A-tier
Exotic Crystals. I like this. Exotic items are generally better and yield more energy, but there’s some huge downsides like losing important items (transmutation, invis, etc) and cluttering the bag. It’s probably not worth spending the energy cost to +3.
Mossy Clump. Water and especially grass floors are useful. Not worth upgrading to +3, as by the time you can pay the astronomical 81 energy, you have explored more than half of the dungeon. You can refund the cost if you energize the seeds you get from trampling grass, but you’ll need to burn over 40 seeds. It’s only worth upgrading if the game is longer.
Petrified Seed. Another favorite, as seeds are unusable with challenges. Somewhat worth upgrading to +3, but only if you can pay the energy cost early. In general, trinkets like these should only be upgraded if there’s many more floors ahead.
Mimic Tooth. Dangerous, but gives more rewards in return. Very interesting and I love it, but the mimics are deadly later in the game, and at that point you can throw it away.
B-tier
Wanderous Resin. Can be fun with mage, but some effects will destroy items and damage the user. This trinket icon should be changed, as all the catalysts, resins, dust and moss in the game is hard to differentiate for colorblind users, they all look like the same hairball.
Salt Cube. This one’s weird. I think it’s below C-tier on normal gameplay, but shoots up to high-tier when playing with many challenges. Fast health regen is much more important and satiety is never an issue, so I always avoid taking this when I play normally, but it’s useful when doing the diet challenge. The buff to 40% finally made it okay-ish in normal gameplay.
Eye of Newt. Kinda useful with darkness challenge, you can constantly throw and pick it up to adjust the vision, but can be annoying.
Shard of Oblivion. The drop boost is not that great, but it can make getting loot a little easier. The unidentified gimmick is an interesting downside, I like how the shard can identify items that are ready for it.
C-tier
Parchment Scrap. Purely advantageous at +3, but it’s too costly and equipment drops are too rare for this to be useful. I think getting enchants normally (with arcane stylus) is cheaper and better. It could’ve been good if you can combine this with mimic tooth.
Trap Mechanism. You can kill enemies with traps and pitfalls, it’s fun but I’ll only take it if I have blast wave early, and that is very rare. This trinket got more dangerous without disarming.
Dimensional Sundial. Only useful to speed up ring of wealth farming runs, and the energy you use to decrease enemy spawn rate should just be used to create helpful items, to combat said enemies. Could use an additional effect.
Vial of Blood. Very harmful downside and the extra healing is not necessary on normal gameplay. Might need to be less severe, the immediate potion heal is too important to prevent deaths.
Rat Skull. Only useful if you want to collect rare bestiary monsters. You need to find crazy bandit, chaos elemental, and crystal mimic for it to be useful, because their drops are the best, but it needs too much luck.
D-tier
Chaotic Censer. You use up items for puzzle rooms to get a magical catalyst in a treasure box, spend energy on it, only to get a harmful challenge that can kill you and destroy items? The gimmick looks fun, but not knowing when it will activate is too dangerous.
13-leaf Clover. Needs a more interesting gimmick. It doesn’t matter if you roll high or low, it will average to the same damage as the game progresses, so ultimately it doesn’t have any usage. The trinket has a very specific use if you equip +0 fast weapons against highly armored enemies, it can overall deal a little more damage, but the usability of this trinket sharply decreases when you upgrade your weapons. It’s also too dangerous if enemies can do high rolls to you, it’s probably best for it to never happen again.
Hmm I think for Vial of Blood, it just needs a little bit more heals than +50%, and cheaper than 36 energy. It’s fine if the downside is severe, it creates an interesting new way to heal, but it just needs more bang for the buck. It sits in an awkward spot where it’s not worth taking with challenges like pharmacophobia, and also not worth it for normal gameplay.
Maybe if Evan added a mini health potion that heals 40% your max HP it’d have some synergy right there and it’d be useful, because currently, health potions heal you completely, making this trinket useless. With the mini health potion those would be basically full health potions at the cost of your trinket + 36 energy + the healing division per turn (which, in my opinion, is neither bad or good)
I agree, I suppose this trinket’s very low regen at +3 is supposed to help with that, and you’re supposed to take damage inbetween, but it’s too much of a downside in both energy and gameplay for a mere extra 50% heal. Blood vial is not necessary on normal gameplay as well as challenges that remove waterskin and potion usage.
By the way, does anyone know if Trap Mechanism replaces naturally-occuring grassy floors? If so, I think it becomes D-tier as grassy floors give useful dew and seeds.
seeds are unusable with challenges
They are less useful, but you can still convert them to potions. If you get a set of three of the same, you can even guarantee which potion you get, as well as identify it.
It’s funny how the usefulness changes with challenges. I’d say that’s a good sign. I love the parchment scrap for instance. With low challenges I can usually upgrade most of my items before level 10, maybe even 6 in 30% of my games.
And the Censer can at least make the game interesting.
But I can sure do without the Clover.
I agree. Personally I can’t find a use for parchment even at low challenges, as arcane stylus enchanting feels better. Curse negation doesn’t seem like it’s worth 51 energy, RC scroll and wells are common enough to make curses trivial.
If we think about it, during early floors where parchment is most helpful, it’s very difficult to immediately pay the 51 energy cost unless you throw all your useful scrolls and potions immediately, which is too dangerous especially when playing with challenges. But if you keep it at +0 you’ll end up encountering more curses, which also makes things difficult. By the time you reach the prison’s alchemy room, you could pay the 51 cost, but by then you already have plenty of remove curse scrolls from drops and shops (which guarantee RC scrolls), and you might’ve encountered anti-curse wells too. By the caves, I have my final gear already, so parchment became useless starting from here. So for me personally, the 51 energy is terrible and could be used for many other important things, curses are never an issue in my games but that’s just my personal thinking.
@bjoern_tantau @pixeldungeon @PlumBrake and having the portable alchemy set utterly changes the cost-benefit-ratio of most
It’s also too dangerous if enemies can do high rolls to you, it’s probably best for it to never happen again.
The clover no longer does that. It only affects your own damage rolls.
I know and I’m on the latest version, it’s why I said that it’s probably best for it to never happen again.
OK. That’s really weird phrasing. Changes to trinkets don’t just “happen”. They are deliberate choices.
I never said that “changes are not deliberate”. I’m only saying that, in my opinion, the original clover’s high rolls to the hero probably shouldn’t happen again.
