Currently there is a lot of confusion around spire cores due to them working differently from regular shield/staff heirlooms. I propose that spire cores and spirestones work the same way as regular heirlooms/nullifium. This is exacerbated by the fact that the way that cores are different is not explained anywhere on the heirlooms page. Warnings are given regularly to new players that spirestones are lost when replacing modifiers on cores.
My proposed solution is to have spirestones work the same way as nullifium but you can spend 100% of your spirestones on every core. New floors of the player spire could simply be unlocked based on your total spirestones.
The benefits of this solution are:
Reduced confusion on differences between cores/spirestones and normal heirlooms/nullifium.
Make spirestones and upgrading cores something players don't feel punished for interacting with. Right now many players avoid upgrading cores entirely or are forced to have a backup core (which becomes difficult at higher rarities) so they can recycle their core to get their spirestones to get a new floor, as that is generally better than upgrading a core.
Would be vastly easier to compare new cores with existing ones, as the new system would allow you to upgrade a new core for comparisons, rather than having to compare a core with 0 spirestones spent vs one with millions of spirestones spent on it.
It would slightly speed up runestone progression in the early game, due to players being able to upgrade cores, but I don't see this as being a particularly large issue.
Currently there is a lot of confusion around spire cores due to them working differently from regular shield/staff heirlooms. I propose that spire cores and spirestones work the same way as regular heirlooms/nullifium. This is exacerbated by the fact that the way that cores are different is not explained anywhere on the heirlooms page. Warnings are given regularly to new players that spirestones are lost when replacing modifiers on cores.
My proposed solution is to have spirestones work the same way as nullifium but you can spend 100% of your spirestones on every core. New floors of the player spire could simply be unlocked based on your total spirestones.
The benefits of this solution are: