I made it vague so you can interpret it your own way. In the scrap cards, you can see an idea turning into a prototype: The Pilot. With each run in the Spire evolving further. When it reaches the best version, one that can beat a simulation of the Heart, it means the core is ready to become the final creation: The Defect. This is shown in the cutscene and the secret scrap fusion.

The person seen is the one maintaining the Pilot. At the rest site, they’re doing repairs. The Pilot has some form of intelligence, not controlled remotely though it’s unclear if it’s truly alive. I won’t say who the person is, since I like hearing theories, some think it’s the Shopkeeper, a certain enemy, or someone tied to the lore.

The idea is that the Pilot is The Defect’s predecessor, giving new meaning to the name like a show’s pilot episode, the first version.

Confused on the lore. What happens in the heart defeat ending with the defect, and also who is the man in the rest site sprite? It does not look like the pilot could be "piloted" as his neck is litterally two like pipes. Very intriqued on the story for this character.

Thank you! glad you liked it

Incredible class. It's hard to keep bringing in unique new mechanics yet you've done it.

Found the reason. I've got a bunch of mods, including the Loadout mod that i forgot i even had active. Upon deactivating it, the scraps became normal once more

Also because the fusing mechanic is kinda rigid I would also want to know if you are using other mods or got the card in other way than the common process, like for example I know some modded relics would allow to get the final scrap by other means, if obtained in a way like that it can lead to breaking so it's good to know for the context of fixing the problem

That is a weird interaction of the final scrap card and how interacts with scrap cards I never seen before, if you could add some context or add the crash info to the bug report to the Bug report discussion I would gladly check what went wrong, sorry for the inconvenience

Weirdly enough, I just had a.. specific issue. I played a game with scavenges, scraps and all. Scraps were.. normal, i believe, as in they do an effect, they exhaust, and fuse.

I crashed out of that game.
Then, I launched another one... and now the scraps i get are purple and don't fuse anymore? they have another effect tho

Thank you!

ngl, best character mod so far

yeah. seems its just a headache from what the downfall people are saying. thanks for trying

I've heard that at least for steam deck it works because it behaves like a pc

Yeah I've spent hours trying to make it work with shortcuts like it does with keyboard but doesn't work it seems it has problems for mods, then tried using the cursor controller as an alternative but is like you just said and really hardcoded where everything goes when pressing specific buttons and the census for the modders is that is really bad, I'm so sorry

If you cant impliment controller support thats fine. once i asked the downfall devs about it apparently the controller implimentation for vanilla is BAD. everything being essentially hard coded, tho they did say that the next release should have it working.

Thanks for the comments! as for the button scrying and using 2 energy I haven't seen this playing nor other people have reported this so I would check if it's related to other mods, as for colorless cards that sounds really cool! but I am done with the mod for now after months of development and want to move one. I will still fix bugs or some balance but things like new cards require new code and art, the same with the replay button but thanks for the cool ideas, I may revisit it in the future when I cooldown with the mod.

insanely good. would love to see more characters with this exact scry/play mechanic. Or an entirely new game. it's so brilliant. Combats are full of tough decisions, real irreducible dilemmas that you can't just solve with some tedious math.

amazing as-is, but as far as feature requests go, here's two.

-a set of colorless cards tailored for this mod specifically, kinda like how Downfall does Boss cards.

-a Scry replay button, showing what you saw in your last Scry, highlighting what you discarded, and maybe another highlight for what you've played since Scrying. Replay button vanishes every time you shuffle draw pile. (Especially useful with a card like Take Aim+, scrying 12. (Also, Take Aim seems a little strong, esp the upgrade.)) Not like it's impossible to keep track without it though.

Thanks for making this!

Not sure if I have a mod conflict or a bug or if the mod is working as intended. The button for scry says scry 4 for 1 energy but what actually happens is scry 4 twice for 2 energy. Same issue with play card button. Its not one energy for 1 card its 2 energy for 2 cards.

Oh it didn't even pass thru my mind the controller support as I've never played with it, I'll see if I can do anything about implementing it

Really cool mod. love the idea and the execution. one pet peeve is.. well it doesnt work with controllers. you cannot select the scry or play buttons with controller. its not a big issue, but its enough to be annoying sense the base game has perfect controller support.

If it makes you feel any better, downfall also fails with controller support even sooner than this (sense you cant leave the first area without going to mouse the campfires first, or select half the downfall characters).

Thank you! I had in mind to have vanilla as standard when creating the mod from the balance to the art and assets to how it feels, glad that people are enjoying it.

I have around 150 hours in slay the spire and have basically done anything that there is in the game but i want to say that this mod is EXTREMELY well made and is such a breath of fresh air with all of the new well put together mechanics and cards

The mechanics are extremely fluid and click together very easily, i could see myself trying to aim for using a different strategy in every run (right now my favorite strategy is Charging and getting an absurdly high amount of Capacity)

At first it was a bit hard to get used to everything but by the start of my second run i finally understood how the character exactly works and how i could use the scrying and autoplaying optimally

This mod is truly one of the best in the workshop and if i didn't know any better i would have thought that this was a vanilla character as well

I will definitely try to beat Acension 20 with this character

You can check the new thread in the discussions tab of the workshop, let's talk in there

Thanks for your quick update. I just noticed something I don't understand when translating. The card : Trash Cannon, has an extended description which said : 'Deal !M! damage for every fusion made to ALL enemies' . I search for the word 'fusion' in your Card.JSON file and no other places have this word. Is this some kind of mistake? I know 'fusion' is one of the keyword in the KEYWORD.JSON file, but it hasn't been properly used in your card description file. What does this mean?
Also, maybe we can make contact somewhere private instead of filling your comment section.

