First off, I love the recent Underspire changes. I’ve cleared it weekly since it was released, but the additions of more room types have definitely made it more fun and made me want to do more than just clear Diamantina every week.
That said, I feel like merchants are now underused. I use trinkets each week on the final 2 bosses but otherwise don’t use them. This previously meant buying them from merchants because I didn’t get enough from guardians to cover my usage. However now that we have treasures and traps and trinket rooms I have more than I need, and the merchant offers go unused (I also never buy the keystones).
The merchants can still sell the keystones, but I’d love to see their trinket offers replaced or expanded by something else. They could provide single purchase options comparable to what a travelling merchant sells (imperial deeds, writs, dragonite, pet food, etc), and it’d be worth checking to see what they have for sale instead of skipping them entirely (which is what I currently do).
100%. We need to be able to use these either for offers or in the forge - such as lowering the cost of converting medals or allowing them to be contributed to making deeds with writs, to reduce the cost.
Otherwise they become useless currency for everyone.
Generally, I only use Trinkets for high-level Trap Rooms – typically a combo of Curse+Death Mark+Freeze+Spell Resistance.
But yes, the fact that Trap Rooms reward you with more treasure (usually Trinkets) does lead to a surplus of them, making the Merchant offers considerably less valuable.
I assume the abundance of trinkets is a sign that low level players were struggling with underspire and getting put off, so they’re there to help lower level players push further and survive longer, so they can earn more rewards.
And that’s great. But… for higher level players, we don’t need all those trinkets, so having some way to trade them in at the merchants, for other stuff would be nice. Or for players beyond a certain point in the game to find higher level resources instead, in merchants offer and other places. Maybe once you have 25 of a set trinket, it won’t appear as a reward anymore?
Trinkets are fine and don’t need a cap. The merchants just need a new gimmick. It just isn’t appealing to pay gems for trinkets that get used up per battle. The people that could use trinkets from merchants would have to spend way too many gems to make them worthwhile, and the rest of us don’t benefit much at all for them.
I think those Merchants could be a full run Genie/Demon-type modifier sellers, but with rewards.
As examples:
Pay x Gems: For the rest of your run, you have a 2% chance to drop a Book of Deeds after each battle, but a Trap Gem spawns once every enemy turn.
Pay X Gems: The next dragon boss you face will drop double the rewards, but the next dragon boss enemy team starts with full mana.
Pay x Gems: For the rest of your run, your torches only have a 50% chance to be used up, but your troops are stunned at the beginning of the battle.
Pay x Gems: The next treasure sentinel will drop a 2nd drop, but your troops start that battle cursed.
Could make it a lot more interesting. (and some things could be fine tuned/balanced etc.)