New Patch Really Sells On The "Between Heaven and Hell" Feeling

[Toran]

-Adds a way to gain upgrades (that already previously had a much better, natural way of earning) with the use of souls.
-Drastically reduces the way to earn said souls in the same patch (I.E. Removed Soul Thief, dropped most Boss soul drops to 10, soul room rewards much smaller in early game).

Like, what am I supposed to feel here? It just feels clunky at best with how some of these patches are rolling out at this point. For starters, the souls currency now has way too many things relying on it between passive upgrades, mandatory Alignment shops, Black Market items, and the other niche soul room uses.

Compound this with the still awkward new balance where melee weapons lost most reward to their risk since tank builds are way too rng reliant on the right gear dropping, managing mana is a right pain without dropping literally everything in trying to get more crystals, and ranged builds just feel exceptionally easy compared to everything else. The trait pool is way too bloated (granted, I love a lot of the new additions, but boy does it make trying to make a fun build painful), a lot of new weapons just feel weaker comparatively to older entries, and luck is so rare I might only see it once every five or six runs meaning Lucky Hit runs are essentially useless to build in to until it's way too late to pivot.

I say all of this, and i still love the game. I want the dev to continue to build this game up in to something incredible, but right now it feels like it's in a really uncomfortable spot. You've still got all my support and I know for a fact I'm going to enjoy the new characters once I finish unlocking all of them (3 to go at the time of writing this).

And please, for anyone else who takes time to read all of this, I hope the best for you and wish you a Happy Holidays! And please realize that criticism from anyone on any side of the argument doesn't necessarily mean hate towards anyone or anything. Game's great, dev's great, just not all of us are gonna agree on every choice made.

[Aurora]

I think the additional talents for getting health, the fact that you can get HP from souls (which you can get a lot of later game with big souls and some luck, the stat). I think a lot of this is because of RNG, lucky hit is one of the most consistent builds since there are so many traits and items that work with it.
The problem with the previous implementation was the fact that the melee character couldn't get mana, or that the mage character couldn't get stamina, it was clunky in that way. Now it isn't.
I also recommend getting dice bag, it is one of the best, if not the best, gift rn.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Lighted:

I think the additional talents for getting health, the fact that you can get HP from souls (which you can get a lot of later game with big souls and some luck, the stat). I think a lot of this is because of RNG, lucky hit is one of the most consistent builds since there are so many traits and items that work with it.
The problem with the previous implementation was the fact that the melee character couldn't get mana, or that the mage character couldn't get stamina, it was clunky in that way. Now it isn't.
I also recommend getting dice bag, it is one of the best, if not the best, gift rn.

Soul Scarf says hi. For 1/3rd the price of a bonus heart, you can get two or more soul hearts (provided you picked the extra health flask and not the faster drink speed). The Nurse and Super Rich go straight-up infinite, for that matter.

[Loquitran]

I like the bonfire mechanic a lot, most often than not, I had a bunch of souls lying around since I got screwed by the rng and no shop/vendor would spawn.
About melee, I still didn't tried melee on this new patch but, melee was really underwhelming before. There was no risk/reward, only risk/risk, since you could perform exactly the same if not way better with ranged and magic weapons. The bonus from "close combat" related traits, still were not enough to justify the risk of being hit, specially when some enemies could move super fast and instantly send a hail of bullets right next to you.

I agree about the traits though. One of the main issues I feel with traits is that, they are too unreliable. Some traits are too niche and some others are way too strong paired with any build, like Mageblood for example. Some weapons are basically useless, some others are a no brainer, and I'm thinking about weapons of the same rarity. You often find weapons with the same rarity, same scaling but one is garbage and the other one is better in every way imaginable and with a stupid high base damage.

I had a lot of luck with lucky hits, no pun intended. It feels really strong, but it is kinda unreliable atm to stack luck. But when you do, it can pop off really hard.

Happy holidays!

edit: oh about the weapons again, I forgot to mention when you find a weapon that scales with your worst attribute, has the same rarity as the weapon you are using and the weapon is extremely better than yours, just because of completely unbalanced base damage.

[HeraldOfOpera]

"Close Range" is actually more forgiving than you might think, and if you've learned the patterns of enemies and bosses well enough you'll find surprising opportunities where practically hugging the boss is outright the safest place to be (like the pentagram attack from the Hell route's final boss)

[geepope]

Honestly Mage Blood and Transcendence aren't even that good, they have their purposes but they offer limited synergy for most builds and most of the time they're more of a consolation prize than anything. If you're slapping them blindly into whatever random build then yeah you're going to have a hard time with lategame scaling.

There are a few stinkers in the trait pool but a lot of those niche traits snowball quickly if you give them a chance. The key more than anything is just to be greedy about grabbing food to level up as quickly as possible; if your 2nd trait doesn't go with your 1st trait it's a bummer, but now your next trait has two different traits it can match up with so you're much more likely to get something going. If you got that trait on floor 3 then you have a lot more time to keep rolling up something that synergizes than if it took you until floor 5 to get that second trait.

