Slay the spire 2

[mortal loom]

Annoyingly, that wasnt enough to kill her

[honest tundra]

Yippie

[mortal loom]

2 turn flawless doormaker

[shrewd vault]

What did you do?

[mortal loom]

ASTRALLY PULSED

More seriously, look at my relic bar

then look atm y buff bar

The otehr answer can be found in this deck

[shrewd vault]

ah, okay, lizard potion power explains part of it

[mortal loom]

(USed Delicate frond + reptile trinekt to give me crazy burst, used a convergence to hold my hand and give me more energy and stars next turn, and then drank all my potions, aligment f or more energy, made him weak and vulnerable with KNOW THY PLACE

and proceeded to heavenly drill.

(14x(11+12))x1.5 is a lot of damage.

[mortal loom]

Damn, broke my streak at 4 again on defect

shouldnt' ahve taken the mirror\

in my defence, it was very fun to take

[manic kestrel]

it literally makes your deck twice as

[plain leaf]

Big?

Mirrror event is annoying

https://preview.redd.it/vakuu-relic-idea-v0-40znzac7nyxg1.png?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=c052856b83c2bf814e0405635becc2db7d05f636
someone’s unhinged relic idea on the Reddit

[manic kestrel]

thats hilarious

[manic kestrel]

it makes your deck twice as

[oblique raft]

kick my heels up and

[mortal loom]

Bad deck because too many strikes and not enough removes? WHAT IF CATASTROPHE

[oblique raft]

mixed that up with Calamity in my head for a moment

[patent geode]

Friendship did not prevail

Could honestly most likely been a win, but I got greedy and took an unnecessary elite fight which put me down some potions as well as a lot of health

[cloud crane]

I had an awesome necrobinder build until my chucklefuck friends ratfucked me by taking the Ice Cream I needed and then shieldmaxxin on phase one of Test Subject to the point it oneshot everyone

[plain leaf]

Test subject 1 is super scary in multiplayer

[spare shoal]

infinite damage

[pliant night]

Fetch!!

[oblique raft]

stop trying to make fetch happen, it-

oh

oh i guess fetch is happening.

[patent geode]

Fetch is probably the easiest Necro card to make happen lol, but yeah good fetch deck.

Always nice to get clone onto a zero mana draw card.

[pliant night]

It's a shame I didn't get more campfires tho, only got 4 clones plus the reflections

[swift hedge]

https://old.rxddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1t038kx/my_cat_helping_with_the_bird_elite/?ref=share&ref_source=link

[mortal loom]

No patch this week, I am bummed

[cloud crane]

God I wish that was me

[mortal loom]

Do i need to do this? no

[sweet remnant]

Just had a Silent run where I geniunely turned 1 99% of encounters

Killed the act 3 Knights in 3 turns without taking any dmg

[plain leaf]

brutal but made it throuogh ascension 8

[cloud crane]

How do you make the mech knight battle suck less? I like doing status builds and I swear I run into that little fucker every time

Can I email MwgaCrit and ask them to change his defeat animation to him splattering on the ground like an overripe tomato?

[spare shoal]

having more status procs, and not doing that in multiplayer because its artifact scales to high heavens and aaaaaaaaaaa

[spare shoal]

and yes

[spare shoal]

having debuffs that apply 2 things, having debuffs that do other things (block + debuff still gives you block, so you're doing stuff while you chip away at the artifact)

[cloud crane]

Probably the most normal email they’ll ever get

[mortal loom]

Man, that is embarssing

yeeted a run because i forgot to remove normality

[cloud crane]

RIP

[mortal loom]

Made it back with this sick deck

2 costs necro, but we dont have any 2 costs support, we just have SO MUCH E NERGY

Killed Lavagulin and Wurmy boy without taking damage

Music box remains an incredible relic

[mortal loom]

Imagine needing claw

Poor queen

(This is turn 4)

[mortal loom]

AGGRESIVE DIGGING NOISES

[mortal loom]

Tonight, the Regent presents: THe musics of the stars!

[plain leaf]

Bombard is great

[shrewd vault]

I love when a big, stupid bonk card is actually just really good

[manic kestrel]

never didnt have it

[plain leaf]

Most big cost cards feel meh without vulnerable

[manic kestrel]

im pretty happy with a bludgeon in act 1

later on you definitely need to pump it up for it to be competitive yeah

plenty of ways to give discounts tho

[patent geode]

Yeah, Bludgeon tends to get the work done.

Since early game especially is about having the damage

At least IME with ironclad.

[manic kestrel]

unga bunga man my beloved

that last run i posted the screenshot of got relax from pael after getting ivory tablet and then after getting bing bong the a2 boss gave me double demesne

and then the devil guy gave me 6 apparitions

in my ethereal deck

[plain leaf]

Bludgeon feels better in forest though

Docks have garderners and coral

[manic kestrel]

for sure.

it still just autowins plenty of hallways in either act and finishes off other elites p. good

[shrewd vault]

I had a run yesterday where for 1.5 acts my only way of casting Bury was Sculpting Strike into Veilpiercer, and realizing I had that option made me feel like a genius

[patent geode]

It's still decent against Gardener, since taking down one or two of them quickly helps mitigate the scaling that can make that fight real dangerous.

Colony however is a hard counter yeah.

[manic kestrel]

I got a war paint on that 6 apparition ethereal deck run and picked it up without remembering the apparition upgrade. it was a net nerf lol

[spare shoal]

what

I uhh

I played a burn??

with mayhem

[patent geode]

Congrats🔥

Better than the time I played against the Fish in docks and discovered that (as expected) hidden jewel can grant statuses replay.

Think I won that fight still, but was slightly annoyed ;p.

[shrewd vault]

spectrum shift really loves to give me Restlessness exclusively on turns when I can't use it (and never on turns when I can)

[patent geode]

Restlessness does have the odd honour of being a retain card I typically don't want

[shrewd vault]

the best thing was when it gave me two copies of restlessness, back to back, in the elite fight leading up to this. thereby making the second one double useless

[spare shoal]

I finally did A4 on regent, now I have everyone at A4

Had a mismatched deck that mostly had a bit of card creation and mayhem, and killed the door with the potion of gigantification I bought just before the fight

Also had a big scare against the worm, when spectrum shift gave me gambit and then mayhem played it

[mortal loom]

Bludgeon is great into the gardeners

You just delete one of them, that's fantastic.

[plain leaf]

the issue is that you then find yourself vulnerable to the rest, which can be a lot of lost health

[mortal loom]

If you're doing it right, deleting one saves you a ton of health

[spare shoal]

Gardeners are scary enough that that is still a great turn

[mortal loom]

The correct order is to delete the fourth one asap

Because that's the one that's buffing and about to attack you for 10, 10, 12 iirc

So you kill that one immediately, that's 30+ damage gone from the fight

Then you kill the one that's buffing next, etc

(source: A10 sicko with a six streak currently)

Outside of incredibly hard hitting aoes, aoe is actually terrible in the gardnerer fight, or only of limited use because of how much better it is to delete one outright

[honest glade]

i like also specifically regent's -strength aoe

[radiant plaza]

nuking Gardeners with Bombardment feels so good

nyoom crunch

[plain leaf]

crush under is great

[oblique raft]

end of days+ is my favorite

[plain leaf]

that one saved me in a necro run

had the power that gives doom whenever you play a card that turn and a ton of souls as well

it was down to the wire of me digging trying to find it to beat the queen

[mortal loom]

dancing

8 in a row, 8 in a row

[mortal loom]

You mean Crush Under, not REsonance, right?

Crush Under is greaT

Resonance is... iffy

[honest glade]

yeah

the one that does damage and eats one strength for the turn

[mortal loom]

I am Le Sad, lost my 9 streak to Vantom

[sweet remnant]

The kinda shit the game throws at me when Im rolling with an amazing Doom build

[spare shoal]

IS HE BACK????

[sweet remnant]

No

Vaaku gave me 1 free energy if I lied to you

[plain leaf]

man, ascension 9 is a big difficulty spike

yet to get past hive

[honest tundra]

How the fuck

[swift hedge]

i think it's a mod
i saw a post on the subreddit that had a screenshot like this with the modded flair

[honest tundra]

Rad. Ta.

[patent geode]

The Vantom of the Vopera

[plain leaf]

ugh, had a decent vuln stacking bully deck but then hit the mecha knight and got the worst draws

tons of defends on his off turn and tons of attacks on his attacking turn

[shrewd vault]

Our ironclad audibly deflated last night during a multiplayer run when we ran into the Knight. He'd built around vulnerable, and even with three of us tossing out as many debuffs as we could it took us way too many cycles to burn through the artifact

[sweet remnant]

Yeah artifact stack multiplication on multiplayer just sounds completely fucked from what I heard. Must be a balancing nightmare

[shrewd vault]

we got Test Subject, too, for the full scaling nightmare experience

[plain leaf]

Failed all three a9 runs today

Had a super fun double fasten bodyslam deck that couldn’t get past hive

[patent geode]

Yeah, can't remember if they were looking into artifact or if someone said they should do so.

