Slay the Spire - Roguelike Card-em-up

[Nespresso]

I think I need help.

 

 

Like seriously. Can someone spectate me, hop on discord and sort of do a co-op a run with me? I'm clearly getting the basics wrong I reckon. 

 

I'm trying to learn from Rhapsody's videos but it seems that dude always has all the stars align with every run. 

[U2031]

Which character are you having more success with? Can you post screenies of the cards you had for your last couple of failed runs? We might be able to give you some pointers, or suggest some other cards that might have fitted better with what you had. I'm at the point now where I can pretty much win every time with the silent, but I'm still shit at the ironclad. I'll bung a load of silent tips under here, see if any of it might be helpful.

 

Upgrade Neutralise asap, if you're applying 2 weak, you can probably keep it up indefinitely on one target. The early enemies will hit for 5 instead of 8, which you can block with one card.

Flying knee is a great upgrade to a strike, does more damage and gives you energy next turn, so get rid of a strike if you can, to get flying knee into your hand more often. Outmaneuver is also great, I usually get one of each if I see them, and they work brilliantly together in any deck.

If you get noxious fumes early on, concentrate on building a blocking deck. Yes it's slower, but once noxious fumed gets played you will always win every fight as long as you block enough damage. Footwork is great for a block heavy deck, I take a second one if I see it. Blur is godlike with burst, and great on it's own.

Don't be afraid to turn down cards, if they don't fit with your theme, then don't take them, they're diluting the good stuff in your deck.

 

Post us some decks!

[U2031]

Here are a couple of decks I won with, and I'm quite surprised how big they were.

 

 

[Scruff]

What are peoples favourite relics? I'm fast falling into utter devotion with Necronomicon. Having a strength boost and then popping down a Bludgeon is a sight to behold   

 

My least fav is Warpaint; especially if you get it early on and it only upgrades a strike/block  

[U2031]

21 minutes ago, Scruff said:

What are peoples favourite relics? I'm fast falling into utter devotion with Necronomicon. Having a strength boost and then popping down a Bludgeon is a sight to behold   

 

My least fav is Warpaint; especially if you get it early on and it only upgrades a strike/block  

 

I had the Necronomicon on my last ironclad run, and I was using it with 3 flexes and upgraded whirlwind to smash things into oblivion. Still didn't have enough block though and got killed.

[Nespresso]

And just now couldn't even make it passed the first boss (Slimer) due to the game giving me fuck all the play with. Couldn't block enough, couldn't attack enough and half my hand was constantly slimed. Do you need to play the slimed cards to exhaust them from your deck? 

 

I only play as the Silent btw. 

[spork]

I only play the slime cards when I don't need to add more defence and even I don't have any other useful cards to play. 

 

Also once you get him down to half health he will cancel what he was going to do and split into two on his turn. It seems pretty well balanced that most times you'll be able to get him to split the first time when he is ready to play his big attack. 

[Scruff]

8 minutes ago, spork said:

I only play the slime cards when I don't need to add more defence and even I don't have any other useful cards to play. 

 

Also once you get him down to half health he will cancel what he was going to do and split into two on his turn. It seems pretty well balanced that most times you'll be able to get him to split the first time when he is ready to play his big attack. 

 

Yep, that's exactly how I deal with him with either character. He doesn't do anything for the first two attacks so I take him down to as close to half his health for that third move so you can do maximum damage to make the medium slimes have as little health as possible.

[Nespresso]

20 hours in. Not a single win... 

 

Either RNGesus has forsaken me or am just astonishingly bad at this. It's weird as I'm perfectly decent at Duelyst, which is against human opponents and has the added factor of positioning on a board. 

 

Going to switch back to Ironclad and basically start from scratch. 

[Zael]

Can you screen a deck you lost a run on?

[Nespresso]

9 minutes ago, Zael said:

Can you screen a deck you lost a run on?

This one just now.

