Cut through Fate has given us an interesting choice:
Swivel is kinda pointless here; it would take all our energy and leave us without either Reality card.
But Apotheosis.. with Miracle, we could play Apotheosis after playing the Realities, getting upgraded versions of Smite and Safety. We could then also play Smite+ for a third attack, giving us a Shuriken strength buff. Or we could play Smite before Deceive Reality, so we get +3 perm Dex when Orange Pellets activate.
Or we could send them both to discard and pull Crescendo, hoping for a better draw next round and retrieve them using Meditate later.
I used Miracle to play Apotheosis+, then the next turn played a bunch of block.
That's unbelievably cool. Your new name is cool guy. Let's have sex.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited June 2021
I have semi-successfully used Runic Dome once, playing a block focused Ironclad
It still wasn't a great situation, and I assuredly drew out some fights I could have ended quickly by blocking too much, but when you're doing juggernaut damage with every block card and setting yourself up for a good body slam anyways, it kind of works
Otherwise as downsides go it's like mildly annoying but I can work around it pretty easily. But also I've played too much of the game, so my memory for what everything can do and when....
Broken Crown is the fucking worst because it cripples your ability to find rares ontop of screwing your card selection.
Ectoplasm is also terrible
Fusion hammer is real good because there's multiple other ways to get upgrades, so it's a mild downside
Coffee dripper demand safer routing and also turns off at least one relic, but it's great at teaching you the fact that health is a resource. Also there's a bunch of ways to heal you can get
Velvet choker is really bad to really good depending on the style of deck you're building. Basically always bad on Watcher unless you get it as a trade and can build around it
Despite hating velvet choker I just picked it up for lack of a better option and then within 3 floors picked up two echo forms and was like "oh yeah, whoops."
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Just looking at that screenshot it also looks like you're willing to go with a larger deck than I typically am, which is probably part of why I lock in a bit earlier.
My ideal deck size is probably around 20. Maybe a bit higher for the Silent and Defect, bit lower for the Watcher and Ironclad.
Bigger decks make Dazes, Wounds and Burns much less likely to cripple you, as well as reduce your chances of seeing your basic Strikes and Defends that you haven't been able to cull out. I think, depending on what your deck is doing, small is better, but in general I feel like 30~ is a pretty safe size. Much higher than 30 is questionable.
Just looking at that screenshot it also looks like you're willing to go with a larger deck than I typically am, which is probably part of why I lock in a bit earlier.
My ideal deck size is probably around 20. Maybe a bit higher for the Silent and Defect, bit lower for the Watcher and Ironclad.
You just cannot get by with a size twenty deck at A20 heart kills. You'll die to status effects alone. (The heart puts five in, spear and shield dump two ontop of your deck every couple of turns... Etc)
A small deck for me is about 25 cards, maybe a couple less. A normal deck is around 30, and I've piloted the odd 40 card monster to victory. Thick decks are resilient decks, as long as they're built right.
Edit: plus most decks I build inherently self thin - that one had 5 powers, a true grit, and corruption so by the end of the fight it was very lean.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Yeah like, I stopped actively dealing with Ascension levels once dailies were invented, so I'm not up to A20 yet and that may be a thing that changes matters
But to me a thirty card deck feels really bloated, unless maybe it's a Silent deck with a lot of cycling or a Defect deck with a bunch of powers
I would much rather have the predictability of a smaller deck (plus the quick cycling for stuff like claws and rampages) than the marginal benefit of drowning out status effects
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
It's interesting, because a lot of beginner guides I read definitely extol the benefits of a small 15 card deck. Only a a few even mention big decking as an alternative.
It's interesting, because a lot of beginner guides I read definitely extol the benefits of a small 15 card deck. Only a a few even mention big decking as an alternative.
Generally speaking in card games, you want reliability in your draws. That's why you run 2x-4x of your bread and butter cards, and keep your deck as small as possible.
Now personally, I have no clue how to reliably remove cards from my decks, so I find myself hitting 30-35 all the damned time. But I'm also bad at this game.