But it's rather notable mm.

[shrewd vault]

The latest beta branch changed something, artifact and shield scaling for certain fights I think? But my friends want to use the release branch, so alas we didn't have it

[plain leaf]

Starting to reach the point in sts2 where im figuring out why certain runs are failing; poor damage poor block poor consistency

My ongoing run definitely has damage issues, particularly on longer fights where fiend fire can’t end it quickly

[hybrid fern]

the mad science that does damage every time you play a card with knife trap

https://tenor.com/view/satoru-satoru-gojo-gojo-jjk-jujustu-kaisen-gif-9777483489438260197

i was always scared of toasty mittens but who knew, silent with strength-gen is good

[shrewd vault]

I never manage to draft knife trap when it's good

My friend wrecked face with it last night in multiplayer, though. Turns out three silents means three copies of flanking, plus some lucky vulnerable sources.

[mortal loom]

I honestly think Knife Trap is a bit of a well, trap

Good shiv decks don't need it

bad shiv decks.... don't genefit

[placid dirge]

I don't think it's particularly good, but it is really fun

[spare shoal]

When you get strangle it gets very silly

[shrewd vault]

Or serpent form, I assume, but I guess if you got serpent form out then knife trap might be redundant

[mortal loom]

Yeah, if you have Serpent form why do you care about knife trap?

like at all

You want 0 cost cards, discard/sly stuff, and ways to make shivs without spending energy

Knife trap's issue is that it only does amazing things with the correct draw order

ontop of it costing 2

[honest tundra]

Relics?

[mortal loom]

Again, why though? I can maybe see the argument for Kunai, but... Serpent form is already slow to get into play

[plain leaf]

I’m not a fan of the three cost forms

Too slow for hallway fights and you often need to take a hit to the face to get them out against elites and bosses

[radiant plaza]

a 3 cost power better kiss me goodnight and solve the whole fight

it better file my taxes and do my laundry

[shrewd vault]

I can dream of Slither Serpent Form, for both flavor and mechanical wins

[mortal loom]

Serpent form is legit incredible.

The amount of damage it does is very, very large

Echo Form likewise

REaper form is... werid. Huge damage spike, also it upgrades to Retain?

Which lets you discount it with bookmark or hold it till energy gen turn

Demon Form is pretty cruddy these days though

[radiant plaza]

Retaining a 3-cost form with the character who can generate stupid amounts of bonus energy makes sense at least

Demon Form is the brokest bitch wincon in existence

you are truly destitute if you're relying on it

[rocky stone]

Reaper Form is effectively kinda double damage

[mortal loom]

Void Form is also "This just wins" as long as you have good card quality

[rocky stone]

plus Sleight of Flesh value, and Doom synergy

[mortal loom]

I think of it more like 1.5x damage because unless yo uhave Time of Need you still ahve to endure their attack turn

It's good, but with caveats.

Very powerful tho, have def won reaper form decks

Speaking of things i havent done before though:

Peck in the starring role as The Carry.

Very rude i couldn't kill this turn

but also incredibly funny

(Yes that is like 3 copies of monologue all active at the same time)

That act 2 start was some bullshit though

Tunnler -> Bowlbugs -> Ovicopter -> Many Exoskeletons

and i'd made the choice to purge my astral strike or wahtever it's called with Biiiiiiiiiiig Hug.

Which i think was the correct decsion (I was pretty star choked and at the time was much more doing stuff with Big Sword and card creation from Quasar+)

[rocky stone]

hate Ovicopter

Mytes are also brutal as an encounter I feel

[mortal loom]

all the act 2 hard halklways fights are evil\

though i like the Toad

mainly becuase you can track how the livespan goes

Spiky babies in the docks

GIANT TOAD in the infestation

Withered but mighty Toad Knight in the City

[rocky stone]

yeah looking back, all of the hard pool sucks

Louse isn't too bad I think?

[spare shoal]

which one was Louse again?

[rocky stone]

Louse Progenitor, the big louse

[mortal loom]

Even that can hit you hard

[rocky stone]

it does hit fairly hard yeah

[spare shoal]

oooh, that one

[oblique raft]

Hive is a bit of a shitshow sometimes

[rocky stone]

Now we can only wonder if the alternate act 2 is gonna be worse 😛

[oblique raft]

Alternate act 2 is just the hive but mirrored

[mortal loom]

Probably, i asuspect it'll be a bit overtuned initally

[patent geode]

The most compelling case I've had for Knife Trap has generally been copy 2+ of Inky Blades.

Which isn't the best use in the world, but eh if I don't have too many weakness cards I generally don't mind it.

I do still need to re-evaluate some of my deck-building lines with Silent, but as of now it feels like playing her is mainly about finding damage in the early game followed by winning with kinda whatever you end up getting your hands on.

[spare shoal]

Knife Trap would be better if it doubled the amount of shivs in your exhaust pile

[honest tundra]

That would be really fun

[patent geode]

The humble defect lightning orb rare

Though there's actually one more scenario in which I've liked knife trap, which was with the relic which gives upgraded attacks bonus damage. There are more busted combos, but that one was neat.

[spare shoal]

it goes well with afterimage too

[plain leaf]

Oh I didn’t even catch the lifecycle that’s cool
I don’t think toad knight is related though

[plain leaf]

Wonder what it’ll be
My theory is that the acts will have a ‘society’ and a ‘nature’ for each

So some sort of urban middle class zone and then another natural but highly hostile zone for 2 and 3 respectively

[oblique raft]

Suburbs and denny's

[plain leaf]

Part of me wonders if wongo’s is intended to be moved there once it’s in

[pliant current]

Alt act 2 is Waffle House?

[mortal loom]

The toad Knight has the exact same skin pattern and designs

He's also riding a beetle which is pretty obviously from the hive

[plain leaf]

He’s not spiky or big though
Another possible alt3 is a sort of lab, since glory feels split between the knight/noble theme and the experiments theme

[mortal loom]

So? Like he's obviously withered looking and old, why does he still need to be spiky or big?

[plain leaf]

Well I guess I assumed that tgats how the lifecycle would go and he wouldn’t shrink in size

[mortal loom]

I mean it could be a mutation, it could be a magical event, it could be some weird spire bullshit

[plain leaf]

The spire is very weird yeah

Feels strange how people are able to live there normally

[rocky stone]

the Spire and its surroundings work on dream logic

that's just how things are

[plain leaf]

The place is super dangerous to the point that the best fighters and adventurers of the world and beyond struggle and usually fail to survive

[plain leaf]

man, so many runs struggling and I end up with this one that was one turning encounters by the start of act 2

straight up one turned the knowledge demon too

[spare shoal]

thank you osty

[plain leaf]

dang, can't get defect past a3 for some reason

[dry glacier]

Dramatic Entrance is so damn good to get at the start, holy

[plain leaf]

dang had a really fun doom deck going but it was just too slow for knowledge demon

just didn't have the defense for the last turn, but exploded his doom to over his max health on the final turn

[mortal loom]

4 in a row. I may have shitty teeth that are decaying and be in a lot of pain from chronic health issues, but hey, i can still destroy the spire

yaaaay

[plain leaf]

I’m definitely struggling with consistency

Especially with defect

I suck at them

[mortal loom]

Okay, so consistency for Defect

and in general.

Early game, you need to draft damage commons

This is kind of an awful deck (Because it's too fat), but... I transformed into High Five

Took defile

anmd Debilitate, and built out from there

Actually, thisi s a much better example because it's defect.

I started with a transform, and got... Glacier and Compact.

So okay, cool. My defences are mostly solved for act 1

Problem: my damage is literally in the shitter. I'm not quite screwed, becaus Defect is heavily offeensive loaded early due to Zap + Dualcast

but that's not super enough for things

So my first two pickups are a Cold Snap (This works great with my glacier and zap and dual cast), into a second Ball Lighting (retroactivelym akes my cold snap better, works great with everything cold snap does)

Floor 5, i get offered Gunk Up. And i had just gotten a Vajra from a chest, and i had compact... Honestly? Probably should have taken it, but it was up agasint Capcitor. Which again.. works great with everything i already had

Floor 6, it's taking damage for gold, or taking a curse for a relic. I gambled on the relic, because i didn't want to take the damage - my thoguht being if i didn't take the damage, i could get away with an upgrade

this pays off, i get Festive Popper which immediately makes my hardest fight (Gardners, this was a bad vs gardeners deck) into a much better one

Given i've already taken Capcitor and just got handed Happy Flower, i take Storm from the elites.

And you can see the shadow of the plan i'm building - I have a lot of stuff that makes orbs, i already have some energy generation from Happy flower...

