Played about 5 runs in, it seems like the cards are quite weak.

I suppose this is intended due to the absurd draw power that you're supposed to play around, but the energy constraints on top of that feel a bit too hardcore.

Haven't fully unlocked the potentials of the archetypes yet but they feel very underwhelming, speed comes serious drawbacks and the card bonuses for triggering the speed keyword is too weak for what you're paying in my opinion.

Drift is really fun and the BGM is fire, but the numbers are too conservative as well, could use a non trivial buff, especially for the utility cards that require drift for their full potential.

While I am still having fun, I feel like I'm playing a character that wants to play many cards but often cant and is hampered by weak individual cards and low energy generation, like a cheetah that maximised speed at the cost of everything else.


Perhaps my opinion will change as I play the character more and get better at drafting and execution, but from what I've seen it is a some what underpowered character compared to the vanilla cast. I'd reckon a lot of it could just be me being like Takumi not used to the high RPM turbo engine and applying the wrong logic and strategies for performance.


Great work with the BGM and effects btw, it has a lot of personality and I really enjoy it.

Got my first HoD kill on A1 with a drift and traction build.

I still think most of the cards are pretty weak but there are a ton of tools to manage your hand; that there should be a decent pool of cards in your hand every turn with overdraw to keep you topped up.

Takes quite a bit of learning to unlock the potential of this character but I'm keen on discovering more, cards like brake-drift are a massive power play, especially with traction and drift.

Speed and Vulnerability builds seem pretty cursed though, might comment further on them when I actually build for them proper.

It's cool to read about your experience- I may buff up the vulnerable archetype at some point in the future; but in general I don't mind if the character has a bit of a learning curve.

I love eurobeat playing when you drift

I don't like eurobeat not playing when you have high speed

Definitely going to roll that out in the next update

Just finished a very strong stomp run (1549 score, 99 hp/111 hp, 8 turn kill at 59:52 timer)
though it is only A2 HoD.

One thing I suspected but have confirmed is this character actually works very well with a lot of relics that I would normally pass up or not feel is strong.

Orichalcum works well with Drift.

Art of War is both easier to use and the +1 energy is more meaningful.

Runic Pyramid is absurdly good, especially when building Nights of Fire (I had 4 copies, of which 3 were upgraded) because of the Overdraw mechanic.

Clockwork Souvenir is so nice to have because of how much mileage Takumi gets out of Artifact buffs. Cards like Maneuver, Brake-Drift and especially Spin Out are super strong when their debuffs are blocked.


Having a lot of fun learning the play style, the learning curve is indeed steep, but I suppose that is somewhat thematic for a drifting character.
I thought it was just a meme character at first, but there is actually good gameplay design hiding under the hood, well done.

Great mod, here are some thoughts!

I think some builds with The Drifter are extremely powerful, but I can see why some people seem to think it feels quite weak. It's definitely harder than a lot of mods, but it It took a while to get the hang of what to ignore and what to build.

A lot of cards are very weak individually but synergise with a draw-based build, and if you can achieve very high draw you can make use of very powerful scaling on total hand like Night of Fire (a card that will just do 300+ damage if you can access high overdraws), and similarly Hypercrash although it is strictly much much worse than Night of Fire because it clears your hand and overdraw, and does less damage! Hypercrash is a very weak card atm for a Rare especially as it has no strength scaling.

I pretty much try to run this kind of build with cards like Floor It and other amazing draw cards and rely on In the Zone to rack up high defence numbers, and/or Total Flame to do strong passive damage. Any retain cards are also good because retaining will increase your Overdraw next turn by the amount you keep in your hand.

I think Drifting feels on the weak side, especially for big health bosses. It's okay as defence but it can't really access high damage numbers and some Drift cards are very expensive to play, especially 180 Degree Turn as a 3 energy cost. 8 Drift is not amazing for the cost, it's 8 damage/8 block now, 4/4 next turn, 2/2 turn after etc. 2 energy costs like Speed Drifting just don't really provide enough in a turn for me to have in my deck and spend 2 of my energy on. Traction is situational and it feels like I need a really heavy drift deck to make use, but there probably needs to be more permanently traction cards for me to want to build towards Drift. I'm sure it would be powerful if I had entirely a deck built around it, but they're much weaker individually that it's not really worth going down this route over other routes - I'll take other cards over drift cards deffo and therefore I'll probably take few drift cards at all.

