This really felt like the run that was going to get a Warrior with all 9 challenges and maximum score to the surface. Had a Ring of Haste from Sewers and a Blazing Spear +2 from Ghost quest, bought Ethereal Chains from the Sewer merchant, transmuted the Wandmaker Wand to Blastwave. Still had the Sewer and Caves Ankhs in case anything goes wrong. Fully mapped all floors, did all quests, sacrificial fires, and animated statues up until this point. And then during the second Dwarf King phase a ghoul steps into an unexpected tile, and I get attacked by the Warlock, ruining the score... Run is still winnable of course, but what is the point.
I have to say, Warrior feels terrible to play at high challenge compared to the others. Faith Is My Armor invalidates the main class mechanic, one entire subclass, and a couple of the shared talents. Wish it would either get reworked or replaced with something that affects the classes more evenly.
Personally, I'm flexible with changes to the challenges but I imagine some might be up in arms if changes were made here. Maybe as additions; we've been getting new classes and mobs, why not challenges? I think I like Curses the most but this just empowers the cleric even more and I'm of the opinion that the class should be taken down a peg or two. Hostile Lands seems like a good newbie challenge but could also be annoyingly run-ending early on. I would think the mage would be, next to hunter, best suited for Fragile. Duelist tears.
True, I'm very much on board with balance changes that remove or rework content, but that is not everybody's cup of tea. Maybe I'll make a fork of Shattered on day to try out these things :)
I was thinking that it locks mage out of all non-staff weapons. Battlemage does not mind, but warlock loses a lot of options. They're probably both overall fine though. And right, duelist would lose an entire talent and some of their class identity, that is non-ideal.