Idk yet if you start every run with mossy mace but if yes tote is totally playable
As of yet 1st run is going well

Ya, tote requires some ...... focus. you can swamp your draw to worthlessness, and just have things that don't work together.

Tote is deckbuilder mode. If you dont know how to play or dont like deckbuilders you are in for a rough time. Best advice is to make your deck of cards as lean and efficient as possible. If you dont need it or if it doesnt work with your current build then dont pick it up. The best deckbuilder decks have 5 cards in them that you play every turn. She is not like the other characters that just slurp everything up to hoard in the bag till it gets bigger.

My 2 biggest issues with Tote are:
1. You cannot sell/throw out/mail your cards outside of combat like other characters. Given that being able to freely reorganize your backpack is such a major feature in the game it really feels bad when you are stuck with every card you pick up and have to pay gold to get rid of them.

2. Randomness, every other character lets you organize your build and plan out your moves ahead of time while Tote is random, and this randomness is further impacted by the first point above in that you cannot freely adjust your deck.

Tote doesn't get enough advantages to offset these problems, it's not unusable, but not as good as the other characters.

Well yeah that is kind of the point. Tote is like i said earlier the deckbuilder archetype and those two gameplay points are the entire essence of that formula. The entire point of a deckbuilder is that its heavily RNG dependent and requires steps to mitigate how it functions. She is harder to play simply because it requires such a drastic change in how you think about the game especially if you are not well versed in deckbuilders or dont like them. That being said she problaby does need a bit of help considering the overall power scaling the game has but ive not played her a whole lot yet to have a firm opinion on that.

A balanced card retention mechanic for tote would make her a lot more playable to typical players of the game.

IE: You retained unplayed cards if you do no right click them to discard them, but every 2 cards retained reduces your draw by 1.

That way some in foresight can dampen the randomness.

This would also give you room to put in a relic that removes card retention for like, energy, or stronger throwing.

You want efficiency, but that doesn't necessarily mean a thin deck. However, because it's only the pack that gets clogged up with status effects, and not the deck, you have more freedom to make it ultra thin without having to worry about whether you'll be able to draw anything on most future turns. But there's still the versatility problem that's inherent to thin decks.

Originally posted by Halko:

The best deckbuilder decks have 5 cards in them that you play every turn.

No, the best decks have no more than the maximum number of cards you can draw per turn, and can be played infinitely so that you never need more than 1 turn. But that's hard to do.

I honestly hate this character >.> It only gets worse because I need to beat the 3rd area with it. X.x I'm stressing on it X.x stupid frog.

Originally posted by DePhoegon:

I honestly hate this character >.> It only gets worse because I need to beat the 3rd area with it. X.x I'm stressing on it X.x stupid frog.

Yeah, she used to be a lot more fun. She was always a deckbuilding character, but a poorly designed one. You used to be able to compensate for that when she could use weapons and armor and other such items like everyone else, but currently, that's not possible. Although I haven't played in a while, and it was announced that she would get more items, but I don't know if that's been implemented yet, so as far as I know, you still can't do that anymore.

Originally posted by LHGreen:

Originally posted by DePhoegon:

I honestly hate this character >.> It only gets worse because I need to beat the 3rd area with it. X.x I'm stressing on it X.x stupid frog.

Yeah, she used to be a lot more fun. She was always a deckbuilding character, but a poorly designed one. You used to be able to compensate for that when she could use weapons and armor and other such items like everyone else, but currently, that's not possible. Although I haven't played in a while, and it was announced that she would get more items, but I don't know if that's been implemented yet, so as far as I know, you still can't do that anymore.

I think the frying pan is still in her item pool....

Btw at how much gold can we remove carvings at the shop?
Was at 36 gold and still didnt manage to remove anything if its even possible

Honestly The largest 2 problems I see with her.. (Ya know outside of being a deck builder, inside a game design that just isn't suited for it)

She literally is as RNG hell as you can get with any given build.
- The costs to remove unsuitable carvings is extensively expensive.
- There is literally no way to store up or change the kinds of builds/decks of any sanity.

There just is no bloody way to pivot your build, or even adapt a build with required items/carvings in hand.
-- Seriously imagine if the game wouldn't let you drop/leave an item on the other characters without paying 5n gold, at each store. (where n is the number you've dropped/destroyed at that one)

Seriously.... I'm normally pretty positive... even when it comes to ... being beaten by some gnarly game cheating my play in some way... but OMFG this character sucks sooo much balls.... It's shameful in any way you can imagine. >.>

Seriuosly though, the healing options just ...... really sucks.
-1 the heart exhausts for 4hp,
-2 the greens exhausts for 5hp, & 1 energy .. With the only upside being .... it waits...

That's not even going on how bad the acorn & logs really are. They give a one time boone, but literally have to be cleared & played again, which completely puts it at odds with any passive gens.
like why?

Then the worst of it .. is you have to do all of them. to the 9th floor.. but even the 'easy mode' where you can get a weapon to start with, is a complete pain in the rear... because getting armor to survive in the 2nd area (4-6) is just ... abnoxious..

The counter intutive part of it all, is she's LITERALLY the least diverse build character freeking possible... despite being all RNG which should prevent that.. but all it ends up doing is making it ... miserable.

Originally posted by KoV:

Btw at how much gold can we remove carvings at the shop?
Was at 36 gold and still didnt manage to remove anything if its even possible

The cost is 5n.
you have to do it from viewing the carvings, inside the shop as well. (that eye in the bottom left) & right click it.
36g would only get you 3 removed. (5, 10, 15) it's obnoxious.

Well, right after this post I started a run with an "item set" from that guy in the beginning. He gave me 4 or 5 acorn caps and a non-carving mossy mace which costs 1 energy to use. And well, yes, it was pretty free run. I was just dumping all caps and saps. I even managed to get relic that makes tossing free, but even without it the run was predetermined.
So yes, the point is the same: Tote lacks. Mostly in the terms of healthy progression and building (deck or backpack – doesn't matter). Either you have working deck from the start and run over 2/3 of the run or you cannot catch up with enemies and fall behind to die at stage 1 boss.

Tote can remove carving at shop and last time I checked, costs reset every floor. Costs are 5 / 10 / 15 / why would you ever remove more than 2 or 3 ???.

Outside of the starting carvings though, I don't find it useful to actually remove anything, it's better to just don't take what's not needed. Thing is, her deck dilutes quite fast. Most of the time, you shouldn't even take carvings.

She has quite a few viable builds too. I finished floors with her with bow (offense) / sap (defense) build, sword build, a full defence build (was killed on penultimate floor because I hadn't found spike forging), and a full sap build (I used poison / block / dodge).

Forging right things is next to mandatory though => you need to focus on placing stuff that gives you a permanent and scaling advantage for future turns. Forging for haste, burn, haste, poison, haste, spikes, weak, haste, rage or haste for example. But even then you've got some leeway. I had a build with no armor, only sap to defend, and won with it.

I think the keys to use her well are: building some defense, some attack, and keeping the deck as small as possible, and focussing on drawing new car(d)vings (mostly basic deckbuilding advice, sorry, I know ). There are also some combos that play on specific carving which are worth it (like the one doing damage on the amount of things in discard). That said, she gives you a lot of choice that will make you lose.

PS:
Also, brick mossy discards stuff if you place them at the top and make use their weight. And clean burn (candle thingy) destroys carvng for free.