 

I'm amazed by how I even managed to lose this. Heavy Blade+ plus all the strength buffs from relics and cards makes for some insane damage output. BUT of course I don't draw a single Heavy Blade+ card during the second boss battle.

[Zael]

I find that unless I'm going for a heavy block deck on both classes then the win is less reliable. 

[Nespresso]

What did I do wrong here?

 

[Zael]

I think you might be going for too many cards. 25 is a lot. Most of those cards are good picks on the first floor but bad picks after that.

[Nespresso]

13 minutes ago, Zael said:

I think you might be going for too many cards. 25 is a lot. Most of those cards are good picks on the first floor but bad picks after that.

But why does the game give me these cards then.

[Zael]

The game will give you cards you won't want to take a good chunk of the time.  Like on floor 3 I'll almost never pick up a new card unless it's absolutely essential.

[U2031]

Just looking at your last deck there, and there's a few things that jump out at me, not that I'm an ironclad expert by any means. Dropkick is pretty pointless, it's energy neutral but only does 5 damage, or eight when upgraded and you only get the effect if the enemy is weak. Pommel strike does much more damage and always draws a card. Armaments is pretty crap unless you upgrade it, because then it upgrades every card in your hand. Even after all that it's really fucking slow, and I try not to take it. I think I would have skipped thunderclap and iron wave as well. If there was a shrug it off offered, that gives more block and also draws a card.  Clothesline is great, but really expensive at 2 energy, if you play that you'll only be playing one block that turn. With demon form, you've basically got a poison build there, it will eventually win automatically, you just need to thin out the deck and get some bigger blocks I think. You could also use headbutt to pull out a block for the next turn.

 

In other news someone in the steam discussions posted almost the exact same thing - 'Why do I keep getting smashed?' but he's up to 75 deaths without a win. I'd say you're doing ok! Keep at it, and try a smaller deck. Make sure you try to block all damage rather than finishing a room faster.

[Nespresso]

Thanks for the tips! I'll try not to get too disheartened as I really enjoy the game (those 20 hours have flown by) but fuck me if it isn't harder than Bloodborne lol. Will give it another go tomorrow.

[Nespresso]

This has more people playing than most multiplayer games. About 10k players in-game right now! 

 

EDIT: For reference: Duelyst (which had its rights bought by Bandai Namco recently) has 131 playing, ouch! Radical Heights 1,466 ouch x2. CoDWWII  2,271 ouch x3! 

[JLM]

I have logged 60 hours on this game already. I am absolutely obsessed. I had originally been playing the daily challenges but have no managed to wean myself off these and start doing regular climbs. I've been playing The Silent almost exclusively as I really love her array of gimmicks.

 

Past couple of victories have involved the most delicious shenanigans.

 

First one revolved around Choke+, which does 12 damage initially and then 5 additional damage every time you play any other cards during the turn. Combined this with two copies of backflip+ to draw more cards, Prepared+ to draw and discard two cards for no energy, tools of the trade that allows you to discard and draw at the start of every turn, and calculated gamble+, which lets you discard your hand and replace it for 0 energy. Then the rest of the deck was a whole bunch of cards that cost 0 energy like deflect, slice and neutralize. So I'd apply the choke and then shuffle through the deck over and over again to keep stacking damage. It was pretty cheap. I loved it.

 

The second one was exclusively blocks and poison. Paid and used question mark events to remove all of my strikes and most of my defends. Got deadly poison, poison stab, crippling cloud and bouncing flask to stack poison, then Catalyst+ to triple it. Also had "The Specimen" relic that means when an enemy dies they pass any remaining poison to their allies. It was beautiful.

 

The only thing missing was corpse explosion, which is fast becoming one of my favourite cards. Corpse explosion+ is ridiculous. It removes the target's poison and does damage triple to the amount of posion they had stacked up, and does that same amount of damage to any of their allies. Had one match with it against The Collector boss who spawns minions. Kept stacking up poison on him and then corpose exploding him to kill both minions.

