I'll post a VoD of the final fight later (I'm mostly just posting the Void fights because they're the most fun and also because these runs are so frigging long even when they dont include me getting u pto do stuff because ia m a terrible streamer)
OK, I'm starting to see the pathing now. BTW, what's the deal with the Red/Green stuff. I know the green is sort of a way to jot your path down in case you come back later, but what's with the red? Like, is it a reminder to "No really, DON'T go here!" sort of thing?
Another quick question I can't find an answer online for: what's the deal with Poison? I've ran into a few enemies that inflict stacks of poison on me. The way it reads is that I should take damage equal to my poison, then lose one stack. In my last run, I was poisoned a few times, but never took damage. I thought maybe the poison was added to the damage stack, but that didn't appear to be the case, unless I was just missing it.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
0
Options
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
You have the right of it. Poison, fire and a at least one other effect (Soultithe - part of the Daughter's kit) adds threat at the start of your turn. There's a chance you had delay block or some other ability that might have stopped it from being obvious that it was happening.
OK, I'm starting to see the pathing now. BTW, what's the deal with the Red/Green stuff. I know the green is sort of a way to jot your path down in case you come back later, but what's with the red? Like, is it a reminder to "No really, DON'T go here!" sort of thing?
Another quick question I can't find an answer online for: what's the deal with Poison? I've ran into a few enemies that inflict stacks of poison on me. The way it reads is that I should take damage equal to my poison, then lose one stack. In my last run, I was poisoned a few times, but never took damage. I thought maybe the poison was added to the damage stack, but that didn't appear to be the case, unless I was just missing it.
Red's the same - if you click a green tile again, it goes red. (I should submit a suggestion around Colorblindess for that, actually...) - i usually use it to mark alternate paths, or stuff i want to remember as esp important here. In that case, the red was... mostly misclicks i think, but you can see the empty tile being used to corner.
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Mmmm, I just ran into one of those things that's maybe not as clear as it could be ...
It makes total sense having had it happen, but losing a run for it definitely sucks. Enlightened's timing against Bloat enemies is really shady. Normally dealing future sight damage before threat resolving is to your benefit. However suddenly dealing yourself 15 damage by accident (or more if you're vulnerable, ooops) when you weren't expecting it is very sad trombone.
The game is, at the very least, incredibly consistent, and that is excellent. It means things like this are definitely on me for not thinking them through. But at the same time, there are so many things the game wants me to think through that ... please, man. :P
Another easy run, this time with the Bleed starting archetype. Only got damaged in a few fights with perfects against everything on the final floor. Oddly enough, the Bleed build ended up being a combo build by the end of the game.
Up next, the Monk looking dude.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Another easy run, this time with the Bleed starting archetype. Only got damaged in a few fights with perfects against everything on the final floor. Oddly enough, the Bleed build ended up being a combo build by the end of the game.
Another easy run, this time with the Bleed starting archetype. Only got damaged in a few fights with perfects against everything on the final floor. Oddly enough, the Bleed build ended up being a combo build by the end of the game.
Up next, the Monk looking dude.
Bleed deck actually really likes combo by start if it can, just because For the Throat is such a strong pay off to having combo (something like 28 bleed if you have a max combo stack and it's upgraded?)
In general though, your starter decks are just that - starter. You can and should feel free to pivot dramatically from them based on what the floor's giving you.
Yeah, i got +5 insatiability of that win and am making a convincing argument that Gusher should be a rare, because it's just a bit too silly. Decklist over here, but you can basically tell it was "Play gusher while at high energy and full combo, win"
Mostly what they define at the start is if you're playing a vast tempo style (Blades, Soultithe, Shii) or a more slow, build up style (Bleed, Corruption, Future Strike).
Speaking of, here's the VoD for my previous i25 win as Daughter. Having both Nest Egg (put ten Void Coins in your discard pile at start of battle) and Nest Egg (When you shuffle your deck the first time, gain 2 corruption per affliction shuffled) is such a fun combo. Lead to killing the Void with a 37+499 damage grasp, which is V. reasonable and fair.
I35 is just thrashing me so far though, it's really hard to get off the ground as Corruption Daughter I find. Once she gets going, she's a beast, but early on, oof. Though i'm now officially past the point where perfect play can guarantee wins according to most people, so hey!
And then put i37 down as well with a Hidden/Blade build. Really fun combo shenanigan's using Ceaseless to create more combo and having 3 (That's right, 3) Blackstoned Quickness in the deck for even more combo, while having a ton of card draw and cycling... and energy generation. Also the most upgrades I've ever gotten thanks to flask of purple juice. Ended up being close thanks to a "I bet it works like X, but i hope it dosent... dammit."
Initial impression on the Monk: I don't really like the playstyle. Getting a majority of damage/block every other turn instead of immediately isn't really my jam. It feels arbitrarily complex to differentiate it from the other characters. Of course, it might just be that I'm still adjusting and the cards I've encountered feel underwhelming.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Initial impression on the Monk: I don't really like the playstyle. Getting a majority of damage/block every other turn instead of immediately isn't really my jam. It feels arbitrarily complex to differentiate it from the other characters. Of course, it might just be that I'm still adjusting and the cards I've encountered feel underwhelming.
I actually think the monk is kind of absurd.
Shii just steam rolls through things early and it's only held back by not having vuln scaling (and thank fuck for that). And future strike has absurd scaling with fatigue - the longer a fight good the more damage he does
His initial block cards are very weak, but he's got lots of very good common block cards as well as some powerful relics like the kneepads. Also better future
Zen gives him energy and card draw with his relic, which is also crazy. He's just a very powerful class
Really the only class I don't like on impossible is Corruption daughter. She's just too slow to get going and feels more like a rolling pebble than a rolling Boulder.
Initial impression on the Monk: I don't really like the playstyle. Getting a majority of damage/block every other turn instead of immediately isn't really my jam. It feels arbitrarily complex to differentiate it from the other characters. Of course, it might just be that I'm still adjusting and the cards I've encountered feel underwhelming.
A few other things about Monk that I don't understand or need to wrap my head around:
Is he supposed to have more expensive cards? I have a lot of 2-cost cards right now. I don't know if that's his thing or I'm just getting a lot of them by accident. I know he can make things cheaper in Zen mode (or 0-cost with that other keyword), but if you can't get to Zen it doesn't matter. Then there's the desire to play all your cards on the cheap, instead of Purging cards for more energy.
I was very confused on how Shii works. As I understand it, Shii just stacks on an enemy. If their Shii amount ever is greater than their current HP (or is it Max HP), they die and the Shii gets split up among all other enemies. I haven't been able to make Shii work so far, so I'm guessing I'm missing out on good Shii support cards or Relics.
Echo Wall seems underwhelming as well. I can't generate it cheaply and it only lasts for one turn, meaning it might not even do damage. Again, probably a card/Relic thing.
Are their card/Relics that provide synergy with Future cards?
Monk's archetype just seems strange to me. Like, what's the point of Future stuff?
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
0
Options
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
edited July 2021
I definitely have thoughts on The Enlightened, and I suspect long-term he's my favourite class because his mechanics are #MyJam, but I do think he's also the most unintuitive and weird class. But also I think that's because I've barely scratched the surface of the game and haven't really seen the entire card pool.
Like, the deck I won with last night (as not-at-all silly as some of the ones Zombie has posted as it was) was just throwing out Opposing Force with Ghost and recurring cards, so I would have like 10 stacks of Echo Wall plus the relic that made them take Shii damage equal to the Echo Wall damage. When enemies are punching _themselves_ for 30-60 damage a turn, you only need to do so much work yourself before everything explodes. :P
I think my biggest hurdle with Enlightened is that they have good access to recursion, but their actual draw seems very weak, and that makes it kind of unintuitive to juggle all the things they seem to want to do. Both starting spells also feel comparatively weak to the all the others. Not that they aren't capable of doing a bunch of shit, but they aren't as naturally directed in how you play them as the Hidden or Daughter.
