Fix Lunar Items

[KnightFilms]

Make lunar items actually rewarding and useful more than a common white item. At the current state lunar items are actually punishing and useless in all-around gameplay. There's just so many issues that needs to be balanced and fixed and I hope Risk of Rain 2 gets solved this June with the roadmap plan.

[KnightFilms]

Guys you truly don't understand the difference between a useful item and a useless item. Lunar coins are the only rare currency in the game required to open specific lunar pods and obtain items from lunar portals. I advise you all to go to the RoR2 wiki and look up the lunar items and tell me which lunar item is close to darn useful? Alright I'll make a quick thought for each.

1. Shaped Glass "Increase base damage by 100% (+100% per stack). Reduce maximum health by 50% (50% per stack)."

This item is clearly good by its "first look" but having a constant max hp reduction to 50% is a big slap in the face. Mobs late game literally start one shotting you. i'm talking about "blazing Imps, Blazing Elder Lemurians, Unstoppable Blazing Stone titan that not only has a pulsating lazer that burns you but constantly spawns pillars with a large radius under you across the entire map and you are forced to kill it before you get pooped on by that dumb and annoyingly game-breaking ability." Every other boss and monster is quite fine to mechanically maneuver around and strategically fight but stone titans aren't fightable in any sense 2hrs+ into the game. They shred you instantaneously which makes no sense how you can counter play it because you are forced to hide behind cover and sit attacking millions of things coming at you.

Just a summary, Shaped Glass can be really good but the punishment of "constant max hp reduction" places you at a critical one shot zone by almost all mobs late game which doesn't help survival and certainly isn't worth taking the item with it's risks involved. If the item only reduce your hp by a flat amount or at the "current state" and then you got to use infusions to get your hp up without "constantly getting placed by the 50% reduction" the item would be really good. But as it stands, it's pretty trash because if you get "transcendence" there isn't items that give you "shieldsteal" to heal up your shield. So you only rely on the passive. Certainly if you get stacks of Shaped Glass and Transcendence, it could be interesting but I never tried. With the amount of RNG in this game it makes this lunar item very mediocre and dangerous.

2. Brittle Crown "30% chance on hit to gain 3 (+3 per stack) gold. Lose gold equal to the amount you are hit for OR lose % gold equal to the % maximum health you lost. Chooses the greater of the two."

Are you serious now? So the positive is that you have a 30% chance to get 3 gold on hit while when you get hit or lose hp you are "guaranteed to lose gold" why is the punishment greater than the reward of the item? You can't even use Shrine of Blood with this lunar item. Like you desperately need Transcendence for it to even work. On its own the item is pretty trash and even with brittle crown it's pretty awkward because you can't lifesteal and all your hp is shields which regen slowly and can't be sped up by items since no items regen your shield from on hitting on any other mechanic.

3. Transcendence "Convert all but 1 health into regenerating shields. (shields regenerate faster than base health regen) Gain 50% (+25% per stack) maximum health."

Regeneration isn't good late game battles what so ever. What makes your character bulky late game is your health pool with the damage reductions and the amount of sustain that you have from on-hit and dmg you do with leech and other items. Transcendence makes your healing items completely and utterly useless. This item is just a meme to try with other "lunar items"

4. Corpsebloom Heal +100% (+100% per stack) more. All healing is applied over time. Can heal for a maximum of 10% (reduced by 50% per stack) of your health per second.

One thing to observe about this darn item is that it doesn't having a single "stackable positive reward." If you stack Corpsebloom this is how it will affect you; remind you that the item gives no positive rewards for stacking so it's stuck flat at heal 10% max hp and makes your healing overtime which is very bad.

1 stack= 10% max hp/sec
2 stack= 5% max hp/sec
3 stack= 2.5% max hp/sec
4 stack= 1.25% max hp/sec

You guys get the memo? The heal 100% + 100% doesn't matter because the heal is always % of your max hp per second and the healing is "always overtime" which makes you not able to sustain.

