Gold Seals

[sharp grove]

🧵

[zinc pilot]

The gold seal defender is logging on

Gold seal in the past has been completely neglected as, when applied to a random card, it can be detrimental by stopping you from milling through your deck effectively. This paints it as bad in a lot of peoples minds, but I believe that once it can be applied to a chosen card, as assumed in the poll, it will be a fun mechanic that can be built around with existing synergies such as editions & enhancements, letting you really stack one great card. Further synergies include Stone Joker, Hiker, Wee Joker, Golden ticket, etc. While not an absolutely core mechanic, I think it will be a very fun & mechanically interesting modifier to build with & around.

[wheat roost]

for anyone not in the loop, there was a discussion about gold seal (among other things) in a thread yesterday, here are the highlights:

• gold seal doesn't feel good to play
• changing it to an enhancement would also suck
• maybe remove seals as a concept altogether, since theres already 2 other ways to change cards (enhance/edition), make "return to hand after played" a joker
• needs better tutorialisation
• alternatively, add more seals and move them all to spectrals
• tooltips on hover could help with explaining the 3 systems, but could also be too much info for new players
• still considering removing seals entirely
• [poll "is gold seal fun" sitting at 7Y to 4N as of this message, some argue it could be lots of fun with changes, some argue it should be axed]
• gold seal could have emergent utility though
• ideas for others include "retrigger card, card is drawn to hand first, and balance chips/mult when this card scores"
• not for certain, but leaning towards keeping seals and making them targetable with spectrals
• feature creep may be an issue
• spectrals as a concept are good, just unbalanced
• incantation could be changed to gain cards 2-10/9 of random suits
• losing all your money for a rare joker is cool and good, but local is biased
• "-1 hand per round +$50" is an awesome idea for a spectral
• 100% confirm WILL be more spectrals
• negative was intended for finding new builds, not completing already-strong specific builds, which ectoplasm sadly goes against
• "Spectral packs only show up when you skip a blind" idea
• [^^^ crowd goes wild]
• first idea is to make low chance default, medium chance for 1 skip, guaranteed for 2 skips
• "nobody likes skips so yeah maybe" in response to removing tags completely, with spectrals in its place
• second idea is to add some "curse" stat per skip, each increasing odds of spectral in shop
• third idea is 1 skip for a base/jumbo, 2 for mega, better received than 1st two
• all packs could be changed to 3/5/5, with 2 picks for mega instead of 1

personally, i believe seals as a concept have a lot of potential and could be hugely fun and interesting, but their current implementation is holding them back severely

[pliant stone]

Can a card be sealed and have an enhancement?

[wheat roost]

yes, theyre separate

[pliant stone]

I assumed it was just like Mult or Bonus and would override other effects like that

That was not clear at all to me

[wheat roost]

thats part of the problem too, there was some discussion on how to make that clearer

[pliant stone]

If there were more Seals and Seals were clearly distinguished from Enhancements then that would probably be clearer

A Seal that’s like “Activate this card an additional time” would synergize quite well with the Enhancements

[wheat roost]

that was one of local's ideas from yesterday lol

i agree though

i think that would be fun

[zinc pilot]

Yeah part of the discussion was that enhancement tarots would have an added line saying "Enhancements can't stack" and the spectral card for gold seal would say "Can stack with enhancements", or something along those lines. It's an issue both ways since enhancements & editions both existing and being able to stack but not within themselves is already confusing

[pliant stone]

I think just distinguishing Seals from Enhancements should work

And you wouldn’t need to specify that they work together

[lean field]

I think that gold seal only show its potential in longer run. In the current demo with only 6 ante, people would not feel it.

[mint glen]

Definitely feel that you should get agency over which cards you can gold seal - getting a seal on a mid card is actively detrimental a lot of the time, and putting it on a selected card would be strong but imo not overbearing.

