My runs have been a bit spotty recently, i keep overcrowding my decks with junk i probably dont need and then getting killed for it. Defitnely lost a couple of runs recently because i just didnt remove enough stuff.
...and then i got this run, which was just silly as hell
To give an idea of how batshit this run was, the only reason it used a wraith form in the heart fight was to heal... the missing 2 hp. Silent Discard is pretty degenerate when it gets going. and boy did this deck get going. I can only imagine how much stupider it'd have been with Tough Bandages, Tingsha, Abacus and/or Sundial. Icecream would have been nice too.
Any of y’all play Griftlands? I’m trying to get back into it, lots of moving parts though.
I just completed my 3rd path, in fact. Cleared Rook on my very first run with him, went back to clear Sal, and finally got Smith over the finish line this weekend thanks to a graft that gave me a free drink + 1 adrenaline (upgraded to 2) every combat turn.
I don't think I'm going to put a ton of time into it but it's been a fun way to scratch the StS itch with a lot more personality. I haven't explored Brawl yet and have a lot more unlocking to do for all 3 paths.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
If it's like STS unlocks, then I'm not a fan either. I picked up STS on mobile recently, and it was silly finishing a run and unlocking a card that I'd been trying to find all run to make my deck work.
Yeah, the only thing that makes StS's meta progression remotely acceptable is that it's at least over pretty fast and is intended as a complexity gate mechanism.
...It still sucks though!
But at least it's not like Roguebook or Hades where your meta progression a: takes fucking forever, and b: is just pure power being added on, rather than expanding your options. (I like Hades a whole lot, but i hate, hate, hate it's meta progression systems. Meta progression roguelikes sucks in general imho)
I think all three of my characters are right around 50% unlocked
Honestly I don’t understand that sort of progression
I can be trusted to play with all the things! I promise!
Yeah I'm 44%, 29% (not bad for only one run ever), and 42%. It's... not great, especially considering how long a run can be.
Just tried my first Brawl run, with Rook. Another victory (something about him just clicks with me I guess?), about 2 hours or so (toddler distracted me a bit). Now everything up to about the same 42-44%. It's certainly a faster option for grinding out unlocks.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Yeah, the only thing that makes StS's meta progression remotely acceptable is that it's at least over pretty fast and is intended as a complexity gate mechanism.
...It still sucks though!
But at least it's not like Roguebook or Hades where your meta progression a: takes fucking forever, and b: is just pure power being added on, rather than expanding your options. (I like Hades a whole lot, but i hate, hate, hate it's meta progression systems. Meta progression roguelikes sucks in general imho)
StS progression never really bothers me. Like you said, it's over really fast, and I think the only time it ever really hits people is when they play it on multiple devices. For new players, the reduced complexity is helpful a bunch more than it's not.
I think all three of my characters are right around 50% unlocked
Honestly I don’t understand that sort of progression
I can be trusted to play with all the things! I promise!
Yeah I'm 44%, 29% (not bad for only one run ever), and 42%. It's... not great, especially considering how long a run can be.
Just tried my first Brawl run, with Rook. Another victory (something about him just clicks with me I guess?), about 2 hours or so (toddler distracted me a bit). Now everything up to about the same 42-44%. It's certainly a faster option for grinding out unlocks.
I like Rook a lot too, for some reason. I think he has probably the best story, and his mechanics just make sense. There’s a luck element to it but you can mitigate that with the right cards/upgrades.
Sal is the most straightforward but I have more trouble breaking her runs, and Smith is cool and easy to break but I don’t have a lot of practice with him yet.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I think all three of my characters are right around 50% unlocked
Honestly I don’t understand that sort of progression
I can be trusted to play with all the things! I promise!
Yeah I'm 44%, 29% (not bad for only one run ever), and 42%. It's... not great, especially considering how long a run can be.
Just tried my first Brawl run, with Rook. Another victory (something about him just clicks with me I guess?), about 2 hours or so (toddler distracted me a bit). Now everything up to about the same 42-44%. It's certainly a faster option for grinding out unlocks.
I like Rook a lot too, for some reason. I think he has probably the best story, and his mechanics just make sense. There’s a luck element to it but you can mitigate that with the right cards/upgrades.
Sal is the most straightforward but I have more trouble breaking her runs, and Smith is cool and easy to break but I don’t have a lot of practice with him yet.
Smith is easy to break, but a little difficult to actually get results by breaking on a turn-to-turn basis.
