Poison+Acid+Disintegrate need a nerf

[Stormrhodos]

I really like the game and managed to beat it on my first playthrough on apprentice but since then every single run I had was ruined by poison early on, so I feel like I just got extremely lucky with enemy spawns and drops the first time.
Poison,acid and disintegrate feel broken. Acid and disintegrate destroying random equipment can straight up ruin a run and destroy any tactical setup you have.
The problems with poison are mostly early-game and RNG-related,but I feel like they can completely destroy a run in the first day or two,and it happened to me several times now. Example of my most recent one:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1263483317

- Poison can stack up to 3 times, which means massive malus to all stats, AND 9 armor-piercing damage every single turn. It also persists after combat,so every stack of poison you get is a guaranteed 9 damage to your character and renders them far less useful for the next couple of combats. This is absolutely broken early game, where your characters barely have any health to speak of and their hitchances are already pretty low. Combine this with having no money to speak of and the only counters to poison being healing at a town for tons of money or buying panax (which heals ONE stack early on for 9gold minimum), what exactly are you supposed to do at that point? Farming money isnt exactly an option on any difficulty higher than apprentice, since enemy types are RNG aswell and chaos doesn't just wait around for you, plus the prices seem to increase as time goes on.

- Bees have a ridiculous speed stat and always seem to go first and attack several times before your characters can, so it's often unavoidable poison that can quickly stack to 3 or spread on your characters,requiring you to heal multiple characters...with what money? Acid slimes have AoE poison, but at least they CAN potentially be countered if you have good enough weapons to burst them down quickly, but good luck if you encounter multiple of them at once or you can't burst them down quickly.

- The only counters to poison are getting lucky with equipment so you get poison immunity early on (completely RNG and unreliable), healing at a town or panax (which is pretty expensive throughout the game AND requires you to spend potentially several turns walking back to the nearest town, taking poison damage and hoping to avoid ambushes,enemy spawns along the way...) and getting equipment with cure,which again is completely RNG and requires you to basically have one of your member on "anti-poison" duty.


Since most of these issues are early-game and RNG-related, my suggestion for possible solutions would be:
- Have poison be a scaling effect (lower damage and stat malus early on, higher damage later on, where characters actually have potential counters to it and much higher health pools.) Or just remove the damage alltogether and have it be a stat reduction, so it's still annoying to have across all levels but not be devastating early on.

-Give more equipment the "cure" skill (I've had ONE piece of equipment with it drop so far during all my runs, it feels like it should be more common on lutes or mage equipment) or:
-Give starting characters a CHOICE of starting equipment instead of locking it behind unlockable classes. This way a player could choose to have a slightly weaker version of equipment but with the added possibility of cure (or similar effects,taunt etc) to counter early-game RNG. The amount of grinding it takes to unlock several classes to have a good composition right now just feels a bit ridiculous.

-Give the deployable campfire a way to heal status effects (perhaps a part of resting,remove one stack or debuff?). Deploying a campfire right now is only worth it if you have characters on low health,but if they happen to be poisoned,they'll just keep taking damage the next turn,which doesnt make much sense)

-Make Panax actually useful early on: Either make it cheaper, since debuffs and poison can be pretty damn common early on and it can only heal ONE at a time, or make it heal whatever you have on you, instead of "1 one of each *type* of affliction" (it actually becomes good with an upgraded pipe,but since upgrading multiple characters is so expensive,thats not a solution in early game)

-Give the player just a tad more starting money or Panax so you can actually have a counter early on (not a great solution since it makes the game easier and the money can be spent elsewhere)

- Exclude bees and acid slimes as enemy types in early game surrounding areas (not a good solution since single one of these enemies are still fine and offer a challenge)

- Turn acid and disintegrate into the same effect as "stolen" equipment: TARGET a specific equipment and give it a x-turn duration and if you don't end combat before the timer runs out,the equipment gets destroyed. Right now,it just immediately destroys random equipment,which can be devastating if it happens to be a weapon or Artifact.

[Nequis]

Try playing on Master lol,where enemies attack for 50% of a character hp and bees are the real boss fights where i had my woodcutter killed in 2 turns by a bee attacking twice per his turn with armor piercing and single poison attack applying 2 stacks.

Still on Jouneyman is perfectly doable and you just need to avoid poison enemies early on,the only time you could be forced to fight 1 is in the glittering mines by which you should already have some counters.

About Acid i agree,had a run get totally gimped by the fact that the jelly went first and my first turn had the weapon destroyed,which later left me with an unviable one simply cause in 5 levels i couldn't drop/find/buy a single other strenght weapon.

[Vercci ]

Everyone in that screenshot has at least 10 damage and you're in act one, just focus the cubes first and you won't lose your precious stats.