By the end of act 1, i've gotten Echo Form and Rainbow, an Entropy, a tea set and a turbo

as well as an overlclock

So you can see right there how i'm starting to combine energy gen with card draw, and a plan to get my powers into play and have my powers do damage

[hybrid fern]

maybe the easiest run of my life

i made the gamblee on buying lighter first shop and getting tezcataras ember, then the juggling punch dagger spite was just icing on the cake

[mortal loom]

Yeah, i'm staring at that and going internal screaming

That is not a play i would make on A10 at all

[hybrid fern]

for sure i couldnt get away with it on higher tiers

[mortal loom]

RIP streak broken, slammed into the QUeen who just demolsihed how my deck was funcitoning

[radiant plaza]

Queen is truly the new “you shall not go infinite” endboss

[plain leaf]

Door giant is that even more so

[mortal loom]

tbh, that's not true. Queen's an output test, and a proper infintie will roll her anyway.

My defect deck lost because it's oputput was shoddy and reliant on Unceasing Top

[mortal loom]

This btw is why i think Knife Trap is overrated

[warm wadi]

I am going to scream if I don't kill this guy

thank god

[warm wadi]

Alas. Only one Shrug It Off and no other draw cards, I couldn't draw my two Rampages fast enough to keep up with the Sculptor

[shrewd vault]

in that your damage output with just the shiv cards themselves is plenty?

[patent geode]

If it's a good shiv deck then it should be, and if it's a bad shiv deck chances are Knife Trap is too slow to make things happen.

Being rather draw dependent and all that.

It's not the worst card in the world I don't think, but it's on the slower end.

[honest glade]

what knife trap is is funny

[radiant plaza]

I would say that Knife Trap is a win condition if you don't have access to, say, Accuracy or another Shiv wincon

but you'd really rather have an actual shiv win condition than knife trap

[mortal loom]

This .

Knife trap is slow and expensive and relies on draw order

All of which are pretty shitty places to be with shivs.

That deck would have taken knife trap and been improved... Ish. Right up until I slammed into getting Shurkien, at which point I just crushed the rest of the game

But honestly the fact I could fight and beat 4 elites, and two of those before I got shurkien says a lot about how "weak" the deck was

Eg, not very

And even if I had had it, the exciting thing it did was mostly re trigger kusnagi, or whatever's it called, which my leading strikes already did while generating me block

[patent geode]

I'd compare it to Master Planner, which is also draw order dependent (in that you want it as early as possible), but does have the upside of costing less when you upgrade it as well as being able to cheat out a silly amount of value.

[mortal loom]

Master planer basically exists to help you solve boss fights

Knife trap has never even done that for me

The other thing is like if you can produce enough shivs to make it do meaningful damage... You probably just win anyway?

It seems good if you have like infinite blades and that's it or something

And infinite blades can just get phantom blades and win with that too

[patent geode]

Mm, phantom blades has put in a lot of work for me.

Honestly I probably value it a bit above Accuracy, but that's because it's easier to make work in the early game.

Accuracy requires you to play 3+ shivs for it to outperform Phantom, which tends to demand you have upgraded commons and a few uncommons in your deck (or I guess a bunch of blade dances).

[plain leaf]

Defect feels like they have a ton more viable deck types than the others, helped by how modular their archetypes are

[radiant plaza]

But have you considered that Necrobinder has an archetype that draws her entire deck into hand for free

Making any other combo viable by default

[plain leaf]

Ive run a lot of weirdness with defect like glass orb stall or rainbow orbs, then the status and 0 cost builds

Doom is an incredibly unmodular archetype though, either youbcommit or you kill what you could’ve next turn

No escape and negative pulse are core to that deck

[spare shoal]

I like Defect but I do feel like their archetypes step over each other sometimes
like if you want to do stuff with one orb

all of its Random Bullshit works great and goes well with other Random Bullshit (status effects, random orbs, play all powers) but the orbs themselves don't get to shine much ime

[plain leaf]

Yeah you’ve a bunch of cards designed for decks with such thin card amounts you’ll rarely do them, they are very random junk to victory

Very hard to run

Ironclad has very clear deck archetypes and wincons, defect is an entirely different beast

Ironclad decks can often feel similar from that though which is not a problem that defect has

[patent geode]

Rn the orbs are I feel a mix overall of glue and payoff for other things, where for the most part you're looking to generate them and have the odd Hotfix, Synchronize, or Defrag.

I do wonder how highly valued Hailstorm is by good players, because whilst Blizzard wasn't a great card necessarily I do think the shift over to Hailstorm for example without wider support helped ensure that Frost is more of a support thing.

Which again lines up with Defect as a good stuff character.

Mind you what Defect does they tend to do well. Generating and evoking a ton of orbs generally goes very well, Status cards are strong early on since they tend to have outsized effects for an eventual drawback (plus payoffs like Rocket Punch or Flak are great), subroutine my beloved for silly power decks, and zero cost cards which tend to be good with either All for One, Feral, or Status decks (since many of the zero cost skills generate a status card).

There's however a lot more to say about Defect, but much of it is for players more skilled than me. Don't know how I manage like a 50% A10 winrate on them though since I don't play them that much.

[plain leaf]

man, had a really abrupt and sudden end to what seemed like an amazing run. Two battletrances, black star and took three elites with minimal health lost, access to miniature tent
then died to antlion
I think the big killer was that while the deck had decent damage and block big capsule and grabbing the tent had my deck inconsistent from its size, while a bunch of expensive cards like not yet would struggle to be played since my deck had no bloodlettings, alongside having no big won con other than just hacking away, spite was problably my biggest damage dealer

[swift hedge]

i won today's daily, also my first regent win

i got crash landing at the last possible second so i wasn't able to make much use of it
rng also meant i wasn't up against enemies that put status cards in my deck very often so guards!! and charge!! weren't a ton of use

[patent geode]

Congrats!

Man I hope they make a mobile port for the game, because it's difficult to return to the first one now (even if its tuning is very good).

[plain leaf]

man early game ironclad on high ascensions is just brutal

[plain leaf]

dang was doing really well with a vuln build then hit mecha knight and got wrecked then first boss test subject had me whiffing my blocks

[mortal loom]

They plan to, but doing the constant updates they want to do

is very, very hard with having ports

Also, fun fact about Bolas: it doesnt care where it ended up

it comes back to your hand

Relateldy, i finally found a way to make Bolas good

[manic kestrel]

it was very funny against doormaker on his devour turns. I had one turn which went bolas make it so × 2 defend × 3 make it so × 2. yeah buddy eat it up

devour definitely feels like more of a buff than a threat in some cases

[mortal loom]

Knife trap was good exactly once, but it did kill the queen for me

please note i did not put knife trap into my deck willingly

nor did i upgrade it willingly

I really should have removed a lot more here

Or hunted mroe elites and found an ormanetla fan

[spare shoal]

I have gotten

5 bonfires

on act 1

[shrewd vault]

https://youtu.be/Y6a5zUvmZWI I'm not a fan of this guy's clickbait-y titles, but I respect someone whose first instinct when he has a question is to do a Monte Carlo simulation about it

[patent geode]

Surprise Caleb Gannon

Not surprised to see him be good at StS2 though

Oh lmao he's played a lot of StS2 huh

He has a second channel for his MtG stuff, of which he was a rather good cube player and developed two games of his own.

[shrewd vault]

Oh, is he a known quantity in magicland?

[patent geode]

Yeah, decently known in the realm of pauper and cubes.

With him developing a card game called Algomancy that's basically him reckoning with his gripes with MtG Cube.

Worth noting that Algomancy does use AI art, but it's a bit of a weird case where the guy was doing programming art long before then and subsequently leaned into the weirdness of the models he used. You can read about it here https://calebgannon.com/2023/07/08/the-making-of-algomancy/

Like I said, it's a weird, very specific case.

[mortal loom]

Nah, he sucks.

His ai art defence is the usual spiel and ignores all the environmental issues etc

And oh it'll hurt artists on the short term

Fuck off and pay artists money, instead of leeching off their work asshole

[mortal loom]

Hey i made knife trap actually do something

[mortal loom]

At last, some good fucking food

Featuring the world's worst bag of prep

[hybrid fern]

is there something wrong with my game ? 😭 😭 i have only ever gotten darkstone periapt,, literally all like 5 times ive ever chosen this event. . . its rng right?

[mortal loom]

It's rng

Fwiw, i am still missing several relics from that

[hybrid fern]

AGAIN wwhyyyy

this shit and fucking clash, only 2 things i get

[mortal loom]

It's not a great event!

though tbh, i think Clash is actually shockingly good soemtimes in this game

[hybrid fern]

does it have a pool of every card they got rid of? cuz theres some heat, blizzard, heavy blade, firebreathing

[hybrid fern]

noo the decimiillipede segments respaawn BEFORE DOOM HITS

[mortal loom]

It's a very limited pool

[sweet remnant]

Oh huh thats funny

[shrewd vault]

https://slaythespire.wiki.gg/wiki/Slay_the_Spire_2:Trash_Heap

Card pool: Caltrops, Distraction, Outmaneuver, Clash, Dual Wield, Entrench, Hello World, Rebound, Stack, Rip and Tear.

