The Vicious Cycle of low health

[abagone]

A lot of times I take damage that is completely unforeseen and unavoidable.

And being forced to go to the next level because of your
low HP often has a negative feedback loop where because you don't have HP to explore and get better items and gold you take more damage and are forced to go to the next level to heal and then take even more damage to the more difficult enemies and environment that you didn't have the tools to deal with leaves you with low HP...etc.
And if you do go exploring at low HP you obviously are more likely to die.

I think the game could benefit from some HP regeneration to give you some leeway in terms of taking damage.
Something up to 25%-50% HP maybe?

Another idea would be to distribute healing across the level rather than it all being in between levels so that you hopefully avoid the Vicious Cycle mentioned above.

[arat360]

As an addendum, perhaps getting Health Powerups should both increase your health by 25 (By Default) and heal you by 50 (By Default). Following this, the perk which increases the amount of health gained from said upgrades should also increase the amount healed by it. Not only would this increase the importance of health upgrades, but it would also encourage exploring more of each area, as there is a possibility of recovering your health.

[Foster]

I think eating edible enemy corpses should heal you weakly, and vampirism should be given a buff.
You can't always eat your enemies, and you would have to eat a ton of them to fully heal from significant damage, but allowing you to eat your enemies to heal early damage would help alleviate the pain.
As well, blood comes in much much smaller quantities than is really feasible to use vampirism to actually heal with, you have to drink gallons upon gallons just to heal 5 hit points which is essentially nothing, so trying to use it without a chainsaw is basically wasting a perk choice.

Alternatively, enemies could randomly uncommonly drop healing items similarly to other Roguelite/Roguelike games like Binding of Isaac and Dead Cells.
Uncommon enough and weak enough that relying upon them to cure your mistakes or unfortunate incidents is foolish and basically destined to fail, but common enough and potent enough that you can still use them to get a much-needed top off when you're critically wounded to at least allow you to keep on trucking around the level.

[Kotommi]

There definitely needs to be more ways to heal during levels. There's enough uncertainty that random nonsense ends up ruining runs too often.

[Foster]

Originally posted by Kotommi:

There definitely needs to be more ways to heal during levels. There's enough uncertainty that random nonsense ends up ruining runs too often.

It really doesn't help that the game seems conflicted between a fast pace and a slow pace.

Enemies are very tanky past level 1, and even some potential level 1 enemies are fairly tanky at that, yet they're all very fast and very hard hitting as well, with fast projectiles and fast rates of fire.

This conflicts with the fact that the devs clearly intended that you take as much time as you wish and explore the whole level or as much of it as possible otherwise to try and obtain as many spells and good wands as you can, as well as health upgrades, nothing rushes you to the exit other than low health, and yet enemies are so abundant most times and so aggressive as well as powerful that if you encounter more than a couple at once chances are you're going to have to rush your way to the exit to survive.

Not to mention the fact 1% of any substance stains you for full effects, and so many enemies bleed crap like toxic sludge, lava, etc. in horrifyingly, ridiculously large quantities.

The way magic works seems intended to force you into more of a defensive role most of the time, yet the monsters aggressively push on you to the point you don't have much of a choice but to try and aggressively react, to wildly varying success.

[Underwhelmed]

I would be fine with the lack of healing if the rates of damage were a little better balanced. Projectile damage in most cases seems ok in the earlier levels, but the environmental damage is insane. I feel like losing a quarter of my health because I briefly touched a tiny puddle of acid is a little ridiculous.

Maybe consider lowering the DOT or increasing the amount of contact required to get the effect to proc?

Also seconding the issue with tanky enemies. Getting to level 3 or 4 and still being stuck with a 3 or 5 damage per shot weapon is being doomed to tedious battles of extensive kiting and hoping that you don't get swarmed because it can take a dozen shots to kill trash mobs.

[Aquillion]

The enemies are only tanky if you're unlucky and don't get a high-damage spell. Buzzsaws do reasonable damage, and the cross explosion does extreme damage (although you usually need modifiers to use the latter one efficiently - it's brutal with homing + a trigger projectile, but if you get that it can one-hit even late game enemies.)

But it feels like we need more unlimited-use high-damage spells like those.

Also, it's worth pointing out that as a fallback, putting one of your starting shock bolts on the starting bomb wand will do reasonably fast damage due to its high rate of fire. It's not ideal, but it's way better than your starting wand configuration and should be the first thing you do on beating the first level if you were unlucky enough to not find a better wand. I assume the reason the starting bomb wand has such a low cast time is to give players this fallback option if they fail to find anything better on level 1.

[arat360]

Regarding the "Tanky" enemies. Picking up "Critical Hit Plus" or "Damage Up" spells will really help, especially when paired with Double or Triple Cast, as they apply to all spells fired in this manner. For example, in one run, I managed to create a wand which fairly consistently dealt upwards of 100 damage per hit by the second area.

Through careful exploration, you can pick up a large amount of varied spells. By the time you leave the first floor, your number one priority should be getting a higher damage basic wand. Even spark bolts can deal 13 damage (They Start at 3) with a single damage up rune.

[Nosada_Kage]

I definitely agree that more health needs to be given out in the levels. I understand wanting to make it challenging, but a little more help would be nice.