It's interesting, because a lot of beginner guides I read definitely extol the benefits of a small 15 card deck. Only a a few even mention big decking as an alternative.
A lot of StS guides are also really dumb and badly written >.>. They make assumptions that are just really toxic for getting good at the game.
Or rather, they make assumptions that assume that everything's going to go your way. Which is when 15 card decks or cards like Searing Blow work.
@Straightzi - what ASC level have you hit? because it changes a lot, esp the last 5. The big changes are that everything gets new (tweaked) AI that really ramps up the level of 'orrible you have to deal with (Sentries put 3 dazed into your deck each, as an example), and A20's modifier is Dual Boss - you have to fight your usual Act 3 boss... and the moment you defeat them, you go straight into a fight one of the two you didnt fight.
I.e You see you're up against Donu/Deca - You'll face either Time Eater or Awoken One immediately afterwards.
This is probably the single biggest transformative element, as you can no longer make decks that just die to one of the three bosses, because chances are you'll see that boss.
Which you shouldnt be doing anyway, and it's why people whine about Time Eater and Awoken One so much because they're building bad decks and getting punished for it (and mistaking the bosses mechanics for punishing playing lots of cards/playing powers, which is not what those bosses actually *do* - they both punish you for playing low impact cards, just across different axis)
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
edited June 2021
I think I'm at like 11 or 12 with Defect as my highest, Silent close behind that and Ironclad/Watcher down at 4 or 5 probably
Overall I think the Ascension system kind of sucks as a difficulty modifier - there a couple of interesting changes (like that A20 one sounds great) but it's mostly just increasing damage which is the most boring way to change difficulty
Straightzi on
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FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
It's interesting, because a lot of beginner guides I read definitely extol the benefits of a small 15 card deck. Only a a few even mention big decking as an alternative.
A lot of StS guides are also really dumb and badly written >.>. They make assumptions that are just really toxic for getting good at the game.
Or rather, they make assumptions that assume that everything's going to go your way. Which is when 15 card decks or cards like Searing Blow work.
I mean, a lot of guides are also from early access when the meta was different, or explicitly beginners guides designed to get your head around the foundational interactions and outright say strategies become different as you increase ascension levels, but yeah, I get what you're saying.
Frankly, i think increasing the damage is fine in this particular case. There's not a huge amount of levers you can pull in a game like this - you cant make the AI a better shot or similar, and the aggreate of increasing the damage (Which isnt even that signifcant - like sentries hit for... 2 more on a20 than a0? possibly even 1 more?).
And honestly, Most of the difficulty comes from the AI changes - things inflict more status effects. They ramp faster. They scale harder. Things cost more gold, you have to carry a curse you cant remove. Every decision counts more.
It's why Jorbs (who's probably the best player in the world) is so fucking slow when he plays. It's terrible to watch how slow he plays, the man likes Frozen Eye for the gods sake.
He also wins a whole lot more than i do (My win rate at a20 is what, 10% ish? Honestly probably lower, I've long since stopped tryharding at this game. His is like 40%+)
Also ironically, i just got a great example of how the Awoken One dosent punish powers, just non-impactful powers:
Yes, that's a 24 str awoken one. This isnt even the strongest awoken one i've fought - pretty sure i've done one who was nearly 40 str, and that fight was a joke.
This deck wasnt the best, so i got a little beat up setting up, but afterwards i was having 160 block turns every turn (and awoken one that turn)
Thumped the awoken one too.
also @Athenor - a big mistake a lot of people make with this game is thinking it's MtG. It's not, and has very little resemblance to MtG in practice other than being a card game with a resource system. So a lot of best practices in MtG (like keeping your deck as lean s possible) are terrible here.
Like imagine in MtG if people could add cards to your deck that did nothing but clog up your hand. The meta for deck building would change REAL fast.
It's interesting, because a lot of beginner guides I read definitely extol the benefits of a small 15 card deck. Only a a few even mention big decking as an alternative.