[mortal loom]

I really fucking hate Test subject someitmes

for it's invurlaiblity phases

[hybrid fern]

this thing seems like it just solves like half the fights in the first 2 acts instantly???

[patent geode]

30 damage to all is indeed good

[mortal loom]

Yup, it's a v strong relic if you can hit it fast enough

[swift hedge]

Is the sts 1 mobile port any good?

[slender forge]

From what I've heard yeah

[patent geode]

Very

It's overall on par with the PC version, which consequently makes it one of the best mobile games around

[mortal loom]

It can be a bit slow/battery heavy

[patent geode]

Didn't notice that myself, though admittedly my battery has been fucked on this phone for years so it's difficult to notice when it's draining even faster than usual.

[pliant current]

It can be slow sometimes and it wasn’t made for a mobile interface but it is definitely still very fun

[mortal loom]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2868840?emclan=103582791474493240&emgid=664987110632063988

[shrewd vault]

As you've probably noticed, we're moving to patch every 2 weeks rather than weekly as outlined in our Early Access Disclaimer. This may be a bit surprising as the first game patched weekly, but it was a lot of work so it really sucked.

Anyways, the 2-week cadence should make it less hectic for us, allowing bigger changes and more time working and polishing stuff before it goes out. It also allows more time for beta players to absorb and give feedback on changes.

! they killed doormaker

[mortal loom]

Def bummed about the change

but also

[dry glacier]

THEY REMOVED DOORMAKER????????

Okay looking at the rest of the changes though, some needed changes to Regent cards even if they're slight tweak downs to the popular ones, Crescent Spear is gooder, Infused Core good(?), Shatter and Tesla Coil are now both huge, Pumpkin Candle might actually be pretty good now, new Neow relics, something for multiple Lantern Keys...... kinda baller.

I hope they add something special to the pot -> upgraded card reward when you use Glowwater potion

[mortal loom]

?

[spare shoal]

What did they do to tesla coil?

And to pumpkin candle?

[mortal loom]

Less damage on upgrade triggers lightning orbs twice

Pumpkin candle now lasts 5 fights, but you can kindle it at campfires

[plain leaf]

dang had a really good run going but I knew my defense was lagging behind, unfortunately I got no defense stuff for act2 boss rare and then got tanx with nothing usefull to give

[hybrid fern]

this helical dart relic is NOT ethical

[plain leaf]

Sorry not tanx the hoarder guy

His boons are just so much weaker than the others for zt 3

[mortal loom]

Fought the new Aeonglass boss

interesting!

Also

[plain leaf]

Aeonglass?

[mortal loom]

I'd like to remind everyone i'm very good at the game and defitnely did not spend most of hte queen fight having not used my strength potion

[plain leaf]

Didn’t know there was a new boss

[mortal loom]

Doormaker was shown... the door

[plain leaf]

Oh that new neow cross class relic looks fun

I love cross class cards

Unfortunately splash did not save me last run

[rocky stone]

Changed Fossil Stalker: in multiplayer, now gains a set amount of Strength if it hits any player, instead of gaining Strength for each player hit

oh thank god

[radiant plaza]

What's the mechanical gimmick

[mortal loom]

RIP, splash is normally enough to carry

also

[plain leaf]

Fun

Definitely grabbing that one a lot

[mortal loom]

Aeonglasy things! ||Every four non-status cards, you get a retain exhaust status added to your hand that does 2 damage at end of turn and costs 1 to get rid of. He does a big attack that debuffs your str and dex temp, then a big double atack, and then back to the startish?||

[rocky stone]

huh, interesting

[plain leaf]

Exhaust decks will have fun

[rocky stone]

or Discard

[plain leaf]

Or flak canon/compaxt

Be interesting to have a boss where it’s worth it to grab some commons act 3 to deal with the mechanic

Wonder if that’ll be the case

[mortal loom]

I beat him up just now iwth this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LPSJvtJNu8 Jorbs is literally fighting him rn.

[mortal loom]

HANDS. OF. UNUSUAL. SIZE

Fair thee well sweet prince

[hybrid fern]

yet another thing making tent the best relic OAT

[patent geode]

Does this technically count as a change to Doormaker 🤔

I expect them to probably come back at some point, potentially when we get the alternative act 3, but yeah it makes sense since it was the boss they were tweaking the most; didn't seem like they were satisfied with it.

Also, Defect got some nice buffs.

Buffed Shatter card: now Evokes all of your Orbs twice
Buffed Tesla Coil+ card: damage decreased from 6 -> 4, but Lightning Triggers increased from once -> twice

I like these two especially, since I wanted some more orb support

[sweet remnant]

Got to meet the new boss on my first run after the update

I will say I really like the visual design

But I feel like they're gonna have to run them through more iterations than even Doormaker before they end up with an actually satisfying, interesting bossfight

[sweet remnant]

I wouldnt be surprised if they ended up just converging back into a really similar spot to DMaker

[warped crane]

I expect they'll probably be buffing it the next beta patch, it's a bit of a pushover at the moment

but the main mechanic itself I think is workable

[dry glacier]

yeah upgraded Tesla Coil will low-key be massive now

especially if you can get the newly buffed Infused Core with it, mmmm...

can't wait for the crimes

[patent geode]

Its big downside is that lightning orbs aren't the best necessarily, but having an easy to access payoff is really nice.

Especially since it can work with 0-mana support, giving you some additional flexibility.

This is also a notable buff in the flexibility of Feral, since you now have a very clear synergy between them which makes feral less risky of a choice for a deck (not that feral itself tends to struggle too much to perform).

[shrewd vault]

It's funny that one of the first things I can point at as me getting better at StS is learning "2 costs aren't scary and 0 costs aren't necessarily good"

...and then defect in StS2 is kind of like "just take all the 0 costs you want, it'll work out"

[patent geode]

Evaluating the balance of defense/offense/scaling coupled with average mana cost in your deck Vs mana generation and card draw is pretty damn difficult still lol.

It's what I struggle with the most, as I probably go a bit too expensive. Consequently I love my energy relics ;p.

[sweet remnant]

Oh btw forgot to mention this

The rules text doesnt quite explain the reworked Pumpkin

It starts with 5 charges and expends 1 charge at the start of a combat to activate its effect (give you 1 Energy).

Kindling it at a Rest Site gives it an additional 5 charges, with no maximum cap.

[patent geode]

Ahkay, tbh I was looking at it as basically a reward for playing well and not needing to rest before the final bosses.

Though I do like its design much more than the old version

[shrewd vault]

I really like how funky the new ancient rewards are

[sweet remnant]

So you arent forced to hop between rest sites after every 5 combats to keep it active

[shrewd vault]

@_@ if only I had time to try them

[radiant plaza]

Tent stonks going up

[sweet remnant]

I had the Tent on the run I picked it so by the time I got to Aenoglass I had 12 charges to spare

[dry glacier]

That's the other thing yeah, 0-Mana Defect has been one of my favorites and I'm glad it has some hybridizing potential now

Though tbh with Tempest/Voltaic, it's been one of the better hybrid options

[patent geode]

I do still believe that tempest kinda sucks still, but I don't mind it too much.

Voltaic however can be a wincon. Its main issue is deck cycling, being expensive, and lightning being kinda perennial IME. However if you're able to make a few orbs it can indeed kill bosses.

[honest glade]

voltaic is like claw ime

the first voltaic is the worst

the secont voltaic is the best

[spare shoal]

Defect has many ways to get extra energy so for me Tempest is pretty good

[patent geode]

Oh wait tempest yes lmao

I was thinking of the power

[mortal loom]

Tempest kinda sucks right up until you get a thunder or two or three

[patent geode]

Tempest is fine enough, since it can help out your early game.

[spare shoal]

Storm is a bit more finnicky, but imo the orbs go like, lightning -> frost -> all the other ones

simply because your starting deck gives you lightning

[patent geode]

In terms of use?

I'd be on the opposite end and consider lightning or dark the worst (dark in part because I don't believe it really has enough support and is a bit overvalued in most cards which generate it)..

Frost is consistently very, very good since you should be evoking your orbs on the regular, and block tends to be better than random damage.

[spare shoal]

Frost needs a bit of focus to really work but it can free your energy to do stuff other than defending

Glass is some decent damage but you need to cycle it quickly or have focus, or it falls off

Lightning has great support, you start with it already, and its Big Number

and I agree with you on Dark

[patent geode]

Eh, I'd disagree there. Glacier tends to be a very consistently good block card (especially since it helps prevent bleed through damage which can otherwise be a problem, whilst coolheaded is efficient draw that also comes with extra block.

You shouldn't really need focus to make frost good.

[spare shoal]

maybe, I personally prefer to get focus and keep my frost orbs than to cycle the frost orbs

since frost orbs start at 2 block, any focus you get is multiplying their value big time

[patent geode]

That would be more viable in the first game, but with Defrag moved to rare and other sources of permanent focus gone (beyond the relic, and no I'm not counting the other power since you lose focus every turn), I don't really believe as much in leaving your orbs be anymore.

