Recent patch: Punishment, not difficult

[AmstradHero]

Due to the changes made in the recent patch, until something is changed, I really can't see myself playing the game again any time soon. I've been absolutely loving it up until now. It was mostly a good challenge - though there were some broken items/combinations that needed addressing - and the gameplay and the concept were a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, as of the most recent build, the game has made the overwhelming majority of cards actively punishing rather than challenging. Even previously "safe" or beneficial cards are now effectively harmful for the player, basically meaning that deck customisation is "pick between bad cards or bad cards". This doesn't make the game fun, and in fact detracts from the entire premise of being able to customise the deck to assist you. To be honest, it feels like the balance was tweaked towards balancing Endless Mode without due consideration of the effects that would have on Story Mode, and as a result the balance for Story Mode is totally out of whack.

1) This is a long standing one. Ambush card - selecting the "fail" card causes you to not only not receive any gain cards (as you would have otherwise obtained) but also to draw a pain card. That kind of turnaround is what I would expect from a "Huge Failure". A failure should net you a pain card AND the gain cards. Either change it to this, or turn into into a "Huge Failure" card (Though I would strongly recommend the former).

2) Goblins. Stop them stealing your weapon. With a rusty axe, it is extraordinarily difficult to dispatch the goblins before they disappear, effectively turning this card into a guaranteed *huge* disadvantage should you happen to be unlucky enough to have your weapon stolen.

3) Goblins - part 2. In a game I just ran, I had the LICH spawn in addition to the goblins... AND I had my weapon stolen. That's not challenging, that is just an outright punishment. Sorry but that is simply not fun.

4) Twisted canyon. As of this patch you now get ONE success, TWO failures and one huge failure? Sorry, but that's just overkill. This was one of the few cards that was outright good for the player. Those kind of cards *have* to exist to make the player feel like their deck customisation is meaningful

5) This is a bug, but Wife's Fury seems to habitually want to spawn the King of Dust and Queen of Dust - but the Queen of Dust's card is bugged and doesn't spawn. Secondly, what the heck kind of combination is this? I would argue that in a large fight, these are harder bosses than later bosses like the Jack of Scales, Queen of Plague or Queen of Skulls. Particularly, I would suggest that the King of Dust's heal is in desperate need for a nerf outside of his initial confrontation.

6) As I stated in a previous post, the gain cards are appallingly miserly. "Reveal 3 map cards"? If you're going to give people effectively no bonus (or just a pitiful bonus that it's effectively meaningless), then combine them into one. 1 food AND 3 gold. Reveal three map cards AND show the next four armory cards and put one on top/bottom. Don't give health potions (tonics are okay) when you're on (or close to) full health. These "gains" offer such pitiful bonuses that when you're trying a story-mode run, the few gain cards you receive can effectively provide you with absolutely nothing.

7) Buy/sell prices for equipment. Selling prices are ONE-THIRD of buying prices???!? Yes, one-for-one was a bit too generous, but ONE-THIRD? Sorry guys, but that's just obscenely low and effectively makes it impossible for you to get any decent gains. Especially as the deck gets larger, the player is effectively *forced* to put in items that they don't actually want (and are pretty much useless), in the hope that if they get them, they'll be able to sell them to buy something useful. With sale prices so low comparatively, again, it makes the "gains" of those items pointless and again renders the player in a position of weakness.

8) Emergency ring. Possibly one of the worst items I've seen to date in the game. There was the ring that could be destroyed after combat (can't remember the name) which was pretty bad, but this one is just downright awful and it's only purpose is to sell. The player typically has so little food that it most circumstances it would be lucky to give even double digits of health, in which case the player is immediately going to die from starvation on their next move unless by some miracle they gain food from their current encounter. This is flat out a terrible item in its current form.

9) Dragon Ring. I'm up to the King of Scales, but this is *still* the only Dragon Artifact I've unlocked, and it does *absolutely nothing* on its own. If you're going to give items set bonuses, they need to provide *something* to the player on their own. Banking on being able to get specific combinations of items has *always* been difficult in Fate, so providing nothing for the item on its own basically means that the only time someone is going to have this in their deck is when they're going for the Dragon Slayer achievement.