Shii is just good anyway. It's damage that can never be healed, doesn't trigger most abilities (isn't damage, isn't a debuff), and passes on to other enemies for free in multi-enemy fights. There are definitely other things that make it even better, but doing Shii damage is - I think - the best damage you can actually deal?
As mentioned above, I think Echo Wall is good if you can spam it. I find it hard to reliably put down when you want it if you only have one source, but if you can build a few stacks it becomes very reliable "offense" in a lot of late-run fights.
@MNC Dover By future stuff, do you mean Future Strike?
As to things... Monk has a lot of expensive cards, yes. Foresight let's you make them cost 0, and zen discounts them. So abusing his expensive cards involves a lot of learning how to abuse Zen and other forms of recursion.
For instance, Clarity's upgrade gives it Rigged - always in your starting hand and ontop of your deck when you shuffle. Put a Black in it and you've got spend 2 energy, get 2 ability chain and discount 2 cards on every cycle of your deck... Before you add in recursion like Better Future (add a blue some to better future+ for maximum shenanigans).
Remember that monks relic draws a card every 3rd time he enters zen - so it's often better to have ways to enter zen easily. 0 cost attacks with a black stone, cards that give Chain, there a relic that starts you with ability chain 1 every turn, and another that let's you keep unused chain from turn to turn
You have the right of it with Shii. Shii has some very good uncommons like escalate that allow it to ramp very fast. See here.. Yes, i am infact about to put 784 shii onto someone in a single cast, this is a very reasonable thing to be doing.
It also benefits a lot from things that are multi application, as every stack of Fatigue automatically adds +1 shii every time you add it. Shiis starter card having opener: ghost makes it an amazing place to put your yellow, red, blue and purple void stones if you've nothing better
Plus you can do stuff like focus minions in a boss fight with Shii and kill the boss in the process.
Echo wall is all about timing. A dedicated echo wall deck can have it up all the time (stocisim+ for example, esp with a black stone) but it's not meant to be a mainstay of damage - it's something that compliments your shii and future strike.
Future Strike is incredibly powerful, but it's a slow ramp up. Did you see the ten minutes of punching VoD I posted? That's a good example. The thing about future strike is a: it benefits from Vulnerability (unlike shii) and b: fatigue multiples it rather than adds to it. So if you play a future strike seven on a guy with 1 fatigue... You do 14 future strike. 2 fatigue? 21.
The other thing is that Shii and Future strike compliment each other. Shii can be thought of as lowering the enemy's max health... and Future Strike accelerates them hitting the brain explosion point. There's even a Future Strike uncommon that plays into this hard, having a bonus trigger or two for being played on an enemy with no future strike
@ArcticLancer The trick is to find good blue stone sources, and just abuse the Recursion/Zen entrance to get their card draw going. I was playing a deck just earlier tonight (didnt record, sadly) that manged to have drawn most of it's deck by turn 2. Better Future+ is a really strong trick, for instance. As is Ghost Stone Swift kick+ or Ghost Stone Mind Blast.
I know i posted it yesterday, but this VoD is a really good example of how you can smoothly mix Echo Wall, Future Strike and Shii into a head-vaporizing drink. Note the fatiuge stacking so that when i future strike/shii it just does crazy things.
I'm actually trying to snooze now (Stupid insomnia), but i can do a more tutorial focused stream tomorrow if you're keen, and explain what i'm trying to do and why. I need to do more monk anyway, gotta finish mastering his cards (I have all of daughter's mastered!)
(Also I still really like this game. I kind of wish it played faster so I could play more of it. :P )
After how burned we both seemed to be feeling from Roguebook, I'm really happy i haven't lead you astray with this. Definitely agree it's not the fastest game though, when I see a run come in under an hour and a half i'm like "Wow, that was fast!"
Also tip: void stones (that aren't green or black) like cards with rebound or ghost a whole lot.
Surefoot+ (a classes common) with a red stone/yellow stone for instance is just a whole pile of block and/or rage. Hidden can do all sorts of bullshit with swift cards and stones
Black stones are best in buffs or stuff that you want to cast twice - build up, quickness and many many buff cards (black stone counter for instance - 6 block on every attack? I'll take that and demand another).
Ghost walk and Spirit walk are great examples of "abuse this with stone" cards - they both loose inert when upgraded to memory. Red stone spirit walk and blue stone ghost walk are amazing finisher cards
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
I think it's worth clarifying that "drawing cards" VS "drawing the right cards" is a distinction worth making. At your current level, I imagine the latter is the more important thing, but I was more leaning into the former. I think what Dover is experiencing is similar to what I felt the first run or two with Enlightened - you spend 4 cards getting into zen and then you only have one left (maybe two if your passive triggered) and it feels very underwhelming to do. Ghost feels comically important to the character, and I also really enjoyed the run where I got a relic that lets Opener trigger on your second card if the first triggered it. That makes the basic 1-cost card Spiritual Enlightened starts with go into Zen by itself, which feels MASSIVELY different compared to Martial Enlightened running out their whole hand to get maybe 1 free energy.
None of this is obvious on first-blush. You kind of have to run into these things to know what's out there. It's part of what makes watching videos difficult - I will see you do these big combos and I can't understand any of it. I'll be sitting there going "Why did you get 3 copies of that? Why is everything free right now? How come the scaling is higher than I expect?" It's still cool to see things explode, but I feel I have to learn by doing in this one.
The game definitely has big "go big!" Energy but it works because you stich these combos together out of a thousand pieces. It feels like a lot of decks end up in dead branch corruption land from slay the spire, but it's because of all the individual bits coming together.
Like one of those VoDs I linked... I have Run Ragged with black stone. Then I purge it, use another card to create copies ontop of my deck, then get into Zen somehow deep I can play them for free via a relic that let's me trade zen plays for energy cost. Then rug all of them played I've setup massive scaling from fatigue and everything else clicks into place
One tip on card draw is that remember you can use cycling as card draw as long as you're hurling volatile cards or afflictions... And the game sure does like throwing afflictions at you
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
Topically, I only did the one failed run with Daughter so far, but is there a ... "good way" to use void coins? I felt like I had not worked them out at all, insofar as both playing them and discarding them felt kind of underwhelming, and I felt like I was missing something. Since they're afflictions I assume they're not intended to be great, but since she also makes a bunch of them they're also clearly part of her kit. Are they really just combo pieces for other cards, or do they have more of a basic fit?
They're combo pieces mainly. The thing is at worst they let you convert another affliction into energy. But where they really shine is when you get them into the deck and start hitting them with Sift effects to let you dig your deck rapidly.
Plus you can get stuff like Haunted Familiar and Shed and then they're scaling you while giving you block. Or that once power that expels and then creates copies the first time you discard can abuse them.
Stuff like Masochist+ or Passage payment+ loves them, the My Father rare (which wants you to rapidly cycle your deck to get a 1 cost 400% corruption attack), things like that. To post yet another VoD you can see how I use them in this run below to create a ton of block and corruption for me (note that I play very few if any block cards just because I'm generating so much from void coins)
It was a pretty typical future strike deck offensively - it leaned on having Back in Time up to get lots of extra Future Strike out whenever it applied slow to things. This eventually lead to it's game winning combo - Black stone into Delay, then using Echoes of the Past to duplicate Delay. Every cast of Delay would throw down 8 future strike minimum... multiplied by fatigue. Ontop of stacking slow, which crippled enemie's damage output. Clarity was used to let me play my big expensive cards without issue - most notably Prophesied, which was just a nice pile of Shii to dump on things.
Block was generated mostly via having a comb of Flame Shield, Performance Enhancer's and Padded Robes - all elite relics. Flameshield gave Block = Turn every turn, Padded Robes gave Block 2 + 1 per fatigue, and Perfomance Enhancers increases any block/delay block gained by 1. Which gave this deck a very tidy amount of free block every turn, and made it easy to mop up incidental damage with Maneuver, Cohesion & Surefoot, or lean on Outpace and Enough when I needed big chunky block. I only lost the perfect on the void by a single point of damage, which tells you a lot about how good this deck was at cleaning damage efficiently.