[spare shoal]

alas

I am trapped in the past

[shrewd vault]

Storm is fun when it goes off, but to be really good it needs Creative AI. And not only is AI already silly amounts of scaling, it can also just give you Storm

[patent geode]

Yeah, storm is moreso a card you're okay with rolling off of CA and not much else I don't think?

Since it's very power hungry relative to how many orbs it creates.

[mortal loom]

Storm is great in this game

You absolutely do not need creative ai

The fact it upgrade to 2 orbs is a big deal

[plain leaf]

The lack of music throws me off

[patent geode]

Oh yeah that'll do it lol

Somehow I'd missed that, but yeah no if it upgrades to 2 orbs it should be great.

[mortal loom]

It doesn't get innate anymore, but that's fine

Powers bullshit defect is still a thing

The second thunder was a mistake there, but that was a pretty classic Defect powers bullshit run

[patent geode]

Yeah, I'd somehow missed its change but it should be much better now.

[spare shoal]

arsenal + metamorphosis is a fun combo

[dry glacier]

It losing Innate is honestly fine since I prefer getting it later in set-up than very early on

[spare shoal]

just got to A5 with everyone

[dry glacier]

hell yeah!

[spare shoal]

it gave me TWO crash landings against the experiment

ended the fight with 28 strength

[dry glacier]

two copies of one of the strongest Regent cards, holy fuck

that's just peam, gg

[plain leaf]

Clad is 10 (havent won a ten yet)
Silent is 5
Regent is 6
Necro is 6
Defect is 4

No idea why I struggle with silent since I agree they’re the strongest

[dry glacier]

If I had to take a loose guess, it might be you not removing enough? She's got the largest starting deck after all

[spare shoal]

Does she?

Isn't it 10 cards like everyone else? 4 defs and strikes, the discard block, and the cost 0 weak

[shrewd vault]

she still has the extra strike + defend from StS1, to cancel out the turn one draw from her starting relic

bulk removal feels harder in 2, though, since it really depends on events. I feel like I mostly deal with the extra cards by mainlining draw

[stark junco]

Damn

[patent geode]

Could you publish a loss?

A quick screenshot should reveal where you're dying and what you picked up.

[patent geode]

Ironically enough removing large swaths of cards is simultaneously not too difficult, but it's oft dependent on one wax-shaped boy.

The relic which exhausts your entire hand to skip a dead turn as well as the gloopy one are both great.

[sweet remnant]

I feel like StS 2 made bulk removal a lot more accesible, something you can dip to without commitment

Im a thick deck runner to a fault in both games tho, so maybe laser focusing on thinning your deck is easier in 1.

[hybrid fern]

Holy the new buffed shatter seems, kinda crazy

Its like x ( being orbs) dualcasts added to your deck

[stark junco]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GYzde05-DPA

[patent geode]

Should've played around it 😌

[stark junco]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HORejku3ciI

[dry glacier]

I think today was the only time that the 2 transform option absolutely fucked me, had the strike and defend get replaced with grand finale and bubble bubble without any poison

so I just had 3 dead cards when including Bane :(

[patent geode]

They declared that thine time was near.

[light garden]

damn

floor one, 6 fucking relics

[dry glacier]

good lord you got the capsule from the bones?

[light garden]

sure did

seed in case you want to try

welp

wasted a god start

[spare shoal]

2nd time I find 5 bonfires in a row

[light garden]

damn

same seed, pael offers wing

relic gaming

[dry glacier]

good Ethereal run, ty game

I ate a whole 5 potions against Aeonglass

[dry glacier]

I ended up dying due to some bad draw but I have to say

the new Tesla Coil upgrade genuinely shreds, especially with Feral in play

it does soooooooooooooooooooooooo much

[shrewd vault]

a messy and unfocused deck, but it turns out that this "All For One" thing might be good

first time fighting Aeonglass and it was...fine? ||Zero cost deck + a lot of energy + flak cannon meant the gimmick kind of didn't matter? so I just killed it in four turns.||

[mortal loom]

Yes, i think it's a bit undertuned right now

[patent geode]

They should give it a new mechanic, such as exiling every tenth card you draw

[plain leaf]

I got killed the one time I encountered it

[mortal loom]

I think the stauts just need to be more impactful.

ore damage. maybe slightyl slower to come in (like every 6 cards), but hitting much harder.

and costing 2 to get rid of

This is turn 1 btw.

[warped crane]

pov: 4 gorillas rolled up to your boss chamber

[dry glacier]

Ironclad stacking never ceases to be funny

[ivory birch]

Silent stacking is also pretty great

[pliant night]

Necro stacking is also pretty sick

Doom and osties and everywhere

[warped crane]

poison stacking or doom with no escape could be pretty good

[patent geode]

Seems like folk enjoy stacking.

[mortal loom]

What is "blocking"

I only know Maul.

Started with 6 strikes into a pair of upgraded perfected strikes, used that to crush act 1 and 2, no one offered me hellraiser, very rude, and then Tanx rocks up and is all "have you considered Maul?"

so i mauled things instead

[patent geode]

The humble Break+

[honest glade]

everyone say thank you tanx

[mortal loom]

Yeah there was, tehre was a lot going on in that deck

Also, i swear i can make decks under 40 cards for silent

Honest.

Really

This is just a stastical anomaly.

(This is a lie i am competley incapable of making small silent decks, but fatdeck silent is really good, so)

"What is your deck velocity"
"Yes"

Well, that's not good

[north sonnet]

Okay I had to see what everyone's thoughts on Aeonglass were and I'm glad it seems like I'm not going crazy

||I'm underwhelmed and I miss Door man||

[radiant plaza]

https://tenor.com/view/deadlock-doorman-deadlock-doorman-default-dance-fortnite-gif-1437214811599099787

To the clever mind, this will assure victory.

[patent geode]

I mean Door is likely to return, just in a different form since they didn't seem wholly satisfied with it for public testing.

Consider after all that we still have an alternate Act 3 brewing.

[hybrid fern]

literally has anyone at megacrit played their own game? this boss cannot exist in the same game as defects current kit,,,, compact??? literally the boss doesnt exist, its just an hp pool atp

[patent geode]

Considering that they designed every other part of the game, and made this one to test something new because they weren't satisfied with Door, yes?

[hybrid fern]

okay im being mean... but i think no boss gimmick should be essentially solved by a single uncommon. especially since the status cards have retain

[stone relic]

https://tenor.com/view/doorman-deadlock-deadlock-doorman-door-man-dance-gif-4339803590491365215

[patent geode]

Considering that they're likely to change the boss based on feedback and data, I do think we can do with being less doomerist about the test branch being used for what it's meant for. I was miffed when they changed prepare even though I understood why they were doing so, but was willing to wait til the next patch to see what they'd do.

[hybrid fern]

oh im not mad im just being silly, im not the type to leave a poor review or anything, i understand how test branch works or i wouldnt be on it

[velvet peak]

"i'm not mad i'm just pretending to be mad" you will find, is not really the defense you might think it is.

Putting on my mod hat to tell you to not mad post about this game like this

[hybrid fern]

absolutely will do 🫡 i completely came across with the wrong tone apparently. apologies.

[manic kestrel]

doormaker was shaming the door name ngl. we need an a3 boss that makes people as mad as the twink does

oh no hahaha all my strikes and defends exhaust this turn? oh fuck lol

im excited to see what they cook with the new guy by the time it hits main branch

[hybrid fern]

and also apologies orange if was being combative. ill chill on any acerbic takes- i imagine theres somewhat higher mod alert regarding this game considering the recent chud-discourse on it , rest assured theres none of that on my end. - and im just as interested to see how time eater junior evolves.

[tender topaz]

you're not wrong yeah, anita sarkeesian showing up means we need to start posting patrols in the neighborhood

[patent geode]

Np, np, it was moreso the community dynamic you see around games such as Helldivers 2 which I was going a bit against.

On a different note, here's me making the wrong choice in the run; colourised.

(Skewer is what I'd go with if I wanted to run, with Memento Mori second. However I have a shop coming up so I am giving myself the excuse to go shopping and try to make accuracy work. You should not try to make accuracy work as a speculatory pick lol.)

My hubris haunts me.

[manic kestrel]

nice debris pickup

[patent geode]

I'll have you know I eventually got two whole cards which give me shivs!

Still, it's a good example of both why you don't pick up payoffs unless you already have a way to use them, or because they are a necessary gamble for solving an upcoming problem

In this case I had two safer choices and was in need of a good early game card, so even though I survived act 1 this was the wrong choice.

[plain leaf]

Got that weird exhaust nine card for necro as my neow rare; that’s easily one of the worst rares with I think queens gambit being the only other one I find to be less useful

[manic kestrel]

which card? soul storm?

