I'm currently in the middle of a watcher run where my first two relics were Bird Faced Urn and Mummified Hand.
It's definitely a change of pace.
That’s an amazing combination - just grab every power card you can, get insanely powerful.
Then get the final boss who gets stronger with every power card you play, and get your face kicked in, because you didn’t get enough Buffer cards.
This is awful advice for anything above A0.
While both make it easier to grab powers, grabbing powers with no rhyme or reason will just get you killed. The only power i'd treat as a slam-dunk with that combo is Creative AI, as it then produces both sustain and energy for you.
Otherwise, you're just diluting your deck to no purpose if you're grabbing powers willy nilly. You could maybe justify it if you got Frozen Egg, and even then you could get yourself killed pretty easily (Too many Innate powers clogging your turn 1)
Powers are about scaling your deck. In Watcher's case, she has a lot of avenues to scale already. With that particular combo, i'd be looking for rushdown (I mean, Rushdown is so stupid strong it's very hard to pass on in general), and maybe the classic and rarely seen due to rushdown's power Deva Form + Fasting combo
Oh, I wouldn’t do it on a serious run - I generally play on A1 now, and just have fun looking for these crazy builds.
I’ve climbed the Spire and killed the Heart, I’m just having fun on A1 where you have the wiggle room to go wild without it blowing up in your face 98% of the time.
Anything that's not a15+ feels wildly boring to me at this point.
Also it actually fucks with me, because the AI changes from A17? A18 are so ingrained. I'm so used to gremlin nob being reliably "Buff, Vuln, BIG HIT" that anything else throws me off badly
...I really wish they'd change book of stabbing so ti was a reliable x2, x3, big attack, x5 - Right now it can randomly replace any of the first 2 attacks with a big attack, which is *way* worse. Esp if you get it going 24, x3, x4, 24, x6 - that version of the fight is way, way harder than x2, x3, 24.
- The bell curse you can't get rid of
- The candle artifact to exhaust a curse for 1 health
- 2x upgraded power cards that give +2 str for each instance of health lost due to a card
- 2x upgraded Reaper attack cards that are 5 dmg and lifesteal equal to dmg on all targets
I could just exhaust that one curse over and over again and gain as much Str as I wanted.
- The bell curse you can't get rid of
- The candle artifact to exhaust a curse for 1 health
- 2x upgraded power cards that give +2 str for each instance of health lost due to a card
- 2x upgraded Reaper attack cards that are 5 dmg and lifesteal equal to dmg on all targets
I could just exhaust that one curse over and over again and gain as much Str as I wanted.
You're thinking of Necronomicurse, which comes when you get Necronomicon. It's the only card in the game that has the re-ad itself to your hand when exhausted functionality.
That's a classic version of that combo though. The other take on it is Feel No pain (block for exhausting cards) with barricade to keep all that block.
Optionally add juggernaut or body slam for some serious nuking
Odd interaction edge case: cards made inate with the jar relics can't be removed from your deck
Useful interaction edge case: cards made 0 cost with Madness remain so even if they exhaust. So Exhume gets them back at 0.
edit: continued:
If the Giant Head gets Artifact, it won't stop the 10% per card damage up debuff, but you have to play enough cards to remove all the artifact stacks before the debuffs actually stick. This is opposite how Time Dilation the run modifier works, probably because on the Giant head it's inate while Slow on Time Dilation is itself a debuff.
If Normality is preventing you from playing cards, you can tell it to go screw by exhausting it with an elixir potion. You'll be able to play more cards after!
you can que up cards to play and the game will go through them one at a time. Normally this will never happen, but well my infinite run is very overkill right now so the poor game takes a few seconds every time I play a curse to figure out what's about to happen.
This run is "Hey, what's the cap on Sacrificial Dagger?". You know it's gotten silly when the Transient dies T1.
Bottling cards is the key if you are doing endless runs. Bottle protects from the Act 3 lose a card event. So it is key to ensure you don’t lose you combo piece(s).
When i was but a wee defect, i found an egg of frost, an AI with artistic ambitions and an overly enthusiastic storm and I thought: That'll do, that'll do.
