Ha - took me a minute to understand what you’re saying, but I know what you mean and have taken extra damage due to punching someone when I thought I had my staff equipped but didn’t.

I disagree that ring of wealth is as powerful as you are making it out to be. Also, it seems like half of your motivation to make this change is because you can’t resist the temptation of a RoW run when presented with the opportunity.

Every time I see a person who grinded for hours and hours to get hundreds of every type of consumable, I see a run that probably would have been easier to win with that ring of wealth left at +1 and the SoUs invested into more straightforward strategies.

My highest successful RoW run was 7 challenges, and I HATED that run - it took forever, and I had to play carefully for so much longer than a conventional run. The others times I tried a RoW run at 6+ challenges, I died before I could reap the benefits of the ring of wealth or made a mistake while grinding and died.

Like someone else said here, I would take a ring of haste over wealth any day. I advise most of the people on this sub that ring of wealth is a trap - leave it at +0 or +1 like you would with most other rings.

I keep trying to get people to play this seed I found. The first floor is so ridiculous. Check it out - JKL-YNS-LFJ

I always enjoy achievements that encourage players to play in different ways and explore parts of the game they may overlook when they get locked into certain strategies. Here are some ideas for achievements that do that:

Leveling up different types of equipment:
Level up a (type of weapon) to +6 ; Types are swords, axes, reach, fast.
Level up a ring to +6.
Level up thrown weapon to +3.
Level up a wand to +6.
Level up wizard staff to +6.
Level up an artifact to +10.

Using alchemy:
Transmute a (weapon, wand, potion, scroll) with the scroll of transmutation.
Use alchemy pot to create: exotic potion, exotic scroll, etc (one of each category on the alchemy page).
Use liquid metal to repair a thrown weapon.
Upgrade a wand with resin.
disenchant a scroll.
make and use the alchemy recipes with the costly items (potion of mastery, scroll of enchantment, potion of might, magical infusion).

Using inventory items:
Kill an enemy with a runestone.
Kill an enemy with a thrown weapon.
Kill an enemy with a bomb.
Kill an enemy with a wand.

Fighting in different ways:
Surprise attack the same enemy 3 times in a row.
Kill an enemy by knocking them into a pit.
Cause an enemy to kill another enemy.
Kill an enemy with a dart while the crossbow is equipped.
Kill an enemy with an armor glyph / weapon enchantment.

Exploring customization of equipment:
Augment armor for evasion/defense, then augment the same armor to the other evasion/defense.
Inscribe a glyph in an armor that already has another glyph inscribed.
Craft a scroll of enchantment and use it on a weapon.
Curse infuse a weapon.

Taking the road less traveled
Give the rat king what he wants.
Use the wand-maker quest item for something else.
use a scroll of upgrade on a cursed item unidentified item.

gotta cut myself off, went a little overboard. Thanks for your work on such a great game!

The one sad thing for me about removing catalysts would be the loss of the interesting decisions forced on the player when they really want a recipe that requires a specific catalyst, but don’t have any low-value items of the type required to make that catalyst.

Instead of dumping catalysts entirely, have you considered including multiple alchemy resources that stick with the player like energy? I’m thinking that energy is be unchanged, but the sacrifice of a potion or scroll is needed to get the 2nd/3rd resource.

Another thought is that I think “empty vials” and “blank scrolls” would be more intuitive than catalysts as alchemy resources, and if you created those with an alchemy pot menu action similar to ‘energize,’ it would be easier for new players to navigate and understand. I wish this worked with the first idea, but I don’t know how you could justify empty vials not taking up space in the player’s inventory.

I recall there being blank scrolls in an old pixel dungeon version, but I think you inscribed them with the stylus, and you couldn’t do anything else with a blank scroll or a stylus, so separating the two seemed kinda pointless.

That should be a hidden achievement! DM3000’s gas can definitely result in a posthumous kill.

I feel like this is the saddest failed run I’ve seen. Man, 3 HP.

Yeah, I thought it was intended, too. Using a whip vs a giant champion with them on the other side of a doorway is a good way to get fully healed since you only do 1-3 damage and you heal a lot on every hit.

Faith is my armor is the 2nd or 3rd hardest challenge. If you only have 4 challenges on, why pick this one?

makes me think of when you find a locked golden chest and the key is on the ground right next to it