Feedback of the prologue

[mossy hollow]

General systems

**Metaprogression: **
The talent tree has some fun nodes, but we aren't really making any choices and investing resources into +3 attack or 2% attack speed is not fun. I like when my fleché becomes lighting damage and a teleport, give us more of that. And should be between two fundamental changes to that skill or perk, not just some extra you unlock. Do i want teleporting fleché or be able to cast it without a target? That type of stuff.
The idea is that you want to have different loadouts filled with different choices for that particular character or build.

Dashing (spacebar): Should probably immediately break free from crowd controls when used. Its a limited cooldown move and given how deadly late game content is, this would seem reasonable. Getting chain stunned by mortars and attacks feels impossible to beat if you make a mistake once.

Shop:
Let us either set up a wishlist for memories/essences or see what other players got in their shop, so it can be pinged. Getting the same essence on multiple shop slots is annoying. When pinging shop items without having enough money, the game should mention how much gold is missing. Makes it easier when donating gold between party members. Skillo (yubar): Essence of wind 30% 199 gold (needs 34 gold). The shop also needs more services, such as increasing the level/quality of something for gold, or even bounties such as "kill X amount of hunters" or "stun 20 enemies". A good way of making us go out of our way to use different memories in exchange of a reward.

Crit: Seems to only work for basic attacks? Kind of invalidades the stat entirely for certain characters, doesn't feel nice. Attack and spell power have uses for every character, the same cannot be said about crit. Maybe essences that make crit work on spells? Or back again with the perk tree choices, perhaps one option that changes crit for abilities.

Character limit, will continue on comments

[mossy hollow]

Maps: Currently it seems like the difficulty only increases as you progress through deeper nodes and step on hunter influenced areas. This incentivizes stalling as much as possible by going between all nodes that you can, which ends up making characters feel stronger than expected for bosses, for instance. Number of nodes cleared should progress the difficulty, in my opinion. Speed/efficiency is usually key for survival in roguelikes, which seems kinda missing here outside being careful with hunters.

We also need more optional and interesting nodes, that lead to more choices during the run. Having a node with a powerful monster will always make you want to get there, but thats rarely a choice, as the alternative...is simply not going there for no reason. More visible rewarding events, more decisions. Once we have more variety and consequences for pathing choices, the map should be much larger. Similar to the standard "3 branching roads interconnected" we often see.

Gearing: i absolutely adore the current system of 3 essences per ability. It makes you get creative, need to make tough choices and adapt based on what you have. However we need a lot more essences and alternatives to solve common problems. For instance, damage mitigation in late game is basically runninng [Rigidity] with a fast hitting memory, along with a low cd buffer memory using [Protection] for insane damage redution with 60% uptime. The essence which turns overheals into barrier is also neat, however it requires two slots (cause you need clemency for leech) and its completely useless when affected by delusional. a lot of essences are either "do something every 10 seconds" or "when casting this memory". The former is usually a terrible dps increase for one essence slot, even with investment the long cooldown makes it not appealing since eventually all your memories will have low cooldown and the average mob clearing needs to be insanely fast to survive.

[mossy hollow]

Theres currently one single method of lowering said cooldowns, and it requires lightning damage. Kind of a weirdly specific requirement, we need more options for this. Being able to use other character's memories would also be extremely fun. I heard that we used to fight against other characters during the runs, it would be cool if they dropped one of their memories, no?

I would also suggest slight variations between abilities when they drop. For example, Scattershot of splinters has 2 extra projectiles, while another version has a wider spread or even scales with ability power instead. This matters for two reasons: First, its more incentive to keep hunting for more memories, and second, it naturally allows us to make even more builds. This absolutely needs to be paired with a greater variety of essences.

Elite enemies (those who drop a stat boost selector) should absolutely be stronger. They currently die in a matter of seconds. Making them tankier would at least pose more of a challenge, one which could actually end your run if you are not careful.

Enemy variety would also be welcome, i don't mean just in terms of different models but rather in funcionality aswell. We do have some shield enemies for instance, thats what im talking about. Healers, buffers, exploding mobs, stuff that makes you access what you are facing and quickly decide which one to target first. Imagine being silenced (unable to cast memories) cause you are stepping on the gas cloud generated by a shaman mob? or having that dangerous elite healed or way faster cause he is currently getting buffed by a small totem which you failed to destroy.

That said, each area probably needs to be bigger, to allow more dangerous encounters while letting us weave around groups to strategize. We are often cramped in a tight corridor against an endless horde of enemies and battles devolve into hitting things as fast as you can and spam dodge if something is too close.

Balance:

While healing has a severe reduction in nightmare difficulty and theres debuffs such as "delusional" which reduces healing by -90%, theres absolutely nothing against barriers and shield memories. Should we get more "anti barrier" threats or make life based characters more viable? I don't know what the current vision is, but i'd really like to not feel forced into barriers when pushing into late game. Especially when the ceiling for barriers is endless, but your life is limited to what you have. Late game enemies can easily chew through your health bar in 1-2 hits, while even barriers which can be several health bars stronger have risks.

