Slay the Spire - Catch all

Just bought it because of the steam sale. $10.__, its lowest price.

I finally beat ascension level 3. Just squeaked by with 3 HP left. I had a curse that damaged me 1 HP with each card I played (while the curse was in my hand), but I had to keep playing cards because there was no way I’d win if I didn’t kill the boss that turn. I was able to string together drawing more cards and getting more energy. I must have done a ton of damage that turn.

Aha, figured we had a thread for this but missed it before. Picked it up a couple weeks ago and have since logged 25 hours. Mr. Dragon and I made it through all of a weekend before having to wait turns on Steam Share got tiresome and he bought his own copy.

So far I've won once each with the Silent and the Defect. Got the Ironclad within inches of defeating Donu & Deca, but other than that have had a harder time finding synergistic builds with him. I think the Silent just resonates with my standard sort of playstyle across most games more (move fast and don't let them hit you). Currently working on a poison-heavy run abusing the synergy of Burst and Catalyst+ to multiply poison by 9. Hit one of the early bosses with 243, which was a beautiful sight.

I just realized the game lets you cheese battles by exiting and reloading. It only saves the game at the start of a battle, so if you’re going to fail you can exit and try the battle again from the start. I made use if that to beat ascension level 4, but it felt kinda cheap.

I was rolling along up until the final boss. I got the weapon early that lets you increase max health if you kill an enemy with it. I got my HP up close to 140. It took me 5 tries to beat the time boss.

I just beat ascension level 9 with the Ironclad using a Searing Blow deck. I got it at the start and upgraded 10 times by the final fight. I think it was something like 97 damage for 2 energy by then (plus I had Armaments to upgrade it even further during combat). I probably added too many cards to my deck, because I was drawing it every 3 turns instead of every 1 or 2 turns as would be ideal. But I had Headbutt, and a little means to exhaust some of my cards to compensate.

As I get further up in ascension levels, I'm finding the ability to exit and restart a fight to be less cheesy. If I know I've built a good deck and I'm losing, I use it as an opportunity to learn and see where my misplays were.

Tscott wrote:

I just beat ascension level 9 with the Ironclad using a Searing Blow deck. I got it at the start and upgraded 10 times by the final fight. I think it was something like 97 damage for 2 energy by then (plus I had Armaments to upgrade it even further during combat). .

Yikes, that's pretty nasty!

I just beat Ascension level 5 by the skin of my teeth. I had a deck with a lot of upgraded perfect strikes in it which each did quite a bit of damage. I also had some upgraded carnage cards. When things went well I'd hit 'em with an upgraded bash and then several turns with the high damage cards.

I can't imagine what ascension level 15 will be like.

This seems like a game a lot of GWJ people would go for. With Sean pimping it on some of the episodes it seems like this thread would have a bit more activity.

I have not had good luck on the ascensions. I think I have cleared the second one on one character. I got distracted though by finishing the unlocks on the Defect.

I've logged like 80hrs plus in this game now. Fair to say I haven't been this invested in a game for a while. The sense of satisfacation you get when you get a deck that just clicks is second to none. Think my best deck was a defect Claws, Hologram and Streamline.

robc wrote:
Tscott wrote:

I just beat ascension level 9 with the Ironclad using a Searing Blow deck. I got it at the start and upgraded 10 times by the final fight. I think it was something like 97 damage for 2 energy by then (plus I had Armaments to upgrade it even further during combat). .

Yikes, that's pretty nasty!

I just beat Ascension level 5 by the skin of my teeth. I had a deck with a lot of upgraded perfect strikes in it which each did quite a bit of damage. I also had some upgraded carnage cards. When things went well I'd hit 'em with an upgraded bash and then several turns with the high damage cards.

I can't imagine what ascension level 15 will be like.

This seems like a game a lot of GWJ people would go for. With Sean pimping it on some of the episodes it seems like this thread would have a bit more activity.

I hope this game gains some more fans. One thing that keeps me coming back to it is that you can't just do the same thing over and over. If you find a deck that works one time, and try to do it again, it's likely not going to work because you're offered something different or have different synergies with the relics you've found. It's all about adapting to what you've got and figuring out how best to use it to your advantage.

There will be some cards that I never pick, but then I'll have runthrough when I'm offered that card and realize that I have relic X and card Y which will make that card useful to me and I could get a winning deck with a card I've always ignored.

