Well, where to begin... This is the nicest, most thoughtful piece of feedback I've ever seen! I spend the entire read rooting for you throughout your journey, joyfully laughing as you discovered new mechanics and figured out how to overcome challenges!
I'm so happy to see a player that chose the Warrior as its preferred class and went with a predominantly STR/DEX build. Up until now, most dedicated players that I got feedback from went the combo route so they dumped all into INT/LUK with either the Rogue or the Wizard, so seeing that you can have a good time with these more traditional builds is really nice.
Allow me to clarify some of the doubts you expressed:
-Luck and fortune: This stat is very easy to underestimate, especially as a new player. While it has no direct impact on your combat abilities, it influences many factors such as the number of items dropped in combat and in chests, the quality of cards opened in packs, the quality of cards found in merchants, the likeliness of getting better equipment, and the quality of rewards at some luck events. Most important of all might be the number of drops you get in combat and chests since that:s the most consistent way of amassing high-quality crafting gems, which are vital to creating a powerful deck.
-Intelligence; The other stat that also doesn't directly affect combat, but is likely to be the most important of all for later runs since this stat determines both your crafting ability and the prices you find at merchants. (With some added secret bonuses). Cheaper merchants are very nice, especially on later runs when prices start getting steep. But the most important is the access to more crafting options at the forge. This makes Intelligence key for combo decks since finding the piece you are looking for on a random pack is not very likely.
The merchant is definitely one of the strongest and most fun rooms in the game. Luck events can be pretty good, but unless you are out of gold, going for a merchant is probably the better idea, yeah.
Again, your describing your journey discovering the power of certain mechanics such as making Champions start with -2 cards is really exciting to read because that's exactly what I envisioned a new player's experience to be! (Unique is the tier below Legendary, btw)
Your description of the warrior deck also makes me very happy, it feels like I was able to hit some sort of balance in the starter deck where you can appreciate every piece and play around with them. While there are always better and worse cards at an objective level, every piece in chess plays a role! Sometimes testing these kinds of design points is hard as the designer, so hearing such a detailed opinion on what your impressions of the deck were is very reassuring!
The game difficulty goes up considerably after the first boss and the shenanigans begin much as you described with cards that traditionally would be crazy, but that's kind of the charm of the game, I think. Your enemies have crazy cards, so you'll have to match their might and get crazy cards of your own to beat them!
I'm not gonna lie, you had me hollering with the " Perhaps even what you call, a card artisan. " line, I wish I could have a review this charming on my Steam page once the game goes up there.
I'm going to dispel *some* of the doubts you outlined since some fo them shouldn't be mysteries and might be a bit unclear due to poor explaining on my side.
-Blue online on items: This just means that it's a more powerful item (Comparatively to what you would've got with a regular frame item in that same situation)
-Rabbit's Rear: Ensures that you get at least one SR or UR card in your packs. So basically makes card packs stronger.
-Suspicious Scale: This only makes the number of cards you open in packs go up by 1. (For example if your card pack says "A pouch containing 1 card..." you'll open 2 cards. The "Max 5" refers to the max amount of cards a pack can contain, so if your pack already has 5 cards in it, this equipment will have no effect. Unfortunately, you can only get 1 copy of each piece of equipment.
-The AI is playing the best it can, sometimes it isn't optimal because it isn't intelligent enough, sometimes it makes a suboptimal play that won't kill the player but will damage you so your next enemy takes you out. At any rate, AI will be improved down the line.
-Minion types are relevant mostly for effects and costs such as "Give +1/+1 to all Elemental Minions you control" or "You must control 2 Beast Minions to play this card". Although each color has affinities for certain types of effects. This means that certain card effects are more commonly found with certain colors. For example, Celestial cards have a higher chance of getting "Heal" abilities.
-Rarity: The chart goes C Common, U Uncommon, R Rare, SR Super Rare, UR Ultra Rare, and X for custom cards such as the ones you forge.
-
Thanks for the bug reports, some of those are on the laundry list, but some others I haven't encountered, so I'll try to replicate and fix them!
Regarding your comments/wishlist of features, here are some of the planned upcoming features:
-Saving of runs.
-Stats such as best time, playtime, minions killed, card packs opened, etc. Some of these are already being logged, so your best time is saved and will be viewable when Card Artisan 0.5 hits the shelves!
-Run history is *not* currently in the plans but honestly I should add that.
-New effects. ("Destroy all minions", "Shuffle your graveyard into your deck", and "Destroy your opponent's graveyard" are all already in the works).
-New trigger times. ("When this card is discarded..." and "When this card is milled..." are both ready in the dev build).
-Improvements to the modding capabilities.
-A Quest/Achievement system with a bit of meta-progression of its own.
-
Lastly, just to clarify the "lore", it is supposed to be just one hero going into a castle dungeon and creating powerful spells by using rare materials on magical forges.
Once again, I deeply appreciate your detailed feedback and it makes me extremely happy to see people enjoying my game enough to feel compelled to leave such a review. These are the kind of comments that make me wanna keep going and keep pumping features and updates as soon as I can. I really hope to see you around in the future, fren!