I mainly tend to pick up anything that has card draw, retain or helps with card draw, and then any 0 energy costs are basically free because of the high draw. Thermal energy is a bit of a free card because I always fill my hand. Pursuit very good because it's one of the only sources of applying vulnerable. Tailgate a very solid must take common. Bob and Weave a solid common defence card because it provides card draw in future - same lines with Coast but with retain.

I echo that Vulnerable feels quite cursed unless you specifically have In Control/Recovery, but that card sort of makes vulnerable fairly OP because of how easily you can clear it. What you gain from being vulnerable isn't worth how much damage you take doing it - on a lot of bosses you will take too much damage to make up for killing them fast enough. If you have Recovery though basically all those cards become free.

Speed is strong, especially if you have speed manipulation, but I tend to just get enough to get up to 2 speed and that seems pretty optimal, via Need for Speed (good as it won't take up space) or something else. The downside of going into 3 Speed is too high, for not that much gain - if you have enough draw cards you don't need much more than 7 base draw to access high high draw. Of course, if I have Cruise Control I will upgrade it and go to 5 Speed and that is pretty powerful to draw 10 cards a turn with no downside. You probably do need to overhaul Speed, I quite like the mechanic of Clutch and you might be better off making that what Speed does (1 Speed = +1 card draw, +1 strength, -1 dexterity) in itself, because there probably needs to be granular punishment for me going into 1 or 2 speed. Reaching +2 card base draw in an Uncommon Power with no downside for 1 mana makes Need for Speed one of the most powerful cards in the game across all characters.

Those are my thoughts so far! I love the mod overall so far and it has a very unique feel - the art is fantastic and the theme is so great. The mechanic of drawing high is very satisfying and it has its own identity, aesthetically and mechanically, for sure.

I've played about 25-30 games and am still on Ascension 8, so will see how it progresses.

Wow, Dayvig, you've created an amazing mod!

I've already played 9 runs and reached ascension 7. I agree with Ken's points, so I won't reiterate them. The speed mechanic is fantastic and incredibly satisfying to use. Personally, I don't worry about going over 2 speed because I don't think the drawbacks are significant. However, my opinion might change when I reach ascension 20.

I don't consider drift to be very important for winning a run, and so I have found Hairpin Turn to be an excellent value card. (not just for efficiency, but for activating the music haha)

With that being said, i don't exactly feel like drift needs to be buffed as it's not useless by any means and not every card needs to be great. But I don't really know - that's too complicated of a question for me to even be remotely sure about with the amount I've played the character so far.

Primarily, I just wanted to request that you add more songs to the rotation. It would be fantastic to have Futureland as a addition.

Also, I think one of the drift cards might be currently experiencing a bug. When I upgrade 135 Degree Turn, I'm getting a number much higher than 8 when playing it, even without any strength or dexterity. If I recall correctly, it was giving me a base drift of 16 or 18.

After getting to asc 20 I feel a lot more confident with the character and so now I think it's a decent time to give my opinion on some of the more notable cards for the character

Nights of Fire: While it is a very powerful card I don't find much use for it anymore. Like having a body slam in a barricade deck, the situation that it works well in was going to be a win from there anyway except possibly in the time eater fight. I wouldn't change this card at all.

135 Degree Turn: The clear standout drift card imo. Useful in almost every deck that I have made and constantly gets played over other strong lines. This may be due to a bug where the initial value is higher than it should be. I would look into it or simply tone it down by a small amount.

Maneuver: Quite strong in the right situation - as it should be - but currently bugged to still only provide 2 traction instead of 3 when upgraded.

180 Degree Turn: Possibly the worst drift scaling the character has. I love it as a concept but the values are too low for what they need to be. The effective value between this card and 135 Degree Turn and Maneuver is massive.

