This is very my first mod so expect some jank.

I didn't like the new items and even less having to blacklist them with a mod to try and enjoy the game, so I spent a week and a half learning how to (very poorly) mod this game.

The white items are specially bad, not only are most of them useless, they bloat the loot poll so other good items like Energy Drink or Delicate Watch are harder to find, this is extra bad since the DLC didn't add any white movement item to keep the ratio of movement items to the rest.

All my opinions on the new items are completely subjective.

No multiplayer testing has been done.

Common Rarity Items | White Items

Warped Echo:

• Taking damage equal or higher than 25% of your maximum health will instead deal 40% of it upfront and the rest will be applied gradually over the next 4 (+0.5 per stack) seconds. This effect has a cooldown of 10 seconds after all of the damage is dealt.

Warped Echo is not really bad, I like the concept a lot is just that the effect feels a bit weird with the biggest problem being that it doesn't have a minimum damage threshold so it can activate against weak attacks instead of actually threatening attacks.

Now it has a minimum damage threshold and the damage is applied over time with 4 ticks per second so you can mitigate some of the damage by healing while it applies and adds synergy with RAPs due to the nature of multiple hits, DoTs have a minimum damage of 1 per tick, so if the damage that you should take is less than the amount of ticks the dot will end early when all damage is applied, this is intentional so you don't take more damage than you should.

Chronic Expansion:

• Every 5 enemies killed grants a stacking damage bonus up to a maximum of 20, Elites count as 5 kills and Champions as 25. Each damage stack increases base damage by 1.25% (+1.25% per item stack), damage stacks are reset back to 0 at the start of the stage.

Chronic Expansion is probably the best white item of the new ones, but it feels a bit clunky to use due to the need to get multi kills, and also if you can get said multi kills chances are you don't need the extra damage and also is potentially broken since you can get infinite damage with FMP.

I keep the main concept of stacking damage via kills but instead or requiring you to get them in a specific way, now every 5 kills grant an stack of bonus damage for the stage, elites and champion counting as multiple kills to get the damage stacks faster and feel rewarded for your effort, it scales higher than Delicate Watch since it takes a while to build up (needs more testing)

Knockback Fin:

• Increase damage by 15% (+15% per stack) against airborne enemies. 10% (+10% per stack) chance on hit to knock grounded enemies into the air.

The problem with knockback fin is that it doesn't really do anything beside sending the enemy flying upwards for a bit, it provides no damage or utility unless you have a LOT of stacks.

Now grants unconditional damage to flying enemies which are present in every stage and keeps the chance to shoot grounded enemies into the air so you can take advantage of the damage bonus against them, kinda like clay pidgeon shooting, knockback(up) doesn't apply to bosses.

Bolstering Lantern:

• Increase armor by 10 (+5 per stack), when below 50% health double this armor increase.

Bolstering Lantern main problem is that it requires you to stay below 50% hp for a damage boost, it is not really worth the danger of being that low and even if you try you can't maintain that threshold because of all of the healing effects that may bump your health back up.

Now it grants armor passively and doubles the effect when you are below 50% health which is when you need it the most, this maintains the original item gimmick.

Antler Shield:

Gain a shield equal to 4% (+4% per stack) of your maximum health that recharges outside of danger. Increase movement speed by 8% (+8% per stack) and jump height by 25% while you have a shield.

Antler Shield is by far the worst new white item, it's an offensive item that has a chance to proc, requires you to take damage to do anything, the damage that it deals is dependent of the damage that you take, you need 10 stacks to deal 100% of the damage, enemies health scales much faster than their damage so for you to deal any meaningful damage to them you would need to get hit by an attack that deals multiple times your hp at which point you would be dead.

The core concept for the new effect is antlers==deer==mobility and blue=>shield, the new effect grants a weak shield that is meant to break when you take a hit and then regenerate later, like antlers, the second effect grants you increased mobility while you have a shield, the extra movement speed and jump height will make dodging attacks and traversing the stage easier.

