My thoughts after Re-100%ing the game (Spoilers for 1.0)

[Bone_Reaper]

So where should i start.

Overall very very positive, the 2 biggest "Breaks" that i found and commented on last time nearly a month ago, were the D tier Targeted weapon damage boost stacking way more then probably intended, and then the absurd Money laundering with the Piggy bank.

These were both handled very well to not make neither so overwhelmingly Bad, but not as broke as they used to be, in the case of the D tier damage boost, lowering it's total damage was a good move, even if it's an extremely heavy nerf, it doesn't dislodge it from the same place it held in a Target weapon focused builds, and it needed to get dialed back.

Then on the Piggy bank front, the situation is very different as it doesn't serve the same purpose anymore as a good way to make a lot of money, and then half way through a level just max out the shop and get full S tier, but rather now in early builds it will serve to bridge the gap a bit with a lack of meta upgrades and needing money to live in levels, since with maxed (now only close to maxed) meta upgrades you can really take far more time in getting a set up and overall later in the meta progression you rather just focus on shop upgrades rather then trying to get a max Piggy later, since you can live better and have better card selection so you want to focus on those rather then the Piggy.

Still the Piggy Bank serves as a very good synergy item for getting the Bonus Bonus and the Finance Bonus in a run early, since both help you make it farther, so even if the money laundering is dead now, the item still serves a purpose in all stages of the meta progression.

still in the pre-release game if you did not use the piggy bank, then you needed A LOT more luck to get a build going that could last long enough for you to get off the ground, so now with that gone, you might expect the game to feel like more RNG, but with the addition of the Diamond Pick Up that gives you 8 tokens, the game token balance feels fine, and actually better then before since you are not limited to always have to have the Piggy around, so the game is better for it.


Now with all that out of the way, let me talk about the new things added, like the new levels, achievements, cards and strategies.

the 10 new Levels are definitely harder then the previous 10, aside form maybe Levels 9 and 10 being Big Spikes in Difficulty. Still the Levels form 11 to 19 were not that hard with a few exceptions, can't remember the actual Level number now, probably 15 or 16, with the Flying Humans that slow you down ans the Level is very small, that is probably the hardest level for me, taking easily the most iteration to my Deck to beat, then the length of Level 19 made it pretty hard, but not too bad with the curated build i had at that point, which i'll get in to later on.

Then comes the Level 20 Boss fight, this was not that hard surprisingly, taking only 2 attempts, since my deck was build for a long level with early Type Combo Bonuses in mind not a straight out boss fight, so i had very little killing power in my early tiers, then i went and made the needed changes and beat it the next try. the Fight was overall very fun and i like the concept.

But there is 1 problem i have with the feel of the fight, in Phase 3, after you go through the 1st 2 HP bars, the Fan of Balls he can shoot seems to be somewhat range dependent, where if you are a bit too far Despot will just spam them only, now move or dash at you, just spam, and if Despot just dashes in to a corner or a wall and got directed in to a corner then you can very easily get in to a situation where you have 0 angles to approach, since the waves of Balls prevent you from getting to close or you gt hit since the gap between the balls isn't big enough, and out side of laser weapons that there are 3 of (now 100% sure on the number form memory), the D tier one, the C tier Prism, and the A tier Sun Beam, most other weapon won't reach Despot from a safe distance where the gap is big enough to dodge the balls, so unless you try to tank damage to get close to cause Despot to charge then you would be potentially softlocked. especially if you don't have the 700+ hp it takes to tank a ball.

though i did need to tank a ball, i am Lucky that i have a lot of hp that accumulates form getting item upgrades too, so i could get past this issue, but i'm not sure how viable it would be to do with way less Meta upgrades. at this point this is just a potential concern and nothing more, since i haven't tested Despot's AI much, but still could be worth looking in to i'd say.

On another note, the new 45ish achievements added by 1.0, for some one that already got 100% on Pre-Release, the new achievements didn't tame more then a 3 or so hours of grinding 1 level to get all the weapon upgrades sorted after clearing all the Levels, but they seem fine if i look at it from the point of starting over and playing the game, since they do guide the player to use all the weapons available at least once.

In total it took me around 5 hours to clear all the new Levels and get all the achievements, though i still need to eventually grind out 600 more DNA points for the last 3 Meta that i didn't buy yet, since only the Armor and HP Pick Ups were the a priority.

There was a weird problem with me losing the Triangle of Darkness from Pre-Release, since i already had it and all related achievements, but i'm guessing this has something to do with the Card unlock distribution being moved form 7.5 mil to 8 mil cap, to account for the new cards, just seems like that was unintended, though thankfully the card isn't especially core to my Decks.


Then the New Cards, i touch on the Card unlocks being changed in the last section, but since i got them all as soon as i opened the game. In general if you want the most out of a card in most cases having 2 level 2 and 2 level 1 is better then having 1 level 3, since your damage out put is multiplied by 4 instead of just being a marginal increase in stats, though this does take 4 times the card space too, but depending on the Levels length it's often better to just get a fast 2/2, or 2/2 2/1 set up with a target weapon and just go ham on the boss that is coming fast, rather then try to build up an assortment of different cards, since single target dps is key in killing bosses, this does in fact only really apply to short levels or early game, since getting compressed weapons to get more room to slowly work through gradual upgrades and replacement of cards is key in the later longer levels.

So the 3 new D tiers, the Spikes and Ghost seem to serve a similar purpose as AoE, but the Spikes are just better, as they do say behind as you move for a bit and still kill enemies even when you are not there anymore, where as the Ghosts Just kind of happen and thus they lose a lot of functionality comparatively. The Spear is very funny, and seems good enough to be used early on, but not especially notable for anything other then small enemies.

