R-EE-balance Notes v1.0
With the release of Desktop Dungeons: Rewind, we at the Extreme Edition have the official developer go-ahead to both backport (and extend) balance tweaks for the original Desktop Dungeons. These optional adjustments can be freely turned on and off (in between runs) on the new Mod Settings part of the pause menu. Currently, we offer three independent toggles: Rebalance, Rewind Scouting, and Fighter.
Rebalance, the first and most significant option, can be set to vanilla, rewind, or rebalance. Vanilla leaves you the base game, exactly as shipped. Rewind turns on all backport-able balance changes from the remake. Rebalance builds on top of the rewind changes, adding our own adjustments aimed to better increase gameplay diversity (particularly with gods). Notably, Rebalance primarily aims to bring the weaker options up to snuff, rather than gut the strong ones, although it doesn't let them off scot free. To avoid confusion when sharing run-end screens, all run-end screens with extended rebalance on will have an icon by the player portrait. Also, see below for the full changelist.
Rewind Scouting, the second option, can be set to vanilla or rewind. Vanilla provides the original scouting experience. Rewind brings you the remaster's range-one enemy scouting on movement *as well as* level numbers on scouted enemies!
Fighter, the third option, can be set to vanilla or rewind. Vanilla gives you the original fighter, with learning and same-level scout. Rewind offers you the new fighter version, with XP on hit and three-tile scouting.
Now, for the big part. Below follows the full list of changes for each balance toggle setting. The EExtended Rebalance also adds all of the changes on the Rewind list. Changed elements are highlighted in bold, and developer notes have been added at the end, for the curious!
Rewind Rebalance List
EExtended Rebalance List
Rebalance, the first and most significant option, can be set to vanilla, rewind, or rebalance. Vanilla leaves you the base game, exactly as shipped. Rewind turns on all backport-able balance changes from the remake. Rebalance builds on top of the rewind changes, adding our own adjustments aimed to better increase gameplay diversity (particularly with gods). Notably, Rebalance primarily aims to bring the weaker options up to snuff, rather than gut the strong ones, although it doesn't let them off scot free. To avoid confusion when sharing run-end screens, all run-end screens with extended rebalance on will have an icon by the player portrait. Also, see below for the full changelist.
Rewind Scouting, the second option, can be set to vanilla or rewind. Vanilla provides the original scouting experience. Rewind brings you the remaster's range-one enemy scouting on movement *as well as* level numbers on scouted enemies!
Fighter, the third option, can be set to vanilla or rewind. Vanilla gives you the original fighter, with learning and same-level scout. Rewind offers you the new fighter version, with XP on hit and three-tile scouting.
Now, for the big part. Below follows the full list of changes for each balance toggle setting. The EExtended Rebalance also adds all of the changes on the Rewind list. Changed elements are highlighted in bold, and developer notes have been added at the end, for the curious!
Rewind Rebalance List
- Dwarf CP bonus to +10 health.
- Orc CP threshold to 100 CP.
- Transmuter’s CP gain to 1 CP per mana spent.
- Transmuter’s Spirit Sword no longer drains mana and grants base damage equal to max mana.
- Chemist’s penalty to potion effectiveness reduced to -20%.
- Chemist’s stacked might strips 3% resist per stack.
- Dev Note: We're glad these changes made it to Rewind, and we think the game is better for them!
EExtended Rebalance List
- Preparations
- Extra [TYPE] Boosters renamed to Extra [TYPE].
- Extra Attack to +1 booster.
- Extra Health to +3 boosters.
- Dev Note: These changes will not update until you exit and re-enter the kingdom screen from a run. This also applies to other elements that can be viewed from the kingdom screen, such as items in locker, or class traits.
- Dev Note: These changes will not update until you exit and re-enter the kingdom screen from a run. This also applies to other elements that can be viewed from the kingdom screen, such as items in locker, or class traits.
- Glyphs
- LEMMISI biased toward spawning near entrance.
- GETINDARE to 4 mana.
- Items
- General
- All (non-puzzle-type) wands to small size.
- All badges to large size.
- Basic Items
- Pendant of Health to 14g and +15 health.
- Troll Heart to +3 health/level.
- Quest Items
- Balanced Dagger to 16g.
- Mage Plate to 16g.
- Piercing Wand to 45 CP (and small size).
- Fire Heart comes with 100% pre-charged.
- Battlemage Ring to 20g and small size.
- Elite Items
- Keg O' Health to +4 health potions.
