Asphodel and rebalancing in general

[Traygus]

Asphodel needs serious attention IMO. It's a pretty steep difficulty spike under good conditions, and ruins runs if you haven't gotten decent rooms already. The terrain often gets abused by flying creatures accidentally or makes it hard to use the shield charge without landing in lava.

Then there's the boss fight that I haven't REALLY learned because there is just crap flying EVERYWHERE. It has a very odd feel to it because when the adds aren't up, I'm absolutely melting the boss...then it's pure chaos in slow motion with a puckered butthole when the adds are up.

As for rebalancing in general, maybe take a close look at what feels required for a good run, because it feels like half of the boons in the game are garbage and like 25%+ are borderline mandatory (like a dash deflect for instance). Some things are pretty good if you have the right build...but I don't feel like I have any real control over build.

One last thing to consider is some option to let us back out of a boon selection panel to comb over our stuff or have an option to view them in window beyond "this replaces that" because it's not always easy to track which curses/effects are on which abilities and these determine the value of the next proposed set of upgrades.

I think I'm like 18 hours in and have only gotten to the final boss once with an awesome build and didn't even finish him. Since I'm kinda stuck at the moment...all I can do is die over and over with little to nothing gained between runs. All in all happy with my 20 dollar investment, but I'm already looking for the next game because of how steep the progression curve already is.

[Scorpix]

Just train and find your the best weapon and gods. 3rd area is much harder.

[His Dudeness]

Git gud.

I kid, I kid. The game basically has terraces to its learning curves with the transitions jarring for some. Each biome kind of has its own thing that makes it unique and forces you to play a little differently. Tartarus introduces the traps. Asphodel the lava lakes to play around and flying enemies. Elysium has some...interesting minions for you to fight and its own traps. And the Temple has its own unique mechanic that you'll love, lol. Also more traps.

This basically means that each time you reach a new level you have to adjust to a new, major change in how to fight in the areas. Once you get the hang of fighting around the lava pits, and possibly using them to your advantage depending on your build, your runs with smooth out as you transition from Tartarus up to Asphodel.

Also, the Hydra is definitely one of the harder bosses to get used to. This is another thing where you'll have to go against it a few times to understand which heads are doing what. You also need to be good at dashing by this point, so the Hydra will test you there with all the ♥♥♥♥ it throws at you. I imagine you'd ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HATE the 'hard mode' version of this dude.

I certainly agree on having a way to view our current boons when a new one is being offered, though. When it gets later in the game and your juggling ten or twelve boons it would be nice to not have to go off my terrible memory.

18 hours is about where I got to the final boss, too. I think it was a few runs later where I finally got him with a railgun Dionysus/Ares run. I agree that once you've filled up the mirror you don't really have much to gain between runs. I've mainly kept going because of the small tidbits of lore that get fed to me at the flow of a barely-open faucet every time I die and hand out more nectar.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Regarding the difficulty, I do think you need to spend a bit more time playing and learning the game.

>25%+ are borderline mandatory (like a dash deflect for instance).

I thought this once myself, and it was actually around the time when I first encountered the bone hydra. Honestly, where I am at now, I generally never get the dash deflect, and I'd rather much get a dionysus/aphrodite boon on it (so I can guarantee that extra 50% bonus damage when enemies are double-afflicted for instance).

So my suggestion is to actually learn the bone hydra's moves, because you'll find that all the attacks are very much dodgeable. By the time you get to the final group phase, you may be liable to get hurt because there's just so much ♥♥♥♥ everywhere.

As you level up in the game, and you figure out combos, you'll find there's a multitude of ways to instantly kill the other snakes in a 1-3 combos. Hell, I kept thinking the bow aspect where you load the casts (hera?) was an idiotic idea. That ended up giving me my first bow victory; my burst damage was ridiculous. But I only realized that after trying something new.

>The terrain often gets abused by flying creatures accidentally or makes it hard to use the shield charge without landing in lava.

The shield charge was my original weapon of choice when I started the game cause it increased my survivability (course, actually beating them game required more damage than I could muster at the time). So I think it's certainly a good choice, but I just have to say, maybe don't fire off randomly into a direction offscreen? And you always can dash away from lava before taking damage.

>Since I'm kinda stuck at the moment...all I can do is die over and over with little to nothing gained between runs.

I mean, are you getting better? Are you enjoying the game? I'm sure you'll gaining rocks and darkness in the meantime.

And honestly, for the record, I think Elysium has a huge jump atm. My dps can feel totally comfortable in the first two areas, and then suddenly, I'm having issue killing anything in Elysium.

[Revolution]

I do not feel that way about Asphodel, but about Elysium. It's often the point in the run where I feel like "well fk, I dont have enough damage"

[itssirtou]

I agree with everyone else, Asphodel is easy. Hydra is 'usually' easy, depends on which heads spawn. Elysium is where the run really starts.

