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i am into accessibility and game design. i go by sysopod on other platforms as well



Inumo
@Inumo

Arright, I've poked around a bit at the new content, here's what I'm thinking about the new update. We're gonna start by talking about the new pack & how it compares to the old pack, then talk about the balance changes and how that affects the base pack. If you just want to look at numbies, I've partially updated my theorycrafting spreadsheet with a new sheet for Curse of Ramona & new numbers for the base pack, though I'm too lazy to build a routing sheet. If someone has health data for the new CoR snakes, let me know and I'll add that info in; I don't know how to do data-mining.

Edit: got some new info & did some bad math for the PS; updated accordingly.


Greed Runs in Curse of Ramona

TL;DR this shit's fuckin' hard, especially to do fast. Greed speedruns will probably always be faster in base pack vs CoR.

The Weedwhacker, while powerful over the course of a day, is a very slow weapon to kill snakes with. A lot of damage is done by virtue of the projectiles continuing to stick around & re-hitting snakes. Also, since the projectiles stick around, that means you either need to be running around finding the snakes that died offscreen and/or investing heavily in harvesters. So, I suspect Greed speedruns at least will probably still be run with pitchfork, though I may be proven wrong given the current state of items.

The loss of the lootsnake really hits us hard, and nothing directly takes its place. Instead, we have to rely a lot on Snake Eyes to get us those double drops if we want to have a hope of hitting 1,000 coins (we'll talk about items in a moment though). That said, what I'll call the "bomb" lineage (Rattler, Fuse Snake, Boomslang) are generally the most profitable lineage. Of the "dash" lineage (Tsuchinoko, Rainbow Snake, and Arrow Snake), the Tsuchinoko isn't as profitable as the Rattler, but the Rainbow and Arrow snakes are comparable to their bomb lineage counterparts. Even with their buffs, the Smog and Volcano snakes just can't quite compete. The main reason why I recommend the bomb lineage over the dash lineage is that they stay much closer to you, which is especially important for a pitchfork (and also why, even though the Snakebug is technically more profitable than a Fire or Clown snake, I'd still probably take a Clown over Snakebug). Also, Oil Snake is basically useless to us; it doesn't follow us and it produces oil (and only oil) so slowly that we can't really make it work for us, especially since we're limited to a max of 6 Oil Snakes.

Finally, looking at the new items, Sacrifice is (of course) not going to be particularly helpful in our runs; you have to take it late to have it be cost-effective, and even still it's causing you damage, something you ideally don't want to take in the first place. That said, you are undoubtedly going to take a lot of damage if you stock up on bomb lineage snakes, so Scale Mail is a must (though it's admittedly maybe less powerful than the Stealth Socks). Animal Mask is helpful if you're trying to catch the dash lineage snakes, and can provide some safety if you need a bit more time to winnow down the bomb snakes, so not a bad thing to invest in. With only the fire and cloud lineage snakes producing projectiles, there's not really much reason to bother with Antivenom. Snake Eyes, as mentioned, are basically essential to get to 1,000 coins; even the most profitable snakes (Boomslang & Arrow) only produce 78 coins max, meaning a stack of 10 Boomslangs & 10 Arrows all bought on day 7 only produce 1,470 coins (at the cost of somehow generating 510 coins prior to that moment; not likely to happen). Given the turning radii of bomb lineage snakes, the Carrion Flower is actually a pretty decent replacement for fertilizer; just get the snakes circling through the patches and avoid the bombs. Lawnmower's not super useful but it's still a damage source, while the Backhoe is only moderately useful for a pitchfork until everything gets leveled up enough to have a respectable fire rate. Finally, the Sidewinder Belt is actually in many ways worse for the pitchfork than the Eyepatch; it forces us to the sides of snakes, putting us closer to many of the current threats (especially bombs) and preventing us from taking advantage of leading snakes. That said, the Sidewinder Belt is incredibly good for the weedwhacker, and in fact may be the key thing that puts weedwhacker kill times above pitchfork kill times long-term.

Greed Runs after Base Pack Rebalance

TL;DR getting viable runs off the ground is way easier, day 7 snakes are better than lootsnakes now, buy Shadow Snakes.

The addition of the free re-roll means it's a lot easier to get your Snake Killers (fertilizer, hypervisor, eyepatch) more consistently, and the item shop weighting only enhances that effect. I didn't notice too much practical difference in kill times with the sun hat, but then, it wasn't a major killer anyways. I thiiiink there might be a bug involving random pitchfork hits getting skipped? It only seems to happen when you're getting coiled by multiple lootsnakes; I just spotted a few occasions where there was no hit damage number floating away even as the attack sound effect1 went off. Gonna try & do some video recording/testing to figure out something reproducible. Don't panic if you aren't seeing all your damage numbers, this is apparently an optimization thing.

As for the new snake numbers, while Lootsnakes continue to reign supreme in max possible profit, every day 7 snake beats it out on days 7 and 8 (on day 9 it gets a bit hinky, but you should have a winning snake kit by then anyways). The Shadow Snake's oil drops got buffed up to Garden Snake levels, but still costs the same as before, so the Shadow Snake has a lot more available profit compared to Garden Snakes (assuming you can survive them; they're definitely a tougher snake to safely kill). Basically you can buy 10 Shadow Snakes before you even start considering buying other snakes on day 7; on day 8 that number drops down to 8 Shadow Snakes. Speaking of, Tunnel Snakes are worth more than Garden Snakes on day 8, and both are marginally worth more than Lootsnakes, so if you got bad day 7/8 rolls even with the free re-roll you can still probably salvage something by filling your spare space with Tunnel and Garden Snakes.

Happy speedrunning!

P.S. Fun fact! Because Cobalt and Dragon Snakes are so expensive, you're actually better off buying 10 Meteor Snakes and 10 Earth Snakes to maximize your point total than you are buying any Cobalt or Dragon Snakes! Meteor & Earth Snakes don't reach par with Cobalt & Dragon Snakes unless you've bought 16 of them, a number nobody would ever bother buying. 8 Meteor Snakes and 8 Earth Snakes before even considering Cobalt or Dragon Snakes. I did my math wrong (was looking at avg points per oil across all snakes bought instead of marginal increases), but the point stands: the ideal big snake pack is 9 Meteor, 9 Earth, 1 Cobalt, and 1 Dragon.


  1. Side note I really wish there was a way to turn the attack sound effect off. I respect its use as a sound cue but it also is kinda annoying. >.>


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in reply to @Inumo's post:

Great breakdown of the update! I’ve been learning Greed (casually for now, will start recording runs when I get my times down a little more) and this is super helpful for understanding the changes to the meta!

The challenge will probably be their speed & tight turning radius more than anything; they're tough to line up & avoid, though maybe you can manage it w/ enough snakeskin boots.

Hey just fyi, doing some data collection on the discord- I think I've got the health values for the new snakes:

Tsuchinoko: 200
Rattler: 600
Snakebug: 1000
Fuse: 1800
Rainbow: 800
Oil: 100
Boomslang: 4000
Arrow: 4500
Cobalt: 30000
Dragon: 40000

The last two might be wrong, it's impossible to count the numbers at that stage and cheat engine kept getting them after I'd already softened them up but I'm pretty sure it's correct.