Faster > stronger. Memory levels lower their cooldown and cooldown reduction essences push them to a few seconds or even a fraction of a sec, pushing everyone into a meta of spamming whathever kills mobs the best as fast as possible. It also doubles down as memories with faster damage ticks build up barrier more effectively. While its absolutely possible to succeed with a slower character (aimed shot builds, shout of obilivion builds, world cracker) they are fundamentally weaker for several reasons and are usually played for the fun aspect;

-Essence of wealth incentivizes unfun gameplay. It makes you want to kill enemies with one specific memory, and depending on what character you are playing this leads to a fairly tedious process as you grind more and more "free" gold. Either make it affect your economy in a more controlled manner or change it entirely, for instance rasing your damage based on gold spent. Getting 400 extra gold cause you slapped wealth on top of your 100% uptime memory and the map was filled with tiny spiders feels weird.
"spending gold with the merchant increases the damage of this memory by 1% for every 10 gold spent. More quality raises the cap."

[mossy hollow]

-Essence of flexibility kills you on late game. Barriers last 2 seconds, but it splits the damage across 4s. This means that taking a big hit (which wouldn't kill you through barrier) might actually be a death sentence if the remaining 2 seconds worth of damage over time exceed your health bar. Which is a very ironic thing since you'd survive without flexbility to begin with...a defensive layer that can outright kill you for existing.

-Some conditional essences feel undertuned. Essence of dusk procs on every attack but its numbers don't justify any investment or even being used at all. And as previously mentioned things that empower on a 10s cooldown are generally weak. Let the essence which gives a flat haste bonus affect those!

-We definitely need more means of sustain. The barrier meta isn't very healthy for the game in my opinion, it should arguably be harder to keep up than just recovering life.

-there needs to be more reliable means of obtaining things aswell. I don't mean a completely guaranteed method of getting whathever you need, but rather just being able to lean towards certain things more reliably. Going through 3 NG cycles without finding a specific non-legendary grade relic is very strange. Perhaps give different biome types extra chance for certain essence/memory types, or put that extra agency over other suggestions above like bounties and more interesting map node options.

-Vesper dodge is just horrible. Low cooldown, a comically (unscalable) small barrier, and it cannot go through enemies. Not being able to phase through enemies automatically make it the worst dash in the game by a lot.

-Vesper passives are health centered and can recover missing hp. both of these things are significantly weaker than just building barrier or not getting hit at all. Recovering health when every other enemy applies delusion is also questionable.

-the same healing principle applies to the 5th character (i don't even remember her name, admitedly i stopped playing her a long time ago cause its just not fun on nightmare).
You sacrifice a massive portion of your health for okay damage and the idea is to recover it back with your memories and passive, but they are definitely not reliable or fast enough to achieve so. "heals X per number of enemies hit" is also very unreliable. Things die, things move, or its not a very crowded map node, now what?
Its also incredibly dangerous to walk around with a depleted health bar in a game where you can have your healing nullified and be oneshot at any moment...
Her attack speed scaling is also off, i don't know why but it feels like no matter how much you invest in attack speed its still significanly slower than other characters.

-Let us add essences to passives and basic attacks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not much to elaborate here, we definitely need this.

-a lot of memories would feel much better if we had one essence that increases area of effect. And one that increases (and decreases) duration.

-Essence of predation is ridiculously strong, it can easily beat any legendary essence even at 10% quality. I don't understand why its stack amount isn't capped by quality...
It also incentivizes to play against the core concept which is run from hunters, instead telling you that its very rewarding to jump into the impending doom and eventually die. It also provides stats by just progressing through the run, thus being extremely good if you drop it early. Feels a bit too strong.

-Essence of regeneration feels extremely weak. does it even stack with multiple casts? im not even sure, the numbers are too low to even justify tinkering around it. clemency scales with your damage, rigidity scales with hit frequency. 32 health over 7 seconds is unsalvageable.

[mossy hollow]

-Essence of iron is nowhere near as good as essence of momentum. Either needs a rework or significantly higher numbers, while also affecting ultimates (the chargeable ones like shout).

-the aoe of essence of pain is too small to do anything relevant

-we seem to have way more offensive essences based on ability power compared to attack power. They are often more interesting aswell. Dusk vs charcoal, spiral.

-essence of spiral procs essence of charcoal, which can be extremely strong. with enough investment it can clear rooms alone. Can we get something similar for attack power? Interactions between essences without your direct interference, is what i mean.
I would also say that spiral should probably only shoot projectiles during the duration of its respective memory. so if you cast shield, it does so for that duration, while only working as a normal "on cast" essence if the corresponding memory has no duration.

-We have plenty of knockups and stuns, most of them have ability power scaling.

-Some essences/memories only get higher damage numbers as you upgrade them, can we get more breakpoints that also affects other stats? increase the duration of barrier, add more dusk projectiles, increase the area of glacial stomp, etc. This would be especially useful for memories, if instead of every single one of them just getting bigger number + lower cd they had other improvements instead.

last but not least
Please add one setting that lets you hold down the button to repeatedly cast a memory. i want to hold down right click and spam fleché with it, or cast all three ignite charges rapidly :)

[gusty osprey]

-Essence of predation is ridiculously strong, it can easily beat any legendary essence even at 10% quality. I don't understand why its stack amount isn't capped by quality...
It also incentivizes to play against the core concept which is run from hunters, instead telling you that its very rewarding to jump into the impending doom and eventually die. It also provides stats by just progressing through the run, thus being extremely good if you drop it early. Feels a bit too strong.

I agree with this ^

Suggestion would be to give you ad/ap per node cleared

not per hunter killed

how is it 3 per boss but 1 for EVERY hunter?