I'm gonna say this much, the relics have finally made the ethereal weapons worth using.
Ps: If you manage your way into an endless floor, avoid Sables at all cost. Maybe this would have gone differently if I had the hourglass along the bombstone in my inventory.
After the last patch I played a bit and had to leave when I came back this is what I came back too, I'm on the wrong side of the map and my inventory is all messed up (missing item and wrong spots) but the game acts like normal.
Its amazing !!!!! like slay the spire, but better )
in 5 runs got to boss, endless mode scales stats way much (imho) some items have "create " wich i supose means "create gold" maybe ? pls continue this amazing game p.s. whetstone + shivs = eazy combo
Items can go behind the text that says how many items you can take during combat rewards. Which can be a little bit annoying. Maybe make that text slightly transparent?
Also the ethereal staff now says "Creates in a space that is in this row"
And the piggy bank just says "Creates"
And the "Goilden bow" (is that deliberate?) just says; "When an arrow kills a non summon enemy creates ".
My best build ever: Strategical benefits are the following:
1. Each turn I receive 6 mana automatically: 4 by helmet, taking 1 energy, 2 by coat for free
2. Also, I have 15 mana at the start of the combat, which allows getting +30 dmg on each weapon immediately, which gives the possibility to kill 1-2 enemies before they harm me in any way
3. And fox rapier improves the shield each use, so it helps during the long combats
Nevertheless, tactics also matter, and this build gives great tactical possibilities having 6 mana at the beginning of each turn: I have 3 tactical tools to cover any strategy drawbacks:
1. -12 to spikes & rage
2. +6 to self-regen
3. +24 to armor
4. any combination in the middle
So, it was a great pleasure to play this build and almost no risk at all;)
Early game, it feels bad because it's a limit on growth, and leaving valuable items untaken because you can only have three at a time just seems stupid (From an organizational point of view)
Late game, it feels bad, because it generally stops affect you. The number of times, after the first boss, that i've taken more than 2 items from a fight, I can count on one hand.
Still a work-in-progress! The main thing is that we're still looking to double the number of items in the game so we need to give the player more options after each fight or they won't have very good odds of finding things that work together.
Maybe you could choose more in the beginning and it tapers off?
More at the beginning would be a great compromise. That way you could start your build and being more selective about items would make more sense.
That follows the previous natural progression of unlimited items. By floor 5 or so I've usually committed myself on a build and most items I don't pick up...just healing or synergy items for my build.
Perhaps start with a significantly larger "Selections per Combat", and then have some particularly good items have a drawback that reduces your picks per combat, that way it'll naturally reduce via progress, as their builds solidify.
This is the best run I've had in a good while but with the bomb stone with the blade summoner doing 120 damage then resummon the blade summoner works with 4 energy to do 120 damage 2 times and I was just trying to try out the new item like the conduit which are awesome.
Nice game, though I never bothered to finish it as I, like others, had issues with the saves. Every time I had reached far into the dungeon, the “continue game” threw me back to level 1 again.
Essentially soft-locked in this fight. Couldn't deal enough damage to kill the healer early because my sword was locked to two uses per fight, but if it ever attacked me it would take a ton of damage...but it never attacks.
I will start off by stating that I am very happy to see that my balancing suggestions from earlier were implemented. Firstly, the status conditions can finally abate and eventually run their course which prevents stacking status conditions from being a viable strategy. Furthermore, it made some encounters easier. Secondly, magic is now finite in numbers since you can no longer stack manastones. Now, I can say with confidence that the major balancing issues have been fixed.