A lot of StS guides are also really dumb and badly written >.>. They make assumptions that are just really toxic for getting good at the game.
Or rather, they make assumptions that assume that everything's going to go your way. Which is when 15 card decks or cards like Searing Blow work.
I mean, a lot of guides are also from early access when the meta was different, or explicitly beginners guides designed to get your head around the foundational interactions and outright say strategies become different as you increase ascension levels, but yeah, I get what you're saying.
Let me be a grumpy old master at the game, Fishman!
tbh, i dont think the meta has actually been different, it's just taken people a long time to learn what works and what does not.
Hell, you can go back and dig up my posts from a year+ back when i was a wee little spire slayer and getting frustrated with time eater destroying my claw decks. And then i was one of the first people (possibly the first?) on the forum to beat the game on A20, and then i started doing only a20 heart kills because everything else got boring as i dug deeper and deeper into the game. It's why I keep playing - the game is so stupidly deep, there's just so much to learn, little fine interactions and fun things.
For example, sekrit defect stratergy: Snecko Eye infinites.
Hologram+ can pull any card in your discard pile back into your hand. It's real good! All For One can pull any card in your discard pile back into your hand if it costs 0.
Fun fact: Af0 only looks at the cost of the card as it currently exists in the graveyard! So if it sees a Hologram+ that costs 0, it'll pull that back. Or if it sees a Af0 that costs 0... You see where this is going.
Snecko Eye: For when your deck is going to run on only the highest, finest grade bullshit.
It's why Jorbs (who's probably the best player in the world) is so fucking slow when he plays. It's terrible to watch how slow he plays, the man likes Frozen Eye for the gods sake.
Jorbs is lightning fast compared to say, like, Lifecoach. That dude plays at a glacial pace
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I mean, let me be clear that I also don't really care that Ascension exists or is twenty levels long. I don't have a good solution for making that sort of Ascension - the closest I get is just cutting out the levels that are just damage increases and having ascension be a five step process or something.
But, as an alternate idea, I'm much more interested in the variable game types that you see with dailies and custom runs - things that make you change the way you play rather than just refine yourself into an extremely boring but effective tool. Roguebook has its difficulty increases done in this sort of way, where you choose your run modifiers before you start a run, and choosing more makes for a higher level version of the game.
Right, we're going to have to agree to disagree there - I think that sort of build your own difficulty is a terrible mechanic for a rougelite as it dramatically expands the possible phase space of choices, which has really ugly implications for balance. It was horrid in hades, and nothing I've seen it of roguebook convinces me it'll be any better there. (Both are also doing silly long term progression grinding which also shoots the balance in the foot...)
To be clear, for me part of the appeal of StS is that is a very tightly balanced game that has a clearly defined pinnacle to reach for. Actually it's a huge part of the appeal.
They still should nerf catalyst though. Curse you Casey!
I don't really find daily modifiers etc interesting because often they're so wild as to just be playing a different game wearing the same outer skin. I mean, your mileage may vary! But I like having a single challenging mountain to scale with multiple paths to the top, rather than multiple different peaks to defeat
I like to do some daily runs now and then just to break it up from A20 runs. It can give you some hilarious runs sometimes (Silent with Corruption, Dead Branch, and Shivs, for example).
Controlled luck, mostly. I hit enough elites to push my rare drop chance up pretty high each act, and got lucky with which rares dropped. Echo form was my starting rare, and i used a duplicaiton event to get a second one.
Damn, nice. I need to stop taking cards every step of the early going to drive up that chance.
Taking cards doesnt effect things.
Quoting the wiki:
"Rare cards start at a listed percentage (seen in the table below) minus 5% and the chance increases by 1% added every time a common card is rolled. Whenever 1% is added to the chance for rare cards, it is subtracted from the chance for commons and then the uncommons if necessary. When a rare card is rolled, the chance for it is reset back to the initial percentage. Only cards from card rewards affect these chances.
The rarity chances are as follows:
Rare: 3% for non shop, 9% for shops.
Uncommon: 37% for both.
