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With the Open Beta announcement of The Bazaar, it also introduced its first paid feature: The Prize Pass. For $9.99 USD, it gives you access to a lot of chests, but more importantly two item packs, one for Vanessa and one for Pygmalien.
Made of 10 new items each, the Mysteries of the Deep and Frozen Assets Expansions will enlarge your pool of items available for the chosen character. Less than a week after their release, these expansion packs have been changed already, with 6 modified items for Vanessa and 5 for Pygmalien.
What do these item packs mean regarding the power of each character? Does this make The Bazaar pay to win (P2W)? Can we trust this purchase if changes happened so close to their release?
In this article, I'll try to answer all those important questions, and share my opinion on this new paying feature for The Bazaar. For the record, I am a lifelong free to play player and do not plan on purchasing the Prize Pass. My goal is to enjoy games without spending money, as I find it more challenging to not dismiss my frustration with the wallet hack. I have coached or wrote articles in exchange for in game purchases, so I have nothing against paying features at all. Developers need to make money, and a game such as The Bazaar was always going to end up with a season pass eventually. I feel like it is important when we talk about money or paying features to know where one stands, so my possible bias don't impact your judgement on whether the prize pass is worth it or not.
With that said, let's dive into it!
It is all about the percentages!
If I asked you to find a precise item in a pool of 10, you would have a 10% chance to get it. If I add one item to the pool, now made of 11 items, but still want the same specific one, you now only have 9.091% chance to make the right pull. If I told you I was fine if you found the item I added or the old one, it now is an 18.182% chance to get one of the two items I want.
The Bazaar is a game about finding items able to synergize with each other, in order to create a cohesive build. Through adding more items, we create a bigger pool, which lowers the odds of finding specific items.
Then, the question we need to ask regarding those 10 new items we can add to Vanessa's or Pygmalien's arsenal is: How do these new items impact my chances of assembling a competitive build.
Mysteries of the Deep: Aquatic Support Kit
All 10 new items for Vanessa have the Aquatic tag, meaning they clearly tilt the pool towards a specific direction. Currently, Vanessa's Aquatic build is geared towards a mix of Shield and Poison, aimed at triggering both Pufferfish and Pearl as often as possible. For that specific build, here are the items I believe are worth widening the pool of items we pick from:
While it isn't a great item when it comes to its own contribution, Diving Helmet allows us to include any item into an aquatic builds. Then, although this is a rather slow item, it should largely make up for it allowing us to include super fast items on its sides.
This doesn't really synergize with anything in the build, but offers two potential great upsides in my opinion. First, Volcanic Vents could replace Pufferfish to make our build Burn oriented rather than Poison. It only takes a little haste to make this Multicast 3 item a solid damage dealer. Then, that same Multicast could represent a potential great enchantment target down the line, for example if we get Turbo, as Volcanic Vents would then Haste 2 items for 2 seconds, three times.
The fact Zoarcid charges when we burn is a bit of a problem in a Poison build. Yet, we just saw how Volcanic Vents could potentially be our damage item. Otherwise, Zoarcid could become bonkers with an enchant down the line, as either Pearl or Pufferfish burning our opponent would suddenly make this super fast.
Dive Weights got nerfed quite heavily in the hotfix deployed on March 7. Still, this is an Ammo item with Vanessa, and that last line "This has + Multicast equal to its Ammo" is very, very scary if some Gunpowder are factored into the equation. Add something else to haste the Dive Weights and you suddenly have a 3 seconds, small item, potentially hasting your entire carpet.
Adding 4 good items from a total of 10 means a 40% ratio. Now, I don't want to enter into super detailed maths, but I'm sure Vanessa's aquatic build does not use 40% of the heroes arsenal. As such, this is a probably a good addition if you are looking to play Vanessa this way.
If you aren't however, then adding more items might not be such a good idea. Let's take the other builds of Vanessa at the moment, either the Mono-Weapon, or the Trebuchet surrounded by many weapons. Here, I can only one item making sense for each:
Both Zoarcid for the Trebuchet build or Submersible as the Mono-Weapon if joined by Crow's nest, make a lot of sense. However, these builds don't function exactly the same as the Aquatic build. Indeed, these tend to only net great results when you find specific items, and these new ones are good options at best.
