Honestly, just feels like he could use more defensive options. Doesn't really feel good to get down to half HP from the easy fights :/

Originally posted by NereidAlbel:

Honestly, just feels like he could use more defensive options. Doesn't really feel good to get down to half HP from the easy fights :/

Hey, I didn't realize this but I lowered the max HP for testing and forgot to revert it for the final version. I just updated the mod with the proper HP amount (75), so that should stifled a bit of the problem.

Could still use a bit more block on cards. Offensive murder power feels fine so far, at least. Especially when you gain Potency per exhausted card vs enemies that spam your deck with Daze :)

I'm not a skilled player so this may not be very insightful but here's my thoughts after 6 or so runs.

- Ill Will is almost useless until it gets upgraded. 0 cost -> 2 disease / 2 disease -> 0 cost / 2 disease -> 3 disease?
- Barbs feel very similar to disease function-wise.
- I love curse deck but I'm not sure if I'm using potency right. Judgement shines against multiple enemies but by the time you have enough curses in your exhaust pile, you have killed most of them. EDIT: I take this back potency is crazy.
- Exhausting cards you choose is a strong move. Some curses exhaust themselves so... I don't know.
- Once you play Cleanse, curses aren't curses anymore.
- Spite and Combo seem out of place (interesting cards, though)
- What's the point of Vulgarity?
- Is Risk Taker worth it?
- Omamori is harmful.
- I think this is fine but you can go completely curse-free.
- Strike and Defend are hard to distinguish.
- Upgrading curses, how does that sound?

Hey, he's so fun to play! Great work! Thanks for sharing!

Originally posted by bubobo:

I'm not a skilled player so this may not be very insightful but here's my thoughts after 6 or so runs.

- Ill Will is almost useless until it gets upgraded. 0 cost -> 2 disease / 2 disease -> 0 cost / 2 disease -> 3 disease?
- Barbs feel very similar to disease function-wise.
- I love curse deck but I'm not sure if I'm using potency right. Judgement shines against multiple enemies but by the time you have enough curses in your exhaust pile, you have killed most of them. EDIT: I take this back potency is crazy.
- Exhausting cards you choose is a strong move. Some curses exhaust themselves so... I don't know.
- Once you play Cleanse, curses aren't curses anymore.
- Spite and Combo seem out of place (interesting cards, though)
- What's the point of Vulgarity?
- Is Risk Taker worth it?
- Omamori is harmful.
- I think this is fine but you can go completely curse-free.
- Strike and Defend are hard to distinguish.
- Upgrading curses, how does that sound?

Hey, he's so fun to play! Great work! Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for the in-depth help! I'll go over some of the small things you mentioned.
- I will consider buffing Ill Will to make Disease decks a little easier to get into.
- Barbs was something that I considered expanding during development, but by the time I got to it, I already had a very large amount of cards and didn't want to dilute the card pool.
- I feel as this is okay due to the lack of Block on this character, so it's easier to end fights quicker.
- I am aware that Cleanse is essentially a must-pick, haha
- I can see that, but I think they are fine cards.
- Depends. For a Disease deck, it could output a small bit more damage while letting you block a bit more efficiently.
- This is known. I kept it in for one reason - people's gamesense might immediately click it and realize that it's bad later, haha.
- This is intentional.
- I changed the art for Strike / Defend slightly to hopefully make them easier to distinguish. I can change it a bit more if necessary.
- Upgrading curses sounds like a nightmare for balance, honestly. It was something a couple of people have considered in the modding community but nobody has ever done it since it's just not worth it.

Affliction along with other curses seem too powerful. Maybe make it so it costs 3-4 mana? Or make it weaker in anyway. A curse shouldn't be too helpful, they should be dreadful and only relics/cards should invert this. There also isn't many options to gain block except from the starting cards and a few others. So maybe add more block cards or implement block into the attack cards? But everything else is balanced especially for the "fill your deck with curses then 'bound of greed'."

I find myself losing way too much HP to very easy fights, forcing me to rest at every rest site and never upgrading any cards. Having no upgraded cards makes my run end pretty early. 10+ attempts and I'm yet to beat the second boss (except in an earlier version where potency never degraded). I like the challenge but it feels a little too hard.

Completely up to you how you want balance this while keeping the same style. A little self heal, better blocks, buff to judgement early game so the enemies die faster, etc would all probably work.

I find the curse playstyle a little niche, sometimes you just can't get a good amount of curse cards + exhaust cards, and even if you do you rarely get them all in your hand when you want them (sometimes I draw all exhaust cards with no curses, all curses with no exhausts, making for a wasted hand). Some way to make even bad deck builds/ bad draws somewhat usable might help.