- Keg O' Mana to +4 mana potions.
- Prep Items
- Shield to +3 damage reduction.
- Perseverance Badge to 35 CP (and large size).
- Strength Potion to 5g.
- Schadenfreude to 20g.
- Naga Cauldron gains +20% baseline effectiveness.
- Membership Badge to 25% off (and large size).
- Subdungeon Items
- Dragon Heart to +4 health per level.
- Dragon Heart to +4 health per level.
- General
- Dungeons
- Havendale Bridge to 1.1x difficulty.
- Zin Kibaru to 130% damage. (In Havendale Bridge, it will have 106 damage.)
- Berserker Camp to 1.3x difficulty.
- Indomitable to 150% damage. (In Halls of Steel, he will have 135 damage. In Vicious Steel, he will have 157 damage.)
- Vicious Steel Count BlahBlah loses Magic Attack.
- Gods
- Mystera Annur
- On worship, spawn 1 new random glyph.*
- Magic to 5(+10) piety cost.
- Refreshment to 80 piety cost. Glyph conversions now restore 25% whether in MA or not, but the player automatically drains glyph CP from inventory. Additionally, spawn 2 new random glyphs.
- Weakening to 20(+0) piety cost.
- Flames to 20(+0) piety cost. Both +level fireball damage and -50% damage go away on level up. Cannot be stacked. Added as a player effect.
- Mystic Balance to 50 piety cost.
- *: A new random glyph is any glyph that has not been generated in the dungeon or already spawned by another effect. These spawn with 0 CP. If all glyphs have been spawned once, any random glyph is spawned.
- Jehora Jeheyu
- Boost Health to 30(+15)
- Boost Mana to 30(+15)
- The Glowing Guardian
- On worship, spawn a 0 CP BURNDAYRAZ.
- Prayer Beads now also grant +1 health and +1% attack.
- Killing undead to +2 piety.
- Killing a burning monster to +2 piety.
- Humility to 0 piety cost. Humility now also grants a prayer bead.
- Absolution to +3 health and 1(+3) piety cost.
- Cleansing’s Consecrated Strike now also maximizes burning on the struck monster.
- Protection to 40% refill on both bars.
- Enlightenment now also pays out +10 piety per bead.
- Dracul
- Blood Tithe to 20(+15) piety cost.
- Blood Tithe to 20(+15) piety cost.
- The Earthmother
- On prep, spawn -1 plant per boon instead of double.
- Entanglement to 5(+5) piety cost.
- Vine Form to 5(+4) piety cost, +3 max health, and spawns 4 plants.
- Tikki Tooki
- +1 piety for all nonlethal instances of poison (instead of once per monster).
- Poison to 5(+15).
- Taurog
- Casting a glyph to -1 piety.
- Killing a regular monster to +5 piety.
- Killing a magic attack monster to +10 piety.
- Taurog’s Gear can be converted without punishment.
- Mana penalty removed from all boons.
- Taurog’s Shield to 20 piety cost.
- Unstoppable Fury requires any piece of Taurog’s equipment.
- Binlor Ironshield
- Stone Skin to +1% magic resistance.
- Stone Heart to 3% resist strip, but only 10 walls destroyed.
- The Pactmaker
- Scholar’s Pact grants XP boost instead of might.
- Warrior’s Pact to -2 piety cost for +1 health and might.
- Alchemist’s Pact to -3 piety cost.
- Consensus may be taken at any time.
- Mystera Annur
- Developer Notes
- Preparations: Extra Attack Boosters stood out as by far and away the best Mage Tower prep in most cases, especially as other preps alleviate the need for consistency that Magnet: Fireball provides. Conversely, the abundance of health options elsewhere made Extra Health Boosters practically irrelevant. With this adjustment, health boosters has a lot more to offer, while attack boosters is still straightforwardly solid, especially for tile efficiency.
- Glyphs: Considering how much of its utility in most runs is the scouting, we've always considered it odd that LEMMISI *isn't* biased toward spawn. Meanwhile, GETINDARE has always been insanely efficient at 3 mana, offering +1.05 hits for half the price of a fireball. Unsurprisingly, it's still insane at 4 mana, but you have to work a bit more to hit the powerhouse breakpoint of 2 fireballs and a first strike.
- Basic Items: Troll Heart's non-fodder use has always been fairly suspect, considering how much better immediate health is than future health. Health Pendant offered, typically, less value than Mana Pendant, and far less than Fine Sword. Both are more readily worth considering now!
