Note : this suggestion based on ascension 20 play.
will keep playing for more data.
personal opinion, don't take it too much.

Relics/Events : no risk for encounter events. some relics are overpowered.


Enemy :
Kodama series- need to be buffed, they are too weak.
Gryphon- balanced.
Fairy party - balanced.
5 Fairy party - another version of Gremlin party in Awaken, strong but fine.
Vengeful Spirit- need to be nerfed.
Fox - balanced.
Python- damage of itself or intangle need to be reduced. (not necessary)
Corrupted Tree guy- damage of its passive need to be reduced. (not necessary)
Stone guy - balanced.
Rabbits - balanced.

Elite :
Fairy- cost and penalty of Frozen pattern is too strong. (slime boss toss 3/5 status card at turn 1, for doing nothing till 3 turn.) minion fairies could hav better damages.
Racoon- polymorph debuff is too strong, new buff for polymorph pattern made her more overpowered.
Sentry's 4/3 Dazed is overpowered, 3/2 is enough.
Lagavulin's siphon soul pattern should delayed or weakened, and its damage must be reduced, since there is no 'sleeping phase' of its original version.
Nob need little buff.
Aya- mostly balanced, just need to be deal less damage or gain less block.

Bosses :
Youkari- still not familiar with her passive, need more experience to estimate balance about her.
kokoro- too many patterns with overpowered buff/debuff, with time limit.
Reimu- 'discard card' pattern is mostly overpowered. (time eater inflict draw reduction for 2 turn.)

Thanks for the feedback! I don't play on high ascension, so I've never actually playtested the A17/18/19 buffs (which is probably why the variance in balance is rather extreme lol). This data will be very helpful, so thanks for sharing!

A few comments:
Regarding the polymorph debuff, although it might seem strong, she spends her entire turn to apply it and she always spends the next turn transforming, which has actually led to me receiving a few comments that she was too weak since this kind of acted as a psuedo-stun for the enemy whenever you break her out of a form (which is what led to me buffing her). In addition, there are many ways to get around doing nothing while polymorphed with powers/skills/attacks that apply buffs/debuffs, and at the very least you get to freely exhaust any dazes you draw that turn. I will admit that giving her Lagavulin's high ascension buff might've been a bit much though, so I'll probably take that one out in the next update.

Regarding Reimu's discard card debuff, I don't think it's nearly as bad as time eater's draw reduction. Since the player chooses the card to discard, they can choose to discard the worst card in their hand whereas draw reduction might prevent the player from drawing their best card. In addition, since this is Act 1, the player likely won't have any energy relics which means the player simply won't need as many cards to spend all their energy effectively anyway.

since she will patched, i'll check about Mamizou later.

Reimu's discard debuff itself is not bad as time eater, but it didn't disappear and stacking over and over. due to her spell card rule, players having hard time to finish her before too late.

Enemy-
little problem : fairy cannot trigger 'Fatal' keyword.

Reimu and Kokoro seems bit strong but need more observation for accurate rating.
Yukari is quite balanced, players just need to adepted her unique design.

Events-
need to have more 'risky' events or choice.
many events didn't involve enough cost for getting strong reward.

Shikieiki : balanced.
Yuka : fair trade.
Hina : balanced.
Koishi : balanced for act 1 event. high return at high cost.
Youmu : balanced.
Sakuya : balanced.
Forest of magic : balanced.
Avatar of Death : seems like balanced, but not sure it is.
Stealing from Yuyuko : fair trade.
Occult ball : it offer high-value card at no risk, but it depend on RNG, so i'm not sure its balanced or not.
Sukima : need to be more risky to use that relic.
Bamboo Forest : Human village need to be weaken and Elentei need to be buffed, choosing 2 card in 20 cards are bit overpowered.
(library event offer 33% heal/choosing one from 20 cards.)
Rinnosuke : need to be more expensive for selling rare relics. (10~20 will enough)
Donation : upgrading card could be cheaper. (designer offer same service at half price.)
Demon book seller : she sells too overpowerd relics at low costs.
Bombinomicon need to be buffed.
book of specter should have usage limit for combat. (free 3 draw for turn are too strong, even it had its own penalty from hearthstone.)
Clash of legend : cards are overpowered, need to be more risky to get it.

i'm not sure there are more events.