Gold seal seems best when you're going for 4/5 of a kind builds in that you can actually recycle your good numbers instead of milling through them all in one turn. Right now, though, 5oak builds can get a strong enough single hand to blow up a blind anyways, so the gold seal isn't all that helpful. This would presumably be mitigated by higher difficulties, but it's still something to keep in mind.

[shell saddle]

I think more types of seals in their own category would be the best implementation like enhancements would be the coolest thing

like extra rare and powerful versions

but yeah random cards for gold seal sucks

[astral jacinth]

Something else that came to my mind that wasn't spoken about in the gold seal thread of another day:
In addition to the tutorialization problem and how unecessary mechanics makes games harder to learn and less intuitive it also has playtesting implications as well.

Every Joker that does funny stuff with the hand or played cards now also has to play nice with Gold Seal, which means extra time sanitizing bugs - a joker that counts the cards in hand after playing a hand could get bugs with Gold Seal, or a joker that does something special to the cards in play expecting them to go to the deck. That's extra code and bugfixing and a lot of intentionally coding around a mechanic that isn't that core, fun or has that many buildaround potential. I'm of the opinion where if a mechanic by itself is not interesting then creating a bunch of synergy points around it won't fix it; it must be inherently interesting.

Take for example Gold Cards or Steel Cards. They're inherently interesting - when thinking about using your discards you gotta think about shuffling 4 cards in and keeping it or shuffling 5 cards in and losing it. It's a tradeoff, greed vs safe play. It's interesting by itself, even without synergies directly with Steel and Gold cards.

Adding "Gold seal cards get +40 chips" and similar jokers won't make the mechanic be interesting; it doesn't change the core of them, just artificially makes them technically be a buildaround.

I'm against expanding gold seals and in favor of cutting it not because I hate it but because I feel the dev time could go to other more interesting mechanics

[celest forum]

I think there should be the framework for seals so modders can add their own

[hearty gate]

I think there should be more seals

[astral jacinth]

Why would we expand a mechanic that doesn't fit neatly with the already stabilished way that upgrades work (if you upgrade a card using a different upgrade removes the old upgrade), that isn't that interesting or has buildaround potential and can lead to more bugs to be fixed and confusion for new players when we can instead axe it and focus the dev time on better mechanics?

[hearty gate]

And I don't think they should take up spectral slots when there are so much cooler things in spectrals

[celest forum]

Because it has the potential to be really interesting, and adding complexity does not necessarily make the game worse.

[zinc pilot]

the gold seal hater has logged on

[astral jacinth]

Every mechanic does. You have to put more words in for why gold seal in particular has more potential than other mechanics

[sharp grove]

The purpose of a poll like this is to determine if people think this is an interesting mechanic or not. I can determine if the juice is worth the squeeze after I collect enough of this sort of data

[astral jacinth]

Fair yeah 🫂

[sharp grove]

That is why I wanted to put some numbers to it

[astral jacinth]

We've already had this discussion, I don't think there's much more to be said

[celest forum]

Because it adds more space for modders to play in, and that is rarely a bad thing.

[zinc pilot]

im happy to see the numbers skew towards positive despite nobody being able to properly utilize it

[hearty gate]

I think gold seal should be a modifier more than its own thing tbh

It's weird to have a whole other system of modification that's only used for one thing

[wheat roost]

I gotta disagree with your basis here- I think gold seals as they are in the demo are flawed and not implemented well, but seals as a concept are, and that stacking two different types of effects on cards gives a lot of room for expression and emergent gameplay

[wheat roost]

I’d agree with this if gold seal stayed as the only seal, but I think adding different types of seals would fix that

[celest forum]

Personally I think the mult/bonus modifiers should be seals.

