Slay the Spire - Catch all

I've generally been hesitant to take any 2+ energy cards unless they are really powerful. Energy is at such a premium that I feel like two 1 energy cards are often better. The same for most of the "X" cards. Or at least, the strategies where they would be useful almost require a custom deck built around them. Which is part of my frustration around the game, you might put together an awesome deck, but due to the randomness of the card/relic drops you might never be able to repeat it.

Or am I missing something?

I was surprised to win for the first time yesterday. I thought it would last longer than that, for some reason, even though I've only managed to get that far the one time.

It was with a character that I thought I was weakest with, the Ironclad, but the combination of Demon Form (+2 str per round), upgraded Limit Break (double your strength figure, doesn't exhaust when upgraded), the basic Headbutt card (move a card from discard to the top of your draw pile), plus an optional Pommel Strike (draw a card), can make for some remarkably fast cycle times. And when you've got a hundred strength or so, bosses start looking kind of tissue-papery, especially when you bust out an upgraded Heavy Blade. (5x multiplier on strength damage.) Oh, and Reaper (hit all enemies for X damage, heal that much total damage, exhaust the card) becomes very useful when you've got even ten strength, never mind fifty.

I kept almost losing, but never quite falling over, and oh man the Ironclad gets big fast. From teetering on the ropes to dishing out 250-point hits can take like two or three rounds, maybe less if you've got the right artifacts.

I've had some fairly strong Defect runs, sitting behind a wall of ice and slowly whittling away at tough bad guys, but nothing like that. That Ironclad deck would have smashed its way through that wall with contemptuous ease, if it got a good start.

Oh, and then I was very amused by the figures at the end. I contributed 813 damage to the overall total from all game winners: IIRC, it was about 16.5 billion damage. People, it would appear, have been playing rather a lot of Slay the Spire, and they must have been putting up big, big numbers when they finished.

(oh, that's American billions, not European, at least assuming I read my significant digits correctly. 16 thousand million, not 16 million million.)

markcov wrote:

Which is part of my frustration around the game, you might put together an awesome deck, but due to the randomness of the card/relic drops you might never be able to repeat it.

Or am I missing something?

That's the thing with this game. It definitely doesn't want you to figure out "THE WINNING DECK" and then just make that deck over and over. It's about finding the card that will get you through the next elite fight, but not get in the way in act 3 when you've got more powerful cards you're trying to draw. It's about finding combos with relics you've found and other cards and maximizing synergies.

For example, Sneaky Strike with Snecko Eye (draw 2 extra cards per turn, but you're confused -cards cost 0-3 energy at random) can net you extra energy about half the time: If you draw it for 0 energy and can play it, that's +2 energy for other stuff in your hand. Sneaky Strike with After Image (get +1 block for every card played in a turn) can net you a little extra block in addition to doing damage when you get it going. It may not be the best card in the Silent deck, but there may be times when it's worth taking.

Exactly. One thing I found with Silent, for example, is that cards that give you powers based on exhaustion go really well with dagger decks, because they evaporate after play. That combined with enemies who use status cards that exhaust when you play them can really add up. There are a lot of non-obvious combos waiting to be found, and each one that you recognize early gives you a chance to build out your deck later. Or, you know, collapse with a mishmash of unrequited possibilities halfway through the second tower.

Okay, I can see how the randomness does add extend the replay ability. Good thing I'm not the game designer. Did my first daily climb. Not great at 238. Died at the 2nd floor boss.

Edit:
Okay, this is bananas. Just started the next daily climb. your starter deck has a copy of 5 cards. It's Grand Finale.

Can only be played if there are no cards in your draw pile. Deal 50 damage to ALL enemies.

I've never even seen this card before. It's going to be a strange run with these in there. Especially 5 of them. It seems like the optimal path is to dump every other card ASAP.

...and it went terrible. I didn't even survive the 1st floor. Basically I had 5 unplayable cards constantly circulating in my deck. I couldn't get the deck count right so I'd get at least one round of playing it.

markcov wrote:

Edit:
Okay, this is bananas. Just started the next daily climb. your starter deck has a copy of 5 cards. It's Grand Finale.

Can only be played if there are no cards in your draw pile. Deal 50 damage to ALL enemies.

Yikes. That's a crazy daily. That is one card I never take because it's so hard to get to work. So crazy that I had to try my hand at this, and I made it the Act 2 boss.

Spoiler:

I got my deck to 17 cards and kept it there. You draw 7 cards first turn because of the starting relic, then 5 after that, so on turn 3 I was able to play one or two Grand Finales as needed. I just had to survive the first two turns.