5. Gesture of the Drowned "Reduce Equipment cooldown by 50% (+50% per stack). Forces your Equipment to activate whenever it is off cooldown"

Kind of a Sleeper item but I haven't tried effectively stacking it. Not having control over your equipment actually sucks. So you have to stack 2 "Gesture of the Drowned" to obtain 100% cooldown and always having your equipment up? I don't understand it the number presented is additive to the 50% or multiplicative which would be 50% of the 50%= 75% and then you'd have to get a 3rd Gesture to obtain above 100%. So Yeah IDK.

Compared to the normals items in the game: common, uncommon, and rare, the lunar items fade very hard because all these normals items that stack are "always rewarding" above. It doesn't make sense to have a rare currency to get lunar items and not have them be rewarding or requiring some weird mechanic that doesn't even work late into the game.

All in all, Engineer is the best character in the game right now. :)

[EmeraldFoxDeity]

Originally posted by GSkillz:

Guys you truly don't understand the difference between a useful item and a useless item. Lunar coins are the only rare currency in the game required to open specific lunar pods and obtain items from lunar portals. I advise you all to go to the RoR2 wiki and look up the lunar items and tell me which lunar item is close to darn useful? Alright I'll make a quick thought for each.

1. Shaped Glass "Increase base damage by 100% (+100% per stack). Reduce maximum health by 50% (50% per stack)."

This item is clearly good by its "first look" but having a constant max hp reduction to 50% is a big slap in the face. Mobs late game literally start one shotting you. i'm talking about "blazing Imps, Blazing Elder Lemurians, Unstoppable Blazing Stone titan that not only has a pulsating lazer that burns you but constantly spawns pillars with a large radius under you across the entire map and you are forced to kill it before you get pooped on by that dumb and annoyingly game-breaking ability." Every other boss and monster is quite fine to mechanically maneuver around and strategically fight but stone titans aren't fightable in any sense 2hrs+ into the game. They shred you instantaneously which makes no sense how you can counter play it because you are forced to hide behind cover and sit attacking millions of things coming at you.

Just a summary, Shaped Glass can be really good but the punishment of "constant max hp reduction" places you at a critical one shot zone by almost all mobs late game which doesn't help survival and certainly isn't worth taking the item with it's risks involved. If the item only reduce your hp by a flat amount or at the "current state" and then you got to use infusions to get your hp up without "constantly getting placed by the 50% reduction" the item would be really good. But as it stands, it's pretty trash because if you get "transcendence" there isn't items that give you "shieldsteal" to heal up your shield. So you only rely on the passive. Certainly if you get stacks of Shaped Glass and Transcendence, it could be interesting but I never tried. With the amount of RNG in this game it makes this lunar item very mediocre and dangerous.

2. Brittle Crown "30% chance on hit to gain 3 (+3 per stack) gold. Lose gold equal to the amount you are hit for OR lose % gold equal to the % maximum health you lost. Chooses the greater of the two."

Are you serious now? So the positive is that you have a 30% chance to get 3 gold on hit while when you get hit or lose hp you are "guaranteed to lose gold" why is the punishment greater than the reward of the item? You can't even use Shrine of Blood with this lunar item. Like you desperately need Transcendence for it to even work. On its own the item is pretty trash and even with brittle crown it's pretty awkward because you can't lifesteal and all your hp is shields which regen slowly and can't be sped up by items since no items regen your shield from on hitting on any other mechanic.

3. Transcendence "Convert all but 1 health into regenerating shields. (shields regenerate faster than base health regen) Gain 50% (+25% per stack) maximum health."

Regeneration isn't good late game battles what so ever. What makes your character bulky late game is your health pool with the damage reductions and the amount of sustain that you have from on-hit and dmg you do with leech and other items. Transcendence makes your healing items completely and utterly useless. This item is just a meme to try with other "lunar items"

4. Corpsebloom Heal +100% (+100% per stack) more. All healing is applied over time. Can heal for a maximum of 10% (reduced by 50% per stack) of your health per second.