[zinc pilot]

honestly if mult/bonus/wild were seals, the "enhancements" would all visually be changing the card material

mult/bonus/wild constantly confuse people but nobody thinks you can have a glass gold card

[sharp grove]

If more were added then:

• enhancements give numerical benefits, like bonus chips/mult/money with associated effects
• seals would give other benefits, like redrawing to hand, retriggering the card, even the wild card modifier would fit here

[wheat roost]

What I mean here is instead of 10 options for enhancements (or however many) you’d have 10 options times 5 options for seals (or however many), a lot more possibilities for synergies and builds

And I think that would be really cool

[wheat roost]

I really like this!

[sharp grove]

I could make the art fit accordingly but it would important to make their effects into 2 disctinct groups

[celest forum]

I don't like this. It feels arbitrary.

[zinc pilot]

if bonus/mult were visually reworked to be a material change, and wild were moved to seals, that would clear up so much confusion

[wheat roost]

Honestly

[zinc pilot]

forget tutorials - it makes sense you can't have two material types, or two editions.

[cyan flame]

Gold seals are just too hard to get going. Wanting to mill through your deck by playing cards can be interrupted with a gold seal unless you are set up with at least a pair already.

[hearty gate]

Kind of random but has anybody here seen a stone card with an Edition?

[zinc pilot]

yeah

[celest forum]

yep

[sharp grove]

Still on the fence here, hence the poll. But yeah this also does turn the meta away from the main idea of using Jokers to determine your build

Deck manip is important obviously

[zinc pilot]

🤷‍♂️ i think it just adds to an already existing vector of building, which is playing card modifiers

[celest forum]

Jokers are a little too much of the game imo

[astral jacinth]

I'm in class rn so I really can't argue much but I wanna ask - if we're going with seals being stackable, isn't making all of the "return to hand / trigger twice / etc" effects be the stackable ones lead to a lot of confusion and bugfixing?

How do the players know which seals trigger first? Do they need to know the order of operations of the game by hand or will there be a intuitive way?

Similarly, what about bugfixing? Having 4 or 5 different seals all with different ways they affect the card means you will have A LOT of bugfixing and bughunting to do, specially if you take into account how you'd likely also have to test and bugfix for interactions between a joker + a card with 2-3 seals, or 2 specific jokers and 4 seals on the same card, etc.

Is there a plan for addressing these issues and concerns?

[wheat roost]

Local was against having multiple seals on one card

[astral jacinth]

Fair, yeah

[cyan flame]

I really like the gold seals, it is just hard to use consistency wise. Had a gold seal glass card I kept dupping and it was just fun. But in most situations I don't get lucky enough repeatedly dupe it or have the money to get multiple of them.

Also seals are just super cool. Would love to see more

[astral jacinth]

In that case I can see the argument for it - having a second way to upgrade cards, having each card have a "tarot upgrade slot" and a "seal upgrade slot". In that case I like the idea of isolating problematic mechanics like return to hand, play twice and etc that could bug with eachother to be exclusive to one another, to prevent bugs

My main question is how are seals going to be obtainable?
Are they gonna be on spectral packs and dilute that pool? Achievable via Joker effects and dilute the joker pool (a very dangerous pool to dilute)? In the astral pack? Or just sold on the shop?

[zinc pilot]

Keep in mind, the spectral pack was basically designed to be "diluted" (added to)

since the arcana deck is limited in size, and celestial is limited in ability

[wheat roost]

Iirc, the main idea was to add them to spectrals, which would go with the idea of making spectrals more consistent with blind skips

[astral jacinth]

I feel like it does, in my opinion, a terrible job at that. Most spectral packs are 2 in size rn.

If the change to bump it to 3 happens and you only get it by skipping a blind happens it means that, if you don't get ANY spectral card you want in the pack, you get at a massive back foot.

