Probably since you can walk past it diagonally, it’s not a bug, but the misclick will be a jumpscare!

Glad to hear it won’t be a second sewers at least! On another note the Cleric has been great. So far Priest plays overall better than Paladin due to Hallowed and Lance. I can’t justify putting points on Mnenonic though. The Cleric spells affecting both solo heroes and NPC allies makes the class well designed I think, hopefully there’s more of these for other classes as I can never justify picking Warlock siphon & ally warp. SHPD has a nice niche of having NPC allies, which is often nonexistent in these kinds of games, but too bad they’re too weak and usually unobtainable in runs. The Cleric is changing this though, if only a bit!

I personally prefer a dwarven arena to fight and spend tokens on, but this idea could make the vault fun! The sewers is incredibly painful with challenges and 99% of my deaths are here due to having no bag options to fight blazing crabs, swarm intelligence, etc. But by the time I reach dwarven city I’ve already won the game and adding another “sewer problem” RNG-check on the imp quest is terrible.

But if there’s OP fun items immediately obtainable in the vault, like a staff that summons an army of minions, or a beam that turns enemies into gold, it’ll close the gap between 0-chal and 9-chal making the “sewer problem” on this quest disappear. SHPD’s allies is honestly one of its charms and they seem fun to use, but summon elemental and dried rose etc are too weak + expensive + unobtainable in most runs. It’ll be fun if we summon an army in the vault, making Warlock soul siphon etc worth taking. Though in the future I’m hoping summon elemental can be crafted on all runs using arcane stylus, it’s such a waste of a cool item if it’s mostly unusable. It’s much weaker than the +1/+3 sacrificed wand, on top of that we need to spend 10 energy + potion + scroll for it.

Yup, I agree it can be good! But I think its main problem is that it’s only good in a vacuum, but when compared to other upgrade options or wands it’s inferior. It needs tons of SoUs for reliable corruption, making it hard to use especially with forbidden runes, and spending one charge + turn to give one random debuff is generally not worth it, as you need luck to find the right debuffs for the current situation. Other wands like lightning can just simply kill things immediately instead of debuffing, personally I think wand of corruption needs to be a good debuffer in the first few hits before it corrupts?

As for my personal pick for worst wand it has to be transfusion, I mostly just use it to prevent eye beams, maybe some small shields. It has its uses but I prefer blastwave or fire!

I also got harassed by him many months ago when I criticized the old salt cube, clover trinket and warrior. It makes it hard to talk about these things when you know he will appear every time you talk about these, and it’s annoying to see that he’s on Lemmy too. Best to just downvote and ignore him. On another note I’m loving the new clover trinket update!

Love the update so far! Cleric’s Trinity is well-designed and makes bad items like divination and darts useful. If I may, I’d like to give one suggestion for 3.1 warrior. He might feel better if he stays simple but also provides optional complexity. For example, his Hold Fast talent could simply give him extra armor that’s unaffected by FIMA, but allies also get the armor with higher amount. This allows optional minion builds for warrior, preventing minions from getting instakilled as they’re often frail. Cleric’s other spells are also well-designed and have this trait of being useful for both solo-hero and minions, and it’d be great for summoner builds to have more skill support like this as they’re just too weak. I’d rather not have Warlock Soul Siphon though, as this skill is strictly for minion builds and doesn’t benefit solo heroes.

I’d also love for summoner builds to always be possible in runs, as dried rose and summon elemental aren’t guaranteed craftables, not to mention they’re too weak without investment! Finding dried rose too late is also a problem as you can’t find the petals anymore. I think summon elemental should always be craftable in runs, and make it very cheap as the potion and transmutation imbue cost afterwards are expensive. I recommend one arcane stylus and 3 energy as the alchemy recipe for 5 summons! The elemental embers unique effect can instead be a weak reusable bomb, like rotberry seed throw.

Maybe it’s just me but I personally think Censer is B-minus tier now, Cleric Cleanse can use Censer! Mnemonic Prayer still sucks though, dumping on Lance and Hallowed is way better. I’d personally vote for Vial, Mimic, Sundial, Parchment, Trap as the worst, the rewards are never worth the pain. Can’t decide which is worst, but Vial has extremely niche uses. It’s unnecessary on 0-chal and it’s useless on high-chal since there’s no dew, potion, etc. Salt Cube is better for diet. You somehow need to find good viscosity armor early in the sewers to actually pick Vial.

