the cost randomization is only when you DRAW the card. Abuse this knowledge to your heart's content because there's a lot of ways to break things with it and it's very funny.
Every time I've gotten a Snecko Eye I've died on the act boss I got the Snecko Eye because I, at some point in every fight, draw a whole hand of cards that were modified to 3 and I just got fucking blasted.
That's probably down to poor drafting.
Mathematically, Snecko Eye is absurd. Simply drawing 2 extra cards per turn is immense, and changes a number of times (consider how fast your deck cycles for one - a twenty card deck takes 4 turns to see everything by default, while a snecko deck will see everything and a repeat on turn 3).
But also the cost randomization means than on average you play 3.5 cards per turn vs the 3 cards of a 3 energy deck.
Snecko saves you upgrades as well a lot of upgrades just decrease the cost and with snecko, that's pointless.
"on average" is doing some heavy lifting there. The exact point raided was that outliers exist and any deck that relies on snecko is particularly prone to getting hosed by them. Either a hand full of 2 and 3 cost cards on a really aggressive enemy turn, or a bunch of card rewards that aren't higher cost, or even a decent hand ruined because the one card you really needed to fire it all off was a three cost and a-whoops.
Not liking that sort of randomness is entirely fine and is, in fact, the point that was raised. Telling someone that "mathematically you should have been fine" is pretty cold comfort.
Every time I've gotten a Snecko Eye I've died on the act boss I got the Snecko Eye because I, at some point in every fight, draw a whole hand of cards that were modified to 3 and I just got fucking blasted.
That's probably down to poor drafting.
Mathematically, Snecko Eye is absurd. Simply drawing 2 extra cards per turn is immense, and changes a number of times (consider how fast your deck cycles for one - a twenty card deck takes 4 turns to see everything by default, while a snecko deck will see everything and a repeat on turn 3).
But also the cost randomization means than on average you play 3.5 cards per turn vs the 3 cards of a 3 energy deck.
Snecko saves you upgrades as well a lot of upgrades just decrease the cost and with snecko, that's pointless.
"on average" is doing some heavy lifting there. The exact point raided was that outliers exist and any deck that relies on snecko is particularly prone to getting hosed by them. Either a hand full of 2 and 3 cost cards on a really aggressive enemy turn, or a bunch of card rewards that aren't higher cost, or even a decent hand ruined because the one card you really needed to fire it all off was a three cost and a-whoops.
Not liking that sort of randomness is entirely fine and is, in fact, the point that was raised. Telling someone that "mathematically you should have been fine" is pretty cold comfort.
Sure, but the thing is if you're taking snecko eye you need to have a plan to deal with that sort of getting hosed. If you relic swap and get crushed because you landed on snecko, then that sucks, but it will happen, that's the problem with choosing the the relic swap option - it's stupidly, stupidly high variance and it will kick you in the arse sometimes. But clever play and clever drafting can usually mitigate these factors, or even turn them into a strength and the power that snecko offers is absurd. (I'm pretty sure that starting with Snecko is one of the best ways to win the game on A20/heart on any class).
I mean the alternate reply is to just go "Yep, that happens" and i'd much rather talk about stratergy for the game than just "Yep, sometimes you just die when taking snecko" because that's pretty boring
Oh boy I forgot the 3 birds had 4 flight on asc 17 and had no way to deal with them. I even had a whirlwind but didn't get any good energy options on act 1.
I was working towards a really slim deck with rampage+, got peace pipe right at the beginning and warped tongs.
They, Thieves when you've had to take Ectoplasm, and the Dark blob things are the worst. (The dark blobs too. So many runs ended by those little fucks)
I don't mind the dark blobs so much when they don't all decide to hit me for like 2x12 damage on turn 2.
That's why i hate them, because they do that too often. I refer to them as the Welcome Squad for act 3, and they're fucking terrifying on A20. That and Serpent dagger lady have ended far too many act 3 runs.
I've barely touched StS recently, Vault of the Void is consuming all my time - i'm climbing up the Impossible+ ranks in that (A bit closer to Hade's heat system that Spire's ascensions). I'm up to Impossible+40 (Out of a possible 68 or so currently?). Very good game.
