Start up feels too hard

[Phoenix]

Either you dilute your late game with useless symbols or you lose early game to not enough symbols. I think the common pool should have some symbols removed from it in order to make getting synergistic starts easier. That or increase the odds on getting synergistic symbols in the game overall.

[Magic Myra]

Not to mention that a lot of good or great items for late game play (particularly Coal, but Magpies, Thieves, and any symbol that gives a bigger payoff after X number of spins) are too risky to take more than 1-2 of in the first few turns - which is particularly bad for Coal because it takes so long for it to pay off, and can be incredibly frustrating when you have 5 coal show up right at the start, and know that you're passing up on an easy 50+ gold a spin in the late game so you can, you know, make it to the late game.

[Pinstar]

The trick I've found is to take things that can easily be eaten as well as the characters who eat them. Keys and safes, even if you don't have the other half, are great because you'll eventually be able to pop them. Same goes for beer/wine, Candy, cheese and more. They'll flesh your board out early game and once you grab the thing that eats them, can mop up the board more easily. Void Stone/Characters are great early and late game too.

The things that are eaten by rare symbols (Diver, Mrs Fruit) I don't bank on as getting that specific consumer is no guarntee.

[Magic Myra]

Yeah, Keys/Lockboxes are, in my opinion, top tier picks early game, and the other consumables (Candy and Beer primarily, but Bananas and Banana Peels can be a good pick as well) aren't necessarily bad either - and one I've been turning to more and more is the Urn set (Urn, Big Urn, Tomb). Granted, they still need a specific item to destroy them (Grave Robber), but it's a common enough one that I'm generally fairly confident that it will show up somewhere along the way on any given run. I'm much more comfortable grabbing symbols from the Lockbox set (Lockbox, Safe, Treasure Chest, Mega Chest) than the associated keys for a similar reason - the Lockpick is a common item, and while I may end up with a run where I have a few keys and no Lockboxes to use them on, I almost never end up without a way to open up the Lockbox along the way.

However, there are enough spins that will come up without any of these items popping up that you'll have to take something that you can't easily get rid of (most runs, the bulk of what's available can't easily be gotten rid of), and because you really need a full slate of paying slots by the time you hit mid game, you can't afford to skip over any sets that either won't combo well into the late game or you cannot reliably get rid of. Most games, you're going to end up with a board full of slop - and because you don't have much you can do to avoid it, it really hurts the feel of the game.

[1classydude]

I agree with Pinstar. I need to stop taking crab cultists despite success just to try other things out, but I definitely take things that go away. Liquor or candy plus boxes/keys lets you fulfill early rent and trash several tiles at the cost of one dwarf or toddler which is really helpful. I also find myself taking fish pretty readily, I feel like you see fish bowl super often currently. Toss in some voids and capsules to hold you over and you can still skip a few times (while not reeeaaally filling in your board as hopefully most are temporary).

[THErne]

In addition to the symbols I find it hard to really shape my runs because of the huge variance in items. Sure, there are ways to filter out the item pool but you only really get 7 digs on a normal run (barring endless mode and the capsule that gives you common items). There are symbols, like rabbit fur and shiny pebble, that let you thin out common symbols and there are items, like golden carrot and lucky cat, that let you thin out common symbols, but not that much in the way of item tailoring. I don't know if there should be a way to straight up choose the items you can get seeing as the rare and very rare items like protractor, copycat, or fuel tank really break runs. But it'd be nice to see a better (or any) way of getting rarer items

[Drecon]

You know, the word luck is literally in the title. You can hedge and mitigate a lot to give yourself the best odds, but the game is not supposed to be 100% always winnable.

[wolfvahn]

Maybe not Drecon, but the death point shouldn't happen so early. It is more than possible that the game simply gives you nothing and you're unable to get 100 or 150.

[Geothermal1159]

There does need a bit of re-balancing or, including a new system as at the moment you could just select the middle option without caring what it is & 99.99% of the time get through the 1st 2 rents payments but, then as wolfvahn said not be able to pass the 3rd simply because the game gave you nothing that works together even when you are trying to make synergies.

That is quite a bit too much reliance on getting lucky just to get into the mid-game let alone end-game. I also suspect that the devs will be adding in more symbols & items as well with their own synergies which will only exacerbate the problems unless they find a way to balance out the total randomness & players being able to have some way to "make their own luck" in the game.

[german8r1]

I think you simply add a symbol that lets you remove another symbol. Or maybe an item where you pay to remove a symbol. Tired of crappy banana peels and cherries late game, along with the card suits.

[Magic Myra]

Originally posted by Drecon:

You know, the word luck is literally in the title. You can hedge and mitigate a lot to give yourself the best odds, but the game is not supposed to be 100% always winnable.

There is fun luck (in this context, seeing how what you buy comes up in each spin and seeing what options you have each spin to build up your engine with), and there is unfun luck (going a full pay cycle without getting any symbols worth taking - especially early game, where you know you need to take the crud if you want a chance to even get to something that might be worth taking). At the end of the day, you should almost always be agonizing over which good choice works best for what you're trying to do, not grumbling over what symbol will likely hurt you least in the long run as you slog through the early spins to something worth taking.

Besides, no one is saying it should be 100% winnable - there's a reason that whenever I talk about this, I'm always talking about giving players one of the Rare doublers like Chef or Dame rather than one of the consumers like Archaeologist - The doublers are balanced (and even with something like the Telescope, don't completely wreck the game) even right from the get go, and getting one early won't guarantee a win - you still need to carefully select the symbols you grab and focus on the combos you want to use. The difference is that you can focus on those builds right from the get go without having to wade through a few dozen spins worth of junk before you even have a chance at something worth building a strategy around.

[Drecon]

Some really good points. Thank all of you.

[Geothermal1159]

Another option could be to implement a "starting perk" or "luck type" which could influence certain types of symbols appearing more often with some examples being.

"Bad Luck" for thieves, hex, crows & dog/wolves.
"Fortuitous Luck" for gold, card suits & lock-boxes/safes.
"Natural Luck" for animals ([i[minus the ones from bad lucj[/i]), seeds/flowers & shiny stone.
"Blind Luck" for arrows, dice & ores.

These could give like a 10-25% chance of appearing more often with the type of luck being select-able at the beginning or even assigned randomly.

The idea is that it gives the player something that could be built with in mind but at the same time be varied enough that you can't just expect a certain type of synergy always appearing.

[Drecon]

I think I like the idea of starting with a random common item actually. Gives you direction without really destroying the balance of the whole game.

[Stanley'sSuperSauce]

I like the idea of trying to pool the items, or having a way to destroy everything. I find only a few very specific builds are actually worth going for, but then the rng makes it so you have to use other methods to try to keep going.