Slay the Spire - Catch all

[quote="bbk1980"]

RnRClown wrote:
Amoebic wrote:

I feel like such an amateur baby compared to most folks. Am I doing myself and my time a grand disservice of taking each run to the bitter end of death? Do you all quit out frequently if a deck isn't going your way?

I never quit out. If I think a deck is going to struggle a bit I might take on an extra elite that will either kill me or give me hope for a victory.

In other news I’m up to ascension 14 with ironclad and it’s getting rough. What are the future ascensions like?

I've done basically nothing with Ascension despite my crazy number of hours in the game - do you have to kill the Heart to move to higher ascension levels, or just the act 3 boss?

Unless you're over Ascension 10-15, there isn't a reason to quit out. You can pretty much win any game in lower Ascension.

However, the really high Ascension levels restrict your win conditions heavily. There are some games that are just unwinnable no matter what decision you make. So I've quit out of those. I probably had 10 games in a row on A20 where I didn't make it past the first Boss.

Don't view each run as "winning or losing", though. Instead view each run as education to make you a better player. If you view it that way, quitting out isn't really an option.

Timespike wrote:

I've done basically nothing with Ascension despite my crazy number of hours in the game - do you have to kill the Heart to move to higher ascension levels, or just the act 3 boss?

Just the act 3 boss - I purposely don't chase the fragments to get to the heart for ascension runs. Better off taking the relics.

Jonman wrote:
Timespike wrote:

I've done basically nothing with Ascension despite my crazy number of hours in the game - do you have to kill the Heart to move to higher ascension levels, or just the act 3 boss?

Just the act 3 boss - I purposely don't chase the fragments to get to the heart for ascension runs. Better off taking the relics. :)

I gave up going for the key fragments at about ascension 5. You really need those relics. I will probably try for heart kills if I ever finish ascension 20 with the three characters ( I’m on PS4 so I think the new one is a while off for me)

I did it, I killed the heart with the silent! That's all three now and even though I really scraped through by the skin of my teeth, I feel very proud!

Now I can focus on my favourite, the defect. On ascension level 4...………..

Congrats. I haven't been able to even beat the Act 3 boss as Defect, yet. The other two are no problem, but I have yet to work out a good strategy on the third hero.

So I beat the boss on accession 20 with the Iron Clad, just a shame that I only had 20 health left and at that level you have to beat 2 lol

onewild wrote:

So I beat the boss on accession 20 with the Iron Clad, just a shame that I only had 20 health left and at that level you have to beat 2 lol

Two level 3 bosses wow. There goes my hope of building an infinite draw deck and not getting time eater. Still well done!

onewild wrote:

So I beat the boss on accession 20 with the Iron Clad, just a shame that I only had 20 health left and at that level you have to beat 2 lol

Good gawd

And you don't get any heals between the two fights outside of Ironclad's relic. I mean I knew it was coming so I knew I had no chance going into the second fight.

Dove back into this on a flight today. Forgot how fun it can be.

EDIT: And of course my first Defect run was going perfectly. But I changed planes in the middle of the Act 3 boss. When I went back to pick it up I stupidly died. Should have quit to save scum real quick but I'm out of practice. Hah.

Just finished the Act 3 boss with the Watcher... I'd guess it was my 8th or 9th run. (It unlocked the fourth tier of new stuff for her, if that gives any context on how many attempts I made.) (edit: actually, I think it was my 14th run, if I'm counting the match history correctly.)

Fairly detailed strategy discussion of various Watcher cards below: I'm spoiler-tagging it for those who want to find out for themselves.

Spoiler:

This time was a new strategy for me... it was a fast-roll deck. I took a bonus card to start, and got Foresight, which lets you Scry 3 at the beginning of every round. I didn't realize how useful this would be at first, and rapidly came to like it a lot. It let me cycle through my deck about 25% faster, looking for cards I needed. The first monster dropped Weave, which is a 0-point, 4-damage card that returns from your discard whenever you Scry, so that was a source of minor but steady damage throughout the game. (never did upgrade it.) The very next drop was Nirvana, which gives 4 block every time you scry, so now I had a permanent 4 block every round. I skipped one pickup, so in just four card choices I had a pretty strong base combo going.

First rest stop, I upgraded Foresight, so I had that Scry rolling from combat start every time. That's a very strong card, for a 1-point blue. Then I grabbed Cut Through Fate (7 damage, Scry 2, draw 1), which sounded good on paper, but in practice I mostly found it a waste of time. Just rolled with those for awhile, got some various relics, nothing that stood out strongly.