- Quest Items: While we considered many more small changes, we decided to aim these at all the most awkward outliers. Dagger's slightly less busted, Mage Plate's much easier to buy for short-term use, Wand is now passable fodder for dungeons where it's useless, Fire Heart has the pre-charge it's always deserved (like Crystal Ball), and Battlemage Ring is much more attractive as a generalist buy when small and cheap.
- Elite Items: Bigger barrels means more fun. Also, paying 10g more than a guaranteed Schadenfreude spawn for 20% more restore than it has always been depressing.
- Prep Items: Big Perseverance Badge and small Slayer Wand opens up Blacksmith prep diversity a lot, and Shield picks up a nice niche in VHoS at minimum. Additionally, the truly strange gap in power between the identically costed Schadenfreude and Strength potions is finally resolved. Also, Cauldron's not just a meme now--you should give it a spin! EE change is just to balance for the adjusted size.
- Dungeons: Havendale Bridge, Berserker Camp and Halls of Steel have always been significant outliers compared to their competitors. These changes let their unique identities shine through a bit more by making them less curbstomp-y. Meanwhile, Vicious Steel no longer providing exclusively Magic Attack bosses forces the player to have to take more diverse approaches than 'stack magic resist'.
- Mystera Annur: Vanilla Mystera, while always solid for pure-casters, typically ends up nothing more than a subpar piety farm or safety altar in many runs, if not skipped altogether. Furthermore, pure casters will often prefer Gnome+JJ for superior max mana, limiting even that niche for her. These changes aim to provide an MA with a much greater diversity of worthwhile options, without raising her power ceiling too far. Cheaper mana and balance make those worth considering for a quick grab. Weakening at 20 now brings enough efficiency to compete with other resist strip options. Temporary Flames lets everyone consider it for that pesky Tower of Goo, while giving pure-casters a place to dump piety (and also not screwing them for their SMM fights). Last and *most* importantly, Refreshment's retooling offers a big reason to worship Mystera. CP drain lets elves compete with gnomes a lot more, but also lets any non-potion race feel happy about keeping glyphs. Furthermore, the up to 3 extra, unspawned glyphs make a huge difference in your odds of finding an extra hit glyph, wall clearing glyph, or other valuable utility piece. New Mystera Annur is flexible, fun, and a solid choice for basically anyone that's not a Warmonger!
- Jehora Jeheyu: Ah, Jehora, king of stats. Offering one of the most versatile glyphs and an insane amount of stat boosting for minimal expense and effort, Vanilla Jehora has always been one of Desktop Dungeons' most consistently excellent options. Our adjustment to both boosts raises the initial cost, but reduces scaling, to make it a bit more expensive to get those stats early when they're most valuable, but not much more expensive in the long run. Notably, Rebalance Jehora is mildly better for specializing than just grabbing two of each boost, to encourage the player to worship him with a plan as opposed to just 'because I get two big bars that'll probably make things work out'.
- The Glowing Guardian: Vanilla Glowing Guardian has always been a bit of an odd bird. His focus on long-term worship typical means that if the player isn't worshipping him by L1-2, he's not worshipping at all, beyond maybe a convert-in for Protections. Yet despite this stringent requirement, he offers boons with rather suspect value compared to the competition, from a mathematical standpoint. Worst of all, these boons then burden you with terrible beads, and while you might like to make them less bad with Enlightenment, that's almost never worth missing out on 6 protections' worth of piety!
Enter Rebalance Glowing Guardian. A free BURNDAYRAZ on worship offers 100 CP and 5 piety. Your beads provide a solid baseline of health and attack over the course of the game. Then, Enlightenment makes the beads solidly worthwhile and refunds piety for you to convert out or buy those protections you'd have previously had to pass on! Beyond this, free Humility for a bead now presents a more nuanced choice. Even when it might be a 'mistake' to take humility, the bead is a 10 piety boost that can tip the scales. Meanwhile, Cleansing Strike's burning max-out gives it solid utility for mid-game leveling and lets you buy it for beads without feeling like you spent piety for nothing. Rebalance Glowing Guardian offers much more worthwhile value, greater endgame flexibility, and fills the gap between Absolution and Protection, while still having a distinct power limitation in the form of inventory clog and fairly average baseline boons. Sorry for the essay on this one. I love new GG! - Dracul: Vanilla Dracul is Mr. Health Refill. Rebalance Dracul is still Mr. Health Refill, but now you don't almost always start by taking 1-2 shots of sanguine. Dracul's always been in a great place, and this change just quietly adds a bit more nuance and variety to how you use him late.
