The Items in the SotS DLC were Pretty Bad... Here's how to Fix Them. 

The issue with antlers isn’t that it’s bad razorwire, it’s that it’s trying to fill a role that razorwire doesn’t. Razorwire deals a flat amount of damage and stacking it only increases the radius and targets hit. Antlers seems to be trying to make taking big hits from large enemies result in those enemies getting hit back, but that’s not what razorwire does. Razorwire is good at dealing with chip damage units like wisps, and also deals with damage over time effects really well. Taking damage as a player is always going to be more severe than an enemy taking damage. Razorwire’s job is to kill lesser enemies so they stop damaging you. It’s almost like a defensive item in role rather than a true thorns effect. Antler shield needs a complete rework because at its core the role it is trying to fill will always be bad because enemies have infinitely more health than they deal damage.

I just realised that I don't think the gearbox devs realize just how bad taking damage (maybe they've never even played e8) is which is why a lot of the items give effects on taking damage

I think antler shield should be something like 100% and 100% with plus 10% per stack for reflected damage. The kicker is give it a high proc coefficient. It's an item that only works when taking damage, and the amount of damage delt will always suck ass due to the nature of your health v enemies health. I think giving each instance of reflected damage a high chance to proc a uke or atg that scales off the reflected damage numbers would atleast make it feel like it does something

Antler shield: Sprinting within 7 meters of an enemy makes them take 20%(+10%) base damage per second. Damage rate increases with move speed. Increases armor by 2(+.5 per stack) Unstable transmitter: keep old behavior and explode again when reappearing and gain 3/4 sec invincibility. Enemies hit by the explosion are stunned for 2 sec (+1 per stack). Old war stealth kit activates after immunity ends Knockback fin: keeps previous behaviors but knocks enemies back and damages enemies for 60% base damage (+15% per stack)

for knockback fin i have a change, item name knockdown fin: when an enemy dies send its corpse 1m in the air(+1m per stack) and drop it causing a 10m area(+2m per stack) of 100% damage(+50% per meter) with a 50% proc coefficient

Im pretty sure alot of these items were built and centered around a certain character in the DLC who totally isn't hated at all for probably the dumbest reasons.

I somewhat dislike the idea of a hard limit on sonorous whispers dropping items. I would prefer a sort of diminishing chance of an item dropping. say it starts off at a 15% chance, then after the first item dropped, it gets reduced to a 10% chance, then after it drops a second item the chance is reduced to 5%, then to 1%. I think the stacking effect could be something like for each stack you get another opportunity for an item to drop 15% of the time. I just feel like the hard limit can make the item feel unnecessarily bad in some circumstances

I still feel warbonds is the worst item. Why? Just use ghor’s tome, leave a treasure if you see it near the teleporter, and grab it before you vanish. Great job, you just got 50% of the value a RED ITEM is supposed to give. Plus, it will give more value over time since you can get multiple drops, while warbonds can only give enough for 1-2 chests and no more. SERIOUSLY, why is it so garbage?

There is a mod out atm called "FlatItemBuff" It's goal was similar to this video's kinda? But they don't really respect the original ideas of the items often, and trys to take them into new directions instead. They changed antlers to a VERY simple +7.5 armor and +7% movement speed. To me this feels perfect, if simple. I always loved mocha because its a 'sugar rush' ; Speed and attack speed is such a cute little ludo narrative. And moose antlers buffing armor and speed kinda scratch that itch too. 'It takes more than that to take down a bull moose' and all that. I think the devs just got a little lost in the sauce, simple is good too!!

*Knockback Fin* Rarity: White Change: Knocks enemies 5 meters (+5 meters per stack) into the air. When kncoking enemies airborne, they gain the debuff pain-o-dynamic, taking more damage comparable and scalable like focus crystal whilst in the air. This aplies to enemies always in the air as well.

Antler shield: Sprinting within 7 meters of an enemy makes them take 20%(+10%) base damage per second. Damage rate increases with move speed. Increases armor by 2(+.5 per stack) Unstable transmitter: keep old behavior and explode again when reappearing and gain 3/4 sec invincibility. Enemies hit by the explosion are stunned for 2 sec (+1 per stack) Knockback fin: keeps previous behaviors but knocks enemies back and damages enemies for 60% base damage (+15% per stack)

A random idea I had for the War Bonds was to give a boost to the money gains and grant them on level up as well as stage start. I don't know if this would be good or not, but it wouls be much better than what it is now

*Sonorous Whispers* Killing elite enemies grants you 1 _(+1 per stack)_ stack of *Whisper,* killing bosses grants 30 _(+3 per stack)_ stacks of *Whisper.* Once you have 100 stacks of *Whisper,* consume all stacks an receive 1 random item. _You do not receive any stacks of _*_Whisper_*_ on certain stages where time does not progress_

One funny thing about warped echo that it can be worse then not having it in some scenarios like if you would get one shotted at full health normally one shot protection would save you but because this item splits the demage you will just die after three seconds.

Video inspired me to make some balance changes (or flat out changes) to some items. Bolstering Lantern: When Enemy is below 50% HP, deal 20% (+20% per stack) more damage to the enemy Lumenous (i spelt it wrong) Shot: After using secondary, your primary ability deals 150% base damage for 1 (+0.5 per stack) seconds. Buff can stack 3 (+1 per stack) times Warped Echo: Gives 1 (+1 per stack) stack of Echo. Getting hit consumes echo, halves damage taken. Echo has a 10 second cooldown (like bands) Antler Shield: Getting hit gives 3(+1 per stack) seconds of Frenzy.

The unstable Transmitter's real issue IS the teleport. Any item that takes control from the player is just not fun. I would view the removal of that effect in itself as a buff.

