Gold and its Effect on Game Balance

[Optim1sm]

I've been playing for a while, and the game is fun. It's also a little too easy currently, and I feel like I can win nearly every run with little trouble.

The reason is because gold is so plentiful. You need gold for meta progression, and if upgrades are going to cost 18,000+, grinding gold would become very tedious if you only gathered a little each run. But then bombs only cost 250, decent food is 400, etc. The optimal strategy is always to spend freely in the shops, because you make more money in the long run by staying alive into the later stages.

When gold is scarce, you can only buy what you need, which adds tension to the run and rewards careful play. When gold is too plentiful, I can spend my way to victory.

Recipes etc. are generally found in secret rooms and trap doors. Three bombs per floor if you know exactly where everything is and don't have help from enemies. I play every run now to find recipes, but I never have any trouble getting enough bombs: random bomb drops, buy all the ones you see in the shops, and a disproportionately large number of bomb relics which give you free bombs. I play every run the same way, because that's the most rewarding strategy, and I almost never feel pinched for bombs.

But then there are the purple gems, for some reason. Maybe to make the recipes feel more special. What do I do with my purple gems when I have nothing to craft? Why are they used for some meta progression, but not all?

The obvious comparison is to The Binding of Isaac. In Isaac, gold is scarce, so every purchase has to be carefully considered. And that works, because there is no meta progression outside of achievement-based unlocks. For that matter, permanent upgrades may not even be a good idea--but that's a separate thread.

Maybe the gems should be used for all upgrades and crafting. Gold would then only be used for shops in runs. Current prices would obviously be too low, so you'd have to rebalance gold drops vs. prices. Then early shops would be way too expensive, so you'd probably need to remove the gold scaling through the run. A big balancing act, but I think something needs to change.

Other thoughts to consider:

• Would be nice to have more interesting interactions with curses, to encourage stacking and risk vs. reward playstyle
  
• Familiars working with builds is good, but I don't know what my build will look like until after I've chosen a familiar, so it might be cool to be able to switch to a level one familiar mid-run, maybe with an altar.
  
• Scaling crit damage is worthless without also scaling a lot of crit chance, which generally means you need to spec into altar chance to be able to scale both stats. Visual feedback on crits feels week, could maybe use a different color for the damage.
  
• More interesting swing upgrades would be nice.
  
• Are pits good design? Did you have to make jumping really awkward so players would accidentally jump into them more often, because the game is too easy otherwise? One of my main problems with Wizard of Legend was that having to dash over pits while running through halls felt really artificial, like it was only pretending to be gameplay to distract you from the tedium of running through halls.
  
• In addition to a relic on every floor, Isaac has a boss fight which drops another relic. UnderMine replaces those bosses with altars, which give you more control over your build (fun), but come at the cost of interesting boss fights. Altars would feel better if curses were more interesting, as in my first point.

[At@At]

I don't think having too much gold is the main reason behind why the game is too easy for most ppl. The problem comes from the fact that ur character gets too strong with just the gold upgrades, u can dodge every single attack with the jump button, and the monster attack patterns are super easy to deal with. I hardly spend gold at the shop, unless I'm trying to do something weird and even then the shop hardly contributes to my runs cuz the number of items sold is nowhere near enough to heal my hp to full or give enough bombs or keys for me to use them on everything. The shop heals lik... 200 hp if u're super lucky with food and potions? U start the game with 500+ hp without blessings/relics and u hardly get hit. Of course, this depends on RnG.

[Domppa [FIN]]

There may also be the possibility that the game was meant to be more casual and enjoyable to introduce new players to roguelikes and so people wouldn't give up on the game too soon.

Sure the game is easy, but it gets harder for every ascension and you run out of stuff to upgrade after some time.

And sure only reason l haven't 100% the game yet is because l haven't died enough or crafted all the items, because l don't like some of them.

At least you get more options on your tactics and builds unlike in isaac on enter the gungeon.

[Aalnius]

I mean you could try going for the no upgrade runs if youre finding the game too easy. Its a pretty easy game to self regulate the difficulty cos you can just not buy or pickup stuff you think makes it too easy.

[StickyDave]

Really? I have trouble getting enough gold.

[CherryKiss]

I do feel like it would be nice if there was some sort of end game gold sink, and thorium sink as well...something to plunge those extra resources into once you don't need them for upgrades anymore...

[attackmuffin]

Originally posted by CherryKiss:

I do feel like it would be nice if there was some sort of end game gold sink, and thorium sink as well...something to plunge those extra resources into once you don't need them for upgrades anymore...

maybe like a shrine that costs money or shrine that doesnt give curses with thorium or something like that?

[CherryKiss]

interesting ideas...I was thinking it'd be neat to uncraft items for an increased cost. Then you could either get bad items out of your relic pool, or uncraft an item to recraft it again, and get it to start a new run. uncrafting I feel should be very expensive though... perhaps 200 thorium a shot?

[Rivia]

I agree highly. I'm about to beat my 10th run and I have like 150k with all upgrades bought already so it's not hard. I buyout pretty much every shop I need. I wonder if it would've been better to not have made a separate currency for crafting so that you always need gold.

[Kosher Pork ✞ Jesus Saves ✞]

I must be doing something wrong, 12 hours in and this game knocks the tar out of me so far. Must be my RNG or I just suck at top-down roguelikes.

[CherryKiss]

Originally posted by Kosher Pork:

I must be doing something wrong, 12 hours in and this game knocks the tar out of me so far. Must be my RNG or I just suck at top-down roguelikes.

Feels like the difficulty is very front-loaded in this game. I took about 8 or so tries before being able to beat Selt the first time. Now I'm surprised if I don't beat the full run in one go. End game you have well upgraded shops, with a huge selection of relics/blessings/potions to arm yourself with. Far easier, even without the added skill of having played a while.

[Kurama Kitsune]

My thought is that there can be adding a pair of NPCs at the hub which cost thorium or gold to do certain things. The one I can think would be cool would be a Summoner, who you would pay 25 or more Thorium for special services. Something like give him 25 Thorium, and he will summon a random relic from the undermine. You are then given a choice: Take the relic, or put it into a vault (which defaults to only being able to store 1 item, but you can use large amounts of gold to increase the size of this vault). Relics put into the vault can be removed from the vault free of charge, but while they are in the vault you cannot find them in the undermine. You can summon more than one relic, but the thorium cost increases by 25 each time the same peasant uses it. His other service would be to, for 50 thorium or something, replace the entrance to the mine with the curse demon's door. Whether you want to use the vault for storing up good relics for a really powerful run, or to just try and remove annoying relics from the pool, is up to the player.

A similar NPC that uses large amounts of gold for something similarly temporary in nature would also be useful for the gold end of things.

It might also be good to change the bag upgrades to be smaller (say each one is only 3%), and for there to be more of them. Both for the early game progression when its still hard to save up enough money for a new player, and so as to have more total upgrades for the bag, and thus being able to make some of the last ones much more expensive.