The payoff turns are incredible, though, when they land. Or were, it's been a while since I booted Griftlands up.
I ended up leaving a pretty scathing review, but one the devs actually liked because it contained genuine feedback. I really wanna like Backpack hero, but it's encounter design and a bunch of other bits just suuuuuucks and really kills the fun of the game. Curses and Spike enemies are the big stand out "Why is this in the game, what does this add?" for me. It's got the same problem i find a lot of these X-roguelike games have that are trying to exist in the StS space: They're too fucking complicated. StS is genius because it's actually very simple in a lot of it's basic mechanics and even encounter design - everything's very boiled down. But the emergent results are anything but simple!
Anyway, i'm still here, and i'm still slaying spires in this the year of 2022. To think i used to be a wee penguin who didntk now what they were doing in this game, and now... Well.
This was a fun run. I took Upgrade Everything on floor 36 on the grounds that the deck was in theory good, but desperately upgrade starved, so it was that or Apotheosis. Oh, and i took it while at 48/60 hp. Managed to win having only lost seven hp since that point... including the rudest fucking Mango ever (+Max Hp gives you nothing when you cant heal, it's a hell of a penalty).
If you're wondering how many upgrades it got me?
Yeah. I still honestly over stuff my decks, this really could have stood to be a lot smaller.
Shoutout to the Duplication pot from Alchemy letting me double up on After Image. Turns out gaining 2 block every time you throw a shiv and also dealing over 20 damage per shiv makes the heart pretty breezy, who knew?
Had a bunch of other fun wins in recent time, including a few Conjure Blade Watcher runs, a Ironclad run that had 3 Demon Forms by the end of act 1 and then got Snecko eye, and a Berserk/Brimstone/Dark Embrace/Corruption Ironclad deck that was sillyfun.
If overstuffing decks is wrong, I don’t want to be right
It's one of the things I'd like to see a hypothetical Slay the Spire 2 tackle - how did you make it so that card removal isn't so absurdly strong? How do you make thick decks attractive?
You can't just say make card draw more accessible, as that both has all kinds of wishes
Weridness... And has a horrible tendency to make infinites easier if you just lean into the card draw
Much as I might grouse heavily about the game, Roguebook's talent tree idea, where you got to select one of three bonuses every X cards was neat. Hampered, of course, by the fact that like so much of the game, it's execution was shit.
Vault of the Void simply says your deck is size 20 - you can only trade cards in and out, not incease or decrease the size. The backpack mechanic makes this overly complex, but a game that leaned into you have X cards, and to add anything to your deck you have to swap another card out permanently could be very neat.
Another very strong option would be simply doing away with Strikes and Defend, and giving characters smaller but more mechanically distinct decks. This has some risks though, like making infinites easier to get going, which I'd county as a negative
Infinites are fun, but I think they should ideally be very rare - Watcher's Rushdown is a problem card for how easy it enables infinites, as an example.
If overstuffing decks is wrong, I don’t want to be right
It's one of the things I'd like to see a hypothetical Slay the Spire 2 tackle - how did you make it so that card removal isn't so absurdly strong? How do you make thick decks attractive?
You can't just say make card draw more accessible, as that both has all kinds of wishes
Weridness... And has a horrible tendency to make infinites easier if you just lean into the card draw
Much as I might grouse heavily about the game, Roguebook's talent tree idea, where you got to select one of three bonuses every X cards was neat. Hampered, of course, by the fact that like so much of the game, it's execution was shit.
Vault of the Void simply says your deck is size 20 - you can only trade cards in and out, not incease or decrease the size. The backpack mechanic makes this overly complex, but a game that leaned into you have X cards, and to add anything to your deck you have to swap another card out permanently could be very neat.
Another very strong option would be simply doing away with Strikes and Defend, and giving characters smaller but more mechanically distinct decks. This has some risks though, like making infinites easier to get going, which I'd county as a negative
Infinites are fun, but I think they should ideally be very rare - Watcher's Rushdown is a problem card for how easy it enables infinites, as an example.
It's an interesting thing to consider
maybe rather than drafting almost every floor, some floors offer transforms instead, or bonuses to existing cards (ala monster train magic shops)
i keep picking up the claw because i want it to work but it never does and i need to stop because its ruining my Defect runs
i won't stop, though
I've found that a single claw can work nicely if you have all for one or scrape with a lot of other 0 costs. It's not amazing or anything, but i've ended up in plenty of situations where it's an 11+ dmg card in a fight, and its slot wasn't wasted.