Things like potency are super powerful late game but feel near useless in the early game. Maybe you could keep 1/4 of your bonus potency (rounded up) at the end of a turn or something to make it more viable early game without being op later?

I'm still adapting to this character (and loving it! love the artwork) but these are my initial thoughts.

Keep up the good work!

[Edit] as soon as I posted this I combo'd 'Blood Thinning', 'second chance' and 'dark form' and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is powerful. Dealing 64 damage to all enemies every turn.

Originally posted by benoz:

I find myself losing way too much HP to very easy fights, forcing me to rest at every rest site and never upgrading any cards. Having no upgraded cards makes my run end pretty early. 10+ attempts and I'm yet to beat the second boss (except in an earlier version where potency never degraded). I like the challenge but it feels a little too hard.

Completely up to you how you want balance this while keeping the same style. A little self heal, better blocks, buff to judgement early game so the enemies die faster, etc would all probably work.

I find the curse playstyle a little niche, sometimes you just can't get a good amount of curse cards + exhaust cards, and even if you do you rarely get them all in your hand when you want them (sometimes I draw all exhaust cards with no curses, all curses with no exhausts, making for a wasted hand). Some way to make even bad deck builds/ bad draws somewhat usable might help.

Things like potency are super powerful late game but feel near useless in the early game. Maybe you could keep 1/4 of your bonus potency (rounded up) at the end of a turn or something to make it more viable early game without being op later?

I'm still adapting to this character (and loving it! love the artwork) but these are my initial thoughts.

Keep up the good work!

[Edit] as soon as I posted this I combo'd 'Blood Thinning', 'second chance' and 'dark form' and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is powerful. Dealing 64 damage to all enemies every turn.

I've had very mixed results on the curse archetype, as many people seem to have minimal trouble setting up a curse archetype and others have a rather difficult time. I have been getting the complaints about lack of defense, so I may consider buffing current block cards / making new ones, but that may take a while.

Originally posted by undersans886:

Affliction along with other curses seem too powerful. Maybe make it so it costs 3-4 mana? Or make it weaker in anyway. A curse shouldn't be too helpful, they should be dreadful and only relics/cards should invert this. There also isn't many options to gain block except from the starting cards and a few others. So maybe add more block cards or implement block into the attack cards? But everything else is balanced especially for the "fill your deck with curses then 'bound of greed'."

Curses are intended to be much less harmful with this character, while still being a nuisance. If all curses were deadly, it would be very difficult to set up a curse deck. I may remove Affliction from the curse pool (from Black Diamond). Lack of block is a common complaint, so I'll make sure to work that out a bit.

Good stuff overall, just a couple things that stand out to me so far
Affliction being a curse doesn't make much sense, since a)you can play it and b) it's nothing but beneficial. Maybe change how it works or remove the curse tag?

Pestilence pretty much destroys the disease archetype. Since disease doesn't stack, giving all foes disease every turn means that's the only disease card you have to run and you'll have a perfect build. I'd suggest either tweaking that card, i.e. disease every 2-3 turns, it applies to one random enemy or making it so that stacking disease gives bonuses

There's a small bug with cleanse and cards like burden of sin where it forces you to exhaust a card before drawing your whole hand. For instance, if I have cleanse and draw 3 attacks and 2 curses, I have to exhaust one of those 5 cards before drawing the next 2 proc'd by cleanse, instead of having a full hand of 7 and then choosing.

Finally a small question about card text. For barbed parry, why specify "if an enemy is going to attack, gain 5 barbs"? I don't see a reason to play that card unless I need the block (getting attacked) so why not just let it apply barbs anyway? And if you're not getting attacked, then having barbs for one turn won't affect anything. Just my thoughts.

Enjoying the mod as a whole, great job

Originally posted by Yoda's Toe Pics:

Good stuff overall, just a couple things that stand out to me so far
Affliction being a curse doesn't make much sense, since a)you can play it and b) it's nothing but beneficial. Maybe change how it works or remove the curse tag?

Pestilence pretty much destroys the disease archetype. Since disease doesn't stack, giving all foes disease every turn means that's the only disease card you have to run and you'll have a perfect build. I'd suggest either tweaking that card, i.e. disease every 2-3 turns, it applies to one random enemy or making it so that stacking disease gives bonuses

There's a small bug with cleanse and cards like burden of sin where it forces you to exhaust a card before drawing your whole hand. For instance, if I have cleanse and draw 3 attacks and 2 curses, I have to exhaust one of those 5 cards before drawing the next 2 proc'd by cleanse, instead of having a full hand of 7 and then choosing.