Draw came from having Stotic Mask (Enter zen, draw a card) and Drinking Alcohol (Draw 2 cards every turn, but you gain 2 less energy every turn. It's basically this game's snecko eye). I uhmed and uhhd a lot about Drinking Alcohol, but decided that since i'd gotten Power Ward from the first boss (Delay Rage and Overcharge 2 on a 4 turn cooldown), had Enough, and Clarity, and knew i'd be able to grab Pickled Hand (2nd card you purge in a turn is worth 2 energy) from the lost and found, i could make it work... and boy, did it work.
Picking up a couple of nice 0 cost attack commons from the Well going into act 3 also really helped out, making it that much easier to hit zen and and goto town.
Haste was a nice damage multiplier - something i could have done maybe is have Haste and Timeless in the deck, which would have basically been triple damage. One big weakness the deck had is only having a single source of Vulnerable and not a reliable one at that. Requiring opener to get vulnerable is pretty limiting!
Hope this helps with learning the game!
Edit: to give some idea of how good its game winning combo was - at the end of the void fight you can see delay inflicting 16 future strike... 5 times and doing 16 damage 5 times.
There's a patch out on the Beta. Lots of changes, mostly buffs and nerfs.
At least one of which i'm claiming responsibility for - Gusher is now a Rare card, instead of Uncommon. Well deserved! (Gusher was the card that i used to obliterate the game in that "I cannot cary all these blades" post).
Notably, Corruption Daughter has a big change - Void Kiss is no longer a get 4 corruption, expel card. It's now a 2 cost attack that gives you 2 corruption and does a punchy 12 damage. This is a real start to helping out Corruption Daughter's early game. Though she's still pretty frigging slow.
The double egg relic combo is very strong. Most of this deck was trying to get enough death strike while casting Blind Fury, and then dropping a massive Cursed Scythe onto everything. Or in the Void's case, using the fact that it attacks you for so much and this deck's block was honestly pretty awful to let me cast Bloodbath... for over 600 damage. (Bloodbath is damage = threat. when you start stacking rage and deathstrike and vuln...).
Bathe in your own blood, Dad!
One thing i'm learning is that in high impossible you've really got to lean on potions to get through. None of this drink THE ENTIRE RAINBOW vs the Void nonsense.
Bad news is - today's patch will be the last until Aug 16th.
Good news is, the Aug 16th patch is going to be worth the wait. More details to come during the next few weeks about what's happening, and what's coming up!
Firstly, let me apologize for no patch last week. Truth is, it was a hectic week - with my Wacom tablet going down and having to be sent off to repairs. That threw me behind a little, and whilst I got the patch up onto the Beta Branch - I wasn’t happy with a few of the things, so I kept it in incubation for another week. Let’s hit the major points.
Volatile Cards NOW DISCARD
So, this has been a pain point for a while now. Discard effects on Volatile cards. The rule has always been that Discard effects on Volatile cards won't trigger, because they're Destroyed, not Discarded.
Truth is, this just kept catching players out (old and new). So its gone. Volatile Cards will "discard" (triggering effects and artifacts etc) and then be Destroyed once processed, just like you assume they would! Sorry about taking so long on this one, it was an unnecessary step of sillyness!
New UI Stuff!
So I’ve been working through booting out some of the old, plain, reused UI for events and giving each one its own due flavour and joy. The Stone Smith and the Soul Merchant have gotten their treatment up first, quick snapshot below! To be honest, there's still a few minor things I’d like to tweak, but mostly I really think it adds a lot more flavour and I can’t wait to paint up more!
Card Balances
So it was time for another card balance pass! You’ll see a big list below of all the card changes that happened. As always, this is kept an eye on and a lot of this is coming from feedback in the Discord. Big thanks to all those who have helped in this regard.
Some standouts include Void Kiss, moving its way to an Attack, which makes you less sad to get Death Strike and Red Void Stones in a Corruption start.
Also Swift Hand has ... gotten pretty spicy!
Thanks everyone for all the positive support as always. I’m excited for what's to come mid-next month, I’ll start sharing more details when I can!
Thanks to all who have left a review so far for Vault! Nearing that 300 reviews mark which is super exciting! If you haven’t already, it means a lot and really helps the game grow and reach new audiences. Also, remember to use the code Steam250Love at the Card Back unlocks screen to unlock the thank you Card Back I released a little while back!
Thanks everyone - a full list of notes will be below!
All for now!
- Josh
Full(ish) Patch Notes
Changes
- Volatile cards now trigger Discard effects! The world is right again.
- Changed the highlight colour for when marking card rewards on the map, for better visibility
- The Deshelved Salesman now will offer 5 items to choose from.
- Reduced the cost of the Elite Artifacts at Lost and Found.
- Shop till you drop with the Spell Child - he also now shows 3 spells.
- Blue Juice is now a starting "Loot the Dead" choice
- Can now minimise the opening choice, as well as the Cursed Item (rather than the moving option of times past)
- New Draft Screen (when chosen at the Well of Stars)
- New UI for the Soul Collector and the Rune Merchant!
Card Changes
- Flaying Flesh - Damage and Bleed changed to 10(13) and 4(5), but it's now Swift instead of Heavy
- Meditation - The base card now says "Start next turn in Zen," with the upgrade making you also immediately enter Zen.
- Careful Advance - Opener now also does Delay Block 6.
- Deliberate - Block increased to 9(13).
- Beard Knot and Silver Medal - Increased Knot bonus from 100% to 250%, and Medal bonus from 20% per stack to 50% per stack. More Void Stones for everyone!
- Muted - Now costs 0. The upgrade makes it produce upgraded Silent Shivs instead of Rigging.
- Battleplan and Collection Plate - Artifacts with these names renamed not to overlap with the names of cards (to Playbook and Meagre Offering)
- Bladestorm - Applies 1 more Bleed.
- Apprentice's Blade - Now produces Volatile Hidden Blades, like all other Blade generators.
- Untrustworthy Coinpurse - Gives 45 essence now. Makes a profit! Sometimes!
- Hidden Blade - Upgrading it adds "Apply Bleed 1" for any enterprising smiths out there.
- Cracked Sundial - 40 is replaced with 24. That's the amount of hours that exist!
- Chalice of Evil - Every 7th changed to every 8th.
- Death's Touch - The upgrade doesn't increase damage any more.
- Build Up - Doesn't do damage anymore.
- Surprise Attack - Does 9(15) damage baseline and 18 bonus now. Surprise.
- Bolster - Block increased to 12(17).
- Anemia - Block increased to 9(12).
- Forgotten Fuse - Changed from 4th turn to every even turn, and includes your Destroy pile now.
- Unrelenting - Deals 2 less damage, but gives 1 more Combo.
- Haste - Now costs 2 unupgraded, and the upgrade adds Chain 1.
- Timeless - Now costs 0 unupgraded.
- Tax Evasion - Changed to a 1(0) cost Expel that Blocks equal to Soultithe and Delay Blocks equal to half.
- Underhanded Tactics - Deals 1 less damage on upgrade.
- Gusher has moved to Rare.
- Void Kiss is now and Attack, that deals damage and gains Corruption.
- Swift Hand has changed. Now is: Add 1 Volatile copy of a Swift card from deck or discard to hand. Combo 1. (No) Expel.
- Self-Inflicted Agony now stacks.
Bugs
- Butchers Blade will no longer be eaten by Hidden Blades
- Can now preview upgrades at the Drafting page
- Fixed a bug that occured when playing Thinning Out with 1 card left in your Deck.
- Fixed lots of bugs with Volatile cards and sneaking into decks.
- Fixed a bug with Reverb causing too much Fatigue
- Fixed a bug at the card draft screen, and it disappearing when checking your deck.
- Fixed some bugs with card artwork previews for monsters
- Fixed a very rare bug which would cause you to skip Elite fights
- Kingdom Come and Who Thrives in Evil will now play ball with the Blood Library Artifacts
Stuff that stands out to me:
Meditation is a real good rare now, it's very strong if you can land an upgrade on it. 2 turns of zen for 2 energy? Hell yes. Haste likewise is a very potent card now if you can get an upgrade on it - Chain is just so good, and it's a damage amp inherently... Timeless i need to play with, but it seems good? Gives you a way to convert future strike into shii for free, which has it's uses... or upgrading it turns it into a potent damage amp.