My only issue with Asphodel is how it seems to be tailor made to ♥♥♥♥ over Hermes and Than trinkets. The enemies aren't dangerous, but they're so spread out and jump around so much you can't stack Lambent Plume. They don't deal a lot of damage but they're almost all made to get cheap hits in, sorry Than.

Hydra is the first real lesson in "Don't stop moving" Just keep dash attacking, in a reasonably intelligent manner, and the fight is pretty easy. Focus on the Green (spawner) Red (lava spam) and Pink (wave) heads as much as you can while never sitting still.

Elysium's lesson is "Don't get greedy" This is the part where not getting hit is more important than getting in hits, until it's time to assassinate a blob so the fight doesn't go on forever. Most opponents don't really stagger so you have to be more conservative with your play. This is especially important for the boss fight. Focus Asterius unless you're confident you can kill him during his call phase. Fighting both after Thesius calls is... iffy.

Styx's lesson is "♥♥♥♥ you, here's poison and laser spam" The satyrs are too tanky, the penis shaped room is was designed by an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. And not only is there never a safe place to stand, dash spam also won't do much for you since lasers and poison pools are persistent. You have to be aggressive but not overaggressive.

Hades' lesson is "dash twice when he spin attacks". Also "Play safe until his cast wears off" and "what do you mean the pillar doesn't cover me there?!"

One last thing to consider is some option to let us back out of a boon selection panel to comb over our stuff or have an option to view them in window beyond "this replaces that" because it's not always easy to track which curses/effects are on which abilities and these determine the value of the next proposed set of upgrades.

Pretty sure you can press B (or whatever you have set to show the boon menu) when picking one. Could be wrong.

[Traygus]

Ok ya'll have fun but I'm tellin ya average players may find themselves much more exasperated than you find warranted and earlier than you expect, but this is something only the devs can elucidate.

[Revolution]

I don't know how many hours into the game you are, but once you get to the point where you can max out a few upgrades from the mirror, it automatically plays the way most people tell you in this thread.

[Morton Koopa Jr.]

Originally posted by Traygus:

Ok ya'll have fun but I'm tellin ya average players may find themselves much more exasperated than you find warranted and earlier than you expect, but this is something only the devs can elucidate.

Funny, you think I'm NOT an average player.

A few runs in, and Elysium with it's regenerating enemies, wall traps, yellow armor galore, kamikaze carts, and then a 2v1 boss where one of them just spends his time blocking everything....that is crippling. And it looks from this thread, I'm not alone in that.

Elysium was where I finally realized what that skull icon meant, and I avoided those for a while. And it's where I needed to start thinking more about how boons synergized, or else I was never going to kill Theseus before his God summons killed me first. (Oh and by this time, you probably have a death defiance.)

edit: wait, I don't think OP has made it to Elysium often. So I think OP might be an outlier here. If he ever gets to Elysium more often, he'll probably realize that this game is even harder.

edit2: actually looking at your post, you're being awfully dismissive here. People legit are giving you advice, and yet, all you say, is well, oly the devs can do anything. I mean, you could also do something.

[Traygus]

Originally posted by Morton Koopa Jr.:

Originally posted by Traygus:

Ok ya'll have fun but I'm tellin ya average players may find themselves much more exasperated than you find warranted and earlier than you expect, but this is something only the devs can elucidate.

Funny, you think I'm NOT an average player.

A few runs in, and Elysium with it's regenerating enemies, wall traps, yellow armor galore, kamikaze carts, and then a 2v1 boss where one of them just spends his time blocking everything....that is crippling. And it looks from this thread, I'm not alone in that.

Elysium was where I finally realized what that skull icon meant, and I avoided those for a while. And it's where I needed to start thinking more about how boons synergized, or else I was never going to kill Theseus before his God summons killed me first. (Oh and by this time, you probably have a death defiance.)

edit: wait, I don't think OP has made it to Elysium often. So I think OP might be an outlier here. If he ever gets to Elysium more often, he'll probably realize that this game is even harder.

edit2: actually looking at your post, you're being awfully dismissive here. People legit are giving you advice, and yet, all you say, is well, oly the devs can do anything. I mean, you could also do something.

I get to Elysium almost as a rule, and it is tougher than asphodel, but idk....I don't dread it like I do asphodel, which is where I really start to feel the difference between a good and bad run. I just really dislike a lot of the mobs and how they interact with the terrain, the medusa mid boss (and mini medusas that occasionally torment me), and I hate the Hydra (MORE than Theseus + Asterius).

Me saying that only the devs can elucidate on a topic isn't being dismissive. It means that only the devs are able to parse data and see how average players are performing in certain areas. If average players are quitting entirely before completing a single run, then it's telling, and wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.