Transmitter can be fixed pretty easily with some changes that wouldn't appear in the description. - don't change camera rotation on teleport - on teleport create a trail to you old position, so you know where you are relative to your old position - make the teleport less janky (teleport as far away from any enemies or stage hazards in within the radius as possible and don't teleport from void damage) And for changes that aren't just fixes - on teleport knock enemies back within a 5m radius (maybe higher idk how far 5m is) - cooldown -20% per stack (it's already like that but description is wrong)

That overkill change of Noxious Thorn is actually a good idea, but would probably need to be changed to a red rarity. Most red items change your run the moment you pick them up with just 1 stack, like Brilliant Behemoth. Picking it up one time gives you explosive attacks for the whole run. Thorn giving bleeding enemies slowdown could be its legendary effect.

The unstable transmitter should have been a void version of the old war stealthkit. It can't be that, because they can't guarantee that someone will have the first DLC, but it would work much better in that item pool.

random idea i had for the teleporter keep it the same, but make sure it *ACTUALLY* teleports you to solid ground, and after teleporting create an 1500% DMG 0 proc coff explosion, but after teleporting there's a 2M cooldown (stacking adds +10% dmg and -.5 seconds off cooldown, caps at around 50 seconds) probably is just broken af

The dlc items mostly rely on taking damage which is not a good idea on high difficulties or late in a run. The items all feel like they were built for the False Son which is neat but it makes them worse on every other survivor. Here's some changes I'd make to items I see as "bad"/not very useful: PSG: Shield gives 10 armour while active. Infusion: Gain 1 hp per stack per kill, killing an elite grants +1 additional hp. (and remove the 100 hp cap) Bison Steak: Gain 4% health per stack and gain 5% move speed per stack. (because we desperately need more move speed items)

i think we could go a step further with the warped echo to make sure it doesn't activate on small hits, making it useless. it should work similarly to e8, only activating on attacks that deal more than a big percentage of your max health. alternatively: you could make it work like the corpsebloom, only allowing you to take ~10% of your max health as damage per second, though at that point i feel like that'd step into lunar territory lol

as someone pointed out, there's no speed items in the DLC. Which unbalances the loot pool. My idea is to change the bolstering lantern into a speed/damage item. When above 50% HP, you get speed, when below, you get damage

Unstable transmitter is trying to be green power elixir. The only change needed is to really fill this role - give it healing instead of dealing damage and make it trigger before elixir. Boom, you have free elixir + get out of jail free card on 2 mins cooldown. VERY useful and exciting.

Seekers of the Storm Item Buffs Does a really good job at buffing the items while keeping their indended identity/function. Knockback Fin Now has a 10% (+10% per stack) chance. (Hyperbolic scaling makes it closer to 9% at 1 stack) Now deals 80% TOTAL damage when knocking around enemies. (This attack has a procCoeff of 0) Now works on airborne enemies, knocking them down instead. (This can deal mild fall damage.) Now works on bosses & champions. (at reduced knockback) Now has a cooldown per enemy of 0.5s (Vanilla is 5s) Antler Shield Always reflects damage. Reflect damage increased to 100% (+100% per stack). Reflect damage limited to 1000% (+1000% per stack) of your damage. Now gives 6 (+6 per stack) Armor. (Which is dope as a white item providing armor that isn't flat damage reduction and can work well with Repulser Brace) Chronic Expansion Now needs 4 kills per buff. (Instead of 5) Now resets after 7 seconds. (7s of no hurting/killing instead of 5s) Now is 10% damage per stack. Capped buff amount at 3. Removed buffs granting more damage per buff. (Gives you a reason to stack the item?) Bolstering Lantern Now activates at 80% health. Now grants 5% (+5% per stack) damage and 20% (+20% per stack) speed. (I'd prefer if it were movement speed instead) Warped Echo Echoed damage now triggers Repulsion Armor. Echoed damage now triggers Planula. Echoed damage no longer puts you into danger. -This means it no longer messes up Shield, Opal and Slug Echoed damage no longer applies Eclipse 8 Curse. (it normally applies curse twice) Now shows a debuff when Echoed damage is incoming. (this is in vanilla just hidden) Fixed Echoed damage not being Non-Lethal when original hit triggered OSP. (Yes this is a bug, they just messed it up) Noxious Thorn Now has a 33% chance. Now inflicts 2 (+1 per stack) debuffs. Now inflicts bleed + every Other present stackable debuff at the same time. Fixed it not applying multiple stacks of bleed. Fixed it not applying more debuffs. Fixed it applying DoTs based on Coeff that triggered the attack.** Fixed it using the damage stat of the enemy that triggered the attack.** Fixed the Strong Burns applied by it being weaker than normal Burns. Fixed it not applying more Essence of Heresy stacks. (Really good paired with Deathmark in case you don't have an easy way of applying multiple debuffs) War Bonds Now grants 120 (+80 gold) on stage start. (no longer scales with level) Now grants upwards of a 30% attack speed boost and 40% speed boost based on money you have. Capping at 400 (+200 per loop) gold. (Scales with Time) Electric Boomerang Now shocks for 5s instead of stunning stacking a lot of stun. (You should also be able to edit which items you want to function modded or not. Makes me not want to immediately scrap most of the new items now, and they round out builds without a ton of overlap in function.)

Also for knockback fin, it could give an effect to enemies that increases their fall damage by a lot temprarily while also making all enemies affected by this always drop gold when dying of fall damage.

unstable transmitter - when dropping to %25, create large aoe (similar to void jailer thing's death) that puts nearby enemies into stasis globule. Globule remains for x (+Y*stacks) and has a healthpool representing all targets within, takes 40% damage (-X%(+Ystacks)) damage from attacks. if globule expires, target's take the total amount of damage split amongst them. (Or perhaps like sleep, where the pool starts at the lowest health target? good for clearing small targets?) Damn I wanna make this in warcraft 3 now.

a mod that changes the knockback fin makes it so that if the enemy is airborne they get knocked down instead and i found that to be incredibly funny

I wont take full credit for this idea as I heard it from someone else in a similar convo about Sonorous whispers, but a great rework would be to give extra drops from the teleporter. Kinda acting like a mountain shrine without the downside of making the TP boss fight harder. Nets you 1 more item with increased chances of getting a boss item drop. Then it stacks just like you would assume, giving 1 (+1 per stack) extra items from the TP boss. This effect stacking with mountain shrines could then mean getting 3 or more TP items on single player runs.

