Slay the Spire

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Ascension 11 on Silent, 9 on Ironclad. This game is super fun.

Definitely agree the Silent really actually only has one archtype, but it's making the archtype work that's fun. No card is mandatory (well, Footwork is close to) and you can draft about 2/3rds of the cards in the Silent in some capacity in that archtype. It makes pretty compelling gameplay where decisions matter. Ironclad too often feels like "welp, didn't get the cards I needed, gg." Everything works towards something, but if you commit too early you can end up getting screwed out of the cards, or alternatively just have everything you need land in your lap. It's weird, and ultimately not quite as satisfying for me.

Shiv decks really should come with a disclaimer "you're here for Cloak and Dagger." Infinite Shivs is really mediocre, and Blade Dance and Storm of Steel are incredibly situational and basically should be passed even in Shiv decks. On the other hand Cloak and Dagger+ adds 9 block with either Footwork+ or After Image, and with both adds 12 block. You really only need one enhancer - Accuracy, Shuriken, Envenom, Thousand Cuts, Terror (terror works best with Shuriken or Accuracy). The only exception is if you have to beat space slug, then I'd get a second/third enhancer. Accuracy+ and Terror, for instance, means each Shiv does 14 damage. That's just fine. To beat the space slug, focus on playing 12 cards every single turn. Then his ability is basically like the Orb Guardians, and you can safely just whup his slug ass.

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Hmm, general Silent guide. Footwork, Noxious Fumes, Caltrops, After Image, in that order. Don't neglect Caltrops. A lot of things multiattack, Caltrops+ can turn a full block turn into 15-30 damage easily. You take none.

Silent is a highly defensive character, and her entire thing is based around taking zero damage. As the ascensions increase the damage and strip the healing, you have to get better at doing this, because you can't afford to just trade damage when you won't heal to full on bosses, start damaged, and everything is doing more damage. Therefore her best cards are all cards that avoid damage.

Avoid the draw packages that cost energy (Acrobatics, Expertise). Your draw should be Backflip, which is a fantastic card (yes, WAY better than Pommel Strike, better even than Shrug it Off). Avoid dedicated offensive cards. Choke isn't that good, Predator is hugely risky, Quick Slash is downright bad. Stick to drafting cards like Cloak and Dagger, Dash, and Sucker Punch. You're going to chip damage things down, but at the end of the day Noxious Fumes can do all the work. Really, all the work. That card is downright busted.

Poison is okay, but again don't overdo it on poison. You don't need tons of sources, Noxious Fumes can do the job alone. Catalyst is overrated, Bouncing Flask is a dangerous card thanks to costing 2 energy, stick to 1-2 Deadly Poison+ (it's a great card, but don't overdo it because again no defense).

Discard is trash. The only good discard card is Tools of the Trade (amazing cycling). If you have Tools, then Reflex+ and Tactician are both worth picking up, otherwise just ignore the theme. The only exception is if you get Bandages or Unceasing Top early. Even then, focus on defense.

Shivs are good. Best shiv card is Cloak and Dagger (that card is amazing), followed distantly by infinite shivs (that card is meh). Blade Dance is something I avoid without Kunai. Don't load up on enhancers. If you have Accuracy or Envenom or A Thousand Cuts or Shurikan they all work. Don't get all of those then realize you can't block damage on a crucial turn. On Time Slug, people knock this build. Just play 12 cards every turn, and time slug becomes "Gains 2 strength every turn". You deal with shit in act 3 that gains 3 strength every turn, and you get a pair of them as elites. Crush time slug. Woke bloke is the actual danger, shivs call for powers, and woke bloke is really hard.

Card specific stuff:

You want 1 dash early in act 1 because it's tits against act 1 elites. Gives block without being a skill versus Nob, provides attack and defense versus the pyramids, suffers very little from the reduced strength/dex versus egg. Just a great act 1 card.

You generally want 1 AOE for the slimes. Die^3 is the best, Dagger Spray is good. Otherwise you want a piercing wail or two to let you do some offense while dodging damage.

Malaise is a top card, and solves many encounters. 2-3 copies is fine, high priority upgrade.

Both free cards are surprisingly good thanks to Backflip being surprisingly good. With Footwork, Deflect is a free 7 block. Sure.

Relics you want to watch for are Ice Cream (obviously, but truly broken with Malaise), Paper frog (everything should be perpeptually weak, so this is just half damage which is nuts), Kunai (shivs), and Bandages. Any of these can win a run single-handedly.

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So I've decided to post my last two wins on the climb here because my silent decks are getting more consistent.