Poor heart. Poor Awoken one. Poor well everything that had to deal with this deck. Just a cavalade of A STORM HAS ARRIVED *everything explodes*
I really would love some news out of Megacrit on what's next.
I'd honestly kill for a StS 2 - Dont reinvent the wheel or anything, just buildo n what's already there with more classes, enemies etcera. Maybe a few new mechanics (For instance, i think you could make a version of a gem-and-socket system work without spiking complexity too hard - limit sockets to being on uncommons, or even rare cards, keep the gems very simple).
Kinda wish i knew anything about modding, as i have a character concept kicking around that i think would work well - The Witch, who's gameplay is focused around The Brew.
Every time she plays a card, she gets Brew equal to it's energy cost. At ten brew, the brew overflows, resets to zero and she gains 1 energy and draws a card (This is what her starting relic would do, so trading it away means she just stacks up to ten and then looses all brew to no immediate benefit).
And then build out from there - Some cards suck up brew as an additional cost in return for powerful effects. Some cards get bonuses if they're the card that Overflows the brew. Powers can modify it, giving new overflow effects or similar - do aoe damage every time you hit ten.
Obviously core goal is a character who cares about energy management, but in a different direction to most other characters - Spending energy is what you want!
Maybe a few new mechanics (For instance, i think you could make a version of a gem-and-socket system work without spiking complexity too hard - limit sockets to being on uncommons, or even rare cards, keep the gems very simple).
Tell me you haven’t played Downfall without telling me you haven’t played Downfall :P
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I think Downfall is Novel more than it's Good, and the gem-and-socket mechanics are some of the weaker ones present IMO. The feeling I had from my time playing with it is that all of the characters were too complicated and mostly too snowball-y. Very much the sense of "I have an idea but I am not a data-analyzing math wiz" levels of balance.
Some ideas were really good though! I really liked Hexaghost's "mini-objectives" with the flame wheel, and juggling imps for the gang of imps felt like a very cool alternative take on stances (ones could be killed!). There's proof in there that there are still some good characters to be made that fit within the game's framework without breaking it open~
Honestly, I think Downfall is good enough to basically be official? MegaCrit's linked to it themselves to give it a call out in news updates. And that last patch really cleaned a lot of things up on some of the bosses.
The Hermit is basically my favorite character now. Yee, and I say yee... haw.
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I feel like I tend to lose a lot of runs pretty early on because I feel like maybe I'm routing too aggressively?
My basic rules are:
1) Always route the shard boss in act 1
2) fight as many elites as possible
3) as many ?'s/campfires as possible
I think mixing in a few more basic encounters to make sure I get cards, as opposed to relics, to help give guidance to build around and hopefully get my power level up might help improve things.
I feel like once I'm out of act 1 I tend to at least beat act 3 if not the heart.
(also I wish something would remind me when I'm at the last chest in a route so I remember to grab the stupid shard! Cost me a heart run)
I feel like I tend to lose a lot of runs pretty early on because I feel like maybe I'm routing too aggressively?
My basic rules are:
1) Always route the shard boss in act 1
2) fight as many elites as possible
3) as many ?'s/campfires as possible
I think mixing in a few more basic encounters to make sure I get cards, as opposed to relics, to help give guidance to build around and hopefully get my power level up might help improve things.
I feel like once I'm out of act 1 I tend to at least beat act 3 if not the heart.
(also I wish something would remind me when I'm at the last chest in a route so I remember to grab the stupid shard! Cost me a heart run)
You need to think less in terms of "take as many X as possible" or definitely hitting the shard elite, and more in terms of "what comes next".
It's fine to have a broad idea of what kind of path you would like to take, generally, but often you'll hit something unexpected on the way which means you'll need to adapt.
So one thing I do a lot is I'll factor in pivot points into my pathing. I'll try to hit some fights and a campfire before my first elite, but I'll also leave myself a way out either before or after that elite just in case RNG gives me bad cards that aren't going to win me that elite fight or the next. It's very rare for me to take a path that doesn't have an "off ramp" in case shit starts hitting the fan.
