Curse system rework suggestion

[wheat dust]

Hello all,
I believe that there is a way to increase player agency and the game play experience with the curse system.
I attached a screen shot from a recent run to illustrate my point.

As you can see I had two red curses for scythe damage - one way stronger than the other. A similar issue can be seen with the blue curses where I either get free armour or the same amount of protection at a hefty cost.
Lastly there are curses like "Gain 5 mana" which are a lost curse to me.

The issue is with curse strength and pseudo-duplicates. With that established here is my suggestion:
-make it so that each effect type (like scythe damage) is just one curse.
-instead of gaining an additional curse in the HR department allow players to level up a curse instead, either one free for completing the stage or any number for soulary.
-balance curses so they are appealing on level 0 and pretty nice on level 3; like you do for weapons and spells already

The result is a more interesting HR floor, more player agency and you get rid of curse selections like I attached here.

Any takers?

[lament echo]

I personally like it the way it is now. The only issue is the balancing of some curses in terms of numbers, ranks and rarity. In your screenshot the worse options were either lower in rank or rarity, which makes sense!

I covered the bad curses here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2904321979

The current way allows you to "plan" your run accordingly by knowing which curses have which rank.

[wheat dust]

While I prefer to be more involved than that I see your point.

I agree that the curse balance is not great. A hefty rework is in order here.

A way to use the curse trees in-game to see potential curses would go a long way in making it more plan-able.
As it is without a wiki or memorizing the system does not feel all to good.

Though I don't see where my suggestion and the current setup are mutually exclusive. You can still require a curse rank to get a specific curse to begin with - you just don't see a weaker version before, and you can level it for a stronger version.

[dusky remnant]

In almost every roguelike Ive played there has always been a tier list of curses, I dont think trying to balance them all to be equally powerful is something that is actually desirable. The varience in the power of them and the niche usage of some is important imo.

I don't think I'd enjoy the game as much if I could get a specific curse at level 1 a lot of the time and be able to level it up through the run, that would homogenize gameplay a lot

In your perticular example Im actually happy both of those defense ones are there, because I can pick them up back to back for 10 defense
The scythe one less so and makes sense, I generally feel that just % upgrades are somewhat needed but boring curses.