Orange Pellets Snecko... interesting! not my favourite combo, but when it works it works. (The issue with it is that it cleanses the randomization... which means your first X hands of cards until you play the combo are stuck with whatever snecko randomized them too.)
Looking at that i'd want Sundial and Clockwork at the very least, and be hoping i have a Berserk in the deck somewhere.
Alas I had no Berserk. I ended up getting sun dial, clockwork, tea set, stone calendar, and goblin horn from that shop. No cards except mayhem picked as I was already pretty bloated.
The good thing about snecko and pellet is if I got good randomization before wiping the random debuff I could headbutt those 0 cost cards back into my draw pile without resetting the cost.
I'm now up to Ascension 10 on every class except the Watcher.
I haven't defeated the heart yet so I can't compare, but it's hard to imagine that there's a more satisfying feeling in this game than defeating the Time Eater with a pure shiv deck.
My god I just curb stomped the heart with ironclad A1. I was just trying to get the trophy and was having terrible luck. Got to the heart twice but couldn't figure out how the fuck to beat the massive damage. Turns out I never actually read the text on entrench and thought it exhausted after doubling block. Snecko with barricade, apotheosis, two flame barriers, two entrenches and my final hit on the heart would have been 400+ without the cap. Damn that was satisfying. Next up is the silent. Probably still going to stick with A1 since you get the increased elites for relics without the extra added difficulty.
I'm now up to Ascension 10 on every class except the Watcher.
I haven't defeated the heart yet so I can't compare, but it's hard to imagine that there's a more satisfying feeling in this game than defeating the Time Eater with a pure shiv deck.
killing time eater with nightmare catalyst before he splits, imo
I cleared the heart with the silent on A1 this morning. Had 4 blade dance+ with 4 accuracy 4+ so they were hitting for 28 plus the 2 starting strength I got from the rest sites. Slap on a burst+ so each dance gave me 8 shivs and I actually managed to hit the hearts damage cap. It was laughably easy. Now can anyone clue me into a good strategy for the defect? It seems like with the ironclad you can use block cards with body slam, or demon form for infinite strength. Silent has poisons and shivs. So what are some good combinations to look out for?
Gamertag: KL Retribution
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
I cleared the heart with the silent on A1 this morning. Had 4 blade dance+ with 4 accuracy 4+ so they were hitting for 28 plus the 2 starting strength I got from the rest sites. Slap on a burst+ so each dance gave me 8 shivs and I actually managed to hit the hearts damage cap. It was laughably easy. Now can anyone clue me into a good strategy for the defect? It seems like with the ironclad you can use block cards with body slam, or demon form for infinite strength. Silent has poisons and shivs. So what are some good combinations to look out for?
Defect has
and combined with
Whenever you play a Power, a random card in your hand costs 0 for the turn.
Mummified Hand is an Uncommon Relic.
Once you start to ramp up your powers, you can star massively stacking doubled powers on top of each other, to the point where you have ten buffers, orbs with +20 focus, and you end every hand with excess energy because so many of your cards end up being effectively free.
The downside is not getting your ramp going quickly enough, either via bad card draw or by running into a boss like the Awakened One, which will scale up along with you.
I cleared the heart with the silent on A1 this morning. Had 4 blade dance+ with 4 accuracy 4+ so they were hitting for 28 plus the 2 starting strength I got from the rest sites. Slap on a burst+ so each dance gave me 8 shivs and I actually managed to hit the hearts damage cap. It was laughably easy. Now can anyone clue me into a good strategy for the defect? It seems like with the ironclad you can use block cards with body slam, or demon form for infinite strength. Silent has poisons and shivs. So what are some good combinations to look out for?
Okay, so... trying to force a stratergy/deck to happen in StS will just be a baaaad time. Fair warning.
THAT OUT OF THE WAY
Generally speaking, Defect wants to solve what it's using to scale, and how to get that into play. Once defect's scaling is online, it tramples stuff - Awoken One hard counters powers? psh, it's only 50 strength, this is fine. (I'm not even joking, i've done that before), behold my infinite block that costs 0 energy to use every turn.
---
Creative AI is incredibly strong. By itself it's almost strong enough to thump A20. Almost, but not quite. Still, if you can stall a fight for long enough, Creative AI automatically wins fights for you because it creates multpicative scaling all on it's lonesome.