It's definitely not a high priority pick, and I always want to build a stupid focus deck on defect because orbs. Always orbs.
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If overstuffing decks is wrong, I don’t want to be right
It's one of the things I'd like to see a hypothetical Slay the Spire 2 tackle - how did you make it so that card removal isn't so absurdly strong? How do you make thick decks attractive?
You can't just say make card draw more accessible, as that both has all kinds of wishes
Weridness... And has a horrible tendency to make infinites easier if you just lean into the card draw
Much as I might grouse heavily about the game, Roguebook's talent tree idea, where you got to select one of three bonuses every X cards was neat. Hampered, of course, by the fact that like so much of the game, it's execution was shit.
Vault of the Void simply says your deck is size 20 - you can only trade cards in and out, not incease or decrease the size. The backpack mechanic makes this overly complex, but a game that leaned into you have X cards, and to add anything to your deck you have to swap another card out permanently could be very neat.
Another very strong option would be simply doing away with Strikes and Defend, and giving characters smaller but more mechanically distinct decks. This has some risks though, like making infinites easier to get going, which I'd county as a negative
Infinites are fun, but I think they should ideally be very rare - Watcher's Rushdown is a problem card for how easy it enables infinites, as an example.
It's an interesting thing to consider
What do you think about just giving everyone Strike and Defend as something they can always do, but then making them crap. So you're incentivized to use the deck over those two baked in options.
i keep picking up the claw because i want it to work but it never does and i need to stop because its ruining my Defect runs
i won't stop, though
I've found that a single claw can work nicely if you have all for one or scrape with a lot of other 0 costs. It's not amazing or anything, but i've ended up in plenty of situations where it's an 11+ dmg card in a fight, and its slot wasn't wasted.
It's definitely not a high priority pick, and I always want to build a stupid focus deck on defect because orbs. Always orbs.
Defect Cheerios is one of my favorite builds when it comes together.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
If overstuffing decks is wrong, I don’t want to be right
It's one of the things I'd like to see a hypothetical Slay the Spire 2 tackle - how did you make it so that card removal isn't so absurdly strong? How do you make thick decks attractive?
You can't just say make card draw more accessible, as that both has all kinds of wishes
Weridness... And has a horrible tendency to make infinites easier if you just lean into the card draw
Much as I might grouse heavily about the game, Roguebook's talent tree idea, where you got to select one of three bonuses every X cards was neat. Hampered, of course, by the fact that like so much of the game, it's execution was shit.
Vault of the Void simply says your deck is size 20 - you can only trade cards in and out, not incease or decrease the size. The backpack mechanic makes this overly complex, but a game that leaned into you have X cards, and to add anything to your deck you have to swap another card out permanently could be very neat.
Another very strong option would be simply doing away with Strikes and Defend, and giving characters smaller but more mechanically distinct decks. This has some risks though, like making infinites easier to get going, which I'd county as a negative
Infinites are fun, but I think they should ideally be very rare - Watcher's Rushdown is a problem card for how easy it enables infinites, as an example.
It's an interesting thing to consider
This was something I mused on when playing Trial of Fire, which has a somewhat interesting combined approach: Characters have a 9-card character deck, and all other cards are added via equipment on your specific body spots. The 9-card deck is a starter deck and as the character levels up you get the chance to swap out an old card for a new one (from a random draw). Equipment modifying the deck is pretty straightforward.
In theory this is a really cool idea that lends itself to easy progression of each character (Trial of Fire has you fielding a team of 3 characters in a hex-grid tactics game), but in practice my main complaint was that so little of the deck is determined by the character cards - literally the cool thing that is unique to each class - that lots of classes feel the same because your deck will be 2/3s to 3/4s equipment with a lot of similar cards shared across them. It's a really disappointing way for things to have turned out feeling so generic ... Still, the core idea is there and I think someone else could do it better.
Strikes and Defends are my least favorite part of StS.
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+1
ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
In my experience, "starter decks" in any deckbuilder are the least enjoyable part of the game, whether that's any of these games or Dominion or Clank! or whatever your weapon of choice is. I appreciate VotV at least starting you off with a booster pack (and a gem? I forget, it's been a while), but it also has the biggest starter decks so ...
What do you think about just giving everyone Strike and Defend as something they can always do, but then making them crap. So you're incentivized to use the deck over those two baked in options.
Bad idea that'll create too many problems with energy gain, any Str/dex equilvent, and squashes the interesting decision space of how do I use these cards this turn? Sorry!