I’m more interested in the worst-craft section, cooking meat is obvious first place but I think the runner-ups are more important to tweak like unstable spell/brew, summon elemental, alchemize.

Huntress is definitely nicer! By “generic”, I meant rogue is starting to look more like a generic guy instead of rogue, the previous design felt more… criminal? A scar or eyepatch are some ideas that would exaggerate and show that the character is a rogue, but it’s not an important issue I think.

Though there may be some confirmation bias, I’ve been noticing more player complaints regarding trinkets outside of cliques. Ultimately trinkets make the game harder, which I am personally in favor of, but making choice-traps might not be the best way to do so. Data often have skewed meaning: I still try to +3 all the trinkets to see what it does, but the fact that I’m often upgrading them doesn’t mean that I think it’s a viable choice.

I used to think stuff like Parchment, Newt Eye and Mimic Tooth are good, but it’s very resource-extensive and often puts me in a much worse position. Other alternatives (like shop RC scroll, torch) are cheaper and better. Nowadays, for serious runs I mostly ignore trinkets completely to guarantee wins, but this is of course my personal opinion and other players can upgrade trinkets and do whatever they want to make their game fun.

Looks great! Huntress in particular always felt uncanny, her new look is far better. Not sure about rogue’s changes though, he could use an eyepatch or scar to feel more roguish. Right now he feels generic?

Great to see trinket buffs as well, experienced players tend to avoid trinkets entirely to boost their winrate. There’s only a few that they might use at +0 or +1 to be cost-effective. +3 trinkets are never used and there’s not a lot of dungeon floors to justify the huge cost. Upgraded thrown weapons and darts are also worth looking into, a big chunk of them harms winrate when crafted, with only a few exceptions.

Please don’t twist my words again by saying “basically”. I’m not forcing Evan to drop the concept entirely, I’m only highlighting possible problems with that idea as well as giving alternate solutions, before any significant effort is put into that concept. But ultimately I’ve mentioned it’s up to Evan to decide on which direction to go.

The thing is, by the time we’ve seen the quest, a significant amount of effort has been put on it already, making change difficult. Criticisms are much more helpful earlier in the development phase, where it’s still just ideas and concepts. By doing this, we can avoid the “sewer problem” preemptively before it happens.

That’s an exaggeration, but it’s not about what’s possible. The game is about tweaking the winrate in your favor with better options and decisions, using core gameplay elements from your bag, and having choices like these are essential to the game.

And that’s perfectly fine if you don’t care about my opinion! But I’d like to share my opinion to the dev and other people regardless, in hopes it will improve the game like warrior, and you cannot stifle these discussions just because you don’t care about it.

Challenges can be added + improved for those who play it, to be more fun. Imagine if the hard mode of RPGs simply remove your spells and gear. Sure, it’s more difficult, but it’s like installing a “negative update” that removes entire chunks of gameplay. Players criticize Shattered’s challenges because they care about Shattered, and telling them to just “take the difficulty level” is insensitive and improvements cannot be made like that.

Not true, only the boss needs to be pickaxed. Everything here can be prepared: sight options, cleansing potion for food, preparing huge damage + crowd control for the minions. Stamina potion can help chase and dodge against the boss, which essentially gives the player high pickaxe DPS. Without options, there is no adaptation, and that’s the “sewer problem” that’ll hopefully not exist in the vault.

And please stop twisting my words. I never said that challenges are bad because they make things harder. I’m saying that a game can be both difficult and fun, and if said difficulty strips away entire classes and core gameplay elements to remove player choices, then it’s bad game design, and we can learn from successful games on how to better create difficulty. If the google result to “Shattered PD challenges” is players complaining how poorly designed it is, then there’s a problem.

It can be higher if you think it’s too low, I just don’t want it to outclass elixir of might, which is 4HP + 5% increase. It could also be another reward entirely!

I’m not asking for the kind of progression that give permanent upgrades or starting gold to heroes. The thing is, we are already unlocking tons of “game changing” options by doing things in Shattered. We unlock characters, alchemy recipes, challenges, seeded runs. The final boss unlock might as well be another 10th challenge.

Longevity and replayability are key aspects of roguelikes and roguelites, and superbosses create a new goal for players who finished the game once. More importantly, these will create online guides, discussions, gameplay videos and reactions. This is the key for growth and momentum, and it’s one of the reasons why some roguelikes and roguelites are so successful, they have this recipe jotted down.

