stats), or didn't really playtest. You just figured out the OP strat(well, part of it) early. Actually I think there is only a couple of Waste-resistant bosses in the whole game, and they are very late.
What's funny is that the card that lets you bypass Waste immunity doesn't even come into play even once since you just get it too late.

[Scion]

Beat the game now. It got harder for a short bit in the middle, but got easy again once I got the "Deal damage equal to shields." card.

Also the "Deal 3x of the damage you took last turn." card is completely busted.

Perhaps some more gameplay-focused DLC might be something the devs could do. More balanced to actually be difficult, and with less of the UI quirks and long animations of the main game.

[ThortheBore]

Yes, Judea is the strongest card for sure. There's also a white card that is an immediate swipe gesture (so you play it instantly for free and then your deck gets smaller) that makes every card in your Zagavor firm. That card is insane. I want to take it into some super battles where there are no herbs allowed, but literally nothing is a challenge after Egor. I think his Hefty ability should have been given to enemies way more liberally.

[CROATOA]

Originally posted by Scion:

Game too easy

There is an instrument for changing balance if you are uncomfortable with it, just google translate it https://steamcommunity.com/app/1138660/discussions/0/4939872515508724582/

Originally posted by Scion:

Edit: Oh right, having an option to NOT always add new cards to your deck would be greatly appreciated. I always have to remove a new card after a battle.

There is exactly that option in Settings->Game.

[RedPepper93]

Agreed, I'm in the middle of the game, it's pretty easy on the hardest difficulty. I think there should be another one which is harder.

[Myth Alric]

I feel like part of the reason it might be too easy is because you can have a min deck size that lets you draw nearly all the cards you have. Which lets you have an extremely tuned deck. Also if you play with the min deck size the entire time, you are saving a ton of money because you are hardly crafting any cards. Which means you have a lot of extra money to get other stuff.

I think if they increased the min deck size on the higher difficulties that would help. Though not sure.

[Greatfox [RUS]]

There are a lot of powerful decks (I mostly ran bless+curse+draw more cards deck in the early and the mid game for the control it provides - you can easily get kills with the word that gives you money for doing so). I'm glad I didn't start out at the hardest difficulty, but now that I know what things exist in the game, it shouldn't be a problem to tackle a challenging run (judging by the difficulty modifiers, even the crude untuned deck I used will perform similarly well). Games like that don't really have to be balanced as the fun comes from experimenting with different decks and items to see how powerful it can be made.

With swipe, you can make a deck that's even smaller than the minimum size one while also stacking some modifiers onto it's cards, so increasing the min size won't really help.

Also, using multiple instances of the word that gives you +15 coins for finishing an enemy on the same enemy immediately after it's dead will give you +15 coins per word used.

[Vladimir Beletsky]

Opinions seem to be divided: many people seem to think that the game is too hard. I personally agree, that the game is more on the easy side for experienced card players.

[Myth Alric]

Now that I think about it, I think it is just a difference in their definition of what is easy and hard. If you die in the game you can just redo the battle with no penalty. It is entirely possible someone could die several times and still consider it easy while someone might die a couple of times and think it is hard. Even though both people die the same amount they have a different opinion on what is easy or hard.

[Greatfox [RUS]]

Originally posted by Vladimir Beletsky:

Opinions seem to be divided: many people seem to think that the game is too hard. I personally agree, that the game is more on the easy side for experienced card players.

It's similar to Tyranny in this aspect: the beginning is difficult since the there aren't that many options to choose, but once you're in the midgame, there's more than one deck+item build that would trump most of the encounters. That said, there's no need to balance the game (it won't end well, better leave it as it is) - increasing variety in the mechanics used by the enemies during encounters should suffice.

The early game puzzles are a bit annoying since it's hard to know which cards would come next (and because it's hard to quickly grasp what value a given status would be when the attack is made), but, at the same time, the 1-turn puzzles in the mansion are rather satisfying (as you can finally do the math without having to write down the intermediate results you can't keep in memory otherwise).

[Tozobi]

On one hand, combat is easy once you figure out which combo you need to go for (waste + whatever does appear to be superior to everything else). On the other hand, you then get a boss fight like the beer waste demon, which is immune to waste. Then you have to reload to swap decks and fight again

[Omni]

Agreed, but I don't think Waste or buff stacking are even close the most broken thing. Even on Nightmare combat becomes trivial from chapter two onwards once you get 4x Curse and a Sea Depth. Throw in a Secret Page trinket, +Curse trinkets and another Sea Depth and non-boss fights consistently end on turn one, or two if there are three enemies. Most boss fights take two, sometimes three turns at most (for example, I killed the vodyanoi big boss in two turns). Up until then I would say the game on Nightmare was decently challenging but not hard (I used a Waste-stacking deck until then).

I think the Curse debuff is too strong when combined with cards that do damage based on the amount of Curse an enemy has (the biggest offender being Sea Depth). That makes Curse extremely effective and efficient at both offense and defense simultaneously. If an enemy isn't dead yet, its damage is reduced to 1 meaning +3 armor from a Circle (Gesture) can prevent all damage until next turn. Additional +armor or defense cards are pointless.