Apr 4, 2022

Downfall - A Slay the Spire Fan Expansion - mikemayhemdev

Wow. Words can’t describe our shock at the initial week of installs and plays. When we launched, I thought “if we got 1,000 players, that’d be enough to have made the Steam setup worthwhile.”. Here we are… almost 100,000 players later! Thank you all for checking out our project, providing feedback, and guiding us to the direction of our first major update. Which arrives RIGHT. NOW!

The focus of this update is “Simplifying”. What that means is, since Downfall has been around for approaching 2 years now with a steady but small playerbase, we’ve loosened our grip on the importance of onboarding and ease of understanding in some of our cards and mechanics.

Being suddenly flooded with an ocean of new players means that those types of issues have been brought front and center, and we have heard those criticisms loud and clear. Everything in this update is intended to take our most egregious cases of mechanics or cards that are more complex than they need to be, and trim the fat.

No card in the entire mod exceeds 5 lines of text now, making it consistent with base Slay the Spire’s card text limitations.

“Simplifying” sometimes means cleaning up some card text without any mechanical changes, but sometimes it means some pretty core baseline changes to character mechanics. And as with most patches, we slipped in some tuning while we were at it. This patch has it all. We look forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy it. We still have more work to do on the front of simplification, but this update tackles the most offensive sources that are easiest to adjust right now.

Before we get to patch notes, we want to take this time to draw attention to and give special thanks to some amazing content creators who have showcased the mod in its launch week, please do show them some love and sub/follow:

https://www.youtube.com/c/Retromation (fantastic channel, highly recommend!)
https://www.twitch.tv/dolphinchemist (over 40 hours of quality Downfall content, thank you!)
https://www.twitch.tv/admiralbahroo
https://www.twitch.tv/amaz
https://www.twitch.tv/itshafu
https://www.twitch.tv/dogdog
https://www.twitch.tv/tsm_theoddone
https://www.twitch.tv/pietsmiet
https://www.twitch.tv/nomakk
https://www.twitch.tv/mikkilol
https://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming
https://www.twitch.tv/mewnfare
and so many more.

And equally special thanks to the content creators supporting us before this newfound surge of players from the Steam launch.
https://www.youtube.com/c/RhapsodyPlays (The original Downfall content creator, endless amount of Downfall runs to watch and long time supporter)
https://www.twitch.tv/jrm1ah
https://www.twitch.tv/wanderbot
https://www.twitch.tv/huttsgaming
https://www.twitch.tv/sneakyteak
https://www.youtube.com/c/OlexaYT
https://www.twitch.tv/baalorlord
https://www.twitch.tv/kdxanatos, and any others I've missed much love to you all!

Patch Notes!

General Changes

Text change to all cards - Effects that generate a card, then add it to your hand, have been changed to just say ‘Gain a <card>’.

Boss Cards - The additional colorless cards added to the pool no longer have the ‘Boss’ keyword. You can play as many as you want!

Act 4 Boss’s buffs have been chopped down to size. Giant wall of text has been cut by over half. The buffs behave a little differently than they used to - be sure to read the new effect. Boss also has a little more HP than before.

Act 4 Elite - The ‘Last Gasp’ mechanic has reminder text in the buffs regarding what the different power effects are, for players that may not know or remember the described keyword effects by name alone.

Fixed an issue with some of the ‘Ban Downfall content in normal runs’ configs not functioning properly (thanks Ocean for this patch)

Hermit Boss (Act 3 version) - Deck significantly altered to boost up its damage output to be more aligned with what an Act 3 boss should be doing.

Prismatic Shard now only gives Hero cards in card reward offers. From Downfall user Ocean, this patch makes Prismatic Shard useful once more in Downfall runs. Villains have expanded on the core design of the game with new systems and cards that talk to those systems, and historically we’ve found it to be problematic when other characters get those systems, so we’ve disabled them. But, Prismatic Shard still allowed you to see the cards that talk to them, which were often dead drafts in other characters.

Hermit

Deadeye - Strength gain up to 2>3 but damage down to 5>6. Hermit appeared to somewhat lag behind other classes in its basic access to hard scaling, so Deadeye is now on par with something like Spot Weakness speed-wise.