With that said, I feel the new relics, which I guess were inspired by other games featuring permadeath, were added too soon to the game. They are completely broken right now and were added right after a patch to fix the pre-existing balancing issues of the game. I know that a game can get stale if nothing new is added to it, but even then I have seen great suggestions in the comments that could have been taken into consideration instead. For example, someone suggested to allow the player to switch from their base backpack to another with unique gimmicks. There could be a backpack that can either increase or decrease the damage output of a weapon depending on where it's placed or one that can improve the effects of foodstuff while reducing the effectiveness of potions. However, the update provided us the relics which can be used in tandem to completely take advantage of the game. First of, there is the comment under mine, but also I managed to combine multiple relics together to create an abomination of a powerhouse, the elephant fossil (I can not remember the real name), the stopwatch, the knives and the empty bottle all provide substantial damage bonuses to my weapons for a small drawback. Thanks to the knives, I could deal over 150 damage on my first turn after which the damage output resets, though the stopwatch also added +3 for the duration of the battle (See build in screenshots below).
Long story short, I'm not that much of a fan of the relics. If anything, the treasure chest that you can open right after beating the boss should have featured legendary items instead of the run-of-the-mill common that I can find casually in every chest of the dungeon.
Another problem to note is there are items that are worse than others, this is made blatantly evident with the club, the spiky club (Not to be confused with the spiked club) and the mace. The regular club is the best weapon out of the 3 while the mace is the worst one out of the 3. The regular club deals 7 damage points and adds 1 weak to the chosen enemy, the spiky club deals 7 damage points and adds 1 slow to the enemy, and the mace deals 10 damage points and adds both 1 weak and 1 slow to the enemy at the cost of 2 energy.
From worst to best, the mace is bad simply because you can usually only use it once per turn due to its energy cost, given it's 2 while Purse without any energy item has 3 energies to begin with. Even then, the damage does not add up, it adds down. If you somehow manage to use the mace twice, it deals a total of 20 damage points, but both the club and spiky club if used 4 times deal 28 damage points. Although in my opinion that would not make the mace a good item, I think the least it could have is a base damage output of 14 to match with the club and spiky club. As for the club and spiky club, it comes down to the status conditions. Currently, and since it is a roguelite, weak is better because it ensures you do not take too much damage from enemies while allowing Purse to dispose of them at a decent pace. Slow reduces the armor that enemies put on, but most enemies don't ever shield up and all the ones that do, except for the Armadillo, only defend themselves every pair of turns or every 3 turns, so the player will always have the enemy open for an onslaught. Compared to the spiky club, the club is useful on every enemy in the game, except the Snake and the Wizard Frog.
To this day, I still have yet to understand the meaning of the pick and the bricks. The pick is a weapon with a base damage of 0 that gets +1 if a gem is near it, but gems are so rare, so I could never use it. If you compare it to the cursed blade (I'm sure the name is different), the key sword and the fish sword anyone would quickly realize how bad the pick is, at the very least the aforementioned weapons have a base damage output of 8 or 7. As a weapon, it is even more insulting than the mace. If I'm being honest, players use a pickaxe to mine diamonds in Minecraft: why not give it a base power of 4 and whenever Purse kills an enemy with it you get a rare gem in exchange? As for the bricks, why would I use them over armor pieces? I guess they only become useful once you get your hand on the berrserker's ring because this gets disabled if any armor of shield item is in Purse's inventory, but given I have seen it a total of 4 or 5 times across all my runs this makes the bricks pretty much pointless.
Aside of new balancing issues from the relics, I was pleasantly surprised of all the additions. The forge is a fantastic idea that allows the player to improve existing items, the chance guy who operates the roulette and the cards minigame lets the player get new items or get trolled by a curse. The trader allows the player to exchange an item for another item of equal rarity, if the player has a useless legendary item they can try to trade it off for another legendary item and last but not least, I encountered an optional miniboss who you can fight to get rare items from. Personally, I fought him because I was short on money for the healer and I had already defeated all the enemies on the map, I did not take any of the drops other than his money yeah, the fox rapier sounded like a pretty cool weapon, shame. Existing events have been recontextualized to each feature a NPC, the healer is a porcupine for example. Before that, the only event with a friendly NPC was the shop with the toad.
This patch made the dungeon feel less empty and more interesting to explore, I have no idea on which quirky character will show up next on a random chance if I ever step on a random event spot. That is definitely a plus in my book!