[Loquitran]

Originally posted by geepope:

Honestly Mage Blood and Transcendence aren't even that good, they have their purposes but they offer limited synergy for most builds and most of the time they're more of a consolation prize than anything. If you're slapping them blindly into whatever random build then yeah you're going to have a hard time with lategame scaling.

There are a few stinkers in the trait pool but a lot of those niche traits snowball quickly if you give them a chance. The key more than anything is just to be greedy about grabbing food to level up as quickly as possible; if your 2nd trait doesn't go with your 1st trait it's a bummer, but now your next trait has two different traits it can match up with so you're much more likely to get something going. If you got that trait on floor 3 then you have a lot more time to keep rolling up something that synergizes than if it took you until floor 5 to get that second trait.

Ok, maybe Mageblood is not that strong, but still is a pretty good buff that fits any build. A lot of traits have so niche uses that usually you are better sticking up with the "generic" ones, or, you may try your luck and reroll and pray for a trait that may fit to your needs.

It's not that hard to get a good trait to be fair, but it's not common to actually have lots of traits that synergize with each other.

[Funky Fizz]

Honestly it just sounds like ya'll need more dice, I have been rerolling traits a TON this update and having good luck with that. I take dice rooms at every opportunity, drop the light blue dice pretty easily and usually have a tome or an obsidian for the one or two bricks I'll pick up during the run

Originally posted by Loquitran:

edit: oh about the weapons again, I forgot to mention when you find a weapon that scales with your worst attribute, has the same rarity as the weapon you are using and the weapon is extremely better than yours, just because of completely unbalanced base damage.

This has been the real meat of the problem for me, unless I get like 25+ in my chosen stat it's often best to just roll with whatever legendary I stumble into on floors 8-10. Earlier today I had an elemental build entirely built around molotov cocktail, bonus burn damage, burn ticks, close range scorch for even more damage, got it up to plus 3 with an additional burning enchantment. 4 of my traits cared directly about elemental damage, 2 of those cared about fire.

I then proceeded to stumble across an unenchanted mjolnir that didn't even scale in dex (which I had been focusing) and it was close but it was outdpsing the fire.

On one hand this means that just about any run should be able to clear death+ with a few lucky pickups near the end. On the other hand you can spend an entire run sculpting a near perfect build (which is honestly pretty hard to do, a lot of things lined up in that molotov run, including stats) and it will be just on par/slightly worse than some random legendary you stumble upon in an armory/boss reward.

[Loquitran]

Originally posted by Funky Fizz:

Honestly it just sounds like ya'll need more dice, I have been rerolling traits a TON this update and having good luck with that. I take dice rooms at every opportunity, drop the light blue dice pretty easily and usually have a tome or an obsidian for the one or two bricks I'll pick up during the run

Originally posted by Loquitran:

edit: oh about the weapons again, I forgot to mention when you find a weapon that scales with your worst attribute, has the same rarity as the weapon you are using and the weapon is extremely better than yours, just because of completely unbalanced base damage.

This has been the real meat of the problem for me, unless I get like 25+ in my chosen stat it's often best to just roll with whatever legendary I stumble into on floors 8-10. Earlier today I had an elemental build entirely built around molotov cocktail, bonus burn damage, burn ticks, close range scorch for even more damage, got it up to plus 3 with an additional burning enchantment. 4 of my traits cared directly about elemental damage, 2 of those cared about fire.

I then proceeded to stumble across an unenchanted mjolnir that didn't even scale in dex (which I had been focusing) and it was close but it was outdpsing the fire.

On one hand this means that just about any run should be able to clear death+ with a few lucky pickups near the end. On the other hand you can spend an entire run sculpting a near perfect build (which is honestly pretty hard to do, a lot of things lined up in that molotov run, including stats) and it will be just on par/slightly worse than some random legendary you stumble upon in an armory/boss reward.

The dice is not the solution to the problem, the dice is just a temporary fix. There are lots of super niche traits that just clutter the pool. Of course, I can reroll, I'm well aware of that. But using dices to have a chance for a usable trait, instead for example, using the dice to pivot to a different build, sounds bad and unfun.

Using your own example as an example, if you had more dices and the traits were less niche, you could just reroll your build into a lightning/melee build and demolish with the Mjolnir and have fun. But you probably couldn't, since you had to reroll over and over to get the traits you initially wanted.

Of course, not all traits should be great, but I've made my point already.

[Dlanor]

I don't know what you guys expect. Souls were lowered because if not then buying way too many HP or Stamina upgrades is too easy with the new way to spend. The shops you buy alignment items in also had their prices lowered drastically. The dev can't just make every run a free win, this patch lowered the difficulty dramatically and the only reason it didn't break the balance completely is that the currency was tweaked to fit the new system.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Bliss:

I don't know what you guys expect. Souls were lowered because if not then buying way too many HP or Stamina upgrades is too easy with the new way to spend. The shops you buy alignment items in also had their prices lowered drastically. The dev can't just make every run a free win, this patch lowered the difficulty dramatically and the only reason it didn't break the balance completely is that the currency was tweaked to fit the new system.

