Current proplems with Rotwood and state of the game - Damage, Gems, Equipment, Material Fodder, etc.

[Mir Oculist]

This post if gonna be a pretty chunky one, after playing the game for over 600 hours since the start of early access up to this day, the game always had some problems regarding various in-game mechanics or features. 

So i wanted to talk about it, as much as i adore and love this game, there are things i wanna see being improved or changed, since it does ruin the experience not only for me, but for many other people as well.

Topic №1 - Damage

• Since the beginning of Early Access for Rotwood, Damage was a pretty big priority in optimising your builds, one particular set of Armour and Weapons was very popular among those times, that being Floracrane Helm, Snortoise Armour, and Floracrane Legs with the Floracrane Weapon of choice on top of that.
   
• This particular set was used to spam the Skill of the Weapon, which at the time was way too strong for no reason in particular, having a lot of Airborne Invulnerability, high Focus Hit and Crit Damage when Fully Charged (in a matter of 1.5 seconds), quick Recovery Time after the skill animation, and just general ease of use for everyone of any skill level.

 

• So at the time, this set of armour was used by 90% percent of players, cheesing the game with the least effort put into playing the game, and utilizing 1 button.You could evade attacks with the skill, while dealing way too much damage for the standarts of the game's launch state.

                                   To say that it wasn't fun experiencing this in multiplayer lobbies would be an understatement, This was one of the first signs of Rotwood's Damage problem, the core of which has already been there since the earliest days.
 

• Fast forward to current day, the Damage problem became far worser, although it has been becoming more major with each update, and recently probably reached the highest peak of absurdity with the release of Path Of The Hunter update, which brings the "Perk Tree" of sorts, which acted as a rework to previous game feature - Heartstones.

Path Of The Hunter acts as a station in which you can choose various Perks that you think would benefit you in your Hunts, many passives that make your character stronger.
One problem arises right away, you spend Heart Shards to gain or upgrade your current perks, and you can spend over 500 Heart Shards in total.
This is a pretty big amount, considering that a lot of early upgrades cost very cheap amounts of Heart Shards, and in return can give substantial bonuses already, there is a growing scaling in amount of Heart Shards you'll be spending after subsequent upgrades of the same perk, which can later ask for 20 or more Heart Shards per level, but at that point the perk already becomes strong enough to the point that levelling it even more will be an overkill.
 

• So, now we can talk about that one one specific perk that breaks the game completely, and makes your Damage go straight into heavens.

Peak Performance - Focus Hits deal x% more Damage when you're at 80% Health or Above.

Peak Performance is a Win/Win perk, something with barely any downsides and something that can fit into every possible build, without much thought put into it. 
If you don't know what to choose from Path Of The Hunter, just upgrade Peak Performance and your Damage shall be higher. beeg numbers = more better.
If you remember me mentioning the fact that you can have over 500 Heart Shards, you can see where this goes.
Even at about 150-300 Heart Shards you already have barely any choice for utility perks, you've likely decided on things you Need and Don't Need, so what else is there to do over than keep spending more Shards on Peak Performance?.
At over 300 Heart Shards boost of damage from Peak Performance can reach up to 100%, while being able to still have many utility perks like Potion Charges, Max HP. Revive, and other things.
And with that, in my opinion this is one of the things that currently lies at fault with making your character far too stronger than the game itself, with minimal input or thought put into making a decision, even the challenges Rotwood can provide with Super Frenzy 5 barely can keep up with the Damage output of the character, which aside from Peak Performance also has many other aspects that boost the Damage even further.
 

• Path Of The Hunter was supposed to bring more varied choices and ability to create more unique builds, and in a way it did succeed with this, but in reality it acted as another tool for improving Damage further than it should be.

The system still needs plenty of adjustments and changes, but right now i should talk about another point that also is very much related to the "Damage Problem".

Topic №2 - Gems

• Gems were added into the game in one of the later updates, just like Path Of The Hunter they were supposed to increase amount of potential build variety or give more interesting choices towards your preferred playstyle, it was a ""hybrid"" between something like Decorations from Monster Hunter games or Blood Gems from Bloodborne, bringing quite a lot of Gems into the game that you can slot into your Weapons, up to 3 Gems.
   
• But, one of the main problems with the Gems in Rotwood was and still is, there's too many various fodder that feels, or is very useless or situational.

In contrast to that you have Damage related gems, many of which basically can improve Damage with Light or Heavy attacks, Backstab damage or Damage while the enemy is attacking, and so on.
This already sounds better than many of the situational options other 2 types of Gems provide (Sustain/Support), but it gets worse, because there are 2 particular Damage related Gems that simply act as the best choice in any scenario if you simply want to hit harder.

Focus Hit Damage and Risky Gems.
 

Both of these Gems do 1 simple thing, give you more damage.

• Focus Hit Gem is a bit more of a conditional effect, requiring you to do Focus Hits with your Weapon for improved result, which is basically very easy to do with each weapon.