Speed Burst: I love this card. The only time it feels wrong to take this card is when the opportunity cost is too high or your deck is already strong enough - and most likely already has one or more copy of it.
I wouldn't change this card.

In the Zone: Sometimes the only block card you'll need. Super powerful in a mid to late game deck with almost no benefit early on. Similar to Feel no Pain but a bit worse early and often way stronger later.
I wouldn't change this card.

Speed Demon: This card does everything... except frontload. This card has helped me to draw cards, deal damage, block, vulnerable myself, vulnerable the enemy, break enemy artifact charges, go infinite and then kill everything while infinite. If you have something you need to do and you get creative enough, this card will make your deck a bit better at that thing.
I would reduce the damage from 4-6 to 3-4/5.

Final Gambit: It's okay on its own but if I have Incense Burner or took apparitions then this card is super useful.
I wouldn't change this card.

Exhaust Pipe: I would say this is the strongest card the character has. Far too strong and marginalises so many other cards into uselessness. Exhausting 2 cards for 0 cost is strong on someone with so much card draw. What really pushes this card over the edge is the fact that exhausting is optional and the 4 block on the upgrade. Exhausting down to exactly 10 cards with a lot of overdraw means you can play this card over and over for massive amounts of block every turn.
I would change it to exhaust 1 card and then 2 on upgrade with no armour.

Road Rage: A card I very much slept on. Carried my entire run from floor 5 to the end of act 3. At which point it became somewhat of a liability to use but by that time I had pivoted away from it mostly.
I wouldn't change this card.

I loved reading all of your balance feedback and experiences!

Glad you are all enjoying the mod. I recently did an update, and I definitely took some of these things into consideration.

Drift seems weak. I'm not sure why it's designed so you lose half your drift even when keeping momentum. It makes it not possible to build up drift like you can build up poison, so there's no real way to scale it to the late game. 135 degree turn is an exception because it scales with stats. I suppose it's fine for drift not to build up if there exist other ways to scale up drift. I haven't actually tried traction yet, but if it does what I think it does, the numbers are too weak. Or you could make drift improve with speed (you'd need to nerf something to compensate).

The amount of card draw is pretty absurd. It significantly enhances the reliability of strong off-class cards like ritual dagger or hand of greed.

The power that gives 2 block per draw is OP, given how much draw there is.

I think that drift needs to be buffed slightly, it feels too difficult to maintain any real amount without having a ton of cards with drift in your deck, maybe make it only lose a third of drift with momentum instead of half? Also having momentum stack one more time would be nice, or make it so that traction ups momentum stacks maybe?

I think you could probably increase drift by 1 across the board with a few exceptions like the Drift + Block card maybe. I see Drift stuff as being similar in 'value' to Iron Wave / Dash. Iron Wave is... an alright card? I'm noticing there's a lot of 'iron wave but harder to play and slightly worse' looking Drift cards.

Dash is generally considered to be pretty good, but I don't think there's any Drift cards with stats similar to Dash.

I've noticed that I'm dying to hallway fights / hexaghost quite a bit even when I'm trying to be strong early on by taking stuff like Ram. Character is oddly good against Gremlin Nob fairly often though.

Originally posted by Khashishi:

Drift seems weak. I'm not sure why it's designed so you lose half your drift even when keeping momentum. It makes it not possible to build up drift like you can build up poison, so there's no real way to scale it to the late game. 135 degree turn is an exception because it scales with stats. I suppose it's fine for drift not to build up if there exist other ways to scale up drift. I haven't actually tried traction yet, but if it does what I think it does, the numbers are too weak. Or you could make drift improve with speed (you'd need to nerf something to compensate).

The amount of card draw is pretty absurd. It significantly enhances the reliability of strong off-class cards like ritual dagger or hand of greed.

I believe this is because unlike Poison, Drift gives Block, and poison style scaling with defense is sort of problematic.

I have started upgrading damage cards early on and no longer agree with my previous statement of 'character doesn't seem to be dealing enough damage'. I do still think it'd be maybe good if some of the Drift cards were a little stronger... but also Drift is extremely powerful as a mechanic.