Called Shot - is now uncommon, always 0-cost and draws 1>2 cards. Time to give up the pretense that it isn't a powerful cycling enabler. This does however mean that it cannot remain a common.

Snipe is now uncommon. New snipe proved exactly as handy of a tool as I hoped, maybe too much. Once uncommon, Deadeye could be made stronger and more splashable and Dive remain at 2 Plated Armor when upgraded. Given it's also a very focused archetype card, it's nice to have it clog up card rewards less if you're going for something else.

Short Fuse - can now trigger even if not in hand.

Rugged maximum damage taken up to 3 from 1. Rugged is supposed to slowly bleed the player if they grow reliant on it, but was doing a pretty poor job of that, being effectively played like Buffer, but cheaper.

Flash Powder Block down to 5. While not strictly better than disarm 100% of the time, it usually is and might deserve to produce slightly less of an overall impact.

Dead or Alive bounty up to 15/40/100. The amount offered didn't feel particularly synced up with the difficulty of pulling it off.

Cheat now properly interacts with Headshot. Small hiccup during the implementation of new Snipe. Funny how these things happen.

Slime Boss

Starter Split card: When unupgraded, Splits into 2 random Slimes instead of needing to choose one. Split+ (the upgraded version) operates exactly as it did before. This often is one of the first cards a new player uses in Downfall, and it just has way too much reading for that. It’s much smoother to just blast out two slimes and have a player read those rather than bring up the choice screen right away.

Duplicated Form - No longer has Fatigue.

All Tackles - Now say ‘Deal X damage. Take Y damage.’ instead of their previous wording.

Effects that refer to Tackle cards now just refer to Tackles.

Replication - Wording polish

Mass Repurpose - Wording polish.

Liquidate - Wording polish.

Minion Master - Wording polish.

Guardian

Refracted Beam - No longer drops the number of hits when used. Base damage reduced to 3.

Gem Cannon - No longer exhausts Socketed cards, but does remove the Gems from them. Upgrade increases damage instead of adding Retain.

Stasis Strike - Reworked. Now deals damage and adds a Stasis Slot.

Stasis Field - Reworked. Now grants block when leaving Stasis instead of buffing itself.

Orb Support - No longer gives Block. Damage increased.

Shield Charge - No longer gives Energy. Block and Brace values slightly increased.

Time Bomb - Wording polish.

Ancient Power - Wording polish.

Compile Package - Wording polish.

Hexaghost

Ghostflame Order Changed - New Order Is Searing, Crushing, Bolstering, Searing Crushing, Inferno. (Attacks -> Skills -> Power -> Attacks -> Skills -> Inferno). This change makes a more logical loop within Hexaghost’s turns and brings in an oft-requested 2nd Crushing Ghostflame. While the original setup was thematic, reflecting the exact turn order of Hexaghost as a boss, gameplay needs to surpass theme here.

Fast Forward - Returned to the normal pool of draftable cards, now at Uncommon. Has Ethereal in place of Exhaust.

Skip a Beat - Cut.

NEW Starter Card “Kindle”. 1-Cost Skill. ‘If the current Ghostlfame is not Ignited, Ignite it.’. Upgrades to remove the conditional, just says ‘Ignite the current Ghostflame’.

Moving Fast Forward out of the card pool was in response to its ease of ignoring the ‘side quest’ mechanic of Hexaghost, but ultimately we just miss seeing it in the draft. So it returns, but at Uncommon. We do, however, like having an Ignite card in the starter deck, so a new one has been created to serve just that purpose.

Crushing Ghostflames - Base damage reduced to 3x2 (from 4x2). Now that there are two, reducing them to just a Strike equivalent as a base is more appropriate.

Inferno Ghostflame - No longer grants Intensity. Damage returned to its pre 4.0 value of 4 per Ignited flame. The Inferno ghostflame got too much tacked onto it in our last update. Removing this gives room for a new Intensity card in the draft pool - the reworked Spectral Spark.

Spectral Spark - Reworked. Now grants 1(2) Intensity in exchange for extinguishing the current flame. Does not apply Soulburn.

