can we stop diluting the pool of perks with useless stuff

[Bocashancla]

the new perks seem pretty bad and I dont want it to end up being like tboi pool of items

[C1ipper]

Most perks have many uses and synergies that are not immediately obvious. Such as the new perk "trick blood money", which can work with trick greed to give you massive amounts of health and money on trick kills. Or how about telekinesis, which can be used as a great improvised weapon, and can be used for triggering multiple secret events that are otherwise quite difficult (the worm rain and chest rain). So yeah, even though some perks seem a little lackluster at first, with some skill and knowledge, or with the addition of other perks, they can become quite powerful.

[Dead Parrot]

Perks are just one issue. It's wands and spells also. Its fine to get bad perks if you have good wands, and on the opposite side many players are fine with bad wands if they get good perks. But with so many lines of rng intersecting, its possible to end up in extremely difficult/nonviable runs with bad wands, bad spells, bad perks. Players have less fun when they feel like they failed a run because of things outside of their control.

The game has gotten to the point where options are so plentiful that pure rng stops being fair and instead becomes a detriment. Same with the holy mountain concept. It's too simple for what the game requires from you (or what you require from the game). I'd like to be able to buy both wands and spells at the same time, and either have rng partially weighted when it comes to perks, such as 1 of 3 perks always being one of the 'good' ones, or perhaps there being a different way to collect certain perks without requiring you to farm gold for 5 layers to reroll multiple times. Many perks are useful/mainly useful on specific layers only or when combo'd with other perks/spells and it can be frustrating sabotaging a run by gambling on getting a certain perk or spell some time later and its compliment never appearing. Adding a reroll mechanic to spells/wands in holy mountain would be a decent compromise.

Another design problem that ties into this is that excessive perk rerolling is too expensive for what it is. In the first layer, the monsters are easy and treasure is easily accessible, therefore its easy to accumulate large amounts of gold. Then it gets progressively harder while monster loot doesnt meaningfully increase until the jungle. I think the real reason people struggle with ice caverns and hisi base and beyond is because even if you take the time to kill everything, its hard to accumulate enough gold to be able to purchase the things you want, assuming average skill level and rngluck. I noticed they added a perma-gold perk but frankly, that shouldnt be a perk. As soon as monsters start being predominately ranged/damage sponges, the gold life timer needs to be extended to compensate for the fact that you might not be ale to collect your loot while trying to shoot 8 ranged gunners and 2 gernaiders even if you can kill them all flawlessly.

tldr; possible fixes
1. weighted rng
2. more reroll options
3. better access to gold that youve already earned

[Ryedestructor]

Originally posted by C1ipper:

Most perks have many uses and synergies that are not immediately obvious. Such as the new perk "trick blood money", which can work with trick greed to give you massive amounts of health and money on trick kills. Or how about telekinesis, which can be used as a great improvised weapon, and can be used for triggering multiple secret events that are otherwise quite difficult (the worm rain and chest rain). So yeah, even though some perks seem a little lackluster at first, with some skill and knowledge, or with the addition of other perks, they can become quite powerful.

Ok explain to me in what situation I would ever want "No Wand Editing" or "Always Cast." The first one is trash, plain and simple; it removes your main method of growing in power/utility in exchange for a mediocre heal whenever you fire a new wand. Always Cast can be good, but is very RNG-based and pretty underwhelming in that it only applies to the current wand. If it gave every wand from then on an always cast spell, then it could be viable. But almost any other perk is preferable.

[C1ipper]

Originally posted by Ryedestructor:

Originally posted by C1ipper:

Most perks have many uses and synergies that are not immediately obvious. Such as the new perk "trick blood money", which can work with trick greed to give you massive amounts of health and money on trick kills. Or how about telekinesis, which can be used as a great improvised weapon, and can be used for triggering multiple secret events that are otherwise quite difficult (the worm rain and chest rain). So yeah, even though some perks seem a little lackluster at first, with some skill and knowledge, or with the addition of other perks, they can become quite powerful.

Ok explain to me in what situation I would ever want "No Wand Editing" or "Always Cast." The first one is trash, plain and simple; it removes your main method of growing in power/utility in exchange for a mediocre heal whenever you fire a new wand. Always Cast can be good, but is very RNG-based and pretty underwhelming in that it only applies to the current wand. If it gave every wand from then on an always cast spell, then it could be viable. But almost any other perk is preferable.

Honestly, the main reason I didn't comment on "No Wand Editing" and "Always Cast" is because even I can't really think of any reasonable uses for those perks. Personally, I think the Always Cast perk should be reworked.