Uncommon Rarity Items | Green Items

Chance Doll:

• 30% (+10% per stack) chance to gain an extra item on Shrine of Chance last payout, 1% (+{0.5}% per stack) chance for a Boss item. Reduce cost ramp up of Shrines of Chance by 25%.

Chance Doll is not bad, it even has a cool gimmick, the "rarity increase" is actually just a different drop pool that includes boss items which allow shrines of chance to drop them, the problem is that higher rarity does not always means better item, an ATG, Bands or a Ghor's Tome is better than a War Bonds, Aegis or Desk plant for example, it just makes you spend the same amount of money for the same amount of items that may or not be better than what you would've gotten.

Now it has two effects, a non stackable reduction of the shrine of chance cost ramp up and a chance to drop an extra item on payout, this item like the original effect is from a new poll which only includes whites, greens and reds, with white items being less common than greens, while also having a very low chance of instead getting a boss item, keeping the cool gimmick of being able to get boss items from shrines while also keeping them rare. Drop chances need more testing which is hard to do since they are random.

Prayer Beads:

• At the start of the stage this item transform into a copy of 1 (+1 per stack) of your items (40% for Greens/15% for Reds/5% for Boss Items/40% for Void items, corrupted Green items have a higher chance) with a 10% chance to transform into 2 copies. (Increase chance of high rarity with item stack.)

Prayer Beads has four main problems, it requires a way to remove it to get the effect, it requires a way to remove it WHEN you have it stacked so you get the most of the effect, the effect is pretty weak and is pretty unclear exactly what it does or how much it actually does, I had to use some UI mods to check that the effect worked at all.

I focused in two main concepts of the original item, the prayer part as in you are hoping for something good to happen and the effect on remove part as in when the item is removed then you get the effect. The new effect makes this item transform into an item that you currently have at the start of the stage, although this just sounds completely random it has the advantage that you can influence the randomness to some degree by removing items that you don't want duplicated it kinda works like a portable 3D printer, it has a small chance to give you 2 copies of the same item while only consuming 1 Prayer Bead.

Luminous Shot:

• Using your utility skill charges up your next attack calling down 3 (+1 per stack) thunder strikes each dealing 200% base damage. Reduces Utility skill cooldown by 15%.

Luminous Shot is not really bad, it has a unique concept, it just doesn't really do what is says it does, the way it works is, whenever you use your secondary skill you get a buff, after you use your primary skill the next time you deal damage you will trigger the damage effect based on your base damage not your primary damage, this is a separate instance of damage that is not added to your damage, this means that it can't help you trigger Bands and that if you miss your primary you can trigger the effect with any other source of damage, but this does not affect the damage itself.

Due to problems with implementation I had to change a bit my original design, the final design is more of variation of the original effect, the new concept is to use your utility skill which is generally your mobility skill to charge your next hit calling down a bunch of thunder strikes, although the base damage per hit will not be high enough to proc bands, the high proc coefficient and multi hit nature of it will allow you to proc effects consistently allowing characters with lower fire rate to be able to stack debuff easier or even if the cooldown of their utility skill is too long to proc the thunders consistently the cooldown reduction by itself will be helpful.

Sale Star:

• No changes to base functionality, blue circle effect around chests now triggers regardless of your money and appears from farther away.

Sale Star is maybe the best item of the DLC, it is both good and balanced with some interaction with other items like Rusted Key.

Since the effect itself was good, I added some small QOL for people like me that forgets about the item and uses it on small chests, the blue circle effect normally only appears if you have enough money to buy the chest and are close enough to interact with it, now you it appears regardless of your money and from farther away, this does not means that you can interact with it from farther away or that you can buy a chest if you don't have enough money, this is just so is easier to remember that you have a Sale Star available.

Unstable Transmitter:

• Taking damage to below 25% health blasts nearby enemies dealing 350% (+350% per item stack) damage and teleporting you to a random location cleansing all timed debuffs and damage over time effects. This effect has a cooldown of 3 (-10% per item stack) minutes, down to a minimum of 30 seconds.

Unstable Transmitter or UT for short, has a really interesting effect but is pretty bad because it fails at what is supposed to do, save you from death, the main reason being, if you don't have one shot protection you can be one shotted and then your dead corpse will just teleport away and fall to the ground, or you teleport with a bit of hp left and a DOT kills you after the 2 seconds of invincibility runs out.