Then the Act 2 boss was the one that has the sentries that steal a card from your draw pile. They took one card out on turn 3 and ruined my system. I wasn't able to play Grand Finale, and that was that.

Well, after 3 rounds, I can't make it beyond the 2nd floor with the daily challenge deck. It ends up being short on block. I can't get enough coins / merchants to delete the cards fast enough. I think a 12 card deck would be the most successful, but I can't survive long enough to do 5 deletes.

Curious to hear what your strategies were.

I know I just posted about this guy on the last page but he just released this video today with some great thoughts on card draw, deck sizes, etc. Basically stuff that we've been talking about recently here. Pretty informative stuff.

Happy New Year! Tonight I unlocked ascension 20 for the Ironclad. My final deck had 32 cards, 6 were upgraded Perfected Strikes and I had a grand total of 18 "strike" cards in my deck. I had Bag of Prep for 2 extra card draw, bag of marbles for vulnerable on turn one, and Necronomicon for my first 2 energy attack being played twice each turn. That comes to 90x2 damage for playing one Perfected Strike+ when enemies were vulnerable. I killed Time Eater before his first strength gain. I killed the act 4 elites on turn 2. I... died horribly to The Heart (not enough block). But you just need to beat the act 3 boss to unlock the next ascension, so at least I progressed there.

Good job!

You folks weren't wrong, this game is great.

Is it bad that I really wish I could play it on my phone?

I finally beat ascension 15. I had a high block deck - several flame walls, ghostly armor. I got barricade shortly after, so I got a couple more block cards. Then I got the bottled tornado artifact which let me choose barricade to be in my starting hand. I also had a barricade which let me do 100+ damage a couple of times. It worked out pretty well!

troubleshot wrote:

You folks weren't wrong, this game is great.

Is it bad that I really wish I could play it on my phone?

If that's bad, then I don't want to be good! Yes, I think it would be amazing to have Slay the Spire in my pocket.

Having defeated the Heart with both the Defect and the Ironclad, I'm attempting to do so with the Silent, and continuing to struggle. I'm just terrible with her compared to the other two classes.

troubleshot wrote:

You folks weren't wrong, this game is great.

Is it bad that I really wish I could play it on my phone?

You could use your phone to play if you connect to your Steam PC over a local network. Not as good as play anywhere, but it's a start.

robc wrote:
troubleshot wrote:

You folks weren't wrong, this game is great.

Is it bad that I really wish I could play it on my phone?

You could use your phone to play if you connect to your Steam PC over a local network. Not as good as play anywhere, but it's a start.

Did not know that was possible. Has anyone tried this? I don't have a bluetooth enabled controller but might consider one if the streaming is good.

kergguz wrote:
robc wrote:
troubleshot wrote:

You folks weren't wrong, this game is great.

Is it bad that I really wish I could play it on my phone?

You could use your phone to play if you connect to your Steam PC over a local network. Not as good as play anywhere, but it's a start.

Did not know that was possible. Has anyone tried this? I don't have a bluetooth enabled controller but might consider one if the streaming is good.

I play it around the house on my phone fairly regularly. It works well for me. I just use the touch controls, no gamepad.

robc wrote:
troubleshot wrote:

You folks weren't wrong, this game is great.

Is it bad that I really wish I could play it on my phone?

You could use your phone to play if you connect to your Steam PC over a local network. Not as good as play anywhere, but it's a start.

Yeah, that's not something I needed to know. If this game were mobile I'd pull it out at work and I'd never get anything done. The "one more move" pull is way too strong.

My decks are still way too big and unoptimized. I'm really good at making a play / purchase at the merchant and *then* realizing what I should have done.

While I"m sure the games start going faster once you really know the cards well, I'm going to have to do some research on how it's possible to beat the game in 20 minutes. Nearly all of my runs are still 1.5-2hrs.

I feel like on mobile I could easily make a boss battle and then drop the game for a bit if need be, but I can agree mobile gaming can indeed be bad for productivity so maybe I should be careful what I wish for...

Have now unlocked all three classes, I feel like I 'get' and dig the first two but the third im still figuring out, anomaly (is that the class name?) is weird, but seems cool nonetheless. Is the plan for full release to have many more classes? Have they spoken on when they intend to increase longevity?

The developer has stated that he plans on releasing additional characters (and presumably other content) after release. There are also supposedly a few well-made new characters in the Steam workshop if you're looking for something fresh.

markcov wrote:

While I"m sure the games start going faster once you really know the cards well, I'm going to have to do some research on how it's possible to beat the game in 20 minutes. Nearly all of my runs are still 1.5-2hrs.

