Yoshika Miyako

Yoshika Character Mod

Adds Yoshika as a playable character.

Overview (as of v0.2.3):

Colors: Black, Red and Green.
Cards: 69 (of 76)
Exhibits: 4 (including Starter Exhibits)

This is an Alpha version - it's incomplete but is playable since its card collection is approx. 90% completed.
The mod has only temporary card art, and is missing some key art too.
The cards need some fine-tuning, and there's probably some other things too.

Main Themes:

Life Loss/Gain (Black): Life and Death! Sacrificing part of your life for some strong effects and then healing it back later!
On top of that, Yoshika has many cards which interact or trigger whenever your life is manipulated, with synergies that can be formed from it.

Temporary/Permanent Firepower (Red): Firepower increases the damage of attacks. Temporary Firepower is removed at the end of the Player's turn.
Yoshika has some low-cost attacks and attacks which hit multiple times, which can take advantage of the Firepower increasing damage per hit.
ngl this theme was very difficult to write about due to how simple it is. Zombie go WRAAGHH and beat you to death before they die themselves

Poison (Green): Yoshika uses Poison in her danmaku, so of course she has to utilise the existing Poison status effect as well.
Poison causes the enemy to lose life at the start of their turn, and then the amount is decreased by 1 for the next turn.
This damage will pass through Block and Graze, and can easily accumulate over time. Although it may seem slow, Yoshika has cards which can forcefully trigger the life loss effect, which can certainly speed things up.

Sub Themes:

Half-life State: Zombies, Jiangshi and the like are undead creatures, who've returned to life but are still at the edge of it.
Translating that to game mechanics, the Player can switch to a "Zombie" state when below half life, and trigger bonus effects while in that state.
This provides a simple but effective risk-reward system where you want to be just barely below the halfway point, and this threshold allows the Player to tank some damage without defending when they want to be below half life.

Midsummer Flowers: Yoshika's token card is the Midsummer Flower, which deals damage and increases the damage of other played Flowers during combat. With the large amount of cards being played, this scales very well with Firepower which Yoshika has an easy access to.
In Slay the Spire, the equivalent card is known as the Claw, which is very fitting for Yoshika who attacks with her hands.

Regeneration: Regeneration heals the Player every turn its active, though it halves the amount of life gained when triggered.
You can think of this status effect as Yoshika's version of Frost Armor - a strong and persistent defensive buffer with only a few cards that provide it.

Status cards (Sunlights, Shadows, Residues): The black statuses feel underused since they only appear in the Black Neutral card pool, so I added some cards which use them. They fit in with the existing risk-reward themes, plus there's two cards (Indiscriminate Ignition and Spirit Assignment) which ask for Status synergies so I need to incorporate something in. Refracted Sunlights were also added to match Dark Residue's "self-damage" style.

Extra Concepts:

Reactive Effects (Reflection, Drowning, Static Charge): Along with Poison, these effects deal damage on the Enemy's turn instead of the Player's.
Yoshika isn't particularly the type to stall in combat, so these effects are regarded as "Concepts" and not "Themes", though there are some cards which synergise well with them.

Flawless and Losing the Game: These concepts are at the extreme ends of risk (9999 damage, die instantly) and reward (reduce all damage taken to 1).
With Yoshika's existing themes it makes sense to add these as well, though to a limited degree due to how polarising they are.
Yoshika was revived by Seiga Kaku - a hermit who's renowned for being a wicked manipulator - so it's best to have some cards related to her too.

Enforced Setbacks/Challenges:

Lack of Block Permanence: Yoshika has limited Block/Graze cards, and zero Barrier/Frost Armor/Retain Block cards. Instead, she has a decent amount of life gain and a limited access to Flawless. You are expected to face-tank some of the attacks which come your way and heal it off using your cards, which means that "No-damage" runs are basically impossible.

Life Management: With Yoshika's varied healing cards, you can easily stall a little and heal to full life. However, there are some Yoshika cards which ask the Player to be below half life to trigger their conditionals, which you may want to do in order to defeat the enemies quickly. As a Jiangshi, you'll need to keep a strict balance between being alive and being dead.

Additional notes

Bug reports, card suggestions, etc. are appreciated. For feedback, post your suggestions in the modding channel in the LBoL discord.