Endless Scaling Imblanced

[Niwrats]

I've had a lot of fun with this game, and taking a build further on has been mostly enjoyable. But the scaling for endless mode is broken (impossible).

The main issue is that player attributes increase by a fixed number, while enemy stats go up by a percent instead. Things like block and health for the player can't come anywhere close to keeping up with enemies.

As an example, I have a run stuck on floor 64. Having a bunch of Gold and the (multiple) Gold Armor Perk(s) (2 health per 10 gold), I've got roughly 7.4k health, which sounds like a lot. But in the battle that soft locked my run, the enemies have thorns. A single application of which gives them 3.9k stacks. Meaning that if I attack twice, I'm dead.

Suggested solution, player attributes need to scale as well (or enemy buffs need to be a flat increase in endless mode). Example: have Gold Armor give 2% more health for gold instead of 2hp. Same is true for Strength, Poison, and Armor. Armor in especially bad when an enemy is hitting for 70k, and you can maybe get ~300 a round.

[DOOM]

Id recommend using items that let you skip the damage entirely, like the dodge status and reflect status. Might not help with enemies with a ton of attacks, but itll get you pretty far in my experience.

[DOOM]

Oh and the holy shield is also very good for late game runs too.

Only issue like you mentioned is the damage scaling, so battles will start to take a very long time without a way to buff your strength.

[Niwrats]

Originally posted by DOOM:

Id recommend using items that let you skip the damage entirely, like the dodge status and reflect status. Might not help with enemies with a ton of attacks, but itll get you pretty far in my experience.

Sadly, dodge can only be obtained by attacking, and thorns means that attack kills the player. So while I can make lots dodge--enough to survive normal attacks--as well as hold dodges between rounds, I can only "use" it before enemies get thorns, and once they have thorns, I can't get more dodge without instantly dying to thorns.

This run example does have a lot of dodge. It also has a holy shield, which lasts only a single round, has to be the very first item I pick up (once enemies have thorns), and vanishes after a single use, so a player would need dozens of them. The build also has reflect, the only way to really deal damage to enemies at this point too.

But there is no way to (consistently) get 6-7 reflects a turn. No way to get and maintain enough dodge (on enemies with thorns). No way to have enough holy shields.

A simple solution would be to reduce enemy thorns, but that isn't the underlying problem, nor is dodge the solution.

The issue is not the build, and not the items, it is the scaling imbalance. Players only gets a flat increase, while enemies get a percent increase. No matter how good your build is, a flat increase cannot keep up with enemy percent scaling.

At higher floors, armor doesn't work, damage doesn't work, poison doesn't work, healing doesn't work, dodge doesn't work. Major aspects of the game all fall apart because they can't possibly keep up with the enemies.

[DOOM]

Originally posted by Niwrats:

Originally posted by DOOM:

Id recommend using items that let you skip the damage entirely, like the dodge status and reflect status. Might not help with enemies with a ton of attacks, but itll get you pretty far in my experience.

Sadly, dodge can only be obtained by attacking, and thorns means that attack kills the player. So while I can make lots dodge--enough to survive normal attacks--as well as hold dodges between rounds, I can only "use" it before enemies get thorns, and once they have thorns, I can't get more dodge without instantly dying to thorns.

This run example does have a lot of dodge. It also has a holy shield, which lasts only a single round, has to be the very first item I pick up (once enemies have thorns), and vanishes after a single use, so a player would need dozens of them. The build also has reflect, the only way to really deal damage to enemies at this point too.

But there is no way to (consistently) get 6-7 reflects a turn. No way to get and maintain enough dodge (on enemies with thorns). No way to have enough holy shields.

A simple solution would be to reduce enemy thorns, but that isn't the underlying problem, nor is dodge the solution.

The issue is not the build, and not the items, it is the scaling imbalance. Players only gets a flat increase, while enemies get a percent increase. No matter how good your build is, a flat increase cannot keep up with enemy percent scaling.

At higher floors, armor doesn't work, damage doesn't work, poison doesn't work, healing doesn't work, dodge doesn't work. Major aspects of the game all fall apart because they can't possibly keep up with the enemies.

Im currently on a floor 50 run with Harley, her random claws make it much easier to stuff like 20+ items each turn. Mix that with magnets and trans mutate items to be all metal, so her magnet claw can grab everything. Enemies cant even touch me anymore due to how many items im grabbing at once. Id recommend giving it a try.

And holy shield comes in clutch with the thorns, so id try to grab as many as you can.

Also strength rings + amulets + strength potions to triple the amount you have for each one you use. This build will probably run out of steam at some point, but its super useful, haven't had any issues with thorns yet.

[Quaffie]

i just reached level 64

upgrades be like:
heal for 5 hp after each fight

enemies be like:
13,4k spikes
16k poison dot

[DOOM]

I agree the scaling is kinda crazy atm. Same with prices in shops, that ramps up way too quickly to be usable in endless runs.

Would be nice if the scaling was more gradual so you have more time to prepare for the late game.

[Saltberg]

Just spam upgraded fortune cookies every round -> unlimited holy shields / dodge / reflect effects without risking any thorns.

[CabbitGurl]

The scaling used to be incremental based, which allowed the community to infinitely go on. Testers like myself recommended % scaling. It's endless mode, the idea is to find the build that helps you go the farthest. There are people that have reached insanely high floors. The discord talks about it sometimes, feel free to ask questions, give suggestions, anything. The devs are completely kind and really listen. I put up the issue of the Thief perk giving the boss strength, now it's fixed. The honey got fixed too, that was really bad. It might get a buff soon as it's too weak now, but we'll see.