Flaying Flesh is actually worth drafting now! It was pretty weak before. Likewise Forgotten Fuse is actually a real consideration now for Volatile blade/shiv decks. Unrelenting getting Combo 2 is also really good.
Swift hand just seems crazy? But i havent actually played it yet. But still, there's a lot of good swift cards and pulling a copy of them into your hand is really strong.
Muted seems spicy. Gusher being rare is "Thank fuck for that".
Build up and Death's touch got deserved nerfs. Bolster's actually worth casting for it's block now, so that's nice. Tax Evasion is actually super strong - being able ot go "okay, i have 50 fucking soultithe, so i'll block all of that and get delay block for half of that..." is great, and the fact it expels could actually be a benefit. generally if you're at 50+ soultithe you're either about to win the fight or implode dramatically.
Self-Inflicted Agony stacking is yay (I bug reported that!). You can actually blackstone it, or have it benefit from the Void Champion blessing that dupes cards!
Dwarven Beard knot and Silver Medal might actually be pickable now. I'm pretty suspicious of Silver medal still tho'
It remains funny to me that Deshelved Salesman is apparently now his official name instead of Disheveled salesman. (We joke on the discord that Josh's patch notes sometimes need patch notes)
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
edited July 2021
I played a run today before realizing there had been a patch, and was quite pleased with the UI updates as I encountered them. Little touches, but big effect on the game's feel~ (I also joined the server to report a bug - Blessing of Energy replaced my starting energy instead of overcharge adding to it >_< ) I realized I am a dumb~ Nothing new there.
Testing the buffs to corruption daughter lead to this:
We're fine, everything is fine. (Deck was creating a massive amount of Void coins, then drawing them to create rage from Corrupt Heart. Add in Deathstrike so we're hitting twice and the enemies being vuln and BIG NUMBER)
I beat my first run with the Monk guy. Basically the game became a loop of:
Insight with Void Stone to make 2 cards in my deck cost 0
One of the cards would be one of my two "Vision 2" cards
Play the card that draws all your Foreseen cards
Now I'm in Zen mode with two 0-cost cards
Vision 2 the Insight and draw card
Eventually set up a turn where all Future Strikes generate Shii as well and burst Shii on a target
Repeat every turn forever
While it was a powerful loop, it was incredibly dull. Every turn was basically the same thing. Still not too sure about Monk guy. I'll try his other starting build and see if it's more interesting.
Of course, none of this matters if I don't stop playing late at night after the kids are asleep. I was so tired that I kept nodding off with my hand on the mouse, causing me to Purge cards on accident. :biggrin:
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Def dont get too hooked on starter decks. In general they dont provide a ton that you have to lean on, though some of them have very good cards tucked away (Enlightene'ds Shii one that has Opener: Ghost, and as i was show @ArcticLancer earlier Grasp does some very mean things once you understand it).
The big thing that you care about your starter deck for is it's spell (Corruption Daughter, Blade Hidden, and Martial Enlightend have very, very good spells), and any notable commons they come with - Quickness, Grasp, Spirit Shield (it has a very strong upgrade), stuff like that.
Actually, quick primer on Grasp: Grasp is good because it's a 1 cost attack that does both raw damage and scaling corruption damage if you can hit the Threshold of seven. It also inflicts soultithe on you, so you get closer to that threshold. Fun fact: If you cast a grasp at 6 soultihe, you'll get it's threshold effect due to how it's effects are ordered.
Anyway, the important bit with Grasp is that because it's an attack, it can be affected by both Rage and Deathstrike. Rage is in a lot of the part's of daughters kit. Deahtstrike likewise. Rage is a damage boost that usually comes in 25% chunks. Deathstrike makes an attack go off twice as long as you have a deathstrike value = the card's cost.
Add in vulnerability (Which is... 50% base damage increase, and Daughter has a buff that makes it 75% base iirc), and you can get actual multiplicative damage where you have grasps going off for 500 damage easy. Or in the picture i posted above, Opportunity doing 1.3k. Stacked modifiers are strong.
Is there a master list/wiki of all the cards/relics in the game? I can't find one and it would have been nice to see what the Dragon Egg (and subsequent Meteor cards) did.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
I have not managed to get the dragon egg to... hatch I guess. Picked up this last weekend and am enjoying it, though I've only managed one or two hard clears.
While I really dig a lot of the mechanics,
there is an amount of planning I'm able to do/enjoy doing, and this game asks for more than that. I'm generally more of a make the best of what happens gamer.
Hatching the dragon egg just requires completing 5 fights. Also @MNC Dover There's an in-game compendium, available from the main menu. Though checking, it dosent seem to show meteor, that seems like an oversight. Cards and relics are only counted as discovered if you've played/taken them, mind.
Personally, i'm not a big fan of Dragon egg - the Meteors are powerful (If i'm remebering correctly, they're a 3(5?) cost heavy attack that does 30 damage to one target, and splashes ten to the others, with "Purge: deal ten damage".) But it inflates your deck to 22 cards, and i feel like all the classes have something better to be doing than casting a 30 damage attack for 3. Might just be something you bite into early game? But 5 fights is a lot.
@Tofystedeth Any particular pain points on the planning? Josh (the dev) seriously loves feedback, so i can always harvest this and pass it along - it might not be agreed with mind (The game has a very clear vision, which i really respect), but he's always interested. You can also always join the discord (Check the patch notes!) and put feedback there yourself.
I do find that success really relies on you taking stock of your starter booster and your possible routes (And even your void stones that are coming) at impossible before you make any moves.
On my second run with the Monk using his other starting deck. I think I like the Shii stuff more than the Future Strike stuff. It feels more "normal" except the enemy isn't losing health before suddenly dying. Less brain power seems required, which is good for me, especially in a game that wants you to take a lot of open variables into account.
Just started the second floor and hoping to find some Shii cards/relic stuff to really break the deck. Everything so far has just been sort of ho-hum in terms of strength and synergy.
Need a voice actor? Hire me at bengrayVO.com
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051 Steam ID Twitch Page
Tofystedeth Any particular pain points on the planning? Josh (the dev) seriously loves feedback, so i can always harvest this and pass it along - it might not be agreed with mind (The game has a very clear vision, which i really respect), but he's always interested. You can also always join the discord (Check the patch notes!) and put feedback there yourself.
I do find that success really relies on you taking stock of your starter booster and your possible routes (And even your void stones that are coming) at impossible before you make any moves.
Stuff like this basically. My brain just isn't geared to go that far ahead. I like having the path and card information available, but ultimately with so much breadth and depth and information available it all becomes noise except for what's in the near future. It's part of why I dislike when 90% of the card draw stuff is tied to the same amount of discard. It makes it harder to for me balance out playing enough cards to do the thing I need do in a turn to mitigate damage with drawing my fancy cards to cool things. The only time I've ever really made that kind of thing work is when it's very focused, like in my corrupted run where I had an upgraded Our Father and an upgraded Dance of Death with a black stone in it, as well as the spell that lets you rig and upgrade a card for the fight. So unless I got super unlucky with enemies that could expel or discard from your deck, if I could get through 1 cycle of my deck I could generally hit with 3 500% corruption attacks in a row.
But again that's a me problem. I don't think it's really a flaw in the game that needs addressed, just a design philosophy thing that makes it a game where higher difficulties aren't going to work for me like they will with other people.
I found future strike a lot easier to play once I was able to get my brain to stop elliding the turn counter right in the middle of the screen. My first few I never knew when it was going to hit.
Tofystedeth Any particular pain points on the planning? Josh (the dev) seriously loves feedback, so i can always harvest this and pass it along - it might not be agreed with mind (The game has a very clear vision, which i really respect), but he's always interested. You can also always join the discord (Check the patch notes!) and put feedback there yourself.