Infernal Form - Buffed to 2(3) Intensity per turn.

Burning Question - Reworked. 2-Cost Skill. ‘Ethereal. Gain 3(4) Strength. When exhausted, gain 2 Dexterity.’

Starter Relic block reduced to 4 (from 5).

Rain of Embers - Now has no Weak effect by default or any reference to ‘If X is 3…’. Upgrades to apply 1 Weak per X.

Doomsday - Now triggers when 6(5) Ghostflames are ignited, regardless of if you are currently on Inferno.

Ghostflame Wall - Soulburn amount increased to 6(9)

Ghost Lash - Base damage increased to 9, exhausted effect changed to ‘Gain 6(8) Vigor’. Lash was a card that was almost never played before outside of Afterlife. This makes it a strongly tuned 1-cost attack should you need to keep it in the deck that isn’t disproportionately strong when you let it go from Ethereal.

Living Bomb - Wording update. No longer Exhausts.

Speedrunning (reworked) - Now grants temporary Strength when you Advance.

Devil’s Dance - Upgrade reduces cost instead of granting Innate. With Inferno not granting intensity, this 2-cost power doesn’t appreciate being Innate when upgraded.

Worthy Sacrifice - Wording update.

Time Warp - Wording update.

Unleash Spirits - Wording update.

Champ

Champ Stances' "Technique Bonus" is now "Skill Bonus", triggering on all Skill cards! Technique is no longer a mechanic.

This is a big one! After the last few Champ updates, it became clear that Technique had really lost a true identity as to what had it, what didn't, and how a player was to build around it.

Techniques have been in a weird space, as they require you to be in a stance to do their effect, but we already have a Combo system that achieves that. The only time Techniques made sense is when Champ had 3 Stances, and these days are long gone.

When it boiled down, most of the things that wanted Technique were skills, so we decided to go with a full simplification here and effectively say “All Skills are Techniques and nothing else is.” However, this kind of change has a lot of knock-on effects, so Champ got more changes as a result than the previous three characters.

Fatigue is removed from all cards. At one point, Fatigue was a primary mechanic on Champ, but it quickly dwindled to just a few cards. For ease of approachability, Fatigue can be cut here without really any mechanical or gameplay loss. We may bring it back some day to another character (awakened one perhaps), but better integrated as a core principle of the whole kit.

Champion’s Crown (Starter Relic) - Reverted back to its previous version from before 4.0, which started combat in a random Stance. Even with the new starter shouts, Champ starting in a Stance is pretty critical to his consistency from combat to combat.

Berserker’s and Defensive Shout - When upgraded, just doubles the Vigor/Counter amount.

Death Blow - No longer has Finisher.

Masterful Slash - Now grants a random Skill instead of a Technique.

Arena Prep - Now grants random Skills instead of Techniques.

Rising Strike - 2nd hit clause is now if the last played card was a Finisher instead of a Technique.

Taunt - Now a Common draftable card instead of being in the starter deck. New Taunt costs 0, still applies 1 Weak and Vuln, upgrades to ALL. Starter deck has regained a Strike.

OId Crownarang - is now Headbutt. The latest version of Crownarang makes more sense as a straight Headbutt reprint.

New Crownarang - Deal 9(10) damage, Berserker Combo: Draw 2(3) Attacks.

Finish Him - Cut. We’ve tried three variants over the last few patches to try to make this work, but it just doesn’t fit into Champ’s kit. A flavorful card but hard to ever find the right use for.

Chain Lash (reworked) - Now a 0-cost attack dealing minor damage and has 'This turn, your Skill Bonus effects are increased by 2(3).'

Reckless Strike (reworked) - Now grants 2 Strength and -1 Dexterity instead of triggering Technique effects.

Circumvent (reworked) - Defensive Combo replaced with 'Any Stance Combo’. Block reduced to 6.

Adrenal Armor (reworked) - Berserker Combo effect replaced with 'Gain 2(4) temporary Strength'. Block buffed.

False Counter (reworked to Rope-a-dope) - Now reads “Gain 10 Block. Next turn, gain 1 energy and draw 3 cards. Finisher.”

