A trinket that actually summons enemies could be more fun, rather than the sundial that simply alters spawn rate a bit. The former feels more impactful. They could be like weaker bees, equally likely to attack both enemies and players, and can be a new entry to find in the bestiary. It might even synergize with minion talents!

I agree! I tried the new Ferret Tuft, it sounds good on paper, but often it benefits the dungeon enemies much more than the player. Dwarf King and Yog spams minions, and demon halls ripper summons + ascension are a nightmare. I think upgrading it should give the player/ally much more evasion than the enemy, it’s a waste of energy and I often feel we need to throw it away later. And for the most part in the dungeon, my guaranteed-hit skills often run out, and I’d have to constantly wander around using doors etc which burns food. If there’s player minions that use magic, that is guaranteed to be craftable in runs, it would make this trinket more pickable.

And yeah Trap Mech tends to create dangerous rooms that benefit enemy long range units, and Vial of Blood doesn’t even work with pharma + barren. These are always recycled for 5 energy. And without challenges, Vial is never worth picking unless we somehow find good viscosity armor in the sewers, but even then the small extra heals are unnecessary. Censer used to be somewhat viable with Cleric’s instant cleanse, but now I’m not sure.

I think I agree, infinite bow shots are still powerful and can kill piranhas etc easier compared to throwns that need to be picked up after use (often wasting turns in dungeons). The only way for throwns to powercreep bow is if each thrown stack is like 15+ pieces. I think 6-10 per stack is enough?

However, I also agree with others that telekinesis is too expensive. The energy costs are high and it could’ve been used for powerful scrolls and potions. When thrown weapons scatter, like force cube dropping everywhere as I need to target multiple foes, we’d need telekinesis to target multiple tiles and rooms and the “thrown weapon build” becomes too expensive to be worth it. I think telekinesis needs to be cheaper to allow thrown SoUs to shine. The only other use for telekinesis is grabbing the 4 chasm keys, but we still need float and that hidden room is rarely worth it.

The only mild success I had with thrown builds is probably boomerangs as they return to you without telekinesis. I think there’s another big problem with thrown + telekinesis, I’d waste turns in combat picking up weapons with tele. If telekinesis usage is instant, then other thrown weapons could come close to boomerang’s turn economy/dps. Wands and other weapons also don’t have this slowness problem, which is why it’s never enticing to upgrade thrown weapons.

Oh that’s alright, I figured it’ll be hard to balance dart SoUs and I guess crossbow’s the way to upgrade darts. I’d love for buffs to the tipped effects though!

I think the balance for earthroot + paralytic dart is a very good example. I find myself using both the seed’s armor effect and the 2x paralysis equally, depending on situation. (but unfortunately on FIMA I only use the latter, I think this challenge removes too much gameplay options like warrior armor seal, earth wand, close-ranged abilities etc)

But for something like stormvine vs 2x shocking dart, the latter’s damage is way too low and they don’t have debuffs or fun effects. In this case, I always feel it’s better to use stormvine for either chasm kills or alch energy + potion. Same goes for swift seed’s timefreeze, it’s a much more powerful effect compared to adrenaline x2. For icecap, it’s often better to use them as energy, cheap frost AoE, or on eternal fire rooms, compared to the 2x single-target chill that doesn’t last as long. And mageroyal seed’s valuable to save for cleansing potion food, etc. I personally think the costs aren’t worth it for the tipped darts I mentioned, and the extra gold cost can often be used for better things

Darts are only from shops. I sometimes buy them if they sell paralysis/incendiary, or if I have the seed to make them! Those can be a little bit useful especially in high challenges, but saving money for heal potion etc is usually preferable. The rest of the darts are meh and not worth the costs (you need to re-tip the darts with seeds after each use). Even with cleric’s lategame trinity ability among other things, from my experience I can’t justify using these other darts, but that’s just my personal opinion

This is a great addition! Finding upgraded/enchanted thrown stacks makes it enticing to invest SoUs further to make em unbreakable. I especially love those thrown weapons with unique effects and debuffs, instead of just pure damage weapons. A badge for +15 thrown weapon run would be great, a lot of new players don’t know you can actually upgrade them, and it adds variety in runs to try out new things!

Can we also have buffs for darts in this update? We could make it viable to dump SoUs on them. A lot of them are not worth the seed+gold cost, save for a few notable ones. I think paralysis, incendiary, and mayyyybe displacing is already good (though the fact that they can miss makes them unreliable crowd control options). But it’s often difficult to justify using the rest. The duration of chill/adrenaline dart is too short, and shocking dart deals tiny damage. In these cases, it’s always better to save the seed and just get rid of the enemy with thrown/wand/ability/items/etc. Poison has many immunities, and rotberry/healing/holy dart consumes precious resources and they’re not impactful enough in dungeon runs (when compared against their opportunity costs). Sungrass seed is always used as my featherfall + food + heal, and starflower is for blandfruit level ups. Cleansing dart has no uses, the single enemy who uses buffs like adrenaline necromancer will spam it so much that it’s not worth the dart usage to clear their buffs.

If possible I’d love for additional roguelike ascension / fun challenges too that don’t take away gameplay like barrenlands. The only challenges I activate nowadays are badder bosses + champions unfortunately. Sometimes new enemies, items and challenges like “+20 pick run” makes me and friends revisit the game every few months. Thank you so much for the updates Evan!

I strongly agree with the things you say, the challenges could really use a rework. Warrior suffers too much from it.

Removing fun options in the game like barren lands + pharma feels awful. We could just nerf potions instead of removing all of them including heal bombs/aquatic rejuvenation/etc. Skills and trinkets like Blood Vial rely on potions, and the challenge ends up removing too much from the game. Barren lands also remove Warden’s skills, as well as the entire game’s strategy with seeds, plants, etc. Here’s hoping for a challenge rework someday, it’ll keep the game fresh! The old challenges could stay as a hidden option in the settings.