wanted to try out new items from the updates and i almost managed to screw myself over lol.
bedevilled blade is really upsetting to use because you need really high base dice to roll into it in the first place, and even then you're filling your discard with negative dice that barely have an use imo.

i also picked up 2 crow skulls (because bones are fairly strong since you can use them to fix failed rolls), except it ended up spiralling down because you can produce so many bones to the point it fills your entire bag, making it borderline impossible to play anymore due to being almost unable to draw any dice from your bag.
it would be nice if bone tokens worked like ghost dice, as in they expire when they're discarded.

i never understood the use for baba yaga's finger, safety pin and fish hook.
the first one is entirely outclassed by rabbit foot (lucky die is the single best item in the game; this is lucky die as a trinket) and one random reroll won't necessarily save you from a critical fail.
as for the other two, maybe i just don't get the benefit of them?
they pretty much only take up space in your bag, when you could draw more dice or a better item instead.
i understand the idea of not making every item overpowered (which explains why there's 2 types of crystal balls, one being weaker than the other) but honestly whenever i see either one of these, i'd rather skip than take them.

i like the new gambler's die balancing, since the negative chips can still have some use (at the very least, you can use them immediately after the roll that created them to "fix" it, in the worst case scenario), and they were a bit too strong before since you could just stack +tokens on any weapon's critical for massive damage lol.

EDIT: is blood blade supposed to be an extremely rare shop-only item or something? i've done dozens of runs going through as many equipment events as possible and i've seen all kinds of weapons EXCEPT the one i need. not even once

i've cleared the entire game with 3 stars, from scratch, 4 separate times now. still no perfectionist medal in sight.
clearing the game itself is already a chore between the overly long loading screens, the character not respawning half the time, and the game crashing every other level, so i haven't even been able to try out any other extra requirements that may be necessary for it to work, like getting all donuts in a single sitting, or without dying.
i can't tell if the medal is broken or not, but it sure does not seem to work, so i give up.
it's way too tedious when there's no apparent reason as to why it isn't working as intended

i think i've found a strat that makes the game a bit more consistent, for future reference.

for starters, switch your first ability to green (the one that eats tiles and turns them into vampirism tokens).
the other 2 should be non-green (because energy tokens get shared across your abilities when matched, so having different colors guarantees you can build them up faster).
personally i like blue second and red last, reasoning explained later.

then dump all your upgrades into maxing out the vampirism token.
turns out being able to deal damage and heal at the same time, unsurprisingly, is really strong.
the amount you heal scales with the token upgrade, so by maxing it as soon as possible and only focusing on matching green tiles helps with offsetting bad luck if your opponent keeps getting chains for no reason.

after maxing the token, you want to upgrade your green ability by level 2 or 3, because it gives more tokens per activation.
level 3 is fairly costly costly early-game, so i'd recommend keeping it to level 2 up until halfway through the campaign, since you want to trigger it as many times as possible.

personally, i like upgrading my fire ability to level 2 because turning water tiles into fire tiles means you're removing both of them at the same time, which gives lots of potential for more green chains. (level 3 is irrelevant because there's never that many unused water tiles)
it also creates more fire matches which build it back up again real fast. it may even trigger multiple times in a single activation.
if going for this build specifically, upgrading the fire token a bit may be a decent investment, since it helps with multi-casting the ability after a single use.
upgrading grass tokens isn't a priority because energy tokens only appear when getting a 4-tile match or higher, and you want to match them as many times as possible so your opponent doesn't get any; it's unlikely to be in a situation where you can match 4 or more.

the last fight is the only one that isn't completely trivialized by this set-up.
i'm not sure if it's just a difference in base stats, but you don't get much to work with.
the enemy seems to prioritize long matches (4 or more), and if there aren't any it prioritizes damage (swords/fire, since its fire ability adds swords tokens).

this means you don't have to prioritize matching green tokens as soon as possible, and it's actually beneficial to focus on longer chains because the opponents high damage doesn't let you stall for a long time like with other fights.
upgrading the grass token a bit and prioritizing longer matches to get more than one heal was my strategy, but it's still pretty much up to luck

TL;DR vampirism strong. it doubles your hp difference since you both heal and deal damage.
make your first ability green, max out vampirism, and only focus on making green matches (and preventing your enemy from doing the same). nothing else matters.
except on the last fight; that one needs a bit of luck