Ah the ol "make a big update but unlock new bugs" thing has occurred. Thank you for the notes! This is on the Android version right? And was the Soul Reaper in a Redux or normal first floor? And was it an alternate form (he "evolves" on the next floor if you defeat him on the previous up to two times)?
Some notes from me:
Soul Reaper Damage: His damage escalates if you play glyphs on the Soul sockets (big purple X). IF you can avoid those or maximize the value of those, that's a good bet. BUT they also remove all special sockets from those sockets when they're soul-marked.
Soul Reaper is also sort of a super boss (there are two super boss types in the game right now). They're not meant to be "get it on the first floor" enemies. It's more like "does my build feel good? Should I wait till the next floor?".
Goblin is my fave to play! And he's my most played. His thorns build was too strong when it worked "right" (thorns permanent, always stacking). So I had to fix it to be unique to my game (thorns are just blocks that deal damage back). I'll add a fix soon to make the enemies with thorns work the same - Their thorns aren't permanent but have to be regenerated if they're lost.
Also finally added your recommendation to make the sorting buttons toggles instead, and they are remembered upon each fresh hand draw.
I'm hesitant to grant Goblin flash cards as, currently to me those are a Kitsune archetype. In exchange, Goblin has heavy cards (powerful 3+ socket cards that become cheaper to use during combat under certain conditions). Consider him the big slow heavy hitter.
REQUEST:
One thing I need to refactor is blessings and some relics. Most of them are old and designed from an earlier version of the game, and that means they don't all keep up. So if you run into any blessings that are weak as hell across multiple runs, let me know! And thank you so much!
I'm excited about Ghoul, too! Currently in his re-brainstorming phase. Thinking about making him eat things until a meter fills up and can be activated in combat, turning him into a berserker and altering his glyphs for the rest of that combat.
Haha trust me it happens to us all, fix one thing break 3 more lol. Part of the curse of being a game dev lol.
Haha I pretty much figured the intent of the soulhunter was to try to beat him every time he shows up, especially since that's one of the wish missions I thought it was expected to beat him on every level. The soulhunter rarely hits 50 damage out the gate on the first floor but usually by redux one it's more than likely. You did say something that made me curious though and some of the mechanics like curse and him have made me wonder before aa well: Are you supposed to be able to choose what socket you put your glyphs in? At least in the android version sockets always fill from beginning to end, there's no way to skip a socket so powering up the soul hunter is completely unavoidable, it's just kinda something you have to grit your teeth and mostly ignore as a mechanic, especially since he enchants most of your sockets, so if you're lucky you might have access to play one glyph per turn if you were going to try to avoid it (which would get you summarily flattened), and many times if your first few sockets are special that means no matter what you do it's 100% guaranteed and all you can do is hope to kill him before he ramps up to doing most of your health in one shot. I'm used to him hitting me like 16-18 times in one turn on any redux. Like cursed sockets you literally can't do anything about it but there's also no cleansing it so it's just unavoidable.
(A note on cursed sockets. I discovered that if you play a glyph that gives you bonus strength on a cursed socket the strength is given to the curser but unlike you it doesn't fade at the end of the turn, it becomes a permanent buff for them!)
As far as the Thorns go I can understand the idea of it being like a reflective shield, but as it is it's completely inviable as a build/strategy. Since the relic that is supposed to make it last doesn't work at all (I sent in a bug report on that) the fact they're SO hard to get and disappear instantly is just too difficult to be functional. The glyphs that give it are so few and far between and they give such piddly amounts like 3 thorns when I could instead use a glyph that gives me 9+ shield or hits for like 15 damage and also gives me 5 shield, or they add a semi-decent amount but take like 14 sockets to play and/or are phantasmal so you can only use them once. I could be wrong but it feels like there are more glyphs that have effects like "doubles your thorns" than glyphs that actually GIVE you thorns. Even with his evolution it's impossible to build up any decent amount so I pretty much never take it. I have a suggestion though for that that might be more of a middle ground: First, making it way more accessible, also changing the thorn golem's skill instead of stacking up whenever he deals damage to instead change all shield he gains into thorns. Making the thorns relic work as written would be fun for those rare runs where you get it but otherwise you could keep it temporary without it being useless.
Ah I can understand that with the flash cards. I just thought of them as a card type rather than being specific to the kitsune as a build type. Fair enough then, I withdraw that suggestion. 👍🏼
There are definitely some relics/blessings that are way better than others and some that are utterly useless. I've definitely had thoughts about some of them. Tomorrow at some point if I have time I'll make you a write-up on the ones that just aren't cutting it. 🫡