Lots of good advice! I think relics help structure your run and force you to make large decisions about what you want to do. I do think they need a lot more balancing and it is definitely possible to find a few that are too strong. Also, It is definitely true that different backpacks and modifiers would be a great addition! I hope to implement them once we start working on the metagame.
Also I agree that the PickAxe is unfortunately hated. It will also be updated in tonight's patch!
Despite the hotfix it is still possible to go infinite with shield spirit and elven wood. If you have >3 bows and a coal then you can use the bows with the shield, then use the coal to refresh them, giving you infinite energy.
This game is incredible! I love how interesting the item placement in the backpack becomes. It’s a fun puzzle trying to work out how to get the best of all items.
and what is the name names of the merchent, healer, archer, forger, suspishoise trader, and how does her backpack expand and does she have brothers and sisters, and if so I would like to see games of them.
Really great game and unique resource mechanic! Found a few bugs, the save game function only saves the first game, and ran into a bug where the Debuff Potion doesn't work and bugged out the rest of the items. I had Debuff Potion + Spice + Seasoning, if perhaps stacking too many effects is the issue. Looking forward to updates!
What a unique experience! I remember seeing screenshots for this game ages ago and being super intrigued, so I'm glad I finally gave it a go. I played it on my channel, if you'd like to take a look!
In this type of game, it is fun to experiment with builds and see with what tools you can be strong enough to finish the game. I finished it with several different builds, but there is one build that cannot work, the cleaver build. I call a build viable if I can go up to the final boss without any trouble, but unfortunately, the passive that gives him pikes every turn makes it impossible to try a "thief/knife master" build as you will melt yourself by just hitting the boss.
I would suggest adopting a different approach for this passive. In Slay the Spire, you have a boss that has the same passive, but it is only active for 4 turns, forcing you to pass into a defensive stance, building up a different strategy than just click to kill. When the boss has armor, having the pike passive-active would achieve the same goal while allowing other builds to emerge.
The true problem is that the pikes do not decrease turn after turn, it should decrease by 10 points or so per turn.
Otherwise, still a great game and I still enjoy experimenting.
I wanna direct use, I have a healing potion that fell from a defeated enemy, I have no space in my backpack to keep it, so I want to use it so that it does not go to waste
I am not sure if this is intended, but, multiple golden whetstones stack additively. So, one gives you 1.25x mult, but two give you 2.5x mult, 3 give you 3.75x mult etc.
Yes, finding two is almost impossible on a standard run, even less 3 or more.
But, given how insanely Endless ramps up, i think this should stay as is.
Also, the game itself easily overshadowed half my AA library of games, i spent more time here than on anything else.
Me: Goes for pacifist/shield/spikes run as its the items im given. Game: literally every anti-shield enemy and boss possible and kills me with completely unavoidable poison damage. ah yes, game design.
The save game feature doesn't work properly. I got a really good build and was playing the endless mode for a little while, but today I loaded my save and it was from a previous game. Now I have to start all over again.
Sorry! I've heard a few reports of this! I will investigate. We will try to update soon! Also we'll be moving to a downloadable version so hopefully that will help soon!
← Return to game
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I'm gonna say this much, the relics have finally made the ethereal weapons worth using.
Ps: If you manage your way into an endless floor, avoid Sables at all cost. Maybe this would have gone differently if I had the hourglass along the bombstone in my inventory.
After the last patch I played a bit and had to leave when I came back this is what I came back too, I'm on the wrong side of the map and my inventory is all messed up (missing item and wrong spots) but the game acts like normal.
I tried reloading many times but it's stuck like this.
i got the shield gives haste and my shives did 50 damage each beat the boss damageless
Its amazing !!!!!
like slay the spire, but better )
in 5 runs got to boss, endless mode scales stats way much (imho)
some items have "create " wich i supose means "create gold" maybe ?
pls continue this amazing game
p.s.
whetstone + shivs = eazy combo
Items can go behind the text that says how many items you can take during combat rewards. Which can be a little bit annoying. Maybe make that text slightly transparent?