Why would you ever want to buff the consumed trophy hunter’s tricorn??? It’s already the best equipment in the game! Ahoy!

Increasing the potency of bleed and collapse alone would be enough to make this green thorn item worthwhile.

tbh I think if they just made the knockback fin actually knock enemies back instead of up it would be great. It would still be a scrap item but if you had a few it would be really funny sending enemies flying off the map like a squid turret.

The rule of thumb is always, if your player character and enemies have wildly different health values, then reflecting enemy damage will completely negligible damage. For Antlers to do any meaning for damage they need to scale off player level or enemy level, not their damage. With your new description, you've removed the part that says they scale off anything, so the changes still won't be enough.

nah these items effects need to be overhauled entirely not just fixed, these effects are just bad, getting gold is already easy, and we dont want to take damage for your items to do anything.

One idea for the knockback fin: 7.5% (+7.5% per stack) chance to knock grounded enemies into the air. 30% (+5% per stack) damage bonus vs airborne enemies. It rewards you for popping enemies into the air, even before it starts inflicting fall damage.

I feel like my idea to remake the knockback fin would be better read here. The idea i had was to add something interesting to the proc chain, so it goes as follows On hit, a 10% chance (+10% per stack) to make the enemy burst with spikes, launching them 7m towards the nearest enemy (with no enemies, get stuck on the terrain) causing 200% (+20%) total damage to both enemies. Enemies spiked will be stuck for 5 seconds and recieve 50% of damage taken by the other Damage numbers can be tweaked, but idea is to get a good proc chain going by adding to the list of debuffs and reactions that can happen. Proc it out of an ATG and a random enemy nearby gets nuked, get it to proc a ukelele and it could potentially kill a swarm, and if that doesnt a lucky sticky bomb will Far from perfect but it sounds more fun than just making the enemies jump

Bolstering Lantern kinda sucks because it contradicts the design philosophy of the much better white damage item, the delicate watch, so I'm gonna argue a massive rework for it. Bolstering Lantern (Void version of Delicate Watch) - Increase damage by 20% (+20% per stack) while at or above 95% health. Does not break at low health. Stats can be tweaked, I'm unsure on whether or not it should be at 90, 95, or 100% health, but it doesn't matter too much because it's the design philosophy that matters. It creates an interesting choice of having 100% uptime with a risk of breaking upon taking too much damage, versus an uptime based entirely on whether or not you get hit. It also synergizes heavily with items that give you barrier, which would be an indirect buff towards them.

Antler shield: Knockback and damage all enemies around you when taking damage equal to 20% of your health or higher. Stacking affect both the distance of the knockback and the damage. It would not be a awesome item, but a solid defense one.

I'm actually surprised to see you agree with the item cap for Whispers

A lot of fun item rework ideas! Although I'd've preferred if the new items were balanced better from the get-go, I've honestly been enjoying how much it has pushed the RoR community to analyze what goes into designing new items and effects. I love the new War Bonds concept! Making it an on-elite kill effect hits a perfect sweetspot that makes it feel like a non-RNG dependent alternative to Ghor's Tome; I'd imagine that with some added visual and audio feedback it could easily remain a legendary item. The Sonorous Whispers rework was something I had in mind as well. It's a simple and healthy limitation; I'd personally also make it add (+1 item per stage per stack) since that's an easy way to keep it fun to grab a few more. Noxious Thorns is a weird one. I think its effect of stacking pre-existing debuffs is a really cool idea, it's just that its conditions are way too... conditional (on-hit, chance based, and nearby enemies. blergh). Stealing an idea from my brother here, but it should just be an on-crit effect. There are too many on-damage-taken items in SotS, and it's not a very good condition to begin with. Making it give +5% crit could also massively help against item bloat making it more difficult to find crit items. It's bleed effect could be replaced with poison or blight to differenciate it more from Shatterspleen if need be. I personally love Unstable Teleporter, but I also completely understand it's mixed reaction. Leaving a gummy clone sounds really cool, but at the same time kinda makes it feel too much like Old War Stealthkit? As I see it, the only way to keep its original intent *and* make it feel like a net positive is to make it damage, stun *aaaand* teleport the *enemies* away. Even that could potentially mess up specific setups, but ah well. I think it's good to have oddball items in any case - it's more healthy for gameplay variety to make people consider their choices. If it were to remain a player-teleporting item, I'd like to echo other people's sentiments of giving you brief invincibility on teleport, as well as making it NOT activate on void fog damage and teleport you to non-fog areas if reasonable. I'm always glad to see people bring up Warped Echoes' existing potential. I'd like to take a moment to add that it synergizes really well with Watches & Potions. Making the second hit non-lethal sounds like a great way to really up it in people's eyes (it would be balanced too since one would still be absolutely boned ifbrought down to 1 hp in the middle of combat). The only other things I'd change are: The visual and audio effects are pretty stinky right now? The incoming damage should be as easy to anticipate as incoming collapse. Secondly, whilst I actually like Warped Echoes, it should be an uncommon item. It's really not the kind of effect I care much to stack? I agree that Luminous Shot just needs its damage scaled up. It's already the one non-legendary item where Gearbox managed to make its feedback feel really really good. Even as is it already just feels more impactful than Runic Lens, where it can be difficult to tell it even procced. On that same note Growth Nectar's greatness effect should be visibly indicated on the player themselves the same way the Death Mark effect makes itself apparent, and Prayer Beads obviously needs better effect clarity. I'm surprised Bolstering Lantern wasn't mentioned here. To be fair though, alongside Antlers and Fin, it's an effect I really wouldn't care completely removed and replaced with something else entirely. SotS didn't add ANY healing or speed items and too many damage increasing items. Lantern, Antlers and Fins can be just be made into hybrid items à la Mocha or something. I personally like the idea of Antlers and Fins adding an on-sprint effect, and Lantern could do some sort of AoE healing effect I dunno. Also rename Antler Shield to "Mystic Antlers" and Knockback Fin to "Dorsal Fin". Soldier's Syringe isn't called "Attack Speed Syringe" for crying out loud lol.