[Ryedestructor]

Originally posted by C1ipper:

Originally posted by Ryedestructor:

Ok explain to me in what situation I would ever want "No Wand Editing" or "Always Cast." The first one is trash, plain and simple; it removes your main method of growing in power/utility in exchange for a mediocre heal whenever you fire a new wand. Always Cast can be good, but is very RNG-based and pretty underwhelming in that it only applies to the current wand. If it gave every wand from then on an always cast spell, then it could be viable. But almost any other perk is preferable.

Honestly, the main reason I didn't comment on "No Wand Editing" and "Always Cast" is because even I can't really think of any reasonable uses for those perks. Personally, I think the Always Cast perk should be reworked.

I agree, a reworked Always Cast would be cool for casual runs, but No Wand Editing truly baffles me with its existence

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by C1ipper:

Most perks have many uses and synergies that are not immediately obvious. Such as the new perk "trick blood money", which can work with trick greed to give you massive amounts of health and money on trick kills. Or how about telekinesis, which can be used as a great improvised weapon, and can be used for triggering multiple secret events that are otherwise quite difficult (the worm rain and chest rain). So yeah, even though some perks seem a little lackluster at first, with some skill and knowledge, or with the addition of other perks, they can become quite powerful.

Aint talking blood money talking useless perks.
-Breathless
-Low gravity
-Faster swimmer
-Never skip leg day
-Exploding Corpses
-Saving grace
-Vampirism
-Worm Attract and Defract
-enemy radar
-teleportis

many more

[NotARobot099]

Originally posted by Degeneratus:

Originally posted by C1ipper:

Most perks have many uses and synergies that are not immediately obvious. Such as the new perk "trick blood money", which can work with trick greed to give you massive amounts of health and money on trick kills. Or how about telekinesis, which can be used as a great improvised weapon, and can be used for triggering multiple secret events that are otherwise quite difficult (the worm rain and chest rain). So yeah, even though some perks seem a little lackluster at first, with some skill and knowledge, or with the addition of other perks, they can become quite powerful.

Aint talking blood money talking useless perks.
-Breathless
-Low gravity
-Faster swimmer
-Never skip leg day
-Exploding Corpses
-Saving grace
-Vampirism
-Worm Attract and Defract
-enemy radar
-teleportis

many more

Vampirism can be good if grabbed early on. The debuff to max HP does not extend to future health pickups. So would you exchange 33 health for the ability to heal basically on command? Get find familiar plus polymorph circle to get infinite sheep that drop blood, use chainsaw on sheep to drain the blood and make pools of essentially portable health.

And if 33 health really is too much to lose then you were probably gonna die anyway.

Enemy radar, while not as good as all see eye or anything along those parts, can be useful for preventing an immediate sneak attack, you just know where enemies are and can sometimes even blind fire in the distance to try and kill the enemy before they’re even on the screen. Not the best perk but it ain’t useless.

Breathless and fast swimmer are a combo for basically aqua man build, fill a room with water from sea or rain cloud and then just jump in with the electric stone. You don’t even need the fire stone because breathless helps you out and you can safely travel while enemies suffocate, projectiles are slowed in the water, and you’re basically an electric eel.

The rest are basically useless and I agree to them.

[Doom Sayer]

Originally posted by NotARobot099:

Originally posted by Degeneratus:

Aint talking blood money talking useless perks.
-Breathless
-Low gravity
-Faster swimmer
-Never skip leg day
-Exploding Corpses
-Saving grace
-Vampirism
-Worm Attract and Defract
-enemy radar
-teleportis

many more

Vampirism can be good if grabbed early on. The debuff to max HP does not extend to future health pickups. So would you exchange 33 health for the ability to heal basically on command? Get find familiar plus polymorph circle to get infinite sheep that drop blood, use chainsaw on sheep to drain the blood and make pools of essentially portable health.

And if 33 health really is too much to lose then you were probably gonna die anyway.

Enemy radar, while not as good as all see eye or anything along those parts, can be useful for preventing an immediate sneak attack, you just know where enemies are and can sometimes even blind fire in the distance to try and kill the enemy before they’re even on the screen. Not the best perk but it ain’t useless.

Breathless and fast swimmer are a combo for basically aqua man build, fill a room with water from sea or rain cloud and then just jump in with the electric stone. You don’t even need the fire stone because breathless helps you out and you can safely travel while enemies suffocate, projectiles are slowed in the water, and you’re basically an electric eel.

