For this mod, I tried to spend some time thinking about what is and is not working with the existing set of trinkets. Rather than go about arbitrarily adjusting stats and hoping that they'd work, I wanted to understand how trinkets are being used, and make changes that would help more trinkets be useful in a wider variety of situations.

Disclaimer: I think Red Hook's done an excellent job with the game, and as I worked on this project, I was impressed with the thought that went into the design. While I've made a lot of changes, I've tried to keep the "heart of the cards trinkets" since I think they're so well designed to begin with.

Keeping "top line" stats: Since I wanted to create a "vanilla" like experience, I decided to keep most of the main stats for most of the trinkets. Players should still be able to look at a trinket and know what it's used for. In a very few cases, I thought I couldn't make a trinket work in its original role, or wanted to iron out some larger problems, so I chose to completely rework a few, but it's only a few (see Reworked trinkets, below).

Stat tradeoffs: One of the very original aspects of this game is the idea that most trinkets provide stat boosts, but in exchange for stat penalties. I think that makes for interesting decisions in building out team comps, and I've left it in place since it's such an integral part of the game. But a lot of the issues with trinkets are in the types of tradeoffs being made.

Strong stats vs weak stats: Very broadly, the strongest stats are offensive stats, because they get used every turn. Number one on that list is damage, because most heroes attack every turn. Likewise with Crit, which has a chance nearly every turn to trigger. Speed is also very close, since every hero takes a speed roll every turn.

Stun Skill doesn't look as good as raw damage, but is actually incredibly powerful, since a stun cancels out an enemy action, and a lot of monsters are right on the edge of resisting it. Stacking it can also raise the chance of chain stuns on monsters, which, again, is incredibly powerful.

The other offensive abilities aren't quite as powerful. Bleed Skill, for instance, looks like a strong stat, but isn't. That's because it increases the chance of landing a bleed, but doesn't otherwise increase damage; and often the chance of landing a bleed will be very binary, either you're nearly always going to get it, or the resist is so high you're never going to get it.

Accuracy is kind of a special case. Early on it's not much good, since most abilities are already close to the hard cap on accuracy. Late game it becomes more powerful, since so many more monsters have high Dodge. But overall, it's more situational than raw damage.

Defensive abilities tend to be weaker, since not every hero will get attacked every turn. Dodge is the strongest of the defensive abilities, but still not as strong as core offensive abilities.

Stress resist is also a moderately strong stat since there are a lot of sources of stress. But the remaining defensive abilities are very situational, and as such are very weak. For instance, it's not every turn a hero will get attacked, but even then, only a few attacks will actually be bleed attacks, which makes Bleed Resist a very weak stat (something something Occultist heal).

Utility abilities are a mixed bag. Healing is very strong, nearly as strong as direct damage, since most healers will be healing most turns. Scouting is actually very good, better than I think a lot of players realize. Trap Disarm is decent (but not useful without Scouting); Food Consumed is just annoying. Everything else tends to be very situational.

The problem: The problem is that a few trinkets are far more powerful than the rest, and so consequently a handful get used while the rest gather dust. The main (though not only) reason is that tradeoffs are imbalanced. The very strong trinkets provide strong stats in exchange for penalties to weak stats (e.g., +DMG for +Stress), while a lot of trinkets provide weak stats in exchange for penalties to strong stats (e.g., +Bleed Skill for -SPD). Since offensive damage is so strong, there really isn't any reason to do anything other than stack trinkets that layer on Damage, Crit, Accuracy, and Speed, and forget about defensive stats, since the penalties for those trinkets just isn't worth the marginal gains.

Trading strong stats for strong stats, and weak stats for weak stats: To fix balance, the first thing I did was to make sure that, for the most part, strong stats are getting traded off against strong stats, and weak stats against weak stats. I tended to use penalties to Speed for the strong (offensive) trinkets, and penalties to Dodge for the weaker (defensive) trinkets, but there are plenty where I used a different tradeoff for a variety of reasons.

Adding "boosters" to weaker trinkets: Getting more sensible tradeoffs helped, but a lot of trinkets still weren't viable. To fix that, I added some additional stats to some of the weaker trinkets to make them more attractive. Very broadly, I added stats that are more universally useful (+CRT, +SPD, +ACC, etc.) to trinkets that were otherwise more situational.