Brotato has an endless mode too, and they nerfed to hell any build that allowed you to infinitely scale. It's a similar concept.

[WilleM]

Most roguelikes have linear scaling for the player versus exponential scaling for the enemies.
The whole point is how far you can get until you hit a brick wall.

However, a lot of them have permanent upgrades which makes it so you can get further and further with each run.

(For example, Eevrspace or Hades)

[Pola]

With the scaling for enemies going up, along with prices but not your income you pretty much rely upon coupons at that point. That makes the re-roll one quite valuable to get the others more easily, along with better chance for rares you want.

Not sure if it's a bug, but Harley's ability seems to clash with any paw that would ensure a specific claw is always the first one. Otherwise that'd have been a bit interesting to play with.

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I got to floor 64 with Anne (with her paw for double harpoon). I got fairly lucky with helmet drops enough times to keep up with the scaling.


Start with buffing block via the starting big shield item once you have a morning star weapon, that combo breezes you through the first 20 floors quite easily.

Once you have a helmet upgraded along with the 2 perks for a harpoon to make x4 triple buff on block. You need bulwark perk to really leverage it on first turn (you can shred the shield item you'd have been using by around that point), otherwise blockmaster to retain some/all block generated is helpful once you've got more helmets.

I had about 11M block at one point, with the morning star doing 1.5x of block as damage + crit and the harpoon providing x3 or x4 attacks with that it's really quite something.

The two harpoons are pretty important, but maybe you can make it work with just one. Chief Bunner (or his paw) are interesting for the ability to get 150% block retention, this way you'll get 1.5x your block when you end your turn, plus he gets the damage scaling based on block which could combo well with great sword to attack all enemies, you could activate a holy shield to avoid the spikes damage, but I guess still suffers the same fate as I had with Anne.

Eventually though scaling would get in the way. I don't remember exactly how it went on floor 64, but I think there was so much attack to block that I focused on that (I had about 4 fully upgraded helmets by this point). But one enemy buffed with an attack to poison me way beyond my health.

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After that run I got to floor 46 with Dolly (plus Anne's harpoon paw) and I think I died of a similar fate, but I wasn't expecting it.



This time I played with strength potion and spiky stressball plus the berserker perk, each time the stressball spikes hurt you strength boosts and damage is dealt to enemies (with perks like pin-cushion and junk-jet providing additional attacks).

The main combo there is each reactionary damage to an enemy is the base damage + strength, which with the harpoon + multiplier perks + strength potion is quite easy to boost. If the enemy has plenty attacking you can use the first or last attack on a brass knuckle for 6-8 dodge.

Garbage Greg could probably achieve similar with his ability to clear half the machine out and enough drops at the start of the turn or when damaged (multiple pin cushion / junk jets?). (EDIT: I tried this and the junk jet only dishes out 1 dmg without strength bonus, I also noticed the dodgy perk returns the 10 dmg stack as a single blow with your strength so multiple stacks is pointless, stressball spikes + dolly ability was 2 separate attacks with strength)

I was under the impression that dodging the attack would avoid the poison and I know I had enough dodge so I'm not quite sure how I died as the defeat screen appeared too quickly.

Perhaps it'd be better to use a hand mirror instead? I haven't quite figured out how to get fortune cookies working well but was attempting to with the Dolly run via a magnet but that part of the build wasn't panning out as well as I wanted it to. Probably better with Scrappy or his paw for magnet claws.

[iron.nuke]

64 seems to be the limit right now.

Mirror does not work that well in late game as you main defense. I tried mirror + poison grenades + poison flasks yesterday to avoid triggering any spikes or reflections. Now I am stuck somewhere in the 50s. Mirrors have some problems:

- No perks: You can't grab them in advance to build up a defense for an intense round.
- No upgrades: Only one reflected attack per mirror, four at most with all perks and the harpoon.
- You can't grab enough. It takes a while to get both x2 perks. If you can obtain a lot of mirrors, turning them into metal and using magnets or using tentacles would be perfect. But most likely you will only get offered a few. Now you could do a harpoon only run to double everything, but that would limit your offensive capabilities immensely. If your enemy does not enough damage to off himself, it will take a very long time.

[Pola]

Originally posted by iron.nuke:

64 seems to be the limit right now.

Mirrors have some problems:

- No perks: You can't grab them in advance to build up a defense for an intense round.
- No upgrades: Only one reflected attack per mirror, four at most with all perks and the harpoon.
- You can't grab enough. It takes a while to get both x2 perks. If you can obtain a lot of mirrors, turning them into metal and using magnets or using tentacles would be perfect. But most likely you will only get offered a few. Now you could do a harpoon only run to double everything, but that would limit your offensive capabilities immensely.

The last point isn't exactly true with double harpoon. See my spoiler for build where I could do say 12k x3 attacks on the first round (helmet+ with 100 block (bulwarks or first claw on block item) buffing to 8k with the 1st (or 2nd) harpoon, then morning star+). If you can survive another turn and have a 2nd helmet you can either do a x3 (first turn) or x4 (next turn) for 218k vs 656k.

One brass knuckles can provide 8 dodge or you can use mirrors when needed, only two needed with double harpoon for equivalent of 7 mirrors.

What other counter is there to poison? Is it always avoidable with brass knuckles for dodge?

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I tried a silly run with vitamin pill + energy drink all transmuted to metal with magnet.

If those two alternate you can get 1.5x multiplier per alternation each turn, but it was not that reliable. You'd need to do that on the first claw with non-metallic backup for the 2nd claw to use if you need the block before ending turn. The idea was that you could leverage both helmet and strength potion too.