Sane Transcendence

Transcendence is an item that offers a lot of advantages with no real downsides; it's a very powerful item that trivializes many game mechanics. This mod aims to rebalance the item.

Changes

Vanilla Item

Increases the holder's maximum health by 50% (+25% per stack), but replaces all but 1 point of their health with shields.

Rebalanced Item

Increases the holder's maximum health by 0% (+20% per stack), but replaces all but 1 point of their health with shields. Also increases shield recharge delay by 20% per stack and reduces shield regen rate by 20% per stack.

Rationale

The first Transcendence stack was very powerful, giving the user a substantial 50% health boost with a single stack. Turning the user's health into shields is already an upside in most ways: shields recharge infinitely simply by avoiding damage, and they are not affected by the Eclipse 1 and 5 modifiers or debuffs like Hex of Famine or Malachite Elites. Stacking the item further increases the user's health, but comes with the trade-off of taking longer to start and finish recharging the shield, turning stacking into a careful balancing act. If you are good at avoiding damage or have damage-negation items like Safer Spaces, stacking becomes more appealing, but it carries the risk of severely hindering your shield regeneration if overstacked.