You want to take as many elites as you safely can, generally speaking. If you don't, you're not going to scale in power fast enough when the bumps in difficulty come. But taking an elite you can't win is just suicide, so leave yourself an alternate route just in case.
joshofalltrades on
+1
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
When was the last time you played it? They tweaked a lot of the really broken cards.
Uh, February, apparently.
It was less "broken cards" and more things like the Automaton's entire mechanism of crafting cards was too easy to abuse (right up until you mis-gauged an interaction and literally tanked your whole deck ). I didn't find any of the character compelling enough to want to play to high ascension levels where the balance might've really peaked. This is more that every character felt inherently combo-centric with nothing being a particularly slow burn.
@wazilla I play exclusively A20, going for heart kills. So with that caveat out of the way:
Routing's an art more than a science, i think.
My routing is generally based around the idea of What Do I Need, What Can I Get, What Will Kill Me.
So if i think i need relics - lots of elites are on the card. But if i know Reptomancer will 110% kill me, maybe i just... dont fight elites in act 3 if i can avoid it. Likewise - Can a campfire give me a super good upgrade? Or save the run with a heal? Then i'm probably heading for one, right? But if like in my previous run campfires are giving me upgrades... when i have apotheosis, and i cant heal at them, because i've got coffe dripper, and idont have peace pipe or shovel, then campfires are pretty worthless.
In my head i have a general flow chart that goes roughly Elites/Shop (Lots of Gold + Courier/Membership)-> Normal Fights (easy)/Shop (with enough gold) -> Campfire/Normal Fight (Hard) -> Events in terms of what i value. And then stuff moves up and down based on the WDIN/WCIG/WWKM idea.
Because i'm forever hitting interesting little wrinkles - like a situation where taking Burning Blood (heal 12 after every fight instead of six) was correct over taking either energy relic.
I know this is a video from IGN from 3 years ago, but it's the devs watching a speedrunner beat the game in 5 minutes. Did anyone else see it? It's kind of hilarious because they're just saying out loud what I was thinking like, "How does this dude even see what cards to pick?"
Thread Rez Give Me Watcher Tips for Climbing High Ascension Thx
Rushdown is broken even if you don’t turn it into an infinite engine. But also, it’s probably the easiest infinite in the game.
Resist the temptation of Alpha. It’s fun to get off but the runs where it makes more sense to than just using your energy to kill things and block damage are vanishingly rare. 6 energy and 3 turns (unless you have Snecko and lots of card draw)? Ridiculous. Later enemies will fuck you up before it’ll do anything at all.
Scry is one of the best effects in the game. Discarding bad cards so you draw better ones is something just about every deck can use.
Watcher is probably the character with the best results from boss swapping as a Neow reward. One Miracle vs. some of the most powerful relics in the game is an easy choice. There’s always the risk of drawing Velvet Choker but that just means you won’t be going infinite.
Most beginners underrate Prostrate. An early Prostrate can be really good! Especially combined with things like Rushdown to draw it multiple times on a turn and go into Divinity.
Thread Rez Give Me Watcher Tips for Climbing High Ascension Thx
Rushdown.
I'm not even kidding, rushdown infinite are very easy to do (too easy) and tend to snap the game in half if you can get past act 2.
Slightly more seriously: Watcher has a very strong early game. Upgrade Eruption asap and get a good damage card - signature move, cut through fate, battle hymn (if upgraded), Carve Reality. Thank go blow up elites, get relics and you're of to the races
Flurry of blows is some hot bullshit that shouldn't be a common, but since it is, abuse it. You only need 1~2 copies to do crazy things.
If it comes to it, remove a defend before removing a strike - early game nova is how Watcher starts her snowball going. But that's generally only necessary if you've failed to get any good damage cards. Still if you're taking transforms or removes as your whale bonus, it's better to remove a defend, or a defend and a strike.