On the subject of advice, I should give credit to itssirtou for advice that was both general and specific (and that I used).

All in all, my opinions are my own. Some of it is what I think, and some what I prefer. I think Tartarus to Asphodel is an early, steep increase in difficulty, and as such, RNG can have a big impact on the viability of the run. How I look leaving Asphodel is a big indicator of how the run will generally go, at least for me. I personally feel like Asphodel is more chaotic than the other maps and I dislike that. I think that the Hydra boss is weird because his main health bar melts in comparison to the total time of the encounter and it feels like a chaotic mess when it counts.The heads can also have weird hitboxes because of being elevated.I think that the mob AI doesn't know how to navigate the terrain, as they often stand in lava taking damage, or fly over it, hurling crap at you (with impunity depending on your build).

[Fringehunter7719]

I find it very hard to talk about zone balancing because the metagame upgrades are transformative on balance.

On my main profile with powerful trinkets, progression upgrades, contractor upgrades, new weapons, weapon upgrades, companions and mirror upgrades I am disappointed if I don't clear heat 15 Hades more or less every time, if I start a fresh one chances are I don't get past Megara.

At some point in between Asphodel felt hard, and then a bit later Elysium felt hard and the truth is I barely improved but now they don't.

The good news of that design is that if you stick with it and get upgrades it's very possible to get to the point where the game will feel quite easy, even if you don't improve or barely do.

[Traygus]

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

I find it very hard to talk about zone balancing because the metagame upgrades are transformative on balance.

On my main profile with powerful trinkets, progression upgrades, contractor upgrades, new weapons, weapon upgrades, companions and mirror upgrades I am disappointed if I don't clear heat 15 Hades more or less every time, if I start a fresh one chances are I don't get past Megara.

At some point in between Asphodel felt hard, and then a bit later Elysium felt hard and the truth is I barely improved but now they don't.

The good news of that design is that if you stick with it and get upgrades it's very possible to get to the point where the game will feel quite easy, even if you don't improve or barely do.

Very interesting perspective. So for someone like me, with mirror giving 2 charges of death defiance and maxing the others up to the one giving % chance for rare boons (should I forego other stuff just for the last charge of death's defiance *now?*) a decent bit of contractor upgrades, just got fishing rod, ummm, chaos shield +2....

Without actually downing Hades, it feels like all I can do is collect darkness and keys...

[Fringehunter7719]

Collecting resources and learning the attack patterns of the enemies I would think. The nature of the game is that you run through the early zone for every time you run through the later ones so you get used to the attack patterns without realising it.

I honestly think the hydra is the easiest boss in game when you learn what it does, it's incredibly predictable - it just does the same cycle of projectiles/extend/slam (or slam x3 in the final phase)/ retract over and over - and if the random heads are giving problems you can easily use that whole area around the main head and just dodge its telegraphed slam or projectile attack.

I think you mentioned the mega gorgon miniboss. That is also very formulaic, the head just spits, waits a few seconds then spits again and you can just double dodge around it in a circle to avoid those. The body slams down when its shadow is centred over you, so just bait it and dodge then get a couple of hits in, on the head or body whichever you want to kill first, then dodge away again. Play defensive and learn the pattern a couple of times without feeling the need to get hits and it'll suddenly click (hopefully) like it did for me.

More upgrades make a huge difference, although I think your current budget is right - the third charge of death defiance isn't more valuable than anything before rare boons, although it is more valuable than those, relative to the cost.

Finding a few builds you're comfortable with can help a lot too. For example I like dash builds with Poseidon (I find the Athena dash you mentioned to be pretty well the worst by the way, because you're immune when dashing anyway and it does minimal damage), so I often take Poseidon's trinket to Tartarus so he's one of my four gods. I find the spear, using almost exclusively special attack between double dashes or the shield again with special very easy to play as you can keep range or dodge immunity almost all the time.

[Superstarsage]

Other people have thrown it out there but while athena dash is pretty much universally recommended, getting your hands on athena anything (except maybe rail special lol) will make asphodel infinitely easier even if it lands on like Bow Attack.. Only one enemy is melee and only one variant of boss add is also melee. So if you're having a hard time, pick up athena's trinket and laugh. Even if you get unlucky and only get damage reduction that'll save you pain too.

Other than that, positioning is highly important because just like how everything's super spread out, it can also get super cramped when all the spawns all decide to aggro and shoot in a circle. At some point, you might just need to pick a point in the circle and dash your way through. Outside of seeing videos of play, I can't really offer much else.

[Spimmy]

Not finding Asphodel to be much fun

[Hazel]

Building around your hammer upgrades is generally much more important than boon synergy