One thing to observe about this darn item is that it doesn't having a single "stackable positive reward." If you stack Corpsebloom this is how it will affect you; remind you that the item gives no positive rewards for stacking so it's stuck flat at heal 10% max hp and makes your healing overtime which is very bad.

1 stack= 10% max hp/sec
2 stack= 5% max hp/sec
3 stack= 2.5% max hp/sec
4 stack= 1.25% max hp/sec

You guys get the memo? The heal 100% + 100% doesn't matter because the heal is always % of your max hp per second and the healing is "always overtime" which makes you not able to sustain.

5. Gesture of the Drowned "Reduce Equipment cooldown by 50% (+50% per stack). Forces your Equipment to activate whenever it is off cooldown"

Kind of a Sleeper item but I haven't tried effectively stacking it. Not having control over your equipment actually sucks. So you have to stack 2 "Gesture of the Drowned" to obtain 100% cooldown and always having your equipment up? I don't understand it the number presented is additive to the 50% or multiplicative which would be 50% of the 50%= 75% and then you'd have to get a 3rd Gesture to obtain above 100%. So Yeah IDK.

Compared to the normals items in the game: common, uncommon, and rare, the lunar items fade very hard because all these normals items that stack are "always rewarding" above. It doesn't make sense to have a rare currency to get lunar items and not have them be rewarding or requiring some weird mechanic that doesn't even work late into the game.

All in all, Engineer is the best character in the game right now. :)

Gesture of the Drowned's downside is hardly one at all. It is especially good with something like The Backup. A lot of people like using disposable missile launcher with it though.

Also I personally don't consider massive stacks of monster teeth and red whips "always rewarding".

[Deathy]

Shaped glass downside gets negated with personal shields, a 3d printer for personal shield will allow you to take however many shaped glass you want. Gesture of the drowned is completely insane with disposable rocket launcher, 2 gestures and a soulbound catalyst will cause a run to go infinite, you will never stop shooting rockets. Transcendence works extremely well with shaped glass since you want to switch to shields with half hp.
Those 3 are the only ones I always take, but hellfire tincture can also be incredible with the right items backing it up. The other items are kind of meh in terms of power


Lunar items can be extremely powerful, and can make a huge difference with how far you can go in a run. All of my game breaking runs have used some sort of lunar item to achieve infinite stages.

[Ailen]

i've tried all lunar items and find them all useful, more or less. For example, Shaped glass debuff become irrelevant at some point of the game, when you stack enough items to start oneshot anything in your sight, so it's pretty good source of damage.
Also it can carry you through early levels if you have a lot of movement items, but lack of damage (what was happen in that Artefactor run in the video below).

Especially good on pair with Transcendence wich, when stacked, one of the most powefull defensive item in the game. Once you obtain some of lunar items game just become ridiculously easy. Just look at this
♥♥♥♥: https://youtu.be/SVMu_n5RjdI

[Ailen]

Actual problem with them is that there is no way to get a lot of lunar coins consictently. So you have only two ways to obtain them - mindless farming of Obelisk at the Dizzle difficulty or cheat them, through redacting game files.

That what need to be changed. If it's was depends of me i'v probably remove lunar coins from the game and probably replace it for item barter, like red and green items. But it's just an oppinion.

[Zeddy]

Shaped glass actually has two upsides. The game has one-shot protection, and no single attack can drain more than 90% of your health + shields if you're at full health. Usually, healing to full health takes a lot of time, but if you only have 8 HP, every single attack is going to full-heal you if you've got 10 lensmakers and scythe. Burn from blazing eats a % of your max hp as well.

If you've got like 7 shaped glass you'll probably have 8 HP and instantly kill enemies before they can even attack.