Ascension 12:

This was an unbelievably good deck, thanks to Vampirism (always the best) and Bird Faced Urn (one of the best relics in the game for silent). Its main damage engine was Terror, 2 Cloak and Dagger+ with Accuracy. An early buy of Membership card paid off in spades, as I was able to pick up Mummified Hand and use card removal several times (ending the run with no defends). A very strong deck. Final boss was Donu and Deca (I took many powers in Act 3, such as 2nd Tools of the Trade, 2nd Well-laid Plans, and Noxious Fumes, all of which I'd have avoided against the Ascended One).

Ascension 11:

A backstab+Shiv deck that was enabled by Shuriken, this deck exemplifies the "defend everything while chipping them to death". Shuriken provides kind of a mini-demon form while doing damage, thanks to many free attacks (such as 2xBackstab, which means you'll start with +1 strength on turn 1 every time). Molten Egg early is nice, but Silent has so few attack cards I genuinely want to add. Still, this deck has what it takes to go the distance. Final Boss was Time Eater.

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surprised your ascension 11 run worked out with a 30+ cards deck that had no draws

I would imagine one bad draw when fighting enemies that put crap in your deck would be game over

As I've said earlier, the Silent's draw cards are marginal. Acrobatics and Expertise are both "spend mana for pure draw". Backflip is the only one I like, I didn't see any (or Tools). Good use of Well-Laid plans mitigates draw luck much better than any card draw, and large decks are much more resistant to junking. Seriously, Well-Laid Plans. It's excellent, and worth upgrading too. The more I play the more I'm convinced it's closer to Noxious Fumes than people give it credit for (and way better than Tools of the Trade).

Plus, look at the deck. If you count on exhaust cards exhausting, the only non-defensive cards I have are Burst+, Slice+, and 3xStrike+. Every other card reduces incoming damage in some way (and Burst+ can too). There just isn't much draw luck to be had when all your cards do the same thing.

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Crushed orb walker duo. It does a guaranteed 30 damage for 0 energy turn 1. What can they do? One was dead on the second turn. Same with any quadruplets, I killed two on the first turn. These are not meant to stand in front of Backstab.

Stone head would suck, nemesis is quite doable. Dodged all but 1 act 3 elite though, not much point in fighting them. Donu and Deca were my act 3 boss, so don't think the deck is slow. Cloak and dagger does stupendous damage.

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Ascension 13:

Kunai is a ridiculous relic. I had enough cash to purchase it from a shop, and that's how the run went. Kunai. Decided to fight 2 Act 3 elites since the deck was fairly borderline and the power might help. Nemesis and Orbs, both were alright. Only 1 Act 2 elite, Book of Stabbing. I took every Cloak and Dagger I saw (I saw 1), and ended up buying Blade Dance from a shop because holy shit I needed some shivs.

Also best necronomicon ever or what?

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And here's Ascension 14:



This was a really good shiv deck (way better than Asc 13) although it didn't have Kunai, so that automatically knocks a bunch of points off. Huge damage on shivs brings it right back up. Apotheosis was picked up in Act 3, still excellent. Fucking Runic Dome made the entire run way scarier than it needed to be, but overall this was WAY easier than the Ascension 13 run. Don't think there's a big difficulty boost from 11-14, although we'll see if more painful events brings it up (my thought is probably not, no)

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Hah, that sounds like fun.

I think from my experience Corruption+Dead Branch is a win at any level. Actually Dead Branch is just one of the best relics period, the unlimited card draw it hands out is really not counteracted by some of those cards being bad.

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Hah! Ascension 15 falls! The upgrade to make events harder is really, really, really annoying. Events were your one shelter on Asc 1-14, and having them generally get uglier is really obnoxious. That being said, I did it! Feel really good about this accomplishment.



Final boss was Time Eater. This deck could easily handle anything, from stone head, to act 2 elites.

Terror is simply an insane card, and Vampirism is a really, really absurd event. Especially if you have, say, blood vial and Molten Egg. That combo is... pretty stupid.

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That is a sick deck. Apparition and Dead Branch and Corruption... that's gotta be wild.

Does Apparition stack like blur?

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And again. I'm getting confident I know enough about Silent to get pretty far. Definitely have to gamble for relics more, but there's a lot of ways you can get paid off. Also didn't expect to win a "trade your starting relic" run when I got goddamn feather.

Spoiler: Asc15 deck

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So so far I've determined I'm very good with the shiv deck, but I must have some fundamental misunderstanding of how poison decks work, because they keep falling apart at some point. It's hard to do when Cloak & Dagger is broken while Deadly Poison just doesn't feel anywhere near as good.

Backstab is rapidly rising in the evaluations, it's just so good at avoiding damage against hallway trash.