The rest are basically useless and I agree to them.

Vampirism early on means you die in like 1 - 3 hits if encountering wrong enemy. Also HP pick up really dont seem very great with it. If perk causes my death I stop using it. At least bad spells usually have weird op uses.

[C1ipper]

Originally posted by Degeneratus:

Originally posted by C1ipper:

Most perks have many uses and synergies that are not immediately obvious. Such as the new perk "trick blood money", which can work with trick greed to give you massive amounts of health and money on trick kills. Or how about telekinesis, which can be used as a great improvised weapon, and can be used for triggering multiple secret events that are otherwise quite difficult (the worm rain and chest rain). So yeah, even though some perks seem a little lackluster at first, with some skill and knowledge, or with the addition of other perks, they can become quite powerful.

Aint talking blood money talking useless perks.
-Breathless
-Low gravity
-Faster swimmer
-Never skip leg day
-Exploding Corpses
-Saving grace
-Vampirism
-Worm Attract and Defract
-enemy radar
-teleportis

many more

Breathless is good if you want to do stuff with liquids, but it's mostly a convenience.
Low gravity isn't really of much use.
Faster swimming is great for, again, liquids.
Never skip leg day is more or less a joke perk, but it can be useful for getting trick kills.
Exploding corpses... is only somewhat good if you are getting swamped by blood substances.
Saving grace is a discount 1-up, it's usually a good pick if there is nothing else worth picking.
Vampirism is good for long runs, due to you gaining the ability to heal somewhat naturally. It
also has great synergy with the Unlimited spells perk, as you can create endless blood with
the blood droplet spell and the blood rain spell.
Worm attractor is good for one secret, worm detractor is only good if you hate worm enemies...
for some reason.
Enemy radar allows you to see that one ukko hiding behind a metal wall ready to one-shot you.
It's basically a discount version of All seeing eye.
Teleportitis is only good if you are doing a janky speedrun.

Hope this helps.

[Yodzilla]

I don't know why Freeze Field exists. It doesn't protect you from dangerous liquids but makes water and blood unusable and super easy to trap yourself in. On top of that it's kind of a bummer that AOE cold spells don't have any effect on fire in the environment. Seems like a bit of an oversight.

[Kalistri]

Freeze field freezes enemies; cast it at a choke point, back up and wait for enemies to come to it, then you can safely shoot them while they can't attack you. Potentially you could also add it to a trigger spell to cast it at range of course.

[Yodzilla]

Originally posted by Kalistri:

Freeze field freezes enemies; cast it at a choke point, back up and wait for enemies to come to it, then you can safely shoot them while they can't attack you. Potentially you could also add it to a trigger spell to cast it at range of course.

Oh no I'm not talking about the AOE freeze spell in the first part of my comment, Freeze Field is a perk that freezes some liquids (water, blood) when you get near them which means you can never use water to get slime or toxic sludge off you and if water falls on you it freezes in a bubble around you completely trapping you unless you have a fire spell. It sucks and I have no idea what purpose it serves.

The freeze spell is fine except for what I said about it not interacting with fire.

[LT2483]

Freeze field deals with pretty much every liquid and fire. That's useful. Also, you can get out of a circle of frozen water with a spark bolt alone, so I'm not quite sure what you are on about.

And now, addressing the thread topic: If you think a perk is useless, it's incredibly easy to mod this game. All you would need to do is to make a new perks file, copy the old one into it, and delete any you think are useless. And if you don't want to do that, think about what you can use perks for. Every perk has it's use, even if it only has really specific uses. Yes, some perks are just outright better (looking at you, shield), but that doesn't invalidate the others.

[Null]

Originally posted by Degeneratus:

Aint talking blood money talking useless perks.

-Breathless

Mandatory for Essence of Spirits and useful to have in general, though situational

-Low gravity

Mandatory for backtracking into a holy mountain unless you get a jetpack wand

-Faster swimmer

Again, Spirits. If you don't want the whiskey ending it's not that great but better than Breathless

-Never skip leg day

Being able to kick explosives saves bombs

-Exploding Corpses

Okay this is pretty useless

-Saving grace

And so is this.

-Vampirism

Yeah this needs the mother of all buffs

-Worm Attract and Defract

Worm blood grants improved vision and can work to open up areas for you

-enemy radar

You really want this in The Works, those places are hell.

-teleportis

Yeah this is pretty worthless

[tv]

Low Gravity would work great as a wand spell. Some sort of AOE attack that suspends and slows down enemies in the air for a little bit. At least against enemies who don't already fly.