After killing Hexaghost, I picked up Deva Form, which is an extremely powerful card. It costs 3 energy, and is Ethereal until you upgrade it, so upgrading it matters a lot. Use it or lose it on a 3-point devastating card is a hell of a choice.

Once it's going, it gives you +1 energy per round, cumulative. 2 rounds in, it's +2 energy, +3 at round 3, and so on. Combining that with Scry and Insights every round was really potent, it let me put out a ton of damage, even with basic, white Strikes. Once I upgraded Deva Form, things got much easier. The combo of big energy and fast card rolling is devastating.

It was a slow-start deck and didn't have nearly enough block at first, but I found a couple of Deceive Reality cards, which are awesome. They're a 1-point card that does 4 block, which is wimpy, but then they create a 1-energy, 13-block card with Retain. So you can spend 2 energy and get 17 block in one round, or you can spend 1 and bank the second card until you actually need it. I think it was probably when I found the first of the two cards that the run was in the bag, because being able to save block is fantastic, particularly since block was so critical to the deck until the other cards got rolling. I bought a Battle Hymn in a shop, which gives you a 1-energy, 13-point Smite card with Retain every round, and that finally started to give me some actual punch. I picked up a second somewhere (don't see it in the run list right now), but found that I usually didn't drop it until I had Deva Form up, because I was afraid of cluttering my hand with cards I was forced to Retain. That added a ton of hit power for late in the fight, though.

I also found a second Nirvana, and upgraded both, so I ended up with semi-permanent 12 block every round. That is damn handy, lemme tell ya.

I think my biggest mistake was overloading on Path to Victory. This is an awesome card (Marks an enemy for either 8 or 11 depending on upgrade, does that much damage, and is cumulative; the Mark never wears off.) But I should have stopped at two. Instead, I kept grabbing more every time I saw them, and ended up with five of them. This did give me a great deal of damage power, as these cards get devastating very quickly, but with my fast cycle times, I should have stuck with no more than two. The extra cards were clutter that slowed me down.

Lesser mistakes were Pray and Prostrate, which give you Mantra points, used to switch to Divinity stance. I don't think I got into Divinity more than once the entire game. Mind, I think it did matter the one time I used it, I think it was a last-round, die or not die against a boss and it pulled me through, but for the most part they weren't worth the card slots. I think the passive power that gives you +2 per round is probably better overall.

What I've been finding is that the stances aren't as useful as I was expecting. In my early runs I was trying to tightly manage swapping between defense and offense, but in actual practice, Wrath stance is just too damn dangerous. You need to know you can drop the stance again before getting hit, or else know for sure that all your enemies will die, and it's pretty rare to pull all the cards you need in only 5 draws. This last run, I had great success in just flat ignoring stances altogether, except for those useless Mantra cards that never actually did a damn thing. Vigilance was only useful as a source of block, really... I'd get into Calm stance and just never leave it again.

It's a shame I couldn't take this deck onto the fourth floor, but I've never beaten the third boss as Defect, so I was stuck at the end of 3. So I guess it's back to plugging away on him for awhile. Maybe I'll figure him out.

Ascension level 7 for my battling trio now, the difference in playtime is pretty huge with Ironclad vs the others:

Ironclad - 92 hours
Silent - 56 hours
Defect - 51 hours

How good is After Image when you have a shiv based deck, I went through the awakened one like a hot knife through butter, barely lost any health.

That damn heart beat me yet again, got 200 plus health of it before it had enough & slapped me down. If I could just find the aorta & cut off its oxygenated blood....

I didn’t know it tracks character time. Is that in a menu somewhere?

LeapingGnome wrote:

I didn’t know it tracks character time. Is that in a menu somewhere?

On the start screen go to:
Statistics
Character Stats
Then scroll down past the achievements

There is a decent bit of info on how you've performed with each character.

I just played a wonderful run with the Defect, killed the heart on Ascension 11. I even had two 'free lives' unused at the end (a 'fairy in the bottle' potion, and the lizard tail relic). But, I didn't get Ascension 12 unlocked after playing it. I've got the beta version enabled, but haven't played the Watcher at all- I think I have to beat the game with the Watcher before I can start climbing Ascension levels again with the other characters. Crap.