Common: 60% for non shop, 54% for shops."
Question Card and Prayer wheel push this higher because you see more cards - so you get more dings of that 1% increase (4% per floor with QC, 6% per normal fight with Prayer wheel, a whopping 16% per normal fight with both). Broken Crown cripples it, because you only get 1% per floor, which is... yeah, bad. N'loths gift sets the floor for rares to spawn at triple it's base rate, a hefty 9%, which has a huge impact on the amount of rares you'll see.
Elites i think also give a flat 10% increase to the chance, but i'm having trouble finding a source on that. Still, elites are good for rare cards.
So in theory if you want the most rares possible, you want to have QC, Prayer wheel, N'loths gift, and then go to every elite fight you can while also hitting as many normal fights as you can.
You'll probably die horribly because that's a terrible way to route the game, but you'll die covered in gold cards and really, who can ask for more?
Bites and apparitions is one of those combos that it's real hard to get and make work, but when it does...
*gestures*
Also grats on the 3x wraith form+ (And identifying that Snecko + Wraith form is some quality bullshit).
This run was fucking rough:
[img][/img]
No real card draw (I got Pocket Watch on floor 49 from a Regenerating Giant Head). Had the powerful Establishemnt + Double Meditate+ engine and some other good stuff, but it was just so slow to get going.
Literally dont win the run without having gambled on floor 29 and hit Face of Cleric from the Face Trader event - i went in to the A4 elites with 103 hp/103 hp. I walked out of the heart with 3 hp left. So that was fun!
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
I got Griftlands after Mary Kish raved about it in Nextlander. After being neck deep in Monster Train for months (I love Monster Train so much) it's interesting to be faced with a different meta and terminology. Trying a diplomatic build, but no mercy on the battlefield.
I will probably also be in trouble when Fights in Tight Spaces comes out of early access.
I am stalling hard on a15 defect on my quest to get my android save up to 20. I think it's because I'm lacking card draw in the decks I'm trying to make. Idk why but act 2 bosses seem to get me every time.
I am stalling hard on a15 defect on my quest to get my android save up to 20. I think it's because I'm lacking card draw in the decks I'm trying to make. Idk why but act 2 bosses seem to get me every time.
Post decklists and we can provide some ideas!
With card draw, the thing about it is that it's tied to the hip with energy. Energy without card draw is a bit suspect, because you can end up with times your energy source is doing nothing. Card draw without energy can mean missing critical cards.
Also, fun combo that people might not be aware of:
Concentration combined with Spinning Top.
Concentration is normally real bad (See above stuff on card draw + energy - discarding cards to get energy is usually pretty iffy). But! Spinning Top gives you functionally unlimited card draw as long as your hand's empty... and Concentration gives no fucks if it discards nothing because it's the only card in your hand - you still get the energy.
Combine the two and draw cards to your heart's content!
Until you realize you put tactician in the deck and start swearing.
Yea my last attempt I made an amazing deck with a ton of card draw and energy generation, and then I ran into time eater while I was playing in bed past my bedtime and in no mood to do math so I ate it. But yeah I need to embrace the defects 1energy 3draw card which I always avoided because I hate spending energy to draw cards.
I think the best run I ever had was a Defect run where I had Unceasing Top and my only card that cost any energy was a single Defend+, and then Time Eater was my second act 3 boss and I got fucking beefed.
I think the best run I ever had was a Defect run where I had Unceasing Top and my only card that cost any energy was a single Defend+, and then Time Eater was my second act 3 boss and I got fucking beefed.
Yeah, that'll do it.
A (Very very boring) way to beat Time Eater as defect is have a decent amount of frost orbs, and then just... sit on them and let them block for you while you charge a dark orb up until it one shots time eater. It's boring and horribly uninteractive, but Timeboi only scales in response to you playing cards... Boom goes the slug.
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I used Miracle to play Apotheosis+, then the next turn played a bunch of block.
The turn after that I wrath murdered Shield.
The turn after that I divinity murdered Spear.