[patent geode]

Grand Finale is a tad bit more difficult to set up, but yeah that necro rare is typically just used for deck thining right now.

Kinda funny to think that it and Stoke existed in the game at the same time at one point.

[manic kestrel]

oh eidolon

what is queens gambit

do you mean, the gambit, the one which kills you if you dont block

[plain leaf]

Yes

Sorry forgot the name

But yeah eidolon and gambit

[shrewd vault]

this was stupid. Imbued Cascade+ with Throwing Axe and History Course, two copies of Whirlwind, one of them Vigorous, with Akabeko meant a lot of fights just disappeared. Even though Cascade into Whirlwind kind of sucks after the free copies, an absolute blast of a deck

[plain leaf]

my last silly run was a shiv build where I got shuriken and fan, just so good even early

[shrewd vault]

Helical Dart is a fair and normal relic

admittedly this build really snowballed, but I feel like Aeonglass should really be able to counter shiv.deck

[dry glacier]

Aeonglass I fully expect to see getting a massive buff in 2 weeks tbh, cuz currently... it feels a bit like the Hunter Killer or Entomancer from Act 2? More appropriate power wise to those two rather than any of the other Act 3 bosses

especially Queen

[shrewd vault]

Honestly, maybe it's just that I keep accidentally hard countering its gimmick, but hunter killer's almost feels meaner

[north sonnet]

ohhh true true

yall I don't think Necrobinder is meant to start with Arsenal lol

End of turn 1 agains Aeonglass I had 15 strength and went through half its health. It was dead by turn 3.

[plain leaf]

hunter killer feels rougher than some of the mini bosses at times

[north sonnet]

It honestly is tbh

[plain leaf]

had a decent defect deck with the caveat of being a bit too big; unceremoniously died to antlion from all the escapes going to the bottom of the deck without a chance to play them

only even saw one and that was drawn when I had no energy

[mortal loom]

Current aeonglass opinions are that it's a bit undertuned, the "Gets ocmeptely countered by danythign that destroys statuses" is... a problem. Otoh, on A10 it literalyl turn 1 is swinging for 32 damage, into debuffing you and swsinging again really hard. This is even more agessive than Test subject, and unlike test subject, it's got artifact, which means you can't just imeddiately debuff it with weak to lolol, can't hurt me

And that's actually quite signfianct.

My thoguhts would be to hit a couple of places:

Tune up the status. Make it a bit rarer (Like push it to every 5 or 6 c ards), but make it worse (more cost, more damage) This a: limits how much compact etc can benefit ooff it, b: equalizes the power of discard, transform options in other classes, and c: Makes it a bigger problem for various decks (if it costs 2, hits for 6 or something ,that's a problem to deal with that pushes you to having to have exahust/discard/transform options to flush it, and i think that's good, personally)

The otehr thign i'd do is make it so when it debuffs you, you don't get all your strength and dex back - eg if it hits you with -3, -3, then you get 2 and and 2 back, so the longer hte ight drags on, the more it rips up your defences

right now it has the problem where it can actually be a very impactful flgith, but not one that directly klls you itself

I've had several runs whcih "Beat" Aeonglass, and then died right afterwards, and it's less that hte fight afterwards killed them

and more that they'd actually lost to aeonglass, the conquences were just delatyed

[mortal loom]

Guy's it's fine.

Yes, there is six copies of Not Yet in the deck

[plain leaf]

I've yet to get past the first boss in a10 sadly

I think I've been letting my decks get too big for whatever reason

[mortal loom]

I suspect the problems go deeper than that, since "Big deck" sint neccesarily a bad thing

as can be seen by this 104 card monster.

[plain leaf]

fair

[mortal loom]

General a10 stuff:

Elites are good. you want as many elites as you can kill in act 1.
Shops are good. An early shop is a good way to get strong enough to kill an elite (Just buy potions orwhatever, instead of removing a strike)
Relics are good. More relics is more good. (Think carefully about relics that come with getting a curse, but often this is worthwhile.).
Whale bonuses that help you be strong now let you snowball hard

[patent geode]

Mm, think 30-40 card decks aren't too bad.

[mortal loom]

LKike example of "Okay, there is a greedy path, so let's snowball"

Normally i'm a bit down on Silver Crucible, since loosing out on the chest r elic and gold is pretty hefty

but my other choices were Arcane Scroll (I would have to high roll, there's a lot of whiffs here), or Neow's Torment (...fine? but i'd have to find good stuff to snowball with)

Anotehr example of "I need to snowball, so let's ball"

and thjen just taking a hyper greedy path

I had two perfected strike+ by floor 4

[mortal loom]

Legit mad i didn't take pumpkin candle here

[mortal loom]

Get forged on.

This sure was a Run of All Time

[plain leaf]

forge is very good

[dry glacier]

with the power of 5 morbillion draw, we win these

[spare shoal]

very normal run

[mortal loom]

That honestly does look pretty normal - I'm guesisng SPlash and Crossbow did a lot of heavy lifting on it being Not normal

[spare shoal]

the not normal part is 140 hp

but yes

splash and some poison is the main source of damage, and there's some shenanigans in there with big card draw and the bullet time

[mortal loom]

Oh, yes

IU totally missed the max hp

[mortal loom]

I am also doing very normal things!

[spare shoal]

Oh no

[mortal loom]

What, this is totally how silent plays!

[spare shoal]

I love that gem relic thing

Mixed decks are very fun

[mortal loom]

OIne of my legit favorite things in this game is the much more dedicated cross-clasisng support

[spare shoal]

I love that the stained glass events gives you a card reward of each rarity

[shrewd vault]

Yea, seeing the cross class Neow relic in the beta patch notes was exciting. They really want it to be a thing

[mortal loom]

That event is so strong, and so fun

It's an interesting relic, it's super voltaile

b ut it can give you some very strong starts

[plain leaf]

ugh runs haven't been going great and its starting to get to me

the kaiser crab one was particularly frustrating since I just didn't draw any block on the first turn of the decimilipede and then didn't draw anything t o do side swaps on kaiser crab

always time to quit when the internal voice starts going 'you can't win because you're incompetent like everything else you do'

same sort of thoughts that led me to stop trying to draw and hindered me learning fighting games

ugh not even getting to act 3 and not even getting to the real part of a10 with double boss outside of a lucky run that got me sharp whirwind with ingredient x and hot cocao

[rocky stone]

Yeah the glass ancient relic also gives you five of each rarity IIRC

Which I kinda wish they told you about

[plain leaf]

The more I play a10 the more I feel my victory in a9 was a lucky fluke

[mortal loom]

Eeey, you did it! nice!

And a very solid deck too

[plain leaf]

I knew I had a chance by the end of act 1

Takes a bit to set up but it mostly wants to get stampede out and then both lifeloss trinity and and dominate and then focus on blocking while leaving the big attacks for free

Stone armor is a weird card where one stone armor is bad but multiple are great

Especially with armaments

I often have block issues going into act 3 with clad but I pulled mantle which solves those

[mortal loom]

Stone armor is bad, stone armor+ is quite a bit better

[mortal loom]

S-sw-swords?!

[patent niche]

finally got back into slaying spires with the new game

the daily today was kind of fun, I ended up disintegrating everything with double Royal stamp corrosive wave and an entire deck of Defect card draw engines

what happened with Doormaker, by the way? I vaguely remember people saying he got removed but given I was just fighting him he seems pretty present

[spare shoal]

are you in the beta branch?

[patent niche]

ah that'll be it, I am not

only picked the game up two days ago, I was just going on osmosis from assorted friends talking my ear off about it

[shrewd vault]

Beta branch replaces Doormaker with a new act 3 boss, the Aeonglass. It's ||sort of underbaked at the moment||. it'll be interesting to see how it develops over the next few patches.

[patent geode]

Yeah, it's one of those experimental changes which is difficult to judge until the next patch.

[plain leaf]

It’s gimmick isn’t hard to deal with but it’s damage output is high

[patent geode]

So far in terms of design, the Queen has been my favourite act 3 boss.

[patent geode]

I do hope it ends up being the opposite towards the end, or at least more balanced between the two.

[plain leaf]

I like test subject

I actually liked portal giant 2 but devs didnt
It did have a lot of mechanics that could hosevmany builds

[patent geode]

I'm honestly in agreement with them regarding the last version of Doormaker, in that it had too many mechanics going on in a way which lacked overall thematic cohesion.

In other words it was really messy in a game which tends to be rather elegant with its designs.

This doesn't mean it was a bad fight, but rather I get why they wanted to take it off the shelf for a bit.

[spare shoal]

3 gimmicks was too much, I think it'd be okay if it was only 2 going back and forth

[patent niche]

I haven't even noticed what Queen's deal is honestly, every time I've gotten to her so far I've had such a monster build she just kind of evaporates

but that's just how climbing through low ascensions works

I imagine I'll see more of it once I'm past the halfway mark

[patent geode]

She puts a curse on the first three cards you draw each turn, so you only get to play one of them.