Thanks for the feedback! Didn't think someone would be so thorough as to try to balance the events too. :P

As for fairies not triggering "Fatal", that's intentional since enemies like darklings from base game don't trigger "Fatal" either.

Glad you think Yukari is balanced! I was worried she was too complex.

Since this is act 1, I tried to keep my events mostly generous since base game act 1 events are usually fairly generous too.

For your comment about the Bamboo Forest event, I'm not sure what you mean by "choosing 2 card in 20 cards." The event gives you 2 card rewards (like the ones you get after combat), it doesn't offer a library-esque choice. I tried to make this clear by following base game wording but admittedly the base game wording isn't all that clear at times either lol.

I do agree with you on some of these other events since I've gotten similar feedback from others, so I'll probably make the appropriate changes in the next update.

I think you're missing two events? There's an event with Reisen and Tewi and another with Mary and Renko (granted, balance probably isn't an issue for this particular event).

The Darklings are an exception, not the rule. All other enemies in multi-enemy fights in the base game trigger Fatal properly (except maybe minions, but I think that's card-specific).

As an aside, I think the reason the Darklings don't is simple: Until the last darkling dies, none of them actually "die" as far as the game code is concerned - instead of dying, they go into their regen cycle. That also means that killing the last Darkling does in fact trigger fatal if applicable (I used that to proc Lesson Learned once, and have seen Jorbs proc Feed the same way).

Edit: Ok, having played through this act/mod a few times (using Marisa for the flavor, and playing on A0), I have some comments of my own.

1. The fairies probably shouldn't be changed to be able to trigger Fatal, since this will ruin what's unique about them. In any case, the basic encounter seems to be in the "easy" encounter list (meaning you see it only in the first 3 hallway fights), and the elite version is also fairly easy.

2. The reporter: Good replacement for Gremlin Nob, yet different enough to matter. The mechanic where she gains strength is interesting in that you can hit her the turn after she gains strength to make her lose most of it.

3. Fox girl: Very annoying fight, but probably not too imalanced. Make sure you bring good front-loaded damage so that you can expose her quickly after she changes forms. Some spoilerish notes: First, know that she can't be killed by the attack that reveals her the first time - she always survives with 1hp. Second, if you try to "snipe" her with the Neow "1hp" wish, she'll still spawn with full temp HP. One last thing: You might want to either reduce the health of the second (disguised) form slightly (5-10 hp should do it) or give it one more attack phase before it goes into debuff phase. This could possibly be reverted at A5 or so.

4: Youkari: I struggled with her at first, but once I understood how her passive works, she became fairly easy. Won that one with a deck that was almost basic thanks to using the "first 3 fights have 1hp" wish and finding the portable gap at my first event (allowing me to snipe 2 elites, but causing me to skip a bunch of the map).

5: Kokoro, I agree that her buff/debuff is probably a bit too strong, in particular the healing and str-gain phases. The healing (baseline) should probably be dropped to 10 or so (Marisa is really good at dealing both front-loaded and scaling damage...and couldn't always break it). Also, she already has STR scaling, so she really doesn't need a phase where she gets even more STR scaling. Again, Marisa is quite good at both front-loaded and scaling damage, even in A1, and yet still got to this phase once. The watcher might not get there either, but without great A1 luck, I don't think any of the other characters would be able to kill her before she gets there.

6: Reimu: Very fun boss with an interesting mechanic. The one problem I have with her is her discard debuff. I think it's fine at the baseline, but needs to not stack, especially since you have to plan your turns very carefully because of fight mechanics and can't always play everything you want to (without taking lots of damage). Having it stack like it does would be more in line with an Act 2 boss (maybe even an Act 3 boss), not an Act 1 boss. Suggestion: Have the debuff always be for 1 card (or 2 on high ascensions, perhaps), but with the "stacks" being how long it'll last (similar to Time Eater, so you get a free turn without the debuff every few turns)...or just have it not stack and replace that action on Reimu with something else.