Taking me to...
Turn 1:
I don't know, like turn 6 or something:
My first Watcher win!
It still wasn't a great situation, and I assuredly drew out some fights I could have ended quickly by blocking too much, but when you're doing juggernaut damage with every block card and setting yourself up for a good body slam anyways, it kind of works
Objectivity as game design, I think it's bad.
Otherwise as downsides go it's like mildly annoying but I can work around it pretty easily. But also I've played too much of the game, so my memory for what everything can do and when....
Broken Crown is the fucking worst because it cripples your ability to find rares ontop of screwing your card selection.
Ectoplasm is also terrible
Fusion hammer is real good because there's multiple other ways to get upgrades, so it's a mild downside
Coffee dripper demand safer routing and also turns off at least one relic, but it's great at teaching you the fact that health is a resource. Also there's a bunch of ways to heal you can get
Velvet choker is really bad to really good depending on the style of deck you're building. Basically always bad on Watcher unless you get it as a trade and can build around it
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Generally speaking for me it's more of an Act II reward than an Act I reward
But if I have the cards I need for my deck at that point, absolutely I'll stop gaining new cards in return for some more energy
It's worth noting that all my posts come from the perspective of trying beat the game on A20 while killing the heart
So like decks are never 'done' - there's always a few more silver bullets I could pack, etc that makes broken Crown real iffy
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Conversely, this makes question card very strong for finding rates, and question card + nloths gift goes hilarious crazy places)
Don't fear the reaper, Donu
(On my phone which crashes every time I win, hence only a8)
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My ideal deck size is probably around 20. Maybe a bit higher for the Silent and Defect, bit lower for the Watcher and Ironclad.
You just cannot get by with a size twenty deck at A20 heart kills. You'll die to status effects alone. (The heart puts five in, spear and shield dump two ontop of your deck every couple of turns... Etc)
A small deck for me is about 25 cards, maybe a couple less. A normal deck is around 30, and I've piloted the odd 40 card monster to victory. Thick decks are resilient decks, as long as they're built right.
Edit: plus most decks I build inherently self thin - that one had 5 powers, a true grit, and corruption so by the end of the fight it was very lean.
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But to me a thirty card deck feels really bloated, unless maybe it's a Silent deck with a lot of cycling or a Defect deck with a bunch of powers
I would much rather have the predictability of a smaller deck (plus the quick cycling for stuff like claws and rampages) than the marginal benefit of drowning out status effects
Generally speaking in card games, you want reliability in your draws. That's why you run 2x-4x of your bread and butter cards, and keep your deck as small as possible.
Now personally, I have no clue how to reliably remove cards from my decks, so I find myself hitting 30-35 all the damned time. But I'm also bad at this game.
A lot of StS guides are also really dumb and badly written >.>. They make assumptions that are just really toxic for getting good at the game.
Or rather, they make assumptions that assume that everything's going to go your way. Which is when 15 card decks or cards like Searing Blow work.
@Straightzi - what ASC level have you hit? because it changes a lot, esp the last 5. The big changes are that everything gets new (tweaked) AI that really ramps up the level of 'orrible you have to deal with (Sentries put 3 dazed into your deck each, as an example), and A20's modifier is Dual Boss - you have to fight your usual Act 3 boss... and the moment you defeat them, you go straight into a fight one of the two you didnt fight.
I.e You see you're up against Donu/Deca - You'll face either Time Eater or Awoken One immediately afterwards.
This is probably the single biggest transformative element, as you can no longer make decks that just die to one of the three bosses, because chances are you'll see that boss.
Which you shouldnt be doing anyway, and it's why people whine about Time Eater and Awoken One so much because they're building bad decks and getting punished for it (and mistaking the bosses mechanics for punishing playing lots of cards/playing powers, which is not what those bosses actually *do* - they both punish you for playing low impact cards, just across different axis)
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Overall I think the Ascension system kind of sucks as a difficulty modifier - there a couple of interesting changes (like that A20 one sounds great) but it's mostly just increasing damage which is the most boring way to change difficulty
I mean, a lot of guides are also from early access when the meta was different, or explicitly beginners guides designed to get your head around the foundational interactions and outright say strategies become different as you increase ascension levels, but yeah, I get what you're saying.