Plus she has an ad and she herself puts 99 Weak/Vulnerable/Frail on ya

[patent niche]

oh, is that it? I did notice the Binding but it didn't hinder me much

[patent geode]

The ad is because she's actually a Vtuber and needs the revenue.

(it's just an enemy)

[patent niche]

I think I might have been snowballing too hard once I got to the point the 99.99.99 comes up since I vaguely recall it now I think about it

[patent geode]

Mm, some decks deal with it fine whilst others can struggle. Overall it's a rather good gimmick.

[shrewd vault]

the other dynamic with queen is that she slowly scales up the minion as long as its alive, but once you kill it she starts scaling herself way harder. so you usually can't ignore the minion completely, but just focusing it down or killiing it with AOE can put you in a worse spot if you can't outscale the queen on her own

[plain leaf]

Yeah it’s a bigger version of the leeches fight

Really need to balance damage while dealing with some rather large damage coming in with frail on you

I find her the hardest boss

[patent geode]

Honestly I always just kill the minion first and then her out of habit, based on nothing other than it feeling correct.

[rocky stone]

you generally wanna do some damage to Queen before you kill the Torchhead

[plain leaf]

Same but that almost killed me in my a10 run, had to kill her that turn or die

[plain leaf]

this was an extremely fun run
didn't have much issue with aeonglass despite being the exact build it should've hosed

[mortal loom]

She generates 20+ block for herself every turn off the torchhead is alive. Unless you have overwhelming damage, it's much better to take the torch head out first

[mortal loom]

Well

That was degenerate

[dry glacier]

I ended up not upgrading the Capacitor cuz I didn't feel like I need it and I still barely took damage on the final boss

I lost 19 damage and 15 of that was turn 1 due to bad draw, when I got my Frost orbs going the fucker could only tickle me lol

[patent geode]

Many such cases lol

You oft don't need that much scaling, so skipping upgrading the capacitor was likely the right choice.

[dry glacier]

Honestly? Wouldn't have made much of a difference no matter what I did on the rest given I had a lot of HP, but me resting probably would've been the right play if it was Asc10

[patent geode]

Yeah, unless you have a certain relic which gives +25hp when you enter the boss room, healing in act 3 is oft the right choice.

Helps ensure you can survive two bad turns, which across two boss fights isn't too unlikely.

[plain leaf]

One of my favorite silly combo runs was were I had two make it so and then the music box from vaku, I’d focus on defence while constantly creating new make it sos that woukd then be returned to my hand next turn

[mortal loom]

Jackpot is doing it's best

Thoguh, seriously, i need to not sleep on Jackpot so much

[shrewd vault]

it's really fun when it works. Jackpot Defect is a blast

[mortal loom]

I think it's much better upgraded, as the upgrade makes it vomit up upgraded cards

Which is a big deal

Ontop of making it a pretty chunky damage number

[patent geode]

Helmet on a sly run always feels like you're cheating

Why yes I'd love to have 4 block for free

[restive stirrup]

To be fair, sly feels like cheating

[patent niche]

man I am not good at Defect

had a couple barnstorming Ironclad runs where I just pelted everything with upgraded boulders and Offerings, I miss being able to hit like ten trucks taped together

[mortal loom]

Silent is just such a silly character

Bought Shovel to start with and got 5 relics out of it, so pretty good return on investment

[plain leaf]

shovel is pretty good

[hybrid fern]

okay my game has to be broken 😭 tth over 100 runs and ive never gotten anything but darkstone periapt from the junk pile, not once theres gotta be something else

[shrewd vault]

does having a cursed copy of the game mean the periapt gives you the +HP right away?

[hybrid fern]

its a mario 64 personalization thing yeah

[placid dirge]

got STS2 back!!

I suck ass at this game. it's unbelievable.

[shrewd vault]

step 1: suck ass
step 2: ???
step 3: beat ass

[hybrid fern]

Decimillie is so scary on a doom deck

[patent niche]

the upside is that you tend to have really good AOE so when it works it really works and that sucker drops instantly

[hybrid fern]

Yeah you have to have like 3 negative pulses

[rocky stone]

this has been an issue for me many times before, yeah

[plain leaf]

Deca is the scariest of the hive mini bosses

[patent niche]

just outright lost a run to Gardeners because I forgot Void Form ends your turn, which I do every time

[mortal loom]

The tempation to spread False Lore about sts 2

and see if it gets picked up tby the community

[restive stirrup]

Mmmm, I think the bees are mayber worse

I normally have aoe because it's useful in a lot of fights

But I often don't have the big hits that solve getting dazed

[plain leaf]

I find entomancer to be really hit or miss depending on the build

some have no issues other struggle ahrd

[mortal loom]

Mr bees is basically a: how hard can you hit in how many hits, and falling that, do you have non attack damage?

Deca demands either serious AOE or seriousconsistent burst damage so you can reduce the incoming damage asap, and forces you to do this while perma weaknened

[honest tundra]

Don’t know who this was but found it fitting

[patent geode]

Defend, defend, hidden cache, end turn?

Void form is unnecessary here

[mortal loom]

Hmm

Yes

[patent geode]

Shame that you are weakened

Otherwise you'd have killed the architect too

[mortal loom]

Yeah, dont worry, i got the Aeonkeeper righjt after

[mortal loom]

Well, that was a stupid way to win

This is not what i would call a good deck

but also it tended to end up with 60+ strength and then musical stampede things out of existence

so ???

Basically running around screaming WHERE IS MY STOKE LET ME STOKE

okay finally found stoke. STOKE STOKE STOKE

I legit took the reflectio nevnet for the 45 hp heal.

[dry glacier]

The fact this dumb shit almost won me my first Asc 10 run feels like a joke

I was like barely off from killing Test Subject, if I just had one more low rolled Perf Strike

[patent geode]

"Oh that's a fairly standard looking deck, some odd choices- oh 32 perfected strikes"

[plain leaf]

Yeah that was my thoughts on it as well

[dry glacier]

500 PERFECTED STRIKES

anyway 2nd Asc 10 Clad run is... GOING GREAT

This was floor 1-4

then act 2 hits me with this shit cuz I also got Mini Cannon

[patent niche]

not even close

[shrewd vault]

Never didn't have it

[patent niche]

I trash talk the potion-shaped rock generator a lot but I would not have made that without that 15 damage

[honest tundra]

Potion rock is great

[shrewd vault]

It may not be a very good potion, but a potion's a potion.

It's like a free backstab

[patent niche]

this run is totally doomed but it's the interesting kind of doomed where you want to see how many elites you can rush down before they eat your no-defence behind

I transformed a card into Meteor Strike first thing and have literally never been able to use it

yeah, died to entomancer, unsurprising

[shrewd vault]

That's the curse of meteor strike. You need really ridiculous energy generation or a way to cheat it out.

[patent niche]

yeah, terrible roll at first act start and I never quite managed to get it to pop off

then the very next run out I start with Supercrit

you're late

[mortal loom]

Honestly hte main issue i see is you didn't commit hard neough to the perfected strikes

i'm not even joking, like.. that deck jsut wins if you go all in on perfected strikes

also i knew i saw that screenie already, YOU WERE TALKING A BOUT IT IN STS2 STRATERGY

you fiend

[patent niche]

I'm doing nothing but highly scuffed synergies today

this run I get a whole bunch of Turbos and other energy cards I can't get use out of and settle on my one gimmick being filling my entire deck with statuses and spamming Flak Cannon, because it's literally the only scaling I have

[dry glacier]

:D

Casual turn 1 Ento kill, you know how it b

won the run btw cuz that shit carried me

[patent niche]

maybe I do just suck at Defect, I lose four runs, swap to Silent and immediately demolish everything with no difficulty

[patent geode]

Everyone's got something they struggle with

[patent niche]

I feel this is overkill

[rocky stone]

never

[mortal loom]

Silent is kinda broken, so I'm not sure it's that

Post some of your defect losses and we can probably give advice on what's killing you

[mortal loom]

I wasnt actually paying attention to my sword

[manic kestrel]

absentee dad has sword grow up big and strong

[patent niche]

there we go, finally managed one via the extremely crude expedient of taking every single vaguely useful card and mashing the ORB buttons

I was definitely focusing too much on getting individual things to scale before

[patent niche]

made an absolutely monstrous strength/self-damage ironclad deck with Bing Bong and then ungad my bunga too hard and killed myself on Spiny Toad, not realising it had Thorns

honestly that feels appropriate considering how Peak cacti work

[dry glacier]

Happens to the best of us, gamer

also, Regent with Crash Landing and Pillar of Creation is so not okay lmao

You know a card gen set-up is yolked when you win without Spectrum Shift

[patent niche]

I have yet to make Pillar of Creation work, maybe I need to run it more

[dry glacier]

Pillar of Creation is among the top 5 cards for Regent low-key, it's extremely strong. Easy tip for it is that all the Transform cards work with it