I love the consumed tricorn. Giving them to equipment drones is the best because of the “Ahoy!” message every time

I think Sonorous Whispers' item per stage limit should increase by 1 per stack, or 1 per X stack (X being whatever stack you think is balanced) so that you don't get hard locked to only +5 items per level forever.

I feel like a rough fix for the transmitter could be added in the code of the item where pings each node all at once, for either no enemies in a certain distance or as little as possible and it teleports randomly from there. (idk, it'd probably be too tedious to add) Also when I first got noxious thorn, I originally thought it would act like ATG or Uke, where it was on hit of your attack before figuring out it's real effect. And personally, I think that's what it should be. Same effect, just proc'd like ATG/Uke. Then we can have aoe, high single target, and now decent DoT in that style of item.

Antler shield : Rarity : red 1. On hit, reflect 50% of the damage back to the attacker (halfing the hp you lose from the attack too) 2. Having antler shield will give you a buff that, once you hit an enemy, the next attack they will do, will damage themselves and prevent you from being hit by it (10 second cooldown and only works on 1 instance of attack) 3. Once you hit an enemy, every second that they stay alive will make their attacks slower and slower, and every second they are alive will give them 10% chance to not do damage. (30 second cooldown)

Honestly the tp mechanic from the unstable transmitter could be made useful if they changed the code a bit. Like making the to being random but it won't put you near enemies, so for example when trying to tp the player it would find the closest spot with little to no enemies nearby.

Feel like knockback fin should stack more with the knockback speed allowing you to essentially pummel someone into the wall instead of pushing them away. So maybe like 5% chance with 5% per stack knock back enemies by 5 meters but each additional stack increases the speed that they get knocked back by 15%. That way it doesn’t scale too OP early on but can be useful if stacked a lot. So essentially more speed = more damage or farther away they get sent. Maybe that’s what the rework intended by making it more meters sent away per stack but didnt clarify if it was a constant speed or not. Got that idea from captain where you can’t really 1 shot elite wisps early on so using the shotgun to slam them into a wall would effectively finish them off. Also I get for warped echo not trying to meta game but with 2-3 medkits you can take full blood shrines without wasting your watches/elixirs if you don’t have a safer spaces available.

For the knockback fin, i would love to see it be like "x% chance to push enemies up, and deal y% extra damage to airborn enemies" so its now a damage item and utility, maybe the extra damage is like 5%+2% per stack, but, you get damage and util, kinda like a moca

Honestly just make Warped Echo not do damage to you, you take the regular 100% damage as usual, BUUUUUT just like ignition tank in the sense of buffing other items, you do another instance of on take damage effects which would make effects that are already difficult to proc like roll of Pennie’s scale much better but also late game builds with razor wire become more interactive with white items besides repulsion armor plate. Also I just want it to be noted I main Loader so I do recognize that even with this change it would not become a good item for many as most people scrap razor wires or noxious thorns but I’m a fan so I’d like more support that doesn’t just remove my one shot protection and then go in cooldown. TLDR: [Warped Echos grants and additional instance of any of on-incoming-damage items, +1 for each stack]

Antler shield should instead reduce shield recharge rate by 10% (-5% per stack) and grant a flat 5% shield on stack 1. Shield builds are sort of a sub thing due to plasma shrimp, but have nowhere near enough supporting items. The 5% is based on your current recharge rate, so it can never reach 0. And we can hard cap it at 0.5s

I have a dirty idea for Knockback fin so it does the CC/damage that was imagined for the original. 7.5(+2.5% per stack) chance on hit to knock enemies back 5(+0.5 per stack) meters and do 25% damage to enemies per meter knocked back. this would include ability knockback effects. maybe it's over the top maybe I'm thinking too much into it but I can imagine this being really fun.

alright ima try and rework these things Chance Doll: 40% (+15% per stack) chance to gain higher rarity items from Chance Shrines on success. Can only fail twice. All other items have a 2.5% chance to be upgraded in rarity upon drop and a 5% chance to be downgraded on item drop. Legendary items cannot be downgraded. Luminous Shot: Using your Secondary skill charges the next Primary attack, dealing an additional 200% (+100% per stack) damage and creating a small 4m (+2m per stack) AOE on hit. Each charge increases the AOE by an additional 4m (+2m per stack). Can be charged 3 times tl;dr chance doll: gambling. you could have an item downgraded, or upgraded. and yes, BOTH the downgrade and upgrade are boosted by clover. lumi shot: basically a higher damage single hit that has a small AOE. It could be strong, but the damage isn't massive for a reason.

I would just change the the knockback fin into the punching glove from RoR1, chance to knockback with a damage boost on proc. Pretty simple.

For the Unstable Transmitter, an idea I had was to remove the teleport and make it instead act like a sort of Stealth Kit adjacent item, more on the offensive side, giving them good synergy off of eachother. New Unstable (Insert new name here because it doesn't teleport you): Upon going below 25% health, explode for 250% damage (+25% per stack) and trigger on-kill effects repeatedly for 3 seconds, and gain a +40% speed boost for 5 seconds. It now has a base cooldown of 30 seconds to match Stealth Kit, and has the same -50% reduction on the cooldown per stack. The explosions and on-kill effects won't remove the invisibility either.

one good change could be to increase the number of items per stage with stacks of sonorous so like 1 sonourous is 5 items, 2 is 8, 3 is 11, and so on

I think an easy way to save transmitter is to have it work like tracers recall from overwatch, teleport the player to a position they’ve already been so they have some control and let them see what they’re teleporting back into, but it should also give a visual indication telling the player they’re about to be teleported so they can actually prepare for it instead of it being an unwelcome surprise. Along with the damage increase.

