Build 24957355

Cull the Crib v0.2.0 Patch Notes

The Map: New Encounters & Events

The run is no longer a straight march of fights. Each section now shuffles a mix of encounters into a random order before its boss — fights, events, a rest, and a shop — so no two runs unfold the same way.

• Omen Events (?): A pool of 12 bespoke events. Strike a bargain, spin a wheel of fortune, loot a dead man's hand, pay a knife's toll, or stop a turning card — each offers a reward, a price, or a gamble. Some gifts come with a curse.
• Curses: 13 temporary curses can follow you out of an Omen bargain — a bleeding wound, frailty, a tithe on your pegs, a weakened faction, a marked deck, an enemy that plays first, and more. Active curses are shown on the map and in combat, and wear off after a combat or two.
• The Tally (Tavern Rest): Rest to heal 20% of your max HP, or Temper your deck for a permanent ×1.15 to one faction's signature mechanic. It stacks additively each visit — two Tempers on the same faction is +30% (×1.30), three is +45% (×1.45). The ×1.15 multiplies:
  • Demon Horde — combo damage: a combo that hits for 100 → 115
  • Undead Legion — lifesteal healing: a 40-HP steal heals 40 → 46
  • Shadow Cult — Fear stacks applied: applying 6 Fear lands 6 → 7 stacks
  • Hell Hounds — Burn damage per tick: 10 stacks ticking for 40 now deal 40 → 46

• The Merchant: A dedicated shop node. Add items to a cart to weigh your spend before committing, then tip the merchant on your way out for a heal — a Small Tip (5% of what you spent) for a guaranteed patch-up, or a Large Tip (20%) that gambles on a bigger one. The tip is at least 1 peg, and tipping ends your visit.
• Elite Encounters: One enemy each section can be empowered for a harder fight — more HP, two hot faction reactions at once, and hardened defense — in exchange for a guaranteed relic and bonus pegs. Empowering is opt-in: walk in cautious or greedy.

New Features

• Crib Depth (Ascension Difficulty): A new per-character difficulty ladder. Clear a depth to unlock the next one, all the way up to Depth 31. You pick a depth for each character on the select screen, with a tooltip explaining every modifier, and the main menu tracks your Best Crib Depth. All 31 modifiers are in the game, including Depth 23 "Boss Intelligence," where the boss always plays second.
• Profiles: Profiles are now separate from characters. Creating a profile just names it, and character cards show your Wins, Losses, and Best Crib Depth.
• Abandon Run: A profile with a run in progress now has an "Abandon Run" button on the main menu, so you can scrap a run and start fresh without deleting the whole profile. Abandoning doesn't count as a loss.
• Dynamic Card Text: Card descriptions are now generated from the game's live values, so what a card says always matches what it does.
• Character Tooltip: Hover your character portrait during combat to see your faction passive and character bonus.
• Play Cards Button: A new round "Play Cards" button sits at the bottom-left of the play area (and shows the shortcut on hover), so it's always clear how to play a card.
• Offensive Fear: Feared enemies now take +2% more damage per Fear stack, giving Shadow Cult an offensive edge on top of the damage reduction.

Faction Balance

A broad rebalance to bring the factions closer together — Demon Horde and Hell Hounds come down, Shadow Cult and Undead Legion come up.

• Demon Horde — Combos now reward Demon Horde: combo damage bonuses scale by how many Demon Horde cards are actually in the combo. A pure-DH combo gets the full bonus; mixed combos get proportionally less; a combo with no DH cards gets none. Previously those bonuses fired on every combo regardless of suit — so Demon Horde quietly scaled off your whole deck and ran away with the game.
• Demon Horde (nerf): Combo damage passive 20% → 15%; pair/triple/quad bonuses 10/25/50 → 8/20/40; run bonus +5 → +4 per card; combo heal 5 → 4. Cards: Twin Strike +8 → +6, Juggler +25% → +15%, Infinity Loop +20% → +15%, King's Wrath x3 → x1.5. Talent multipliers (Apocalypse, Bargain) trimmed.
• Hell Hounds (nerf): Burn deals 4 (was 5) damage per stack each turn; Hound Master heals 3 (was 4) per Burn. Cards: Pyre +5 → +2 Burn, Blazing Eight +8 → +6, Controlled Burn 10 → 8, Flame Jack +25% → +20% Burn damage.
• Shadow Cult (buff): Fear reduces enemy damage by 4% (was 3%) per stack; Shadow Priest starts with and heals from 4 (was 3) Fear. Cards: Five Fears +5 → +6, Mind Fray +2 → +3. Fear Queen now consumes only half your Fear stacks for its burst and keeps the rest — so Shadow can turn Fear into damage without dropping its defense.
• Undead Legion (buff): Lifesteal steals 4 (was 3) HP per scoring card; Necromancer lifesteal bonus +50% → +75%. Cards: Death's Toll steal 10 → 12, Soul Harvest 4 → 5, Vampiric Jack +3 → +4, Blood Queen x1.5 → x1.75. Damage-conversion talents up: Life Link 30% → 40% and Blood Bomb 50% → 70% of stolen HP dealt as damage, so lifesteal builds hit harder.
• Soul Shield reworked (UL talent): The Undead "Soul Shield" talent used to reduce every hit by a share of your total lifesteal — which snowballed into flat-out invulnerability. It's now a proper absorb shield: every HP you steal banks +15 flat plus its full amount into a pool (capped at 50% of your max HP) that soaks incoming damage before your health, then depletes and refills as you keep stealing. The current shield shows as a light-blue overlay on the health bar and a blue number at its bottom-left.

