Mafiascum.net

So I heard getting body slams and imperviouses early is really good? This run was stoopid, non-elites all died in the first turn and so did most of the elites!
I should not have bought a Dead Branch way at the end, but then it spawned Corruption for me against the final boss so that was nice!

Why can I win in the daily runs but not the normal runs lol.

Daily Runs are easier than normal runs.

ive been stuck on asc14 for ironclad ugh

What I found for Ironclad is that, once you hit whatever the Ascender's Bane ascension is, I started just having Evolve / Power Through / Second Wind / Body Slam+ as my "default" plan and only did other things with a compelling reason. Even if your deck doesn't end up being a Barricade/Calipers deck, that package works in most decks and is both super strong AND super flexible.

Just beat ascension 8 as Ironclad with a exhaust deck with the branch and the one that deals 3 damage on exhaust. That deck farmed once you got the exhaust your hand and deal 7 damage for each removed

Yeah, my easiest asc wins on Ironclad have all been dead branch runs. That relic is a game winner

Defect is damn fun. Got a decent frost/snecko eye/miscellaneous other stuff build in first run and beat time eater.

i can't figure out the build paths for defect yet

Beat ascension 10 as ironclad last week. With ironclad it feels really easy and with the silent it feels so hard.
When is the defect full released?

I got the Defect unlocked after doing a run as both Ironclad and Silent yesterday.

defect is already released

Been enjoying defect a lot lately. Up to ascension 6 or 7. Best build I've gotten so far is definitely this one:



Featuring:
-8 claws, and overclock+ and beam cell+ as additional 0-cost cards
-All for one, by far the single most important card in the deck and its centerpiece, drawing all of the claws I've played so far to play again
-5 holograms, which can be used to draw all for one from my discard pile to play all of the claws i've played again again
-2 seeks, which can be used to tutor for the single copy of all for one
-Secret technique, which can be used to tutor for one of the seeks to get all for one, making it effectively a 4-of
-Shuriken, to buff my strength as I play all of the claws that i've played so far again every turn

So much fun.

god i cant figure out how to make defect work

i always get duped into going for the 0 cost deck and just getting wrecked in act 3

I think the powers based deck is his most consistent. Just need a boot sequence or 2 to cover the setup time.

The 0-Cost deck is probably the most powerful deck, but you gotta get a bunch of claws, some scrapes, some holograms, and at least one All for One; the +2 energy for 1 Void card is really good, too. And pray you don't run into Time Master.

I can only beat defect normal run, the other two are impossible

So I recently hit A15 play, and what I've learned is that A14->A15 is like way harder. I didn't realize how much I relied on events to carry me until I hit A15. It's no problem for the Silent since the Silent is broken, but the two other classes have me feeling like I hit a brick wall.

Hah. Silent is the only one I'm not at 15 with. Hit 15 on defect 2 days ago. And yeah, 14->15 is definitely huge. I think it's still best to rely on events to carry you though, it's just... not as good.

Apparently act 4 is getting released in the main branch tomorrow, which is pretty neat. I've avoided real spoilers about it so far so excited to try it out.

But in the mean time I feel the need to rant about how good this game is. Specifically a20 and how well-designed it is. I just beat a20 on a second character (beat it on ironclad maybe a month ago, just beat it on defect) and it just changes the game in a way no other level of ascension does. It fundamentally changes the incentives that you face as you run through the game. Before, one of the most viable sort of ideological strategies IME was to build a deck that's solid enough to beat bosses but won't be able to face many hard regular encounters, dodge elites as a first priority and regular encounters as a second priority (prioritizing fires/?s/shops depending on situation) and then just beat the bosses with highly-scaling cards like demon form or creative AI that are much more mediocre in repeated regular combats where many enemies in a row might hit you for high damage on turn 1.

But in ascension 20, that kind of deck isn't good enough. You need something even better than the typical good-enough deck in a19 - something *significantly* better, to the point where suddenly you're heavily incentivized to fight elites in order to get strong archetype-defining relics or support relics.

The double boss fight itself is also so complicated in such a great way with so many weird and interesting decisions. Like, how do I split my potions between the fights? If I were to weigh my deck against the boss I know I'm facing vs the other two, how much risk am I willing to take in this fight vs the next? In the run I just completed, I faced time lord followed by the chosen. The time lord I beat in ~10 turns taking ~1/3 of my hp (I started at almost full). But the chosen took ~25 turns to beat and I only made it out against it with a sliver of health... and I actually think I got lucky here, and suspect that if I'd fought the shapes instead I would have likely died because of the nature of my deck. My deck was actually really, really heavily flawed - it was fairly heavily reliant on three copies of reinforced body +, in conjunction with a chemical X that I picked up at a shop with the help of some gold-based relics (notably, before this run, I'd never even considered buying chemical X because I never had any x cards in my deck when i saw it!), and it had a few ways of making those draws consistent (equilibrium+, rebound, reprogram+ chief among them). But the deck was fairly big, and so a bad draw on the wrong turn could be very painful (there was a turn vs chosen when he hit for 10x4 on a turn where my only defensive card was a regular defend, so I had to tank 31 damage (would be 35 but torii is a lifesaver)). I had a lot of focus (biased cognition + core surge + consume+ = 7 focus), but only 2 orb slots because of consume and because I never was offered any +orb slot effects, so I had to balance between having frost orbs and being able to do damage largely through dark orbs (symbiotic virus + darkness+ + rainbow+).

It was just a really cool fight and I barely played it well enough to win and god this game is so good.

man, i have so many opinions in this thread that are just wrong now.

Barricade being a good card? Hah.
Gremlin leader being the worst act 2 elite? haaah. Fuck book of stabbing on high ascension.

just started playing again. hit a16 on ironclad
can't fuckin get past a12 on silent. even when i think i have a bomb ass deck i get rekt

i feel like im missing some obvious good cards or something