I've been thinking long and hard about starter relics, how they compare to commons, if a common Coin could exist, and how much gold Feed could give instead of max hp.

Based on Avan's suggestion, my conclusion is that bundling 4 gold with 4 temp hp when combat starts is in line with Burning Blood which is overtuned on purpose since it does nothing against the final boss and Chad's starting deck is arguably middle of the pack.
Incidentally, you'd have two 4s for le 4th chairman. Ignore how gaining gold when combat starts makes no sense. Save some text space instead.


Thoughts about keywords, brevity, and clarity, formatted for your convenience:

Heat Level could just be Heat. "Spend 1 Heat" sounds nicer too, doesn't it? Tooltip:
+2 attack damage and +1 Block
per level, up to 3. Lose 1
whenever you lose HP.

Minigame tooltip:
Activate 1 at random:
- Random enemy loses 5 HP.
(So you don't need to specify attack damage. Annoying vs Spikers anyway.)
- Apply 1 Vulnerable and 1
Weak to a random enemy.
(Micro buff in 1v1. 2 of either to a random enemy would be too good already.)
- +1 Strength and +1 Dexterity
this turn. (I mean, Flex is barely playable.)
- Random card in hand costs
1 less this turn.
- Energize 1. (Debatable but we could establish this as the Outmaneuver keyword.)
- Gain 3 Vigor. (Imo this keyword is common enough in mods nowadays.)
Rest unchanged.

Grab tooltip:
Equip an item that empowers
Attacks and Skills. Whenever
you play either, item loses 1
Durability, breaks at 0. Before
you Grab another, attack by
throwing the equipped item.
PS: Cut the Durability keyword. Add it to the item stats tooltip instead.

Retaliate tooltip:
Before your turn starts, lose
Retaliate and play that many
Attacks from your draw pile.


Rephrasing card text as well because it's cathartic. Mostly unrelated to balance:
(You won't like it, but I recommend cutting Essence from most names.)

Wasn't sure how to shorten well enough to post this in the comments, but game crashed when I tried to pick up the relic that replaces starting (gives 2 heat level at start of combat), and the relic seemed to go to the right of my most recent relic instead of replacing the starting one, don't know if that has anything to do with it.


Game crashed.
Version Info:
- Java version (1.8.0_144)
- Slay the Spire (03-07-2022)
- ModTheSpire (3.28.0)
Mod list:
- basemod (5.44.1)
- GifTheSpireLib (2.0.1)
- stslib (2.4.1)
- YakuzaMod (0.1.0)
- paparatto (0.1.2)

Cause:
java.util.ConcurrentModificationException
at java.util.ArrayList$Itr.checkForComodification(ArrayList.java:901)
at java.util.ArrayList$Itr.next(ArrayList.java:851)
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.core.OverlayMenu.update(OverlayMenu.java:69)
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.dungeons.AbstractDungeon.update(AbstractDungeon.java:2649)
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.core.CardCrawlGame.update(CardCrawlGame.java:876)
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.core.CardCrawlGame.render(CardCrawlGame.java:423)
at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication.mainLoop(LwjglApplication.java:225)
at com.badlogic.gdx.backends.lwjgl.LwjglApplication$1.run(LwjglApplication.java:126)

The relic Idol's Rod can be used to farm potions. I suggest adding a cap per combat and increasing the chance to compensate.

The relic Saejima's Coat is useless if you don't have a source of Retaliate in your deck.
Suggestion: rework it to: "The first time you play an Attack with a cost of 2 or more each turn, gain 1 Retaliate."

The relic Majima's Eyepatch has the same problem. The only source of Weave I have encountered is the Taxi Driver and it exhausts.
Suggestion: rework it to: "Whenever you have no Block and take no damage from an attack, gain 1 Strength."
This can trigger if you block the damage exactly, if Weave or Buffer blocks the damage, if Tungstene Rod + Intangible/Torii reduces the damage to 0...

The relic Throwing Gloves looks very weak. Most items deal damage to a random enemy when thrown, adding 1 to that isn't worth much. There is one that draws 2, one with Retaliate 1 and one with Minigame 2, adding 1 to those isn't very powerful either.

The card Grab Demonfire Dagger is very strong. Dealing 4(6) more damage with every attack is already strong. Being able to draw with every skill makes the 0-cost Minigames super powerful. I'm probably biased on this because my first run used this for a semi-infinite combo. Still, this adds a lot of Draw to a character who has very few ways to draw.

The card Heat Strike is underwhelming. In the first combats it is rare that you can spend 2 energy on an attack and fully block the incoming damage. It quickly gets outperformed by other cards like E.of Slapping, E.of Swift Strikes or E.of Sweep Kick.
This also makes Common cards that Use Heat underwhelming. You can't pick them on early floors before getting a better Heat source than Heat Strike.
I suggest removing E.of Swift Strikes and replacing Heat Strike with its effect: 0-cost, 2(5) damage and 1 Heat. This way the player can actually use Heat on the same turn or defend himself. This would also make Heat Strike the most energy efficient Heat card.

Loving most of the suggestions here, truly great stuff. Thanks a lot. Some things of note:
-That relic replacement is really giving me a lot of trouble, probably will disable It for the time being. Also will go along with the tojo badge suggestion of gold+thp while I work on something a bit fancier.
- I was kind of shy with doubling, tripling and adding modifiers to throw. It was probably unwarranted so I will toy with some ideas before reworking the Throwing gloves or adding the bonuses of Polish to throw.
- Minigames are prone to infinite, I got today two friday nights and a real estate on a run, which was enough to turn most shogi cards to 0 cost and cycle indefinitely. This means that I should definitely cap the Idol rod and rebalance both dagger and dragon kart.
- I've taken notes on tooltip and card changes and they are really welcome. It does read better, will work on readability soon.

