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The damage gym only giving +6 damage seems unfortunate; $10 for 10 damage seemed fine and not imbalanced.

Nevermind, I tried it again and it does work.

If you have a T2 scroll from the Quill. Any scroll of that type from the Scriptorium will also be T2. Making that event even more hilariously busted.

I just tested this, and it doesn’t seem to be the case.

I think I ran into a build like yours. :)

In the very first round of the game, I got the gym as the second of the three options, but when I clicked it, I got the garden instead.

I don’t remember precisely the sequence of events, but I don’t think either one came from the chest. I think I got them from shops or events.

Random thought for a way to nerf: what if you could readily get energy to boost items, but it took exponentially more energy to improve an item the more it has already been improved?

Somehow ended up with two ice axes that didn’t merge:

If your inventory and storage are both full, you can’t buy an item even if it would immediately merge with something you have.

Celestial Bow seems absurdly overpowered. If you avoid having any projectile other than Kaboom, it effectively reduces the time for Kaboom from 20+ seconds to 6s (leaving aside all the ways you can speed up the Celestial Bow).

Rather than tweaking how often it shows up (because it’s one of the more fun events to find), consider changing how scrolls stack to make them less exponential.

Right now, if you have six scrolls of -0.1s, and sell them, you’ll get -0.1s, -0.2s, -0.4s, -0.8s, -1.6s, -3.2s, for a total of -6.3s. That’s fun, but pretty broken. ;)

As much fun as it was to play with, and as much as I hate to suggest nerfing it, you might consider instead capping it, so that using a scroll of cooldown when you have other scrolls of cooldown will upgrade the other scrolls as if they were bumped uncommon->epic->legendary, with a hard-cap at legendary (so a legendary scroll doesn’t get any better). That would provide some benefit to saving them up (which compensates for having to hold off on using them and hope for more scrolls, which requires luck), but would keep it from being exponential.

It’s okay for there to be big differences in items; games should be substantially different. And if you decide to pass up on your first couple of opportunities, then it’s on you if you lose. (In some games, I do restart until I get particularly interesting items, but that’s on me.)

Part of the problem, I think, is that it’s entirely possible to end up having no opportunity in the first three selections to get an item that is capable of doing meaningful damage/poison/bleed. For instance, selecting a “get a damage/poison/bleed item” option can give you something that boosts other items but does nothing itself. Shops give you a choice of items, but shops might have only boost items, or items that are too weak to meaningfully compete in the early game.

Here’s an example. Started a game. My first selection: Non-Damage shop, garden, 3 regen. The latter two can’t give me something that does damage/poison/bleed, but the first one could. So, either of the last two is a risk that I don’t get something useful by the first battle. If I want to play it safe, I can pick the Non-Damage shop.

In the Non-Damage shop, I found Morning star (boost item), Poison shield (does only 2 poison damage, not nearly enough to compete in the early game), or Bleeder (3 bleed, possibly enough to compete unless someone gets a strong early build). Getting something competitive required picking the shop of the three choices, and then there was only 1 out of 3 items that could compete.

Oh, and the items I see if I refresh the shop are a good sample of what I often see going into a Non-Damage shop: Barbed arrow (stun but no damage), Stone tower (defense only), Block ring (defense only).

Next round: room 99 (nice but can’t give anything damaging), 3 regen again (also nice but not damaging), and a generic “shop”. The generic shop again had 1/3 items that actually compete (Foil, 20 damage x 3); the other two were Chiffon (5 heal, no damage) and Sword (20 damage, very likely not enough unless you get lucky and go up against someone who also found nothing).

Started another new game. First choices: fountain (nope), random Precious item (nope), Non-Damage shop. Shop choices: healing item, block item, spiky shoes (usually too slow by itself).

What I’m getting at is that in order to be competitive for the first match, you either ignore most of the choices and hope you get something usable in the shop, or you pick the interesting choices and risk getting some losses before you find your footing in order to have a better mid-game.

Random items are great for the mid-game or late-game, when you’ve got a decent build and you’re looking for pieces to improve it or pivot, and when the average random item sells for a decent amount so worst case you get some decent gold. In the early game, randomness gets you killed, and the shops often don’t have any offensive items. I’ve had a number of games where there were no offensive options available at all.

