Not sure why we need game-breaking in an otherwise easy game but this is noteable. I always felt Plasma was the most game-breaking ability though...even on Nightmare, it trivialized almost everything.

The game has a very unbalanced difficulty curve. Playing Nightmare with lv. 1 cap, the game is brutally hard at first. Two hits from anything will kill you, and you don't have the tools yet to implement any real strategies. However, by mid-game, the game is very manageable. And by the end-game, it's pretty easy. This is because of the poor way the damage scaling was done, which was basically just to add a fixed 60 damage to all attacks from normal. I think this was ripped directly from OoE like many things in this game were, and that's one decision that should have been given more thought.

But a high-leveled Sun Ring would make this game easy even at Nightmare lv. 1 on a new game+

Playing Nightmare with lv. 1 cap, the game is brutally hard at first.

Plasma nerfs Nightmare mode too sadly...so it's tough until you get to that point.

But I don't think any damage-scaling would have mattered. I nerfed Nightmare mode because I was never touched with Plasma, not because the damage wasn't high enoough. Plus I had already practiced every boss to beat them with no-damage on regular mode for the items drops there. Those combined made it a breeze, regardless of damage scaling.

You're definitely right. But about the time you get plasma, you have a decent amount of HP and some longer range orbs that also make the game a lot easier. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense that you die in two hits at the start and only have close-range weapons, while you can tank 8-10 hits near the end when you're loaded with orbs and healing items.

Damage probably should have scaled based on some % of original enemy damage or something to even out the curve, which would have made the game more balanced.

Level 650 and the ring restores 165 HP every 3 seconds. Already makes it nearly impossible to die. I'll post the final totals if I end up leveling it to 999.

i'm not that far (well, almost to the end, don't have this orb you speak of yet). . but i'd suspect that any orb and its related accessories is/are gonna be OP if you get it/the levels into the hundreds.

i mean, like, basically this is "yeah, this item you get after clearing 100% of the game is game breaking. . .if you spend another 50 hours grinding to get it to to ridiculously high levels, way beyond what is necessary to beat the game."
why shouldn't the prize for 100% completion be OP?

I agree that if you do level things up to ridiculous extents, your reward (or punishment, if you prefer to see it that way) is that you've become ridiculously powerful.

My orbs were like level 13 at most, by the time I finished a playthrough at normal difficulty. This was not a speedrun; this was my first playthrough, and I got 100% map completion and 100% lore completion, just not 100% item drops or bestiary.

Now I didn't spend all my orb crafting things but I didn't have that many of them either. If I only used one orb the entire game and dumped all my crafting efforts into it, I still doubt I'd be at level 200.

Following from several years ago, but I did gradually work on this up to level 999. At that level, you get around 190 HP every 3 seconds. Even on nightmare, you're essentially invulnerable.

But as for my original question, does anyone know of any orbs that scale in value like this? Some have binary effects, while others scale in a much more gradual fashion so that even the continue to get more powerful all the way to 999.

I just did a new file nightmare lvl 1 run and I'd say blood is pretty good, I had it up to nearly level 100 by the end and I would recover 3-4 hp per melee attack, and stuff like blood orb melee or eye, the multihit ones, yeah, it's PER hit, so like 15~25 HP per attack depending on the enemy and my aim. not as OP as maxed sun ring, but I'm betting it really scales up later, and even at lower levels it made no time stop feats possible for mid/late game bosses without food spamming. only boss I didn't at least silver feat was that stupid cat robot at the start. did too little damage to kill him before he walked across the room and I died if I didn't pause to jump on him...
unsure if bleak ring scales but if it does that could get pretty dangerous both ways (sequential hits boosts both damage dealt AND taken)