I would double down on Unstable Transmitter teleporting you into danger by making it a lunar item. Some insane upside balanced out by the fact you might get warped next to a twisted elite.

How Antler shield got implemented really shows u how rushed or how badly designed this dlc really is. I mean u could make it 10%/100% or 100%/10% and it still wouldnt be great. Even 100%/100% wouldnt be broken, i think.

flatitembuffs changes antlers to grant +7% speed and +5 armor which i absolutely love

I was so excited to get warped echo but the more I found out about it the more it became an instant scrap, why? It increases curse by 1.5x, interrupts and delays cautious slug, opal and all shields, it doesn't work with planula, repulsion armor plates and all armor and it IGNORES ONE SHOT PROTECTIONS which is kind of the runs lifeblood late in runs I really like the idea of knock back fin getting a slight damage boost to airborne enemies just slightly help with those pesky flying enemies and encourage prioritizing them aswell as give knocking enemies into the air a purpose I think noxious thorns has the coolest potential of all the items and a few of my favorites are; Maybe changing it so it slightly extends cooldown by maybe half a second, making it a VERY synergizable item and super printable which is always one of the best feelings in the game, seeing that one printer that can really boost your run and play into your build One idea that was also really cool is to make it an on hit item that has a small chance to either apply double debuffs or (the really cool one) make debuffs spread from one enemy to another which would feel awesome. And looking back on it mixing all these together for a red would make it a really fun item to play around with and especially the debuff duration increase helping bleed become viable on more burst damage characters like loader arti etc

True that they could have made antler shield work like the old stealth watch, it used to proc on damage and the bigger the hit the higher the chance For the damage it deals I can see two ways a) It uses the survivor damage stat and make it higher and have a good proc cof so that it's basically a counter attack that can proc on hit item etc but the downside is that the longer the run the less good it gets since survivor basically stop getting levels at some point b) Make it return the damage received multiplied by aloooot more making it scale infinitly in theory

I did not realize antler shield had a 55% chance when making the suggestion lol, for some reason I thought it was a 10% chance or something lol. Also I definitely think the antler shield should deal what yhe damage would've been before reduction so that armour plates and stuff don't hurt the item. Also because I think it would be funny if you stack a shit ton of antler shields and then vaporize mithrix when he hits you.

My main problem with dlc items is that no new speed items were added. Speed is crucial in eclipse, and the super-diluted loot pool makes it even harder to find those few speedup trinkets; I would have loved a good speed green, damnit. This will never ever happen, but since so many new items are absolute trash tier, I'd love to see some of them completely reworked into speed items. This could be achieved even by buffing old bad greens - hunter's harpoon, for example, rather than activating on kill, could de-activate when hit (like cautious slug), with multiple stacks giving more speed and/or requiring less time to reactivate. Regarding the green/white buffs you proposed, I say "meh, yeah, I guess that's better" to most of them. Sadly most effects rely on taking damage or reaching certain hp percents, which automatically makes them trash tier when playing E8 (yeah lantern is pretty bad too despite being a direct dmg item). Rather than trying to buff the items while still trying to stick to their original design as much as possible, I would have liked a complete rework of some trash whites/greens to make them more directly damage/proc based; or maybe to extend the effect of certain abilities, like the shurikens give a powerful ranged buff to M1 (what if the luminous shot added a powerful, slow-moving projectile to M2 that requires a large time to recharge?). For example, I really really liked the concept for the thorn, acting like a bleed tank (it should also buff Bandit's hemorrage - I like the fact that characters like arti benefit from tank even without fire items!). And lastly, regarding the reds, I don't think that whispers should have such a hard cap on its utility; 5 more items is still great, don't get me wrong, but the cap should be there to avoid uber-broken post-loop stages filled with loot rather than encouraging the player to saturate it (one could also argue that sacrifice already breaks the game this way, sooo... Whatever?). I say - put the cap to at least 10 (if any) and nerf the drop chance to 1%, so that whispers provides 2-3 extra items per stage if used without thought but can be easily pushed to 7-10 if one decides to double-triple the time they spend in a level. So what if one can break the game by spending three hours in gilded coast? You can still farm desperados on the moon and oneshot mithrix, and it's not like it's hard to break the game by looping. Alternatively, you could simply fix this problem by making it such that whispers only works on Petrichor V. I'n sorry but I *really* don't like the Warbonds rework 🫠. Pleease no more on-kill items!! Also consider that early in the loops gold quickly becomes easy to farm, and in the early game it's hard to obtain reds - so it being a loot-centered red makes it already a pretty bad red in concept. In order for it to be somewhat useful and noticeably decrease the time spent looting in the midgame, I think that it should buff looting HERE and NOW, rather than being a slow, ramping-up gold item. If we really don't want to rework it to be a damage item (maybe based on how much gold you have), I had seen on reddit a very fitting concept which I liked a lot: upon entering a stage, all interactables are free for (something) seconds. So you have this big burst of loot upon entering a stage which also helps with fighting the stage itself.

