I'm back to give the comments I promised a month ago :) I'm at ascension 11, and finding it a bit difficult to climb higher without getting a fairly narrow group of good cards, so my perspective is mostly going to be about smoothing out the card-pool a little for viability as you ascend.

There are some cards (cough supernova) that are really really strong, but some other cards that are really really bad. The Runesmith generally doesn't need help on turn 10 of a fight - you generate elements, you set up runes, and then you crush them. You only need a fairly small number of cards in your deck that just help you on turn 10. Instead, the Runesmith needs more cards that are strong on turn 1 - a common pattern if your deck isn't really strong is that you'll take some damage the first few turns of every fight, and then set up runes and win. But if you take damage every single fight, eventually you just die.

Finally, before getting into cards, I want to say that maybe the basic relic should be buffed. Right now you get 1 ignis at the start, and 1 ignis per 3 attacks. In the average fight, this is an effect worth less than a 0-cost card (chisel stab). Compare this to Defect (who gets a free Zap, a 1 and later 0 cost effect), or Silent (who gets a free +2 cards, a slightly less than 1-cost effect). How about something that better supports crafting runes other than firestone (which can currently feel punishing), like starting with 1 of each and getting 1 random element for every 5 cards you play?

Now, on to what cards I think are really bad, and need to be changed to decent cards:

Runic Bullets: On turn 1, you don't need an attack for 0. If you have 7 runes, you don't need an attack for 35, because you've already won. It's just always bad unless you have 5 Unstable Hammers. This could be reworked into a card like Accelerate, which does something good and can break your runes (maybe multiple runes?) to do something even better.

Attraction: It's effect is so bad it doesn't even draw the card all the time, and it still costs 1? Should be reworked into one of those needed cards that does something good on turn 1 and then exhausts.

Craft Reservo: The effect is strong, but it's so, so bad if I'm not somehow generating 2 aqua consistently turn 1 or 2. Imagine if well-laid plans said "can't be played the first time through your deck." That's how bad this is. Maybe actually make it a free rune? Buff the starting relic and make it cost only 1 Aqua? Something so that you can actually play the card when it's useful to you.

Discharge: This also suffers from the problem of doing nothing if you haven't crafted a rune yet. You don't want to put this in your deck because it's so bad turn 1.

Frozen Chisel: The slow is cute, but it doesn't matter much. The damage is okay but compare to Predator from Silent. The element gain isn't much, especially for a 2-cost card. I don't know if this needs to be reworked into a card that's best on turn 1, or just buffed, but I know it's bad.

Reinforce: You don't want to be spending an entire energy and card on this effect. Could be reduced to 0 cost easily.

Runesonance: By the time you want it, you've probably already won. Delete this card and make something that gives me something I want for cheap and then exhausts.

Arc Reactor: Much worse than Lithium Ion. Maybe make this just give temporary focus (+6 for 1 turn? Should it upgrade to +more, or to last 2 turns?).

Construct Bifrost: It's just not good enough. Again, think about the slowness. You have to generate the elements. Then you have to draw and play this craft card. Then you have to get a card added to your hand that you actually want to play. I don't really want this effect to be on a rune.

Craft Industria: Deceptively bad. Once you've got a bunch of elements and have started crafting runes, you probably don't need a ton more energy. Not sure how to fix - maybe make this a rune that, only upon crafting, gives you energy, cards, and elements (like Adrenaline or Offering), thus speeding up your gameplan?

Craft Medicinae: A weird card. The decks that can use it can use it to heal to full in the middle of every fight. The decks that can't use it will just end the fight with it sitting there unbroken and having done nothing. I think this card is bad not in itself, but because it is only good in decks that are already doing good stuff, and therefore increases the variance of decks. What if, instead, it gave you HP every turn (maybe just 1, not based on potency) and at the end of the fight, but not when it broke?

