Welcome or Welcome Back!
Today's a big one, I'd class it as a major update usually, but there's some news regarding that in this update, I'll get to it, first let's talk about the brand new inclusions to the boss bounties, and what the mechanics are and the intent behind them.
Kalfu, Crossroads
Kalfu's mythology paints him as the guy that mans the crossroads in the space between life and death, along with another loa, Papa Legba (who's not in the game... yet?). He's seen as the more darker concept of what that border symbolises than Papa Legba, hence his inclusion here, since I thought it a good balance to how jaunty Samedi and La Croix are going to end up being.
His primary mechanic is Curses. He gives you a card that gives you two options and asks you to pick between bad and bad. It gives you as a player some agency over which bad you take, and sometimes you might even be able to situationally spin the bad into a good! He's the easiest of the loa added, hence the first I'm covering, as he has no special traits other than his use of the new curses cards. He should be relatively easy to beat, but just make sure you play enough cards out to not have him block your draws with the curses.
Marinette the Dry Arms
A loa of violence and rage, Marinette is a spirit that wants nothing more than to kill you. Her primary mechanic is a death clock, where you only have 10 turns (9 after her first!) to kill her before she kills you. Her cards primarily hit very hard, but also increase her own mortis by higher than normal values when played, with some having straight downsides.
The room features a clock in the back that will help you keep a track of how long you've got to beat her, and if you're lucky she'll even occasionally struggle against her own psyche, giving you a turn off to get some big cards out without having to manage her hard hits.
Baron Samedi
A man that surely needs no introduction, Baron Samedi is likely the most recognisable loa that is featured in this patch. Of course, his primary mechanic is very on theme and is a personal favourite, hence the teasers from last week!
His primary mechanic, brews, are cards that sometimes have downsides, sometimes have upsides and always increase your mortis costs permanently. Partake a little, but be careful of how many you drink, less you end up off your ass.
Baron La Croix
The hardest of the bunch, Baron La Croix seeks a similar gameplan as Samedi, but is far, far more aggressive with it, repeatedly stacking mortis cost increases that are very difficult to deal with, and massively punishing holding cards in your hand. He's rated as the same difficulty as Agni at 4/5 and will be QUITE DIFFICULT (I hope) to beat reliably. Some playtesters, admittedly, have been able to build meta decks (insane to say) using a lot of theorycrafting and tweaking. I'm aware they exist but
It's a singleplayer game. If you can't have fun breaking it, what's the point?
Baron La Croix will use some of Samedi's drinks, being so closely affiliated to him, if I had to give any advice it'd be pack a few "prevent mortis cost" cards and make the best of them on use. Good luck!
Balance Changes (marked with ːsteamhappyː for any player requests!)
Increased card draw cost on Line of Credit to give it a more real downside. (ːsteamhappyː)
Lowered the number of turns Rotting Curse can remain active for, so you can't stack hundreds of mortis increase per turn on the boss (I'm looking at you, chuck.)
Tuned the Fire Domain down a little bit, so it provides you an extra card when it rips a card from your hand. (ːsteamhappyː)
Codex: Index now banishes itself on use so you can't win insanely quickly by just repeatedly pulling it back out of the discard pile. (Didn't do anything else to codexes, just this one that instantly shit on anything in the game.)
Fixes
Corrected some cards not properly counting when they banished cards and by how much, to help banish synergies.
Fixed the codex counter not syncing properly with how close you are to the wincon. Do note, banishing a codex card without playing it is NOT the same as playing it. You have to play all the codex cards.
Small Tidbit:
I mentioned at the start I'm changing a bit about how major patches and minor patches work - I've decided it's easier for me (and probably better for everyone) if I just push patches based on what I've done, rather than trying to schedule out larger patches and holding back updates based on if a larger patch is a few days away or not. Might mean more smaller patches, but it'll definitely mean more frequent larger ones. I'll still save 0.X+1.0 (e.g. 0.4.0, 0.5.0) patches for the major, major updates, but the patches between will just be whatever I've done that week.
Also, we've had a few donations recently! Thank you a bunch! I mentioned it over on the devlogs for the game on itch.io (check here for the history!) but I thought I should say thank you here too.
As always, hope you'll enjoy these changes and, again, as always...
Till next time!