Watcher's best boss relics are Runic Pyramid, followed closely by Pandora's box, Astrolabe and Empty Cage. The Lotus and the water upgrade are very strong on her. Energy relics are nice, but the stuff I listed is all stronger
Snecko eye is mostly a trap - it's fine if you boss swap into it and can start planning around swivels, but most of her high win strategies are rushdown infinities, which go in very different directions.
Removals are a big deal for Watcher. Cherish them - her card quality is so high that strikes and defends are awful.
Lesson learned is an insane card.
An outside strategy, but a good one is fasting ,+ orange pellets. Likewise, Master reality+ Dead branch or Nilry's Codex can do some real bullshit
Some other stuff would be learning how to stance swap effectively. Watcher has 1 wrath and 1 calm source by default, that's really not enough
Tantrum is the premium way to get into Wrath, but indignation also works.
For getting into calm, Fear No Evil or Inner peace are the way to go. Meditate is very powerful as well, especially meditate plus, but it doesn't enable Multiple stance switches in one turn the way FNE or IP does.
Going after Divinity is tricky. It gets a lot easier if you have toxic egg, as all the divinity cards are better upgraded. If you're going after Divinity ii really want to figure out how to hit it every turn.
Blasphemy is just a plain good card when it's upgraded - tripling your damage ends a lot of fights. Dead card in boss fights, by even then blasphemy into a stacked ritual dagger can one shot time eater out similar bullshit, so hey. You can dodge the self inflicted damage by being intangible on the turn it lands.
Other rares of note include Lesson Learned, Scrawl, Omniscience (you need good targets, but it can do a lot of work). Ragnarok is your "strong early game damage rare" that falls off. Brilliance is surprisingly pickable early game because 1 energy, do 24 damage is actually very good. It doesn't take much to make it scale stupidly hard either. (Remember, every point of damage it gains gets tripled in divinity stance)
Hand of Greed is amazing if you can get it early - 2 energy, do 40 or even 2 energy, do 50 is ridiculous. And you get a ton of gold. Obviously conflicts with lesson learned, but you have enough gold to just buy apotheosis so hey.
Don't sleep on Just Lucky - especially upgraded the scary effect is amazing. Additionally it scales very hard with Fasting or Kunai/Shuriken. Easy to under estimate. Shuriken or fasting can also make Ragnarok very silly. Even a little bit of strength goes far on Watcher because of her inherent x2 multiplier in Wrath.
Again Watcher really wants removals, so avoid curses. Your strikes are only good early, and even your defends are awful compared to the free block you can generate from talk to the hand or mental fortress. Medical Kit is a very strong pick-up as a result. You can do some real bullshit with Abacus or Sundial too, both of which benefit from small deck sizes.
Orrery in the shop is secretly one of the strongest things you can spend your gold on, as 5 card picks can be a huge power boost. Especially when you're looking for a piece of the puzzle like mental fortress still.
If you don't already, look up Jorbs on YouTube and watch his videos to see how you can wreck faces with Watcher - and the infinites he'll create
This is a pretty good example of doing Stupid Rushdown things. Note how few relics the deck has, and the fact that they are all iffy relics with the exception of Holy Water, Centennial Puzzle, Violet Lotus and Mark of the Bloom. (Okay, lantern is great but like, we got it at the end of the game, it doesn't count). Also look at how few cards the deck has and how fast it can prune - I would have removed every attack that wasn't tantrum and eruption if i could have.
The deck took Mind Bloom on floor 36 at 41/68 hp, and it walked out of an Awoken One -> Time Eater -> Spear and Shield -> Heart fight at... 7 hp, 24 of which was lost in the heart fight, 10 to Time Eater. Awoken one got 3 turns. Time eater got 10 turns, spear and shield? Died on turn 1 technically speaking (We vaulted). Heart lasted seven turns.
I sat on a power and duplication pot for a while, then popped them in the heart fight to get six cards drawn every time i entered wrath and gaining 3 energy.
That's the power of rushdown.