10) Hero's Remains & new layouts. I got the new corner layout (four across, three down) with Hero's Remains at the second last on the left. The game placed the return point at the very bottom, meaning that there was no way to deliver it *without* triggering the Geas curse. Given that this also cost a whopping 10 food, this card was a ridiculous punishment. The new layouts are interesting, but can be extraordinarily punishing in terms of food consumption, and given low prices for selling items, the chance of having any gold to be able to afford to buy items (since you're forced to spend it on food) seems very low at the current point in time.

11) Relevant to goblins in particular, but a few other cases as well - items/gold dropped on the ground should be automatically picked up at the end of a fight. There is no reason that this shouldn't occur, because once the enemies are dead, the player should be free to pick up anything left on the ground. Not doing so is again, simply a punishment to the player for no good reason.

I apologise if this appraisal seems somewhat harsh, but the current balance is *way* off. You removed some of the most egregious exploits that were present in the game, which was good, but you seemingly balanced other cards *before* removing them. At the current point in time, the balance for story mode feels like the game is constantly punishing rather than difficult or challenging, and that it is near impossible to succeed unless you get very fortunate.

This is by far the least enjoyable build I have played of the game so far, and this is after trying a number of different court cards in the current build. Endless mode didn't feel quite as bad, but I don't feel inspired at the current point in time to give it multiple runs to make more statistically consistent comparison.

Previously, I was recommending Hand of Fate to others, even though it was still in early access - which is something that I never do - in fact, I typically don't even get or play games in early access. However, at the current point in time, I'm going to be advising people to hold off until the balance issues are worked out, because there are some serious problems right now.

[AmstradHero]

Another note: Loan was now asking for 40 gold. Given the reward is 5 gold gain cards, and the prevalence of 3, 5 and 7 gold gain cards in the deck, it's quite possible (and likely) that taking up the loan would actually result in the player LOSING money instead of gaining it.

[notmyhorse]

I agree with AmstradHero on every point. In previous builds of the game, the overall difficulty of the game was offset by a couple cards, but only to a certain extent. Yes, twisted canyon used to guarantee a weapon with limited penalties, but the ability to reliably get a weapon was important for progress. In previous patches of the game, I found myself reliably selling armor, then equipment to feed myself in more difficult runs. Often, my survival to the final floor was reliant upon several small gains (i.e. maiden, twisted canyon, food wagon, etc) throughout the dungeon to merely feed myself, finishing the boss equipped with a shield if I was lucky.

The current patch of the game is tedious to play. As AmstradHero mentioned, almost every card in the encounter deck is essentially a pain card. If this "balance" is a response to the previous endless mode, I believe it is an overreaction. My high score was 26,766, with an average of 161 gold found per floor. While these are high numbers, this was after five previous attempts and tweaks to the deck, and took advantage of the Midas curse. However, endless piles of gold and food didn't help against Hand of Fate, and after my maximum health was reduced by 60% over 3 moves, I fell to a pain card. Random Number Jesus killed someone with a max health of 180 and endless piles of food and gold in the easiest patch to date.

*I believe only the midis curse was broken, and the fix should have been that you eat 3 gold a move instead of one. You should still have been able to pick up food, just had no use for it apart from charity events. *

I can no longer feed myself in either mode of play. Before my complaint of combat that was as long as I had a shield, I could beat anyone. I, in particular, have gotten the curse where every prone attack damages the protagonist in the last four consecutive games. This curse makes combat tedious. The inability to make prone attacks doesn't make more difficult combat, it makes me stand in a corner and reflect projectiles until everyone dies. Due to current combat AI, the mob stands opposite me as if saying to one another "I'm not getting close to that guy, you do it".

Hand of Fate is exciting because of how unique it is. It's immersive, personal, and is THE RPG I've been telling all my friends about. I hope the next patch fixes these wonky balance issues and makes it worth playing.

[morgan]

This sort of feedback is great, by the way.

Balancing is hard, and it won't be done until we're done. That's why it's good to get a sense of what people are enjoying and what they're not along the way.

I dug a little more deeply into our model for balancing in another post, but the short answer to all of these is : it's a work in progress. We'll let you know how things fare as we tweak them up - and please, keep the feedback like this rolling. It's incredibly helpful, and it's why we're doing Early Access.

[Tim Dungeon]

Totally agree with Amstrad (at least on the cards I've unlocked so far).

Been enjoying the game a good bit. I've unlocked up to jack of scales (before the patch). Haven't tried endless mode. Now, I've started six seperate games and die before getting anywhere near the last map. Before the patch I was able to progress in the game, maybe getting killed off once or twice but this is pretty disheartening. Even when I feel like I might actually be getting an advantage, it usually disappears within the next couple of moves due to unlucky failures/hugefailures or just really hard cards.