Talent Rebalance

Talent points stack up fast, and a full tree was turning you into an unstoppable snowball. This pass brings down the biggest compounding talents and the top-tier capstones so a maxed build is powerful, not unbeatable. (Several of these also fixes talents whose tooltips didn't match what they actually did.)

• Demon Horde combos: Pair +12→+10, Triple +30→+25, Quad +65→+52. Apocalypse now multiplies combo bonuses x1.6 (was x2.0), Supremacy +15%→+10%, Overload +40%→+30%, Bargain +25%→+15%. Compounding talents Bloodlust (+1.8%→+1.2% per combo) and Legacy (+3→+2 permanent per combo) reined in.
• Shadow Cult capstones: Nightmare now x1.6 damage (was x2.0), Void +30%→+22%, Mastery +0.8%→+0.6% per 1% enemy HP.
• Hell Hounds burst: Final and Blaze 1.8x→1.6x, Eternal explosion 3x→2.4x, Wrath 1.5x→1.35x stacks.
• Undead Legion: Reservoir permanent damage +30%→+22%.
• High-roll talents fixed: Risky now makes you take +50% damage (was actually +120% under the hood, despite the tooltip) and Nightmare +75% (was +150%) — a real gamble now, not an instant death sentence.
• Tooltip accuracy: A batch of talent descriptions were showing the wrong numbers or cryptic jargon. Every corrected tooltip is listed below (old → new).

Tooltip corrections — Demon Horde

• Pair Power: "Pairs +12 dmg" → "Pairs +10 dmg"
• Triple Strike: "Triples +30 dmg" → "Triples +25 dmg"
• Quad Crush: "Quads +65 dmg" → "Quads +52 dmg"
• Fury Echo: "Combo dmg carries +2 next hand" → "Each combo adds +2 damage to your combos next hand"
• Bloodlust: "Each combo permanently adds +0.018 mult" → "Each combo permanently adds +1.2% damage. Heal 5 HP per combo scored"
• Supremacy: "Combo bonuses gain +15% value" → "Combo bonuses gain +10% value"
• Bargain: "+0.25 mult, combos don't add base" → "+15% damage, combos add no base"
• Overload: "Combos +40%, can't stack types" → "Combos +30% damage, can't stack types"
• Apocalypse: "All combo bonuses are multiplied by 1.5x" → "All combo bonuses x1.6"
• Legacy: "Combos +3 permanent/battle" → "Each combo permanently adds +2 combo damage (this battle)"

Tooltip corrections — Shadow Cult

• Nightmare (Fear): "Fear affects enemy mult 50%" → "Fear also cuts the enemy's damage multiplier (at 50% strength)"
• Strike: "+0.07 mult/Fear (max 1.05)" → "+6% damage per Fear stack (max +90%)"
• Risky: "Base mult 2.0, take 2.2x dmg" → "x2.0 damage dealt, take +50% damage"
• Void: "+0.30 mult, Fear stacks applied reduced by 1" → "+22% damage, Fear stacks applied reduced by 1 (min 0)"
• Form: "±20% dmg/defense" → "+20% damage dealt, -20% defense"
• Feast: "Consume Fear for +0.35 mult" → "Consume Fear for +5% damage per stack"
• Nightmare (capstone): "2.0x damage dealt, take 2.5x damage" → "x1.6 damage dealt, take +75% damage"
• Mastery: "+0.008 mult per 1% enemy HP" → "+0.6% damage per 1% enemy HP"

Tooltip corrections — Hell Hounds

• Inferno: (garbled text) → "Burn ticks twice per hand — at the start of Play and the end of Counting"
• Revenge: "Enemy dmg = +1 Burn" → "When the enemy damages you, apply +1 Burn to it"
• Final: "<25 HP = 1.8x all dmg" → "<25% HP = 1.6x all dmg"
• Blaze: "12+ Burn = 1.8x dmg" → "12+ Burn = 1.6x dmg"
• Eternal: "20 Burn: Explode for 3x dmg" → "20 Burn: Explode for 2.4x dmg"
• Wrath: "Burn ignores defense, 1.5x stacks" → "Burn ignores defense, 1.35x stacks"