In my experience, "starter decks" in any deckbuilder are the least enjoyable part of the game, whether that's any of these games or Dominion or Clank! or whatever your weapon of choice is. I appreciate VotV at least starting you off with a booster pack (and a gem? I forget, it's been a while), but it also has the biggest starter decks so ...
My take on them personally is that they actually serve a lot of useful purposes in reducing initial complexity and decision trees... but Strikes and Defends are definitely pretty boring. I'm very much in favor of say, giving each character a 10 card starter deck that's unique in various fashions. EG, imagine iron clad has a couple of attacks that are strikes, but do extra damage if the target's vulnerable. Silent starts off with a couple of 0 cost, do X poison attacks (like 2 or 3 poison) and a little dribble of card draw, etcera.
It's definitely not a high priority pick, and I always want to build a stupid focus deck on defect because orbs. Always orbs.
I honestly find the way Orbs work for defect to be a bit boring. Talk to the devs, the orginal concept for the Defect was a Gunslinger, where Orbs only had an effect when evoked. I'd love to see a model that leaned into that idea, as i think channeling and evoking orbs is a lot more fun than "Sit there gettting passive block and charging a dark orb forever"
Hero Realms is a deckbuilder that has 5 different playable characters. Each can be leveled to 12 and 3 of the levels let you upgrade your starting cards to have slight upgrades. In StS, this would be like playing as The Silent and replacing upgrading a Strike to do damage and give +2 Poison or +2 Block.
One way to expand on this further would be to let players spend a resource earned from the prior run to modify their starting deck. The upgrades would last for the next run only, but could be saved up to potentially upgrade your entire starting deck for a super run.
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I would loathe any sort of meta-stuff like upgrading starting cards with stuff from the last run. That sort of thing completely ruins a roguelike for me. I want a game tuned so that each run is balanced in itself. The only reason Slay the Spire's meta-progression doesn't annoy me is that you unlock all the cards almost immediately and you unlock the ascensions pretty quickly.
I would loathe any sort of meta-stuff like upgrading starting cards with stuff from the last run. That sort of thing completely ruins a roguelike for me. I want a game tuned so that each run is balanced in itself. The only reason Slay the Spire's meta-progression doesn't annoy me is that you unlock all the cards almost immediately and you unlock the ascensions pretty quickly.
Yeah any kind of cross-run Progression like that sounds fun, but it quickly turns really toxic. like Really, Really toxic. You'll yeet runs just to earn resources for the next "Real" run, and balancing the game turns into a nightmare, because either the game's balanced around not having meta progression stuff, in which case the meta progression makes it a joke, or it assumes you're going in on that... in which case normal runs are terrible to play.
See also Roguebook which does meta progression and fucking sucks as a result. I mean, the game's issues are many, but it's godawful grindy-arse Meta progression talent tree is one of it's worst sins. I'd go so far as to say the StS's meta progression really isnt - it's a complexity gating mechanism to stop players from overloading wehen they're new to the game.
Anyway, i stand by the fact i'd want ot see each character in a hypoethical StS 2 have a unique starting deck, as i think you can do more that way.
I would loathe any sort of meta-stuff like upgrading starting cards with stuff from the last run. That sort of thing completely ruins a roguelike for me. I want a game tuned so that each run is balanced in itself. The only reason Slay the Spire's meta-progression doesn't annoy me is that you unlock all the cards almost immediately and you unlock the ascensions pretty quickly.
Yeah any kind of cross-run Progression like that sounds fun, but it quickly turns really toxic. like Really, Really toxic. You'll yeet runs just to earn resources for the next "Real" run, and balancing the game turns into a nightmare, because either the game's balanced around not having meta progression stuff, in which case the meta progression makes it a joke, or it assumes you're going in on that... in which case normal runs are terrible to play.
See also Roguebook which does meta progression and fucking sucks as a result. I mean, the game's issues are many, but it's godawful grindy-arse Meta progression talent tree is one of it's worst sins. I'd go so far as to say the StS's meta progression really isnt - it's a complexity gating mechanism to stop players from overloading wehen they're new to the game.
Anyway, i stand by the fact i'd want ot see each character in a hypoethical StS 2 have a unique starting deck, as i think you can do more that way.
That's what kind of turns me off to Hades. Like half my runs are just kinda half assing through the first 2 zones just so i can grab shadow crystals and keys so i can unlock stuff for other runs.
