I'm sorry I've just now seen that you posted here, Steam didn't give me a notification for a new discussion.

I agree that Lost to Ages is strong. I think you are probably right that it is too strong, but I liked the concept. How do you think it would play at 1 energy? Probably not worth picking up at that point. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to test anymore, so your feedback is valuable here. Maybe it always draws 1 card and the base cost is 1, upgrades to 0 cost?

As for damage scaling, I intended this to be non-obvious, but it does exist. I wanted this to feel weird and different and rewarding to master. For most people I guess I probably didn't succeed. However, I played many runs at A20 and was able to beat the Heart plenty. Here are the damage plans that I could get to work that didn't feel slow to me:

1) Entropy, with or without Chaos Rift. You have to hit some early or it's hard to pull it together, but it can get stupid. Return to Aether is a big power-up for this strategy.

2) Spirit Strike with deck manipulation. I have managed 20+ Strength against the Heart using this for an easy win.

3) Cheating the big hitters into play: Burning Vengeance especially, but also Disaster and to a lesser extent Cataclysm. They are absolutely enough to beat Act 4 without any scaling at all if you have the right tools. I have more often won with Recurring Nightmare here, but also Snecko Eye, Harbinger Form, Cast Stones, and Enlightenment+ is especially funny.

4) Spectral Phalanx+ can be enough by itself. I have picked up a copy early Act 3 and just used deck manipulation to get around it and save it for Time Eater and Act 4.

5) Soothsayer with Ambush. It can be tough to commit to getting a lot of Fated cards but in the right deck this goes nuts. I have seen Ambush hit for the damage cap.

Finally, there are other oddball strategies you can hit that require a bit more luck. Sadistic Nature with Maelstrom is funny, Shuriken is obvious, there are others. For all three of my mod characters I have made an effort to hide synergies with weaker relics and/or Colorless cards, so keep your eyes open.

I really appreciate you taking the time to play and post. The reception for this mod has been less than great. I spent an enormous amount of time working on this thing, literally hundreds of hours making the art, at least as much time playtesting on both A10 and A20. By the time I released it, I was pretty tired of Spire in general, and with 2 foreign language translations already provided I am not really interested in big changes. I am open to numbers changes that don't require new translations if anything is especially unbalanced.

Thanks again!

Don't feel bad, creative concepts that require planning and thought are not always the most popular things when it comes to mods. I really like this mod and what it's planning to do. I'll try out some of these strategies and see how it feels.

Okay, so I've played several more runs, and I've noticed a few things:

1) Especially in act one she struggles with damage, there are ways to cheat out big damage, but several of them involve rares, and major finagling when you don't have several cycler cards available yet.
2) Entropy scales well, but starts too low. I think most of the Entropy cards could use a bump up 1-2 points of defense/damage, especially the commons.
3) Augury needs more payoff cards, Impending Doom especially is not a strong enough card to justify taking usually. The cap on Augury is 7, and getting it that high usually involves some special consideration. If it was Augury + 3 and maybe Augury + 5 on upgrade, it might be more pickable.
4)Speaking of Augury, with the noted lack of Augury payoffs, the upgraded starter relic, that adds +2 Augury per turn has limited value. What might be interesting is if that relic also allowed you to uncap the Augury limit, could create some very interesting situations.

Edit: I have reconsidered Impending Doom, it's fine where it is.

(Current) Changelog in local fork:
Cast Stones damage 7>8
Degeneration damage 5x2>6x2
Discord damage 5>6
Kismet: Changed to draw a card and deal 6(8) damage to all enemies when deck is shuffled
Lost to Ages: Changed to 1 cost, draws 1 card and allows you to exhaust up to 2(3) (Perhaps will draw 2 cards to combat deck bloat)
Fleeting Strike: 3>4 (maybe, unsure)
Peer Through Mists: Now exhausts Curse, Statuses and Basic rarity cards block reduced per card from 4(6) to 3(4) (VERY experimental, perhaps will become Rare)

Sorry I haven't responded until now, it's been very busy around here. I'm happy for you to clone the repo and modify things. I'm not getting spammed at all. I'm just glad that at least a few people are enjoying this mod after the sorry reception it got.

I have close to 3,000 hours in Spire at this point I think, and after finishing this mod my heart just isn't in it anymore.

For what it's worth, Augury wasn't intended to really "scale" with many things on purpose. The character is supposed to be good at planning and manipulation, and more Augury is intended to make it easier to plan your current and next turn. Much of the character's scaling is intended to scale with number and quality of card plays, and not numerical scaling. Again, whether I succeeded or not is unclear and certainly up to debate. Happy coding!

I wish you the best. If it's alright with you could I upload the re-balanced/tweaked version on the workshop, where I'll keep working on it until I'm satisfied? I just want people to enjoy the mod.

Sure, I don't mind at all. Good luck!

Originally posted by ResponsibleAlex:

Sorry I haven't responded until now, it's been very busy around here. I'm happy for you to clone the repo and modify things. I'm not getting spammed at all. I'm just glad that at least a few people are enjoying this mod after the sorry reception it got.

I have close to 3,000 hours in Spire at this point I think, and after finishing this mod my heart just isn't in it anymore.

For what it's worth, Augury wasn't intended to really "scale" with many things on purpose. The character is supposed to be good at planning and manipulation, and more Augury is intended to make it easier to plan your current and next turn. Much of the character's scaling is intended to scale with number and quality of card plays, and not numerical scaling. Again, whether I succeeded or not is unclear and certainly up to debate. Happy coding!

Just wanted to say thanks for all your work, I really appreciate your contribution to the StS modding community. I've played all three of your characters and they're easily some of my favourites in terms of interesting mechanics, fun combos / interactions, great art and general cohesiveness that few other modded characters can achieve.

@neruze
I really appreciate you saying that, thank you.

Yeah, your mod is super fun! And I appreciate it greatly. It's also given me the impetus I needed to learn how to code, finally, and I've been having a blast with Java. I won't stop until this mod ends up as something truly special.