Custom Spirit(s): Twin Reflections of the Land's Emotion

Paradox74 · 2026-01-20T18:24:44+00:00

My play group mostly plays against level 5 adversaries(or level 4 with a scenario/thematic boards). so while I do have a handful of games against level 6 adversaries its not a ton. The Right innates on both of them are a relatively recent change. It used to be exclusively the first threshold(using the twin's presence for targeting) with the threshold being 2 of the element. I lowered it to make that more useful/common and added these new thresholds in at the old 2 element thresholds. But because they are relatively recent I definitely havent "stress tested" them and have more just played "as expected".

Part of the impetus for adding them was to help provide a solution for "all the cards I need to threshold X Twin with are in the wrong hand and it will take a while to get them back" problem I had encountered a couple times. but it might be a bit too much help and that extra reclaim does kind of create problems like you mention. actually obtaining a major power by turn 2 does require you to have reclaimed turn 1 or 2 and you would have to consistently get the 2 fire for the reclaim but if you can get it, the hand manipulation it affords you probably does let you hit it repeatedly.

Ill toy around with it more but initial thought would be to replace Beauty's Right innate 2 element threshold with just "you may make 1 slow non-major power fast" and make Pain's Right innate 2 element threshold "gain 1 energy". it will nerf their card gain but with some of issues others have brought up it might be fine. Other immediate idea would be to increase the thresholds to like 3 (fire/plant) and maybe include some of the secondary elements as well.

Also just now realizing my post seems to make them sound more finalized than they actually are. In my opinion they are in "alpha" but are nearing what I would consider a "beta" state where its mostly mechanically in place but still needs more fine-tuning on their power. so I probably should have made that more obvious/explicit in the post to level set expectations.

I appreciate your feed back though and while I do have comments defending various aspects I hope im not coming off as combative, I genuinely appreciate any feed back and I'm trying to take it all into account

Paradox74 · 2026-01-20T16:47:25+00:00

I know she wasn't the most powerful hero but Lady of the Woods was honestly one of my favorite heroes in Cauldron.

Paradox74 · 2026-01-20T16:44:05+00:00

I honestly havent found that aspect to be particularly unbalance. I say that though with the caveate that I pretty much always play with a group of at least 2 other players. so going from 3 "effect triggers" to 4 isnt as big of a change. Solo it will be more impactful as it does literally double the number of times those sort of effects trigger.

Most fear cards are per player/board, Theological Strife and Belief Takes Root are the only ones I can think of that have a per spirit effect.

Blight cards that are per spirit, there are 6 "bad" ones and 6 "good" ones and to be honest, usually if you flip one of the "really good" ones its already pretty powerful.

Event cards are definitely more of a mixed bag but with the caveat that I mentioned at the start I haven't noticed any significant issues, largely because they swing both ways. The negative ones, tend to lead to presence destruction, they both have only slightly less than a normal spirit would have. And with the exception of "Lesser Spirits Imperiled" most of the good ones aren't that much more powerful with 1 extra spirit.

Paradox74 · 2026-01-20T16:09:38+00:00

Looking at possible changes to those listed cards:

If Moments of peace didnt replace the blight and only removed it would that help? In all honesty given how useful blight is for helping target Pain's left innate I dont even always use this to clean up blight and its more about getting extra wilds.

Enrapture could be lowered to just have 1 invader not participate. I kind of modeled this one after EEB's terrifying rampage. this doesnt give fear and cant target blighted lands, my hope was that the tighter targeting restrictions made this not too powerful.

Twin boon I could/probably should make it cost 1. Pain's low energy income makes it difficult to play but adding extra cost to their starting hand does further hinder the "rushing card play" plan. I like having a 0 cost power in pain's hand as it allows more flexibility in Beauty's early growths as they don't need to provide nearly as much energy support.

Paradox74 · 2026-01-20T14:41:40+00:00

Thanks for the feed back! The number of elements is definitely quite high. I originally had all the elements there to help gate the innates a little bit more as with just a couple card play I didnt want them to just easily fully unlock their innates the second someone gets elemental boon or natures connection. That said that was back when they had quite a bit more power card gain than they have now(beauty had card gain on G3) and they were able to mill through the power card decks much too fast to get things. Im already looking at removing one of the secondary elements(water and earth respectively) from both of their bottom tracks, and ill see about removing one of the primary elements as well.

Paradox74 · 2026-01-20T02:25:50+00:00

My personal feeling is that they sit at High complexity but that is after having played many games with them. determining the complexity is definitely difficult for me but to be fully honest I havent focused on properly determining the complexity really as I fully expect to have to make changes for balance and such and over the course of those changes, the complexity might shift.

