Item tiers/rarities feel kinda inconsistent...

[Halucygeno]

TL;DR: The rarity-to-usefulness ratio of higher tier items feels very inconsistent to me, so getting an Epic or Legendary is usually a bit of a letdown. I felt like the more of these high-tier items I unlocked, the more I diluted the item pool with gimmicky junk (no offence).

I don't know, maybe I just haven't played enough (I'm still on Shard 9), but I get the strong impression that some Epic and Legendary items (which are supposed to be very good, I assume) are extremely gimmicky, situational and/or mediocre. Others feel less like items and more like setups for synergies. And the crazy thing is, I think they're sometimes outdone by Rare or even Common tier items.

E.g. Low Grade Timeline Swapper - restores 2% of your max health per 10% of Boost every 3 seconds. Completely useless if you don't have Boost-increasing items, and even then, you can probably hope for an average of 4% to 8% health. So every 3s, you heal less than one tenth of your health bar. It's really not that good, but look, Epic quality.

Otherworldly Contact - On activate: Destroy all nearby Obstacles for 5 seconds. "Obstacles" means debris like cacti, rocks, etc. - it does not destroy lasers or solid structures, so it's functionally a less safe version of Personal Matter Stabilizer (albeit with a much shorter cooldown). Kinda useful, but iffy. Legendary quality.

Meanwhile, Greed Machine gives you 3 seconds of invincibility, 35% Boost and 20% Energy just for picking up sparks. It has good synergies with spark-generators like High Risk Investment, Interest, Jackpot, Steady Investment, Instant Compensation Machine and ESPECIALLY Dangerous Investment Scheme, but not only; Blood Engine can be used during the invulnerability to give yourself infinite Boost for free. Synergies aside, it's just a very solid item, letting you build up tons of speed early on. It's situational, obviously, but you'll be picking up sparks anyway, so you'll get a lot of use out of it. Rare quality.

And finally, despite being one of the earliest Common items you get (I don't think you even need to unlock it), Plutonium Coin is low-key GOATed. Having your Energy passively regenerate even while you're in the air makes using your abilities feel so much more consistent and reliable, and not so dependent on you getting perfect landings all the time. It genuinely changes my play-style into something more relaxed and free.

There are many other, smaller examples (e.g. I think Fragile Taco [Rare] is just a less reliable Aromatic Herbs [Common], Shiny Anchor Pin [Rare] is a less reliable Golden Necklace [Common], etc.), but I’ve already yapped too much. I didn’t suggest any changes, cause I’m not sure if this is really a problem that needs fixing or anything (on the bright side, having good items on the lower tiers means I find them more often :D). That said, after getting a bunch of unlocks, my favorite Epic or Legendary items are now competing for space with dozens of weird gimmicks that I wouldn't pick over a Plutonium Coin. That feels pretty bad.

So yeah, it can be very underwhelming to see a high-tier item only for it to be something super gimmicky.

[Dyxa]

Agreed, most legendaries are rubbish while basic items are what really carried your run, some are on proper tier while most are questionable.

Greed machine are broken! since it also counts for those gained sparks as well. Other broken sparks combo are probably that star item thingy which makes you invulnerable when picking up sparks and the item which gives you sparks on hurt, with them, all obstacle seems like sparks instead. Even so, all of this said example is not yet reached the broken realm, and there are plenty of this.

All hail Plutonium Coin!

[the poopshitter]

This. The investment scheme legendary or whatever it was called is just straight garbage. Costs 1.5k on a good day and will literally never make up its own cost in any shard even if you somehow get a legendary and pick it stage 1.
Then again so are all items that grant you sparks in some way while costing several hundreds of them at any given point... they're just worthless and overtuned unless you get them from a stage that drops items and all your other choices are also meh. OR you happen to get some item that procs off of sparks picked up and it also somehow counts... which, in that case items only being functional via synergy is still terrible design and they shouldn't be bloating up higher rarities.

Meanwhile the game is a cakewalk if you get two-three plutonium coins in the same run so you can just spam your ability basically all the time and not interact with the 20 back-to-back tiny pits that you can't see until you're right next to them which the game decides to drop on you.

[the poopshitter]

Originally posted by Dyxa:

Agreed, most legendaries are rubbish while basic items are what really carried your run, some are on proper tier while most are questionable.

Greed machine are broken! since it also counts for those gained sparks as well. Other broken sparks combo are probably that star item thingy which makes you invulnerable when picking up sparks and the item which gives you sparks on hurt, with them, all obstacle seems like sparks instead. Even so, all of this said example is not yet reached the broken realm, and there are plenty of this.

All hail Plutonium Coin!

It's to the point that there's multiple items that do the EXACT same thing and HAVE LITERALLY IDENTICAL DESCRIPTIONS beyond a small technicality... and are of different rarities.
There's a green item that gives you 2 health every 2 seconds. Sounds fine, right?
Then there's a blue item that gives you 2% health every 2 seconds. Works identically, and the health gain seems about the same too even after upgrading your max health.
Why does it exist? Nobody knows. It's just redundant and feels like padding in a game where the roguelike mechanics are already padding and detract from the core gameplay loop.

I understand that there's only so much you can do in terms of items for this sort of gameplay loop and so little mechanics so you basically HAVE to make everything revolve around either a timer, an active trigger, close calls or perfect landings... and affect only health, energy, speed, or perfect landings. But... that doesn't mean you should copypaste items outright to pad out rarities.

[Genny War]

Yeah. I kinda wish I could reset my item rarity upgrade back down to nothing so I could roll more of the basic items again. The higher level stuff is mostly for stacking effects that have synergy, I feel like, or otherwise change the way you play (gimmicks and such), while the more basic items keep gameplay the same, but are just small buffs, which is really all you need for most things. I like some of the silly items sometimes, but I wish I rolled that coin more often lol

The % healing is better if you have a few health buffs, like pumpkin squash or breastplate. There's one that is random chance, amounts to the same 1 per second, but the random chance means luck makes it better, and such.

I like the idea, but feels like u get so few items you only rarely get good interacts, unless you play for two hours on endless or smth lol

[Lord Buttsak]

I'm inclined to agree, I've had majority purple/blue items absolutely carry my shards, it's a lot more attractive to buy two purples than one legendary that isn't going to add much to your run