Imagine you skip a blind, is doing a 5oak build and get incantation, gold seal and a seal you're not interested in. Skipping a blind means you lose a lot, and you only got a gold seal which means you can rebuild slightly easier if you don't one shot the boss

[zinc pilot]

this issue already exists with spectral packs and is not a reason to remove gold seals

same issue exists with arcana & celestial packs

or the shop

sometimes you just dont get something you like lol

Also, it does a terrible job at what? Allowing more consumables to be added? We already have 12 so I think spectral packs are doing great at expanding the consumable selection

[cyan flame]

I wish you could buy seals in the shop like tarot cards

[astral jacinth]

(sorry for taking a while to answer btw)

[wheat roost]

I could see that working out tbh

A lil sticker sheet for a seal

[celest forum]

sticker sheet for seals

[wheat roost]

And seal spectrals could give like, 2 or 3

[cyan flame]

A multi seal should be rare. But gold maybe a little more common? RN you need to get lucky enough to get it, and then hope you get the card you want to put it on multiple times before it gets good

[astral jacinth]

Nyhh, I really should not be starting discussions in class I'm really sorry; in 50 mins I'll be able to talk really really sorry about that >.< @zinc pilot

[zinc pilot]

lmaoooooooo ur fine dont stress about it

[wheat roost]

i do think this poll is a bit flawed, cause a lot of people answering it wont read everything in the thread and will miss some key info, like there potentially being more seals, which i feel is necessary to the mechanic to be interesting

but like, gold seals just by themself aren't

[zinc pilot]

Eh, I think the poll is meant to judge interest based on the feature as it exists now with the one exception of being able to place it non-randomly

[astral jacinth]

Alright - back and available to talk for 50 minutes hah

[astral jacinth]

This issue exists in really any rogue-like/lite that wants to add new content. If you have too many build-specific items in the game you endup having many runs where you just find too many unrelated synergy pieces and don't get anything going.

This is why mechanics and cards, ideally, should be able to cross pollinate and be useful in many builds

[zinc pilot]

Notably, I do think gold seal is helpful across a wide variety of builds, especially considering the synergistic jokers

[astral jacinth]

Take, for example, the "if your hand includes X hand" jokers.

The 3oak joker can be used in 3oak builds, 4oak, 5oak and full house builds. It's generic and in many builds chances are it's gonna be at least usable.

Compare it to the straight joker. You can only get it's benefit if you're doing exactly a straight or straight flush build - two very uncommon builds in the game rn.

Until straights get fixed to be more applicable and easy to get a run going I 100% could make an argument for removing this joker

As per the spectral packs not being good for bloat, think of it this way.

If you spend 4$ and not get anything from that pack you wasted 4$. That's auck.

If you spend a full blind skip (which often can mean mising out of 10$ or more in money + not see a shop) and spend 4$ for a pack and find nothing you want you're losing a lot more

That's not just 4$ down the drain, that's 14$-15$ down the drain. That stings - a lot.

[cyan flame]

Yeah, my straight runs tend to die very fast if you can't find scaling fast.

[astral jacinth]

Putting a lot of synergy cards into the spectral packs is dangerous from a design perspective because you're increasing the risk of the player getting nothing out of it.

The risk reward idea is you skip the blind, losing money and a shop visit (the risk) while you get a great card in the spectral shop if you can get by (the reward). Adding a ton of unrelated spectral cards in there means that there's an additional risk (not finding anything applicable) that is not satisfying (it's not a direct consequence of the risk you took (skipping a blind)) and is not accounted for in the basic balancing of the mechanic

The less generic, more synergy-dependant and more bloated the spectral pack becomes the less and less worth it it is to skip a blind to take one.

[wheat roost]

im not sold on seals all going in spectrals either tbh

[astral jacinth]

From a flavor and thematic sense it is the easiest to expand but from a purely mechanical sense it has this issue which can really flip the mechanic's entire balancing into chaos

[wheat roost]

i dont think its reason enough to get rid of seals entirely though

i believe in seal's depth

[cyan flame]

Someone mentioned the idea of a sticker sheet that could appear in the shop earlier. I thought that was cool.