One example I can think of off the top of my head is the Ratmen Hunting card. I have been unable to get rid of these cards due to the 50 gold price tag on the Duke card. Since the patch I've not be able to get more than 40 gold at any one time. :/

Getting the Devil's Carnival card, getting a huge success then a failure on the second draw and geting nothing in return hurts pretty bad too, especially when you're down a lot of life/gold/food.

Also, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but upon recieving a new weapon gain, my starting shield disappears. This has happened several times, most recently with the Huge Hammer card. This makes it very difficult to progress when you are starting out in light armor and the bad guys are getting double damage ranged attacks.

[Tim Dungeon]

Just played one game, since my first post and this one. Within 3 moves I was down to 0 food, pulld Deadman's Gorge, went from 100hp to 13 (three lizard men, three bandats both sets two red dots). Gained 10 gold for that encounter, by the next two moves I was dead due to starvation.

I did get two blessings though, which is why I was down to five food at the start of the game, got boned on the map composition (cruciform shape on both first and second map "+" ). Gave up for tonight lol.

[courtney]

Is the court card mode harder than the previous public version? Yes. And no. As part of the Endless mode changes, the early court card game also actually got a bit easier and the late game got harder. Does it get too hard? Is it too hard too early? Either or both of those may be true.

I may have underestimated the extent to which people were selling their items instead of keeping them to use. But we would prefer players to want to use their equipment more than selling it, so it looks like the gain cards needed fixing in that respect anyway.

Thanks for all the feedback.

[notmyhorse]

I am so excited for the finished product. You developers only have a slight idea.

[bahamut66]

Posted my own feedback in a separate post, but a lot of these complaints apply. The terrible gain cards, the price nerfing, and some of the card changes like loan, which I could sometimes not afford even before the patch, really are the highlights.

Surprised no one touched on the bandit encounters at shops, where you can be robbed right before buying food, items, or healing. I don't hate the idea, but I think it should have limits. During one run, I got jumped by the jack of dust and the queen of plagues. When I just wanted to buy some food. DA FUQ?!

I can sympathize with the idea that you want us to keep our items, I can, but two things. 1, if you have the item you want, shouldn't you be able to get some use out of your old item, even if that use is just to sell for food? and 2, the gain cards, particularly the map or the look at the top of your equipment deck make it absurdly hard to get any good cards to begin with. Besides, if you want us to keep our items, why change the prices so that it's nearly impossible to buy new items from the shop? I'd keep hags wraps if I could afford it ever...which I no longer can.

[Ailheim]

I have to conqur with the comments in this thread. I've never agreed so much with an OP before. Albeit not having played for long, the difference between this and the last build is mortifying. My first impressions in the previous build were extremely positive. I bought the game a couple of days before this new build and the change hit me like a low flying 747. Glad to see that I'm not the only one who thought that the game became too discouraging. I really hope that some balance will be added.

[AmstradHero]

Originally posted by courtney:

Is the court card mode harder than the previous public version? Yes. And no. As part of the Endless mode changes, the early court card game also actually got a bit easier and the late game got harder. Does it get too hard? Is it too hard too early? Either or both of those may be true.

I went back and tried a couple of the earlier cards, Queen of Dust and Jack of Plague. The latter seemed a bit easier, but I did get an extraordinarily lucky run in that I didn't encounter a single Angry Mob. I then tried the Queen of Plague and got felled due to a lack of useful gain cards, followed by an amazingly obnoxious goblins encounter (see below).

Originally posted by courtney:

I may have underestimated the extent to which people were selling their items instead of keeping them to use. But we would prefer players to want to use their equipment more than selling it, so it looks like the gain cards needed fixing in that respect anyway.

Sure, I'd prefer that too. The issue is that as the equipment deck gets larger and larger, the player *has* to include some items that they really don't care for, or that are in fact pretty much useless. There are still a bunch of equipment cards that I have never found useful (the emergency ring was just the most egregious example to date) except as a source of gold to buy other equipment or food simply in order to survive. If you want people to keep their equipment cards rather than selling them, then they have to be useful. At the current point in time, that's simply not the case - and now for later court cards people are practically forced to sell items simply to have enough food.

Originally posted by courtney:

Thanks for all the feedback.