--Arek75

Minor suggestion, but I think the version of Cirno's theme that appears in Unthinkable Natural Law would be more fitting for her elite battle theme.

Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnVltopWrfY

Great job on the recent nerfs, pretty much every overpowered urban legend card was hit.

Didn't think I'd ever get a comment about minor balance changes lol. Glad to hear you think the changes are for the better though. :P

So far I've only played this act with modded characters (since why play mods and then stop halfway?) but here's my thoughts on balance:

I think the fairy elite fight is too forgiving compared to any of the baseline Act 1 elites, at least if you have AoE. If you have something that can deal any amount of AoE damage on 2 separate turns, you can easily finish the fight with 0 damage. (Admittedly you can mostly only do that with modded content). Even without AoE, she's easy compared to the other elites. I'd suggest giving the little fairies in that fight a bit of block on the turn that they revive, to make it harder to stunlock the whole party.

The event where Tenshi gives you her dress is ridiculously overpowered, especially since it can activate multiple times. Anytime you get low on HP you can just knock an enemy down to near 0, let them "kill" you, and finish them next turn so you can wail on the reaper. Especially since she doesn't attack for the first 2 turns. It has carried me on runs where I should have lost. I'd suggest you modify the dress to only heal you to 50% HP. That's still powerful since it can activate multiple times, but less tempting to activate on purpose given the risk that the reaper will just steal the HP right back.

The relic option in the forest of magic event is a bit too good. Compare to Big Fish event, where the options are +5 max HP vs a relic+Regret--Regret is a LOT nastier than clumsy. The only reason you wouldn't pick that is if you'd been aggressively sacrificing max HP. Maybe if it was 2x Clumsy?

Buying a known Necronomicon in act 1, when you deck is still unbuilt, is too powerful for a cost similar to one uncommon relic in the shop. That seems like another place where sacrificing max HP would make sense.

This act's events give out a lot more relics than the normal act 1, even if they're not free. If you can, try to come up with a few more events where neither option is a relic. I do like that they all give you 2 or 3 meaningful choices though.

Reimu's sealing should not stack. As long as it stays at 1 card it's a pretty fun addition to what's already a planning-heavy fight.

Pretty much all the other fights are great from what I've seen.

Thanks a lot for the extensive feedback! It's nice to see that I'm still getting these kinds of comments every now and then.

Assuming the player knows how to approach the fight, I wholeheartedly agree that the elite fairy fight is easier that it should be. However, a lot of times I see people handle the fight incorrectly and end up frustrating themselves, so I'm a bit leery of buffing them more right now. Maybe I'll revisit them when I get a good idea for adjusting the fight.

I give the reaper from the dress relic pretty substantial buffs every subsequent time you fight her to prevent exactly the kind of "hp farming" you're describing, so your deck must have had extremely strong scaling or those buffs weren't enough :P. In any case, I saw that her numbers were a bit low when I revisited her, so hopefully some buffs for her will curb this issue.

Looking back on the event, I'll admit that a single Clumsy is far too lenient of a downside for a free relic. I think I'll take your suggestion to make the cost 2 Clumsy instead.

While getting Necronomicon in act 1 is very strong indeed, I don't think this situation occurs frequently enough for it to be a major balance issue. Not only do you need to have enough money for the event, but you also need to actually encounter the event, and even then there are 5 different books for sale and you are only given 2 of them as options. And then of course, you need to be offered enough expensive attacks in your card rewards for the relic to be useful.

My events tend to offer a lot of relics (especially special relics) since those kinds of events are my favorite from base game, which kind of bled into my design choices as you can see :P. I'll definitely make an effort to tone that down a little in any later content I make though.

While I don't think Reimu's sealing is quite as bad as people make it out to be, I agree that it can definitely be annoying to deal with, so I'll probably lower the maximum stack on lower ascensions or something.

Yeah, the deck where I farmed that relic multiple times had way too much scaling and not enough frontloaded defense. That's why I kept running out of HP! I will say that the most times I've ever used it in a run is 2, but 2 full HP refills is a lot. A relic that fills you to 50% once counts as "rare" in the base game.

