Slay the Spire

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Post Post #5 (isolation #0) » Fri Feb 09, 2018 6:59 am

Post by implosion »

was waiting for this thread to pop up.

But yeah, basically what zito said, it could use more relics and more enemies and such but it is already very fun. I'm at ascension 8 with ironclad and 6 with silent i think.
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Post Post #10 (isolation #1) » Wed Feb 21, 2018 5:14 pm

Post by implosion »

Some good ironclad builds include:

-Barricade. Play barricade, get enough block that nothing can ever touch you, bodyslam and/or other-attacks until things die.

-Strength. This can have several sub-forms:
-Demon form. Consistent if you manage to play the card, but if you don't draw it early enough/don't have any energy relics to play another card on the same turn/face enemies that deal damage quickly like taskmaster + slaver + slaver, you can get killed pretty quickly. But if you play the card and then survive for a bit you're good.
-Relic-based. Vajra is a start. Girya is awesome on its own if you get it at the right time. Du-vu doll can be a beast if you get the right stuff.
-Generic card-based. Inflames, spot weaknesses, maybe some flexes. inflame/spot weakness kind of benefit any build though. Limit break benefits any strength build tremendously.

-Wound-based. Get a single copy of evolve, and pick up wild strikes and power throughs when you can. Super efficient cards when you don't care about drawbacks.

-Generic. Just pick up cards that are generally good and have good overall utility, like metallicizes and other generic powers, shrug it off, battle trance, shockwaves, etc. I'm sure different people have wildly different conceptions of what cards are good in this regard.
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Post Post #20 (isolation #2) » Mon Mar 05, 2018 9:00 am

Post by implosion »

In post 19, xRECKONERx wrote:I've never been able to make shiv work. Even if I get accuracy and shiv producers, I can't get the block package online
After-image is a savior in shiv decks that don't have the best block engine otherwise, especially since it can be made innate for consistency. That combo also synergizes more with some other enablers, like nightmare to get more after-images, kunai so that you can get dexterity off of your shiv spam, or dead branch so that shivs turn into other things which can generate block (though this only really works in a big deck, since if you have a small deck it can get polluted with chaff but I usually run big decks).
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Post Post #25 (isolation #3) » Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:30 am

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Snecko might be the best name for a thing ever.
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Post Post #51 (isolation #4) » Tue Apr 10, 2018 7:36 pm

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I'll probably finish silent ascension at some point (I'm at 10 I think, finished ironclad like a month ish ago) but I've been enjoying the dailies a LOT since they made them not incredibly boring.

Yesterday was so lovely. 2nd and 3rd relics to show up were spinning top and ice cream. Had one with the 50-card starting deck + taking a card gives you 3x copies and I took like 6 perfected strikes (aka, like 18 perfected strikes). Many more great ones that I'm forgetting.
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Post Post #66 (isolation #5) » Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:28 am

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I think Champ is harder for silent than ironclad. Silent has a tougher time bursting him the turn after he buffs, because silent generally has lower damage output per turn unless you get a very heavily combo-y deck (e.g. shuriken). Poison and 99 vulnerable builds also suffer from his un-debuffing. Ironclad strength builds are capable of just killing him the next turn, since ironclad has ways to apply vulnerable that aren't exhausted, and because options like limit break and demon form can sometimes just let you power through it. You also have a bigger health pool to begin with which is very relevant if you wind up needing to tank a single 24 x 3 attack before you can kill.
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Post Post #73 (isolation #6) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 5:53 pm

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I did all my ascensions on ironclad with fat decks. Just taking goodstuffs when offered, pretty much.
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Post Post #77 (isolation #7) » Wed Apr 18, 2018 9:10 pm

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Generally, when I pick a route, I choose whichever route has the highest combination of Elites+Camps, so I wind up hitting shops whenever they come up, rather than directly seeking them out. Maybe an error.
I generally directly seek out shops if and only if I have a lot of money (250-300+). With that much money, a shop can act as your choice of any relic or card you want, which is powerful since you can get something fitting a build or start defining a deck archetype. Alternatively seek them out if you need to remove a curse/cards in general if you're going for a thin deck.

However, big important thing to note here: ? spaces are godsends. Especially IMO in zone 2. So many of them have the potential to be archetype-defining/gamebreaking in zone 2: gaining a book, vampirism, upgrading all strikes+defends, etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting some broken ones. But all of those events are in certain circumstances capable of carrying runs *entirely* on their own if you find them. Obviously this won't give you perfect consistency but there are plenty of ascension levels that I got past by getting the upgrade all strikes+defends event, iirc.

This is complemented by zone 2 elites, as greyice mentioned, being giant assholes.

Seriously, fuck gremlin leader when you don't have a really strong deck. Not that stabbing or taskmaster are nice either.
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Post Post #118 (isolation #8) » Wed May 16, 2018 12:45 pm

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Supposedly later this month. Which, given that the 31st is a Thursday, might mean the 31st. I've been avoiding the beta branch so I'm excited for defect full release.
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Post Post #132 (isolation #9) » Thu May 31, 2018 3:58 pm

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Defect is damn fun. Got a decent frost/snecko eye/miscellaneous other stuff build in first run and beat time eater.
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Post Post #137 (isolation #10) » Wed Jul 11, 2018 8:19 pm

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

Image

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.
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Post Post #143 (isolation #11) » Mon Jul 30, 2018 5:39 pm

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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.
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Post Post #144 (isolation #12) » Wed Nov 14, 2018 9:41 pm

Post by implosion »

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.
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Post Post #145 (isolation #13) » Wed Nov 14, 2018 9:47 pm

Post by implosion »

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.
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