I swear to fucking god gearbox used chat gpt to come up with these stats and im not saying this as a joke i genuinely believe they did this

10:30 what if instead of just being the base 1% + per stack, it was +1 item per stack. So instead of 5 items per stage, it can drop 6, then 7, and so forth. Gives more paths for players because sonorous could drop IBM or another red that might not be useful at that time and the player can think "hmmm do I want to wait and see if I get a atg or do I want to scrap this red for another sonorous". Kind of goes against the original reason for having an item cap, but I think it will make it worth getting multiple stacks of sonorous rather than just one in a run.

idea for the new knockback fin to add in the funny damage: when an enemy slams into a wall they take massive damage based on their velocity like overwatch doomfist

One potential use for antlers that I've conceptualized (but not yet tested) is its use to proc Voidsent Flame. If it can do this, at the VERY least it's effective at picking off weaker enemies like wisps. Regardless, still the worst item in the DLC. Here's some reworks that I've seen/come up with that I think make a lot of sense: Antler Shield: Worst item. Hands down. Random proc for no good reason, with a *10%* base damage. It tickles wisps just barely over half the time. It could have a low proc chance, relatively, but do 100% of the damage dealt back. 1.0 multiplier base, 0.25x added per stack may be a good baseline. Enemies have more health than the player, so 10% simply does NOT cut it. It could also instead be another white-tier dodge chance item, like tougher times, but instead provide synergies. Make it reflect damage on *dodge* back to the attacker rather than as a chance per hit. Similar to crit synergy items, it should give a base dodge chance of 5-10% that does not stack to get the build off the ground. This chance should factor into the hyperbolic scaling of tougher times, though, to prevent full immunity conditions from being met. The damage reflected may justifiably be fixed in this rework. As to be expected, this item should remain blacklisted on Mithrix for... obvious reasons. Unstable Transmitter: The main critique the item receives is how ineffective it is as an escape by merit of often times placing you *into* danger as easily as it gets you out. I think the function of transmitter is good, and could synergize positively with old war stealthkit if given the proper adjustments. For one, I think the explosion should happen AFTER the tp and not before. The explosion should be buffed substantially (1000% at least, to give it a good chance at clearing away smaller enemies) The explosion should inflict a 3 second stun, to prevent the remaining enemies from closing in immediately. This duration, or the damage, could be effective stackable potential for the item. The player should grant a *very* brief second of invulnerability, to ensure they are given time to respond to potential stage hazards or lingering attacks like the mushroom molotovs or juvenile magma worm aoe. Noxious Thorn: This item currently falls into a similar less obvious trap as antler shield: its conditions are too specific. That, on top of being similarly underpowered. I propose that, if it's to keep its chance-based proc, it be retooled into an effective synergy for hellfire tincture or other forms of self-damage. Modify the "back to the attacker" caveat. It's a massive culprit in a lot of the lacking power, just by merit of making this *on damage* item limited to one target in a game where enemies are constantly surrounding the player. Make the item a sidegrade to the razorwire, instead afflicting all *nearby* enemies with the debuff stacks. Copy the debuff from the attacker when considering which to apply, defaulting to bleed, but it may be worth excluding Collapse from affected status effects. Stacks of debuffs may warrant being reduced to 1 at base stack, but should retain the stacking bonus alongside increased range. War Bonds!!!!: I've seen the most suggested reworks for this item in particular, because of its notorious reputation as a red with the potential of a scrapable white item (especially in the late game). I have a few that I've taken a liking to-- Currently, there is a mod which reworks many items in the DLC and I quite like the callback they've put into war bonds. It instead acts as a red-tier version of the Golden Gun from RoR1/Returns: you gain extra damage from the amount of gold you currently have, up to a cap which is extended by the stacking of the item. I still think this serves better as a green item, but definitely works better than what we have and could be a potential alternative with proper adjustment. A more interesting solution, though, is another suggestion I've found: War bonds grants the player gold *proportional to 20% of the gold from their last stage* upon entering a stage. This effect would stack 10% per stack, even exceeding 100% and instead effectively granting "interest" for the held money at the end of the a stage. This makes the item effective in the early and late game as a way of expediting the early-stage money farm to clear out the loot in a more interesting and effective way. It also creates an anti-synergy with bazaar between time, which would reduce the player's earnings to 0.2^2 as no gold is earned in bazaar-- an interesting side effect, and I think a worthy deterrent for players who prefer to focus on full looting stages over potentially sacrificing for an extra red. A third potential option I've come up is to make it instead act like the Razorpenny from RoR1 rather than golden gun: gold is gained on critical hit. With effective scaling and a proper setup, though, this could very easily trivialize the economy in its entirety-- doing so, however, may require some proper setup that would only really apply in the late game, where money is already more of a nuisance than a real mechanic. Sonorous Whisper: I think I somewhat agree with your sentiment of limiting the item drops, however I think the cap could be much greater. I don't really see a problem with activating "sacrifice" for a typical run, because frankly... it wasn't a problem with 56 Leaf Clover (RoR1). I think the major difference was the difficulty scaling being much more oppressive in classic RoR as opposed to RoR2. The return on investment from spending time sitting around with Sonorous post-rebalance is not really that beneficial, nor is it fun: if a player feels like they have more fun getting free drops for 30 minutes before fighting Mithrix, I think a red item being the key to that is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff. A cap does more to simply limit this form of engagement, but should be tuned to make it less of a factor in a typical stage clear. If it retains a lower item cap, I think stacking potential could do one of two things: increase the cap, or slightly increase the rarity of drops a la' rusted key or shipping request. Knockback fin: Their suggestion you've shown here is EXACTLY what I've envisioned for the item. It fails as a get-off-me tool AND as a weapon, and the former is a more interesting avenue. Stun and distance is all this item needs to give it potential to grant some genuine breathing room, as opposed to launching a lemurian 5 feet into the air and then not preventing the fireball from flying from above you offscreen and killing you anyway. The knockback angle should retain some upwards force, though, for one because it keeps the enemies from sliding across the ground (which would look kinda' odd) and because then it's still got the funny potential of sending enemies FLYING. I think the stun should be preserved, but your chance to distance is warranted. The stun should be weak, but be enough to disrupt the next attack-- and it's much warranted, given that we're retaining the item's pitiful proc chance on damage taken condition. The proc chance on damage taken is the worst offender on most of these items, and should be a MASSIVE factor in how we decide to rebalance them-- whether we throw the chance out entirely or simply buff around it. It also would NOT make stun grenades obsolete, not even remotely. Stun grenades are on-hit proc items, their purpose is offensive-defense. Knockback fin would be defensive-defense. Weaponizing knockback fin to inflict stun would not be an effective option unless it isn't restricted for self-damage. I think, to circumnavigate this concern, one of two changes can be made: either blacklist it from your own tincture damage (like roll of pennies), or make it afflict only the striking target like antler shield. Warped Echo: I like the proposition here. My main gripe has always been that it invalidates one-shot protection, much like shield items, but does so consistently to the point of warranting a potential rework into a lunar. This fixes that, and gives it a secondary bonus as a buff. Very good change all around, although I would maybe run some numbers on how damage reduction factors into this. I certainly wouldn't recommend it being affected twice by RAP, but it could be a much needed boost to the usefulness of Planula. Chance Doll: I agree with your suggestion here. I like how it is currently, but it does feel difficult to extract value from in a pre-loop run and could use the boost. Luminous Shot: This item... well, it's not just not good enough. You see, like many moderately worthless items its use is survivor-dependent. However, what really IRKS me about this one is that it is COMPLETELY unusable for Railgunner. Her scope doesn't trigger it for either secondary, and it isn't affected by using the primary while scoped. If they do buff the damage itself, it should also be fixed for Railgunner to make some actual *sense*. Alternatively, I've seen a suggestion somewhere to flip the script on this one: make the luminous shot power up with primary skill uses, and then discharge on a secondary skill hit. Would still require some fixes for railgunner and possibly other secondary abilities, but I think it would make the shot more consistently useful without warranting a strong damage buff. Primary skills are often times your main source of damage and switching to a secondary on a long cooldown to buff *one* primary attack with a slight damage augment is just pitiful. Flipping it wouldn't force players to play around it for marginal improvement, it would just give secondary skills some extra kick and encourage using them more often for newer players.