Also the ethereal staff now says "Creates in a space that is in this row"
And the piggy bank just says "Creates"
And the "Goilden bow" (is that deliberate?) just says; "When an arrow kills a non summon enemy creates ".
Ok, I think this is just a universal issue now...
My best build ever:
Strategical benefits are the following:
1. Each turn I receive 6 mana automatically: 4 by helmet, taking 1 energy, 2 by coat for free
2. Also, I have 15 mana at the start of the combat, which allows getting +30 dmg on each weapon immediately, which gives the possibility to kill 1-2 enemies before they harm me in any way
3. And fox rapier improves the shield each use, so it helps during the long combats
Nevertheless, tactics also matter, and this build gives great tactical possibilities having 6 mana at the beginning of each turn: I have 3 tactical tools to cover any strategy drawbacks:
1. -12 to spikes & rage
2. +6 to self-regen
3. +24 to armor
4. any combination in the middle
So, it was a great pleasure to play this build and almost no risk at all;)
after moving the character everything is back to normal, and I was 65 hp ok, I got a real heart attack
after loading the game from the save point, hp reset to the initial value, before saving I had 55 hp and now I only have 40!
help me
a sry that was just updated
make a downloadable version, because I have recently deleted my cookies and the record has been deleted
Limiting to 3 items per fight is... bad.
Early game, it feels bad because it's a limit on growth, and leaving valuable items untaken because you can only have three at a time just seems stupid (From an organizational point of view)
Late game, it feels bad, because it generally stops affect you. The number of times, after the first boss, that i've taken more than 2 items from a fight, I can count on one hand.
Still a work-in-progress! The main thing is that we're still looking to double the number of items in the game so we need to give the player more options after each fight or they won't have very good odds of finding things that work together.
Maybe you could choose more in the beginning and it tapers off?
More at the beginning would be a great compromise. That way you could start your build and being more selective about items would make more sense.
That follows the previous natural progression of unlimited items. By floor 5 or so I've usually committed myself on a build and most items I don't pick up...just healing or synergy items for my build.
Perhaps start with a significantly larger "Selections per Combat", and then have some particularly good items have a drawback that reduces your picks per combat, that way it'll naturally reduce via progress, as their builds solidify.
This is the best run I've had in a good while but with the bomb stone with the blade summoner doing 120 damage then resummon the blade summoner works with 4 energy to do 120 damage 2 times and I was just trying to try out the new item like the conduit which are awesome.
Nice game, though I never bothered to finish it as I, like others, had issues with the saves. Every time I had reached far into the dungeon, the “continue game” threw me back to level 1 again.
Essentially soft-locked in this fight. Couldn't deal enough damage to kill the healer early because my sword was locked to two uses per fight, but if it ever attacked me it would take a ton of damage...but it never attacks.
I ran into the same issue with a pacifist build and the Frog Wizard. They never attack me and eventually I die to poison.
I guess I’m forced to reload and try for a weapon to clear this floor, and I just got the pacifist ring, too. :(
Just sitting here–sharpening my club–like a psychopath.
This is a review of the latest patch.
I will start off by stating that I am very happy to see that my balancing suggestions from earlier were implemented. Firstly, the status conditions can finally abate and eventually run their course which prevents stacking status conditions from being a viable strategy. Furthermore, it made some encounters easier. Secondly, magic is now finite in numbers since you can no longer stack manastones. Now, I can say with confidence that the major balancing issues have been fixed.
With that said, I feel the new relics, which I guess were inspired by other games featuring permadeath, were added too soon to the game. They are completely broken right now and were added right after a patch to fix the pre-existing balancing issues of the game. I know that a game can get stale if nothing new is added to it, but even then I have seen great suggestions in the comments that could have been taken into consideration instead. For example, someone suggested to allow the player to switch from their base backpack to another with unique gimmicks. There could be a backpack that can either increase or decrease the damage output of a weapon depending on where it's placed or one that can improve the effects of foodstuff while reducing the effectiveness of potions. However, the update provided us the relics which can be used in tandem to completely take advantage of the game. First of, there is the comment under mine, but also I managed to combine multiple relics together to create an abomination of a powerhouse, the elephant fossil (I can not remember the real name), the stopwatch, the knives and the empty bottle all provide substantial damage bonuses to my weapons for a small drawback. Thanks to the knives, I could deal over 150 damage on my first turn after which the damage output resets, though the stopwatch also added +3 for the duration of the battle (See build in screenshots below).