I initially intended to make this item a Void tier that corrupts Stealthkits, but I decided against it since I didn't want a DLC item to depend of another DLC, maybe I'll add it as an option in the future, as for the effect, I mostly left it intact with some adjustments, now if the attack would've killed you and you are over 25% hp, it will instead leave you at 1 hp before teleporting you away, the second addition is that after teleporting away all your timed debuffs and Dots get cleared, kinda like Blast Shower, this doesn't affect cooldowns, this way it'll be much more effective at keeping you alive, increased base cooldown from 120 to 180 and minimum cooldown from 15 to 30, since the new effect is a type of one shot protection, the CD reduction per stack is also reduced, vanilla ingame description is wrong, is 20% not 5%.

Noxious Thorn:

• 20% chance fire 1 (+1 per stack) thorn that deals 60% TOTAL damage to the 3 (+2 per stack) nearest targets within 15m. Fire an extra thorn for each unique debuff the initial target had and apply 1 bleed for every 3 thorns fired.

Noxious Thorn is the worst new green, it's comparable to Antler Shield in both effect and effectiveness and it shares the same problems with it, at the time of me writing this Noxious Thorn is extremely bugged and will only apply 1 stack of bleed and nothing else, which is pretty useless for a green, is we assume it's not bugged and works properly, the effect is still really underwhelming since it's an offensive effect that not only requires you to get hit, has a chance to trigger it depends on the enemy having a debuff and being close enough, it directly competes with Razorwire which is far superior in every way and less gimmicky.

I struggled a lot on the new design and went through many different variations, the new effect focuses in the bleed, debuff and thorns part of the item, now is an offensive item that deals more damage the more unique debuffs the initial target has, which works with itself since if you fire enough thorns you apply bleed to it, increasing the amount of thorns fired, this is mainly an AOE damaging item that let's you deal DOT damage to a single target as long as he is range of more enemies.

Legendary Rarity Items | Red Items

War Bonds:

• Spawn 3 (+1 per stack) chests at the start of every stage, each chest has a 79% chance to be a Small Chest, 20% to be a Large Chest and a 1% to be a Legendary Chest. (Decrease chance of Small Chests per stack).

War Bonds is the worst new red item, the effect is so weak if gives barely enough gold to buy 3 small chests, it doesn't even let's you get more loot, it just let's you get loot that you would've gotten anyway a tiny bit faster, this is really weak for a red and this is ignoring the fact that sometimes it doesn't give you any gold at all.

The new effect spawn extra chests at the start of each stage with a very small chance to get a legendary chest, instead of getting gold which you get by playing normally, on the other hand getting more chests, which means more loot is not something you can get normally, this means more inventory management and synergies with scrappers, printers, sale star and recycler, the effect stacks with other players like Shipping request.

TODO

• Fix this god forsaken code.
• Fix any balancing issue I find
• The rest of the Red items and maybe the lunar.

Changelog

0.7.8

• Prayer Beads no longer transforms into scraps or items it shouldn't.

0.7.7

• Changed Luminous Shot main effect.
• Removed stacking buff effect, changed damage from TOTAL damage to base damage and added cooldown reduction for your utility skill, this is to focus more in consistent multiple strikes that deal decent damage and are good for procs instead of just being a variation of bands.
• Fixed Noxious Thorn config not working.

0.7.6

• Fixed Warped Echo changes affecting other DOTs damage.
• Fixed Noxious Thorn range.

0.7.5

• Changed Noxious Thorn main effect.
• Removed critical chance and critical damage effect from Noxious Thorn to focus in the concept of a burst of thorns that leaves the target bleeding and gets stronger via debuffs.
• Chance Doll buffed, increased item drop chance from 20% to 30%.
• Warped Echo changed, increased damage threshold from 20% to 25% of maximum health.
• Minor changes to Bolstering Lantern description.
• Removed Utility tag from Knockback Fin.
• Config tweak, added default value under all options descriptions.