As for ascension mode, I've got a terrible win rate at it. I just keep being persistent and eventually I find a deck that works well and scales enough to beat the final boss. But usually, I think I'm working towards something and almost getting there, and then some elite on the second floor proves to me that my deck wasn't ready.

robc wrote:

This seems like a game a lot of GWJ people would go for. With Sean pimping it on some of the episodes it seems like this thread would have a bit more activity.

Also, the 3MA group, as they pretty much said it’s a top pick so far for game of the year.

So I beat ascension 10 with the Ironclad. My winning condition seems to be to keep bringing back limit break using headbutt after getting some strength gain started.

I see they’ve added more cards, including some more colorless ones. One is called “the bomb” and does 30 damage to all enemies after 3 turns. They also reworked berserk- it now grants one extra energy per turn, but gives you 5 turns of vulnerable. Could be interesting with a defensive based deck.

I have 110 hour in this game. halp.

I passed 50 hours last night...

Tscott wrote:

So I beat ascension 10 with the Ironclad. My winning condition seems to be to keep bringing back limit break using headbutt after getting some strength gain started.

I see they’ve added more cards, including some more colorless ones. One is called “the bomb” and does 30 damage to all enemies after 3 turns. They also reworked berserk- it now grants one extra energy per turn, but gives you 5 turns of vulnerable. Could be interesting with a defensive based deck.

Nice! I'm stalled on level 6.

I hadn't played a daily climb in a while since I've been banging my head on the ascension levels. Today with the potion cards and the tons of artifacts was pretty crazy. I got my first win on one of these, but my score was pretty low since I took a safe route through the map.

The hardest thing about trying to get the one relic achievement is to not automatically click on the relic when you get offered a good one.

I got my first win last night, playing as Ironclad with absurd amounts of block. Double tap + upgraded Body Slam dealing 160 damage per turn on occasions. Now to give the Silent a try.

This is a very clever game. I get the hearthstone feel good when everything comes together, minus the Hearthstone ragequit when you come up against the inevitable BS.

kergguz wrote:

I got my first win last night, playing as Ironclad with absurd amounts of block. Double tap + upgraded Body Slam dealing 160 damage per turn on occasions. Now to give the Silent a try.

This is a very clever game. I get the hearthstone feel good when everything comes together, minus the Hearthstone ragequit when you come up against the inevitable BS.

Can I add you on steam to spam "WELL PLAYED" at you whenever you play? That will get you all the way to Hearthstone.

drdoak wrote:
kergguz wrote:

I got my first win last night, playing as Ironclad with absurd amounts of block. Double tap + upgraded Body Slam dealing 160 damage per turn on occasions. Now to give the Silent a try.

This is a very clever game. I get the hearthstone feel good when everything comes together, minus the Hearthstone ragequit when you come up against the inevitable BS.

Can I add you on steam to spam "WELL PLAYED" at you whenever you play? That will get you all the way to Hearthstone.

Hehe, that made me lol.

But no

After watching France win their World Cup game (yeah!), and listening to crowds of people screaming / cheering / honking / driving the wrong way down a one way street - I decided to finish my run of Slay the Spire I had going. I finally beat Ascension level 6 while having a large hand. I managed to get my best placement on the leaderboard with a score of 1259 and a place of 3838.

Here are my cards...
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/957462163600928370/49720769DCD1F7ADBB89C18FE4D4D6FD8B5D80AA/)
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/957462163600928615/B01B20BCA180808AD03338B5384B48F0727465E3/)

With my 2 offerings I was able to get some nice chains going. I also had a relic that gave me another energy and card when an enemy died, so that helped vs multiple enemies. I had a buncg of Shrug it Off, True Grit and an Armament to help on defense. I love getting an upgraded Armament to help upgrade my other cards during the battle.

I had another relic that gave me random cards when a card was exhausted.That gave my a Demon Form and the card that doubles strength.

I also had some nice damage cards, so with the strength I was going some damage at the end. It took me a lot of tries to beat Ascension Level 6.

Tscott wrote:

The hardest thing about trying to get the one relic achievement is to not automatically click on the relic when you get offered a good one.

And damn it if I didn't do it again. Tonight I again was trying for the one relic achievement, and got the "give us all your gold, or we fight you" event and automatically picked up the red mask relic at the end of the fight. Took me until the end of the map before I realized I had messed up my run.

EDIT:
Further update- since posting the above, I've been good at not picking up relics on accident, but this game doesn't want me to win the one-relic achievement.

I've been choosing the option to give up my starting relic for a boss relic at the start of each game. The worst one to get is Black Star - the only bonus you get is that elites now drop two relics. I just gave up on the achievement for that run and went for as many relics as I could.