I’m hoping there will be a way to reduce the need to restart early.

I wonder if it would work to just guarantee certain encounters in the first few rounds.

Consider, for instance, that Balatro guarantees a pack of jokers in the first shop.

Not quite. I had the quill that produces scrolls, and the chest that produces stones, and the meat cleaver that produces money, almost from the beginning of the game, and upgraded them a bit later on. I sandbagged a bit to make sure I got a lot of value out of them. I got lucky and got several scriptoriums over the course of the run. (And I got extra benefit from those by having “when you sell” items like the cat-chest that gains value when you sell, which is how I managed to get that much money.)

As soon as I got a cooldown stone, I used it on whatever highest-value cooldown scroll I had. Then, a few rounds from the end of the game, I used all the cooldown scrolls I had in order from highest-value to lowest-value.

Having played a number of games specifically aiming for minimum cooldown, I don’t think it’s too overpowered (as long as pain doll is fixed).

You have to consistently have a lot of money to search for items, and save all your cooldown improvements (potentially losing battles that you would have won if you went ahead and used the cooldown you had so far), and choose getting more cooldown over other things that you might otherwise get benefit out of. I had to dedicate essentially the whole game towards this goal in order to reach it a few rounds before the end, and sell or pass up other more powerful win conditions to get it (e.g. items to trigger axe charge, or rush items), and at that point it became the “win more” victory lap.

I think the bigger thing that might need looking at is the degree to which the items you find in the first three steps, before the first battle, vary so strongly in impact on the rest of the game that I tend to just restart the run if I don’t find interesting things.

And notice that it’s a common stone face, un-upgraded.

New high on money and max health, as well.

Here’s a fun combination. Barbed arrow stuns at start of battle. Morning star rushes left/right items on stun. And Pain doll has 1s cooldown. So, it activates every 0.5s. My 10th win with this was against a full slow-bow/poison/whiplash combo board, and I just…outpaced it to win in 1.5s.

Now I’m wondering if I can get enough luck in finding Scriptoriums to get a larger item like Stone Face or Kaboom down to 1s. :)

I might get rid of the slow bow, it is too broken.

I don’t think the slow bow itself is inherently broken. I think it’s the fact that poison was already strong, and the poisonous sword and slow bow are a two-item combo because they both perform the action that triggers the other, continuously. If you break that two-item cycle, it’d substantially reduce the prevalence of this combo in the meta.

Poison portal will only target 1 poison item instead of all of them

That’s definitely an improvement, though by itself it doesn’t solve the problem. It just means people using a poison build will only keep their best poison item.

By the end, around 1800 I think?

Managed to get the gain-10-health item down to 1s cooldown, as well as a pain doll and a cat.

What feels the most unbalanced beside the obvious 3-4 poison rush combo?

Pain Doll, definitely; primarily its fast cooldown.

Bleed seems underpowered; I’ve never seen any bleed builds that seem like they survive into the endgame. Poison ends up beating it every time, even though people have shield, because poison scales so much faster. Even if you lean into bleed at every opportunity, and have a board full of bleed items and bleed boosters, it isn’t fast enough to outpace damage-rush or high regen or poison.

It feels like bleed is balanced well for the early game; it just needs more scaling.

Once that is nerfed. We’re looking at Ice Axe + Reaper + Face + Mirror + <Insert fast weapon with too high base damage>

That one is powerful, but it has the advantage of requiring more pieces to make it effective.

(That said, it might make sense to make Ice Axe have a slightly longer cooldown, and then slightly increase the amount it charges per damage activation,.)

Current cooldown record, in a game where I didn’t even find a Scriptorium, only the quill that produces scrolls after battle:

Update: can now confirm that 1s is the minimum cooldown on items. Pretty fun to use items with a 1s cooldown. I combined a 1s Pain Doll with a 1s cooldown version of the item to charge another item, which means that 1s after the battle the Pain Doll activated twice.

I think the Pain Doll might be slightly overpowered:

Got it early, upgraded it a couple of times, and spent effectively every dollar buying items to sell for it. A 2s cooldown is absurd; maybe the pain doll is the item I should try to get to 0s cooldown. ;)

Update:

Yeah, it’s overpowered. The scaling of the amount you get for selling items is great. The scaling of the cooldown goes 8s->6s->4s->2s, and having that much damage every 4s, let alone 2s, wins a battle by itself. Even against poison. :)

That cooldown scaling is much faster than the cat, and the damage scaling is faster than the cat. I’d suggest keeping the damage scaling, and reducing the cooldown scaling so that it’s 4s at legendary and 5s at epic.