The ID is updated now in lowercase, If any problems arise or have questions feel free to start a new thread in the discussions tab.

Yes I can change it no problem, just one second, and hope you didn't get discouraged with the amount of extra text or lack of explanation , for example the first extended descriptions in cards are their evolved form and things like that, don't hesitate to ask anything

OK I finally figure it out. When translating to Chinese, The prefix can't contain uppercase letters.
So if you use 'ThePilotCharacter:XX', it won't appear correctly in game. It has to be 'thepilotcharacter:XX' . I could manually change all your prefix next to the keyword, although this will take me too much time. Could you maybe have faster way to change all the prefix to 'thepilotcharacter' ?

Hi, just so you know I'm still working on translating your mod. But recently I tested my translation in the game and it seems something is wrong. When translating the keyword in card description, all the new keywords added by the mods will show as ’ThePilotCharacter:XX' in the game. For example, I translated your keyword 'Repair' to '维修‘ , and it will show 'ThePilotCharacter:维修' in the game. Although the yellow highlight and the tooltip are still showing correctly. This never happened before with other character mods I translated and yes, I already translated the Keyword.json file. Could you possibly make a version only for me and change the 'ThePilotCharacter' to something else? I'm trying to figure out what's causing this.

Thank you!! I tried my best to have the vanilla vibe with the art and the character and actually good idea to have a form card, maybe I could think of something

LOVE THE MOD! breaks my brain in a great way, the most complex sts character i've ever seen, only complaint: he don't have a form card!

yeah! meant if you know about that the files and formatting in the JSON but it seems you already know that, if you do it I'll work from my part to enable the chinese translation don't worry.

Should I just edit your files in Localization/eng? I think after I translate all the .json files, you'll need to put them into a new folder with the title <zhs> inside localization folder, and you should also do something with your mod itself to enable the Chinese translation, otherwise the game will crash. I know how to translate the .json file correctly but I know nothing about JAVA code, so you'll need to figured out how to add Chinese as the second language of your mod.

Thanks, also sure! you can do it no problem it's a really big endeavor with a lot of text I warn you, don't know if you already have knowledge on how to translate mods, but all files are available in the github linked, go to resources/localization and feel free to contact if you have questions as I think there was some different things to setup from my part. Good luck!

I love the creativity of this mod！Could you give me permission to translate it to Chinese?

I'm adding them just in case in the mod screenshots, again sorry..

You have to understand that today I realised the tutorial wasn't showing to new players since like 15 versions ago, IM SO SORRY

Dont get it at first, but have some time with it and its damn cool, very unique gameplay loop.

Thanks for the comments! Love that people are liking the mechanics and as for the notes I'm glad they are useful, be prepared because a large balance update is coming

this is kinda breaking my brain but in a good way. holy shit 12/10 creativity for this characters gimmick like my god.

The Pilot is really fun to play and I fully recommend trying it :)

Hey @BatNick as a fellow modder, Thank you for taking the time to fill out the change notes on the mod when it updates. :)

Glad you are enjoying it! Arc blaster was me just wanting to bring the fun of Searing Blow with discard and custom images (also the naming with numbers is just a cool concept), is not the most efficient combo but it is fun if you get it early.

Frozen eye is one of the strongest relics simply because it plays really well with the pilot now that you control your deck instead of drawing, you'll still sometimes scry to remove cards but now you save energy, I do feel it's the same with vanilla if you play frozen eye you slow down your game for optimal play here is the same.

The comments really make me happy and I hope you enjoy your time!!!

i've only gotten past the first boss on my first run of this character so far, but holy smokes. such a cool mechanic, and it's implemented real damn well so far. can't wait to show it to my other sts nerd friend.

arc blaster + maintenance combo feels like it could very easily be the kind of synergy that becomes broken, but since it takes a while to ramp, it doesn't feel overpowered, especially against enemies with higher health.

i'm really interested to see how frozen eye interacts with this character, also, because it seems like it could be op, but it's also such a crapshoot if you'll be able to get it that it seems like it would balance out. makes shops a lot more enticing, though.

i'm looking forward to playing more of this, and may have other comments in the future, but i wanted to say something now because, wow.

Also thank you gameboy! I'm glad it's being recieved well.

Some relics are kinda finicky, Pen Nib works on playing an attack and double it's damages, grenades and scrap count as playing but don't do damage, I fixed equipment cards so it doesn't do that with but forgot to apply the same with scraps and grenades thanks for the catch I'll be updating that!

im trying to make sense of how the character interacts with pen nib. atk scrap & modules have no effect, but grenades triggers it even though its dmg isnt boosted. is this intended?

I'm having so much fun with this. Such a unique character yet all the gameplay elements feel right at home and super satisfying. Just played a charge combo build and it was a blast!