[astral jacinth]

There is a genuine argument for flipping the themes of Spectral and Arcana packs:
-> Spectral packs become available in every shop
-> Arcana packs become skip-only
-> All effects currently in the Spectral pack go to the Arcana Pack
-> All of the effects currently in the Arcana Pack go to the Spectral Pack

Essentially just reskinning them.

[wheat roost]

i also like the sticker sheet :) not biased for any reason though

[astral jacinth]

If you don't find anything useful in an Arcana Pack rn, shucks, -4$, not that big of a deal.

If you don't find anything useful in a Spectral Pack in the skip version, you lost -4$, the money you skipped by skipping the blind and a shop visit. You're in big trouble.

[wheat roost]

i could see that working. im a little attached to the current arcana pack but i recognize that feeling isnt based in anything concrete

[astral jacinth]

That way you put the bloat (and the chance of not finding synergy) into the one where not finding synergy stings less and keep the spectral pack into a tight list of well balanced and worth it cards

Talisman is much closer to a tarot card in power (even with you choosing the card) than to a spectral card

(Also, there was some discussion about "What do we call the thingy when you skip a blind that indicates you'll get a spectral pack?"; you could call it Fortune if you do this change. You skip once you get Fortune 1 and a regular Tarot pack, skip twice and get Fortune 2 and get a Mega Tarot pack.)

[twin kindle]

If seals were renamed so something like sleeves then it would also make sense to have them in a separate "sleeve pack". Could lean into spectral pack being the destructive one while the new sleeves pack would be Jokers but for a specific card. A sleeve would also make it clear that you can't stack them

[astral jacinth]

I can see changing the seals into sleeves; that more properly conveys the "If you turn it into a stone card it's still there" mechanic

[twin kindle]

Could even animate that you take the card out of its sleeve

[pliant stone]

the problem with sleeves is they're whole point is to change the backside of the card, which isn't really viable in a deckbuilder

and also you wouldn't see their effect when you saw the cards they were on

[astral jacinth]

Wasn't they supposed to protect the card from damage

[pliant stone]

maybe

[astral jacinth]

You could have a border around the card and a slight tint around the card; "Gold sleeve", "Red sleeve", etc

I'll be honest - the mechanic of looking at the top of your deck and knowing you'll be getting an 8 since only your 8 is in a red sleeve sounds genuinely cool and not a downside.

[pliant stone]

That really wouldn't make sense unless you could see the sleeves on the deck and when The Wheel turns the cards over, which I don't think is a new system that is worth adding when they could just as easily be seals

[twin kindle]

I mean, the same back side logic applies to stone card, like if the card is made out of stone it wouldn't have a paper/plastic backside

[astral jacinth]

We already have something similar, the DNA bug where the generated cards have the red back

[astral jacinth]

You 100% can see the card is sleeved from the front

[pliant stone]

a bug that uses assets already in the game is very different than adding a whole new system

sure but I meant it wouldn't make sense if you couldn't see it when the card was flipped, meaning it would need that new system

[wheat roost]

there was talk of using facedown cards elsewhere too, and its already relatively easy to figure out what the facedowns are, so i dont think card sleeves are the best replacement for seals

i dont think its all that necessary in the first place either

[pliant stone]

Seals seem very fine to me as a system

I don't see a reason to add a whole new one as a replacement

[astral jacinth]

I do feel like they'd be massively beneficial for increasing the game's understandability

[pliant stone]

sleeves?

[astral jacinth]

Yeh, sleeves over seals

Reskinning seals as sleeves

[twin kindle]

Why are we talking about sleeves as if they would be visible when face down? This is a magical land where poker blinds are sentient, I don't see why card sleeves couldn't be completely one way invisible

[pliant stone]

I'm very confused how you make that statement

there is a single seal in the game at the moment

[wheat roost]

thats a fair point

[astral jacinth]

Laugic we've been discussing expanding the seal system this entire time

[pliant stone]

what's the point of making them sleeves if they aren't visible from the other side?