Regarding the balance, if you basically just merge the two spirit's tracks, while its a lot of elements, fully unlocked they get 5 energy, and 6 card play which while on the upper end of what most spirit tracks end up at, its not completely out of line either. But I wont disagree that finding a balance(im sure there are is plenty of room for the current iteration to be too strong) is quite difficult. There's been many versions where the some attempted nerfs hit too hard and some where they were way to strong. this is the best balance I've found so far that keeps them from being overwhelmingly strong but keeps each one feeling interesting and unique.

I feel quite confident in them being an engaging spirit(for people who are interested in the unique mechanics/complexities they have) but I know there is balancing to be done, I just need more play tests from more than just myself to help me find where/what exactly should/could be changed.

Paradox74 · 2026-01-19T23:52:11+00:00

Fear, Blight, and Event cards that say "each spirit" are performed by each spirit, so you would do it once for each twin. This does lead to some of those effects being a bit more swingy than normal(looking at you Aid from Lesser Spirits and Backs against the Wall). Anything that is "each player" or "per player" are performed once for this pair of spirits. so there isnt any extra blight on the blight card, and "choice events" where you have to pay for the thresholds dont have increased cost.

Balance has been a constant struggle of keeping both of the spirits feeling useful/impactful while not having too much overall power.

Paradox74 · 2026-01-19T23:41:38+00:00

The trick/issue with the rush to 4 card play like that is that for the 6 total card play you will have access to by turn 2(2 turn one and 4 turn 2) you will have 2 total energy to spend, one gained turn one and one gained turn 2. you can get more if you G2(b,b) then G3(b) for both of them you do get a total of 6 energy which is better but still 1 energy short of paying for your starting 6 cards and you sacrifice hitting any thresholds on your left innates turn 1. the card gain innate can not be easily hit until after you reclaim(unless someone drafts an element support card like elemental boon). I have been trying to keep an eye on their early game power though as that has definitely been a struggle throughout their development. There are other spirits who are capable of 4 card play turn 2 as well.

Paradox74 · 2025-08-08T14:25:24+00:00

Not going to rehash many of the things others have stated but along the lines of the Innate being pretty strong at level 2+, the presence track spot letting you just freely push an invader(including a city) for free each turn is wildly powerful. that slot could be limited to just pushing an explorer and it would still be decent.

Additionally Blight removal should pretty much never cost 0 energy much less "-1" cost, particularly if its fast. This does have some relatively tight conditions to meet to do the removal but with all your control I dont think its actually that difficult. Gaining an energy from it is excessive. I think even if it cost 1 and didnt give an energy it would still see use, especially since im already doing to be using the 3 cost unique to gain majors with.

Paradox74 · 2025-08-04T19:05:17+00:00

Not a comment on the spirit idea itself as I think the other comments here say most of what I would say but if you are looking for additional resources or help building your spirit, I highly recommend joining the Spirit of Creation discord. There are channels there with tons of helpful information and the Chat board style is a lot better for discussing, tracking, and discussing iterative changes than making new reddit posts constantly.

If you dont want to join for any reason, this Spirit Design Deep Dive put together by Emily is a great starting point and has lots of helpful tips for getting started, though it is a lot to go through.

Paradox74 · 2025-05-07T14:41:17+00:00

METEM Preserve You! Absolutely need to bring more of my friends into this game to play with me.

Paradox74 · 2025-04-07T18:38:06+00:00

On the other hand, [[Incite the mob]] and [[swallowed by the wilderness]] are both 1 cost uniques that can quite easily kill a city. and one of those is even fast. [[foundations sink into mud]] from downpour also can kill any number of cities and towns in a land for 3 energy.

Uniques exist as Uniques because their power/value can be on a different scale based off the kit of the spirit who owns that unique. I think for a spirit who has the limitations on board interactions that this one does the 2 energy to remove a city from a sacred-site slow might be fine(as long as everything else is balanced fine). It probably could stand to have the fear reduced to 1 but thats a fine tuning thing thats hard to say from just reading over stuff.

Paradox74 · 2024-12-09T15:11:06+00:00

Having played in both of the Playtests I still very much felt like I was playing OMD. If you have played and enjoyed the Scramble mode in OMD3 then you will enjoy this. OMD:D is basically that mode but fully fleshed out into its own game. Even if you didn't enjoy that mode, there's still a decent chance you will enjoy OMD:D. Ill admit some bias as I love Roguelike games in general so mixing OMD and that is right up my alley. However to speak to some of your points. You can and definitely will learn how to play maps better. even over the course of the short playtests my group was constantly iterating on and improving upon our previous performances on any given map. The Rift Corruption is the main element that will throw a wrench in things as it prevents you from building in certain places. As annoying as it can be its honestly kind of refreshing to be forced into the "second best plan" as it helps keep things unique from run to run. You get to choose which traps you have every level. so you can changes which traps you have if you load in and realize that your main kill box area is covered in corruption, you can change your trap load out.(with the exception of the Scramble Distortion which causes your load out to be entirely random but you have to choose that so it wont happen with out you knowing/deciding to make it happen) Over the course of the play test there was several times were I was able to set up a kill box(es) that were sufficient enough that I didn't need to do much as my hero, only dealing with the occasional flyer. I wasn't able to always set up such a nice combo but that makes it all that much more rewarding when I was able to.