I would loathe any sort of meta-stuff like upgrading starting cards with stuff from the last run. That sort of thing completely ruins a roguelike for me. I want a game tuned so that each run is balanced in itself. The only reason Slay the Spire's meta-progression doesn't annoy me is that you unlock all the cards almost immediately and you unlock the ascensions pretty quickly.
Yeah any kind of cross-run Progression like that sounds fun, but it quickly turns really toxic. like Really, Really toxic. You'll yeet runs just to earn resources for the next "Real" run, and balancing the game turns into a nightmare, because either the game's balanced around not having meta progression stuff, in which case the meta progression makes it a joke, or it assumes you're going in on that... in which case normal runs are terrible to play.
See also Roguebook which does meta progression and fucking sucks as a result. I mean, the game's issues are many, but it's godawful grindy-arse Meta progression talent tree is one of it's worst sins. I'd go so far as to say the StS's meta progression really isnt - it's a complexity gating mechanism to stop players from overloading wehen they're new to the game.
Anyway, i stand by the fact i'd want ot see each character in a hypoethical StS 2 have a unique starting deck, as i think you can do more that way.
That's what kind of turns me off to Hades. Like half my runs are just kinda half assing through the first 2 zones just so i can grab shadow crystals and keys so i can unlock stuff for other runs.
I hacked in the resources to unlock shit in Hades and it 100% improved my experience.
Even with that that though, you still have rooms that give you long term power instead of in-run power, and they combined with every run being around 30 minutes ontop of being seriously physically intense on the hands ended up killing the game for me.
I beat the game, but I never got the epilogue stuff done, and very little of the heat system (I hate select your own difficulty systems, honestly. Much better to have fixed difficulty levels and then accessibility options you can turn on or off).
I feel like in a lot of respects it was something off a victim of it's early access nature - the sheer profusion of content is great when you're waiting for the next big patch, but in it's current state? Eeeeeeesh
I would loathe any sort of meta-stuff like upgrading starting cards with stuff from the last run. That sort of thing completely ruins a roguelike for me. I want a game tuned so that each run is balanced in itself. The only reason Slay the Spire's meta-progression doesn't annoy me is that you unlock all the cards almost immediately and you unlock the ascensions pretty quickly.
Yeah any kind of cross-run Progression like that sounds fun, but it quickly turns really toxic. like Really, Really toxic. You'll yeet runs just to earn resources for the next "Real" run, and balancing the game turns into a nightmare, because either the game's balanced around not having meta progression stuff, in which case the meta progression makes it a joke, or it assumes you're going in on that... in which case normal runs are terrible to play.
See also Roguebook which does meta progression and fucking sucks as a result. I mean, the game's issues are many, but it's godawful grindy-arse Meta progression talent tree is one of it's worst sins. I'd go so far as to say the StS's meta progression really isnt - it's a complexity gating mechanism to stop players from overloading wehen they're new to the game.
Anyway, i stand by the fact i'd want ot see each character in a hypoethical StS 2 have a unique starting deck, as i think you can do more that way.
That's what kind of turns me off to Hades. Like half my runs are just kinda half assing through the first 2 zones just so i can grab shadow crystals and keys so i can unlock stuff for other runs.
I hacked in the resources to unlock shit in Hades and it 100% improved my experience.
Even with that that though, you still have rooms that give you long term power instead of in-run power, and they combined with every run being around 30 minutes ontop of being seriously physically intense on the hands ended up killing the game for me.
I beat the game, but I never got the epilogue stuff done, and very little of the heat system (I hate select your own difficulty systems, honestly. Much better to have fixed difficulty levels and then accessibility options you can turn on or off).
I feel like in a lot of respects it was something off a victim of it's early access nature - the sheer profusion of content is great when you're waiting for the next big patch, but in it's current state? Eeeeeeesh
re select your own difficulty system- aside from it being in order, isn't that just what Ascension is in StS?
I would loathe any sort of meta-stuff like upgrading starting cards with stuff from the last run. That sort of thing completely ruins a roguelike for me. I want a game tuned so that each run is balanced in itself. The only reason Slay the Spire's meta-progression doesn't annoy me is that you unlock all the cards almost immediately and you unlock the ascensions pretty quickly.
Yeah any kind of cross-run Progression like that sounds fun, but it quickly turns really toxic. like Really, Really toxic. You'll yeet runs just to earn resources for the next "Real" run, and balancing the game turns into a nightmare, because either the game's balanced around not having meta progression stuff, in which case the meta progression makes it a joke, or it assumes you're going in on that... in which case normal runs are terrible to play.