- The Earthmother: Vanilla Earthmother has always been very quietly degenerate, because of how subtle the strength of extra XP is. Entanglement seems good, of course, but it's easy to miss that it's practically +30 extra XP, on top of the huge amount you net from IMAWAL. Oh, and then she also gives more mana refill than any other god out there, and has some of the best early health and damage boons for even more efficient leveling. For Rebalance Earthmother, we decided to pull back on some of her most powerful, yet least unique options. Vine Form at higher piety cost, lower health, and more plants... is still really good. Entanglement having a repeated piety cost increase means you can't spam it quite as freely. However, most importantly, these changes also indirectly nerf converting in for Clearance. You can no longer spam 10 piety worth of Entanglement to fuel Clearance indefinitely, so you'll have to consider other options, and will generally get a couple less refills out of it. Also, before you try using the prep to get around that, we adjusted the prep penalty so that it hits the clearance spam case, but arguably makes her more generally usable in cramped layouts!
- Tikki Tooki: Much like Dracul, Vanilla Tikki's always been solid, with almost all boons seeing regular use. We decided to give poison a little bump for Rebalance Tikki, as it often clashes too much with typical Tikki gameplay to be worth taking. The piety change also opens up APHEELSIK as a third glyph (alongside the two that slow) that can kickstart level 1 Tikki piety, and makes long fights not force you to convert out.
- Taurog: Vanilla Taurog has always offered a solid but inflexible package. Apart from Taurog-only semi-warmongers, his altar ends up dead much of the time. His gear, while good, costs both inventory space and max mana, and Fury might as well not exist for most people. Plus, he can often be a very difficult god to escape once inside, forcing you to blow all your popcorn to dip in-and-out for a Sword, when you could have used that popcorn for multiple shots of Reflexes from TT, or Dracul lifesteal, or numerous other things better than +5 base damage (as solid as that is). As such, Rebalance Taurog emphasizes flexibility above all else. Gear no longer costs max mana, and can be converted. Piety gain is increased, while piety loss is decreased. Fury can be used without investing an absurd 4 inventory slots for less free hits than Reflexes. Somewhat like Mystera, he's not any stronger in terms of his power ceiling. However, his power floor has gone from 'Oh, just ignore him (in most runs)' to 'Oh, I could dip in for a piece of gear and a DP pretty safely'!
- Binlor Ironshield: Vanilla Binlor typically has two primary use cases (when you don't smash him): Join early to farm piety and grab Fist/Form/Soup, or do that and spam Stone Skin to max out your magic resistance for absurdly cheap. We think the first use case is fun and fairly balanced. We think the second use case is pretty darn degenerate as is. (Poor Namtar.) Rebalance Binlor specifically targets this, making Stone Skin a boon for effective leveling, and retooling the more restrictive Stone Heart to be the better magic resistance farm. He's pretty similar, really, but a bit less of a complete run carry when magic attack gets involved.
- The Pactmaker: The Pactmaker is a strange god to balance. If it's too good, then it overbears the play of your actual gods. If it's too bad, it feels like you just rolled -1 altar on your run. Vanilla Pactmaker too often seemed to fall into the latter category, outside of very specific scenarios (like Body Pact VGT or Spirit Pact Goat). Ultimately, most of his pacts offered too little value for their cost, especially considering that taking one early either shut out or forced the valuable Consensus. Rebalance Pactmaker has made Scholar's Pact a more potent leveling tool with XP boost, to make it worthwhile both early and late. Warrior's Pact, meanwhile, no longer costs over 100 piety for less health than two Jehora boosts, and also gives you might on hit for late game utility! Lastly, Alchemist pact gets a slight cost nerf to make it just slightly easier to take in more runs. Most crucially, too, Consensus is now always takeable, so you don't have to blow off a pact just to save it. The Pactmaker may still be an odd altar, but its new suite of options is a bit more flexible and a bit more worthwhile.
- Preparations: Extra Attack Boosters stood out as by far and away the best Mage Tower prep in most cases, especially as other preps alleviate the need for consistency that Magnet: Fireball provides. Conversely, the abundance of health options elsewhere made Extra Health Boosters practically irrelevant. With this adjustment, health boosters has a lot more to offer, while attack boosters is still straightforwardly solid, especially for tile efficiency.