Soul Scarf was broken in the initial patch and this was a big buff. Maxing out Power Hungry should be more difficult than this.

[Managedant]

I literally just got the achievement for beating death without swinging a weapon. And I did it on cinder 9 to boot. Didn’t get the companion achievement I was going for but hey, that one works too.



Literally:
Reroll.
Eat as much food as you can.
Spam soul scarf until you’re comfortable with the new mechanics.
Then go onto dice bag once you’ve got the hang of things.
The sound damage charm is surprisingly good as well.
Radiant damage is the way to go if you want to take advantage of lucky hit traits. Radiant damage comes with a debuff on enemies that raises your lucky hit chance on hits against them to increase to 20 percent at max stacks.

I am loving the fact I can actually enjoy this game now, whereas in the base game every run for me was predicated on getting that soul heart power trait and playing sorcerer and hoping a good weapon would drop or be miserable an entire run.

[Funky Fizz]

Originally posted by Loquitran:

Originally posted by Funky Fizz:

Honestly it just sounds like ya'll need more dice, I have been rerolling traits a TON this update and having good luck with that. I take dice rooms at every opportunity, drop the light blue dice pretty easily and usually have a tome or an obsidian for the one or two bricks I'll pick up during the run



This has been the real meat of the problem for me, unless I get like 25+ in my chosen stat it's often best to just roll with whatever legendary I stumble into on floors 8-10. Earlier today I had an elemental build entirely built around molotov cocktail, bonus burn damage, burn ticks, close range scorch for even more damage, got it up to plus 3 with an additional burning enchantment. 4 of my traits cared directly about elemental damage, 2 of those cared about fire.

I then proceeded to stumble across an unenchanted mjolnir that didn't even scale in dex (which I had been focusing) and it was close but it was outdpsing the fire.

On one hand this means that just about any run should be able to clear death+ with a few lucky pickups near the end. On the other hand you can spend an entire run sculpting a near perfect build (which is honestly pretty hard to do, a lot of things lined up in that molotov run, including stats) and it will be just on par/slightly worse than some random legendary you stumble upon in an armory/boss reward.

The dice is not the solution to the problem, the dice is just a temporary fix. There are lots of super niche traits that just clutter the pool. Of course, I can reroll, I'm well aware of that. But using dices to have a chance for a usable trait, instead for example, using the dice to pivot to a different build, sounds bad and unfun.

Using your own example as an example, if you had more dices and the traits were less niche, you could just reroll your build into a lightning/melee build and demolish with the Mjolnir and have fun. But you probably couldn't, since you had to reroll over and over to get the traits you initially wanted.

Of course, not all traits should be great, but I've made my point already.

I was able to adjust my build though, I had a couple of tomes I stumbled into, a few of my elemental perks were generalist, and I take the perk that gives three red dice on each dice room, so I was able to sculpt my run into something REALLY amazing with mjolnir.

My frustration wasn't with my run or the perks, more so just that mjolnir came out right off rip as an individual item that was slightly outperforming something I had worked really hard to setup, just because of base stats.

I have a sneaking suspicion that traits/items are loosely weighted to coordinate with each other. There's just been too many times that I've done a lucky or elemental run and stumbled into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of items/perks that care about them.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Originally posted by Funky Fizz:

Originally posted by Loquitran:

The dice is not the solution to the problem, the dice is just a temporary fix. There are lots of super niche traits that just clutter the pool. Of course, I can reroll, I'm well aware of that. But using dices to have a chance for a usable trait, instead for example, using the dice to pivot to a different build, sounds bad and unfun.

Using your own example as an example, if you had more dices and the traits were less niche, you could just reroll your build into a lightning/melee build and demolish with the Mjolnir and have fun. But you probably couldn't, since you had to reroll over and over to get the traits you initially wanted.

Of course, not all traits should be great, but I've made my point already.

I was able to adjust my build though, I had a couple of tomes I stumbled into, a few of my elemental perks were generalist, and I take the perk that gives three red dice on each dice room, so I was able to sculpt my run into something REALLY amazing with mjolnir.

My frustration wasn't with my run or the perks, more so just that mjolnir came out right off rip as an individual item that was slightly outperforming something I had worked really hard to setup, just because of base stats.

I have a sneaking suspicion that traits/items are loosely weighted to coordinate with each other. There's just been too many times that I've done a lucky or elemental run and stumbled into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of items/perks that care about them.

It's called "smart loot" and they've admitted to it. Even in-game, you'll notice that Butterfly Effect says trait selections are more affected by your existing traits. Thus implying that there's already a weighting to that effect in addition to the one for stats.