Way To Crown

Turn-based deck-builder, minimal visuals, focus on advanced strategies and builds. · By AlSoKnown

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Balance discussion: v0.37

A topic by AlSoKnown created Jun 03, 2026 Views: 252 Replies: 12

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AlSoKnownDeveloper108 days ago

The batch of new monsters in this release covers all terrains and power levels and uses new mechanics such as card attachment and monsters triggering by playing cards.

Some of the new encounters are quite deadly for unsuspecting player, and hopefully require novel tactics to win against (or a strategy to avoid).

I would like to hear the opinions on the balance, in particular:

Are some new monsters too hard for the stages they appear?
How new final bosses compare to existing ones in terms of difficulty and entertainment?
Is the nerf to infinite indirect playing too harsh?

Of course, any other feedback is also welcome.

Norbert33998 days ago

Are some new monsters too hard for the stages they appear?

So far it seems good to me.

Is the nerf to infinite indirect playing too harsh?

The few times when I could make a loop like that, I didn’t really need to do that. I think the nerf is fine.

How new final bosses compare to existing ones in terms of difficulty and entertainment?

Generally I guess they add more difficulty and make things more interesting.

This icy prison stage is the only new encounter I had at lvl 20 so far (except the added hellhounds to lava pit). The deck here is maybe a bit too minimalistic in this version, and not good enough to win this with endless failure or endless turmoil. Unlike the alternative final stage, sanguine with a negative fatigue encounter effect, which would’ve been one of the hardest in the last version.

save file

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Haven’t yet encountered a Sphinx or Unquenchable One anywhere.

AlSoKnownDeveloper97 days ago

So far it seems good to me.

In my own playtesting the only potentially troublesome new monster is Cockroach, especially for unsuspecting player who have not yet added enough damage / draw to the deck. The good thing is that it really rewards AoE attacks, which were previously somewhat underutilized. For the next version, I have added quite powerful item+quest combo for fighting Cockroaches.

This icy prison … deck here is maybe a bit too minimalistic

To be honest, if not for the “start turn fatigue” ascension, this fight would be trivial to win just by spamming confusion. I am thinking about adding some “soft” resistance to insanity for final bosses (as opposed to total immunity, which is comparatively boring).

encountered a Sphinx or Unquenchable One anywhere.

It just so happens that both would also be vulnerable to Prestidigitation, especially since it bypasses Sphinx’s ‘concealed’.

Norbert33996 days ago

Cockroach

They’re kinda like wolves. Whether they’re worse or not depends on the hero, I guess. And on how many cockroaches can appear on which stage.

if not for the “start turn fatigue” ascension, this fight would be trivial to win

That’s true. It still was mildly interesting to work around.

Start turn fatigue indeed doesn’t feel like an ideal source of difficulty. But without it, you could also just spam defense and some damage.

It just so happens that both would also be vulnerable to Prestidigitation

Yeah, Prestidigitation is pretty strong. Confusion is just one of the most powerful status effects. It’s more rarely resisted than stun or entangle, and additionally attacks sanity.

Norbert33977 days ago

I now think that roaches are indeed a bit too impactful considering that they’re roaches. I didn’t think you could encounter more than three at once before higher levels. If that’s just the “additional enemies” ascension, adding roaches scales too differrntly compared to other monsters added this way.

AlSoKnownDeveloper77 days ago

“additional enemies” ascension, adding roaches scales too differrntly compared to other monsters added this way.

Not quite, ‘add cockroach’ is a random encounter modifier, similar to chests, butterflies, etc. It is comparatively rare, 3 times less likely than Wooden Chest, for example. “Additional enemies” ascension currently always adds fixed monsters per terrain type.

Simplest fix would be to reduce respawn to 0..1, thus preventing “population explosion” outright. But that would be less interesting both flavor-wise and from gameplay perspective. I will try to rework them to make respawning less random while keeping the potential danger of drowning in roaches :)

Norbert33977 days ago

I see, interesting.

I will try to rework them to make respawning less random while keeping the potential danger of drowning in roaches :)

Hmm… If it’s 0..1, you need another method of summoning a sea of roaches to drown in. Maybe if a non-roach enemy dies, each roach summons a roach.

AlSoKnownDeveloper73 days ago (1 edit)

I reworked Cockroach to “move” the decision point of random choice so that player can see the outcome before killing.

Now besides mass-attacks and insanity, valid strategies for killing cockroaches are:

Wait until vitality randomly reaches zero, and kill individual Cockroach at that moment
Reduce vitality by cards like Draining Aura (but still kill on player’s turn)

As for Dragon Hoard, I reworked it by changing “on damaged” condition to “protected > 0”, with corresponding adjustments. Player is now limited by both number of turns and number of attacks, and gets only 0..1 gems. Overall ‘gem output’ dropped dramatically, to the point that I would now recommend taking the quest only if hero has luck.