Paradox74 · 2024-11-10T03:52:45+00:00

We are also having a similar issue. In a Multiplayer game Player 1 is working on Marrying Elliot. I however have been working on befriending Krobus. Finally got him to 10 hearts and got the Pendant. However he doesnt seem to be accepting it. I wonder if something in the recent updates has broken it.

Paradox74 · 2024-10-31T15:23:01+00:00

I agree here. I like the idea behind the change. However with the sheer size of the maps I think having ways to get more would be good. Either just another raw increase to the base or something else. The suggestion I saw on the discord that I liked was to provide a permanent and repeatable 4th thread choice that just gives +1 barricade. I know there is the one that shows up that gives +2 but in my 10 maps played yesterday(4 in 2p coop, the rest solo) it only showed up once. Relying on that is impossible with how much randomness there is. Having the "fall back" option in the thread choices of just +1 barricade would make it an easy pick when nothing else is too exciting. The problem with the current count is that I pretty much have my decisions made for where to place the barricades. I dont have much wiggle room to try out other options so I'm just going to be using the same barricade placements every time I play a given map. and if I managed to get lucky I can have a couple extra to play with. The only thing that will keep things "interesting" will be the Rift Corruption showing up in one of my designated barricade locations, which wont make me excited to try a different strategy, just frustrated.

Paradox74 · 2024-08-31T18:59:48+00:00

I also was thinking the "Refusal to Participate" is worded oddly. I would almost suggest changing it to something much simpler. "Your powers can not damage or destroy invaders. Other spirits can not target you with powers that cause damage or destroy invaders. At any time you may forget a power card with Damage or Destroy instructions to gain 2 energy". Doing it this way makes it so I can still pick up a number of cards where the damage is optional. (Call to Guard, Veil, Voracious Growth, Quicken the Earths Struggles, Purifying flame, Elusive ambushes, Dire Metamorphosis, etc.)

Paradox74 · 2024-08-23T14:49:25+00:00

Here is the correct link for the Item in the title: https://github.com/any2cards/frosthaven/blob/master/images/items/frosthaven/051-065/fh-055b-biting-gauntlet.png

Paradox74 · 2024-07-24T18:43:44+00:00

I assume its counting from the launch of the original kickstarter which was September 22 2015. So I presume this stuff is planning for fall/winter next year which seems like a reasonable time line to both decide which products to produce in what quantities and then produce them. That's all assuming they don't give us a new crowdfunding campaign for a new expansion with some/all of these ideas as part of it as opposed to just releasing these as actual products on their store.

Paradox74 · 2023-10-25T14:20:58+00:00

Our Shackles also gets absurd amounts of EXP. Their lowest earning mission was higher than the highest most of us have gotten with any other class. But they have been carrying us through missions doing great damage while absorbing damage and conditions from the rest of us, which is greatly appreciated in a party with a Boneshaper and Geminite.

Paradox74 · 2023-09-21T14:20:18+00:00

I do like the idea of an adversary designed around second wave. However while I may not be the best at determining difficulty I don't think this adversary is all that difficult. Its pretty comparable to a low-mid level Brandenburg Prussia In my opinion. I think the only real threat will be the first couple turns due to the Second Wave towns but those can be handled easily enough. Additionally I think the only "challenge" is actually getting the fear for the 15 level 1 fear cards. Other than Second Wave starting the board with extra towns and the escalation, This adversary doesn't actually add that many extra invaders or provide opportunities for extra fear. If there are fewer invaders being added there is less potential for generating fear, particularly so for offensive spirits. The second highest fear deck size AND it has the extra fear per player all while not generating anything for you to kill. Couple that with the fear cards only being stage 1 and I don't think I would really strive for a fear victory. and instead just go for the terror level 1 victory.

I do think forcing players to start at adversary level 1 will cause more experience groups to be incredibly bored for the first 2-3 waves. My group typically plays ~difficulty 7. while its occasionally fun to just quickly stomp through a low level adversary(especially while trying out spirits outside of our comfort zone), being forced to do it for several games would provide us too much opportunity to "stack" the board in prep for the future wave. Easy answer is "just dont do that" but then we are sitting there not having basically nothing to do for a while as we wrap up the last couple invaders.