Backstep - No longer needs Defensive Combo to trigger the Vigor to Block conversion.

Bring It On - Reduced to 9(12) Block/Counter, from 10(13)

Bob and Weave - Vigor and Block amounts reduced by 1.

Steel Edge - Upgrade changed to X+1.

Flash Cut - Defensive Combo reduced to 4 Block/Counter

Moment of Truth - Always draws a card by default. Upgrades to draw 2.

Duel (reworked to "Challenge") - If the enemy has Strength (instead of being alone), play this twice.

Vicious Mockery - Reworked. Now reads 'Target enemy gains 1 Strength. Gain 12(16) Vigor.'

Good Clean Fight - Reworked. Now costs 0, and reads 'You and ALL enemies gain 2(3) Strength'.

Clobber - No longer has a Berserker Combo effect, and always has its former ‘Wallop’esque Defensive Combo effect. Damage reduced to 6(9).

Steel Edge - Now upgrades to X+1 instead of bonus stats.

Murder Strike - No longer exhausts. Now costs 2 and raises damage when you play a Skill.

Moment of Truth always draws a card by default. Upgrades to draw 2.

Lariat - Changed to be a reprint of Reinforced Body. Champ definitely lifts, bro.

Ultimate Stance effect slightly reworded to say ‘If you exit this stance before it expires, immediately re-enter it.’. This allows Ultimate Stance to not block Stance-entering trigger effects.

Sword Throw - Slight change for clarity. States ‘Gain 2 Weak. Berserker Combo: Lose 2 Weak.’.

Shield Throw - No longer grants base Block, but hits twice instead. States ‘Gain 2 Frail. Defensive Combo: Lose 2 Frail.’

Parry - The Riposte card given now has Ethereal, as it always should have had. You can’t Parry an attack and then Riposte a few minutes later!

Skillful Dodge - Wording update.

Encircle - Wording update to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Defensive/Berserker Styles - Wording update to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Sigil of Victory - Wording update to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Technical Jig - Wording update to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Triple Strike - Wording update to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Back to Basics event override - Updated to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Tome of Technique - Updated to refer to Skill Bonuses.

Automaton

ALL functions cost 1 regardless of the cost of cards in the Sequence.

Another big one! In practice, unless you were very specifically forcing 0-cost or 2-cost cards, almost all Functions were 1-cost. The 2-cost and 0-cost functions have been a thorn in our side for balance and design space purposes anyway, so this made clear sense as a simplification of the mechanic. But, like Champ, doing this change comes with a long series of knockon effects involving the balance of 0-cost and 2-cost Encode cards, so the changelist is quite long to make sure the new 1-cost Function system is well supported and tuned.

Cards that referred to 'cards in the Sequence' now just refer to 'Encoded cards'.

For Loop+ - Upgrades X+1 instead of current upgrade.

Return (reworked) - Put a card from your discard on top of your draw pile. next turn, gain [E]([E]). 1 cost

Full Release (now in the draft pool, No Alpha/Beta, they are cut) - 2(1) cost, "Encode. Function becomes a Power with 'At the start of your turn...'"

Find and Replace - Retain/Ethereal removed. Upgrade removes the downside.

Hardcode - Removed temporarily. It will return as a Relic in a future update.

New Uncommon card to replace Hardcode's slot - "Undervolt" - "All enemies lose 1(2) Strength. Gain 2 Burns. Exhaust."

Hyper Beam - No longer Retains or reduces cost when retained. Costs 1. Lower damage, but still a boatload for 1-cost.

Sentient Form - Now reads "Whenever you draw a Function, increase all numbers on it by one."

Deprecate / Invalidate - No more Compile Errors on either of these, but they are now single target.

Delayed Slice (reworked to 'Robo-Chop') - Deal 9(10) damage. Next turn, draw 1(2) additional card.

Cloning Beam - Damage bumped to 14 (from 10).

Wild Beam - Replaced with Wild Strike, a direct reprint. The common pool needed an core simple attack card analogous to Sticky Shield, and rather than make a card very very close to Wild Strike, it’s better to just do a reprint here.