Random UI quirk: I had the Marble Foot, in my active items, went to the fountain, and at first thought I didn’t get an item. Then I realized I’d heard the upgrade clank, so I’d gotten an item that immediately merged. That meant I didn’t get to see which item it was, and I’m still not quite sure which item it was.

Not bad. Somewhat more balanced, in that it’s more feasible to win with more than one kind of build. Still pretty unbalanced, but substantially better. Will probably need more tuning over time.

I love the change to not combine scrolls, thank you. That’s especially true if I get multiple Scriptoriums in a row.

Do items have a minimum cooldown? If not, my next goal is to try to get a cat with 0 cooldown. :)

Damage is more fun to take into the endgame. It’s still a die roll, as it gets hard-countered by certain builds. But it’s not as much of a die roll as it used to be. (My first 10-0 with a damage rush build came after a number of builds that got unlucky in matchups and got hard-countered.)

Poison is still best. I had a great damage-rush build with an upgraded cat that had 90+ damage and I’d gotten it down to ~3s cooldown, along with an upgraded axe and a bunch of multi-hit items. Sold all of it to purchase Poisonous Blade and Slowing Bow from the same shop, which was easily the right choice. Got Poison Portal the round after, and that was the game.

Those three together, ideally along with one cheap “use at start of battle” item that does rush or slow, will win 90+% of matchups. The ones they lose to are usually either the same build but faster, or a combo that takes more pieces so it shows up less often (e.g. the bomb and all rush items, or a damage-enchanted ).

Also, aside: I continue to find Meat Cleaver by far the most fun item to find in the early game. Finding it means I’ll have at least twice as much money over the course of the game, not counting compounding effects.

Another damage rush build, with a very large cat.

Ran into this build on an opponent and I’m sorry, what? How? That is an absurd amount of damage boosting, and it doesn’t look like there’s an item doing it, so it would have to be individual damage boost consumables like scrolls. That seems excessively unlikely.

One thing I particularly like about the game is that there’s incentive to pivot.

Poison is fine in general. The balance issues are primarily with the 2-3 items that trigger the poison sword continuously. And even then, it’s not a guarantee of victory.

Awesome. That’ll solve the problem. That introduces a bit of busywork itself, to manually merge, but it doesn’t come up very often.

Grip Ring doesn’t trigger Dragon Egg.

From the department of “busywork is bad”: if you have an item with “when you sell”, it’s worth taking items that combine (e.g. scrolls/stones/potions) one by one so that they don’t get a chance to combine, and then selling one before you obtain another, so that you get more “when you sell” triggers. That seems suboptimal; doing things a more tedious way shouldn’t provide more benefits.

Similarly, in the upgrade and enchant screens, I have multiple times sold an item by accident instead of improving it, because they’re both ‘drag to the centre of the screen’ actions.

Can confirm, have done the same.

10-0, with a simple damage-rush build.

The Grip Ring can’t rush itself (sometimes useful if you’re trying to trigger other items).

At this point I think it’ll be as much luck as skill. If you come up against someone with a Whiplash, everything you have that’s time-based will be stunlocked, so it comes down to your own Whiplash or other “when you use” or “when your opponent uses” items. If neither side has an enchanted non-time-based item, then it comes down to a combination of who has more HP/regen, and/or who got damage out in the fraction of a second before stunlock. If either side has an enchanted non-time-based item, then the question is which of those items is stronger relative to the other side’s HP/regen, and nothing else matters.

One thing that’d help is if stun stopped normal time-based progression but didn’t stop charge. Otherwise, stun will continue to sit at the top of the hierarchy, and nothing counters it. Something needs to counter stun the way stun counters everything else.

Most lives remaining so far (3):

Still trying for the elusive 10-0.

Minimal winning combo: Poisonous blade, slowing bow, any item that triggers Rush or Slow once, ideally at the start of the fight. Throw in Rope Dart or Whiplash to help stunlock.

By the way, the music has really strong Mega Man X soundfont vibes. Love it. :)