… giving it a more thematic downside instead, like giving 1 confusion every time it successfully triggers.
I also would like more interesting downside for Paradoxical Figure, but adding confusion, while indeed thematic, still feels not quite right. I will try to think of more ideas.
Un-upgraded carnival trick reads like you can upgrade the stamina cost to 0. After you upgrade it, suddenly it has minimum stamina cost of 1.
Yes, this is the problem I described / fixed. It worked like this: normally “max upgrades” is a fixed number either intrinsic to the card or from ascension. However, cost reduction upgrade tried to estimate the maximum number of upgrades by looking at the current card cost, so in fact it displayed “upgrades remaining” instead of “maximum”.
Now, the UI will display something like “upgrades: (2 left)” instead of “upgrades: (max 2)”, and both the absolute maximums and cost upgrades will (I hope) be correctly taken into account during calculation.
I think turmoil, failure, oppression, and blaze are the more generally difficult ones.
I usually play with larger deck, so ‘blaze’ is not so punishing for my style (BTW, I hope to some day pick it while having Pendant of Amnesia, thus vindicating that otherwise rarely useful item).
I agree that ‘hailstorm’ is often the easiest, except for very “flimsy” builds. I am thinking of buffing hailstorm to Shoot 3.
I often pick turmoil/failure to add “spice” to my final battle when I feel that my deck is truly broken the barrier and the fight would be boring otherwise.