Slay the Spire - Catch all

The ascension level that makes the birds take 4 hits to down instead of 3 was a wake-up call. So tough to kill now.

Daily 12/8 won 983

That was a crazy daily.

Any tips for The Silent decks that are capable of taking out the heart (final boss)?

I've done it with the Defect and the Ironclad, but I'm least familiar at this point with good Silent decks.

The only real idea I've had so far is to try and make a deck that defends itself while applying poison, with the intent of eventually dropping a couple of 3x Catalyst cards to triple, and triple again, the heart's poison into the triple digits, killing it after a few turns. I haven't really come close to pulling it off, yet, though.

I won today's (12/12) daily with a score of 1029. It was a blast.

Silent

Modifiers:
Cursed Run: Whenever you defeat a Boss, become Cursed. Your starting relic is replaced with Cursed Key, Darkstone Periapt, and Du-Vu Doll.
Controlled Chaos: Start with Frozen Eye. At the start of your turn add 10 random cards to the bottom of your draw pile.
Terminal: Whenever you enter a new room, lose 1 Max HP. Start each combat with 5 Plated Armor.

The strategy today was stack up on curses and discard abilities to keep them in check. Once I found the Dead Branch relic I went full-on into exhaust card mode, mainly going big on shivs. I also ran across the kunai and shuriken, which was really great with shivs. I got a perfect on Donu/Deca with this guy.

WolverineJon wrote:

Any tips for The Silent decks that are capable of taking out the heart (final boss)?

I've done it with the Defect and the Ironclad, but I'm least familiar at this point with good Silent decks.

The only real idea I've had so far is to try and make a deck that defends itself while applying poison, with the intent of eventually dropping a couple of 3x Catalyst cards to triple, and triple again, the heart's poison into the triple digits, killing it after a few turns. I haven't really come close to pulling it off, yet, though.

I actually got my first time through the heart last night with the Silent. It might not be a realistic deck in most cases, but I got an insanely lucky pull.

I started with the rare card, After image, the one that gives you 1 Block when you play a card. My first elite gave me the egg that makes all powers I get be upgraded. My very next room gave me Infinite Blades, the power to start with a Shiv (Innate, because of the egg). Before the first floor was over, I added a second Shiv-granting power and another copy of the Block when playing a card (also Innate thanks to being upgraded). Once I had that, I let the enemy have 1 Strength to start with 4 energy, enough to ensure 2 block per card played, and 2 shivs on every hand after the first. I got an Anchor to make the first turn safer, and a Blur to prevent the giant stack of Block from always being wasted, plus some Cloak and Dagger cards to add block and get more shivs. When I got the little knife that adds Dexterity when you play 3 attacks in a turn, I knew I would make it to the end. Thankfully, the block from playing a card is applied before the beating heart damage, so I didn't automatically kill myself in 2 turns, but I did need the Dexterity and block cards to survive some of those burst hits. If I had gotten a couple of the cards to lower an enemy's Strength for a turn it would have been even safer.

Well I finally beat the Heart with the Ironclad. This game I wasn't sure I was going to make it past act one, because I took the offer to transform two cards at the start and got Hemokinesis (take 3 damage, deal 14 damage) and Bloodletting (take 3 damage, gain energy) and was losing HP every fight. But I wound up getting Red Skull (get +3 strength when you're under %50 hp) and Feed (gain max hp if you kill an enemy with this attack) and got over 130 max hp by the end of the game, so I could get strength from Red Skull and still have a decent amount of life to spare. Add in Demon Form (add +2(3) strength per turn), heavy blade and a lot of block and I finally won.

High strength decks can be a lot of fun - kind of like high poison with the silent. The enemies can just vaporize.

Died at the 3rd boss on the daily today with a score of 650. Was dominating the game until that last boss. 20 hours of play time now and still have never beat the game on a daily or regular run. It is frustrating, but fun at the same time.

Got my first ascension with a messy but effective pen nib-driven anger/clash/flex/pommel strike deck. Just milled through zero cost cards with a couple of immolates and cleaves in there to thin crowds. Also had a metamorphosis and some warcrys which added to the zero cost/milling confusion

Fun Daily today, with 5 copies of FTL. Made a deck built around draw and zero cost cards, with ornamental fan and pen nib made it pretty straight forward but fun deck to play with. Ended up with 846.

Cleared ascension 1 with the Silent after rolling the 1 energy per turn at the expense of seeing intents relic in place of the starting one. Was pretty sure it would be a quick death, but I leaned heavily into debuffs, block, and caltrops and ended up grinding everything down through attrition.

I've found the Silent's card and unique relic selection to be a lot more forgiving than the Ironclad, who seems to need brute force to win while the Silent has a number of routes available that require a lot less luck to build towards and pull off. Haven't given the Defect much love yet, but from what I have played so far it seems like a pretty crazy playstyle...

With The Defect, I've had good luck with heavy orb rotation and lots of complementary powers. But others report good luck with claw strategies.

Sealed Deck daily is great - played it through a number of times - then ended up with 3 upgraded limit breaks with heavy blade as the kill card. Poor old time keeper never stood a chance as the last blow had 2071 points of damage.

Holy crap! I don't think I ever had more than several hundred damage on a single blow. I didn't play that daily though.

I think I got my all-time top score on today's daily (12/20), 1451.

Defect
Modifiers:
Heirloom: Start with 1 Rare relic.
Flight: You may ignore paths when choosing the next room to travel to.
Big Game Hunter: Elite enemies are now swarming the Spire and drop better rewards.