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I stopped playing for a while, came back and there's more stuff! I'm only on like Ascension 3 with both classes, does it get significantly harder or is it basically the same? I'm having fun, I've had some great decks but I don't know how they compare to the ones posted lately. I'm just waiting for that one dream deck to post here.

The big break points are 5 (less healing off boss fights), 11 (potions suck), and 15 (events suck) in terms of difficulty. The rest are just kind scaling - more HP on monsters, more power on monsters, less gold, less max HP, etc.

Only one of my Asc 15 wins was a "dream deck" the rest were just pretty good. Getting a dream deck gets much tougher as the ascension levels rise.

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Pandora's Box with Toxic Egg, that's got some really high EV if it hits. Looks damn fun to play, even if your second boss relic is Tiny House. What'd it spit out, House, Bell, Star?

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Wow, usually I love Astralobe. Buuuut after you removed your junk with Pandora's Box, that's just gotta sting. Ouch.

I've got to say, I just cannot get into Ironclad at all. The entire thing annoys me. But Silent remains great.

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This was weird because I didn't really know where I was going. I got doubt for gold, planning to remove it at a shop (netting 175 gold) but then got Molten Egg. So I ran with doubt all the way through, well, the end of the game. Granted the Blue Candle pickup had a LOT to do with that. Ended with 507 gold, which I thought was going to screw me, but managed to beat the Awakened One. He's TOUGH. Turns out if you never play a single power he's much more managable. I played Footwork+, then malaised all the strength away, and he was not very difficult.

Hmm, still think the worst boss in the game is Champ. He wrecks face.

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Eh, Champ does base 60 damage on his first buff attack, and that's without the ascension bonuses. He hits for 70+ very frequently on Ascension 15. And he'll spam that. It makes Hyperbeam look like a tickle.

I honestly don't have any problems with any of the act 3 bosses at this point. The thing is, all of them fuck with your strategies, but you can adapt to them. Well except Donu and Deca, if you deck doesn't scale faster than them they'll just beat you flat. At this point I've lost more Ascension 15 runs to Champ than I have to every act 3 boss combined. I'm not even joking, he might be just about my least favorite thing ever.

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Really starting to move closer to 50% on wins for Asc 15 Silent. The biggest death sentences are Act 2 elites, followed by Champ. Post-nerf Ascended one isn't bad, all the Act 3 bosses are actually just kind of fair for where they are.

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I'm happy to offer Silent help, I think I can state with some confidence I know what I'm doing on Silent.

You might be overfocused on Noxious Fumes, it's just one way to scale, and not even the best one. Terror, Skewer, Burst & Malaise, all perfectly viable methods of getting there.

Mind posting some decks?

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I'm happy to offer Silent help, I think I can state with some confidence I know what I'm doing on Silent.

You might be overfocused on Noxious Fumes, it's just one way to scale, and not even the best one. Terror, Skewer, Burst & Malaise, all perfectly viable methods of getting there.

Mind posting some decks?

I'll try to remember next time I play Silent, but my general strategy with Silent is to load up on cards like Backflip, Caltrops, and Noxious Fumes, and try to turtle up and wittle away. I'll pick up attacks like Dagger Spray that hit everything or hit multiple times, or Cloak and Dagger that can do good block while also damaging, and I'll go in on Shivs if I can get an Accuracy in the first zone. It's generally good enough to get me to the third zone, but then I usually peter out against a third zone elite.

Ironclad, my strategy is usually just to try and keep my deck thin, and then cycle through as many high damage cards as quickly as I can. That tends to either win the run, or die in zone 1, depending on how well I'm doing mental math in that span.

If you can log into run history and post some failed ones, I'll probably grasp the problem. It sounds like you've focused on too defensive though. Make sure to hit elites! The more relics the better. There's a lot of ways to win, and you can give yourself opportunities. Hit shops with enough gold to grab relics like Snecko Skull, Shuriken, Kunai, things you can build around and win the match with.

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Silent needs the relics though, silent just works better with relics (Silent plays more cards, and more cards = works better with most of the relics). Also silent cards are generally weaker, so the relics are a larger part of her power. It's much more important for Silent to hit all the act 1 elites she can, so draft a deck capable of dealing with them - Sucker Punch, Dash, Glass Knife, Backstab, other high damage attacks are very, very important for her early. Like first card pick I'll take Glass Knife over Noxious Fumes every single time. I'd take Backstab over Noxious Fumes as well.

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Great deck, and great example of early relic pickups doing work in Silent. Ditching Defends over Strikes with Astrolabe is an interesting choice, but it definitely worked out for you.