Tooltip corrections — Undead Legion

• Soul Shield: "Shield = 40% HP stolen" → "Each steal banks +15 shield plus its full amount, absorbing damage before your health (max 50% HP)"
• Undying: "Lifesteal +40 cap over max" → "Overheal up to +40 HP above your max"
• Reservoir: "Gain +30% damage permanently" → "Gain +22% damage permanently (heal still capped at 75% max HP)"

Descent Tuning & Economy

• Difficulty Curve: Enemies and mid-run bosses scale up more sharply through the later sections, so fights stay meaningful as your deck snowballs.
• Tighter Economy: Peg rewards are down and relics/potions cost more — you can no longer buy out every shop, so purchases are real choices.
• Merchant manners: A Merchant will never re-sell something you've already bought this run (even after you use it — no stockpiling two of the same one-shot potion), and a run will never open on a Merchant.
• Talent points that fit: You no longer bank talent points you can't spend — awards stop once your unlocked trees are full (up to the run cap), so the first run doesn't hand you points with nowhere to go.

Enemy Changes

• The Dealer (boss): The Dealer's shield has been reworked. Instead of a flat reduction on everything, it now greatly reduces (95%) the first hit you land each phase and re-arms for the next phase. This fixes a bug where the shield stacked twice, and the enrage now correctly bypasses it.
• The Dealer — Combo Scaling reworked: The Dealer used to add its per-combo damage bonus to every hit it made, so a combo-heavy deck fed it an ever-compounding stack that could nuke you from full in a single counting phase. Now it banks that bonus from the combos you score and unleashes it on the first hit of its counting hand, then resets — a single telegraphed strike instead of a runaway spiral. On top of that, no single Dealer hit can now exceed 20% of your max HP, so it can't one-shot you no matter how the numbers stack.
• Faction Reactions: Enemies telegraph a "hot" faction each hand with a highlighted icon and tooltip, so you can see which card type they'll react to. The hot faction now rotates randomly through their reactions each hand, and empowered Elite enemies run two at once.
• Cursed Mirror: Reflected damage from its Horde ability is now capped at 40 per hit — it still copies 25% of your damage, but big single hits can no longer rebound for catastrophic amounts.
• Rotten Jack-o-Lantern: Its Shadow-card penalty is reworked — playing a Shadow card now reduces your Fear to 50% effectiveness instead of doubling its cost. Easier to read and more predictable.

Quality of Life

• Bigger Cards: Cards in hand are larger with bigger, auto-sizing effect text that's easier to read.
• Battle Log: The Log now drops down and stays open while you play — it no longer dims or blocks the board. Close it with the Log button, the X, or Esc.
• Character Cards: Now show your real run HP; unused stat lines were removed to clean up the display.
• Counting Display: The combo label during Counting now shows the actual damage each combo deals, not just its name.
• Game Speed Button: The fast-forward icon now uses stacked arrows so the current speed is clearer at a glance.
• Cleaner HUD: The small damage/healing balance bar under the health bar has been removed.
• Tidier Play Area: Played cards no longer overlap at all — each entity's cards lay out side by side at full width (shrinking to fit a long row), so effect text never bleeds onto a neighbor. Hovering a played card still pops the full card. Whoever leads the hand sits flush against the left edge and the second player's row is nudged half a card over, so play order reads at a glance.
• Shield Readout: When you have a Soul Shield, the health bar shows both a light-blue overlay and a blue number so you always know how much you have.
• Quieter Enemies: Enemy "took damage" sounds no longer fire on every hit — they play only when an enemy is defeated, so busy combats are far less noisy.
• Curse Clarity: A shop-price curse now reads "until your next Merchant" instead of a misleading "combats remaining" count.

Tutorial

• Completion Screen: Defeating the Straw Dummy now shows a congratulations screen with a button back to the main menu.
• No More Skipping: The Skip button has been removed from the tutorial so new players see all of it.
• Card Effects Step: A new step explains that every card has a unique faction effect based on its rank, so new players know to read their cards.

Bug Fixes

• Tutorial Freeze: Fixed the tutorial hanging after the final blow to the Straw Dummy.
• Crib Tax (Depth 13+): Fixed card-count, overflow, and scoring issues, stretched crib cards, and Reveal Enemy Crib pointing at the wrong cards when Crib Tax interleaves them.
• Controlled Burn: Its choice popup now properly pauses the play phase.
• Crash Fix: Fixed a crash tied to Shared Pain, Enemy Regen, and Burning Floor interactions.
• Feedback: Added on-screen toasts for Crib Tax and Deck Sabotage steals, and a depth indicator on the map.
• Card Art: Fixed an issue that could leave some card images missing from the build on certain installs.
• Single-Enemy Text: Defeating a lone enemy now reads "Enemy defeated" instead of a plural.
• Combat Smoothness: Fixed the split-second stutters when dealing cards, moving to the crib, and scoring — sounds, card art, and combat icons are now pre-loaded/cached instead of loading from disk mid-hand.
• Card Reveal: Shadow Compass now reveals a card by its proper name (e.g. "King of Undead Legion") instead of a raw rank and code ("13 of UNDEAD_LEGION").