I also thought On Diet made the caves quest difficult, but I manage to adapt to it specifically because I can prepare for it. That’s the entire point of this message, every obstacle in this game can be adapted to because there is a way to prepare items. That’s what makes roguelikes fun, you see an impossible boss ahead, and on the next run, you bring solutions to counter that boss.

The vault quest however, has no possible way to prepare if you start at zero again. That’s the problem. The only way to adapt to vault quest is if players are allowed to pre-buff before the vault, but at that point it’s no longer worth getting the +2 ring as you need those buff items for dwarf king and yog in 9-chal. If the vault quest won’t be as RNG-hell as 9-chal sewers, then there is another way to adapt via skill and memory, but that’ll be difficult to balance with challenges.

While I prefer a token gambling collosseum, or something like the caves quest, it’s up to you on how to proceed with the city quest!

Though I’m not sure how to balance that vault idea other than completely eliminating challenges during the quest. On diet, swarm, champions, pharma, and barren lands are lethal, but FIMA will be the worst offender as it eliminates most of the gear progression in that vault microcosm, making all melee weapons + armor useless. That “starting point” is always the most lethal in high challenges, but by the time players reach the city it’s usually a winning run already and they have the correct builds to proceed. If the city quest can even cause 20% death at this stage in the game… my biggest worry will be not experiencing the imp update entirely because skipping it becomes the optimum play on high challenges. Hope that’s not the case!

Players can prepare against tengu or caves quest to boost the winrate, but this vault quest is something that they cannot prepare against, and that constant death rate might be too unappealing as it goes against the core gameplay of “preparing for the next fight”. It might act as a fun minigame if done well, but it seems hard to execute well.

Forgive me warrior for I have sinned :( The god of pixel dungeon rightfully deserves the SSS tier

I’m glad to see Shattered sales doing well~ Updates really help keep Shattered alive, players can also spread the word to keep the momentum going

I’m eager for city and halls quest, but I’m very concerned with that dwarven vault idea. If none of the player’s items can go with them, it’ll be extremely difficult to balance this quest with high challenges. Sewer and prisons have the highest death rate due to players having no options in their bag yet, and that city quest will end up as another sewer. Builds also become unusable, and some players don’t like this quest idea.

There’s some great suggestions for city quest: What if the devil imp takes the player to an arena in the dwarven kingdom? That’s often the most fun event in RPGs, where you have the choice to fight a few enemies for small rewards, or risk it all for better loot. The imp could set up a fight against weak enemies at first, eventually leading to a boss fight with corrupted Thymor from those lore pages. Dwarf tokens drop from enemies, which can be exchanged with the imp for rewards such as the +2 ring.

This suggestion will solve several problems. Arena fights will allow newbies to get used to slugfests prevalent in Dwarf King’s fight. But more importantly, Thymor will allow useless items in this game to shine. This warlock should use ice spells, as there are almost no ice enemies in this game to justify using Icy Touch’s ice immunity. He could also buff at the start of the battle, since no enemies use buffs in this game for cleansing dart to remove. Of course, players can choose to brute-force this fight with healing potions instead, or escape the arena before Thymor appears, as you will have enough tokens for the +2 ring without Thymor. But defeating Thymor could drop an additional Devil Fruit that fills satiety and adds +6 Max HP. This boss reward should be useful but not game-breaking, as the final boss is already easy without challenges.

Challenge tweaks and new challenges that buffs enemies are also nice. Slay the Spire encourages players to clear the game multiple times using most characters, which unlocks a hidden act 4 final boss as a final goal. Shattered needs that replayability incentive, as right now when new players clear the game once, they get bombarded with challenges that they usually find unappealing, which leads to them quitting without trying most of the game characters, killing the momentum of players sharing the game.

That’s because I need to explain why one hero is in S while another is in D. That’s not necessarily bias, it’s just to explain my personal opinion on why the character is there. You’re free to disagree of course, but when you inflate stats to say why warrior is good, that’s definitely bias. I just want warrior to be on par with the other heroes, if you actually like warrior then there’s no reason to argue against him getting more card options.

I never said that everyone has all of these, I’m saying that warrior doesn’t have any of it. If he just have one or two good cards such as heals, his tanking would be much more consistent. If we compare to someone who can consistently generate heals and shields, plus other cards like ranged, they can overall save a lot more HP compared to warrior. While monk needs to kill normal enemies, once that happens you have those cards forever until used, making it very consistent. With combo decaying it’s much more difficult as floors don’t have that many fights to maintain combo. You are very biased with warrior it seems?