Once you found Crows Nest in the Mono-Weapon build you can work with Double Barrel, Cutlass, Submarine, Flagship to name a few. Sure, Submersible is better than Submarine as it's a bit faster and take one less spot on your carpet, but it is completely useless without Crows Nest, or another large item.
Then, finding that key item looks more important than a specific weapon. In that sense, adding 10 more items to the pool could be detrimental to the Mono Weapon build. The same could be said for the Trebuchet build, which will be improved when Zoarcid is added to the mix, but still relies on finding Trebuchet first and foremost. One thing to note in this example is the possibility of Zoarcid opening a new build with other burn items such as Lighter, Pop Snappers or Incendiary Rounds. I really like Zoarcid in case you didn't notice.
Frozen Assets: Opens a New Avenue
Because one has to get to the end of the Prize Pass to unlock these rewards, I wonder how many players managed to play with the pre-nerfed version of these items. Yet, even without using them in the game, it's easy to understand why they acted quickly, as several look very good, and I'm talking about the post nerf items here.
First, let's start with the obvious, the freeze synergy is the focus on this item pack, as many items scale based on your ability to freeze. However, only two items, Cold Room and Ice Luge, two of the most severely nerfed items, have the ability to freeze. Then, this once again will specialize Pygmalien into a certain direction.
At the moment, the character is fairly flexible, able to build around Fixer Upper, a scaling weapon, medium sized weapons, or create some loops to trigger charge items (Yo-Yo, Matchbox). The addition of Frozen Assets could bring a new build, based around Freezing to gain Regeneration through Cold Room and Private Springs.
Both items are properties, meaning they have immediate synergies with existing Freeze items as well.
Compared to Vanessa, which had to look at its kit as support to already existing builds, Pygmalien gets to open a new building avenue. This alone makes it much more interesting, as the kit is raising the interest of items already in the base pool. It could mean adding 10 items actually makes more than 10 items a consideration for Pygmalien now. Cherry on top, Pygmalien is also more flexible than Vanessa in how it builds. For example, although they have obvious synergies, Fixer Upper or Dog are able to carry their build if you raise their value or damage enough, opening for various supporting casts around them.
On top of this new avenue, Pygmalien also gains some new synergies for existing build.
Sauna looks like a decent support item if you have Matchbox in your build. More Health and Regeneration is perfect for slow items with a huge damage count, something Pygmalien tends to do rather often. We can also use this as a counter to Poison builds in a Fixer Upper strategy.
This is a very slow, but in this enchantment based metagame, increasing the value of a property often correlate with making it much stronger. I doubt we would keep this in our final build, but it is a great placeholder until we find how to perfectly use our 10 slots, on top of a fine swap for PvE encounters we know we'll win.
Closing Words
Due to the lack of a Lobby and specific opponents, The Bazaar entices us to aim for the strongest build possible most of the time, with the possibility to flex certain items against specific heroes. In that context, the item kit Frozen Assets for Pygmalien feels pretty great. Indeed, the 10 additional items open a new build, which raises the value of already existing items on top of synergizing with existing ones.
On the other hand, I don't feel like Vanessa gains much flexibility with her Mysteries of the Deep kit. There are some great items in there, but they need to fit into an already existing mold. Then, while Pygmalien feels like it gained both potential and versatility, Vanessa mostly raised the power of her aquatic build, but likely hurts her Mono-Weapon core because of it.
For all these reasons, I would consider the Prize Pass for a Pygmalien player, but likely would pass if I was playing Vanessa. We already know there will be more item kits in the future, and we can only use one per run. Obviously, there will be a metagame that will make us miss this Aquatic kit eventually, but on average, I think I'm fine playing with the base pool until more options come around.
Let's conclude this article with some of the questions we asked in the introduction:
Does this make The Bazaar pay to win? At the entire game's level, I would say no, but these kits could make a specific character feel Pay to win for a month, until everyone is allowed to use gems to get the items.
Can we trust this purchase if changes happened so close to their release? I believe we can trust the fact Tempo will balance those items. Sometimes, it means they will get nerfed, but that could also mean a quick buff when those kits feel underwhelming. The developers showed their will to routinely update the game, so these kits will follow that same logic.
