Taking the Mick | Patreon Weekly #306
Added 2025-04-14 14:00:18 +0000 UTCHey Patrons! In this weekly I’m going to go over the results from the last poll, and some new badges coming in v3.1!
Here are the results from Poll #65, which asked for more specific choices on v3.1 side content:
Levelgen:
75%: Standard Rooms and Terrain
58%: Special or Secret Rooms
Both options did well but there’s clearly more demand for new terrain than new special rooms right now. I’ll look to add those new rooms in v3.1, and maybe finally put those totally empty standard rooms to rest.
Rare Enemies:
75%: Gnoll Exiles
57%: Hermit Crabs
40%: Skeletal Rippers
40%: Bomb Skeletons
30%: Loose Swarms
I’m a little saddened by the poor performance of skeletal rippers here, as the demon halls does need more enemy variety, but I’ll try to think concepts through a bit more thoroughly there before presenting more ideas. In the meantime gnoll exiles are a clear favourite, with hermit crabs in a reasonable second place. I’ll look to add both of them in v3.1
Also, if you missed it there’s a new Alpha out for gold+ Patrons right now! For now the alpha is mainly about trying out Warrior changes, and has little other new content.
New Badges!
Along with the poll results above, I’ve also implemented four new badges for v3.1, and might get around to adding a new trinket as well. Here are those badges, which are all fully implemented but disabled in the alpha for now.

Safety Hazard: This badge is a bit more of a tutorialization effort than a challenge, taking the player with getting 10 kills in a run with the help of terrain hazards. This includes traps, plants, and chasms. The hazard doesn’t need to make the kill, just assist in it.
So Many Colors: One novely of the game is stacking a bunch of buffs or statuses via things like alchemy recipes. This badge encourages players to try that out by rewarding them for having 10 or more buff/debuff icons visible at once.
Pacifist Ascent: This badge is pure gameplay challenge, and requires a bit of prep work. You have to make the entire ascent without killing a single enemy and weakening the amulet’s curse. This starts out fairly easy, but pretty soon you’ll have 2x speed enemies chasing you down while your speed is halved and capped at 1x!
Taking the Mick: This badge is a nice little mix of gameplay and game knowledge challenge. You’ll need to strike the final blow on Yog with a Pickaxe that’s +20 or higher. The name of this badge is one of the more obscure references I’ve ever made, it’s a callback to a very hard achievement in an old browser-based game made by Jagex (the Runescape devs) called Miner Disturbance. I was one of maybe 10 players to have unlocked it.
Comments
The problem I have with secrets like that, from a design perspective, is that wikies are a thing. IMO secret badges don't exist, 'look me up on the wiki' badges are a more accurate name. So I prefer to just be more or less vague in the badges description, but always give the player enough to go on so that they can figure it out themselves.
Shattered Pixel
2025-04-14 17:43:00 +0000 UTCEver considered adding secret badges yourself?
Zrp200
2025-04-14 17:39:02 +0000 UTCWhat do you think?
Umbra
2025-04-14 16:04:20 +0000 UTCIs the only way to get that last one with curse infusion?
Explodingpineapple 64
2025-04-14 14:28:55 +0000 UTC