I've ran now 4 times trying to kill the first elite on floor one, with no success. I either run out of hearts or spend my entire time with yawn fest low defend cards. I'm curious how you expect this character to play out, maybe I'm just hitting bad RNG in card rewards? Would love a youtube vid or playthrough of some sort. Thought I had an understanding by reading the description, but .. must be missing something.

Originally posted by JustJinxed:

I've ran now 4 times trying to kill the first elite on floor one, with no success. I either run out of hearts or spend my entire time with yawn fest low defend cards. I'm curious how you expect this character to play out, maybe I'm just hitting bad RNG in card rewards? Would love a youtube vid or playthrough of some sort. Thought I had an understanding by reading the description, but .. must be missing something.

Hi!

While I can't speak to your personal experience, given that I don't know how you're playing, I can suggest better strategies. For example, if you're having trouble beating elites early on, consider avoiding them until you feel more powerful. Additionally, consider checking your starting routes to see if you can use Neow's Lament to get an easy kill on an elite, or consider taking the alternate Neow relic that will give you additional energy in elite and boss fights for the first Act.

I would also suggest looking for strong combination cards that can be used to great effect, especially if you're intent on fighting elites early on. I prefer not to tell people which cards to take, or give specific strategies, and I want people to figure out their own strategies, and try different things. There are at least 4-5 (or maybe even more than I'm not aware of) different major archetypes to build down as the Slumbering, and I don't want to limit players to only thinking about one because I have suggested it.

If you have more questions, feel free to message me directly as well. I don't have access to good recording software right now, but I could try to figure something out if you think that would be particularly useful.

Thank you for your feedback :)

I would love to scrape your brain even on one archtype / howto with this one. I did a few more runs last night and sort of had some luck with the draw/sleep combo, but couldn't think of any other cards to spice it up more. A lot of cards I thought would pay off ended up being more a hindrance.

PS.. Last Resort isn't taking into account any of the unplayable cards :(

I have to echo the Last Resort issue. It may be that status/curse cards are intended to block use of Last Resort, but honestly that would make it kinda useless.

Hi, I spoke with the previous poster a lot in direct messages, but to address your note, I cannot recreate this issue with any combination of Last Resort and curses or status cards. What were the exact cards in hand and energy count that you found this issue?
Thanks!

I've actually had it happen more than once. The time I recall best, I believe the unplayable was a Writhe, I was out of energy, and the rest of my hand was unplayable due to various special requirements on the cards. I'll try to recreate it in a bit.

Alright, POSSIBLY the same issue: I played my entire hand apart from Last Resort, had 1 energy left, couldn't play it.

Hi, in the first case, Last Resort has an energy cost of 1, so it shouldn't have been playable. In the second case, I cannot recreate this issue. I have pushed an update with some related fixes, and also included new text dialog indicating when Last Resort cannot be played and which card is preventing it. Let me know if this issue persists.

Not seeing the new text. Also, just had a situation where I was unable to play it when the rest of my hand consisted of Comfortable and a card whose prerequisite hadn't been met.

Hi, what was the last card? Additionally, I've added a second screenshot to the mod page displaying what should happen when you try to play Last Resort incorrectly.

OHHHHH, it only shows up when you actually try and play it? I was looking for a tooltip. The card whose prerequisite hadn't been met was from another mod; the preq that hadn't been met was an abundance of a custom resource.

Hi, I cannot be sure without knowing exactly what you're using, but it seems to me as though whatever modded card you are making use of is not properly using the game's canPlay function. It would make sense to me if the reason I cannot replicate any of your issues are due to this.

If you really wanna try it, it's the Bladedancer I've been messing with; I just didn't mention it by name because I didn't want you to feel obliged to try it yourself. XD FWIW I do have a lot of fun with it, tho in its current form it might be a bit OP.

Sorry to necro this thread but I'm hoping this feedback is useful somehow. I find this mod pretty fun! The Stretch+Yawn combo is a bit too strong, imo... It's a bit too easy to stack your dream level up to extreme levels that effectively trivialize the mid-to-late game. I've played the character 3 times, 2 of them being successful runs and 1 of them only dying to an unrelated mod's event choice that I really should've known would kill me. Both of my successful runs used a Stretch+Yawn build (with me picking up multiple copies of both), and ended with a dream level of over 40. The unsuccessful one almost certainly would've gone down that path as well.

For fair disclosure, I do use a handful of mods, and perhaps the most relevant one (which may be overpowered but I honestly enjoy it) is BetterRewards. I figure it is probably responsible for giving me a stronger start than other players have had, so I realize I probably ought to test your mod without it just to see if I'm able to gather momentum without it. I feel like BetterRewards only benefits you in the early game, though, which means my concerns might still be valid in the mid-to-late game.

Hi, happy to hear you're enjoying the character! I haven't had time to put much design thought into the character in a while, but I was mostly happy with the final balance state of the character. It was always meant to have a rolling difficulty curve (meaning it starts difficult, and becomes easier as you pick up momentum, but if you lose the momentum ever, it's over). Regarding stretch+yawn, I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't know that I consider it imbalanced enough to re-evaluate. The difficulty is supposed to be picking one without the other, and also their being dead cards if you don't draw both at the same time, while still giving you the tactical option to give up on the dream for some quick boosts.

Feel free to leave any additional thoughts you have! I might not respond to them, but if/when I do a balance pass again, I will definitely read everything here again.