Frankly, i think increasing the damage is fine in this particular case. There's not a huge amount of levers you can pull in a game like this - you cant make the AI a better shot or similar, and the aggreate of increasing the damage (Which isnt even that signifcant - like sentries hit for... 2 more on a20 than a0? possibly even 1 more?).
And honestly, Most of the difficulty comes from the AI changes - things inflict more status effects. They ramp faster. They scale harder. Things cost more gold, you have to carry a curse you cant remove. Every decision counts more.
It's why Jorbs (who's probably the best player in the world) is so fucking slow when he plays. It's terrible to watch how slow he plays, the man likes Frozen Eye for the gods sake.
He also wins a whole lot more than i do (My win rate at a20 is what, 10% ish? Honestly probably lower, I've long since stopped tryharding at this game. His is like 40%+)
Also ironically, i just got a great example of how the Awoken One dosent punish powers, just non-impactful powers:
Yes, that's a 24 str awoken one. This isnt even the strongest awoken one i've fought - pretty sure i've done one who was nearly 40 str, and that fight was a joke.
This deck wasnt the best, so i got a little beat up setting up, but afterwards i was having 160 block turns every turn (and awoken one that turn)
Thumped the awoken one too.
also @Athenor - a big mistake a lot of people make with this game is thinking it's MtG. It's not, and has very little resemblance to MtG in practice other than being a card game with a resource system. So a lot of best practices in MtG (like keeping your deck as lean s possible) are terrible here.
Like imagine in MtG if people could add cards to your deck that did nothing but clog up your hand. The meta for deck building would change REAL fast.
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Let me be a grumpy old master at the game, Fishman!
tbh, i dont think the meta has actually been different, it's just taken people a long time to learn what works and what does not.
Hell, you can go back and dig up my posts from a year+ back when i was a wee little spire slayer and getting frustrated with time eater destroying my claw decks. And then i was one of the first people (possibly the first?) on the forum to beat the game on A20, and then i started doing only a20 heart kills because everything else got boring as i dug deeper and deeper into the game. It's why I keep playing - the game is so stupidly deep, there's just so much to learn, little fine interactions and fun things.
For example, sekrit defect stratergy: Snecko Eye infinites.
Hologram+ can pull any card in your discard pile back into your hand. It's real good! All For One can pull any card in your discard pile back into your hand if it costs 0.
Fun fact: Af0 only looks at the cost of the card as it currently exists in the graveyard! So if it sees a Hologram+ that costs 0, it'll pull that back. Or if it sees a Af0 that costs 0... You see where this is going.
Snecko Eye: For when your deck is going to run on only the highest, finest grade bullshit.
(Take snecko eye kids, it's good)
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Jorbs is lightning fast compared to say, like, Lifecoach. That dude plays at a glacial pace
But, as an alternate idea, I'm much more interested in the variable game types that you see with dailies and custom runs - things that make you change the way you play rather than just refine yourself into an extremely boring but effective tool. Roguebook has its difficulty increases done in this sort of way, where you choose your run modifiers before you start a run, and choosing more makes for a higher level version of the game.
To be clear, for me part of the appeal of StS is that is a very tightly balanced game that has a clearly defined pinnacle to reach for. Actually it's a huge part of the appeal.
They still should nerf catalyst though. Curse you Casey!
I don't really find daily modifiers etc interesting because often they're so wild as to just be playing a different game wearing the same outer skin. I mean, your mileage may vary! But I like having a single challenging mountain to scale with multiple paths to the top, rather than multiple different peaks to defeat
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Slay the Spire already had that clearly defined pinnacle for me
It was the Heart
Adding any difficulty beyond that is just boring mostly, it's gotta be transformative for me
(Side note, proposed catalyst nerf: catalyst+ applies six poison, then doubles all poison on the target)
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. Using dual wield to dupe the attack. Works best with runic pyramid to control your hand
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Oh wait, you mean in my defect run @Athenor
Controlled luck, mostly. I hit enough elites to push my rare drop chance up pretty high each act, and got lucky with which rares dropped. Echo form was my starting rare, and i used a duplicaiton event to get a second one.