Also, if you're looking for "fun" way to buff her, consider giving her starting intangible equal to the previous number of times she's been summoned. She always spends her first 2 turns applying debuffs. You can still use those turns to finish off the other monsters and buff, but now your time limit is shorter and you're more likely to need to tank some hits to finish her off.

As for the relic thing, your event relics are all very creative and I wouldn't touch them. But for me, I found that the events that were even more memorable than the event relics were the event cards--apparition, sacrificial dagger, bite, madness, and the ones where you can trade HP for choosing a colorless card. It could be fun to have a few events where the reward is a special card, or a random rare card, or any of the colorless rares. (For instance, notorious hoarder Marisa might give you a random rare card instead of a random relic).

I say all that, and then remember that you did make those urban legend cards and an event that gives one of them. Still, even if it's a lot of cards that is only one event (that I know of).

But really, when I said that your events give more cards than the base game act 1, what I'm really getting at is that the average effect your events have on the run is bigger. There's lots of events similar to the "biggest" base game events, and only a few equivalent to the "remove 1 card" or "transform 1 card" or "pay HP to upgrade 2 random cards" events. You can end up with a lot more power boosts, and a lot more lost HP, by the end of your act 1. Sadly the kind of events that would smooth out this imbalance are, by definition, less fun to design and to encounter.

Also, remember when I said that you usually need mod content to have enough aoe to flawless the Cirno fight? Well I just remembered which modded relic let me do that most recently: It was one of yours! Specifically the one from the event where you have to choose mercy or justice for a sinner (I chose justice). I wouldn't go changing that of course, this just happens to be a fight it's especially good at.

Bit of feedback so far on act 2 asc 20 animator with this:

Regular enemies;

Mirror
This enemy seems a bit easy for act 2; also when compared to the others.

Swordslinger
I don't really like this enemy; it's a bit too variable: he doubles the effect of bad card draws and is trivial as long as you use block/get it each turn. For custom characters that rely less on block, this guy is a nightmare. I'd say shielding/temp HP should also apply for sure.

I think Cosmic monolith is fair. BigSlime&SlimeBunny are a bit hard, still on the fair side.

The encounters that can really rough you up are the triple gloops and the triple tanukis. They won't do it every time, think more like once every 50 times or so you run into one their AI will go into wrecking mode. Basically, if tanuki's go 'triple buff' then 'triple 3x3', you're looking at 72(!!!) damage turn 2 (48 for the simple version). Same with the gloops, they can potentially do 24+13x3 = 63 damage turn 2.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2056146845

That makes the triple tanuki or gloop (sometimes) more dangerous than the triple slavers (which is an elite fight...). I think their AI needs a bit of tuning: for example pick one of these options:

1) Reduce the effect/buff for the tanuki and gloop by ~1. Remove the asc-17 bonus from it. Change the Asc-17+ AI to be smart. (Essentially, always buff then hit very hard instead of randoming).
2) Operate on a fixed cycle (like the sentries in regular act 1).
3) Operate randomly; have a caveat that they can't start with or repeat the same action.

So far my beat rate on the elites:
Koishi; 1 death, 3 kills.
Reisen: 7 deaths, 1 kill
Tenko: 3 deaths, 4 kills

For me, Reisen is far more dangerous than the other two. It's a combination of consistent damage from very early on and high debuffs, as well as having basically two curses in your deck. There's a potential for 45+ damage turn 2, comparable to reptomancer. The 'exhaust a card every other turn' is actually more helpful than harmful.

Reisen could do with a clear tooltip for when the next card played is going to exhaust, and when it is not. I have it remembered now that '2' means exhaust and '1' meens keep, but it shouldn't be too hard to change the tooltip based on the state of the buff/debuff.

Koishi, too isn't all too bad; as long as you have some form of card draw her special thing tends to help you more than it hurts. Koishi also hits the least hard of the three.

Tenshi isn't as bad even though she hits hardest: all you need to do is have 45 damage before turn 3. Animator tends to be a bit slow so it makes sense that tenshi should be hard.

