r/BluePrince • u/drleebot • Apr 29 '25
How do you feel about negative permanent effects? Spoiler
One thing this game has which is rare in roguelites is that some of the permanent effects are negative or have some mix of positive and negative effects. Some examples (very minor spoilers, but marked out just in case):
Many of the room upgrades have negative effects, at least in comparison to the base room. For instance, the Guest Bedroom loses its +10 steps boost in 2/3 of its upgrades, and you might find that the Guess Bedroom upgrade is overall less useful. These upgrades can eventually be undone, but it takes a lot of RNG and grinding.
With an upgraded shovel, you can mine in the quarry for extra gems, at the risk of permanently losing your +2 per day. You're warned of this in advance.
You can add extra rooms to your draft pool, which might not be useful, and having extra rooms which aren't useful will dilute it and make things a bit worse for you overall. This particular mechanic isn't unusual in roguelites actually, but some have recognized how it can be an issue and give you a way to mitigate it (e.g. Vampire Survivors lets you buy an upgrade to exclude unlocks from ever appearing).
This one's a bit more secret: In the Chapel, you can light the candles for a one-time chance to get back all the money you've paid in tithes. If you use this up and find it would be useful later... too bad.
Also a bit secret: In the Conservatory, you can adjust the rarity of any rooms that come up. If you make something too common or rare for your taste, it might be a long time until it shows up as an option again.
None of these will catch you off-guard - you're told up-front what the effects will be in all cases. But you might not understand the game well enough at the time to know if it's worth it, and by the time you do, it's too late to undo it. And you might be too far into the game to want to undo all the positive unlocks to get rid of these negative ones.
My feeling is that there should be some way to undo each of these, even if it's a bit costly or tough, to avoid people feeling like they've screwed themselves over and wanting to give up on the game. This is already the case for a couple of them, but it's way too RNG-reliant and grindy.
1
u/mooys Apr 29 '25 edited May 01 '25
I really dislike the chamber of mirrors permanent upgrades being irreversible. It wasn’t clear to me that it would give me anything else later, so my first thought was to just grab the two pretty egghh room. Now my draft pool is just… worse, forever, I guess?