See also Roguebook which does meta progression and fucking sucks as a result. I mean, the game's issues are many, but it's godawful grindy-arse Meta progression talent tree is one of it's worst sins. I'd go so far as to say the StS's meta progression really isnt - it's a complexity gating mechanism to stop players from overloading wehen they're new to the game.
Anyway, i stand by the fact i'd want ot see each character in a hypoethical StS 2 have a unique starting deck, as i think you can do more that way.
That's what kind of turns me off to Hades. Like half my runs are just kinda half assing through the first 2 zones just so i can grab shadow crystals and keys so i can unlock stuff for other runs.
I hacked in the resources to unlock shit in Hades and it 100% improved my experience.
Even with that that though, you still have rooms that give you long term power instead of in-run power, and they combined with every run being around 30 minutes ontop of being seriously physically intense on the hands ended up killing the game for me.
I beat the game, but I never got the epilogue stuff done, and very little of the heat system (I hate select your own difficulty systems, honestly. Much better to have fixed difficulty levels and then accessibility options you can turn on or off).
I feel like in a lot of respects it was something off a victim of it's early access nature - the sheer profusion of content is great when you're waiting for the next big patch, but in it's current state? Eeeeeeesh
re select your own difficulty system- aside from it being in order, isn't that just what Ascension is in StS?
Not really.
ASC is a series of stacking modfiers which means that A20 is a consitent experience player to player.
Heat, or Vault of the Void's I-Levels are a series of modifiers that you pick and choose from. One player may go in on traps doing bonus damage, etc. Concviably, the game ends up in the samep lace, objectively it really dosent - in VotV you cant even max out every single modifier without hacking, so one person's I30 game looks very different to another person's.
I dislike this approach because a: i belive it creates a ton of junk data for balancing, and b: It means that part of getting good at the game becomes gaming the diffuclty system and otherwise trying to subvert it. Whereas A20 StS provides you with a bunch of consitent, brutal challneges you need to plan for (i.e you always know you'll see 2/3 Act 3 bosses, so you have to build a deck that wont die to them, etcera)
---
Anyway, i am playing a deck that just picked up Tiny House over Snecko Eye OR Pandora's box, which is... that's a fucking thing that happened. You win a cookie if you can guess what sort of deck.
Anyway, i am playing a deck that just picked up Tiny House over Snecko Eye OR Pandora's box, which is... that's a fucking thing that happened. You win a cookie if you can guess what sort of deck.
Body Slam?
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Anyway, i am playing a deck that just picked up Tiny House over Snecko Eye OR Pandora's box, which is... that's a fucking thing that happened. You win a cookie if you can guess what sort of deck.
Can Defect even make a deck that doesn't slam Snekco Eye?
I'd figure it's a Slient deck relying on 1000 cuts and needing to know it can use several cards a turn to both do damage and survive, but I dunno.
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It only took 510 hours :')
Now for the other 3 classes! You can do it!
My runs have been a bit spotty recently, i keep overcrowding my decks with junk i probably dont need and then getting killed for it. Defitnely lost a couple of runs recently because i just didnt remove enough stuff.
...and then i got this run, which was just silly as hell
To give an idea of how batshit this run was, the only reason it used a wraith form in the heart fight was to heal... the missing 2 hp. Silent Discard is pretty degenerate when it gets going. and boy did this deck get going. I can only imagine how much stupider it'd have been with Tough Bandages, Tingsha, Abacus and/or Sundial. Icecream would have been nice too.
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also can I say that I hate the stupid wheel spinny-game, I keep getting stabbed
like, that little goblin probably stabs me 50% of the time instead of the implied 1/6 chance of the wheel
I just completed my 3rd path, in fact. Cleared Rook on my very first run with him, went back to clear Sal, and finally got Smith over the finish line this weekend thanks to a graft that gave me a free drink + 1 adrenaline (upgraded to 2) every combat turn.
I don't think I'm going to put a ton of time into it but it's been a fun way to scratch the StS itch with a lot more personality. I haven't explored Brawl yet and have a lot more unlocking to do for all 3 paths.
Honestly I don’t understand that sort of progression
I can be trusted to play with all the things! I promise!
Yeah I'm 44%, 29% (not bad for only one run ever), and 42%. It's... not great, especially considering how long a run can be.
...It still sucks though!