One reason players don't take a very situational trinket like a Bleed Resist focused trinket is that they look at it and say: I don't know how often this is going to be useful. But if there's a stat that's going to be useful a lot of the time attached to it - even if it's a relatively minor bonus - that makes the trinket more attractive.

Bending the rules: I did want to make the trinkets useful, so in a lot of cases I bent the rules to reduce (or in a few rare cases, increase) the penalty. I did that mainly with trinkets that have major restrictions on them, like class specific or position specific. That's particularly the case with a stat on a class-specific item that's only going to get used for a limited number of weak abilities.

Focusing roles for heros: This is a more abstract concept, but in looking at the trinkets, I wanted to think about which role for the hero they would help focus. Trinkets can help nudge the player toward a given role for a hero, by putting together several stats that make sense in a given role. But part of that is also making players choose between roles for a hero rather than "all of the above".

That's particularly true of heroes with access to a strong stun ability or a strong healing ability. Damage, stun, and healing should be a "choose one", not an "all of the above". I've consequently added some Stun Skill penalties to damage-oriented trinkets, and some offensive penalties to stun-oriented trinkets.

Making the early game more accessible: I've removed all penalties from the (Very) Common trinkets. Their bonuses are low enough that it shouldn't be an issue, and should help make for some FeelsGoodMan moments when starting players discover them and can instantly slot them without worrying about stat penalties.

Shifting power from the mid game to the end game: The mid game typically represents a major power boost as a few of the currently overpowered trinkets (Sun Ring, Moon Ring, Blasphemous Vial) get picked up. I've reduced the power on those trinkets (see below), but in exchange, have added some power to the late game trinkets, particularly some of the currently weak Ancestral trinkets. I've also tacked on some extra stats to the Trophies, because seriously, if you win a Champion level boss fight, you deserve a real reward for it.

Light and dark: The biggest and most obvious changes are to the high light and low light trinkets; I've removed the +DMG from them. These trinkets had +Stress as the tradeoff, which is a weaker tradeoff, but I think that was seen as acceptable since it meant maintaining a specific light level. The problem is that most experienced players are very good at maintaining a given light level and reasonably good at managing stress, so it just wasn't enough of a penalty, which made Moon Rings and Sun Rings in particularly incredibly powerful. I've added some booster stats to compensate, but it's a major rework.

Reworked trinkets: As mentioned above, I've reworked most of the light and dark items to remove damage bonuses, but have added some other bonuses to partially compensate. Other changes:

Sacrificial Cauldron: This is now a healing focused item for Occultist - with a Bleed Skill penalty that should reduce the number of deaths-by-healer (I've tested this, and am reasonably confident it does in fact work - there's still a chance, it's just lower). Doesn't do anything about his trademark Heal-for-0, but this should make Occultists a more attractive healer.

Blasphemous Vial: This is now an exclusively Stun oriented item; Blight stats got moved to the Poisoned Herb.

Abomination Padlocks: Most of these have been reworked so they focus on one of each of his roles (Blight, Stun + defensive, transform + damage).

Ancestor's Handkerchief: This is now a healing oriented item, so you can think about no longer carrying around Junia's Head, which really when you think about it is a terribly unsanitary practice (the heads have been adjusted accordingly!).

Ancestor's Moustache Cream: This is now a camping recovery oriented item. It's still just a really weird item, and I'm not sure how viable it is even with its changed stats.

Ancestor's Tentacle Idol: This is now the ultimate in Eldritch hunting power among the trinkets.

Crew's Bell: This is now a very strong item for supporting a defensive stun-oriented front liner (e.g. Man-at-Arms or Hellion), the downside being that you probably won't get it until you're pretty much done with the game and it isn't useful any more.

Overall balance: My goal in this was not to make every trinket equal in power - quite the contrary. I'm fine with some trinkets being significantly more powerful than others, particularly if they're harder to get.

What I wanted is to get each trinket to the point where I could look at it and say: yes, I can think of a situation where I may run this trinket. I wanted to get everything to a point on the scale between "very occasionally useful" and "very often useful", and away from the extremes of "never useful" and "better than everything else". I think what I've done isn't perfect, but I'm hopeful it's a big step in that direction.