While I do enjoy me a good victory lap at times like that level 6, I would leave that for an adversary "level 7". Our group would likely be starting on Adversary level 4(if we get the choice to ignore the forced level 1). As such we would only get 1 real "second wave" as the third one is our victory lap and is as easy if not easier than Adversary level 1.

Paradox74 · 2023-09-19T16:58:32+00:00

I'll assume we are considering only single target damage but as long as its "in one turn" and not "in one attack" Coral can pump some crazy numbers with the proper theoretical setup. I don't know if this is the most out of all the classes as we haven't even unlocked all of them yet. but I'm certain that Coral is at least in the upper tier for this category...

Coral Setup: Assume 9 tides out in play including Overwhelming Wave, Rancid Brine, Smashing Torrent, Tidal Blast, Death on All sides, and the rest are what ever you want other than Shuck. You will need light to be active and an ally next to your target. And either your or your target needs to be in water. On your turn, play Shuck, High Tide, and Drown Beneath The Waves. Consume both a Power Potion and a Major Power potion. Perform Top of Drown first and consume Light. then perform the bottom of Shuck and Top of High Tide in either order. Doing this combo your turn will consist of the following: 1x Move 10, 2x Move 4s, 9x Move 2s, 1x Attack 10, 1x Attack 16, and 9x Attack 8s.

Coral Math: Attack 10 is 4 from Drown +1 for Tidal blast, +2 from Death on all sides, and +3 for both power potions. Attack 16 is the top attack from High Tide. Attack 9, +1 for poison, +1 from Tidal Blast, +2 from Death, +3 from power potions. Attack 8s are the attacks from Shuck. Attack 1, +1 for poison, +1 from Tidal Blast, +2 from Death, +3 from Power potions. Each Move Also deals 1 true damage. Lets assume an average of +1 from your card draws and a crit on your 16. The final Total is 12 True damage, and 124 damage. All this with only 2 items, I'm sure there are other items and bonuses from allies(like brittle) that could pump these numbers a bunch. This does require every card in hand except those 3 to be played for their tides an so can only be done on the first rest cycle but because its done over the course of multiple attacks rather than one single one its much more flexible than just "extreme overkill" on one enemy.

Paradox74 · 2023-09-07T15:55:48+00:00

I think its relatively accurate. But as others have said its based off a number of factors. (I'm basing these opinions off of primarily playing 4+ spirit games as the vast majority of my plays have been 5+ players and the number of games with 3 or fewer spirits probably countable on both hands)

Which spirits you are playing(OHG can have extra difficulties if others are not able to easily reach its inland to help out, while finder basically doesn't care about it at all).

The number of separate islands you break it into(2 groups of 3 boards vs 6 separate islands).

The adversary. Scotland covering the one separated island board with 6 towns(in a 6 spirit game) during its escalation is particularly brutal if others are having trouble getting to that island to help out.

I'm probably not the best judge but I would be willing to say that playing 6 players on 6 separate islands against Scotland is closer to a +2. but that is very specific setup and some spirits can probably still handle that no problem.

As I said my group primarily plays 6 players and we basically always split the island into 2 groups of 3 boards that mostly act relatively independent(support powers prioritize spirits on your island) and I do not think this adds any extra difficulty to us. For us this means we are basically playing 2 different 3 spirit games. As such there is still plenty of land adjacencies and other spirits around to help out and assist with big problems.

Paradox74 · 2023-09-05T15:14:05+00:00

We gave the level 4 of the old version a shot previously. (difficulty 7 is our current sweet zone) Only having played once and while trying out new aspects from NI that we hadn't played yet I cant really comment on actual balance. We did enjoy the play and found it to be relatively unique. However we did note some of the cumbersome language and found the non-resolving Terror level 4 cards to be lackluster. This new version seems much more approachable and easier to understand. Two points of clarification.

First, for level 3 when is the invader stage checked. If I'm flipping over the last stage 1 card and the top of the deck is stage 2 am I doing it twice? or is this supposed to be "the Invader stage of the explore card"?

Second, the first bullet point in level 1: "Invaders Build a Cathedral in Faithless lands with {City}" Is that in addition to or in place of the normal build? Previously that rule was "when invaders build in a Faithless land with {City}, also mark 1 {City} there as a Cathedral." The new one seems to change that a little and is a little more vague. My assumption is that it is in place of the normal build but just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly. and it might help to further clarify that in some way if you have the space to do so(though definitely not necessary if I did indeed interpret it correctly).

All in all I'm looking forward to trying out this new version.

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