But at least it's not like Roguebook or Hades where your meta progression a: takes fucking forever, and b: is just pure power being added on, rather than expanding your options. (I like Hades a whole lot, but i hate, hate, hate it's meta progression systems. Meta progression roguelikes sucks in general imho)
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Just tried my first Brawl run, with Rook. Another victory (something about him just clicks with me I guess?), about 2 hours or so (toddler distracted me a bit). Now everything up to about the same 42-44%. It's certainly a faster option for grinding out unlocks.
StS progression never really bothers me. Like you said, it's over really fast, and I think the only time it ever really hits people is when they play it on multiple devices. For new players, the reduced complexity is helpful a bunch more than it's not.
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I like Rook a lot too, for some reason. I think he has probably the best story, and his mechanics just make sense. There’s a luck element to it but you can mitigate that with the right cards/upgrades.
Sal is the most straightforward but I have more trouble breaking her runs, and Smith is cool and easy to break but I don’t have a lot of practice with him yet.
Smith is easy to break, but a little difficult to actually get results by breaking on a turn-to-turn basis.
The payoff turns are incredible, though, when they land. Or were, it's been a while since I booted Griftlands up.
Wow CR-8 will bake your noodle.
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I ended up leaving a pretty scathing review, but one the devs actually liked because it contained genuine feedback. I really wanna like Backpack hero, but it's encounter design and a bunch of other bits just suuuuuucks and really kills the fun of the game. Curses and Spike enemies are the big stand out "Why is this in the game, what does this add?" for me. It's got the same problem i find a lot of these X-roguelike games have that are trying to exist in the StS space: They're too fucking complicated. StS is genius because it's actually very simple in a lot of it's basic mechanics and even encounter design - everything's very boiled down. But the emergent results are anything but simple!
Anyway, i'm still here, and i'm still slaying spires in this the year of 2022. To think i used to be a wee penguin who didntk now what they were doing in this game, and now... Well.
This was a fun run. I took Upgrade Everything on floor 36 on the grounds that the deck was in theory good, but desperately upgrade starved, so it was that or Apotheosis. Oh, and i took it while at 48/60 hp. Managed to win having only lost seven hp since that point... including the rudest fucking Mango ever (+Max Hp gives you nothing when you cant heal, it's a hell of a penalty).
If you're wondering how many upgrades it got me?
Yeah. I still honestly over stuff my decks, this really could have stood to be a lot smaller.
Shoutout to the Duplication pot from Alchemy letting me double up on After Image. Turns out gaining 2 block every time you throw a shiv and also dealing over 20 damage per shiv makes the heart pretty breezy, who knew?
Had a bunch of other fun wins in recent time, including a few Conjure Blade Watcher runs, a Ironclad run that had 3 Demon Forms by the end of act 1 and then got Snecko eye, and a Berserk/Brimstone/Dark Embrace/Corruption Ironclad deck that was sillyfun.
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It's one of the things I'd like to see a hypothetical Slay the Spire 2 tackle - how did you make it so that card removal isn't so absurdly strong? How do you make thick decks attractive?
You can't just say make card draw more accessible, as that both has all kinds of wishes
Weridness... And has a horrible tendency to make infinites easier if you just lean into the card draw
Much as I might grouse heavily about the game, Roguebook's talent tree idea, where you got to select one of three bonuses every X cards was neat. Hampered, of course, by the fact that like so much of the game, it's execution was shit.
Vault of the Void simply says your deck is size 20 - you can only trade cards in and out, not incease or decrease the size. The backpack mechanic makes this overly complex, but a game that leaned into you have X cards, and to add anything to your deck you have to swap another card out permanently could be very neat.
Another very strong option would be simply doing away with Strikes and Defend, and giving characters smaller but more mechanically distinct decks. This has some risks though, like making infinites easier to get going, which I'd county as a negative
Infinites are fun, but I think they should ideally be very rare - Watcher's Rushdown is a problem card for how easy it enables infinites, as an example.
It's an interesting thing to consider
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maybe rather than drafting almost every floor, some floors offer transforms instead, or bonuses to existing cards (ala monster train magic shops)
i won't stop, though
I've found that a single claw can work nicely if you have all for one or scrape with a lot of other 0 costs. It's not amazing or anything, but i've ended up in plenty of situations where it's an 11+ dmg card in a fight, and its slot wasn't wasted.
It's definitely not a high priority pick, and I always want to build a stupid focus deck on defect because orbs. Always orbs.
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What do you think about just giving everyone Strike and Defend as something they can always do, but then making them crap. So you're incentivized to use the deck over those two baked in options.