And Risky Gem just boosts your damage while also making you receive more damage, up to the max of 20% more Damage Dealt and Received.
With that, a lot of the decision making regarding Gems and builds once again can go to vain, where people are simply gonna choose the option that gives you more damage and that's it, you can either go with 3 Focus Hit Gems for a safer but still stable damage increase, or 3 Risky Gems for massive damage increase,even if can make you pretty much oneshotable in many cases.
 

• Once again, something that was supposed to make people think of what would particularly help in their build turned into another situation where more damage is just a better and easier option.

 

• With the release of Path Of The Hunter Gems also became far worser in one aspect that i haven't mentioned yet.

Gem Fodder.
Gem fodder was a thing with you having way too many Activated or not Activated Gems, making the Gem table very muddy, and on the other hand having over 3000 Gems in my case, that i basically don't even need to Activate,
Previously you would also have to farm for multiple same Gems if you wanted to have 2 Weapons utlizing 3 Risky Gems for example, you couldn't just use already existing Risky Gems that are slotted into another Weapon.

Current update actually bring a very heavy and good change to one existing aspect of Rotwood, mannequins.
Mannequins now have a system of loadouts in which you can save and freely swap between many builds with ease, all in one place.
 

• But, a very big buttt, it also affected the problem with Gem fodder.

One of the good parts about Mannequins rework, is that you basically can use any of your existing Gems on any Loadout, without the need to farm for more of the same Gems for each Weapon you like.
And that's where the problem lies, since basically now you need to grind even less, and at a certain point you'll be having hundreds, or thousands of unused Gems in your inventory, collecting dust and having no real use.
I can't think of any solutions to this problem, but i at the very least wanted to the Gems to be more unique and interesting, less situational or straight up useless, less about improving the damage while making other options obsolete.

Topic №3 - Equipment

• Rotwood has a pretty good assortment of Weapons and Armours, all of which belong to a certain Zone and can usually particularly help in some of those Zone.

With this much Armour and Weapons you'd think there is a lot of opportunities for making very different builds, but unfortunately this is a similar situation with the Gems, but not quite.

Most of the Armour falls into category of either Utility or Situational stuff, but both have particularly bad pieces of armour that basically never help you in any capacity, or help only in certain scenarios, some of the examples would be, Collosophire Helm - Freezes an enemy when you get hit, Groak Pants - Prevent Spore effects, many of the Acid resistance related equipment, entire Rillo or Bullbug sets, Mothball set - since it only works in multiplayer, and still a lot of other Armours.
 

• Because of that, once again players would rather just pick something that makes their build deal more damage, or just use many of the popular overpowered builds that are aimed for maximised damage without any interesting playstyle either, one of the most popular contenders is Gnarlic build, making use of the Bullrog body armour and Collosophire legs, all you have to do is run around and kill everything in the process, while also getting more damage after every completed room if you haven't Dodged a single time.
   
• Because of that, a lot of other Armour is simply left to "rot" with having no use, even when it comes to fashion, since some sets like Floracrane just genuinely look goofy/ugly.

Armour reworks are currently planned, and this definitely should be one of the bigger priority to increase the amount of potaential builds options, because currently many of the Loadouts can play mostly the same way, and also use the same Armours, either for bonuses, or because you don't wanna look ugly.

Topic №4 - Material Fodder

• If you played Rotwood for about 20 hours or more, you may already know what i'm talking about, after a certain point you'll run out of ways to spend many of your resources, such as Materials for Weapon or Armour upgrades, Corestones, recently added Gifts for the NPC's, or you'll have many other resources that you have way too many but will never run out of, such as Seeds or Food and Gems.

I don't think it's a necessarily bad thing that you will run out of things that will be in need of spending it on something, but for a Rogue-lite game there still should be a lot more ways to find use for all those things, which i hope to see in the future updates.
 

• Food by itself is another topic, but i'll talk about it here.

Food is supposed to a useful option to select from the array of Powers one that you'd like to start a run with, and it can certainly be a helpful thing to start a run with a decent boost right away, but unfortunately many people just don't use it, ever.
Because of that it simply becomes a matter of collecting Food, but even if you were to start using it after already collecting for a long time, you will never run out of it, since every time you'll be getting much more Food from cooking, while only being able to eat once at the start of the run.
 

• I do have one idea that could potentially fix this, and make Food a more interesting part of the game, but it still might be a bit questionable.

My idea would be, make it similar to some of the Monster Hunter games while still keeping some original Rotwood identity.
In town Glorabelle could make a certain Dish for you that can be used before the hunt, to make a Dish first you choose 1 Power that you'll gain at the start of the run, this will also act as a Dish Preset that allows you to choose from a limited amount of ingredient to add into the final product, since each of the Dish Presets will not allow you to use all of the ingredients, each of the unique Ingredients will give their own minor bonuses, such bonuses can include resistances to various elements like Acid or Frost, or other helpful effects, and each Dish in total can use up to 3 unique Ingredients.
So basically, this would act as a better version of current Food system, allowing you to still get a boost for the run with the Power of choice and some minor stat upgrades, but you get the ability to do it in town, and on top of that have more use for already existing Ingredients.
I don't think this would be a perfect system either, but something more interesting and useful than what we have already.