I do find that success really relies on you taking stock of your starter booster and your possible routes (And even your void stones that are coming) at impossible before you make any moves.
Stuff like this basically. My brain just isn't geared to go that far ahead. I like having the path and card information available, but ultimately with so much breadth and depth and information available it all becomes noise except for what's in the near future. It's part of why I dislike when 90% of the card draw stuff is tied to the same amount of discard. It makes it harder to for me balance out playing enough cards to do the thing I need do in a turn to mitigate damage with drawing my fancy cards to cool things. The only time I've ever really made that kind of thing work is when it's very focused, like in my corrupted run where I had an upgraded Our Father and an upgraded Dance of Death with a black stone in it, as well as the spell that lets you rig and upgrade a card for the fight. So unless I got super unlucky with enemies that could expel or discard from your deck, if I could get through 1 cycle of my deck I could generally hit with 3 500% corruption attacks in a row.
But again that's a me problem. I don't think it's really a flaw in the game that needs addressed, just a design philosophy thing that makes it a game where higher difficulties aren't going to work for me like they will with other people.
I've never actually managed to get an Our Father run, and it's really sad! I want to blow up all the things
One thing it's worth understanding with the game is that card draw is nice, but card selection is more important. Where is where cards with Draw 1/Discard 1 come in. You have by the standards of these games such a tiny deck that cycling your deck repeatedly is a very real thing you can and should be doing.
Also! Card draw is energy in this game, which makes it really fucking weird compared to a lot of games. Like in Slay the Spire energy generators are no good without card draw, and card draw is pretty weak without energy generation. In this game though, anything that gets you a card without it being a voltaile can make you energy (This makes cards with Rebound or Recur effecitvely be cheaper than you think - because you can always play a rebound card and THEN purge it if you want, or purge the recurs.)
If you're going super hard on card draw though (And you should!), there's a couple of ways to make it work.
One: Voltailes. Discarding voltaile cards just destroys them. This seems like "okay, but why"... but you can do things with The Hidden for instance where you draw a bunch of cards while having a bunch of hidden blades in hand (and they're always voltaile), and then you pitch all the hidden blades, and purge what you dont need that you drew so you can play what you do need. Hidden's Juggle even clues you in on this - it creates a voltaile hidden blade when played, perfect for pitching. Hidden in general is really good at this, just because Juggle exists and can easily end up as a draw 4, discard 4 (Upgrade and a blue stone), so you can cycle your entire deck very very rapidly.
Two: Recursion. Daughter has ready access to a bunch of recursion, but the other classes have it too, and there's at least a couple of classless recursion cards, as well as the very powerful Ballet Shoes rare relic for the Daughter. If you pitch a bunch of cards you can use recursion to grab back the one you actually want.
Three: Value. Daughter's again the best at this thanks to Void Coins, Shed and Haunted Familar, but a lot of cards have the Discard keyword on them. This is what makes stuff like Daughter's Dark Dance card really strong - It recurs one and then you have to discard? What's the point? Well, for one, you can pull back something you need this turn and then throw something you dont. But you can also use it to do things like pull back a Distraction+ with a black stone in it, then instantly discard it... scoring you Distractions big chunky block, and creating a free volatile copy you can pitch to whatever.
There are plain draw card effects in the game though - Flask of Whiskey is a rare relic that does it (+1 a turn, no strings), and Drinking Alchol is an elite relic (+2 per turn, but you earn 2 less energy per turn... aka, you only get energy on your starting turn unless you're overcharged. Still crazy strong though). Enlightned draws a card every 3rd time he goes Zen, and it's possible to enter zen repetadly in a single turn with the right deck (It's easiest when you've got the "Play 2+ cards for 0 by reducing your Zen count by the cost so you can exit zen within 2 card plays"
Some other stuff to watch out for includes things like Daughter's Power Draw (Draws 1, but it's an attack so can be Deathtouched), or one of the Enlightned cards has Follow up: Draw 1 on it. Manuver has draw 1 too, which is great.
...i dont think any of this helps your oh god too much information thing, but it hopefully provides some advice.
Posts
Ha...
ha...ha...ha...ha.... *twitch*
Congrats!
I just cracked I25 too. Which then unlocked I30. Ow. my brain. No literally, Ow, i have a headache after that run.
Also @MNC Dover here's an example of the sort of routing you can do in the game.
I'll post a VoD of the final fight later (I'm mostly just posting the Void fights because they're the most fun and also because these runs are so frigging long even when they dont include me getting u pto do stuff because ia m a terrible streamer)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Another quick question I can't find an answer online for: what's the deal with Poison? I've ran into a few enemies that inflict stacks of poison on me. The way it reads is that I should take damage equal to my poison, then lose one stack. In my last run, I was poisoned a few times, but never took damage. I thought maybe the poison was added to the damage stack, but that didn't appear to be the case, unless I was just missing it.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Red's the same - if you click a green tile again, it goes red. (I should submit a suggestion around Colorblindess for that, actually...) - i usually use it to mark alternate paths, or stuff i want to remember as esp important here. In that case, the red was... mostly misclicks i think, but you can see the empty tile being used to corner.
Edit: I'm going live btw! Link in my siggy as per usual.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
It makes total sense having had it happen, but losing a run for it definitely sucks. Enlightened's timing against Bloat enemies is really shady. Normally dealing future sight damage before threat resolving is to your benefit. However suddenly dealing yourself 15 damage by accident (or more if you're vulnerable, ooops) when you weren't expecting it is very sad trombone.
The game is, at the very least, incredibly consistent, and that is excellent. It means things like this are definitely on me for not thinking them through. But at the same time, there are so many things the game wants me to think through that ... please, man. :P
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
I have some ideas myself, but feedback is always great
I beat i30 by the by
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Up next, the Monk looking dude.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Find your inner zen
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Bleed deck actually really likes combo by start if it can, just because For the Throat is such a strong pay off to having combo (something like 28 bleed if you have a max combo stack and it's upgraded?)
In general though, your starter decks are just that - starter. You can and should feel free to pivot dramatically from them based on what the floor's giving you.
Like this piece of absolute lunacy!
Yeah, i got +5 insatiability of that win and am making a convincing argument that Gusher should be a rare, because it's just a bit too silly. Decklist over here, but you can basically tell it was "Play gusher while at high energy and full combo, win"
Mostly what they define at the start is if you're playing a vast tempo style (Blades, Soultithe, Shii) or a more slow, build up style (Bleed, Corruption, Future Strike).
Speaking of, here's the VoD for my previous i25 win as Daughter. Having both Nest Egg (put ten Void Coins in your discard pile at start of battle) and Nest Egg (When you shuffle your deck the first time, gain 2 corruption per affliction shuffled) is such a fun combo. Lead to killing the Void with a 37+499 damage grasp, which is V. reasonable and fair.
I35 is just thrashing me so far though, it's really hard to get off the ground as Corruption Daughter I find. Once she gets going, she's a beast, but early on, oof. Though i'm now officially past the point where perfect play can guarantee wins according to most people, so hey!
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Did the deed as a Enlightened Shii/Echo Wall build. Things would punch me and then their heads would explode. Also i got to cast Run Ragged 6 times in one fight off a single copy, so that was very fun. VoD of the Void blowing up over here.
And then put i37 down as well with a Hidden/Blade build. Really fun combo shenanigan's using Ceaseless to create more combo and having 3 (That's right, 3) Blackstoned Quickness in the deck for even more combo, while having a ton of card draw and cycling... and energy generation. Also the most upgrades I've ever gotten thanks to flask of purple juice. Ended up being close thanks to a "I bet it works like X, but i hope it dosent... dammit."
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
I actually think the monk is kind of absurd.
Shii just steam rolls through things early and it's only held back by not having vuln scaling (and thank fuck for that). And future strike has absurd scaling with fatigue - the longer a fight good the more damage he does
His initial block cards are very weak, but he's got lots of very good common block cards as well as some powerful relics like the kneepads. Also better future
Zen gives him energy and card draw with his relic, which is also crazy. He's just a very powerful class
Really the only class I don't like on impossible is Corruption daughter. She's just too slow to get going and feels more like a rolling pebble than a rolling Boulder.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
My only monk run did the other archetype
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Monk's archetype just seems strange to me. Like, what's the point of Future stuff?