[astral jacinth]

Having multiple different seals in the game but a card can only have one seal at a time

[pliant stone]

yeah I know

[wheat roost]

i just dont think it would be that confusing

like im not inherently opposed to the idea i just dont think its necessary for a reskin

[pliant stone]

you said changing Seals to Sleeves would be massively beneficial for increasing the game's understandability, and I don't see how you could say that at all

[astral jacinth]

They properly communicate the mechanics:
-> They communicate that you can only have 1 sleeve at a time
-> They communicate that you can stack a sleeve/seal with a tarot upgrade like stone card, mult card, lucky card, etc

[wheat roost]

plus i really want a wax seal lol

[pliant stone]

there is 1 seal in the game

currently

[wheat roost]

this in the hypothetical scenario that there are multiple

[pliant stone]

There is nothing about Enhancements that indicates you can only have one, but you can

[astral jacinth]

How is a new player supposed to know that if you turn a card with a gold seal into a stone card it keeps the seal when it loses everything else?

If it's a sleeve they can think "This only affects the card, not the sleeve"

[twin kindle]

So that from the dev side it's basically a reskin of the seal, but from the player side it feels like "oh, a card can only have one enchantment and one sleeve, and they are separate from each other"
If the are seals instead or any other system that applies to cards, it doesn't make it clear that it's a separate system from enchantments

[astral jacinth]

And that's a visual design problem

[wheat roost]

local mentioned changing the art of enhancements to make it more clear theyre mutually exclusive

[astral jacinth]

Also - sleeves fit the theme of the game a lot better. Very few people are stamping their cards but a lot of people sleeve them

[wheat roost]

thats a fair point too

[twin kindle]

Yeah, but then after you learn you can only have one, are you going to try all the combinations of things you can add to cards and see if this specific combination stacks?

[pliant stone]

I feel like individually sleeving cards in a deckbuilder is incredibly silly and doesn't make any sense from an actual funtionality standpoint. Knowing where a specific card is in the draw pile but not others is not something that seems like it fits this game (or any deckbuilding game really)

[astral jacinth]

That is not it's main functionality?

[pliant stone]

especially when the bonus of sleeving the card is entirely unrelated to this additional knowledge

[sharp grove]

I'll be keeping it as a gold seal, and expanding to more seals was always hypothetical

[wheat roost]

thats a non-issue, they could just not be visible while facedown

local has spoken

[astral jacinth]

Nyeh. I find it a massive flavor fail but fair enough

[pliant stone]

then it makes absolutely no sense as to why they would be sleeves

[sharp grove]

I appreciate the 'show don't tell' sentiment, it is good design. But it also might not be needed if it's information that needs to be explained once

[astral jacinth]

The problem is people might learn "Oh, if I put a multi upgrade on a all suits card it loses the suit" they might also assume "If I put a multi upgrade on a gold seal I lose the gold seal as well"

[twin kindle]

It was my word choice. Call it trims or whatever, but somehow make it clear card can have one enchantment and one seal.

[pliant stone]

well trims are entirely different than sleeves and all my objections would go away 😅

[astral jacinth]

The problem is the players can make a trail of logic that leads them into never figuring out they don't stack

[pliant stone]

all of my objections were because sleeves give additional info besides their intended bonus by being visible when face down

[astral jacinth]

But w/e. That aside, thoughts on swapping tarot and spectral packs' themes (not mechanics)?