Today I tried it and got cursed key- 4 energy per turn but every time you open a non-boss chest you get a curse- PERFECT! Since I won't be opening the chests anyway. I had everything I needed in my deck - except strength gain. I had limit break which doubles your strength, but the first two maps I had NO options for cards to give plus strength to start limit break off. No Flex, no Spot Weakness, no Inflame. It was pretty infuriating. I died on the 2nd boss fight because I couldn't kill him fast enough to avoid his hyper beam attack.

Still playing this. I try to get in a game a night- maybe more on the weekends.

I just beat Ascension 13 with the silent. I know, so close to 15, right? But... now they've added 5 more Ascension levels to make the highest level 20. And of course there's an achievement for beating 20. Now monsters in fights get improved abilities as you level up past 15. For example, the birds normally would lose their flight after 3 hits in a turn- now it'll be 4 hits. Or the elite sentry fight in Act 1 will now give 3 dazed in your deck on turns they're not attacking instead of only two. And at level 20 you'll need to fight two Act 3 bosses to win the game. Yikes.

Hope to reach that someday, with at least one character, if not all three.

I just hit the 100 hour mark in this game and am still loving it. Still haven't beaten the final boss though. This last run, it looked like the magic run. I was playing Ironclad and got the power card where your unused block doesn't expire at the end of the turn. Then I got a card that doubles your block and a relic or power that causes 5 damage when you gain block. So I went to town. Combined with Headbutt I would double my block and pluck the card from the discard to double it again.

Very quickly I would have battles where my block was over 100 and I would stand there and laugh at their feeble attempts. I plowed through the 3rd region with ease and got to the last boss. And here it all fell apart. I had 30 card deck because I got a little card buying happy. And my HP was low because why bother increasing when you can have 100+ block? I never even drew the Barricade card and died quickly. A tragic end to a glorious run.

Sounds like a deck in desperate need of a body slam. And some card draw to get you through the deck quicker in cases like that.

Yeah. I was on the lookout for body slam but it never showed up. I always neglect how important those draw x cards for getting through a deck.

BTW, if anyone is looking for some interesting videos to learn from, I've been watching this guy and learning some interesting strategies.

He streams and then puts up some of his better runs on youtube. And he's constantly trying out new relics or cards and figuring out how best to make them work. (Slight swearing warning if you watch, but not excessive)

I finally made some good progress and beat ascension level 10 with the fighter. My score wasn't that great, but it feel good to move up the difficulty ladder.

I finally got Ascension 15 unlocked for the Silent tonight. I had 5 or 6 frustrating runs this weekend before getting success.

I had the new-ish boss relic, The Kite, that gives +1 energy, but you need to discard 2 cards at the start of every turn. And I had Tough Bandages which gives +3 block for every card discarded. Then I got the book that gives the option to add one of 3 random cards into your draw pile at the end of every turn.

Took forever to play (2 hours 15 mins) as every turn was like a math puzzle. I actually found a use for Expertise (draw until you have 6 cards in your hand) in this deck since I was discarding so much.

Tscott, that is awesome getting The Silent to Ascension 15.

I had been playing the fighter guy and I started playing The Silent again. It took a lot of tries to beat Ascension level 1. I have much more trouble with The Slient.

I put together a deck with Bullet Time to reduce the cost of cards in my hand to zero. I used the artifact to make sure I start the battle with it in my hand. Another artifact gave me 3 shivs in my hand to start the battle. Then I had backstab. Another artifact gave me a random card each time I exhausted a card - so between the backstab and the shivs I would draw 4 cards. Then I would play Bullet Time to get the cost of all the rest of my cards to 0.

On top of that I had a ton of poison cards and a catalyst or 2. I had to fight the donut and his buddy at the end and was able to get rid of the donut quickly.

I recently had 2 heartbreaking attempts to beat Ascension 15 as the silent. In one, I was hit for lethal damage after getting the final boss down to 25hp with 22 poison applied and drew into a daze with energy still left in my turn. So darn close, almost any card in my deck would've killed him off but I had to draw a daze.

So last night played the Ironclad, who was at Ascension 11. I got Barricade and Corruption in my deck, with the relics Dead Branch, Blue Candle and Medkit. It was a dream. Ascension 12 Unlocked.

I think Medkit is an often overlooked relic. It allows you to exhaust any status card in your hand with no downside (where as Blue Candle exhausts curses at the cost of 1 hp for playing the card). The trick with Medkit is it's a shop only relic, so you need to find it at a shop at a time you have enough gold for it.