[KnightFilms]

Originally posted by Zeddy:

Shaped glass actually has two upsides. The game has one-shot protection, and no single attack can drain more than 90% of your health + shields if you're at full health. Usually, healing to full health takes a lot of time, but if you only have 8 HP, every single attack is going to full-heal you if you've got 10 lensmakers and scythe. Burn from blazing eats a % of your max hp as well.

If you've got like 7 shaped glass you'll probably have 8 HP and instantly kill enemies before they can even attack.

Bruh what? Did you even face blazing enemies past 100 minutes? they one shot lmao

[BlahBlah]

Originally posted by GSkillz:

Originally posted by Zeddy:

Shaped glass actually has two upsides. The game has one-shot protection, and no single attack can drain more than 90% of your health + shields if you're at full health. Usually, healing to full health takes a lot of time, but if you only have 8 HP, every single attack is going to full-heal you if you've got 10 lensmakers and scythe. Burn from blazing eats a % of your max hp as well.

If you've got like 7 shaped glass you'll probably have 8 HP and instantly kill enemies before they can even attack.

Bruh what? Did you even face blazing enemies past 100 minutes? they one shot lmao

They don't. They literally can't. The burn dot isn't enough to compensate for OSP. You're being hit by multiple things at once.

[Zeddy]

Originally posted by GSkillz:

Bruh what? Did you even face blazing enemies past 100 minutes? they one shot lmao

Blazing DoT does 5% of your max health at 1 minute and 1 million minutes. Shaped glass makes you take LESS burn damage, making it easier to survive. At least in theory.

Besides, if just like you say blazings oneshot you at 100 minutes, what's then the downside in having half health? A oneshot is a oneshot. Killing the enemy twice as fast keeps you twice as safe.

[Streylok]

Brittle Crown is amazing. When you are far enough along that one shot does multiple sources of damage, each source of damage procs the affect. Once you have enough of both fire and ice bands, a tesla coil, a few ukuleles and a few missle mk1, your aoe damage is going to be pretty insane. All of these effects cause Brittle crown to just get insane.

Once in the Abyssal Depths, I can nearly buy the gold chest in the cave within a minute or two.

[Devily]

Personally I have an issue with Corpsebloom, Effigy of Grief and Shaped Glass.

Shaped Glass is kind of lame... both for the buff and the debuff.
You basically "crit" every attack but lose half your health, stacks with actual crits but... whatever?
I'd rather it emulate the Glass artifact and be more extreme: raise damage by 400% but you end up having your health reduced to 1/4.
It's more extreme, more fun and it actually becomes a "kill or be killed" situation, since 1 attack can kill you but you pretty much destroy everything with one skill as well.

Corpsebloom... is just boring and useless.
You're never going to use this item, it is pointless, early game the regeneration effects are not really needed with good items and even then you don't need a boost from Corpsebloom to make that one single slug or medbot effective.
Lategame, you need immediate healing, if you cannot heal from 200 back to 1000 in half a second you're dead.
Just remove the cap of "10% health maximum per second" or do something else with it, as it stands picking Corpsebloom is basically saying "I want to do a no healing run"... and that is already a niche of Trascendence.

Effigy of Grief meanwhile is not too bad but the area of effect is just so puny, you need to be so precise.
Make it as big or more than a banner: more dangerous to get out but once you placed it you have a proper kill zone set up, a reliable one.

Those are my opinions anyway, I feel a lot of people don't pick these items specifically because their effects are pretty tame or they are basically a kill switch.
Except Glass, stacking Glass is pretty fun but again, it goes back to my point of "make it more extreme".

[bokoblin]

Originally posted by GSkillz:

Make lunar items actually rewarding and useful more than a common white item. At the current state lunar items are actually punishing and useless in all-around gameplay. There's just so many issues that needs to be balanced and fixed and I hope Risk of Rain 2 gets solved this June with the roadmap plan.

agreed. blue = suck