[wheat roost]

a single sentence in the tutorial could fix that though

[twin kindle]

You could have example cards floating in the menu and then the if the player sees a multi enchanted gold seal card they might try to make one

[astral jacinth]

Bloating a tutorial is a dangerous road

[pliant stone]

One additional sentence is not bloat

[wheat roost]

lol the ace of spades in balatro could have random effects

that would be fun

[twin kindle]

Nobody plays tutorials these days, you need to force it or have the game itself be the tutorial

[sharp grove]

Related anecdote - by far the most common issue for new players was 'Why don't consumables do anything', because people didn't know you could click and use them.
After adding an explicit part to the tutorial, that problem basically disappeared

So this is an issue that can have a solution

[astral jacinth]

Fair

[sharp grove]

Balatro currently has an information display problem and this sounds like it could be fixed by displaying that information at the appropriate time

It doesn't require new art, new systems, supporting mechanic changes

[pliant stone]

it could also display info about the mechanics in the Collections screen

or some other unobtrusive place so that it's available more than once at the tutorial, but doesn't clutter the play area / UI

[sharp grove]

It would probably need to be during play - because new players don't look at the collection

[pliant stone]

I meant in addition to the tutorial blurb, if one gets added

[wheat roost]

for seals to work- and i really think they could! -theres gotta be more than 1 seal

i believe in this mechanic so hard

[pliant stone]

I really like it too

[hearty gate]

how many people do you see with sleeved decks of playing cards?

it's a good idea, I see sleeves a lot when I play stuff like Magic

but never have I seen sleeved playing carads

[wheat roost]

its a moot point, local already deconfirmed changing it to sleeves

[hearty gate]

oh i should read more

:p

[astral jacinth]

I've once saw someone once sleeve all the train cards in Ticket to Ride. Some people really like sleeves

[hearty gate]

wild

cool, but weird

[astral jacinth]

Thinking about this more, honestly I can agree with no sleeves if the UI problems get fixed

The game has a sort of sub-theme about old timey card games and superstitions - stuff like tarot cards, crumbled and old lucky cards, etc. Having a card sleeve - which is a super modern industrial thing very far detached from that reality and closer to MtG and YGO - clashes with that aesthetic

[dense token]

It would maybe be good if you could choose

It only sucks now because you can't depend on getting it, when you get the opportunity to get it you are stuck with whatever card it's attached to, and while you can modify/enhance/copy that card it's arguably way too much of an investment outside of maybe some crazy endless build which probably doesn't need it anyway

Maybe if there were more jokers like Hiker that scaled individual cards when playing them then it would work out

[fossil wave]

I mean if you can choose the card, then couldn't you just hypothetically choose the exact cards that build your strongest hand, assuming you got lucky enough to pull them?

Might not always be useful, but that sounds like a very fun mechanic

[dense token]

It would be very cool to make straights work with gold seals, but my sensing is that for say flush house stuff it's not going to be worth the trouble

(society if straight flush had reward reflective of the difficulty of building around it)

[loud forge]

I just put an idea in the Suggestions channel for how I'd handle Gold Seal

Which is that IMO, acquiring a Gold Seal should be a tag (whether it comes from a skip or from a spectral pack), and the tag would trigger at start of next Blind, forcing you to pick a card from that exact hand, before you have a chance to search for a specific card

And that card gets the Gold Seal

That would retain some element of risk, as when you pick up the Gold Seal, you have no knowledge of what your next hand is going to be

And you might get a dud hand

But even so, you'd get to pick the least-bad card from that hand to use it on

[dense token]

Weird to have a system so similar to (but yet separate from) tarot cards for this one mechanic though

[viscid wind]

if we could have gold seal and glass and polychrome at same time than i want gold seal lol

if we still cant than id rather get glass and polychrome

[fossil wave]

Would be an interesting synergy to make gold sealed cards unbreakable with glass hehe

might be a bit op though

[loud forge]

I think a more interesting effect would be if gold seal cards couldn't be debuffed

[wheat hawk]

I like the concept of gold seals, but I think it's just too hard to build around on a random card. Being able to choose the card would make it much better

Like even just being able to slap it onto a mult card and play that card every turn would be interesting early game

[robust zephyr]

My idea for balancing gold seals is for them to not count against your hand size when they return to your hand but would otherwise act normally (i.e. they return to your hand after drawing cards). That way if you don’t have a build for them yet, they don’t necessarily ruin your run.