I had a idea for the knockup fin of: "Let's keep the knock up, but give knocked up/airborne enemies a debuff that increases damage taken by 10%(+5 per stack)." (maybe this is too weak... idk I never designed a item in RoR game) while yes I do get the fact that the name here is knockback fin. the knock up mechanic sounded too good to not work with a little.

My takes: -Antler: +1 armor (+1 per stack), after taking damage, reflect 100% (+100% per stack) of the MITIGATED damage. //This does work with teddy bears, opaline bubble, the elephant and repulsion armor. Damage taken on a shield or barrier does NOT count as mitigated, only how much the damage you actually take is compared to the initial damage value. -Unstable transmitter: When reaching below 25% health teleport to the LAST interacteable you used (if any) and become immune and invisible for 1 second. This has a 2 min coldown (-5% per item stack, multiplicative). //This makes so you know where are you going to get teleported AND prevents you from instantly dying after the tp, also gives it some niche uses such as comming back to a interacteable you can use more than once (such chance altars) faster, it is also pretty decent with the boss teleporter. -Noxious torn: After taking damage create an area (increased area by stacks) around you for 2 seconds (+1 second per stack). All bleeding enemies inside the area take an extra stack of bleed and one random enemy takes one more. This has a 60 second cd (-5% per stack). //Better visuals so more satisfying, also makes it more consistent, since you usually want to refresh those stacks. Also, also, synergy with the close range and self damaging stuff. -Ward bonds: During the first 30 seconds (+15 per stack) of a new stage, interacteables cost 0 //Waaaaaay more fun to use and the raw value you can get makes it deserving of a legendary status, also scales bette late game, so you move way faster. -Sonorous whispers: Combat shrines drop an item when cleared, shrines of the montain drop one item more when completed (increase the rarity of items dropped with each stack). One of these is GUARANTEED to appear on each stage //Gives you agency, instead of just being raw op. -Knockback fin: 5% chance on hit (+5% per stack AND increases by the damage of the skill) to knock enemies on the air, when they fall, they create a small shockwave that deals 5% (+5% per stack) of their health to nearby enemies (Flying enemies create the shockwave on impact instead). //Gives it actual utility, some enemies were basically inmune to this. Also it would be a really cool tool to add to proc chains. -Warped echo: Reduce damage taken by 50% and store the other 50% on a pool. After 3 seconds (+1 per stack) of the first instance of damage or when you reach max hp take the damage stored on the pool. The max amount stored on the pool is equal to 90% of your hp, when reaching it this item stops working until the pool is emptied again. //Way more fun to use and you can do some cool min-maxing for it, also gets some healing and self-damaging synergies

*Unstable Transmitter* Rarity: Green Change: When reaching below 25% hp, survivor creates an explosion for 500% damage (explosion radius increases by +5m per stack) *then becomes invulnerable for 5 seconds, but loses the ability to deal damage except from their equipment (if they have) and the initial explosion.* After the 5 seconds they release a larger explosion that deals no damage, instead only knocking back enemies (explosion radius increase by +15m). The closer to the survivor they are, the stronger they're pushed back. After the 1st explosion a red eye appears above the player and blinks for each second, growing larger every blink before exploding, signifying the second explosion. Cooldown is 120 seconds (-10% cooldown reduction per stack).

Unstable transmitter should just be a void version of Stealthkit

The runic lens are a prety fucking good item yet the visual cue that it did something is so damn subtle.

Knockback fin is so much fun to me, I go all in every time I see a printer

I always thought that making the warped echo give the other damage over time, like reverse healing, to be a much more interesting approach than just 50 damage now 50 damage in 3 seconds.

What if warbonds just gave you 3 free purchases at the start of the level. Would be ridiculous economy-wise, especially on stage 4, but i mean, it still isn't exactly powerful , so i think it could work. Or if we go a different route, maybe it could give you damage that scales with gold(exponentially like teddy bear), and you carry gold between stages.

