Watching the Tweets go by...

Because chop attacks are generally very useful when outnumbered, which is the norm. Hefty Chopper and Advanced Chopping are sold in the regular shops, and are usually good choices for new players who don't have higher rarity weapons. Being adjacent to more than one slime isn't desirable, but they often have more moves, so it's frequently unavoidable. Chops often produce the greatest damage per attack, which, to me, seems a pretty good reason to use them.
I don't use them in my current builds for The Viscous Tombs, but I did in my first (1/1/1) run because they were the best weapons I could lay hands on.
What, exactly, would you recommend for new players?

 

AND

Lol. I hope the deck has less Simian Reflexes in them now. Wow. Monkeys have to be in the top 3 of most annoying monsters to face from the original campaign. I think they make take the #1 spot with these changes.

 

War Monkeys used to be the most hated monsters, but they got nerfed hard at the end of beta (their numbers were reduced and they lost Duck) and now they feel a bit pathetic. However, this change to Simian Reflexes might make them too hard for the first time players meet them. Maybe have the card only trigger on magic and projectile attacks? Otherwise you could get hit with SR + Acrobatic Flip + Cowardly Attack.

 

I'm sure you did (and, no matter how sarcastic that sounds due to this being text-only, I mean a sincere tone of voice). Finding a strategy that covers many circumstances is itself great fun. And succeeding even if you have to "brute force" that deck in odd circumstances is also fun. I wasn't trying to tell you this was wrong or anything: I was talking about the "intended" or "ideal" strategy for these campaigns. And when facing skeletons and slimes, Chops are less ideal than the other strategies discussed.

New players? I'd have to go back and see what sorts of Common gear are available around then to be sure. But here: lemme hop back a meta-level, okay?

When I say all this stuff, I'm talking about what the adventure itself communicates to the player. Chops are good against clusters of enemies; that's obviously true. Now, a new player, even one who hopefully understands such strategy, steps into an adventure for the first time and sees "whoa, these clustered enemies have an ability that lets them heal each other!" This is the single most immediate thing on a new player's mind, and a strategic thinker should immediately start thinking about counters.

And so, yes, I acknowledge everything you're saying about the damage dealt by Chops. Absolutely! But the level design is telling the player that a strategy of spread-out damage is less ideal. Therefore, if the designers change the setup so that there's even greater punishment for failure to adapt to the level, it only fits with the design goal. It makes the level better at its intent.

Does that make sense?

I could still try to come up with specific recommendations for a new player if you'd like, but I was really talking about this sort of thing. I know for a fact that I depended on single-target magic, single-target high-damage melee and such when I beat those levels. (Also, I personally love mobility, and so slimes weren't always clustered next to me.)

 

Yes, that makes a sort of sense, in a sense. It puts me in mind of a musical instrument company trying to ensure their instruments are only used to play classical music. In accordance with my nature, I will do my best to use their instruments to play everything except classical. And if I can't find a way around it, I'll probably just play something else. Classical on a kazoo, maybe.

 

And thus do you perform the best kazoo.

Though I disagree with the logic that got there. If a game designer makes a level to take full advantage of the hero's "double jump" ability, you don't talk about it in a negative way: you talk about how it's "taking advantage of the double jump ability."

(Unless it's bad. But that can happen in any design task.)

 

That's true, especially if the hero has a "double jump" ability. I've never been a fan of "single solution" problems in this type of game (such things fit in Zork, but it is a different animal entirely), and I'm not sure that's what the designers are trying to do here. I sincerely hope not. Such a thing could clash badly with, "The Game Of Fantastical Adventure Limited Only By Your Imagination!", as printed on the intro page.

Some of the tweets I read are a bit disquieting, but we won't really know until we see how everything works as a whole.

 

And, of course, some of the concerns people have expressed here translate to "what if a new player doesn't HAVE the double jump?"

Far be it from me to deny those concerns. I can only assume that this is why the designers kept adding new anti-Troglodyte stuff to the game: new players have to have picked up SOMEthing from that heap of loot to have the best chance against the level 7 adventures. Thankfully, now they do (and, thankfully, there's plenty of strategy beyond just those items).