Really enjoying this game! Putting down some thoughts on possible improvements

[Dr Snooze]

First off, as I said I'm loving this game! It's a lot of fun, and there are a lot of different combinations of characters and builds to play with. Lots of good depth here!

Here is some (hopefully constructive) feedback from my perspective:
1. I find myself not wanting to attach recipes to gray items, which means I end up holding on to a lot of them. It would be nice if there was some mechanic to upgrade the base item after it's been forged, possibly in the store or at the camp site. Then I'd feel better about attaching good recipes to gray items early on.
2. When I'm going for some type of debuff build, I find that the heroes' abilities are usually not the primary source of that debuff. It's mostly the relics and items that generate the big stacks of debuffs. There are some heroes who do a good job of it, but a lot of them generate 3 or 4 per cast, and that's just not really enough to build around.
3. This is more of a nebulous point, but I feel like every party ends up being built around a single thing, like going all out on bleeds, or ethereal damage, or summons. I wonder if it would be better if there was a mechanic to encourage more variety within a single party? Not sure where I'm going with this, but it's a thought.

That's it for now, would love to hear other ideas and discuss!

[Hotloop]

Hey thanks for the feedback, and I am glad that you're enjoying the game!

For 1. I think the decision to hold onto an item is part of the decision making process that the player has to make. I don't think it's necessary a bad thing, it creates a questioning about do I prefer to be stronger now or a bit stronger later and do I have a team that can support not having X recipe for now. But there's already sort of a fix for this and this is the Dismantling at the shop, where you can detach your gray heirlooms at a small gold price.

2. Good point, and that's by design. If picking a single hero would already give you enough Burn for instance to build around Burn then the synergies would be way too easy to build. You need to mix and match more heroes that apply the debuff that you want or other effects. That being said, the HERO REBORN which will release in the 1.0 update, will allow all heroes to change their "specialization" and some of the hero reborn perks are about specializing in applying way more debuffs.

3. That's what the game tries to do with relic such Sea Horse, where your Summon count is basically 8 but it's capped at 8 or Moltenstone, which gives 19 Burns but caps the amount of Burns to 19. It's trying to give you ways to be able to have a bit of everything so that you can make more varied builds with multiple archetypes.
I don't think the optimal play is to focus on just 1 thing, but focusing on a small array of things, for instance, if you focus on Bleeds, then you'll most likely also focus on dealing damage with attacks since Bleeds scale with that. And if you go for Summon build, well summons on their own are not going to make you win the game, you generally need a more complex synergy to make summons work. But I do see what you mean and that's definitely the goal with the game, that focusing on 1 single thing should not be optimal. At the same time, if you focus on everything than that should not be optimal neither as that means you don't have a synergy. It's about finding that good spot!

Cheers! :)