So, turns out I'm an idiot. I *did* finish the base game with The Defect. I just didn't collect the gems during my Watcher run, which is why I couldn't go further.

Honestly, I'm not sure I could have. That early special elite can be a killer.

Tscott wrote:

I just played a wonderful run with the Defect, killed the heart on Ascension 11. I even had two 'free lives' unused at the end (a 'fairy in the bottle' potion, and the lizard tail relic). But, I didn't get Ascension 12 unlocked after playing it. I've got the beta version enabled, but haven't played the Watcher at all- I think I have to beat the game with the Watcher before I can start climbing Ascension levels again with the other characters. Crap.

Can you gain ascensions in beta? I assumed it would be limited.

Today's challenge is fun. I took too many cards, but I was rolling there for a while.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Tscott wrote:

I just played a wonderful run with the Defect, killed the heart on Ascension 11. I even had two 'free lives' unused at the end (a 'fairy in the bottle' potion, and the lizard tail relic). But, I didn't get Ascension 12 unlocked after playing it. I've got the beta version enabled, but haven't played the Watcher at all- I think I have to beat the game with the Watcher before I can start climbing Ascension levels again with the other characters. Crap.

Can you gain ascensions in beta? I assumed it would be limited.

Yes you can.

I beat the 3 act with the Watcher, so I'm able to try to climb ascension levels with the Silent and Defect again. I'm still trying to get a feel for the Watcher. I definitely don't think the deck I won with would've been good against the heart or at higher difficulties.

I also finally beat the heart at ascension level 20 with the Ironclad! I had attempted it many times, but this was the run where I prevailed. A lot of Feel No Pain + plus exhaust for block, a variety of ways to gain strength, and some Reapers and a Feed for healing and max HP. I took Coffee Dripper for the Act 1 boss reward (+1 energy but you can no longer rest at campfires) but I already had some strength and a Reaper and Meat on the Bone, so I knew I'd have some sources of healing. I ended the fight with the Heart at a full 118 health (I started the fight at 87/118).

Oh and I think I really like all the recent changes to balance the game (changing rarity of some relics, adding new relics and potions). It’s pretty impressive how they taken such a well balanced game and continue to improve it.

I've made it to the heart with the Watcher a couple of times, but haven't killed it yet, despite absolutely slaughtering the 4th-map elite last time.

Yeah, I made it to the Heart once with the Watcher, and got slaughtered. That was my first Heart attempt on any character, and it didn't go well.

Does the amount of times you've got to the heart & dealt it damage (once you beat the act 3 boss) matter when your actually fighting it in act 4?

Spikeout wrote:

Does the amount of times you've got to the heart & dealt it damage (once you beat the act 3 boss) matter when your actually fighting it in act 4?

No not at all it’s always the same apart from what ascension you are on.

Please elaborate. Do higher ascensions increase or decrease heart HP? After 80 hours I’m finally able to reach heart on ascension 1

Just found out this game has mods and that there is a Sailor Moon mod. The power of the moon compels you.

bbk1980 wrote:
Spikeout wrote:

Does the amount of times you've got to the heart & dealt it damage (once you beat the act 3 boss) matter when your actually fighting it in act 4?

No not at all it’s always the same apart from what ascension you are on.

Ah ok, thought I might have been weakening the heart with all those times I've stood before it & dealt it damage that seemed to go towards an overall total over all your runs.

I'm on level 10 ascension with Defect, level 9 with Silent & level 8 with Ironclad.

There are relics I'm only getting for the first time & I'm 226 hours in, its quite astonishing how replayable this is. Hurry up & get The Watcher update out on Switch!

I think the game keeps track of everyone's scores at the end of act 3, and that's the large total of damage that's been dealt to the heart. I'm not sure if that's across all platforms though.

The health of the Heart in the act 4 fight I'm pretty sure stays the same through all difficulties- 800 HP. What changes is in later difficulties the "beat of the heart" (damage done to you per card played) increases from 1 to 2, and the invulnerability buff that it has decreases the damage you can do per turn. At low difficulties there's a limit of 300 points of damage it can take per turn, but at higher difficulties it can only take to 200 points of damage per turn.

Zoso1701 wrote:

Please elaborate. Do higher ascensions increase or decrease heart HP? After 80 hours I’m finally able to reach heart on ascension 1

Higher ascensions make all bosses harder. The hp of bosses rises at level 9. I’m on ascension 17 now and boy it’s rough.