Neat game! It's fun trying to stack abilities even though it's hard to tell how to do so effectively. My strategy is mostly stack some healing and hope for the best. The game seems super RNG dependent, especially early on. My best run went to level 9, and I had a build that seemed to be crushing it until I died in two hits :)
The thing that I regret the most is not having enough time to do some serious game balancing! It was hard to strike a balance between “too easy” and “frequent deaths to one-shots”. I think I ended up a bit closer to the latter, but it’s definitely possible to mostly get a handle on the RNG and avoid the worst of it. Except with the blessings: you can’t replace them and are stuck with what you choose, so if you get bad luck on the RNG there they can really end your run.
There’s a few essential mods (getting enough healing is definitely essential), a pretty big pool of useful mods, and some mods that sound good but should be avoided (and some that are potentially run-ending). I had a lot of fun playing through when developing and discovering the different synergies, and I can confirm that the game is beatable :)
Well I'm sure it helps to beat the game knowing how everything works :p. I'm curious to know a little more how stacking abilities works--for instance, is there any point at all to getting two of the same ability? The game description kind of hints that there are different triggers for proccing the same ability type on equipment, but I couldn't quite tell.
Knowing the inner mechanics is definitely helpful, though with the high level of randomization, new and unexpected combinations still make it a non-trivial affair!
Yes, everything is independent. If you have, say, two of the same proc that procs with 50% chance on hit, on a hit you’ll roll for both of those and both can potentially proc at the same time.
I realized a bit too late in development that having so many abilities able to proc with the same name on the same turn meant that the combat log would be difficult for the player to parse. This means that the player potentially misses out on information crucial to learning the game’s mechanics.