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
Like, the deck I won with last night (as not-at-all silly as some of the ones Zombie has posted as it was) was just throwing out Opposing Force with Ghost and recurring cards, so I would have like 10 stacks of Echo Wall plus the relic that made them take Shii damage equal to the Echo Wall damage. When enemies are punching _themselves_ for 30-60 damage a turn, you only need to do so much work yourself before everything explodes. :P
I think my biggest hurdle with Enlightened is that they have good access to recursion, but their actual draw seems very weak, and that makes it kind of unintuitive to juggle all the things they seem to want to do. Both starting spells also feel comparatively weak to the all the others. Not that they aren't capable of doing a bunch of shit, but they aren't as naturally directed in how you play them as the Hidden or Daughter.
Shii is just good anyway. It's damage that can never be healed, doesn't trigger most abilities (isn't damage, isn't a debuff), and passes on to other enemies for free in multi-enemy fights. There are definitely other things that make it even better, but doing Shii damage is - I think - the best damage you can actually deal?
As mentioned above, I think Echo Wall is good if you can spam it. I find it hard to reliably put down when you want it if you only have one source, but if you can build a few stacks it becomes very reliable "offense" in a lot of late-run fights.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
As to things... Monk has a lot of expensive cards, yes. Foresight let's you make them cost 0, and zen discounts them. So abusing his expensive cards involves a lot of learning how to abuse Zen and other forms of recursion.
For instance, Clarity's upgrade gives it Rigged - always in your starting hand and ontop of your deck when you shuffle. Put a Black in it and you've got spend 2 energy, get 2 ability chain and discount 2 cards on every cycle of your deck... Before you add in recursion like Better Future (add a blue some to better future+ for maximum shenanigans).
Remember that monks relic draws a card every 3rd time he enters zen - so it's often better to have ways to enter zen easily. 0 cost attacks with a black stone, cards that give Chain, there a relic that starts you with ability chain 1 every turn, and another that let's you keep unused chain from turn to turn
You have the right of it with Shii. Shii has some very good uncommons like escalate that allow it to ramp very fast. See here.. Yes, i am infact about to put 784 shii onto someone in a single cast, this is a very reasonable thing to be doing.
It also benefits a lot from things that are multi application, as every stack of Fatigue automatically adds +1 shii every time you add it. Shiis starter card having opener: ghost makes it an amazing place to put your yellow, red, blue and purple void stones if you've nothing better
Plus you can do stuff like focus minions in a boss fight with Shii and kill the boss in the process.
Echo wall is all about timing. A dedicated echo wall deck can have it up all the time (stocisim+ for example, esp with a black stone) but it's not meant to be a mainstay of damage - it's something that compliments your shii and future strike.
Future Strike is incredibly powerful, but it's a slow ramp up. Did you see the ten minutes of punching VoD I posted? That's a good example. The thing about future strike is a: it benefits from Vulnerability (unlike shii) and b: fatigue multiples it rather than adds to it. So if you play a future strike seven on a guy with 1 fatigue... You do 14 future strike. 2 fatigue? 21.
The other thing is that Shii and Future strike compliment each other. Shii can be thought of as lowering the enemy's max health... and Future Strike accelerates them hitting the brain explosion point. There's even a Future Strike uncommon that plays into this hard, having a bonus trigger or two for being played on an enemy with no future strike
@ArcticLancer The trick is to find good blue stone sources, and just abuse the Recursion/Zen entrance to get their card draw going. I was playing a deck just earlier tonight (didnt record, sadly) that manged to have drawn most of it's deck by turn 2. Better Future+ is a really strong trick, for instance. As is Ghost Stone Swift kick+ or Ghost Stone Mind Blast.
I know i posted it yesterday, but this VoD is a really good example of how you can smoothly mix Echo Wall, Future Strike and Shii into a head-vaporizing drink. Note the fatiuge stacking so that when i future strike/shii it just does crazy things.
I'm actually trying to snooze now (Stupid insomnia), but i can do a more tutorial focused stream tomorrow if you're keen, and explain what i'm trying to do and why. I need to do more monk anyway, gotta finish mastering his cards (I have all of daughter's mastered!)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
After how burned we both seemed to be feeling from Roguebook, I'm really happy i haven't lead you astray with this. Definitely agree it's not the fastest game though, when I see a run come in under an hour and a half i'm like "Wow, that was fast!"
Also tip: void stones (that aren't green or black) like cards with rebound or ghost a whole lot.
Surefoot+ (a classes common) with a red stone/yellow stone for instance is just a whole pile of block and/or rage. Hidden can do all sorts of bullshit with swift cards and stones
Black stones are best in buffs or stuff that you want to cast twice - build up, quickness and many many buff cards (black stone counter for instance - 6 block on every attack? I'll take that and demand another).
Ghost walk and Spirit walk are great examples of "abuse this with stone" cards - they both loose inert when upgraded to memory. Red stone spirit walk and blue stone ghost walk are amazing finisher cards
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
None of this is obvious on first-blush. You kind of have to run into these things to know what's out there. It's part of what makes watching videos difficult - I will see you do these big combos and I can't understand any of it. I'll be sitting there going "Why did you get 3 copies of that? Why is everything free right now? How come the scaling is higher than I expect?" It's still cool to see things explode, but I feel I have to learn by doing in this one.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
It's the answer to everything in this game.
The game definitely has big "go big!" Energy but it works because you stich these combos together out of a thousand pieces. It feels like a lot of decks end up in dead branch corruption land from slay the spire, but it's because of all the individual bits coming together.
Like one of those VoDs I linked... I have Run Ragged with black stone. Then I purge it, use another card to create copies ontop of my deck, then get into Zen somehow deep I can play them for free via a relic that let's me trade zen plays for energy cost. Then rug all of them played I've setup massive scaling from fatigue and everything else clicks into place
One tip on card draw is that remember you can use cycling as card draw as long as you're hurling volatile cards or afflictions... And the game sure does like throwing afflictions at you
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
Plus you can get stuff like Haunted Familiar and Shed and then they're scaling you while giving you block. Or that once power that expels and then creates copies the first time you discard can abuse them.
Stuff like Masochist+ or Passage payment+ loves them, the My Father rare (which wants you to rapidly cycle your deck to get a 1 cost 400% corruption attack), things like that. To post yet another VoD you can see how I use them in this run below to create a ton of block and corruption for me (note that I play very few if any block cards just because I'm generating so much from void coins)
https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1092285445
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
One VoD as promised!
If you wanna see just the boss fight, it's here.
The decklist is in the spoiler below.
So, let's talk strategy of this deck!
It was a pretty typical future strike deck offensively - it leaned on having Back in Time up to get lots of extra Future Strike out whenever it applied slow to things. This eventually lead to it's game winning combo - Black stone into Delay, then using Echoes of the Past to duplicate Delay. Every cast of Delay would throw down 8 future strike minimum... multiplied by fatigue. Ontop of stacking slow, which crippled enemie's damage output. Clarity was used to let me play my big expensive cards without issue - most notably Prophesied, which was just a nice pile of Shii to dump on things.
Block was generated mostly via having a comb of Flame Shield, Performance Enhancer's and Padded Robes - all elite relics. Flameshield gave Block = Turn every turn, Padded Robes gave Block 2 + 1 per fatigue, and Perfomance Enhancers increases any block/delay block gained by 1. Which gave this deck a very tidy amount of free block every turn, and made it easy to mop up incidental damage with Maneuver, Cohesion & Surefoot, or lean on Outpace and Enough when I needed big chunky block. I only lost the perfect on the void by a single point of damage, which tells you a lot about how good this deck was at cleaning damage efficiently.
