I think it is worth clarifying in the "Beak" card that its effect on the cards is valid until the end of the combat. That is add "this combat" to the card description.

Thanks for the suggestion, I've made this change.

I love this mod! Very well done models and events. Very clever. I have to ask, though. Is the Jester of Nihil beatable? I had an insane run with the Defect where I was easily able to create 40+ block every turn, but because it was from frost orbs, I couldn't protect my teammates very well. Even so, by taking a little bit of damage, I was able to stall for half a dozen turns. But the boss can push over 100 (140 or so, I believe) damage when it does its sweep attack and it generates 20 block every turn and has about 200 HP. That makes it more sturdy than Giant Head and hits harder than Hyperbeam from Bronze Automaton

The allies are pretty useless, too. One of them is supposed to do triple damage as long as you can deal with the enemy's block, but it spends multiple turns wasting turns not attacking or blocking and scales very slowly. I'm not even sure what the other ally even does. Just soak up damage? Pretty useless.

Glad to hear you like the animations and events! We spent a lot of time on those. :P

Jester of Nihil should be a fairly winnable fight, although a Frost Orb Defect would have a tough matchup against him. A faster deck that scaled damage instead of defense would be much better here, since the fight becomes much harder after the allies die, so the priority should be winning before then.

It is intentional that the boss's total damage output against you and your allies is high enough that the player cannot reasonably stall and just blockshare for the allies. The blockshare in this fight is mainly so it doesn't feel as bad to draw a hand full of block cards - offense should be the priority for this fight, especially since it doesn't matter how much health the allies have left at the end as long as you win.

The boss is tanky to counterbalance the fact that the allies do deal a significant amount of damage if you respect their mechanics. The green haired ally applies a debuff to the boss that causes the boss to take more damage from attacks. The ally who deals triple damage to enemies without block can often deal 50-100 damage when she attacks if you break the block for her.

Hmm, thanks for the response. You've done a good job with the balance everywhere else, as far as I can tell, so I'll give it another go. Sounds like the best way to spend this day off

Edit: Ok, I've tried it a couple times. The Silent also struggles a lot if you're using poison, since the Jester gets a new charge of artifact every other time he's hit with a status effect. Good luck timing Catalyst, lol! I went back to the Defect and it looks like you need to save the girl who does triple damage. I went in with a Stack, a Glacier, Reinforced Body, and Echo Form. Turned down the difficulty to Ascension 10. I won by the skin of my teeth.

I see the status that the green girl inflicts. That's not nearly good enough to try to keep her alive. Especially with that prevent status effects ability, but probably not worth it even if that didn't exist. I can't see the Watcher using Wrath in that battle unless she was very sure she could leave it. So the Ironclad might be the only character that can dish out enough damage and still block outside of extreme examples.

not sure if this is a bug or just a weird thing, but the second boss of act four*(edited, was accidentally act two) and her minions never target you, and just your ally while he is alive, unlike all other fights

@drewmarc Bit of a late replay since I don't get notified when a response is edited :P. The green girl's status effect is supposed to feel powerful enough that you should be trying to "help" her apply it (it's essentially 3 Strength to you and all your allies but as a debuff on the enemy). I thought it would feel impactful enough especially since the other girl's triple hit combined with triple damage effect means she can benefit 9x from the damage bonus, but if the status still feels underwhelming I might consider buffing it.

@C-Vale That's the intentional behavior to help make up for the fact that your ally hits you in that fight.

Maybe I'm wrong. Since I've been using the Silent, the Defect, and modded characters that are similar to those two, I may not be fully appreciative of the debuff.

On a completely different note, holy cow! I didn't realize there was another Act IV! I'm guessing that you lose the chance to go there if you sign the contract? That place was so epic!

Glad you thought it was epic. :P
By "contract", do you mean that event you sometimes see in Act 3? That has no bearing on whether or not you can go to Act 4. You don't even need the 3 base game keys either.

Originally posted by Darkglade:

Glad you thought it was epic. :P
By "contract", do you mean that event you sometimes see in Act 3? That has no bearing on whether or not you can go to Act 4. You don't even need the 3 base game keys either.

Yes, that's the one. You see the same skeleton guy, and he mentions something about reading all the terms of the contract and shows you fine print that you can't see with the naked eye. I thought one of the hidden terms is to make it impossible to get to the secondary Act 4 (Act 3.5?). Is that new then?

Nah, the stuff he mentions in the event is just flavor/fluff.

First of all, i'd like to say, HOLY F-K did you guys manage to completely capture the hype that act 4 and 5 in Library of Ruina for me and put it into StS form, it's almost jawdropping every update you put in, from seeing enemy play pages to seeing baral send me to brazil, this whole ally mechanic in the mod is such an engaging and it's all amazingly spectacular. It adds an amazing new angle to boss fights and managing all your resources and such.
My one question (Spoilers for anyone who hasn't played this mod's Act 5, seriously if you haven't reached it yet please go play it) Is act 5 meant to be nailbitingly difficult to practically impossible to beat unless you have some INSANE gimmick up your sleeve like permanent intangibility or something? Serum W being able to target the player seems a bit weird since i initially thought you need an immense amount of scaling to beat it but then it would just instakill you, perhaps it should just remove all your strength? And seeing Zena slapping me upside the head with heart damage swing with no way to stop it is a bit concerning. I apologize if i've misunderstood some mechanics, but this seems way more brutal than it should.

Originally posted by Yau:

Thanks for the feedback, though I'd like to ask, what ascension were you playing on? It helps a lot with balancing concerns.

Originally posted by squeeny:

Originally posted by Yau:

Thanks for the feedback, though I'd like to ask, what ascension were you playing on? It helps a lot with balancing concerns.

I was playing on ascension 8, i was there just because my character happened to be on that specific tier at the time. Baral and Zena were swinging at me for around 90 damage per turn, and i felt like there really wasn't a way to keep myself alive let alone the fellow librarians i was paired with. My second attempt had me burst baral down as fast as i could and i could barely knock him down to around 1k hp before i died to the head again.

@Yau Glad to hear you enjoyed the mod! The final fight is meant to be tough but beatable, but the balance may not be perfect at the moment. We've lowered their damage output so hopefully it should feel more doable now.

As for the fight mechanics, it is intended for the player to try to lower baral's strength with binah passive and wheels industry before he gets his claw power which nullifies strength down effects, and then use binah to destroy his strength up move when he tries to use it on his 2nd intent (he will not use the strength up move on his first intent, so you can hamper his ability to get strength for the rest of the fight). If you can do this, it makes his triple hit a lot less threatening and opens up more breathing room.