I started with a Bird-faced urn, so I pretty much had to go powerspam with this deck. I eventually picked up a few echo forms, a mummified hand, a snecko eye, a few storms, a creative AI, several buffers, etc. I was unstoppable. I got perfect on all 3 bosses and 10 of the 15 elites I fought. It was a really fun run

Are you actually in the Matrix Erik? Your scores are consistently insane. I'm lucky to pip 900 on a good run!

DC Malleus wrote:

Are you actually in the Matrix Erik? Your scores are consistently insane. I'm lucky to pip 900 on a good run!

I really think the trick to a good score is to hit as many elites as you can. Perfect bonuses can also stack up if you have a good deck going. It is definitely easier to get a good score on the daily runs. They are often much easier, like the one I just posted about.

But how do you take on so many elites successfully? I find there's usually at least one or two enemy types that will wreck any given run, and it usually takes me 4-5 rooms to recover from a bad one. I'm pretty sure you're The One but I understand that you can't just go dropping that sort of thing in an internet forum. Say hi to Morpheus for me

Well the game definitely gets easier once you start snowballing on good relics, and elites drop good ones. Also they tend to drop better cards. I will say the elites on Act 2 can be a bit harder on average, so I sometimes avoid them if I am low on health, but in general if I am not in a position to kill elites consistently, I worry about my overall chances for the run.

The scoring system is also pretty stupid. It gives way too many points to weird little things like "Highlander" (only 1 copy of any given card in your deck at the end) and other similar challenges that are based on luck more than skill.

For example, I've never gotten higher than 1820 even though I have some pretty insane decks and Ascension 18-19 wins. Don't worry too much about your score as it's not necessarily indicative of how good you played.

High Ascension is really hard and will test even the best StS players, so make Asc20 for each character your goal instead of scores.

Ascension 20? Hahahahaha, I can't even get to ascension 5.

I've never been a fan of the 'perfect' scoring either. Not losing any HP isn't always the best way to play the game. With relics like Red Skull (gain strength when you're at 50% or less HP) or cards like Reaper (heal for the amount of unblocked damage the card does). If you can win a fight while taking some damage, but heal up at the end, that should be just as good.

The scoring is overall a little wonky once someone learns to exploit it. For example there's someone on youtube that has a video of a seeded run where they get 4000 points as the Ironclad. It comes from finding a seed they can exploit, learning all the card offerings and shops and elite patterns, etc. They perfect as many elites as they can, and they get a number of bonuses for having more than 4 copies of a non-starter card in their deck. Apparently you get the bonus for each set of 4 you have including curses, because one of his sets of 4 was of Normality (you can only play 3 cards this turn when this card is in your hand).

I have never looked at the score, that's just not where the fun is for me as it might be in other games. For me it's just, is this deck of cards fun, and can I finish the run?

kergguz wrote:

I have never looked at the score, that's just not where the fun is for me as it might be in other games. For me it's just, is this deck of cards fun, and can I finish the run?

For the most part, my focus is trying to increase my ascension levels. I've been stuck on ironclad 15 for a while.

I don't play the others as much and think I'm around 3 for the silent and 1 for the other.

I can't seem to break out of Ascension 1.

Robear wrote:

I can't seem to break out of Ascension 1.

You and me both, buddy.

Being on Ascension 1 just means you have more fun ahead of you!

Found another good Slay the Spire Streamer/Youtuber: JoINrbs https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpj...

Watched the 3 current most recent videos and he's got a great hold of the many aspects of the game. The Ironclad run is fascinating how he gets everything to work. With the relics he gets in the run he winds up defending with little to no block in the deck. The Defect run he starts with double claw in the deck but it morphs into a very different deck by the end. And he did a 3 hour long(!!!) overexplain of a Silent run here which, while it covers a lot of the basics at the start, did touch on things I hadn't considered before and its fascinating to see how he thinks through the fights and potions and card offerings. I'm definitely planing to watch some of his other videos and try to pick up more.

A little late to the game here. I picked it up a few weeks ago, and it has really put it's hooks into me! In the first weekend I put in 12 hours over just a 36hr period. I've put in 45 hours total now and I keep meaning to find this thread. Not sure exactly why it's been so addicting. The randomness of the cards can be a little frustrating. For example, I had a decent Poison run with The Silent that petered out in the 3rd floor b/c I had the wrong deck mix. So I wanted to try another run, but the game keeps refusing to give me poison cards.
I did have a major breakthrough when I realized that one way to a strong deck is having very few cards with lots of turnover. I had been running decks of 30+ and kept getting the Librarian bonus. My success with The Silent really jumped once I came at it with a deck of only 13 cards. I mean, there's a hint right there in the game that says perhaps the best move ISN'T to take a card every drop.
I'd heard the guys on the podcast talking up the game a lot, but I've been trying to kill off the backlog this year instead of purchasing a new game. Fortunately, this is a very light game and it runs on my low power travel laptop. Plus all my backlog games are on the PC/Xbox/PS4 which I can't play when travelling anyway. So perhaps this doesn't count as cheating on my backlog? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Looking forward to learning a lot more about this game. I've completed Ascension 0 runs with the silent and ironclad. Haven't played any defect yet, Ascension runs, or daily runs.

Question for the group, is every card part of some viable strategy? Like, there's poison cards, and shiv cards. But is there a strategy where Sneaky Strike is useful? Or are there some cards that end up just being "filler". If so, I wonder what percentage fall into that category.

I think most cards have the potential to be a part of a viable strategy. I'd definitely take Sneaky Strike if I had a lot of Prepared cards or a Gambling Chip. There is a fair amount of synergy around discard abilities.