Duct Tape: The problem with this card (aside from the fact that it's bad in 95% of decks) is that Apparitions are in the game. In fact, this is as good a place as any to talk about the stasis-apparition problem. Right now, stasis is treated as something you want to pay for. But it's only good on a very small number of cards, and it's really, really good on Apparition. I think the solution, if it can be coded in, is to make stasis cheaper and better, but make it so that each card can only be stasis'd once. After stasis triggers, it gets the property "Stasis Exhaust" or something, which isn't removed by Downgrade effects, and prevents it from being stasis'd again. If this is done, and some extra cards that do good stuff and then exhaust are added, then I think it would be fine to print Duct Tape as a one or zero cost "stasis all cards in your hand and deck" effect. But right now, stasis is just too bad when it's bad, and too good when you have specifically apparitions.

Last Stand: I appreciate that this is a fun, dramatic card. But it's not that good, and if you play it against the Heart you'll just die. Part of the fun of ridiculous cards is that there are some niche situations where you can make them good (see Grand Finale). I don't want this card to be good in every deck or even a sizable minority of decks, but I do want there to be some situation where you could kill the Heart with this card.

Metallurgical Research: Not very good (remember how I've been complaining about slow cards this entire time?), and devalues the other upgrading work you might have been doing with e.g. grindstones (By the way, the grindstone mechanic is super rewarding). How about instead, this card was something like "0 cost skill. Gain 1 ignis 1 terra, draw a card. Gain 2 stacks of Grindstone. Exhaust."

Time Machine: Less broken than before, but still just plays the role of slow healing card. This class doesn't need multiple slow healing cards at Rare. Probably doesn't need to be a card. I'm sorry.


These aren't the only cards that you could buff or change, but they stand out to me as the ones that feel like they're clogging up my picks when I'm trying to win ascension runs.


Obviously I've made it clear that I want some more cards that exhaust but cheaply give you things like elements, temporary focus, block, debuffs on enemies, low-potency runes, damage, or card draw.

There's another class of cards I haven't mentioned wanting, and that's more cards like Prism. Prism lets you spend elements that you wouldn't otherwise be able to spend to get a short-term effect. There's room for more cards that say things like "spend all your elements - do X damage, plus Y for every element spent" or something.

This also brings up the question of whether the class should support a strategy that doesn't involve crafting runes. If you compare this to Defect, Runesmith actually has a lot more cards that are just sort of regular attacks (some of them could probably stand to be deleted, honestly). And yet, Defect has a fairly well-supported zero-cost attack "package", that you can either combine with orbs or use to win entirely without orbs, while Runesmith seems to have no such synergies, aside from specifically Hammer Time. I did manage to win one run by upgrading and enhancing Fiery Hammer a lot, but that was at pretty low ascension.

You could try to craft a Runesmith "attack package" by making a few of the more appealing basic attacks into hammers or chisels, making Hammer Time also buff chisels (maybe in a different way?), and including an extra synergy card (maybe at Rare) that cared about hammers and chisels. In terms of elements, this package should presumably be generating elements but also spending them, so that this part of the class doesn't get left unused. This ties back in to how I wanted more cards that spend elements - one card might spend some ignis for extra damage, another might spend terra for extra block, and a third might spend aqua to apply some buff or debuff or draw a card.

I'm also a little worried about rune identity. In Defect your decks often end up with an identity, where they're e.g. generating a lot of Lightning, which means they want things like Leap way more than the decks that generate a lot of Frost. And then once you have a few Leaps, you don't need Frost as much and want even more Lightning - this sort of natural synergy and identity helps keep things diverse. With the Runesmith, because you're spending the elements, rather than synergy, you have anti-synergy. If you have a Preparation++ to generate a bunch of all elements, then once you have some Magmas you don't want more Magmas, you want a Ferro or something. So rather than decks naturally becoming diverse, they naturally become sort of samey if they're generating elements and then spending them.

I think one solution for this is to have certain uncommon and rare element generating cards generate a lot of one element, and potentially even be (or get upgraded to be) innate. Like, imagine if your deck had an innate card that gave you 6 earth every single turn 1, gave you some block, and exhausted. That would really incentivize you to pick cards that let you spend specifically Terra for a good effect - in fact, you have to print more cards that spent or counted specific elements (or at most 1 of another element if you buffed the starting relic) just so people had more things they were incentivized to pick.