Draw came from having Stotic Mask (Enter zen, draw a card) and Drinking Alcohol (Draw 2 cards every turn, but you gain 2 less energy every turn. It's basically this game's snecko eye). I uhmed and uhhd a lot about Drinking Alcohol, but decided that since i'd gotten Power Ward from the first boss (Delay Rage and Overcharge 2 on a 4 turn cooldown), had Enough, and Clarity, and knew i'd be able to grab Pickled Hand (2nd card you purge in a turn is worth 2 energy) from the lost and found, i could make it work... and boy, did it work.
Picking up a couple of nice 0 cost attack commons from the Well going into act 3 also really helped out, making it that much easier to hit zen and and goto town.
Haste was a nice damage multiplier - something i could have done maybe is have Haste and Timeless in the deck, which would have basically been triple damage. One big weakness the deck had is only having a single source of Vulnerable and not a reliable one at that. Requiring opener to get vulnerable is pretty limiting!
Hope this helps with learning the game!
Edit: to give some idea of how good its game winning combo was - at the end of the void fight you can see delay inflicting 16 future strike... 5 times and doing 16 damage 5 times.
Oh and one slow. And some delay block.
All for 1 energy.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
At least one of which i'm claiming responsibility for - Gusher is now a Rare card, instead of Uncommon. Well deserved! (Gusher was the card that i used to obliterate the game in that "I cannot cary all these blades" post).
Notably, Corruption Daughter has a big change - Void Kiss is no longer a get 4 corruption, expel card. It's now a 2 cost attack that gives you 2 corruption and does a punchy 12 damage. This is a real start to helping out Corruption Daughter's early game. Though she's still pretty frigging slow.
Still! I managed to down I45 with her
The double egg relic combo is very strong. Most of this deck was trying to get enough death strike while casting Blind Fury, and then dropping a massive Cursed Scythe onto everything. Or in the Void's case, using the fact that it attacks you for so much and this deck's block was honestly pretty awful to let me cast Bloodbath... for over 600 damage. (Bloodbath is damage = threat. when you start stacking rage and deathstrike and vuln...).
Bathe in your own blood, Dad!
One thing i'm learning is that in high impossible you've really got to lean on potions to get through. None of this drink THE ENTIRE RAINBOW vs the Void nonsense.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Raw text below. Some big stuff here!
Good news, and bad news.
Bad news is - today's patch will be the last until Aug 16th.
Good news is, the Aug 16th patch is going to be worth the wait. More details to come during the next few weeks about what's happening, and what's coming up!
Alright, enough vague threats of enjoyment - lets move onto patch details.
Firstly, let me apologize for no patch last week. Truth is, it was a hectic week - with my Wacom tablet going down and having to be sent off to repairs. That threw me behind a little, and whilst I got the patch up onto the Beta Branch - I wasn’t happy with a few of the things, so I kept it in incubation for another week. Let’s hit the major points.
Volatile Cards NOW DISCARD
So, this has been a pain point for a while now. Discard effects on Volatile cards. The rule has always been that Discard effects on Volatile cards won't trigger, because they're Destroyed, not Discarded.
Truth is, this just kept catching players out (old and new). So its gone. Volatile Cards will "discard" (triggering effects and artifacts etc) and then be Destroyed once processed, just like you assume they would! Sorry about taking so long on this one, it was an unnecessary step of sillyness!
New UI Stuff!
So I’ve been working through booting out some of the old, plain, reused UI for events and giving each one its own due flavour and joy. The Stone Smith and the Soul Merchant have gotten their treatment up first, quick snapshot below! To be honest, there's still a few minor things I’d like to tweak, but mostly I really think it adds a lot more flavour and I can’t wait to paint up more!
Card Balances
So it was time for another card balance pass! You’ll see a big list below of all the card changes that happened. As always, this is kept an eye on and a lot of this is coming from feedback in the Discord. Big thanks to all those who have helped in this regard.
Some standouts include Void Kiss, moving its way to an Attack, which makes you less sad to get Death Strike and Red Void Stones in a Corruption start.
Also Swift Hand has ... gotten pretty spicy!
Thanks everyone for all the positive support as always. I’m excited for what's to come mid-next month, I’ll start sharing more details when I can!
Thanks to all who have left a review so far for Vault! Nearing that 300 reviews mark which is super exciting! If you haven’t already, it means a lot and really helps the game grow and reach new audiences. Also, remember to use the code Steam250Love at the Card Back unlocks screen to unlock the thank you Card Back I released a little while back!
Thanks everyone - a full list of notes will be below!
All for now!
- Josh
Full(ish) Patch Notes
Changes
- Volatile cards now trigger Discard effects! The world is right again.
- Changed the highlight colour for when marking card rewards on the map, for better visibility
- The Deshelved Salesman now will offer 5 items to choose from.
- Reduced the cost of the Elite Artifacts at Lost and Found.
- Shop till you drop with the Spell Child - he also now shows 3 spells.
- Blue Juice is now a starting "Loot the Dead" choice
- Can now minimise the opening choice, as well as the Cursed Item (rather than the moving option of times past)
- New Draft Screen (when chosen at the Well of Stars)
- New UI for the Soul Collector and the Rune Merchant!
Card Changes
- Flaying Flesh - Damage and Bleed changed to 10(13) and 4(5), but it's now Swift instead of Heavy
- Meditation - The base card now says "Start next turn in Zen," with the upgrade making you also immediately enter Zen.
- Careful Advance - Opener now also does Delay Block 6.
- Deliberate - Block increased to 9(13).
- Beard Knot and Silver Medal - Increased Knot bonus from 100% to 250%, and Medal bonus from 20% per stack to 50% per stack. More Void Stones for everyone!
- Muted - Now costs 0. The upgrade makes it produce upgraded Silent Shivs instead of Rigging.
- Battleplan and Collection Plate - Artifacts with these names renamed not to overlap with the names of cards (to Playbook and Meagre Offering)
- Bladestorm - Applies 1 more Bleed.
- Apprentice's Blade - Now produces Volatile Hidden Blades, like all other Blade generators.
- Untrustworthy Coinpurse - Gives 45 essence now. Makes a profit! Sometimes!
- Hidden Blade - Upgrading it adds "Apply Bleed 1" for any enterprising smiths out there.
- Cracked Sundial - 40 is replaced with 24. That's the amount of hours that exist!
- Chalice of Evil - Every 7th changed to every 8th.
- Death's Touch - The upgrade doesn't increase damage any more.
- Build Up - Doesn't do damage anymore.
- Surprise Attack - Does 9(15) damage baseline and 18 bonus now. Surprise.
- Bolster - Block increased to 12(17).
- Anemia - Block increased to 9(12).
- Forgotten Fuse - Changed from 4th turn to every even turn, and includes your Destroy pile now.
- Unrelenting - Deals 2 less damage, but gives 1 more Combo.
- Haste - Now costs 2 unupgraded, and the upgrade adds Chain 1.
- Timeless - Now costs 0 unupgraded.
- Tax Evasion - Changed to a 1(0) cost Expel that Blocks equal to Soultithe and Delay Blocks equal to half.
- Underhanded Tactics - Deals 1 less damage on upgrade.
- Gusher has moved to Rare.
- Void Kiss is now and Attack, that deals damage and gains Corruption.
- Swift Hand has changed. Now is: Add 1 Volatile copy of a Swift card from deck or discard to hand. Combo 1. (No) Expel.
- Self-Inflicted Agony now stacks.
Bugs
- Butchers Blade will no longer be eaten by Hidden Blades
- Can now preview upgrades at the Drafting page
- Fixed a bug that occured when playing Thinning Out with 1 card left in your Deck.
- Fixed lots of bugs with Volatile cards and sneaking into decks.
- Fixed a bug with Reverb causing too much Fatigue
- Fixed a bug at the card draft screen, and it disappearing when checking your deck.
- Fixed some bugs with card artwork previews for monsters
- Fixed a very rare bug which would cause you to skip Elite fights
- Kingdom Come and Who Thrives in Evil will now play ball with the Blood Library Artifacts
Stuff that stands out to me:
Meditation is a real good rare now, it's very strong if you can land an upgrade on it. 2 turns of zen for 2 energy? Hell yes. Haste likewise is a very potent card now if you can get an upgrade on it - Chain is just so good, and it's a damage amp inherently... Timeless i need to play with, but it seems good? Gives you a way to convert future strike into shii for free, which has it's uses... or upgrading it turns it into a potent damage amp.