That change also introduces very rare and crazy synergies with combos like Spiked Collar + Vulnerability Mark or Mind Control + Duty Call, which I always like.

Norbert33969 days ago

Good changes.

So roaches are now mostly dangerous when you have the monocle.

I wonder if all item traps like this are intended, e.g. vestigal bone vs krampus, thick tome/abacus vs eye of dilemma, mittens vs ice shards, or snake eyes vs burning.

AlSoKnownDeveloper69 days ago (4 edits)

So roaches are now mostly dangerous when you have the monocle.

Interesting catch. Thankfully, at least for me the most common usage of Monocle is to combine with Rogue’s Quick Shot, which increases the chance to draw enough attacks to kill all roaches in one turn.

I wonder if all item traps like this are intended

I consider anti-synergies with the same attitude as positive synergies, which is that they are good in general as they make more interesting things to decide / think about, but may need balancing in the most extreme cases.

On the ones you indicated, here is my opinion:

vestigal bone vs krampus

That one is ok. Vestigal Bone is very powerful, and has some other similar interactions with forced discard and malus cards. For example new Infected Rat + Scavenger Rat may become quite problematic if left unchecked. Slightly unrelated, but Krampus is also countered by new Shining Armor.

thick tome/abacus vs eye of dilemma

Thick tome negative effect is relatively minor in this case, but with Abacus it is indeed a serious danger. I did suffer with Abacus against other enemies as well, especially Efreet / Ice Dragon. It is mitigated slightly by the fact that most common usage of Abacus is for Mage / Ivory Tower.

Maybe Eye of Dilemma is just generally a bit too strong compared to other eye monsters, but I still think this falls into acceptable range of danger.

mittens vs ice shards

This one I think is most problematic, mostly because the positive effect of Mittens was intended to give power exactly for Frozen cards, so the item contradicts itself in a way. Also, I want to add more ice cards which add Ice Shards to hand, in a similar manner to Burning. The ‘Frozen’ on Ice Shard is intended for such scenario (as well as to buff Ice Dragon a little).

My plan for Mittens was to have another way to enable ice-based builds besides Snowflake, but I am still not quite satisfied with its current version, so open to change it and/or add another item with that goal.

snake eyes vs burning

I did intentionally pick Snake Eyes with Firebreathing once, and it was almost game-winning, so this one can cut both ways. Still, I often like to pick Ember Log in fire builds as a safeguard against unintentionally overflowing hand with Burning.

IMHO the strongest “oops, that was a trap” moment currently is Burnt Pancake vs sigils. Thankfully, it is easily avoidable once you’ve burned (pun intended :) ) yourself once.

Another similar, but more obvious trap is Spiked Collar + Dragon Lance, which is remarkable to me since I did fall for it several time just because I forgot having one of the items.

(Moving ‘greedy’ discussion here for convenience, since it is about balance anyway)

It’s never insignificant and always can potentially fumble all important effects in your remaining hand. So regardless of how much greedy you have, you shouldn’t rely on your remaining hand.

I was actually concerned that low greed values will be too weak / easy to ignore. My preferred design was “fumble floor(greed * 0.03) effects, then fumble 1 extra effect with probability of frac(greed * 0.03)” in other words, keep expected average value, but make random value to differ by at most 1. However, I found it to be too cumbersome to explain in game.

I will think more about it. Also, currently greedy does not interact properly with Sturdy Clamp / Magnet. I will fix it (unless greedy rework will make it unneeded).

Also, what is your opinion on diseased status? In particular, I debated whether Sympthom card should exhaust.

Norbert33968 days ago

for me the most common usage of Monocle is to combine with Rogue’s Quick Shot

Monocle is pretty good in general for helping with burning, among other things. Sometimes I even pick a random range card just to have more chances to get a monocle. I guess at the end of the day this anti-synergy fits, you kind of expect monocle to have a risk when you first read about it.

Maybe with the way burning works, luck is a bit too connected to handling fire. Without it, removing a single burning might take a lot of health and fatigue if you’re unlucky. If I have some healing, I’d prefer having a monocle over fireproof gloves when going to the lava pit.

anti-synergies

Interesting notes. I agree with the general balancing of having these anti-synergies. Come to think of it, only the mittens really seemed like an oversight to me.

I always avoid abacus, since it’s not really that useful to have, and makes chaos realms much more dangerous. On mage, thick tome giving you a hand size of 9 can be almost as bad at times. It’s useful as a quest prerequisite, but I still stopped picking it as a reward.

