Tender Cactus has borderline incomprehensible description

[X-Parasite]

There are a lot of compounding factors that make the description impossible to parse.
- First, using an exponent with a fractional power isn't ideal.
- It says that attack damage is capped at two, but what is an attack? Is an "attack" any time an enemy takes damage? Or is it specifically when an enemy is hit with your orb? Are bombs attacks?
- What is bonus damage? Is bonus damage the damage I gain from crits? Is it damage I get from upgrading an orb? Or is it damage I get from item effects?
- If my damage is capped at 2 then why would I care about the increased damage effect?
- What is the use case of this item? When would I want it? What effect of the item allows it to scale in exchange for what seem to be crippling drawbacks?

It's not obvious

[phillip_lynx]

- ^1.3 is something. Every power over 1 is good
- The attack meant is the damage when shooting the ball.
- Bonus damage is all what you collect above hitting pegs. If Pegs have extra damage this is bonus. And Echo (I hope this is the name in english) is also bonus damage. And the damage of your wealth with the Pig-Ball. Etc.
- The increased Damage effect kicks in at every peg hit, because you do then your orb damage to the selected foe. <-- This means, you get your final damage while the ball is hitting pegs. The amount is the same, but dealt realtime AND it switches to the next enemy if the first is dead. So you do not waste a 5k hit on one enemy but distribute it to all.
- And last, in my games, when I had the cactus all of the boards were onehit.

[Lilbabycat]

i've avoided the item for all these reasons.
my presumption is that the base damage - as shown on the ball's tooltip is what is limited to 2.
actual damage is modified by the calc, which is X ^ 1.3
So if we have lots of upgraded marks on the stage, its very powerful, but mods to base damage (such as crit, spinesse, etc) are bad.
But i'm not sure.

[X-Parasite]

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

- ^1.3 is something. Every power over 1 is good
- The attack meant is the damage when shooting the ball.
- Bonus damage is all what you collect above hitting pegs. If Pegs have extra damage this is bonus. And Echo (I hope this is the name in english) is also bonus damage. And the damage of your wealth with the Pig-Ball. Etc.
- The increased Damage effect kicks in at every peg hit, because you do then your orb damage to the selected foe.
- And last, in my games, when I had the cactus all of the boards were onehit.

Apologies, if my intent wasn't clear, I'm asking these questions rhetorically, to illustrate how confused a given player might be. I'm not personally looking for the answers, I'm trying to illustrate how the item's design is poorly communicated.

[phillip_lynx]

Originally posted by X-Parasite:

Originally posted by phillip_lynx:

- ^1.3 is something. Every power over 1 is good
- The attack meant is the damage when shooting the ball.
- Bonus damage is all what you collect above hitting pegs. If Pegs have extra damage this is bonus. And Echo (I hope this is the name in english) is also bonus damage. And the damage of your wealth with the Pig-Ball. Etc.
- The increased Damage effect kicks in at every peg hit, because you do then your orb damage to the selected foe.
- And last, in my games, when I had the cactus all of the boards were onehit.

Apologies, if my intent wasn't clear, I'm asking these questions rhetorically, to illustrate how confused a given player might be. I'm not personally looking for the answers, I'm trying to illustrate how the item's design is poorly communicated.

OK, this was not clear to me. So sorry for my text.

But on the other hand, after playing the first time with the cactus all of this was clear to me. (As the other relics when I started a long time ago. Many of them I had to see before I got the description and their effects (also in combination with others))

[solifugyd]

I pretty much understood the description, even if it was pretty complicated, but after taking it at the end of boss 1, I seemed to suffer a severe and immediate drop in ability to kill things, and the run ended because of an encounter with the beacons that force you to target them, appearing along with archers and casters. I can't really see how you could play around those encounters with this thing. Granted, it was in cruciball 17 or so, but what the hell? The game really doesn't need even more boss relics that shoot you in the foot.

[phillip_lynx]

Originally posted by solifugyd:

I pretty much understood the description, even if it was pretty complicated, but after taking it at the end of boss 1, I seemed to suffer a severe and immediate drop in ability to kill things, and the run ended because of an encounter with the beacons that force you to target them, appearing along with archers and casters. I can't really see how you could play around those encounters with this thing. Granted, it was in cruciball 17 or so, but what the hell? The game really doesn't need even more boss relics that shoot you in the foot.

Only get it, if you have a high (Standard) Damage Ball and maybe relics which gives +x/+y.

On a very lucky run I had a ball with 22/50. This one killed sooooo fast.

And remember, the Damage output is equal to non cactus runs, only distributed in the flight (with the exeption of the "hit all" balls)

[Luckyxray]

all i know is that its pretty bad for most runs

[Josh]

It's basically the same as the molten mantel, but instead of being op with any deck it is only good with guaranteed muscircle or guaranteed crits with spiness. I had it with a crit deck, but I only had one crit, so if i hit the crit at the end of a shot it didn't matter. It was like using a muscirle deck, but hitting a crit at the last minute without this relic. It also completely removes any aoe you might have, and a few relics like the net don't do anything. I think in Muscircle decks it can be a better alternative to removing a crit. Since you do damage every time you hit a peg it doesn't matter if you hit a crit at the end with this relic.

[X-Parasite]

I JUST REALIZED WHY I WAS SO CONFUSED!!!
It's because the damage number I was seeing when my ball hit a peg was completely desynced from the damage being dealt to enemies on each peg hit

[Sir Hasserfüllt]

Got it twice so far. So far the answer to the "when would I want it" question for me is "always". Just pick orbs with decent base damage for it and send it. I two-shotted the boss without crits, then one-shot it with them on the next run.
Well...killed during the first shot, but I suppose that doesn't count as ZTK lol

[Lilbabycat]

it also seems to be very powerful with builds that have multiple respawns + multiballs + upgrade orbs, but if you don't have a certain threshold for the high hp enemies it falls short, gotta scale.