 

I love some of the magical runs you get where the stars align on your relics and give you a built in strategy unique to that run. Had one build where I traded in my starting relic and got Ninja Scroll, which gives you three shivs at the start of every combat, then I got the kunai which gives you +1 dexterity every time you play three attacks. So every match I'd have +1 dexterity at the start and could stack from there to get absolutely ridiculous blocks. Regular defends doing 15 etc. This paired up beautifully with wraith form+, which gives you four turns of "intangible", which lets you take 1 damage from enemy attacks, with the downside being that you lose dexterity at the end of every turn for the rest of the fight. So I'd stack up an absurd amount of dexterity, block everything thrown at me and then activate wraith form with the double edged sword aspect of it completely removed.

 

I am in love with this game.

 

I totally agree with the advice about keeping your deck small. It is really really easy to have your head turned by the merchant, the events that let you do whacky stuff to your deck and by the cards you're offered after combat. Do not do this unless it benefits your strategy. My initial mistake when I was getting wrecked every time was to make these outrageously bloated decks full of absolute madness but could not reliably execute any of it. It also makes you very vulnerable to curses/dazed/slime etc. because you're already struggling to get to the stuff you want and the enemies make this worse. I had losses where I'd been doing burst+ adrenaline + into doppelganger+, so I'd have something ridiculous like 25-30 energy but then nothing to spend it on because my deck was a bloated mess.

 

If you visit the merchant and he doesn't have anything you actively need, spend the gold to get something removed and streamline your deck. This is more valuable than buying something just because it's there. I find that fewer than 20 cards with the option to shuffle about a lot has been great for me. It's all well and good having Apotheosis+ but your upgraded cards are wasted if the right ones never come up when you need them to. There is some element of luck of the draw of course, but you can definitely mitigate this by making your deck small, flexible and stripped of chaff.

 

That screen shot with the hand full of dazed and a strike. Can see that tools of the trade and a thousand cuts are both activated and the enemy is poisoned. It's little bits of a number of different strategies that aren't really working together. Removing strikes and blocks means that the one non-dazed card would be more likely to be something you've chosen. Probably wouldn't bother with activating two powers against an enemy who gives you dazed cards whenever you play a non-attacking card either.

 

If your build revolves around drawing/shuffling/stacking energy and you play loads and loads of cards per turn, then a Thousand cuts is a great compliment to that. If not then I'd maybe leave it out as it doesn't give you good value.

 

Say no to unnecessary cards, guys, it could save your life.

[Nespresso]

Meanwhile I couldn't even make it passed the first boss just now (Slime) and then the run after I got rekt by an Elite who kept dealing 18 damage per turn.

[JLM]

Ha, don't get me wrong, I still get destroyed a lot of the time as well.

 

My last run last night was a disaster. I had a glorious long term strategy in mind but got over excited about stripping the deck down in preparation and died on the first elite because I thought I'd still be able to sneak the win and get a relic. It happens, but yeah, making the jump from exclusively getting wrecked to getting a few wins has mostly been about not accepting

every shiny new toy I'm offered. I rarely die on the first boss now, but still die on the third boss quite frequently when my builds are not quite as ingenious as I thought they were.  

My preferred plan with The Silent by default is to try a poison-heavy build. I absolutely love bouncing flask, crippling cloud, catalyst and corpse explosion. If I get hold of any of those early then I will often upgrade them and tailor the rest of the deck to suit them. If not, I will see what my relic/card situation is and adapt accordingly. There is a poker hand element to it as well, where I'll sometimes have three out of the four cards I need to do something deadly and I have to decide whether to go for versatility or hold out hope that I'll find the missing pieces before the end game.

 

The choke strategy came about because I got Choke+ right at the beginning when given the option to transform a card. I then decided that every other decision I'd make would be based around maximising choke damage. So I picked up anything that cost 0, anything that let me draw/replace/re-shuffle at low cost and then some heavy duty blocks thrown in to let me survive all my shuffling. So I could do something like choke and then backflip plus to put some block on and get some cards.

