Queen's Trial upgrades feel terrible.

[Andiuxy]

Besides the fundamental upgrades, the random picks are terrible and too expensive... After 8 settlements and 4 away from the seal, I barely had 8 upgrades and from those I only had 1 race house / 0 flame upgrades.

You're basically done if you don't find a good path with modifiers. Also the lack of embarkation points feels terrible. You have 0 as soon as you arrive prestige/viceroy territory.... what is the point of getting embarkation bonuses as upgrades if you can't even pick a single one for free???

My suggestion is too let us re-roll upgrades with bread or remove gears as a wall to simple upgrades... That would solve many things until you rework this mode.

The queen trial is far from impossible, but it does not motivate me to start a 10 hour run to get "F" by upgrades lol.

[Skallagrim]

While the QHT upgrades can definitely need some re-balancing, only manage to get 8 upgrades just means you are not pathing aggressively towards map modifiers. Aim for having ~60% of the settlements played with negative modifiers, and at least half of the remaining settlements on world even titles for the in-cycle bonus. Most of them are not really negative anyways. Getting 20+ upgrades is not difficult at all.

Embarkation points can use some tweaks. Maybe add 1 per fundamental upgrade. The other embarkation options are there strictly when you plan to spent reserve points. Have ~10 reserve points saved up, and pop 1 or 2 on a tough map if you feel starting with stone (open caches), or bricks (frog houses) can be useful. At the end have about a dozen points saved up for the seal map. Again something that highly incentifies taking map modifiers.

Race house is practically useless in QHT. They are only worth taking if offered along other race houses, with Harpies being the best of the 5.

--Edit--

Also I noticed you are basically at Seal with only 8 settlements. This suggest you want to re-think how to approach pathing. Try circling around Smoldering City for ~6-7 settlements, with goal of having every one of them played on modifier / event tile. Then make a B-line towards a seal. I tend to arrive at seal with ~16-17 settlements, and more than 10 played with modifiers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3356089076
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3384722133

[Andiuxy]

The issue is that there are modifiers that don't give gears , i guess i was just unlucky.

[Skallagrim]

You shouldn't be picky about them. Only modifier I actively avoid is no pause, and even that I took on both of those 2 runs I posted. Everything else should be fair game, as long as you are not stacking multiple hard ones (Ancient Battleground / no trade / no order / monastery of 1st order) together. After a dozen or so modifiers you should have plenty of all meta materials.