Topic №5 - Anomalies, Difficulty, Runs.

• Anomalies AKA Teffra Saturation was added in one of the later updates, as a thing that spiced up Super Frenzies with an attempt to make them more fun and harder, but also give players more rewards upon their completion.

It worked very well, and was pretty much the lategame grind or the only source of replayability, although it did have some issues and flaws, the system worked good enough and i was a big fan of it, because Super Frenzy hunts became much more interesting.
Now, this changed drastically after Path Of The Hunter update, and instead of having 1 Super Frenzy Anomaly per run, you have a choice of 3 Anomaly Corrupted Miniboss Rot Hunts.
I am very mixed about this change for many reasons, first of all being the fact that obviously now there is a lot less excitement when playing through Super Frenzy hunts, second being the difficulty of Anomaly Corrupted Miniboss Rot Hunts, which are very low level compared to your Character.

• This resulted in having pretty short Anomaly runs in which you basically oneshot everything and rush through the hunt to get all the rewards, Minibosses at the end of those hunts also don't pose any threat since they are far more underlevelled, and because of that current Anomalies become a tedious grind for Heart Shards, that replaced a previously fun option to make your Super Frenzies even more harder.

But, i do expect the devs to bring back Anomalies to Super Frenzy hunts as well later on, perhaps it's in a state of being reworked and changed for the better, but current state of Anomalies is just very boring, and makes lategame a tedious grind for nothing.
 

• On to Difficulty, after Path Of The Hunter update it also suffered pretty heavily, because from the previous topic of Damage and an ability to upgrade your Weapons up to 15th level made the players far stronger, while keeping the whole game and enemies pretty much unchanged, maybe even nerfing some of the difficulty as well.

So for now all we have is the lack of Difficulty that previously was still a part of Rotwood's lategame content, because you simply couldn't overlevel yourself to the comically absurd heights that Path Of The Hunter brings.
 

• The Runs, i cannot say a whole lot about the runs, but there was always very small amount of variety when it came to this, so most of the replayability came from the option of clearing all in-game content, multiplayer. or experimentation with builds.

Some developers mentioned that they had plans to make runs longer, and this can have a lot of potential in Rotwood's case, but it was never certain whether this is gonna ever happen or what it exactly means.
Other than that, more random events and room variety, both in their layout and unique room types that also can appear as options you choose in the run, would be a welcomed addition.

Conclusion.

• This post might be pretty messy and unprofessional in many regards, but i just wanted to talk about some of the things that have been happening with the game, and what i wanted to see changed or improved.
  I still love Rotwood, it became one of my favourite games of all time for its unique style, polished combat and great experience it provides, and i see so much potential within this game, it's just sad to see when it doesn't move in the right direction.
  One of the ways i thought of Rotwood recently was - The game fell into "All Damage, no unique or interesting Build Crafting" situation, and originally many people liked Rotwood exactly for the ability to try and make interesting build loadouts, which over time has been suffering a lot, with many questionable armours, or tools to increase Damage over everything else.
  
  Be sure to tell me what you think about this post, and maybe relate to some of the points that i bringed up.

[Creamean6_7]

At the beginning of the new version, I discussed the garlic suit in group chat. But it seems that many players only know how strong this suit is in this version. In the past, garlic suits were also very common in public rooms. In China community, the evaluation of this phenomenon was polarized. Some people would kick off garlic suit players, while others had to wear garlic suits because others wore them. But this version is accepted by players because of the appearance of the heart chip system, because some people want to collect 500 pieces quickly. However, this acceptance has made the suit more widely spread, resulting in more extreme polarization. Some people think that with the addition of the heart chip system, the garlic suit should be weakened, while others say that it will not be collected faster without wearing the garlic suit, and the garlic suit has become an unshakable suit in this game.

And the heart chip system. I'm sorry. That's my nickname. Some people think that playing 200 chips by one person is enough. Some people think that you can't play in the super frenzy without collecting 500. Of course, there are also many players who think that others have collected 500 chips. If I don't collect them, I will fall behind others, so I will collect them. Of course, collecting chips in the half-way adventure is extremely boring. Some people think that the weather system should appear in the whole adventure, especially in the super frenzy. Regarding the upper limit of the cardiac chip system, some people say that the upper limit of the system should be increased with the increase of the game progress, but this is unfair to multiplayer players. After all, players rarely meet other players with similar progress in public rooms.

[DemonNamahage]

I agree with many things, I would also like to see some day slots for gems on armor, in addition to weapons. For example, removing various support stones from the pool of weapon stones that are not very functional, this could also give armor the opportunity to improve above the limit level. I would also like to see a pet system someday, imagine a little Bulbin distracting the opponents while you deal with the rest of the enemies, so cute! I'm also really looking forward to the next location, AND I KNOW IT WILL BE DEDICATED TO THE VOLCANIC THEME Klei!Happy New Year to all

Edited December 25, 2025 by DemonNamahage