Flaying Flesh is actually worth drafting now! It was pretty weak before. Likewise Forgotten Fuse is actually a real consideration now for Volatile blade/shiv decks. Unrelenting getting Combo 2 is also really good.
Swift hand just seems crazy? But i havent actually played it yet. But still, there's a lot of good swift cards and pulling a copy of them into your hand is really strong.
Muted seems spicy. Gusher being rare is "Thank fuck for that".
Build up and Death's touch got deserved nerfs. Bolster's actually worth casting for it's block now, so that's nice. Tax Evasion is actually super strong - being able ot go "okay, i have 50 fucking soultithe, so i'll block all of that and get delay block for half of that..." is great, and the fact it expels could actually be a benefit. generally if you're at 50+ soultithe you're either about to win the fight or implode dramatically.
Self-Inflicted Agony stacking is yay (I bug reported that!). You can actually blackstone it, or have it benefit from the Void Champion blessing that dupes cards!
Dwarven Beard knot and Silver Medal might actually be pickable now. I'm pretty suspicious of Silver medal still tho'
It remains funny to me that Deshelved Salesman is apparently now his official name instead of Disheveled salesman. (We joke on the discord that Josh's patch notes sometimes need patch notes)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
(I also joined the server to report a bug - Blessing of Energy replaced my starting energy instead of overcharge adding to it >_< ) I realized I am a dumb~ Nothing new there.
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
We're fine, everything is fine. (Deck was creating a massive amount of Void coins, then drawing them to create rage from Corrupt Heart. Add in Deathstrike so we're hitting twice and the enemies being vuln and BIG NUMBER)
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
While it was a powerful loop, it was incredibly dull. Every turn was basically the same thing. Still not too sure about Monk guy. I'll try his other starting build and see if it's more interesting.
Of course, none of this matters if I don't stop playing late at night after the kids are asleep. I was so tired that I kept nodding off with my hand on the mouse, causing me to Purge cards on accident. :biggrin:
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
The big thing that you care about your starter deck for is it's spell (Corruption Daughter, Blade Hidden, and Martial Enlightend have very, very good spells), and any notable commons they come with - Quickness, Grasp, Spirit Shield (it has a very strong upgrade), stuff like that.
Actually, quick primer on Grasp: Grasp is good because it's a 1 cost attack that does both raw damage and scaling corruption damage if you can hit the Threshold of seven. It also inflicts soultithe on you, so you get closer to that threshold. Fun fact: If you cast a grasp at 6 soultihe, you'll get it's threshold effect due to how it's effects are ordered.
Anyway, the important bit with Grasp is that because it's an attack, it can be affected by both Rage and Deathstrike. Rage is in a lot of the part's of daughters kit. Deahtstrike likewise. Rage is a damage boost that usually comes in 25% chunks. Deathstrike makes an attack go off twice as long as you have a deathstrike value = the card's cost.
Add in vulnerability (Which is... 50% base damage increase, and Daughter has a buff that makes it 75% base iirc), and you can get actual multiplicative damage where you have grasps going off for 500 damage easy. Or in the picture i posted above, Opportunity doing 1.3k. Stacked modifiers are strong.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
While I really dig a lot of the mechanics,
there is an amount of planning I'm able to do/enjoy doing, and this game asks for more than that. I'm generally more of a make the best of what happens gamer.
Personally, i'm not a big fan of Dragon egg - the Meteors are powerful (If i'm remebering correctly, they're a 3(5?) cost heavy attack that does 30 damage to one target, and splashes ten to the others, with "Purge: deal ten damage".) But it inflates your deck to 22 cards, and i feel like all the classes have something better to be doing than casting a 30 damage attack for 3. Might just be something you bite into early game? But 5 fights is a lot.
@Tofystedeth Any particular pain points on the planning? Josh (the dev) seriously loves feedback, so i can always harvest this and pass it along - it might not be agreed with mind (The game has a very clear vision, which i really respect), but he's always interested. You can also always join the discord (Check the patch notes!) and put feedback there yourself.
I do find that success really relies on you taking stock of your starter booster and your possible routes (And even your void stones that are coming) at impossible before you make any moves.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Just started the second floor and hoping to find some Shii cards/relic stuff to really break the deck. Everything so far has just been sort of ho-hum in terms of strength and synergy.
Legends of Runeterra: MNCdover #moc
Switch ID: MNC Dover SW-1154-3107-1051
Steam ID
Twitch Page
But again that's a me problem. I don't think it's really a flaw in the game that needs addressed, just a design philosophy thing that makes it a game where higher difficulties aren't going to work for me like they will with other people.
I'm currently a zombie myself, but it is a lot of fun. It throws a lot at you, but I have most of the mechanics down.
I did one run on Normal so far, got to that last boss and was literally one turn from killing him. I was really enjoying that 2nd char.
Yesss, goood, more people to lock in the Void FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER.
I've never actually managed to get an Our Father run, and it's really sad! I want to blow up all the things
One thing it's worth understanding with the game is that card draw is nice, but card selection is more important. Where is where cards with Draw 1/Discard 1 come in. You have by the standards of these games such a tiny deck that cycling your deck repeatedly is a very real thing you can and should be doing.
Also! Card draw is energy in this game, which makes it really fucking weird compared to a lot of games. Like in Slay the Spire energy generators are no good without card draw, and card draw is pretty weak without energy generation. In this game though, anything that gets you a card without it being a voltaile can make you energy (This makes cards with Rebound or Recur effecitvely be cheaper than you think - because you can always play a rebound card and THEN purge it if you want, or purge the recurs.)
If you're going super hard on card draw though (And you should!), there's a couple of ways to make it work.
One: Voltailes. Discarding voltaile cards just destroys them. This seems like "okay, but why"... but you can do things with The Hidden for instance where you draw a bunch of cards while having a bunch of hidden blades in hand (and they're always voltaile), and then you pitch all the hidden blades, and purge what you dont need that you drew so you can play what you do need. Hidden's Juggle even clues you in on this - it creates a voltaile hidden blade when played, perfect for pitching. Hidden in general is really good at this, just because Juggle exists and can easily end up as a draw 4, discard 4 (Upgrade and a blue stone), so you can cycle your entire deck very very rapidly.
Two: Recursion. Daughter has ready access to a bunch of recursion, but the other classes have it too, and there's at least a couple of classless recursion cards, as well as the very powerful Ballet Shoes rare relic for the Daughter. If you pitch a bunch of cards you can use recursion to grab back the one you actually want.
Three: Value. Daughter's again the best at this thanks to Void Coins, Shed and Haunted Familar, but a lot of cards have the Discard keyword on them. This is what makes stuff like Daughter's Dark Dance card really strong - It recurs one and then you have to discard? What's the point? Well, for one, you can pull back something you need this turn and then throw something you dont. But you can also use it to do things like pull back a Distraction+ with a black stone in it, then instantly discard it... scoring you Distractions big chunky block, and creating a free volatile copy you can pitch to whatever.
There are plain draw card effects in the game though - Flask of Whiskey is a rare relic that does it (+1 a turn, no strings), and Drinking Alchol is an elite relic (+2 per turn, but you earn 2 less energy per turn... aka, you only get energy on your starting turn unless you're overcharged. Still crazy strong though). Enlightned draws a card every 3rd time he goes Zen, and it's possible to enter zen repetadly in a single turn with the right deck (It's easiest when you've got the "Play 2+ cards for 0 by reducing your Zen count by the cost so you can exit zen within 2 card plays"
Some other stuff to watch out for includes things like Daughter's Power Draw (Draws 1, but it's an attack so can be Deathtouched), or one of the Enlightned cards has Follow up: Draw 1 on it. Manuver has draw 1 too, which is great.
...i dont think any of this helps your oh god too much information thing, but it hopefully provides some advice.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Don't take it unless you have a deck it works really well with somehow.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile