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.
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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.
@bjoern_tantau @pixeldungeon @PlumBrake and having the portable alchemy set utterly changes the cost-benefit-ratio of most
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.
Curse negation is worth 51 energy 🫥
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.
I usually get 1 or 2 rc scrolls by the times I reach prison (not plenty) 51 energy is not that much and curses are my worst enemy in the entire game.
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.
It only replaces regular rooms
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.
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.
Thanks for the feedback! There are a few trinkets I’d like to adjust still but overall I’m a lot happier with their general balance after v2.5 and patches. It is sort of intended that some people strongly dislike some trinkets though. They’re all meant to be about tradeoffs and changing up gameplay variables (even if the tradeoff can sometimes just be lots of alch energy), so naturally some players will find some tradeoffs to be great deals and others to be terrible.
The patches made them better, but maybe it can still be improved~ For this tierlist, it’s less about personal preferences, but whether the tradeoffs help or hinder the hero and comparing the costs against other things. Like… I prefer to use torches than newt eye, but I admit that it’s somewhat useful in certain playstyles, so I put it higher. Conversely, even though parchment is hyped up as a powerful anti-curse trinket, in practice it often hinders runs. Some trinkets like sundial will only make already-winning runs better, instead of giving win conditions. I suppose when we consider that obtaining these trinkets use up puzzle room items, food, and a lot of energy… it’s inevitable to think about these. They’re costly dungeon tools, instead of optional game settings, so I usually only take the beneficial trinkets and avoid the C and D trinkets which often hinders the hero, unless I want to have fun.
EDIT: Thinking about this, I think I’ll put mimic tooth at B-tier, it’s both a win condition and a lose condition and it feels situational.
You’d be surprised how much a particular player’s perspective can influence what they think is objectively powerful and what isn’t. Just as an example, the rat skull is one of the highest winrate trinkets in the game, due to the added value from drops from rare enemies. There are of course some trinkets that the majority opinion is correct about though, I would like the censor to be less trouble for it’s benefit for example.
That’s true. To me, curses are the worst thing to ever happen ever, therefore the Parchment scrap is the best trinket in the game in my opinion. Just out of curiosity, what’s the trinket with the worst win rate?
It fluctuates, and does depend a bit on how you interpret the numbers, but atm it’s the mimic tooth! It’s a very spicy trinket, in a way that people really enjoy, but the chance of getting chomped by an ebony mimic is not worth the reward to the average player.
I look forward to it~~ The censer’s potential for death and item loss is terrifying, and I don’t know when it will explode. At least with resin trinket, I have full control of the decision to possibly set things on fire. Also, I’m unsure if rat skull itself is the reason for winning… If I can farm floors sustainably, rat skull is nice as I’ll eventually find those powerful rare mobs for the badge, but this only makes already-winning runs better. If I play normally, the 5% rare chance never triggers much to break-even on the 36 energy. I feel most of these trinkets have harmful tradeoffs, and the massive energy commitment could’ve been placed on actual win-conditions, especially when getting the 1M score badge. That would be my personal perspective I suppose…? I only take the C and D trinkets if I play casually, and I take them knowing full well that it will be a neutral-challenge rather than a benefit.
(But having said that, it’s still nice that trinkets are dungeon tools instead of obscure game settings. I feel shattered is lacking in the variety of items that can be dropped from mobs and chests, they’re always the same scrolls and potions. Dungeon runs are nice with more loot variety, maybe poison spells from cave spiders, or hidden shops with weird items, with the journal overhaul finding items becomes fun~)
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.
You keep using that word, “happen”. I would never use that word when talking about changes to code. That was the source of my original confusion.