Like in all honesty, i want a balance patch for watcher that kicks Flurry up to rare (up it's damage a bit in compensation), knocks Conjure Blade down to uncommon, and makes it so rush down only draws 1 card.. and probably should cost 2 to put into play, upgrading to cost 1. (which is a crazy harsh nerf, but like, Rushdown is insane and i dont think you can fix it by kicking it to rare, i think only cutting it's ability to setup infinites so easily is the thing that has to be tackled).
It won't happen (afaik, StS is a done game for now, there's been no word from Megacrit on what they're working on next)
If anyone was looking at Roguebook, the Deluxe Edition is only US$6.99 on Switch (80% off) until the 23rd.
I really cannot recommend roguebook at all. Just ooof. Horrific meta progression, squandered gameplay potential, a serious case of go big or go home, it's just a mess.
It looks pretty! But that's about all I can give it
Roguebook squandered every fun thing about it. It's one of two steam refunds I've ever asked for
It also was super off-putting how they pushed and pushed and pushed Richard Garfield Beng part of things.
Frustrating as hell too, because some stuff like the control two characters and positioning matters is really good, conceptually.
And then they just did nothing good with that, characters are basically parasitic (their mechanics only help themselves), the positioning stuff mostly just ends up being more go big or go home (that guy in the back is going to hyper scale, hope you can kill him before he comes online!)
I've been very frustrated with just how many cars have roguelikes seem to miss the core of why Slay the Spire is so good:
It's simple.
All it's complexity is emergent from simple base rules (and a willingness to let crazy things happen as a result).
To many that I've played write incredibly complicated checks, but there's no real payoff to this
Yeah, it's complicated in ways it doesn't need to be. The routing alone is complicated for reasons I can't understand. It didn't seem to have an appreciable difference to something more streamlined.
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Yes, that's pain in a Runic Pyramid Deck. Yes, I didn't remove it.
why would i remove a card that reads "Gain 4 strength, draw 1 card. next turn, gain 3 block". Best card in the deck, 110%
I ended up not able to feed half the time because my deck was gianing 12+ strength a turn and i'd nuke things with Reaper on accident.
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Oh, I wouldn’t do it on a serious run - I generally play on A1 now, and just have fun looking for these crazy builds.
I’ve climbed the Spire and killed the Heart, I’m just having fun on A1 where you have the wiggle room to go wild without it blowing up in your face 98% of the time.
Also it actually fucks with me, because the AI changes from A17? A18 are so ingrained. I'm so used to gremlin nob being reliably "Buff, Vuln, BIG HIT" that anything else throws me off badly
...I really wish they'd change book of stabbing so ti was a reliable x2, x3, big attack, x5 - Right now it can randomly replace any of the first 2 attacks with a big attack, which is *way* worse. Esp if you get it going 24, x3, x4, 24, x6 - that version of the fight is way, way harder than x2, x3, 24.
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- The bell curse you can't get rid of
- The candle artifact to exhaust a curse for 1 health
- 2x upgraded power cards that give +2 str for each instance of health lost due to a card
- 2x upgraded Reaper attack cards that are 5 dmg and lifesteal equal to dmg on all targets
I could just exhaust that one curse over and over again and gain as much Str as I wanted.
You're thinking of Necronomicurse, which comes when you get Necronomicon. It's the only card in the game that has the re-ad itself to your hand when exhausted functionality.
That's a classic version of that combo though. The other take on it is Feel No pain (block for exhausting cards) with barricade to keep all that block.
Optionally add juggernaut or body slam for some serious nuking
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Useful interaction edge case: cards made 0 cost with Madness remain so even if they exhaust. So Exhume gets them back at 0.
edit: continued:
If the Giant Head gets Artifact, it won't stop the 10% per card damage up debuff, but you have to play enough cards to remove all the artifact stacks before the debuffs actually stick. This is opposite how Time Dilation the run modifier works, probably because on the Giant head it's inate while Slow on Time Dilation is itself a debuff.
If Normality is preventing you from playing cards, you can tell it to go screw by exhausting it with an elixir potion. You'll be able to play more cards after!
you can que up cards to play and the game will go through them one at a time. Normally this will never happen, but well my infinite run is very overkill right now so the poor game takes a few seconds every time I play a curse to figure out what's about to happen.
