A reason to experiment with all Skills/Spells in Arcade Mode? Single Skill Runs.

[Own]

The nature of Arcade Mode is that it incentivizes people to try out everything the game has to offer.

And then they narrow it down to about 3-4 skills or spells that are really, really good in Arcade Mode. IHeartPie experiments with the odd skill for his viewers, but his heart never really seems into it as much as the runs with skills he loves.

I believe it would be nice if you could talk to an NPC in Arcadia to lock your game into a Single Skill Run, presenting a menu displaying every Weapon Skill and Attack Spell in the game. Choose one and on your next run it locks you out of every skill but that one, or just automatically levels that skill up whenever you would be able to level it up. Or perhaps you're allowed to level up indirect spells too like Protect/Haste? I dunno.

Then you end a run at, say, floor 6 with Chain Lightning and you gain 6 bonus Essence, while putting a 'F6' under Chain Lightning in the Single Skill Run menu. Try it again and get to Floor 8, you get 2 bonus Essence for your new high floor and 'F8' appears under it.

Giving people a way to get some easy essence via mastering all the skills and spells in the game instead of just a few via incentives would help to get a lot more mileage out of Arcade Mode. Because, honestly, why run Meteor when I can do so much better and quicker with other skills?

You could also reward getting to certain floors with certain skills and spells with extra things, like... I don't know, if someone gets to floor 10 (or beats Arcade Mode) with a specific skill:

Meteor - Get a 'Sun Charm' for Arcade/Story Mode, works like the Butterfly Charm but instead of butterflies little planets, stars and moons orbit around the character.

Whirlslash - Get a pair of cosmetic 'Spiral Glasses'. Optionally, a 'Dizzy Charm' that makes a pair of tiny Chickens race around your head.

Cloud Buddy - Get a 'Storm Charm' that makes a tiny cloud appear over your head, drizzling down on it.

Insect Swarm - Get a 'Smell Charm' that makes green, wavey lines come off your character with flies buzzing around them.

... I guess what I'm saying is the Butterfly Charm is really cool and I'd love to see at least 4 different kinds of it's type of effect for 4-player visual variety.

 

[Teddy]

Master Ji seems like the perfect NPC for this

I think the idea sounds like a good way to make sub-optimal builds interesting to run! We could use achievements to bundle skills together, perhaps (such as 'reach floor X with all fire skills' gives you something flamey). Otherwise it might get a bit unsustainable if we want progressing achievement tiers of all 22 spells, all of them needing a new reward for every step!

 

[GarlicJelly]

I like this! I'd be fine with 1 for each element and 1 for each melee class. I think the support skills should be allowed in the 1 skill runs and once you've made it to X floors with a certain amount of skills you unlock the support charm.

(Maybe you need to reach floor 6 with all skills to unlock the support charm. I don't know the numbers but you should have at least 1-2 spare points to put into your support skill when you reach floor 6 so I think that's a good number to put for the support challenge.)

 

[Own]

I didn't mean like, one item for getting to floor 5, 10, 15, just... each skill having one specific Charm / Cosmetic item. But 22 Charms+Cosmetic Items might be rather a lot, true.

Nice to see this has potential to be implemented, though. I know I'd struggle hard and sink a lot of time into getting far at all using just the Dodging Strike skill alone.