You might already be aware of this, but just in case, there's a "fast mode" (or something along those lines) option in the options menu. It greatly speeds up all of the game's animations. Such a great feature to respect the player's time (in addition to speeding up speed runs)!

WolverineJon wrote:

You might already be aware of this, but just in case, there's a "fast mode" (or something along those lines) option in the options menu. It greatly speeds up all of the game's animations. Such a great feature to respect the player's time (in addition to speeding up speed runs)!

A ha! I remember seeing that option the first time I opened the game and I never looked back. Forgot all about it. Thanks!

troubleshot wrote:

Have now unlocked all three classes, I feel like I 'get' and dig the first two but the third im still figuring out, anomaly (is that the class name?) is weird, but seems cool nonetheless. Is the plan for full release to have many more classes? Have they spoken on when they intend to increase longevity?

I've had success with setting a deck for lots of power cards, block, and using the Orbs to do all my offense. Get some high block cards and Barricade to take care of defense. Focus cards to boost the orb power, expand orb slots, and have lightening hit everybody. Only on Ascension 1 myself though. It seems inefficient to split your offense between cards that focus on orbs and direct attack damage. The frost orbs seem inefficient for generating block so I prefer to stick with dark / lightining / plasma and just use the orbs for attacking. It's not very good for quick kills though. Dark orbs need time to charge up.

So I finally managed my first "winning" (get to the heart) Silent run. This was one where everything went my way almost all the time, having very little to do with skill, but it taught me some new combos I hadn't realized before.

Started out removing a strike at game launch, and then removed another strike early on from a ? square. My first relic was a golden idol (+25% gold), which I kept for the rest of the game. That was a biggie. Then Prayer Wheel dropped somewhere in that same timeframe, which gave me two cards from each routine enemy. Somehow I picked up a Ninja Scroll (3 shivs at start of combat) paired up with a Shuriken, which gives you +1 strength every time you attack three times in one round. So I pretty much always had +1 strength from then on, and the longer a fight went, the stronger I'd become. I think my peak might have been +8? The numbers were getting pretty crazy.

Then I got Pandora's Box, and boy was that one interesting. That replaces every strike and defend card in your deck with something random. I ended up with two Well-Laid plans (keep a card at end of turn), which is *really* handy with Silent, to set up combos. That also gave me an extra Noxious Fumes; I ended up running with one +3 and one +2 noxious for the remainder of the game. (give enemies 5 poison/round.)

But, and this is a huge but, I had almost no block in my deck anymore! I didn't really think through what that was going to do to me, so I suddenly had a deck full of random cards, some of which were very strong, and very little defense. I normally grab defense as Silent because attack cards are easy, so I had some, but I was scrambling desperately for quite awhile. Fortunately, the double-card-drop relic let me patch that hole surprisingly quickly. And jeeze, suddenly the character could put out incredible amounts of damage. It's just crazy how much the Silent can put out with the right cards. I found a Bottled Flame, which let me make an attack card Innate, so I chose Finisher. (1 energy, 6 damage per attack you've already played this round.) Normally, that's a decent card, but combined with three starting shivs and Innate, that first round was pretty much guaranteed 30 damage for one energy, and putting out 40 to 50 in the first round was quite common. And, note, the strength starts piling up from all those attacks right away, so having +2 strength by the second round was pretty normal. Bad guys just evaporated.

Then Pantograph dropped, giving me +25hp for bosses. I think that's where the win became likely, because that let me start upgrading instead of resting.

Then I found a ? room that let me fight a first-round boss for a rare relic. Got Lagavulin, and that thing didn't have a prayer. I think it did, I dunno, two damage? And that dropped yet another biggie, a Cursed Key, +1 energy but a curse in every non-boss chest. I ended up skipping one small chest because of it, almost pure win.

Then somewhere in there I picked up a Nightmare (make three copies of a card), and upgraded it, and started using it with a normal Footwork (+2 dex), so if I got a good pull I'd be sitting with +8 dex. Later I bumped Footwork and saw several combats with +12. And then Bandage Up (+4hp, evaporate) dropped, and that teams up real well with Nightmare. Upgraded to +6, that was 24hp of healing in a combat where I could deploy both, which I think happened only once. By then, my deck was getting so big that the really major combos didn't happen that often, but there were zillions of others I kept finding.

The card that sealed the deal was Corpse Explosion. In the final fight at Floor 50, I got Donu and Deca, and Corpse Explosion meant I only had to kill one. I wasn't able to get my Nightmare/Dex combo going (I tried desperately), but even with lesser combos, I was only a little under half health when the front guy went down, and that was the game.

