Aspects, Crystals and Unstable Infinites

We are mostly recovered from the release now. It was stressful, as releases always are - especially when you're reuploading a freshly rebuilt build five minutes before pressing the release button. But we made it through, avoided major bugs, and some of you have played the game quite a few hours.

NET.CRAWL is a peculiar title. You can't really chill your way through it, nor can you brute force it. You've got to give yourself fully to the game, learn its language, and listen to whatever it has to say.

In his 2000s book On Writing, Stephen King describes writing as "telepathy" - a kind of magic where the author transmits thoughts and emotions directly from their mind to the reader's, across any distance. I'm not a writer, and I don't care much about stories or even emotions. But I care deeply about systems and knowledge. The fact that someone on the other side of the planet can complete a run is proof that through some techno-telepathy-magic, we managed to transmit the knowledge about the game's systems. And, maybe there were emotions involved too.

That's pretty cool if you ask me.

But whether we call it telepathy or not, we'd better not waste mana on using it for mundane tasks, such as explaining the reasoning behind this patch's changes. And that's what the rest of the post will be about.

Aspect Matrix

You can now buy hidden aspects for 100 credits.

This solves two problems:

Even though buying a hidden aspect is very fun, it was hard to justify because why would you buy a "cat in the bag" for full price?

In the early game, Crystals are hard to get - and that's exactly when you want to buy two Aspects the most. This change gives more granularity at the price point for two Aspects. Instead of only 3 Crystals, you now get three other options (300 Credits, 1 Crystal + 200 Credits, or 2 Crystals + 100 Credits).

This is objectively a great change that was held back by the fear of making UI more complicated and fruitless attempts to give the game's two currencies more distinct use cases.

+3 Offer Price Increase

This one is hard to be happy about but it feels necessary.

The Aspects change frees up a lot of Crystals, and people were already getting to the final fight with way too much Link. The game is just not fun when you have 20-something Link. I can't put pressure on you if two hearts are enough to chill until the end of turn 4 against 16 Trace.

Trinity Grid

I know a lot of people don't like how hard it is to fit a Trinity piece into the grid. Let's attempt the impossible - make it even harder to fit perfectly, but feel less bad at the same time:

One node in each triplet-piece now gets upgraded. That node alone should be worth the asking price.

I have also lowered the price for the 6-slot option in System Expansion to 1 Crystal and made System Expansion appear earlier and slightly more frequently. You should have more empty slots available when you get to Trinity System and it should make it less frustrating.

Similarly, the "flat" Data Pool now also sells Upgraded Pieces:

Infinite Reboot

There is this post on Steam forums where Blanche got exploited for "unlimited Crystals." I didn't realize it right away, but unlimited Crystals was a bug. However, the fact that certain builds