This run is "Hey, what's the cap on Sacrificial Dagger?". You know it's gotten silly when the Transient dies T1.
When i was but a wee defect, i found an egg of frost, an AI with artistic ambitions and an overly enthusiastic storm and I thought: That'll do, that'll do.
Poor heart. Poor Awoken one. Poor well everything that had to deal with this deck. Just a cavalade of A STORM HAS ARRIVED *everything explodes*
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Edifices Eviscerated: Too many to count.
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Neow plushie gonna get crowdfunded soon. I’m honestly surprised we haven’t seen more buttons, pins, plushies, and keychain StS merch.
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I'd honestly kill for a StS 2 - Dont reinvent the wheel or anything, just buildo n what's already there with more classes, enemies etcera. Maybe a few new mechanics (For instance, i think you could make a version of a gem-and-socket system work without spiking complexity too hard - limit sockets to being on uncommons, or even rare cards, keep the gems very simple).
Kinda wish i knew anything about modding, as i have a character concept kicking around that i think would work well - The Witch, who's gameplay is focused around The Brew.
Every time she plays a card, she gets Brew equal to it's energy cost. At ten brew, the brew overflows, resets to zero and she gains 1 energy and draws a card (This is what her starting relic would do, so trading it away means she just stacks up to ten and then looses all brew to no immediate benefit).
And then build out from there - Some cards suck up brew as an additional cost in return for powerful effects. Some cards get bonuses if they're the card that Overflows the brew. Powers can modify it, giving new overflow effects or similar - do aoe damage every time you hit ten.
Obviously core goal is a character who cares about energy management, but in a different direction to most other characters - Spending energy is what you want!
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Tell me you haven’t played Downfall without telling me you haven’t played Downfall :P
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Some ideas were really good though! I really liked Hexaghost's "mini-objectives" with the flame wheel, and juggling imps for the gang of imps felt like a very cool alternative take on stances (ones could be killed!). There's proof in there that there are still some good characters to be made that fit within the game's framework without breaking it open~
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
The Hermit is basically my favorite character now. Yee, and I say yee... haw.
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I feel like I tend to lose a lot of runs pretty early on because I feel like maybe I'm routing too aggressively?
My basic rules are:
1) Always route the shard boss in act 1
2) fight as many elites as possible
3) as many ?'s/campfires as possible
I think mixing in a few more basic encounters to make sure I get cards, as opposed to relics, to help give guidance to build around and hopefully get my power level up might help improve things.
I feel like once I'm out of act 1 I tend to at least beat act 3 if not the heart.
(also I wish something would remind me when I'm at the last chest in a route so I remember to grab the stupid shard! Cost me a heart run)
You need to think less in terms of "take as many X as possible" or definitely hitting the shard elite, and more in terms of "what comes next".
It's fine to have a broad idea of what kind of path you would like to take, generally, but often you'll hit something unexpected on the way which means you'll need to adapt.
So one thing I do a lot is I'll factor in pivot points into my pathing. I'll try to hit some fights and a campfire before my first elite, but I'll also leave myself a way out either before or after that elite just in case RNG gives me bad cards that aren't going to win me that elite fight or the next. It's very rare for me to take a path that doesn't have an "off ramp" in case shit starts hitting the fan.
You want to take as many elites as you safely can, generally speaking. If you don't, you're not going to scale in power fast enough when the bumps in difficulty come. But taking an elite you can't win is just suicide, so leave yourself an alternate route just in case.
Uh, February, apparently.
It was less "broken cards" and more things like the Automaton's entire mechanism of crafting cards was too easy to abuse (right up until you mis-gauged an interaction and literally tanked your whole deck
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Routing's an art more than a science, i think.
My routing is generally based around the idea of What Do I Need, What Can I Get, What Will Kill Me.