That was an incredibly chaotic run. I originally had kind of a plan, but ended up with this completely weird, scattershot, unplanned deck, which combined with the relics that dropped happened to turn into a monster. When I melted the second Lagavulin so easily, I realized that the deck was really working, even though I had almost no idea how any given round was going to look. The combo I really wanted at any given time was almost never there, but there was almost always something powerful on tap. It was a 41-card deck by the end, fer chrissake, but it worked anyway.

Pandora's Box, I gotta say, is a real interesting relic choice. But without that double-drop relic, I think it would have doomed me. A deck with no block kicks ass, but you get worn down pretty hard. I think my lowest ebb was 5hp. It's a good way, I think, to teach you more of your character type, because you have to adapt or die. If you have a comfort zone, that relic will take you right out of it.

It'll also kill you, of course, but so does everything else in that game.

I love the Pandora's Box relic. My goal with all of the characters is to replace the Defend / Strikes ASAP. This just allows me to do it quicker. Even better, if it's early it's like you get a choice of what type of deck you're going to have. The pitfall is that you might die on the next encounter b/c the deck is terribly unbalanced. But it's great after that.

Thanks for sharing.

markcov wrote:

I love the Pandora's Box relic. My goal with all of the characters is to replace the Defend / Strikes ASAP. This just allows me to do it quicker. Even better, if it's early it's like you get a choice of what type of deck you're going to have. The pitfall is that you might die on the next encounter b/c the deck is terribly unbalanced. But it's great after that.

Thanks for sharing.

Is there a good way to do that, normally? I try to remove strikes at shops, and will Transform what I can, but I think this is the first run I've ever had where all my strikes and defends went away. I've had them all upgraded once, but I don't normally even manage to get rid of my strikes, much less my defends.

Most games you might be able to get rid of half of them. Some games you get lucky and you get a relic or a special on the ? floors that let you drop them all at once.

I've had a bunch of runs where I got Pandora's Box, and it almost always improves my situation, unless I've only got like 5hp left and I needed the Block cards lol. I have, in contrast, never managed to sell off all my Block/Attack starters, and I don't think I'll try.

The one card that I *love* is the "upgrade your deck for this combat" one. But that rarely drops, and sometimes it shows up in the Shop when I don't have enough gold. I usually weep at that point. I tell my son I'm looking at sad puppy pictures but I'm not.

Ah, Apotheosis (upgrade all cards in deck for this combat.) Wonderful card, but it has the problem that you have to draw it. I just got aced by the dagger-summoning elite in the third act, Apotheosis just didn't drop in time, and I couldn't put out damage fast enough to kill those daggers in two rounds. Everything had been going so well, too. sigh.

I dunno if there's a relic to start with a skill, but if so, Apotheosis would have to top the list of good combos. You wouldn't need to upgrade cards anymore.

edit: aha, it's Bottled Lightning. There's one relic for each card type. That combo would be devastating.

Just had my first Heart kill with a wacky Ironclad build. Super patchwork up until the second half of the second act, when I suddenly got dead branch, fiend fire, corruption, and dark embrace happening in concert. Once the cycle started, I would end up exhausting a full hand through fiend fire, replenishing with dead branch and cycling the deck through to fiend fire again as it avoided the exhaustion and was the first card to be re-drawn. Had about four block cards left, and all they did was act as the catalyst for the cycle via the corruption/dark embrace pairing. First time I've had that 'I've broken the game!' rush

Ended up with a final score of 1194 which I know is meaningless but it still felt pretty good to finally crack 1k :p

DC Malleus wrote:

Just had my first Heart kill with a wacky Ironclad build. Super patchwork up until the second half of the second act, when I suddenly got dead branch, fiend fire, corruption, and dark embrace happening in concert. Once the cycle started, I would end up exhausting a full hand through fiend fire, replenishing with dead branch and cycling the deck through to fiend fire again as it avoided the exhaustion and was the first card to be re-drawn. Had about four block cards left, and all they did was act as the catalyst for the cycle via the corruption/dark embrace pairing. First time I've had that 'I've broken the game!' rush

Ended up with a final score of 1194 which I know is meaningless but it still felt pretty good to finally crack 1k :p

Exhaust decks are one of my favorite ways to play. If I find a dead branch, I will go all-in on exhaust cards. Dead Branch plus Corruption is probably the most OP combo in the game if you can pull it off.

What triggers a heart kill? I have never seen it happen and I've had a score over 1,000 before. I just assumed it was just a 'story' thing that it can't be killed as an excuse to show you cumulative stats.