Again, apologies if my posts have been very blunt, but I'd prefer to give upfront honest feedback than beat around the bush. Glad to hear player feedback is being taken onboard - you guys seemed pretty cool and open to players at PAX last year (and do so now), so I'd love to see you come out with an awesome final product.

A few more things:

1) Damage inflicted on the player seems to have increased, in some cases by a lot. In one goblins encounter (in which I had both my axe AND my shield stolen AND had six of scales to deal with in addition to the goblins) I took 13 damage from a single fireball and 14 damage from a single sword swipe. In a lizard dome encounter, I took 19 (I think - it was definitely mid/high teens) damage from single ratman leap attack.
2) Call for the Priest - failure (not huge failure) now makes you draw a pain card. I just gave away half my food, and I'm being punished? Again, this was one of the few cards that was usually beneficial.
3) Nerfing of Hero's Remains. While it was potentially a little too powerful in its previous form (though that is mitigated a LOT now by some layouts where you potentially have to backtrack a LONG way to deliver the items), a measly 1 gain card is a bit too far. (Especially when it can be "look at 5 map cards"... when you've already uncovered the entire level)

Originally posted by bahamut66:

Surprised no one touched on the bandit encounters at shops, where you can be robbed right before buying food, items, or healing. I don't hate the idea, but I think it should have limits.

I haven't encountered this one yet, but if I had, I definitely would have added it to the list. This is definitely way too far over the top. Even if there are guaranteed gain cards afterwards, this is just another unnecessary form of player punishment.

[AmstradHero]

So with some extraordinary luck (and I do mean extraordinary), the King of Scales just went down. The run itself was ridiculously hard (and there were a bunch of hideously failed runs before it), and even on the successful run, went down to 35 max health, before raising back up to 45 thanks to the maiden. On the other hand, the final battle with the King of Scales was rather anti-climatic and disappointingly easy - it was probably one of the easiest court battles.

2 of scales and a boss with a ranged attack that is very easy to dodge - far easier than Queen of Plague or King of Bones, and his attacks are telegraphed a long way such that they were easy to dodge - in fact, the only damage taken was due to the fire trap. Furthermore, his shield spray actually leaves him quite vulnerable because he doesn't break out it when hit from behind, meaning the player can get three or four hits in for free.

At the current point in time, this court card is such that almost all of the difficulty comes from getting to the boss, while the boss itself poses very little threat. To be honest, I would probably prefer it the "deal from the pain deck" curse was moved to a different court card (with a higher number of steps before drawing) and a different curse/dealer attack system being worked out for the King of Scales. I know a final dealer fight is planned, but the final court card battle feels like a let down. The final fight effectively *has* to be easy at the moment because the run-through is almost guaranteed to render you fairly crippled, meaning that it would be impossible to have an interesting fight immediately afterwards too.

Two more suggestions:
1) A gain card that allows you to select a "slot" to gain a random item for. Which slots could even be a "random" selection from 3 slots (perhaps not quite 100% random, one could be a slot the player does not have an item in), providing the player with the opportunity to get a "random" item from their equipment deck while filling out a slot them may not have anything in. This would potentially encourage people to keep the items that they pick up as well.

2) Turn all max health loss cards into % based losses - and don't adjust the current values. As it stands, a few max health losses can result in a very small health pool. A percentage approach means it's worse for people with increased max health, but it means repeated max health losses aren't quite so crippling because they operate at a diminishing rate. The increase max health cards should stay as flat values.

[bahamut66]

I gotta say, I'll probably leave this game until it's finished as of right now. I went through another run and have some new thoughts on a few issues. First, YES, damage has increased IMMENSELY. I know the Lich is meant to be hard, but I had heavy friggin armor and was taking 15 damage a pop from some AOE I could not see or defend against. The helpful priest and other cards now dealing damage for failure...what?! Also, the goblins. Having goblins AND other baddies come at you can really screw you over and I think was a bad idea.

Anyone else noticed the different music too? The battle music is kind of annoying with its use of cymbols, but whenever you go to a shop it immediately switches to battle music and is...frankly just obnoxious. Also, I think it would be nice to have some way of telling us what we start with when we get the upgraded equipment bonus, that threw me for a bit. AND it would be nice if we could chooes to not use those upgrades, since trying to get the secret society card is damn near impossible when you start with a blessing and trying to beat river is absurd when you start with medium armor.