Long story short, I'm not that much of a fan of the relics. If anything, the treasure chest that you can open right after beating the boss should have featured legendary items instead of the run-of-the-mill common that I can find casually in every chest of the dungeon.
Another problem to note is there are items that are worse than others, this is made blatantly evident with the club, the spiky club (Not to be confused with the spiked club) and the mace. The regular club is the best weapon out of the 3 while the mace is the worst one out of the 3. The regular club deals 7 damage points and adds 1 weak to the chosen enemy, the spiky club deals 7 damage points and adds 1 slow to the enemy, and the mace deals 10 damage points and adds both 1 weak and 1 slow to the enemy at the cost of 2 energy.
From worst to best, the mace is bad simply because you can usually only use it once per turn due to its energy cost, given it's 2 while Purse without any energy item has 3 energies to begin with. Even then, the damage does not add up, it adds down. If you somehow manage to use the mace twice, it deals a total of 20 damage points, but both the club and spiky club if used 4 times deal 28 damage points. Although in my opinion that would not make the mace a good item, I think the least it could have is a base damage output of 14 to match with the club and spiky club. As for the club and spiky club, it comes down to the status conditions. Currently, and since it is a roguelite, weak is better because it ensures you do not take too much damage from enemies while allowing Purse to dispose of them at a decent pace. Slow reduces the armor that enemies put on, but most enemies don't ever shield up and all the ones that do, except for the Armadillo, only defend themselves every pair of turns or every 3 turns, so the player will always have the enemy open for an onslaught. Compared to the spiky club, the club is useful on every enemy in the game, except the Snake and the Wizard Frog.
To this day, I still have yet to understand the meaning of the pick and the bricks. The pick is a weapon with a base damage of 0 that gets +1 if a gem is near it, but gems are so rare, so I could never use it. If you compare it to the cursed blade (I'm sure the name is different), the key sword and the fish sword anyone would quickly realize how bad the pick is, at the very least the aforementioned weapons have a base damage output of 8 or 7. As a weapon, it is even more insulting than the mace. If I'm being honest, players use a pickaxe to mine diamonds in Minecraft: why not give it a base power of 4 and whenever Purse kills an enemy with it you get a rare gem in exchange? As for the bricks, why would I use them over armor pieces? I guess they only become useful once you get your hand on the berrserker's ring because this gets disabled if any armor of shield item is in Purse's inventory, but given I have seen it a total of 4 or 5 times across all my runs this makes the bricks pretty much pointless.
Aside of new balancing issues from the relics, I was pleasantly surprised of all the additions. The forge is a fantastic idea that allows the player to improve existing items, the chance guy who operates the roulette and the cards minigame lets the player get new items or get trolled by a curse. The trader allows the player to exchange an item for another item of equal rarity, if the player has a useless legendary item they can try to trade it off for another legendary item and last but not least, I encountered an optional miniboss who you can fight to get rare items from. Personally, I fought him because I was short on money for the healer and I had already defeated all the enemies on the map, I did not take any of the drops other than his money yeah, the fox rapier sounded like a pretty cool weapon, shame. Existing events have been recontextualized to each feature a NPC, the healer is a porcupine for example. Before that, the only event with a friendly NPC was the shop with the toad.
This patch made the dungeon feel less empty and more interesting to explore, I have no idea on which quirky character will show up next on a random chance if I ever step on a random event spot. That is definitely a plus in my book!
Lots of good advice! I think relics help structure your run and force you to make large decisions about what you want to do. I do think they need a lot more balancing and it is definitely possible to find a few that are too strong. Also, It is definitely true that different backpacks and modifiers would be a great addition! I hope to implement them once we start working on the metagame.