So if i think i need relics - lots of elites are on the card. But if i know Reptomancer will 110% kill me, maybe i just... dont fight elites in act 3 if i can avoid it. Likewise - Can a campfire give me a super good upgrade? Or save the run with a heal? Then i'm probably heading for one, right? But if like in my previous run campfires are giving me upgrades... when i have apotheosis, and i cant heal at them, because i've got coffe dripper, and idont have peace pipe or shovel, then campfires are pretty worthless.
In my head i have a general flow chart that goes roughly Elites/Shop (Lots of Gold + Courier/Membership)-> Normal Fights (easy)/Shop (with enough gold) -> Campfire/Normal Fight (Hard) -> Events in terms of what i value. And then stuff moves up and down based on the WDIN/WCIG/WWKM idea.
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Because i'm forever hitting interesting little wrinkles - like a situation where taking Burning Blood (heal 12 after every fight instead of six) was correct over taking either energy relic.
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I know this is a video from IGN from 3 years ago, but it's the devs watching a speedrunner beat the game in 5 minutes. Did anyone else see it? It's kind of hilarious because they're just saying out loud what I was thinking like, "How does this dude even see what cards to pick?"
So they know the cards that are coming and the enemies they will have to face and exactly how much damage they can take and how much they need to do.
It’s still not an easy optimization but it is an optimization one the less
That's an unseeded run.
Rushdown is broken even if you don’t turn it into an infinite engine. But also, it’s probably the easiest infinite in the game.
Resist the temptation of Alpha. It’s fun to get off but the runs where it makes more sense to than just using your energy to kill things and block damage are vanishingly rare. 6 energy and 3 turns (unless you have Snecko and lots of card draw)? Ridiculous. Later enemies will fuck you up before it’ll do anything at all.
Scry is one of the best effects in the game. Discarding bad cards so you draw better ones is something just about every deck can use.
Watcher is probably the character with the best results from boss swapping as a Neow reward. One Miracle vs. some of the most powerful relics in the game is an easy choice. There’s always the risk of drawing Velvet Choker but that just means you won’t be going infinite.
Most beginners underrate Prostrate. An early Prostrate can be really good! Especially combined with things like Rushdown to draw it multiple times on a turn and go into Divinity.
If I think of some more I will maek poast.
Rushdown.
I'm not even kidding, rushdown infinite are very easy to do (too easy) and tend to snap the game in half if you can get past act 2.
Slightly more seriously: Watcher has a very strong early game. Upgrade Eruption asap and get a good damage card - signature move, cut through fate, battle hymn (if upgraded), Carve Reality. Thank go blow up elites, get relics and you're of to the races
Flurry of blows is some hot bullshit that shouldn't be a common, but since it is, abuse it. You only need 1~2 copies to do crazy things.
If it comes to it, remove a defend before removing a strike - early game nova is how Watcher starts her snowball going. But that's generally only necessary if you've failed to get any good damage cards. Still if you're taking transforms or removes as your whale bonus, it's better to remove a defend, or a defend and a strike.
Watcher's best boss relics are Runic Pyramid, followed closely by Pandora's box, Astrolabe and Empty Cage. The Lotus and the water upgrade are very strong on her. Energy relics are nice, but the stuff I listed is all stronger
Snecko eye is mostly a trap - it's fine if you boss swap into it and can start planning around swivels, but most of her high win strategies are rushdown infinities, which go in very different directions.
Removals are a big deal for Watcher. Cherish them - her card quality is so high that strikes and defends are awful.
Lesson learned is an insane card.
An outside strategy, but a good one is fasting ,+ orange pellets. Likewise, Master reality+ Dead branch or Nilry's Codex can do some real bullshit
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Tantrum is the premium way to get into Wrath, but indignation also works.
For getting into calm, Fear No Evil or Inner peace are the way to go. Meditate is very powerful as well, especially meditate plus, but it doesn't enable Multiple stance switches in one turn the way FNE or IP does.
Going after Divinity is tricky. It gets a lot easier if you have toxic egg, as all the divinity cards are better upgraded. If you're going after Divinity ii really want to figure out how to hit it every turn.
Blasphemy is just a plain good card when it's upgraded - tripling your damage ends a lot of fights. Dead card in boss fights, by even then blasphemy into a stacked ritual dagger can one shot time eater out similar bullshit, so hey. You can dodge the self inflicted damage by being intangible on the turn it lands.
