balance · February 14, 2024
HELLCARD Tinkerer Balance And Bugfixes Update
HELLCARD adjusts Tinkerer card costs, modifies endless modifiers, and squashes multiple UI and crash bugs.
A balance and bugfix update for HELLCARD revises the Tinkerer class mechanics, alters card resource costs, and addresses game-ending crashes.
Tinkerer Card Adjustments
Tabletop Trebuchet and Backpack Ballista drop their Core costs in exchange for an increased Screws cost of 7. Duct Tape drops from 2 Cores to 1 Core while reducing Block from 6 to 5 per turn. Tough Tabard shifts from 1 Core and 5 Screws to 5 Screws alone, increasing Block from 15 to 20. Furor Divinus costs 5 Screws and 2 Cores, changing its influence effect to grant allies one card draw per mana gained. Ingenuity and Stimulate both gain the Exhaust property.
Core Mechanic Overhauls
Science! and Field Flux remove their Core gaining caps. Playing either card with active Cores now discards one random card and applies Strain, with Field Flux dropping its conditional mana gain in exchange for a zero-cost reduction. Quantum Flow and Stable Influx also drop their Core caps so their secondary effects always trigger, applying Strain when played with two or more Cores.
Monster and Encounter Balancing
Cook HP drops to 120 and Strength drops to 15, while the difficulty of cauldron-spawned monsters scales down. Corrupted Arachnod health decreases from 15 to 12 and adds a Shift move action. Bugged scaling interactions for modifiers like Rotten and Sharpen Bones against Sickly and Anemic stats are fixed.
Quality of Life and Vault Changes
Vault interactions add a confirmation prompt if you refuse a random artifact. Legacy endless characters can now retire to earn XP, and companion deck change pop-ups stay visible longer. Terminate and Sugar Rush cards now prevent card discard at the end of the turn when played.
Bug Fixes
Fixes address crashes occurring after alt-tabbing, incorrect Spider Gun damage output, and broken interactions between Pavise, Junk Mail, and Gauntlet cards when holding large amounts of Screws. Additional fixes resolve broken save states for unlocked avatars and prevent the game from auto-creating a Tinkerer character upon joining a friend's lobby before unlocking the class.
Why this patch matters
The Tinkerer receives targeted resource adjustments and mechanics cleanups that alter how core-heavy builds spend resources.