I like the warped echo changes but I also think the second hit shouldn't be able to disable items that do stuff after not getting hit for a certain amount of time, I think the thing with the second hit not being able to kill you might be a bit busted but warped echo currently just REMOVES oneshot protection so I think the first hit shouldn't be able to remove your oneshot protection and that would make it quite a bit more useful

for luminous shot i do think having a couple ideas would be nice, either it stacking off m1 and proccing on m2 instead, m2 giving more stacks based on total damage, and/or even m1 only decrementing stacks by 1 per hit would be changes that id think would be and feel alot better and more natural to use

10:27 only 5 (+1 per stack) per stage is how I would've done it personally

War bonds is just fundamentally bad as a red based around giving you gold. Even with any rework around that idea, unless you find it on stage one or two, where enemy spawns can be scarce you just don't need more gold, even with the E6 gold reduction. The only time I'm lacking gold after stage two is farming to open the legendary chest first because of sale stars.

Chance dolls can kinda hinder you because you could want a crowbar or hoof but get a scythe because of it.

Antlers; good. chance to reflect on damage great. thats damage that got reflected = passive dps? Noxious Thorn: When taking damage chance to trigger active enemy debuffs. Applies bleed. 25% chance on being hit to inflict nearby enemies with 2 (+1 per stack) Stacks of bleed. Sounds good to me, yeah ideally you don;t want to get hit but when you do, IS CURRENTLY BUGGED and only does the bleed and doesnt stack. War Bonds: IDK i got it yesterday, was pretty helpful just having gold at the start of a stage is great and it gives pretty good gold at latter stages. Knockback fin: knocks enemies back. Kinda annoying sometimes but it works well with how I play so Getting enemies away from me is good in my book. /shrug Warped echo: take some damage now, DO SOMETHING THAT HEALS YOU, and hey now that big attack that would have killed you didn;t kill you. Yeah its a synergy item.

A main problem i see is just bloat, expecially compared to survivors of the void

Unstable transmitter rework might actually make old world stealthkit actually worth not scrapping Also, hot take, but I don't really see a problem with the sonorous whispers. The 56 leaf clover in Risk of Rain 1 was exactly like it, but even more overpowered because it was uncommon. edit: reread the item description, guaranteed items on 'big enemy' kills does in fact make it pretty overpowered. if they removed that, then i wouldn't have a problem with it.

There's a simple way to fix knockback fin so that it still knocks enemies up into the air, but is more useful: apply a debuff that causes them to take damage the next time they touch the ground. Enemy goes up, enemy comes down, enemy goes "splat" when the debuff "detonates".

war bonds is like smart shopper from returns but very bad

Honestly i think all knockback fin needs is a small damage bonus and a small proc co 120% +20% damage and a .15 - .2 proc co and boom the item is good and keep the previous effects. Probably change the base chance too and remove stacking or something because not a lot of whites stack twice.

I feel like antler shield should combine tougher times with razorwire. Immunity is harder to come by with new item bloat, and adding a new item that serves that purpose with the niche of mini razorwire would be good. I think antler shield is a good idea but was executed by people who don’t play the game. 5% (+5% stack) chance to block AND reflect damage x10 i think would be better

11:27 It feels like the knockback fin should y'know, knock enemies back Heck when playing an artificer run I thought it was knockback fin but it was actually the broken knockback of ice spear

knockback fin should increase the damage you deal to airborne enemies

i think the reason people feel chance doll and possibly prayer beads are weak is because you cant *see* the effect. i think adding an animation for chance doll indicating when it increases the rarity, and an animation for prayer beads when scrapped alongside numbers popping out showing the stat increases would go a long way

Personally I wish War Bonds increased legendary chest chance by a small amount and for Sonorous Whispers I wish increased the aspect drop chance

My view of warped echo so far has been that all it does is take away one shot protection.

I really hope someone mods these changes into the game.

10:30 make it so that its 5 items per difficulty tier per stage with no limit past "Hahahahaha...". That'd encourage you to keep moving onward and would make it incredibly useful in looped runs.

I actually liky unstable transmitter, i wouldnt even mind if they reduced the damage, and having a safer teleport

Warped echo actively debuffs you currently cuz it straight up removes 1 shot protection (figured that out the hard way against a scavenger) so Id love to see your idea for that added to the game

Sonorous Whispers: Upon Elite or Teleporter Boss kill, gain a temporary copy of another item you currently have, copied items last for 30(+30 per stack) Seconds This would solve the issue of being able to farm items for forever in hidden realms and prevent from sticking on the stage for unreasonably long to farm for even a limited amounts of items ( Also touched up the conditions a little, on "large enemy kill" is a really janky item condition that never make a sense to me, tricorn really only has that as a condition, because those are the enemies that drop unique items)

i disagree with some of these changes. i like the niche that some of the new items add I just think they need flat buffs more than complete reworks. theres exceptions like warbonds and the green teleport item. knockback fin is very fun with stacks but is useless without, perhaps it should knock them back and up and also should inflicted a reduced effect on bosses/flying enemies. Bosses and flying enemies are affected by other knockback(enough squid polyps can fling anything into the sky) so i dont know why knockback fin doesnt.

The problem with the new alter shield is that it essentially makes you invincible to Mithrix and Voidling with only on stack

I prefer the Unstable Transmitter teleport. Out of all the times I picked this green up, I was never teleported in another problem. The problem is that is doesn't synergize with Power Elixir and Old War Stealthkit, had both proc at once, then I'd love it even more. Unstable Tranmitter has always teleported me some distance away from all enemies, meaning the only time I died was because I was already dead to an overload bomb or too many burn stacks.

The antler shield change would make me only pick one up at maximum because the guaranteed effect is a lot more useful.