Not sure if this is Intended, but Retaliate plays the attack in some weird timing between drawing/shuffling your deck and it can cause you to actually draw less cards than you're supposed to. I recommend changing this so Retaliate works more like the neutral card Mayhem to avoid this.

Also apparently Throwing Gloves doesnt affect the Sai's Retaliate throw effect, giving 1 instead of 2. Heard you were looking to rework the relic though.

Originally posted by Javihu92:

Minigames are prone to infinite.

Yeah, that cost discount can high roll quite hard. You could cut it but that's no fun, is it?

If you keep the discount, you need a bigger table to keep it in check through probability, like:
- Gain 4 Block next turn.
- Gain 1 Block and 1 temporary HP.
- Gain 1 Block and 1 Plated Armor.
- Deal 2 damage to all enemies. (Note: Bowling could deal 5.)
- Copy an Attack. It has Purge.
- Exhaust a Status or Curse in any card pile. (Shouldn't roll if there are none, of course.)

I do think bundling str+dex and weak+vuln was right. Separately they were underwhelming. Energize 1 is also fine since it's delayed. I would rework friday night though. Real estate is cool in how it uniquely supports high rolling, but there's a critical mass with friday night.
So, instead of rolling once more, it could yield one of the results again, and then you code the discount to hit one card for -2 which is often a waste but very much on purpose.

I'm always up for more Minigame effects. I was kind of concerned with Friday Night because it really clutters everything with powers and slows down gameplay, in fact I think it would be interesting to give Friday Night something more unique than double effectives, as Cabaret Club or Pocket Circuit already do that.

I may double down on the sheer chaos of minigames with the following:

Friday Night
(Innate) Minigame effect list is improved.

I could move the reduction to the improved minigame list and add some other more powerful effects. Gain 1 Plated Armor, Gain 1 Heat Level... something like that.

Again, thanks a lot for the feedback!

pd: by the way, already fixed the problems with retaliate and the sais.

Since you commented on grabs, I'll tweak a few, including the commons that displease you. I often skip grabs myself, besides kart or sake. I'll try multiplying throws by leftover durability while I'm at it. 🐲 is energy and brackets like () denote upgrades.

Thanks for your suggestions! Some comments:
- An issue of grab deck is that sometimes there are no attack or block cards that are actually usable. Weapon counter and weapon finish are undertuned and i'm planning a buff for them, but I miss some common attacks compatible with the weapon playstyle. On return I'm thinning out some Heat cards, many overlap in their purpose, so I'll remove them.
- The bat was meant to be like searing blow, but I overtuned It like crazy. I like the idea of upgrading for each grab, maybe with dome tweaks to damage and block couple work.
- One of the reasons I was uncomfortable with grabs is that most were just deal damage/gain block/random enemy. I like the throw value scaling off durability, probably will give it a try.
- I started giving some thought to new cards for the grab deck, but now I'll probably borrow some ideas.
- Another reason for grabs feeling weak was (I think) the lack of a rare power that enabled new strategies. Kamurocho Streets allows to spam throws along with Switch Grab, but I would like a power along the lines of holding on to an item (like the demonfire dagger).

Just some thoughts.

Originally posted by Javihu92:

- sometimes there are no usable attack or block cards.

👇This is one solution.

Originally posted by Javihu92:

I like the throw value scaling off durability

Originally posted by Javihu92:

- Another reason for grabs feeling weak was (I think) the lack of a rare power that enabled new strategies.

Not really. Try to balance powers around cards, not cards around powers that might make them strong enough. Some are just undertuned or awkward to weave in.
I'm not confident in my nunchucks either, but the idea is that you should almost get your money's worth on the turn that you grab a new item, then conclude in an above average pay-off next turn. I do agree with making some effects much weaker for flavor though.

Originally posted by Javihu92:

I would like a power along the lines of holding on to an item (like the demonfire dagger).

Well, there are only 5 trillion possible designs, lmao. One of many approaches:


This is kind of inelegant since all that text needs the space of 2 card previews (which is doable in place of tooltips nowadays, like in the Noh Dancer mod), but I think it would be a fine compromise between conditional support and effort.

This is gold, already rewriting some cards to get it all together. Mixing some things here and there to spice up grabs.

I have 1 concern: Throw what you Grab at 1 Durability means a 998 hit with the demonfire dagger.

Probably tuning demonfire dagger down to 50 or something like that will work, never got to use it for longer than 20 cards anyway.

Otherwise taking a lot of this advice to heart, really helpful.

Your concerns were justified. Poker+ is quite strong. It's prolly not harsh enough but for now I would make it discard 1(2) at random to reduce consistency (and mouse clicks ).

Ramen's lotsa fun but shouldn't upgrade to 3 durability. I'm not even sure it should have 2 in the first place. Like, it would still see play at 1 durability if grabbing it gave you 1(3) temp hp. Remember that you can raise both its durability and how much it draws off one attack.

Similar thing with sake+. 4 is enough.

PS: How kind of you to prevent negative str n dex off minigames with hardhat, lmao.💦

I liked these balance changes, added them. Added something extra to the sake item too. (Also got the bugfixes done)

I'm working on adding a new event/monster, it may take some time as I'm really busy, but will get done in time.