So let's talk about that. Defect's big thing is you can combine Orbs with Focus and then stuff like Loop and Capacitor. Having something like Consume taking you down to one orb slot seems bad until you stack loop on it and watch things just fry or crap tons of block get generated.
Loop/Capicator/Source of Focus + Frost Orbs/Lighting Orbs/A dark orb is pretty crazy thing.
Biased Coginition (Often just called Biased Cog) is very strong because it's such a big lump of focus. The focus down sucks, but you can block this with artifact, or cleanse it with Orange Pellets. Conveniently, it's a power so you just need to slam a skill and an attack in the same turn.
If you're going hard on Creative Ai, snecko eye helps a lot to let you draw it and get it in play early. Storm is a good card to put in your deck as well at that point - you wait until you're basically safe/creative Ai has given you a heatsinks and an extra Creative AI or two, play storm and watch things just explode. (Storm is a great example of a payoff/finisher card - it's bad by itself, even actively counter productive but in the right deck it tends to just end fights)
Ball Lighting, Darkness (upgraded ideally), or whatever the 2 cost 10 damage aoe and make a darkness orb card isare all very strong early game options to watch out for. Ball Lightning falls off pretty hard, but the other two can be powerful options throughout the game. Dark Orbs in general benefit a lot from ways to hit them with loop, and a great pay off to a "Turtle behind a wall of frost, then dual cast/multicast a dark orb for Massvie Damage".
IF you have really excessive frost orb generation, Blizzard is a great way to convert this into damage. It really needs an Echo Form to work though, as it's very slow - Echo form speeds up both the creation of frost orbs, and effectively gives it x6 scaling on your frost orbs instead of just x3, making winning a lot more practical.
Echo Form! Just an incredible power - the first card of your turn gets played twice. If you play Echo Form and use it to dupe Echo Form, the first 3 cards of your turn get played twice. All the scaling i've talked about so far? the shenanigan's with loop, Darkness, Blizzard? They go extra nuts with this.
Meteor Strike is a very awkard card until you have a way to break your energy costs (Snecko Eye!). Then it's just incredible. Hyperbeam is a rare i would slam in the early game, as it obliterates a lot of early fights.
Reinforced Body is generally a nice thing to do with excess energy.
Genetic Algorithm is incredibly strong, as it quickly turns into a monster block card - Defect has the best scaling of any character in theory, but is very slow to get it online. Genetic Algorithm can buy you the precious turns needed to get going. Fun fact: if Echo Form doubles it, it gets it's permanent block increase twice. This isnt abuseable at all... *cough*. It's also a great justification to have Strange Spoon.
Someone's probably going to say Claws are good. Do not listen to them, they lie. Okay, so that's not entirely true, but claws take a very specific deck to make work and are generally something of a trap option - they're very slow, and while Infinite Damage sounds cool, you just dont need infinite damage... and they're slooooooow. So slow.
All for One can recur a lot of stuff, and if you have Snecko Eye it recurs anything in your discard pile that got set to 0 cost. This can create infinite loops if you have two Af0s that end up costing 0, or a Hologram+ and AfO... etc.
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Claws are great and all my best Defect games have been claw based
I particularly like pairing them with frost orbs, personally - let the claws be the whole of your damage output, and let defense take care of itself more or less
Yea. Removing cards is the one thing I wish was easier in this game. Make it separate from removing curses or whatever for balance.
The game balance would shatter if removal was easier. Like even if removing curses was separate, you'd still break the game on half because of how powerful removing strikes is, let alone removing defends (defends are easier to make better than strikes, but they're still actually really weak cards)
@furlion all of them can do a20 fine. Watcher is probably the easiest because she generally has the best act 1, aka, mass elite genocide. Which then let's her snowball very aggressively and shore up her weak areas.
I just had a fun accuracy/blade dance/shuriken deck that was stifled by lack of card draw to make things more consistent. Took snecko eye after act 2 just for the extra draw (I had pellets & mummified hand to help) and went on to womp the rest of the run. A20 heart run. Sat on a flex and speed potion for the heart too, really helped.
Posts
too much adrenaline is fatal, unfortunately
pure nightmare nightmare nightmare jorbs
...Oh, i see. Nightmare looping Nightmare and other cards. Yeah, that'll do it.
