Super Frenzy levels 4 and 5 should be changed to be more impactful

[Tired_Awaii]

Currently Super Frenzy is our endgame content and grind, yet some of the modifiers that are applied for the different levels don't have much impact on the difficulty really only relying on the increased stats of enemies to provide challenge.

1st level Fine as is since its the starting point of Super Frenzies.

2nd level Fine as a modifier but it is severely lacking in what is considered "traps" which are boosted.

3rd level The most impactful in terms of changes being that we now have to face multiple minibosses at once rather than just one, its a really good one but does have a major flaw in that it is predetermined so you'll always be facing the same two minibosses on SF3+. This also means that certain minibosses will just no longer appear on SF runs which is bummer since many of the new minibosses we got were really cool and it'd be neat to see different combinations. Maybe they could pull from the quadrants they are in so something like the Gourdo twins can appear alongside Whammo like the old days. Also, hopefully more minibosses can be added in the future so there is at least 3 for each area like the Great Rotwood Forest and Nocturne Grove.

4th Level This is probably the least impactful of the Super Frenzy modifiers. All this modifier does is reduce your starting health which is a very weak modifier all things considered. It does make the earlier part of the run more difficult since you have less initial mistakes, but you can easily fix this problem with higher max hp or potions from the wellspring talents. I have two potential replacements for this modifier to increase the impact this SF level can have besides stat boosts. For one, the idea of affecting health is neat, but the problem is that it only really impacts you once throughout the run. I think it would be better to instead nerf overall healing which has been one of the ways that one can easily go through Super Frenzy and it would have impact throughout the entire run as all player healing would be affected. I think a making final healing 50%-80% as affective would be good. The second change is one that would move away from impacting health and instead focus more on making the hunts more dangerous with extra weather effects. Multiple mini-hunts have special weather conditions which impact how we interact with those hunts besides the shorter runs and it would be interesting to see those weather effects applied to the main hunts for each area.

5th Level While this modifier has more overall impact compared to the 4th level, I feel the effect it has is very lackluster. Originally, all Super Frenzy levels had freebies removed, but eventually it was changed so the removal of freebies was put alongside the increased teffra cost of everything. However, with the addition of the Hunter's Path, many of those effects have just been either reduced in impact or could just be ignored. One of the first major changes I suggest is making it so freebies are instead turned into discounts. For Alki this would mean that you can upgrade powers at half price in accordance to how many points you have in the Good Will talent from the wellspring. As for Hoggins, the free pot should hold half of what it usually does and it should also be effected by the Good Will talent adding an extra 250 per point invested which would then be halved from the SF5 modifier. On top of those changes I also believe that SF5 should remove the player's ability to go to Alphonse's market and should instead be replaced with 3 way paths to go to either a normal room, Alki's upgrades, or Hoggins' potion. A big problem that exists is that the market can easily provide for the player which means the paths to Alki or Hoggins are typically ignored unless the player has the Good Will effect which only applies to Alki and is really powerful because you can easily invest into it without much worry. Making the market unavailable will push the player to take these rooms more and also provide some much needed importance to Hoggins as most will ignore him. While I think both these changes being applied alongside the already existing price increases would do a lot in making SF5 more impactful, I also understand that these changes may be deemed a little too drastic and may not be implemented at the same time.

Edited March 20 by Tired_Awaii