XaiJu
Shattered Pixel
Shattered Pixel

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v1.4.0 Item Changes! | Patreon Poll #32

Hey Patrons!

As mentioned in last month’s poll, I was considering running another for a specific item if the ‘Item Rework / Addition’ option did well. It did reasonably well, and I’ve come up with a few exciting ideas anyway, so I’m eager to see what you guys think!

The strength of support for each option will determine what item changes or additions I work on in v1.4!

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Please vote for all the options that you like, not just for your one favourite! I allow multiple votes as it means that a higher proportion of people will end up voting for the winning choice.

All patrons are encouraged to share their opinion by commenting and voting, but currently only the votes from Golden+ Supporters are counted when determining a poll winner. Votes from Shattered Supporters are worth double!

Footwear of Nature Rework

The footwear of nature suffer from a good passive and a poor active. Generating more seeds and dew is quite useful, but the current active is just earthroot. I’d like to improve the footwear of nature by giving them an active ability that’s more than just an afterthought.

Right now I’m considering letting the footwear inherit the effect of whatever seed was last fed to them, letting the player either buff themselves or harm an adjacent enemy if there is enough charge. Some seeds might charge up fairly quickly and allow multiple activations, while others (looking at you sungrass) might take quite a while to get a single use.

Chalice of Blood Rework

The chalice is in an odd spot at the moment, being the only artifact that doesn’t have an active effect. If I were considering it now I would probably have let this item be a ring instead, but we’re far past that at this point. So, instead I’d like to redesign the chalice slightly to have an active effect instead of passive health regen.

The core idea of sacrificing a bunch of up-front HP for more healing later would stay in place, but instead of passive regen the chalice would build up charge that the player could spend in the moment for a more powerful healing effect.

Ring of Arcana

(name is not final)

The first new item! The ring of arcana would provide benefits to enchantments and glyphs, letting them trigger more often and with enhanced effects! I don’t know exactly what form this would take on a per-effect basis, but they will likely be impressive.

So far enchants and curses have had to work with a fairly limited power budget, largely piggybacking on the power of the item they are attached to. This ring would let the player experiment with builds where the enchant or glyph itself is the main focus instead.

Unstable Flask

(name is not final)

Another new item! The unstable flask would act as a counterpart to the unstable spellbook, allowing the player to conjure random potion effects that can become exotic if the flask is filled with the right potions.

As potions can be drunk or thrown, the artifact will let the player choose whether they want each effect applied to themselves or an enemy. This would result in the effects of the flask being more positive overall than the spellbook, a nice counterbalance to potions being generally weaker than scrolls otherwise.

I floated the idea for this item a few days ago on the $10+ Patreon discord channel and got some mixed reception. A lot of folks weren’t too keen on having this item function just like the spellbook. So, if it does well in the poll I will try to ensure that it feels distinct while keeping the same core idea. Just as a starting point I’ll probably give the artifact a different name.

Comments

I've always found the chalice very elegant, even if it's the odd one out, and I'd be sad to see its mechanics change. Maybe that's just me though. The ring is very clever.

CarvedRunes

The only thing I really do with the footwear is sell it. I rarely find it useful. I like the idea of the ring and flask, but I think the footwear should be addressed.

Big BM

I am very happy with the idea for the ring. Rings are in a bit of an awkward spot sometimes as their effect has to be passive, but passive effects are also usually not that fun. So the effect needs to tie into some other action or mechanic to make it feel interactive anyway. Tieing into enchants/glyphs is both unique within the game and suitable interactive.

Shattered Pixel

chalice improvement is something I'd like to see eventually, but my votes are the footwear and ring at the moment - i think they're very promising concepts and would make more of an impact than chalice would atm. footwear also have some really unintuitive transmutation logic, this could be a good opportunity to address that by potentially redesigning how they upgrade

Lassoloc

I have always thought the footwear of nature is pretty blah, except for a warden, especially if she has a wand of regrowth.

Ed Baldwin


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