Also, just a thought, but giving us the option to limit the cards we put in our deck might be good. Like have different tiers, 25, 30, or 35 tiers, hell those could be considered different difficulties as it allows you to stack the deck with good encounters rather than having to throw all your equipment and all encounters, some very bad, in just to meet the deck limit.

Please, please, PLEASE get rid of the useless gain cards. I literally pulled two 1 gold and two 3 gold cards in a row. That's not even enough to buy food, much less any useful items. And the scouting and armory top or bottom of the deck cards are largely worthless. If memory serves, the worst gold card you could get in the last build was 5, and even that was too little by the 3rd or fourth row of cards.

Queen of dust had a weird glitch during my last run too when she just froze and I could wail on her until she died. I had hags wraps, but she didn't slow down, she just froze.

Probably gonna be my last playthrough until all this gets ironed out. The performance, especially in the forest levels, is so much better, but the game has drifted into what I like to call FTL territory, where it stops being fun and starts relying too much on randomness and instadeath encounters you cannot win.

[Pandabites]

I have to say I agree with everything being said here. The game is utterly punishing and I'm horribly disappointed in the balancing changes in the new patch. Before the patch, my progress through story mode had made it up to the King of Scales, which prior to the patch I had reached four times but on pitifully low health, so I was unable to beat him. I now after FIFTEEN attempts I find myself unable to move down more than a few levels before dying from the sheer number of pain cards I'm drawing or from starvation, which is almost always because I have absolutely no gold or items when I reach shops. Also, what's up with some shops not offering to sell food or to buy items?

Previously beneficial cards are no longer beneficial due to reduction of success cards from two to one, or from three to two and the punishment for failure being upped from one to two pain cards.

The balancing in the game was perfect before this patch (I personally hadn't found any of the exploits people are talking about here and I hadn't played endless mode), but I'll be putting this game down until the balancing issues are sorted out.

[David]

Just to add my viewpoint. I agree with some of the things (mostly latter ones) but not necessarily all of them- the game should be challenging. That said, since not everybody wants the same things, maybe there could be a difficulty setting or more customisation options.

I'll guess I state which ones I outright agree with and disagree with and which I'm 50/50 on:

Some of the 50/50 ones I disagree with the specific but agree with the idea or vice versa, like twisted canyon is good even with lots of fail cards but there should be good cards, and like hero's remains quest can always be refused, but some of the new layouts are very punishing too, which is one way to balance risk/reward and keep the player starving but I'm not sure whether I feel it's balanced or harsh yet (since it may just be my OCD to try and fully explore levels to avoid getting the new level penalties for longer).

agree: 8,9,11,12(Loan)

50/50: 1,~3,4,5,6,10

disagree: 2,7


I'll get around to playing some more of this patch later, both Endless and Story, but the balance in Endless seems improved as I'm not getting an infinite Endless run everytime (in fact all my Endless runs died at some point, usually to starvation), which I did in the previous patch, although I do miss having the option to construct an Endless deck, if nothing else but for hunting tokens (I'm still managing to unlock some, but some tokens like Secret Society are going to be really difficult).

I've already finished Story mode, but I will be able to see when I go back and play that if it too difficult if I find that I cannot beat certain bosses again.

[AmstradHero]

Dragondave17: I think your appraisal may be slightly skewed by the bonus gold from the Dagger, and the fact that you're playing endless mode. Now playing endless mode *after* defeating the King of Scales and getting the Dagger gold pile rewards, endless mode feels to be much more balanced. Without the gold piles it was still somewhat punishing, though comparatively it was much better than story mode. Still, I think it's fairly safe to say that balance is definitely out of whack in terms of rewards given to the player - especially in Story Mode.

Hi Devs, I've got some more wall of text discussion/criticism/suggestions:

1) With reference to my complaint about Goblins stealing a weapon being too harsh - losing a weapon is definitely less harsh in Endless mode because you have more opportunities to gain another weapon. The issue in story mode is that you get few opportunities to get a weapon, and the rusty axe is so ineffective against goblins because they fall over after not much damage, and are extremely difficult to stop spreading out to enable the player to build up their combo, meaning at least one will almost certainly get away. It is possible, but it is quite difficult. With the regular axe (and no monster card interference) I am almost guaranteed to kill them, but with the rusty axe, my success rate at killing all of them is very low.

I still maintain that monsters during the Goblin encounter are terrible regardless of Story / Endless mode. They simply ensure that you lose - and potentially lose very big if the goblins have stolen equipment. I strongly recommend removing them, but if you feel you *have* to keep them in, then I would limit it to Dust/Skulls/Plague cards, and probably maxing out at 4 (but more likely to be 2 or 3).