Finally a small question about card text. For barbed parry, why specify "if an enemy is going to attack, gain 5 barbs"? I don't see a reason to play that card unless I need the block (getting attacked) so why not just let it apply barbs anyway? And if you're not getting attacked, then having barbs for one turn won't affect anything. Just my thoughts.

Enjoying the mod as a whole, great job

Thanks for playing!

Affliction is intended to show the player that Curses arn't necesarily negative cards for the character.

I may rework Disease to have some sort of stacking effect, but that'll take time.

Noted

Thematic reasons, it's a parry. I'll probably change it at some point.

One valid idea for Affliction is to take a look at the Cleanse mechanic from the Witch character. Pretty good method of making curses useful instead of being purely negative.

The Cursed also adds a potion that works incredibly well for The Judge: Dregs Potion adds an unplayable curse to your hand, and Judge could work well with one that has you pick 1 of 3 curses to add to your hand. Or even a potion to add a curse to your deck whenever, as that's a theme for the character.

Hi Wordo, Ty for the beautiful character you added ! when i downloaded the mod i was like "mhe another curse mater char." but i must say the mod feel really in the spirit of the original slay the spire character. so far i have done about 50+ game with the char, which i like a lot. i Never win one run yet, and im quit a veteran of the spire (+1000 hours in the game already :O) so i'd say it's quit hard to win with im (considering im not even on ascencion 1...) But i might be doing something wrong becaus some of the cards feel really strong. if i can give some feedback i think the character is a bit relic-dependant because in order to do all the really cool stuff you can do with him you have to spend a lot of ressources to setup, and yet manage to block all incomming dammage. i think he lack of a way to regen is life, or some key cards that would allow him to safely setup once he got the right deck. i understand the hit me mechanic but it's not really working up for me atm. one card (the one that check top of the deck and give you power if it's a curse) does NOT have enough support tho.
Overall, the character is really well done, and you got a BIG thanks for all your work. i only hope you can finish polishing that champ and adding the last pictures you need for some of the cards (it help with the immersion).

Out of curiosity, what has your feedback/experience been with disease decks? I've done about 20 runs trying to focus entirely on block/disease/scourge/barbs and I'm really struggling to get to the third boss unless I get some seriously lucky relics, and even then I can't win.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of 'late game' block purely from cards, which makes me feel like I take significantly more damage using disease to counter attack than if I just blasted them with regular attacks instead to kill them quicker.

As soon as you get the power card that diseases everyone at the end of your turn, all other disease cards become kind of pointless. Not saying it's overpowered, just the way disease is structured makes adding additional disease a little underwhelming.

I don't think I've ever reached the amount of disease required to use that golden 3 energy card that KOs them either.

Thoughts?

Briefly, my experience with disease decks is that they just don't work. Most cards that inflict disease are dead weight in your hand if an enemy already has it. And yes, the power just reinforces that. I end up just using them as exhaust fodder.

I think the intended point of spamming disease is The Cure (if target disease > 25, deal 100 damage). The problem is that there aren't enough of these cards, and stacking disease is too difficult to even come close to that threshold. I tend to find I can hold an enemy at about 15 before it just makes more sense to kill them. More cards like The Cure would make stacking disease worth it.

Most of the block is built on synergy with some other deck archetype, and isn't particularly good on its own.

The cards I generally think of as "Good block"
Exorcism (10 block, apply 2 vuln).
Cursed Buckler (5 block +1/exhausted card)
Mental Fortitude(5 block +5 if not debuffed, bonus does not scale with dex).
Edit: Famous Technique (6 block, if you have exhausted 3: draw 2)

If you start stacking up curses:
Repent(6 block, draw 2, exhaust 1)

If you can reliably exhaust some stuff:
Penitence(whenever you exhaust a card gain 5 block). -- the best endgame block option I've found, but you basically have to go curse spam.

I love playing this dude when I'm going curse/exhaust decks. It's a really fun playstyle, and the idea of making the curses do all of this unique ♥♥♥♥ is really interesting. Unfortunately, it feels like the rest of the cards just run in too many directions to really be useful - you can spam vuln/weakness, you can give yourself strength, you can do this disease/scourge mechanic, your cards get better with large decks, your cards get better with small decks. All of these have a smattering of cards dedicated to them, but you can't really build a deck around them.

I'll note that I have 2 cards yet to be revealed. But I can't imagine they change the above much.

heh, "briefly"

The power that gives 5 block when you exhaust a card is insanely OP. It should be toned down to 3.