Defense Budget

An income-themed item pack: five items that make gold a resource you manage — and a liability you can drown in.

• Savings Bond (white) — every 10 seconds, earn 2% (+2% per stack) interest on your held gold.
• Accounts Receivable (green) — damaging an enemy marks it; marked enemies pay you an extra 10% (+10% per stack) of their bounty when killed by anyone.
• Golden Parachute (red) — upon lethal damage, pay a difficulty-scaled severance fee (on credit, if you carry a Defense Budget) to survive at 15% health instead. Recharges in 45s (-25% per stack).
• Overtime Pay (void) — corrupts all Rolls of Pennies: heal 0.75% (+0.75% per stack) of your maximum health every second. Healing past full health (yours or from teammates) steadily earns one small chest's worth of gold for every 400% of your maximum health overhealed — a slow, continuous income for staying topped up. Healing items (Bustling Fungus, Leeching Seed, Rejuvenation Rack...) make it flow faster. Time standing still (the Bazaar) doesn't pay. Requires Survivors of the Void.
• Defense Budget (lunar) — the flagship, detailed below.
• Artifact of Communism — all gold belongs to the collective: one shared pool that every player earns into and spends from. Total income runs slightly below the sum of individual incomes (configurable overhead). Pairs horrifyingly with a teammate who shops irresponsibly.

Defense Budget (Lunar)

Spend gold you don't have... but earn far less.

What it does

• Income tax — Your gold income is reduced by 25% per stack (multiplicative: 75%, 56%, 42%...). Only you pay the tax — your teammates' income and shared chest prices are untouched.
• Line of credit — You can buy things you can't afford. The shortfall becomes deficit. Your credit limit is roughly the price of one (inflated) small chest per stack, and it scales with difficulty over time just like chest prices do.
• Interest — While in deficit, your debt grows 1% per second, and all gold income repays the deficit first. You earn nothing for yourself until you're back in the black.
• Deficit spending — While in deficit, you deal +15% damage per stack. Debt is power. Power is debt.
• Default — If your deficit ever exceeds your credit limit (interest, losing stacks, Brittle Crown...), you lose 2% of your maximum health per second until the deficit is repaid below the limit. This damage bypasses armor and blocking.

Your gold counter shows your deficit as a negative red number (deeper red once you default), and a yellow $ buff shows while you are in deficit; it turns red when you have defaulted.

Fine print

• Default damage can never be farmed for gold: money gained (Roll of Pennies) or lost (Brittle Crown) from the default damage itself is voided.
• Cleansing away your last stack does not forgive your deficit. The committee always collects.
• All numbers are configurable in BepInEx/config/Isaac_Cummings.DefenseBudget.cfg, including an optional price-inflation mode (CostIncreasePerStack) that raises gold costs for the whole lobby instead of (or on top of) the income tax.

Requirements

BepInExPack, HookGenPatcher, R2API (Items, Language, Networking, ContentManagement). Every player in a lobby needs the same version.

Changelog

• 1.1.1 — Fixed: with Overtime Pay (or Savings Bond) the teleporter could get stuck leaving the stage, because the exit waits for everyone's gold to drain to 0 and the gold kept trickling in. Overtime Pay now pays a quarter as much (one small chest's worth per 400% overheal, was 100%); the config key changed to ChestsPer100PercentOverheal so the new value applies automatically.
• 1.1.0 — The deficit now shows on the gold counter for every player, not just the host (it was server-only; clients always saw 0). New void item Overtime Pay replaces Final Notice as the Roll of Pennies corruption. Adds an R2API_Networking dependency.
• 1.0.1 — First automated release.