For the remaining examples, it makes sense that you need to make sure you can deal with the anti-synergy before picking it up.

“fumble floor(greed * 0.03) effects, then fumble 1 extra effect with probability of frac(greed * 0.03)”

Well, you could make stochastic rounding a key word. It’s not nearly as much gambling, but I guess this would still have a similar shortcoming where 2 greedy isn’t all that different from 33 greedy in the short term. Maybe something else would be better than fumbling.

I don’t think it has the same expected average value, because it doesn’t depend on the amount of effects in your hand. As I understand it, currently at 34 greedy all effects are fumbled.

Also, what is your opinion on diseased status? In particular, I debated whether Sympthom card should exhaust.

Isn’t it spelled “symptom”?

I think the diseased status is a good concept. I actually haven’t yet noticed that the card doesn’t exhaust, I just assumed that it exhausts like other malus cards. Whether it exhausts or not, you don’t want to be diseased for too long. So I guess it’s ok if it doesn’t.

AlSoKnownDeveloper67 days ago

Sometimes I even pick a random range card just to have more chances to get a monocle

I enjoy this part of strategy, and this is the reason I normally play on a few ascension levels below maximum. I usually do not pick ‘remove affinity’ and ‘reduce reward options’ ascensions.

I have vague plans to visually rearrange / group ascensions to better communicate their intended severity.

As a small example, with affinity, you can also play in the opposite direction – picking Monocle will increase the chance of encountering cards with random ranges.

I’d prefer having a monocle over fireproof gloves when going to the lava pit.

On high stages, Fireproof Gloves do help significantly against enemies’ Burn damage. In fact, I had to nerf them a few versions ago since they previously prevented 100% of Burn damage, completely countering hardest fire monsters.

Conversely, there are cases when controlled small self-damage is beneficial (Enduring Fist, Embroidery Needle, Pipette, Pythos Dwelling, etc), and Burning with Monocle is a potential synergy in these cases.

I always avoid abacus, since it’s not really that useful to have

Interesting. I almost auto-pick Abacus with Mage, since increased Ivory Tower block is (usually) enough to offset the spikes of enemy damage. Also, I feel I was punished for having Abacus by Frozen Giant / Ice Dragon far more often than by Eye of Dilemma.

I agree that Abacus is less useful in other scenarios. My second-place in frequency is probably in dexterity-scaling Rogue builds for Juggling. I also remember using it with Immolate and Bird of Hermes with some success. In theory it should be very good with Thermal Fracture, but I never once encountered that combo.

fumble floor(greed * 0.03) effects I don’t think it has the same expected average value, because it doesn’t depend on the amount

I meant floor(greed * 0.03 * number of effects) effects

Isn’t it spelled “symptom”?

Yes, noticed it too when posting my previous message. Fixed.

Norbert33967 days ago

I enjoy this part of strategy, and this is the reason I normally play on a few ascension levels below maximum. I usually do not pick ‘remove affinity’ and ‘reduce reward options’ ascensions.

Yeah, I guess this aspect of strategy is only the quests on full ascensions, and I do feel like I’m missing out on some builds, for example I never managed to pull off an ice build. So I do plan on playing more without these ascensions at some point. But I also like to kind of explore and master one way of playing the game at a time, so for now I mostly stick to max ascensions.

I’d prefer having a monocle over fireproof gloves when going to the lava pit.

On high stages, Fireproof Gloves do help significantly against enemies’ Burn damage.

It’s true that in more specific circumstances, fireproof gloves can be better.

It’s difficult to guess how dangerous burning practically is because it might be easy to unintentionally savescum if you do encounter really bad luck with burning.

I almost auto-pick Abacus with Mage, since increased Ivory Tower block is (usually) enough to offset the spikes of enemy damage. Also, I feel I was punished for having Abacus by Frozen Giant / Ice Dragon far more often than by Eye of Dilemma.

Right, if you don’t have Ivory Tower, those would more often be a problem with using abacus.

It might be a max ascensions thing, one of mage’s starting deck weaknesses is a lack of offense, so Eyes of Dilemma are one of the main threats, because you can’t always avoid the Chaos Realms. And Ivory Tower is already good enough, after all the game doesn’t assume that you’ll find Abacus.

My second-place usage of abacus was with second chance / brainstorm. I guess on a character that could reliably deal with 3 (4?) eyes as well as an Ice Dragon etc., it can be good to pick up abacus. But that’s already a pretty strong character unless the abacus itself makes the difference.

I meant floor(greed * 0.03 * number of effects) effects

Ah, I see. That’s also better in that one regard. But yeah, this seems like it would be convoluted to explain in total.

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Way To Crown

Balance discussion: v0.37