I think the Thwack hammer is too powerful when fully heated.
Thwack hammer is a one-star item; I'm only at 9 levels of heat right now, and I'm doing triple digit damage, and interrupting enemy attacks with little to no effort (on the PC).
To clarify: When I'm on the PC, and have good frame rates in combat, I can see the enemy attack animations beginning, and < swing > and the attack is stopped, and damage is done, and the enemy is knocked back, and < swing > again and I'm moving forward, doing triple digit damage, knocking them farther back, and usually killing anything by then. If not, my next attack -- and even the delay in attacking here isn't a problem, as they have to come back to me -- does.
Or, if I have a bunch of things, I just back off, and build up a charge. Now I have to release my charge attack very early as they are approaching me; it takes time to deliver. But it does a heck of a lot -- I have yet to see anything survive a charge plus a normal (first) swing.
For a one-star item, at depths 8-12, at 9 levels of heat. It's not even fully charged, and if it behaves like the other swords I've seen, it will get another ability at 10. (Or maybe not -- checking right now shows that it already has attack speed increase and charge time decrease. Hmm ... checking more stuff seems to indicate that the first ability comes at 4 heat, not 5.)
Now, this requires being able to time my attack. This approach is [s]useless[/s] very hard for me to pull off on my mac.
Seriously, right now the only things that are giving me trouble are:
Gun puppies that cannot be reached
Large sections of spiked floors
Gun puppies hiding behind large sections of spiked floors
And bramble with poison, etc.
And once my jelly shield and armor get better, even the spikes won't be an issue anymore. As it is, once the shield reached two heat, I could manage to avoid taking damage from spiked floors (without the puppies), and where it levels up to, ...
Frankly, it's looking like that flame thrower goblin is the only real thing I've seen shallower than level 12 that I'm worried about now. (Oh, and the sleep lichen :-).
Just how overpowered is it?
So overpowered that even when I'm in an area where I know I can just use my blaster and slowly pchoo - pchoo - pchoo away at the monsters, at 11-15 points per, I'd rather just charge in, swing wildly, and take the enemy out in 1/5th the time for almost no damage. And if I do somehow blow the timing, all I do is shield, walk around (so they have to switch to movement and reset their attack timings), and start over.
Seriously, the thwack hammer is overpowered for depths 8-12, and it's one-star.
And I would like to say, that the Thwack Hammer works fine.
It's not overpowered at all.
It's extremely slow, more than two monsters and there's a good chance you will get your own attacks interrupted.
And the charge attack takes a huge amount of time to launch, making it almost pointless for anything but whomping enemies popping out of the ground.
Once you get to the deeper depths, you're going to want something faster, like a Brandish or Spur, just because of how often you'll be interrupted using a slower weapon.