Also I agree that the PickAxe is unfortunately hated. It will also be updated in tonight's patch!
This game is incredibly fun, would reccomend. there are some issues with saves not working but these dont annoy me too much.
Despite the hotfix it is still possible to go infinite with shield spirit and elven wood. If you have >3 bows and a coal then you can use the bows with the shield, then use the coal to refresh them, giving you infinite energy.
Bows will be changed in an update later today!
It kinda works on android
Very fun game!
This game is incredible! I love how interesting the item placement in the backpack becomes. It’s a fun puzzle trying to work out how to get the best of all items.
Are we able to override saves? I keep get thrown back to an older save despite saving multiple times :/
and what is the name names of the merchent, healer, archer, forger, suspishoise trader, and how does her backpack expand and does she have brothers and sisters, and if so I would like to see games of them.
can you add more bows and arrows
Really great game and unique resource mechanic! Found a few bugs, the save game function only saves the first game, and ran into a bug where the Debuff Potion doesn't work and bugged out the rest of the items. I had Debuff Potion + Spice + Seasoning, if perhaps stacking too many effects is the issue. Looking forward to updates!
What is the protagonist's name and/or gender?
her name is Purse!
Thanks
does anybody know if the tasty fly actually does anything?
Edit: i found out that the merchant likes them
Hey so I found a bug where I couldn't end my turn or do anything after I use the elven sword (I just reloaded my save)
What a unique experience! I remember seeing screenshots for this game ages ago and being super intrigued, so I'm glad I finally gave it a go. I played it on my channel, if you'd like to take a look!
So glad you enjoyed it! Great to watch!
I found an error regarding seasoning, after completing the level the effect given by this food stops working
and i love this game types 11/10
Quick balancing question.
In this type of game, it is fun to experiment with builds and see with what tools you can be strong enough to finish the game. I finished it with several different builds, but there is one build that cannot work, the cleaver build. I call a build viable if I can go up to the final boss without any trouble, but unfortunately, the passive that gives him pikes every turn makes it impossible to try a "thief/knife master" build as you will melt yourself by just hitting the boss.
I would suggest adopting a different approach for this passive. In Slay the Spire, you have a boss that has the same passive, but it is only active for 4 turns, forcing you to pass into a defensive stance, building up a different strategy than just click to kill. When the boss has armor, having the pike passive-active would achieve the same goal while allowing other builds to emerge.
The true problem is that the pikes do not decrease turn after turn, it should decrease by 10 points or so per turn.
Otherwise, still a great game and I still enjoy experimenting.
Fair! We want to do more to help against spikes! We are working on it.
I wanna direct use, I have a healing potion that fell from a defeated enemy, I have no space in my backpack to keep it, so I want to use it so that it does not go to waste
We are planning to make this change! Love the idea!
I think there is a BUG with Electric Stone, it can't buff a wand.
The wand was a Weapon
Now I can open it
for some reason I cannot open it
I am not sure if this is intended, but, multiple golden whetstones stack additively. So, one gives you 1.25x mult, but two give you 2.5x mult, 3 give you 3.75x mult etc.
Yes, finding two is almost impossible on a standard run, even less 3 or more.
But, given how insanely Endless ramps up, i think this should stay as is.
Also, the game itself easily overshadowed half my AA library of games, i spent more time here than on anything else.
I love this game so much! Do you think you'll ever make it available on mobile as well?
well... it is available in mobile...its just that....its smol
Me: Goes for pacifist/shield/spikes run as its the items im given.
Game: literally every anti-shield enemy and boss possible and kills me with completely unavoidable poison damage.
ah yes, game design.
The save game feature doesn't work properly. I got a really good build and was playing the endless mode for a little while, but today I loaded my save and it was from a previous game. Now I have to start all over again.
Sorry! I've heard a few reports of this! I will investigate. We will try to update soon! Also we'll be moving to a downloadable version so hopefully that will help soon!
Yep, same thing happened to me and I had a great build, too :(