And on the boss fights:

Byakuren/Miko: 3 deaths, 4 kills
Eiki: 2 kills
Kaguya: 1 death

Kaguya I would say seems not that hard, just that her mechanics are a bit confusing.
1> The regular boss with 'resurrection' type effects "Awakened One" and the black slime will cancel its attack if it resurrects. Same for splitting slimes. Kaguya does not do so, leading to a gotcha moment. This should be on the tooltip.
2> It's unclear when impossible requests are checked. It's also strange for them to be curse cards at all, this does not help with the confusion: If I discard the request with the help of another card instead of fulfilling them, does neither party get the strength? What if I fulfill a request after discarding it, what happens then?
3> Failing to complete a request applies before kaguya's attack, which leads to the problem where she will do more damage than her 'intent' actually indicates she will. This can lead to another gotcha (this happened to kill me).

Eiki is just very weird, but quite exploitable.

Miko/byakuren is terrifying, but a lot of fun. I would like their pattern to be a bit more predictable, seems a bit too much RNG, if you luck out the fight is not challenging. One time for example Byakuren decided to do a 60-damage AoE attack on turn 5 in one fight, but nothing in another, etc. Their mechanics are complicated enough by themselves to just have a fixed attack pattern, or maybe just a semivariable one (like the Heart in the base game). I think it's actually okay to go with some of their harder possibilities.

I would like for there to be a clear tooltip or indicator in this fight when the next card played on your target is going to be useless on it.

Thanks for taking the time to leave detailed feedback! I really appreciate it. :P

Swordslinger was meant to replace Snecko as a fairly variable fight, but I can see how it might be rough for certain modded characters that don't block as much. I'll see what I can do to introduce some more consistency without completely gutting the fight.

The Tanuki Dogs only use their berserk buff when they fall below 75% HP, so it's a bit unlucky that your AoE attack just barely cleared the threshold for all of them. I'll probably reduce the threshold so it's less likely a single AoE riles them all up at once.

The Gloops do have a fixed attack pattern already - they will always use their strong debuff first, then they will debuff you if you aren't weak/frail/vulnerable, then they will attack (so if you don't kill one of them by turn 3, you will face the 63 damage that you described. :P) The biggest offender here is probably the fact that the effect of their strong debuff is doubled for A17+, which is probably far too swingy of a buff, so I'll probably change that.

I didn't think Reisen would be that much more dangerous than the other elites, but I don't usually play on high ascension so maybe I'm not seeing the entire picture :P. After comparing some numbers, I'll probably reduce the health of her minions a little since they seem to be a bit tanky for how dangerous they are.

Reisen does actually have a visual indicator for when the next card exhausts (and so do Byakuren and Miko, for that matter). Reisen should have the divinity particle effects surrounding her when the next card is exhausted (Miko also has the divinity particles whereas Byakuren has the calm particles). It's possible you turned off the particle effects though, which would turn off these visual aids (guess I could make the settings option not turn these off so people don't miss them >_>).

Kaguya's tooltip should state that she "immediately revives" instead of reviving in a certain number of turns, although I can see how that might feel unintuitive given how base game usually handles revival. The requests are checked when she dies, which is probably not as clear as it should be since I decided to split half the relevant information into her power and the other half into a keyword description >_>. I'll try to condense the information and hopefully it'll be more clear.

The requests are curses mainly for flavor, and it does not matter where the request is - it will still track your progress even if it's in the draw/discard pile, and it will still be checked for completion when Kaguya dies. As for her intended damage suddenly increasing, do you mean it increased on her turn? Even if she dies to thorns or something during her double attack, her revive should interrupt her second hit, meaning she should only ever suddenly do less damage, not more.

Miko/Byakuren have some variance to their AI, but their AoE attacks should occur in fixed intervals. Miko should first use her AoE on turn 4, and then use it again every fourth turn from then on (so 4, 8, 12, etc). Byakuren should first use her AoE on turn 6, then every fourth turn (so 6, 10, 14, etc).

I also thought the swordslinger felt a little unbalanced (or more, impossible-to-be-balanced), but I guess if it's replacing snecko that's reasonable. If you're looking for a catch-all rule that will work nicely with almost all modded characters, might I suggest "double all unblocked damage dealt by this monster"? Temp HP, shielding etc all still count as a blocked attack.