Separator - Moved to Uncommon.

Invoke - Cut. This card’s primary purpose was to offset an expensive function by granting immediate energy in exchange. Now that there are no expensive functions, this isn’t needed, and the kit already has Turbo and Allocate for additional energy sources.

Flail - Now deals 7x2(8x2) and grants 1(2) Artifact. Exhausts, and does not Encode. Flail and Iterate have always been two cards serving similar purposes, in that they are abuse cases with Fine Tuning and Sentient Form. With Iterate and Separator now both uncommon, one of these three needed to not become a self-Encoder.

New common Attack 'Cleanse' - Deal 9(12) damage. Exhaust a random Status card in your hand.

Bronze Armor - Compile effect is now: ALL enemies gain 12(8) Block.

Dark Dash (cut) - Replaced with Fragment (the thing you get from Format).

Safeguard - No longer has a Compile error effect. Block reduced to 7(9), and is now Common.

Constructor - Now is Uncommon.

Recursive Strike - Is now Uncommon and is slightly changed. "Deal 6 damage 2 times. Encode 2 copies of Strike."

Burn Out - No longer adds more Burns after getting rid of statuses, but has Exhaust. Costs 1. This change makes Burn Out a viable Status cleanser for decks that take on Status generating cards and just want to get rid of them, rather than an attack for decks that stack Statuses for positive effects. That archetype already has Bug Barrage and Break which do a fine job.

Spaghetti Code - Offers an actual random choice of 3, instead of always offering a bucket of “1 0-cost, 1 1-cost, 1 2-cost”

Virus - No longer Exhausts.

Thunder Wave (reworked) - Now reads: “Deal 16(22) to ALL enemies. Gain 1 Buffer. Exhaust.”

Digital Carnage is now Rare. Damage reduced to 15(20).

Infinite Loop - Compile effect buffed to +4 (from +2) damage on the next copy.

Branch - Damage & Block reduced by 2.

Replicate - Damage increased to 5.

Frontload - Reduced to 8(11) Block.

Boost - Reduced to 6 Block

Minor Beam - Increase to 5 damage

Break - 3 Statuses always, 15(20) damage.

Bit Shift - Wording update.

Fine Tuning - Wording update. Explicitly states it doesn't affect cost.

Backtrace - Wording update. Damage increased to 8.

Replicate - Wording update.

Bronze Orb - Wording update.

Class Default - Wording update.

Dev Tools - Wording update.

Branch - Wording update.

Gremlins

Pizazz Potion - Now grants 10 Vigor instead of 3 Wiz. As this is a shared potion, this makes the potion a little more easy to understand for other characters.

Flip Out - Now hits only a single target with base damage. Block triggers still hits ALL. Damage slightly increased.

Tadah - Now costs 0 and does not reduce the Skill’s cost by default. Still reduces cost when upgraded.

Tricksy - Wording update.

Necromancy - Wording update.

Burly Blow - Wording update.

Snecko

Snecko HP reduced from 90 -> 85.

Snek Bite nerfed: damage reduced from 9 -> 7.

Snecko now starts with ??? Basic instead of ???.

Amount of classes chosen increased from 3 to 4.

Offclass card generation now respects class choices.

Iron Fang buffed: +1 to max damage/Block

Improvised Attack/Defense cards +1 damage/Block.

Cheat - Wording update

Memorize - Wording update.

Transmogrify - Wording update.

Shift - Wording update.

Nope - Wording update.

Soul Exchange - Wording update.

Boss Cards

Donu Blast cut, replaced with ‘Shaper’s Blessing’. 2-Cost Power that reads “Choose One: Gain 2(3) Strength, or 5(8) Plated Armor.” The previous version of this card was just far too much text, and as a colorless card should stick to being a support for other cards in the draft - not a ‘build around me’ by itself.

The Evil Within - No longer grants Block.

Awaken - Strength removed. Healing reduced to 8(12), but happens “when you die, or at the end of combat”. This removes awkward gameplay where you actively want to take damage to trigger Awaken if you would end up net positive.

Hexaburn - Now only requires 3(2) turns to explode.

Prepare Crush - Wording update.