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the cost randomization is only when you DRAW the card. Abuse this knowledge to your heart's content because there's a lot of ways to break things with it and it's very funny.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
"on average" is doing some heavy lifting there. The exact point raided was that outliers exist and any deck that relies on snecko is particularly prone to getting hosed by them. Either a hand full of 2 and 3 cost cards on a really aggressive enemy turn, or a bunch of card rewards that aren't higher cost, or even a decent hand ruined because the one card you really needed to fire it all off was a three cost and a-whoops.
Not liking that sort of randomness is entirely fine and is, in fact, the point that was raised. Telling someone that "mathematically you should have been fine" is pretty cold comfort.
Sure, but the thing is if you're taking snecko eye you need to have a plan to deal with that sort of getting hosed. If you relic swap and get crushed because you landed on snecko, then that sucks, but it will happen, that's the problem with choosing the the relic swap option - it's stupidly, stupidly high variance and it will kick you in the arse sometimes. But clever play and clever drafting can usually mitigate these factors, or even turn them into a strength and the power that snecko offers is absurd. (I'm pretty sure that starting with Snecko is one of the best ways to win the game on A20/heart on any class).
I mean the alternate reply is to just go "Yep, that happens" and i'd much rather talk about stratergy for the game than just "Yep, sometimes you just die when taking snecko" because that's pretty boring
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Switch: 0293 6817 9891
AMA
How do you feel? Would you use snecko eye as a golfball, or a soccer ball?
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Would you rather fight one duck-sized snecko eye or one hundred snecko eye-sized ducks?
there will be no more questions, thank you
I was working towards a really slim deck with rampage+, got peace pipe right at the beginning and warped tongs.
fucking birbs
They, Thieves when you've had to take Ectoplasm, and the Dark blob things are the worst. (The dark blobs too. So many runs ended by those little fucks)
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That's why i hate them, because they do that too often. I refer to them as the Welcome Squad for act 3, and they're fucking terrifying on A20. That and Serpent dagger lady have ended far too many act 3 runs.
Grats @Athenor Feeling proud, i hope?
I've barely touched StS recently, Vault of the Void is consuming all my time - i'm climbing up the Impossible+ ranks in that (A bit closer to Hade's heat system that Spire's ascensions). I'm up to Impossible+40 (Out of a possible 68 or so currently?). Very good game.
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I've avoided elites in a3 because I was too scared to die before the shop.
This is the result of a starting Hand of Greed which was quickly bottled and upgraded along with a bottled Double Tap.
Looking at that i'd want Sundial and Clockwork at the very least, and be hoping i have a Berserk in the deck somewhere.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
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The good thing about snecko and pellet is if I got good randomization before wiping the random debuff I could headbutt those 0 cost cards back into my draw pile without resetting the cost.
I haven't defeated the heart yet so I can't compare, but it's hard to imagine that there's a more satisfying feeling in this game than defeating the Time Eater with a pure shiv deck.
PSN:Furlion
killing time eater with nightmare catalyst before he splits, imo
Mmmmm... that's some nice poison.
PSN:Furlion
Defect has
and combined with
Whenever you play a Power, a random card in your hand costs 0 for the turn.
Mummified Hand is an Uncommon Relic.
Once you start to ramp up your powers, you can star massively stacking doubled powers on top of each other, to the point where you have ten buffers, orbs with +20 focus, and you end every hand with excess energy because so many of your cards end up being effectively free.
The downside is not getting your ramp going quickly enough, either via bad card draw or by running into a boss like the Awakened One, which will scale up along with you.
Okay, so... trying to force a stratergy/deck to happen in StS will just be a baaaad time. Fair warning.
THAT OUT OF THE WAY
Generally speaking, Defect wants to solve what it's using to scale, and how to get that into play. Once defect's scaling is online, it tramples stuff - Awoken One hard counters powers? psh, it's only 50 strength, this is fine. (I'm not even joking, i've done that before), behold my infinite block that costs 0 energy to use every turn.
---
Creative AI is incredibly strong. By itself it's almost strong enough to thump A20. Almost, but not quite. Still, if you can stall a fight for long enough, Creative AI automatically wins fights for you because it creates multpicative scaling all on it's lonesome.
