At 6 challenge it's possible to have very high winrate without haste ring! Just don't take barren lands, pharma, and no-armor, as these challenges eliminate most options in the game. If you google "Shattered PD Challenges", the first result says that they suck :/ Other roguelikes such as Slay the Spire have challenges that mostly buff enemies and nerf specific things without removing them, but on this game they just remove most of your cards entirely...
With barren lands off, you can plant seeds against champion crabs in the sewers. Dews provide extra heals against bad luck, and it prevents Warden, Blandfruit room and Wand of Regrowth from being "dead cards". With pharma off, you can use potions as food. Flies are now worth fighting, and the shop has heal potions instead of selling useless drinks, and there's more fun alchemy options like aquatic regen, shielding and regrowth. With no-armor off, close-range weapons become usable, most weapons are close-ranged. This challenge eliminates more cards than you think, as without armor you are forced to find rare ranged weapons like glaive, whip, wands. No-armor also strips away minions like living earth and prismatic image.
I've won several 9 challenge runs, but it's not fun. You do need RNG to find either haste ring or flow glyph, and other movement options like chains, because no-armor removes all the close-range cards except vampiric. Without seed planting, you don't have any cards if you meet early blazing crabs. Some classes have extra cards like invisibility and ranged, but for characters like warrior you just... die.
I feel these challenges need rework... Barren lands could instead have rot lashers in grass tiles, to make seed and dew gathering costly. Do you burn grass tiles, or use your resources to find seeds and dew? Pharma could instead cut potion heals by half, but also poison the hero for a long duration, so you gain no healing from them. But you can use mageroyal or purity potion to get rid of the poison, making healing costly. No-armor could instead halve your armor effectiveness, so it's still possible to use close-ranged weapons and warrior's armor seal. Adding a 10th challenge afterwards that buffs enemy movesets/stats would be more fun, and this gives 9 challenge players like myself something new to do :)
Agreed and those challenges are outdated and anti-fun, they're relics from the bad pixel dungeon. If the next update can tweak these with a badge for winning 10 challenges I'd be so happy to play again
Yeah, some challenges remove mechanics from the game. I could do it with Warden +8 challenges (barren lands off), it was fun, but I got everthing I needed in the initial levels. I started to try with other classes, but I feel that if you don't get the ring until prision, it's better drop it and restart.
I have a few 9 challenge wins with no ring of haste https://youtu.be/lCBdiFUREEA?si=S1vOSs6bYEIFvxeZ
How do you get through the midgame? Prisons especially seems really awful with all of the skeletons.
You can use rogue cloak, hourglass, chains or blast wand to get distance from skeletons so you can last hit them with a throwing weapon or a wand to avoid the bone explosion damage. With faith is my armor you really should avoid all of those bone explosions they hit too hard.
Midgame is often all about survival and in 9 challenge dying on boss floors with an ankh for full heal and fully replenishing your satiety with potions of cleansing might just give you the edge you need to survive.
Won a 9chal huntress run today with no Ring of Haste. Tried transmutating my rings like 3 times but never got lucky.
Rooted everything with Wand of Regrowth and just sniped them from behind the grass. Hourglass kept me mobile from big danger.
Got a Vampiric Quaterstaff +2 from early floors coupled with a Ring of Arcana so that got me trough the early game.
yeah
