Thank you for the ideas :)
I didn’t think of adding passive perks to some triggers. Maybe I didn’t find it “elegant” enough. But for the ember, that makes sense. The alternative can be to give risky triggers a higher power value.
I totally agree that a ton of work can be done through level design. So that different builds can thrive in different regions/biomes/rooms. Maybe having information about the future regions or boss, so that you can adapt your build. Genes that can give you better access to these information…
One other thing that could be improved is that the enemies don’t really use their perks. And most of their build are totally useless. So they feel at the same time very samey, but also force the player to carefully look at their build to avoid being one-shot by a rare loop. I tried to introduce “species” (= enemies that share some genes), but it actually made the game boring ^^ so I don’t know.
Yes I can totally see easily activated genes as a high-value legendary gene ;)