I think what Zigeye has been trying to tell us is that Max is OP.



Pilfer - particularly in the later stages - makes Max the most valuable door opener always. The +4 dust bonus seems a bit ... extreme ... when a room otherwise reveals 1 lone dust mote.



Everybody knows that a combination of mob farming, pilfering and the merchant shop affords enough dust to fully power levels...

To be fair, getting to +4 dust bonus takes quite a bit of food and I wouldn't really call that "extreme". I'm also curious how that makes you fully power entire levels, since I wasn't able to do that even with Max & Warden combo, I doubt that even having a shop would allow this to happen.



I have also never seen a room that only reveals 1 dust. I'm pretty sure they usually give anywhere between 4-6 dust.



I don't mind Max being an amazing door opener but he is a bit too good at everything atm. He gives you science, can operate major modules, has very high DPS and can give you a lot of dust.



I think pilfer should be left as is. In my current playthrough I have Max but I use him as an operator because I have a Third Eye artifact that I gave to a different door opener. And Max's wit is imo too good to ignore, even at the cost of gaining potentially slightly less dust when opening doors.



Max should be nerfed a bit but not as much as it may appear on first sight. I would personally take away some of his wit or even strip away the ability to operate major modules entirely. Either that, or take away his ability to generate science but that would turn him into a relatively boring hero (though I would be ok with that if it meant giving science generation passive to Sara Numas. Sara Numas for life! <3 )

Don't know... currently the game revolves too much about dust.

Max/Pilfer is kinda required right now. What I think is that the game needs to have alternative strategies besides dust hoarding. The accumulation of skill on Max is not a big deal I think, because they cancel each other out. If you are exploring, you can't operate for example. So you can never use all his skill at once, they are not synergistic. He is a jack-of-all-trades, but master of none. The science perk is nice, but not unique to him. Is there an artifact which grants it as well?

PANCZASU wrote:
I'm also curious how that makes you fully power entire levels, since I wasn't able to do that even with Max & Warden combo, I doubt that even having a shop would allow this to happen.



I have also never seen a room that only reveals 1 dust. I'm pretty sure they usually give anywhere between 4-6 dust.

A shop surrounded by, let's say, 5 level4 mechanical pals, and operated by a master hacker, will generate roughly 6 dust every turn. At higher levels, dust drops are more likely to occur when fighting mobs. It is easy to make up the extra 4 dust needed to power the next room. This depends a great deal on finding a merchant - the earlier the better. Max's ability (and yes, there are 1-dust rooms) makes it much much simpler to keep up with power demands until a merchant is found. But you might have a point - the imbalance may be in the shop rather than in pilfer.



I have in the past completed levels 7/8 without more than two darkened rooms for mobs to spawn in. I even had dust left over to purchase items.

Pilfer was introduced back when Dust dropped rarely but when it dropped it dropped in high amounts. So Pilfer usually credited for a small percentage of the overall dust-finding-income.

Since there was a change that you find dust more frequently but also in lower amounts, Pilfer becomes exponentially stronger.



Imho it should give you a certain percentage of what you found to be more in line with it's original intention.

I have started playing with Max/Pilfer and could light up all rooms in most levels. Sometimes I turn of the far ones at the end of the level to scoop up all good items from a merchant before going up.



The game is kinda impossible/too hard without Max, and too easy with him.



There should be alternative ways to prevent being overrun by supermobs when not having enough dust. We need more gameplay styles.

As for Pilfer, I think that changing it to 20%30%/40% dust would be a push in the right direction.

Agreed, super OP. Pilfer should be at just +1 to start. Even if it got up to +3 with Max it would greatly reduce it's effectiveness to a more balanced state.



As for other +Dust options, maybe make the Store stack up to +3 with enough Wit instead of just being +1 all the time would be a nice. Finding a Merchant doesn't always happen, so making this +Dust module more powerful would be my vote. I don't find the +1 worth moving my operator ever.



With the new Beta release the "Power Generator Module", I think it's called, gives you a powered room for industry cost and increases dust drop rates floor wide, really cool. Plus certain rooms are powered for free by a "Mysterious Force" , really helps out with the whole Dust focus issue, I think. Max is still MVP for sure though

Yep, your right. In beta I don't really need Max anymore, all I need is 2 good operators and one high dps character. With emergency modules, random self powered rooms it's much easier to manage. My fav combo for now is Golgy and Josh ... 3rd and 4th characters could be anything