Defect Cheerios is one of my favorite builds when it comes together.
In theory this is a really cool idea that lends itself to easy progression of each character (Trial of Fire has you fielding a team of 3 characters in a hex-grid tactics game), but in practice my main complaint was that so little of the deck is determined by the character cards - literally the cool thing that is unique to each class - that lots of classes feel the same because your deck will be 2/3s to 3/4s equipment with a lot of similar cards shared across them. It's a really disappointing way for things to have turned out feeling so generic ... Still, the core idea is there and I think someone else could do it better.
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Bad idea that'll create too many problems with energy gain, any Str/dex equilvent, and squashes the interesting decision space of how do I use these cards this turn? Sorry!
My take on them personally is that they actually serve a lot of useful purposes in reducing initial complexity and decision trees... but Strikes and Defends are definitely pretty boring. I'm very much in favor of say, giving each character a 10 card starter deck that's unique in various fashions. EG, imagine iron clad has a couple of attacks that are strikes, but do extra damage if the target's vulnerable. Silent starts off with a couple of 0 cost, do X poison attacks (like 2 or 3 poison) and a little dribble of card draw, etcera.
I honestly find the way Orbs work for defect to be a bit boring. Talk to the devs, the orginal concept for the Defect was a Gunslinger, where Orbs only had an effect when evoked. I'd love to see a model that leaned into that idea, as i think channeling and evoking orbs is a lot more fun than "Sit there gettting passive block and charging a dark orb forever"
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One way to expand on this further would be to let players spend a resource earned from the prior run to modify their starting deck. The upgrades would last for the next run only, but could be saved up to potentially upgrade your entire starting deck for a super run.
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Yeah any kind of cross-run Progression like that sounds fun, but it quickly turns really toxic. like Really, Really toxic. You'll yeet runs just to earn resources for the next "Real" run, and balancing the game turns into a nightmare, because either the game's balanced around not having meta progression stuff, in which case the meta progression makes it a joke, or it assumes you're going in on that... in which case normal runs are terrible to play.
See also Roguebook which does meta progression and fucking sucks as a result. I mean, the game's issues are many, but it's godawful grindy-arse Meta progression talent tree is one of it's worst sins. I'd go so far as to say the StS's meta progression really isnt - it's a complexity gating mechanism to stop players from overloading wehen they're new to the game.
Anyway, i stand by the fact i'd want ot see each character in a hypoethical StS 2 have a unique starting deck, as i think you can do more that way.
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That's what kind of turns me off to Hades. Like half my runs are just kinda half assing through the first 2 zones just so i can grab shadow crystals and keys so i can unlock stuff for other runs.
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I hacked in the resources to unlock shit in Hades and it 100% improved my experience.
Even with that that though, you still have rooms that give you long term power instead of in-run power, and they combined with every run being around 30 minutes ontop of being seriously physically intense on the hands ended up killing the game for me.
I beat the game, but I never got the epilogue stuff done, and very little of the heat system (I hate select your own difficulty systems, honestly. Much better to have fixed difficulty levels and then accessibility options you can turn on or off).
I feel like in a lot of respects it was something off a victim of it's early access nature - the sheer profusion of content is great when you're waiting for the next big patch, but in it's current state? Eeeeeeesh
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re select your own difficulty system- aside from it being in order, isn't that just what Ascension is in StS?
Not really.
ASC is a series of stacking modfiers which means that A20 is a consitent experience player to player.
Heat, or Vault of the Void's I-Levels are a series of modifiers that you pick and choose from. One player may go in on traps doing bonus damage, etc. Concviably, the game ends up in the samep lace, objectively it really dosent - in VotV you cant even max out every single modifier without hacking, so one person's I30 game looks very different to another person's.
I dislike this approach because a: i belive it creates a ton of junk data for balancing, and b: It means that part of getting good at the game becomes gaming the diffuclty system and otherwise trying to subvert it. Whereas A20 StS provides you with a bunch of consitent, brutal challneges you need to plan for (i.e you always know you'll see 2/3 Act 3 bosses, so you have to build a deck that wont die to them, etcera)
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Anyway, i am playing a deck that just picked up Tiny House over Snecko Eye OR Pandora's box, which is... that's a fucking thing that happened. You win a cookie if you can guess what sort of deck.
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Body Slam?
watcher infinite?
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I'd figure it's a Slient deck relying on 1000 cuts and needing to know it can use several cards a turn to both do damage and survive, but I dunno.
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