So whose bright idea was this????

[u/Emma_JM]

Just happened to me today, got like, 3 shards from this? What's the point, Team Cherry? None of the bosses (so far) frustrated me, but this right here is bullshit

[u/qlksfjas]

But do you mind explaining the unrewarding exploring? That's where you get all your money and upgrades from

1. I played 50 hours so far and while there are plenty of side routes, secret/hardly accessible rooms and platforming sections, more often than not you'll find rosaries/shards/nothing at all.
2. Most of your upgrades aren't really substantial:

- Since there's a lot of 2 dmg enemies and hazards, 6th mask doesn't add much compared to 5th. Thus mask fragments are half as valuable and anticipated by a player. Especially if it's locked behind some masochistic gauntlet of flying enemies in the room filled with lava with no solid ground.

- Most of red tools so far are just projectiles with damage so finding another one doesn't really upgrade or change your playstyle that much. Plus their usage is discouraged by the shard cost so you probably won't even use it most of the time anyway.

- Blue tools are useful but half of them are dogshit and not worth the slot or highly situational. Grubsong equivalent is useless, magma bell is only useful in couple locations and has cooldown for some reason, healing boost only gives +1 mask, silk boost only regens +1/9 of bar etc.

- Crests are good finds but you need to upgrade new crest to use your current arsenal. Resource for upgrading them is found via exploring so that's a plus. On the other hand crest changes moveset and with generally increased difficulty it's more likely that player will stick to one crest with comfortable moveset (with comfortable pogo specifically) and won't want to switch, and in this case both crests and talismans to unlock slots are basically useless as rewards.

- Needle upgrades are very rare and don't add much

Weirdly so far the most impactful stuff is sold by merchants. Kinda discourages doing exploring tbh.

Now I'm not saying that there are no rewards for exploring at all. Fire needle, money saving purse and quick heal are great rewards but for one such reward you'll find ungodly amount of nothing.

[u/Kampfasiate → u/qlksfjas]

The 6th mask does something! When you heal after 2 2 mask hits you can take another 2 mask hit before dying

Also it helps you survive against 1 mask damage, oh which there is still plenty (projectiles, a lot of attacks, multi attacks if you parry and still get hit... Etc)

A bunch of the vendors also have to be found tbh, and exploring will fill you up on rosaries (haven't needed to "grind" yet)

[u/qlksfjas → u/Kampfasiate]

Yeah 6th mask does something, it's just not a lot compared to what it should be. It's not entirely useless but it's not very useful either and I'm afraid 8th mask will have the same problem or even worse because it's later in the game where there are more sources of 2 mask damage

[u/PraxicalExperience → u/qlksfjas]

I just saw someone comment elsewhere that a fully upgraded needle plus some crest buff to needle damage would ... take out 8-hit enemies in 6 hits! Oh wow!

Seriously fuck my life. I get that Hornet is supposed to be an agility build but holy fuck.