Other rares of note include Lesson Learned, Scrawl, Omniscience (you need good targets, but it can do a lot of work). Ragnarok is your "strong early game damage rare" that falls off. Brilliance is surprisingly pickable early game because 1 energy, do 24 damage is actually very good. It doesn't take much to make it scale stupidly hard either. (Remember, every point of damage it gains gets tripled in divinity stance)
Hand of Greed is amazing if you can get it early - 2 energy, do 40 or even 2 energy, do 50 is ridiculous. And you get a ton of gold. Obviously conflicts with lesson learned, but you have enough gold to just buy apotheosis so hey.
Don't sleep on Just Lucky - especially upgraded the scary effect is amazing. Additionally it scales very hard with Fasting or Kunai/Shuriken. Easy to under estimate. Shuriken or fasting can also make Ragnarok very silly. Even a little bit of strength goes far on Watcher because of her inherent x2 multiplier in Wrath.
Again Watcher really wants removals, so avoid curses. Your strikes are only good early, and even your defends are awful compared to the free block you can generate from talk to the hand or mental fortress. Medical Kit is a very strong pick-up as a result. You can do some real bullshit with Abacus or Sundial too, both of which benefit from small deck sizes.
Orrery in the shop is secretly one of the strongest things you can spend your gold on, as 5 card picks can be a huge power boost. Especially when you're looking for a piece of the puzzle like mental fortress still.
If you don't already, look up Jorbs on YouTube and watch his videos to see how you can wreck faces with Watcher - and the infinites he'll create
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This is a pretty good example of doing Stupid Rushdown things. Note how few relics the deck has, and the fact that they are all iffy relics with the exception of Holy Water, Centennial Puzzle, Violet Lotus and Mark of the Bloom. (Okay, lantern is great but like, we got it at the end of the game, it doesn't count). Also look at how few cards the deck has and how fast it can prune - I would have removed every attack that wasn't tantrum and eruption if i could have.
The deck took Mind Bloom on floor 36 at 41/68 hp, and it walked out of an Awoken One -> Time Eater -> Spear and Shield -> Heart fight at... 7 hp, 24 of which was lost in the heart fight, 10 to Time Eater. Awoken one got 3 turns. Time eater got 10 turns, spear and shield? Died on turn 1 technically speaking (We vaulted). Heart lasted seven turns.
I sat on a power and duplication pot for a while, then popped them in the heart fight to get six cards drawn every time i entered wrath and gaining 3 energy.
That's the power of rushdown.
Like in all honesty, i want a balance patch for watcher that kicks Flurry up to rare (up it's damage a bit in compensation), knocks Conjure Blade down to uncommon, and makes it so rush down only draws 1 card.. and probably should cost 2 to put into play, upgrading to cost 1. (which is a crazy harsh nerf, but like, Rushdown is insane and i dont think you can fix it by kicking it to rare, i think only cutting it's ability to setup infinites so easily is the thing that has to be tackled).
It won't happen (afaik, StS is a done game for now, there's been no word from Megacrit on what they're working on next)
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😬
I really cannot recommend roguebook at all. Just ooof. Horrific meta progression, squandered gameplay potential, a serious case of go big or go home, it's just a mess.
It looks pretty! But that's about all I can give it
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It also was super off-putting how they pushed and pushed and pushed Richard Garfield Beng part of things.
Frustrating as hell too, because some stuff like the control two characters and positioning matters is really good, conceptually.
And then they just did nothing good with that, characters are basically parasitic (their mechanics only help themselves), the positioning stuff mostly just ends up being more go big or go home (that guy in the back is going to hyper scale, hope you can kill him before he comes online!)
I've been very frustrated with just how many cars have roguelikes seem to miss the core of why Slay the Spire is so good:
It's simple.
All it's complexity is emergent from simple base rules (and a willingness to let crazy things happen as a result).
To many that I've played write incredibly complicated checks, but there's no real payoff to this
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