 

This would leave me with choke applied, a bit of block and loads of cards. I'd then continue playing cards for as long as possible with 0 energy. So I'd do something like deflect , prepared+, calculated gamble+, then slash and neutralize. So for 3 energy I've played most of my deck, put one some block, applied weak and done loads of damage. Because I'd committed to this idea early, I spent all of my gold trimming off stuff that wasn't conducive to this plan, and also rejected any cards that cost more than 1 energy as my primary objective was to play as many cards as possible.

 

I think the daily challenges have been very helpful for exposing me to prettymuch all of the cards/relics the game has to offer. It's not representative of the main

game's difficulty but it gives you loads of ideas about synergy because you get to try everything out and see what works. Would have taken me a lot longer to familiarise myself with all the colourless cards etc. if I'd waited to see them in regular climbs.

 

This has gone long, but in short, try and have an idea of a strategy in mind and be strict with yourself about what you're offered.

[Hecate]

On 2/28/2018 at 23:17, VN1X said:

I've got no time for all these endless-procedurally-generated-roguelikes any more. For instance I was gutted to find out that Flinthook turned to be one of those (actually only found out after I bought and played it), when all I wanted was regular 8-hour platformer which slowly builds upon its mechanics throughout the game. Gah.

 

I'm more than willing to believe that vn1x is this unlucky.

[Nespresso]

9 hours ago, Hecate said:

 

I'm more than willing to believe that vn1x is this unlucky.

Oh hey Clippa, how are things? 

 

EDIT: Oh nvm, banned already. 

[U2031]

Just had a fun game of this. I got poisons fairly early so started to build around that. Ended up with two copies of Nightmare (put three copies of a card in your hand next turn) so I copied Catalyst like crazy and this happened.

 

[U2031]

Also, how is everyone finding the new character? I can't quite get my head around it at the moment, I'm still trying to figure out a good strategy. I've got most of the way through the third floor, but still not managed to complete the game with them.

[spork]

1 hour ago, U2031 said:

Also, how is everyone finding the new character? I can't quite get my head around it at the moment, I'm still trying to figure out a good strategy. I've got most of the way through the third floor, but still not managed to complete the game with them.

 

Is it in the main game or just the testing branch still? 

[JDubYes]

1 hour ago, spork said:

 

Is it in the main game or just the testing branch still? 

 

Ive not played in a few weeks, but I’m pretty sure I read it was just in the testing branch at present.

[U2031]

Yeah, you have to opt into the beta for it to be available. It's tricky because for most of the cards, the artwork hasn't been finalised and you can't instantly identify a card and what it does by seeing artwork that you know. A lot of them just have a generic card back and BETA across the middle. I think I might opt back out and come back when it's all finished. The new character has some interesting mechanics, but there's a lot to learn.

[JLM]

Only played a couple of games as The Defect. My two friends who are about as obsessed with this game as me have been playing him loads though. They both reckon he's the most fun of the three characters at the moment. He's an interesting build for sure. Quite squishy defensively but you can mitigate this, and its attacking power can be quite obscene once it gets going.

 

I want to wait until he's added to the main game before delving into it too much further. I'm looking forward to trying some daily challenges with other characters using some of The Defect's more whacky cards.

 

I have been playing The Silent in the beta build too, just to see what's changed and to fight some of the new enemies they've added.

The snake enemy they've added that has Constriction as its passive ability is quite brutal. At the end of each turn it does 10 damage as standard, and it's usually attacking for 20-25 on top of that. Getting that really early on in the run was quite a pain and I took a fair bit of damage.

 

I love that Nightmare catalyst scenario above. Last Nightmare build I did I ended up nightmaring Noxious fumes+ and Dexterity+ and taking any little hits needed to make sure I had that set up. Then it was a case of tanking the rest of the match, sprinkling in more poison when needed and otherwise blocking everything.

 

I quite like this game.