2) Loan. So, I know I complained about this before, but this was before I realised this card has another possibility. Due to three King of Scales gold piles before I hit this card, I had a whopping 90 gold. After loaning money to the merchant, the next line of text read: "You never see of hear of the merchant again." I am curious to know, what are the chances of this occurring? If there is a percentage chance that this could occur any time the player donates gold, then this card is effectively worthless at the current point in time. Even if this can only occur when the player has in excess of 80 gold or something like that, this is still a fairly appalling punishment.

3) I picked up a gold gain card of 1 gold. This isn't a gain. 3 gold is pretty mediocre, but 1 gold is just appalling. This is pretty much the equivalent of the rusty axes added for the King of Scales run. Gain cards that give the player nothing are not enjoyable.

4) Twisted canyon with one success and three huge failure cards. I'm not sure what caused this to change (previously I saw two failure and 1 huge failure), but this is pretty bad. Again, the twisted canyon should be "reasonably" friendly. The *only* way I think this can be justified is if
a) Huge Failure results in no drawing of a weapon card (the weapon is broken) and no pain cards.
b) At worst there are two Huge Failures.
So success results in a weapon. Failure results in pain card and a weapon, Huge Failure results in no effect. For endless mode, I think this is as harsh as it should be. For Story Mode, anything less than two success cards seems too unfair for the player.

Epic food discussion time!
5) Attacks at shops. I really dislike this. Shops are supposed to be safe havens. If you're going to include this, I would say the likelihood of it occurring has to drop by a lot, AND the player has to be guaranteed one or two gain cards afterwards. At the moment it happens way too often, and it's a "great, now I just lost a whole lot health when all I was trying to do was buy some food".

6) Change food consumption for inactive encounter cards such that you only consume food and heal as a result on every third (or second) card. For new layouts like the M shape or the L (or elongated L), the player can lose a LOT of food from simply exploring in the wrong direction. For the M, the player uses a whopping 16 food in the worst case scenario. If cards are rendered inactive, they'll use only 12. Which is still quite high, but slightly less crippling. This is only a small improvement for the player, but it rewards and encourages exploration a little more.

7) Shops sometimes don't sell food. There should always be at least one food card in a shop, else death by starvation is going to become a common way to die, at it's possibly one of the least enjoyable deaths. Losing because the only shop for the last three levels doesn't sell food even though you're sitting on a substantial pile of gold isn't enjoyable at all.

8) The 1 food card costs 5 gold. Drop it to 4. It still means 3 and 5 food are better deal, but that 1 food isn't so unfairly expensive. Players will only buy 1 food when they have no other option - it only gets you ONE move - so don't kick a player while they're down.

9) In endless mode, instead of drawing a curse card upon going down the stairs, potentially have the Dealer add some purple tinged "attack cards" to the deck in the form of more challenging or difficult encounters. Ambush, A Winding Path, Ratmen Hunting, Dark Dweller, The Hanged Man, Angry Mob, Lost in Swamp, etc. This still has the effect of making the game more difficult, but in a permanent and visibly tangible way to the player. Hitting one of those purple encounter cards means that the player gets a definite "ah, this is the Dealer's way of trying to beat me" feeling, but because it's so overt, even when it goes badly, it doesn't feel quite so cheap. I would strongly suggest, however, against adding the most awful cards in - no Warning Signs, no Davy Jones' Locker, etc. Instant Death cards are not enjoyable and shouldn't be the thing that finishes a player's Endless Mode run.

10) As an extension of the above, perhaps give the player the opportunity to craft their deck in endless mode again (or provide it as another option in addition to the set deck option you've now added), but as the player goes down floors, fill it out with cards as outlined above. This will effectively ensure that Endless Mode runs cannot be endless, because eventually the player will just end up with predominantly purple cards. Perhaps there could also be a bonus score tally for the number of purple cards the player completed - though that could possibly be difficult depending on your design.

11) The Dagger bonus says it will populate areas with gold and food. The piles only ever grant gold. If they're supposed to provide food, they currently don't. (Or at least haven't done once in a LOT of piles).

That's all I've got right now. The Dagger reward has certainly made the game less painful, but since you only get that *after* defeating the King of Scales and it's meant to be a fairly huge reward, I'm still confident that balance is definitely skewed severely against the player at this point.