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Taking cards doesnt effect things.
Quoting the wiki:
"Rare cards start at a listed percentage (seen in the table below) minus 5% and the chance increases by 1% added every time a common card is rolled. Whenever 1% is added to the chance for rare cards, it is subtracted from the chance for commons and then the uncommons if necessary. When a rare card is rolled, the chance for it is reset back to the initial percentage. Only cards from card rewards affect these chances.
The rarity chances are as follows:
Rare: 3% for non shop, 9% for shops.
Uncommon: 37% for both.
Common: 60% for non shop, 54% for shops."
Question Card and Prayer wheel push this higher because you see more cards - so you get more dings of that 1% increase (4% per floor with QC, 6% per normal fight with Prayer wheel, a whopping 16% per normal fight with both). Broken Crown cripples it, because you only get 1% per floor, which is... yeah, bad. N'loths gift sets the floor for rares to spawn at triple it's base rate, a hefty 9%, which has a huge impact on the amount of rares you'll see.
Elites i think also give a flat 10% increase to the chance, but i'm having trouble finding a source on that. Still, elites are good for rare cards.
So in theory if you want the most rares possible, you want to have QC, Prayer wheel, N'loths gift, and then go to every elite fight you can while also hitting as many normal fights as you can.
You'll probably die horribly because that's a terrible way to route the game, but you'll die covered in gold cards and really, who can ask for more?
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The Astrolabe giveth.
maybe I'll switch it up and play some Watcher
What the fuck was this run, and why did I stick with it?
So when I loaded up that run from last night, I found I had the chance to change relics. I decided to stick with it.
I had to do a few reloads to better optimize my play, but...
This shit started happening.
Then I picked up a Sneako Eye for Act 3.
Then the game gave me a fucking DEAD BRANCH.
So shit like this started happening:
And, well... Long story short, though it took a while:
This is such a fucking stupid deck that should never have worked.
Edit: Not seen was me giving a blood vial to the vampires to get the bites without losing HP.
*gestures*
Also grats on the 3x wraith form+ (And identifying that Snecko + Wraith form is some quality bullshit).
This run was fucking rough:
No real card draw (I got Pocket Watch on floor 49 from a Regenerating Giant Head). Had the powerful Establishemnt + Double Meditate+ engine and some other good stuff, but it was just so slow to get going.
Literally dont win the run without having gambled on floor 29 and hit Face of Cleric from the Face Trader event - i went in to the A4 elites with 103 hp/103 hp. I walked out of the heart with 3 hp left. So that was fun!
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I will probably also be in trouble when Fights in Tight Spaces comes out of early access.
Post decklists and we can provide some ideas!
With card draw, the thing about it is that it's tied to the hip with energy. Energy without card draw is a bit suspect, because you can end up with times your energy source is doing nothing. Card draw without energy can mean missing critical cards.
Also, fun combo that people might not be aware of:
Concentration combined with Spinning Top.
Concentration is normally real bad (See above stuff on card draw + energy - discarding cards to get energy is usually pretty iffy). But! Spinning Top gives you functionally unlimited card draw as long as your hand's empty... and Concentration gives no fucks if it discards nothing because it's the only card in your hand - you still get the energy.
Combine the two and draw cards to your heart's content!
Until you realize you put tactician in the deck and start swearing.
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Yeah, that'll do it.
A (Very very boring) way to beat Time Eater as defect is have a decent amount of frost orbs, and then just... sit on them and let them block for you while you charge a dark orb up until it one shots time eater. It's boring and horribly uninteractive, but Timeboi only scales in response to you playing cards... Boom goes the slug.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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Switch: 0293 6817 9891