It prints an insane amount of block when you have like Collision Course, Quasar, BEGONE!, CHARGE!!, things like that

[patent niche]

I did not realise Transforms also counted, never mind

time to go wild with the minion kit

which is already funny

[dry glacier]

It's a little unintuitive, but yeah all the Transform effects count for it

[plain leaf]

I think forge triggers it too

[dry glacier]

which includes Entropy from the Colorless pool!

yep yep, if you get Forge off after Pillars

Legit you can easily put it in your deck if you have a Collision Course or something since functionally you can treat it as 1 Mana 11(15) damage with 3(4) Block if you are stingy about keeping the Debris in your discard

Yeah I double-checked, literally nothing that is strictly in the card-gen archetype for Regent is bad. Every single card in it is either great or has hard enough of a niche that it's worth picking even if it can end up rather meh in other points

crazy shit

[placid dirge]

what the fuck is wongo's

[dry glacier]

Wongo's is a hack, but at least the rates he gives you are rather good when it's for like a common relic

a lot of the commons are hella good funnily enough, like Strike Dummy

[patent geode]

Regent is probably the character with the highest floor right now since he's rather draw order dependent, but yeah when he's good he's great

[mortal loom]

slamming the able STOP PLAYING ARCHYPES> cough

[spare shoal]

poor able

always being slammed

[mortal loom]

I don't actually ahve helix drill in my deck, mind

Again, i still don't have a helix drill in my deck

[mortal loom]

Guys my ironclad was defective.

[plain leaf]

That’s a lot of defect cards

How’d you get so many

[spare shoal]

the event gives you 3, and you don't have the prismatic gem...

maybe it was the Mad Science?

[dry glacier]

The colorful glass gives you 15 cards from a different character to pick lol

5 commons, 5 uncommons, 5 rares

it's why there is a clump of 5 uncommons and 5 rares here

[spare shoal]

Damn, thats very good

[plain leaf]

cross class cards can be very fun

it'd be interesting if there wa sa character with a major 'use cards from other classes' theme

[honest glade]

there wont be

bc thatd be horrifyingly busted

[placid dirge]

Thinking about all of Ironclad's "on exhaust" mixed with a shiv build

[patent geode]

I may have but a 30-40% winrate at A10, but I am happy.

Also I don't think you're supposed to slam the able-bodied

[mortal loom]

Colourphil Philosphers (Defect) + Defective Glasss from Oro

[mortal loom]

How are you calculating that?

[mortal loom]

They've got it coming.

[patent geode]

Just raw numbers for how many runs I have at A10 Vs the amount of wins.

Variance due to variance between characters.

[mortal loom]

Oh, did you sit down and math it out?

[patent geode]

Yeah, ultimately I don't play the game that much rn so it was fairly easy to do.

[mortal loom]

That's a genuinely impressive win rate

[patent geode]

It's closer to 30% for the most part, with the 40% being because I don't want to do any rounding based on memory alone ;p.

[mortal loom]

Mine was 33% last time I calculated it, but it's def dropped since then

I've been playing horribly 🙁 brain shit getting in the way, I've lost a lot of perfectly winnable runs

[patent geode]

Ah that sucks.

[mortal loom]

I'll pull it back. I'm still fucking good at the game, and I'm still winning with some pretty crazy plays

[patent niche]

I am steadily working my way up the ascensions and honestly I feel considerably worse at this than I did at STS1

although some of that is that I am forcing myself to play out the runs that seem very obviously doomed as practice

[shrewd vault]

I started out feeling like I was way worse and I still feel like my win rate is pretty bad, but I've gotten to much higher ascension than I ever did in StS1. so...answers unclear

[sweet remnant]

It's a different game, it takes time to learn it

But it is an easier game at the end of the path

[plain leaf]

Did necro 6 with a strange but functional build

Tezca ember with lots of card draw is really good

[patent niche]

butchered test subject in his intangible phase with shivs + serpent form

not an amazing serpent form build honestly since I never got any shiv synergy other than "lots of them" but it worked

I haven't fought Aeonglass yet but so far Test Subject and Queenie really don't seem so bad

TS has a fairly impactful set of gimmicks, Queen is basically just a giant meatsack

[patent geode]

Tbh the main difference I noticed whilst playing is that the bosses tend to have a higher expected damage output for off turns, which conversely means that you just kinda need to be able to absorb a decent bit of hp damage.

Putting it another way, I try to not go into the Act 1 boss with only 30hp or so.

[patent niche]

yeah, I took some advice from a friend and started resting more + taking more straight up bludgeoning cards and started doing a lot better

STS1 seemed to have a bigger variation in boss outcomes, you got either "owned" or "deleted it with ease" more often than in this game

[patent geode]

Agree with you there

[plain leaf]

man got both inferno and crimson veil act 1 and still hasn't able to clear

didn't have any aoe and took way too much damage on the infested

[patent niche]

what's the great and terrible spire hivemind opinion on Neurosurge

personally having a great time with it early on

[dry glacier]

One of the best cards on Necro, simple as

giga energy, card draw for the low low cost of killing the thing fast enough so you don't die. At most you play it a bit like Wraith Form where if you are uncertain about the value in a longer fight or if your draw looks shit for Neurosurge use, you just let it cycle

[rocky stone]

it's good

most fights the drawback won't catch up to you, unless you're already really low

[patent niche]

I picked it up first thing last run and then unfortunately got curbstomped by a really badly timed Skulking Colony

[light garden]

translation:

Taste mine blade!

[placid dirge]

I'm so dogshit at Defect it makes me mad

[patent geode]

It's like Offering except it doesn't deal damage to you.

Where it can be rough is when you're at low hp, obviously ;p, but even then fights in StS2 aren't typically that long.

I'd recommend next time you win a run to look at how many turns each encounter took; for me it's oft around 3-4 IIRC for the normal ones, and maybe 6-12 for bigger foes (can't think of many a time which have gone beyond 12 that weren't for some weird, niche reason).

[cloud tapir]

and, funnily enough, there's a card right there that speeds up the fight! (neurosurge)

[patent geode]

Indeed

Plus worst comes to worst you can just not play it.

[mortal loom]

It just kills you instead

Offering is a lot safer =p

[patent geode]

If I die I wasn't worthy

[mortal loom]

More seriously, so I'm not just being smarmy

There are no bad cards, there are just cards bad for your current situation

Necrosurge is in the generally good category, where the times it's bad are rare - but the penalty is significant. Offering can be played on low HP to gas you up enough to win. Necro puts you on a clock, no matter what.

This makes it a lot better when you're playing high energy cards, lots of osty HP cards, Gambit

It makes it a lot worse if you have the corruption enchant (which necro does like, because she can put it on things like Times up, Eradicate, et), or if your playing Lots of 0 cost stuff

It also gets dramatically worse if you can't block consistently and are taking lots of chip damage, since this accelerates the clock

Relatedly, it's hard to take multiplies and this can make Bing bong or smash the mirror awkward, despite the high power of those events

(it's actually really bad with smash the mirror, since it increases the chance you'll see bad luck)

Still a windmill slam most of time

But I don't think trying to say a card is always good/always bad produces useful info

[patent geode]

To go into more detail, I think that the biggest downside with necrosurge is that at least IME Necro is a more defensive class.

As such whilst I'd still generally expect normal fights to be quick enough for surge to not be much of a risk, against bosses it's especially deck dependent.

[mortal loom]

Oh flak cannon

You are just a ridiclous card

World's worst Whetstone btw

upgraded myl ast two strikes right before the campfire i proceed to cook them out of my deck.

Okay, we're gaming

[shrewd vault]

starting deck? what starting deck?

[patent niche]

I have yet to really get Flak Cannon firing on all cylinders

should play more defect

[shrewd vault]

I just won with status defect, but ironically I passed up Flak Cannon because my damage was already good and I was having fun with Compact

I think either one would've bullied Aeonglass, but bullying it with Compact is much funnier IMO

[mortal loom]

Chat, what's teh funniest way to win?

[mortal loom]

Flak cannon's biggest thing is it doesnt give a shit where the status is - your deck, your hand, your discard pile, it just exhausts it.

[shrewd vault]

tl;dr: status defect is really fun. even without the synergy pieces, they're undercosted effects that scale well. with synergy they're amazing. (including just getting All For One or Scrape for all the zero cost status cards)

[patent niche]

my two runs that I decided to skew towards 0-cost/status defect got kind of stepped on before I could get any of the possible big synergy pieces, it'll happen eventually

(1000 hatreds upon the Skulking Colony)

[mortal loom]

Which means it's incredibly good in combo with stuff like the "puts wounds in your discard pile"

like with that deck i was actively playing cards just to generate statuses.

because that was funcitonally loading ammo into my deck

Also this right after being offered Stoke, Mangle, Brand.

(I took stoke, then i took flesh)

[mortal loom]

So the main thing with status stuff is that the 0 costs make stuatsies are really, relaly good

and Gunk Up is actually a very resptacble strenth payoff card

crunch