C tier cards, the Bomb is fun and has good utility with Bonuses, and is similar to the Spikes in that it is left as you move so it gets kills without you being in direct danger. Absolute Storm, not too noticeable and since the damage is rather low, so on later waves it's use drops very hard. the Laser Chain, it's very interesting as it's ok damage very good piercing and if you have a 2/2 2/1 set up you can have 4 laser going at once, which is just fun. The minion Flash passive is odd, since i still have 0 idea on what it actually does, i'm assuming that it makes you minions perform some action that draws more enemy aggro, if so then it's good, i guess, the problem is that i actually have no idea what "Flash" means and since the screen is usually very chaotic it's near impossible to know what is the skill Flash and what isn't.

B tier, The Anvil, it's fantastic, it had great damage, and the sound it makes is very satisfying, and it's even end game viable, with it being able to even 1 shot most small to mid sized targets in a radius, and if you have it as a 2/2 2/1 set up the 4 anvils are very nice for clearing hordes. Electricity bill, the idea is very funny, though it's not very noticeable in a build, though based on the stats it's decent enough. The Claws can get very strong later on, but the fact you need to be in an enemies melee range to use them means that you can easily get melted by later mid hp mini bosses or large enemies, so a bit lackluster.

A tier, Moon Moon, it's Good, just inconsistent damage,though again it works best at a 2/2 2/1 to get 4 of them up at once. the Yo-Yo is again Good damage, but inconsistent damage, not much else. the sword Swing, i rarely noticed it, since the Damage is very Good, but not in a very noticeable area, so it doesn't leave an impact, as well as having the same problem as the Claws do that you need to be pretty close to get good damage, though it's a bit better, since it seems to linger for just a bit. Lava and Jaws are pretty much the same from what i can tell, Jaws do seem to do better in action, but both are a bit "Eh" as choices for A tier.

Now for S tier, Meteor Rain is very Good, though seems just barely under powered enough to feel good as an S tier, though it is better then the AoE in A tier, i'm still not fully sure why it just feels like that. Death is very strong, but maybe a bit too slow, being almost 40 seconds with 0 use only to kill the enemies that aren't even on screen ,but in a radius, makes it's usability very low, as other S tier options will just do more in that 36 seconds, and the fact you don't want enemies to be near you, and the radius not being the entire screen really hurt it, if it lost 20% to 25% of it's damage but was 10 seconds faster it would feel way more satisfying to use, and actually more usable, since most of the time it takes less then 10 seconds for you to drop form full hp to 0, so Death just misses the crucial use of a wide damage weapon. The Trash Throwing D tier boosting item, seems useless in most cases, like actually, since you have so limited space for active weapons, why use them on an ability that needs you to have literal trash (at that stage when you get S tiers at least) when you could have other B+ tier weapons fill those slots, the only use i can see with it is to try and super buff the D tier Laser with a 2/2 2/1, and then the Target weapon Boost too stacking the damage, but even then you are using all of your slots on just that. If it were to Boost C and B tier weapons too, just with less by each grade, then sure, like at it's tier 1, currently it's a 50% boost to D, but if instead it was a 40% D, 20% C and 10% B then it would actually have use, in trying to use those weapons you can build up early, and just forgo A tier and S tier otherwise completely, then it would be a fun passive to try to make a build around. that's the last actual card added by the 1.0, but i'll add the Secret Moon Card here too, since i haven't actually used it before the 1.0 release even though i got it unlocked as soon as it was available and meat the Remake 2 times in fact. So the Secret Moon is similar to the Moon Moon, just bigger, so it is better, but it's still inconsistent damage, so it's there if you want it, but not anything extremely special, outside of the reference.


Now then on to the last major part of this post, Strategies. the most consistent one i found was again Finance Slime to get the Shop to Level 4 right of the bat and getting Targeted weapons, particularly the Assault Rifle, Prism and Supreme Gun, then just get the D tier targeted damage boost and you can melt most enemies, you can get other targeted weapons and Finance items to get Duel wielding bonus and Finance Bonus going too, and in longer levels you should focus on getting Bonus Bonus to at least level 2 fast, so you can stockpile pick ups on the map early on. That is what got me through all the levels added in 1.0, and it's very easy to do and consistent to boot.

The last thing i want to mention here is that the slimes are currently generally just bad, aside from the Finance Slime, since comparatively Finance gets a level 4 shop, and at least the equivalent of 2 level 2 weapons as a starting boost, when all others are kind of samey with just different speed, which makes little difference unless you are slower then average or the starting weapon, which you can just sell and replace as soon as you get your 1st shop. and the other minor stats generally don't matter unless you want to try very specific builds, and even then the Tokes form the Finance Slime will just get you farther in early set up then others, in fact it's around 3 times more things you can get, as if you upgrade to a level 4 shop to get B tier early, then you are left with 10 tokens, while on the Finance Slime you are left with 30 tokens, this means that if you reroll the shop once every 3 items bought then you get 9 items with 3 rerolls, and other slimes just get 3 items and 1 reroll. Yes technically the small other boosts like better minion damage will be better in the long run, but when pretty all levels are at most 10 minutes and can be cleared with B to A tiers only with C tiers for filler there is no real need to go that far, and so Finance Slime is just way better then any other slime you could choose, since it gives you the items of around 3 to 4 shops worth from your 1st, meaning you save 3 levels worth of exp for more shops later, you can also set up Finance and bonus bonus on the 1st shop.

I'm not saying to Nerf Finance Slime, i'm more so saying to make the benefits of the other slimes more noticeable in the short term, since half the levels are not long enough to build a minion army big enough to kill the boss, or to get good enough homing to do it either.

Still a very easy recommendation on this game to everyone i know, i've spent almost 115 hours in it, so far.