0.7.4

• Chronic Expansion code has been rewritten.
• Fixed Chronic Expansion kills sometimes not counting towards kill counter.
• Fixed Chronic Expansion giving lower damage than expected at low levels or low base damage.
• Chronic Expansion small buff, champions kill value increased from 10 to 25.

0.7.3

• Actually Fixed Noxious Thorn sometimes not working due to NullReference.

0.7.2

• Removed RebirthBlacklist tag from Unstable Transmitter. (I misunderstood what it does.)
• Fixed Noxious Thorn sometimes not working due to NullReference.

0.7.1

• Fixed War Bonds not being toggleable in the config.

0.7.0

• Unstable Transmitter rework added.
• Added AIBlacklist, BrotherBlacklist, RebirthBlacklist tags to Unstable Transmitter.
• Unstable Transmitter cooldown buff is no longer hidden.
• War Bons rework added.
• Chance Doll nerf, now it can only drop the extra item on the last payout.
• Noxious Thorn buff, thorn coefficient increased from 0.1 to 0.3
• Warped Echo buff and debuff icon fixed, now it should not look like is stackable.
• Added Risk of Options as dependency.

0.6.0

• Added Luminous Shot rework.
• Added Sale Star QoL changes.

0.5.0

• Now fully configurable, all of the item values can be changed, by default the values reset to their default value after an update but can be changed in options.
• Added Noxious Thorn Rework.
• Warped Echo code has been rewritten.
• Warped Echo now applies the correct upfront damage thanks to the new code.
• Tweaked a bit of Warped Echo description.
• Warped Echo damage split changed from 50-50 by default to 40% upfront, 60% gradual.
• Antler Shield movement speed nerfed from 10%(+10% per stack) to 8%(8% per stack).
• Tweaked items tags so they drop from the chest types that better match their new effects.
• Chronic Expansion and Chance Doll item tags keep as is.
• Added BrotherBlacklist tag to Warped Echo, this prevent Mithrix from using it, although it should be fine I added it just in case.
• Added Damage tag to Knockback Fin.
• Removed Damage tag from Bolstering Lantern.
• Removed AIBlacklist tag from Antler Shield.
• Added OnStageBeginEffect tag to Prayer Beads.
• Removed AIBlacklist tag from Noxious Thorn.
• Replaced Utility tag with Damage tag on Noxious Thorn.

0.4.0

• Added config file to toggle items changes, no values configuration yet.
• Added rework of Prayer Beads.
• Tweaked Chance Doll second item drop chances to match red items drops of normal Shrines.
• (This change was made in 0.3.4, I just forgot to mention it) Removed changes of Cautious Slug and Personal Shield Generator descriptions because of the removal of antler shield effect and because this is outside of the scope of this mod.

0.3.4

• Added rework of Chance Doll.
• Removed and replaced Antler Shield "outside of danger" with increased jump height while shielded to focus more in the mobility aspect and keep the effect simple.
• Tweaked some parts of Antler Shield description to improve readability by rephrasing it to spreading out the colored prefixes more.
• Removed Bolstering Lantern stacking health regeneration for a simpler effect that focuses on armor on low health to maintain original item main gimmick.
• Rewrote and summarized items explanations in the Thunderstore page.

0.3.3

• Fixed Antler Shield new "outside of danger" effect always applying.
• Fixed Elites and Champions kills affecting other multikill items like Berzerker's Pauldron.
• Fixed some typos.

0.3.2

• Antler Shield new effect added and minor tweaks to description.
• Cautious Slug description tweaked, "outside of combat" changed and highlighted to "outside of danger" since the description is incorrect, the Cautious Slug effect triggers when you have not been hit for 7 seconds aka "outside of danger", "outside of combat" is when you have not attacked for 5 seconds.
• Highlighted Personal Shield Generator(PSG) "outside of danger" in the description.
• Chronic Expansion description rewritten for better clarity.
• Elites and Champions count as multiple kills for Chronic Expansion stacks.
• Added the back normal SFX for when you gain the first stack of Bolstering Lantern.

0.3.1

• Forgot to include Dll...

0.3.0

• Initial Release