So let's talk about that. Defect's big thing is you can combine Orbs with Focus and then stuff like Loop and Capacitor. Having something like Consume taking you down to one orb slot seems bad until you stack loop on it and watch things just fry or crap tons of block get generated.
Loop/Capicator/Source of Focus + Frost Orbs/Lighting Orbs/A dark orb is pretty crazy thing.
Biased Coginition (Often just called Biased Cog) is very strong because it's such a big lump of focus. The focus down sucks, but you can block this with artifact, or cleanse it with Orange Pellets. Conveniently, it's a power so you just need to slam a skill and an attack in the same turn.
If you're going hard on Creative Ai, snecko eye helps a lot to let you draw it and get it in play early. Storm is a good card to put in your deck as well at that point - you wait until you're basically safe/creative Ai has given you a heatsinks and an extra Creative AI or two, play storm and watch things just explode. (Storm is a great example of a payoff/finisher card - it's bad by itself, even actively counter productive but in the right deck it tends to just end fights)
Ball Lighting, Darkness (upgraded ideally), or whatever the 2 cost 10 damage aoe and make a darkness orb card isare all very strong early game options to watch out for. Ball Lightning falls off pretty hard, but the other two can be powerful options throughout the game. Dark Orbs in general benefit a lot from ways to hit them with loop, and a great pay off to a "Turtle behind a wall of frost, then dual cast/multicast a dark orb for Massvie Damage".
IF you have really excessive frost orb generation, Blizzard is a great way to convert this into damage. It really needs an Echo Form to work though, as it's very slow - Echo form speeds up both the creation of frost orbs, and effectively gives it x6 scaling on your frost orbs instead of just x3, making winning a lot more practical.
Echo Form! Just an incredible power - the first card of your turn gets played twice. If you play Echo Form and use it to dupe Echo Form, the first 3 cards of your turn get played twice. All the scaling i've talked about so far? the shenanigan's with loop, Darkness, Blizzard? They go extra nuts with this.
Meteor Strike is a very awkard card until you have a way to break your energy costs (Snecko Eye!). Then it's just incredible. Hyperbeam is a rare i would slam in the early game, as it obliterates a lot of early fights.
Reinforced Body is generally a nice thing to do with excess energy.
Genetic Algorithm is incredibly strong, as it quickly turns into a monster block card - Defect has the best scaling of any character in theory, but is very slow to get it online. Genetic Algorithm can buy you the precious turns needed to get going. Fun fact: if Echo Form doubles it, it gets it's permanent block increase twice. This isnt abuseable at all... *cough*. It's also a great justification to have Strange Spoon.
Someone's probably going to say Claws are good. Do not listen to them, they lie. Okay, so that's not entirely true, but claws take a very specific deck to make work and are generally something of a trap option - they're very slow, and while Infinite Damage sounds cool, you just dont need infinite damage... and they're slooooooow. So slow.
All for One can recur a lot of stuff, and if you have Snecko Eye it recurs anything in your discard pile that got set to 0 cost. This can create infinite loops if you have two Af0s that end up costing 0, or a Hologram+ and AfO... etc.
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you need too many "remove cards" events and shop visits to get it to the point where you keep drawing claws often enough for it scale up
I particularly like pairing them with frost orbs, personally - let the claws be the whole of your damage output, and let defense take care of itself more or less
PSN:Furlion
Watcher imo.
Got a starting metamorphosis and made a pretty stupid 0 cost attack deck. Lucked out with girya and wrist blade.
I even ran into time eater at the end but it didn't even matter.
The game balance would shatter if removal was easier. Like even if removing curses was separate, you'd still break the game on half because of how powerful removing strikes is, let alone removing defends (defends are easier to make better than strikes, but they're still actually really weak cards)
@furlion all of them can do a20 fine. Watcher is probably the easiest because she generally has the best act 1, aka, mass elite genocide. Which then let's her snowball very aggressively and shore up her weak areas.
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PSN:Furlion
Man. Rebound, zap+, secret technique+ is a pretty good a1 combo.
Edit: alas it is very subject to card draw order.
Act 3. The achievement was around before the heart was released.
Also having seek+ reboot+ skim+ and master of strategy+ in a smaller deck is really good.