A Better Knowing Skull

This mod is meant to redesign the Event "Knowing Skull" into something more fun for the player while maintaining the core design aspects of the base event.

The Event "Knowing Skull" has new options allowing the player to leave before entering and receive a small bonus. If the player chooses to engage with the skull, there are new options available for purchase.

Additionally, the relative costs of each option have been altered to be balanced for their offerings, and also scale at different rates. The health cost of leaving has also been reduced below Ascension 15.

The event can also now be found on any floor of the Spire, not just Act 2, and the health requirements for finding the event have been adjusted to make finding the event much less common at low hp values.

The event has also been given a set of minor adjustments when encountered at or above Ascension 15, as the base event did not change with the rest of the events.

There is an option in the mod’s configuration panel to disable the inital bonus for leaving without choosing any options.

The normal event relies on a classic Push Your Luck[boardgamegeek.com] mechanic. The player can spend more health now to get rewards, but risks not keeping enough health to survive later encounters. In deconstructing this event, the main issue noted was not the core idea, but rather the particular implementation resulting from a couple distinct factors.

The options offered are not the most appealing, and as a result the typical interaction with this event is to leave immediately, and thus have a net result of losing about 6 health. Occasionally, a player might opt to take the gold bonus once or twice before going if they are feeling healthy, or risky. Often times adding a random Colorless card is a negative even without the health cost, and often potions are either full, or not worth the cost of obtaining a new one, especially at random.

It is inherently not enjoyable to select an event space and not actually interact with the event in any meaningful way and also be forced to lose health. This is particularly true as the normal event is limited to Act 2, in which typically health is the most important, as in Act 1 health can be spent a bit more freely, and in Act 3 there are other factors that cause a health trade to be potentially more viable.

As a solution, "A Better Knowing Skull" reimagines this event to be a little less frustrating when showing up at the wrong moment, while also encouraging the player to "push their luck" a little more often.

To accomplish this, an option was added before entering into negotiation with the skull to instead leave, circumventing the forced health penalty, and offering a slight heal as compensation (There is also an option to disable this section of the event in the settings). Naturally, different players will have different biases on how much they want to risk, so risk avoidant players can use this option to avoid having to pay any penalty while still keeping the event in the pool of options.

Another task was to make the offerings more appealing such that players are more likely to engage with the central mechanic of the event. This was accomplished by altering the rewards offered. Instead of a random potion and a random Colorless card, the player now can choose to trade health to upgrade a random card in their deck, or receive a random common relic. The cost related to these offerings have been meticulously adjusted to find the sweet spot where the player always has to stop and think for a minute before deciding if the cost is worth it in their given situation. Obviously, each player will have a different sweet spot and valuation, but the goal is to reduce the probability of always choosing the same option regardless of surrounding circumstances. This also has the added benefit of making the rewards for spending health a bit more obviously helpful, as getting a bad Colorless card is a double negative, and many potions are not useful or exciting to receive. It is not a good player experience to pay a cost for something only to get nothing, or even punished, as a result.

The costs of each option have also been given a very minor fluctuation in order to give the player another aspect to consider when evaluating both the value of any given option, but also the risk of choosing to engage with the skull at all.

Additionally, in the base event, the player can technically kill themselves by not watching the costs carefully in comparison to their health, particularly as the leave option has a health cost associated with it too. While this is a neat possibility, it is not the most interesting mechanic, and isn’t really a measure of skill in any satisfying way. "A Better Knowing Skull" aims to keep the spirit of this interaction while limiting the possibility of realistically making this math mistake by lowering the leave cost to 1 hp (Above Asc 15, however, the cost rises to fit the theme of unfavourable events).

This event was chosen due to specific requests I received and thus I had a less clear vision for how to handle this event, so I am excited to hear your feedback in the comments!

Feel free to suggest other events that you would like to see revamped or reimagined!

I hope you have a good time with this mod, and I welcome any and all feedback.
Special thanks to 旅渚Lastcel for the Simplified Chinese translation!

If you enjoyed this mod, consider checking out some of my other mods:
A Better Note
A Better Sensory Stone
A Better Match
A Better Forgotten Altar
A Better Third Choice
A Better Lab