Slay the Spire - Catch all

Yeah, I've never done it, but I don't like doing heart runs as it saps the fun for me.

Do you just not bother with the keys if you don't want to fight the heart? Is it still considered a "win"? After finishing Act 3 with the first 3 characters and unlocking the heart, it seems like finishing Act 3 is no longer considered a win.

Yeah, during Ascension runs I'm merely trying to survive rather than do Heart runs.

Ascension wins only require the three stages (up through Ascension 10 or so, which is about as far as I've gotten).

I'll sometimes do non-key runs where I have to plot a path against the most elites per act. Usually ends up with me decimating finals bosses or getting destroyed in act 2. Depends on the synergy of my deck and the elite relics I pick up

So I've really relasped into StS in a big way. Trying to move up the Ascension ladder for Ironclad but struggling. For those of you who have made it to double digits, any advanced tips? I suspect I am adding too many cards to my deck making it unreliable in later fights.

bigred wrote:

So I've really relasped into StS in a big way. Trying to move up the Ascension ladder for Ironclad but struggling. For those of you who have made it to double digits, any advanced tips? I suspect I am adding too many cards to my deck making it unreliable in later fights.

I'm pretty sure this is why I'm stuck at lower levels. But those cards are soooo pretty! Maybe I'll just have one this once.

bigred wrote:

So I've really relasped into StS in a big way. Trying to move up the Ascension ladder for Ironclad but struggling. For those of you who have made it to double digits, any advanced tips? I suspect I am adding too many cards to my deck making it unreliable in later fights.

I'm basically stuck at Ascension level 20 (you fight the boss twice on act 3) on Ironclad, Silent & Defect. Getting there has taken me hundreds of hours, I'm at 700 hours total play time now.

I'd say the best tips are keeping a lean deck & once you get certain relics try to pick your cards that will bring out the best of those relics.

If you get Kunai (play 3 attacks in a single turn to gain +1 dexterity) or Shuriken (play 3 attacks in a single turn to gain +1 strength) then try to get attack cards that cost 0 or get shiv based cards so you can get as much increased dexterity/strength as possible in each battle.

There are cards that combo up extremely well with others too. When playing Ironclad if you get the card 'Juggernaut' (when blocking deal 5/7 damage to a random enemy) then trying to add 'Iron Wave' & 'Metallicize' will be massively beneficial in both keeping your defence high as well as dealing out damage.

Its good to remove cards rather than upgrade them in a lot of the '?' rooms. Getting the normal attack or defence cards out of your deck means your chance to draw the better cards you pick up along the way increases each turn.

If your fairly powerful earlier on I'd try to choose a path were you fight as many elite enemies as possible to accumulate relics. When you get higher in the Ascension levels though this can be a roll of the dice in act 2 onwards as the elites damage output can be insane or their debuffs in reducing your dexterity or strength can seem brutally unfair.

That's just a few tips but do look at the synergistic effect between not only relics & cards but the cards alone themselves. There have been synergies I haven't discovered until hundreds of hours in.

I too am recently relapsed--StS is definitely a forever game that I just keep coming back to.

I'm still having occasional issues with my game not saving and Act 3 clears not registering, which is frustrating. I'd be a couple of Ascension levels higher on Ironclad (15) and Defect (14) if not for that issue. I've been trying to be better about actually quitting out of the run (and forcing a save) rather than just putting the Switch to sleep, so we'll see if that helps.

edit: can confirm, it does not help. Had an Act 3 clear, got to the heart campfire, made sure to force a save by quitting to the main menu, got the next ascension level ding...and still on the same ascension after starting a new game. Very frustrating.

To be honest I think I may have reached my skill cap here--I still make plenty of misplays and sub-optimal choices, so I have a sneaking suspicion that any time I do manage to clear Act 3 it's more RNG delivering than anything else, but I enjoy the game so much I don't really mind at this point. Over 300 hours and counting...

Yeah. I think my challenge early-on is deciding at one point to specialize along one of the top builds for Ironclad. Barricade + body slam, super strength and high attack, etc. I end up picking cards out of precaution to meet all and end up with a janky 30 card deck.

I started messing around with rarely taking cards and focusing on removing strikes and defense. Worked ok. Deck was lacking and I got destroyed in Act II.

I learned to manage my deck size in a challenge that was something like "finish the game with a 15 card deck" or the like. Now, there are a few relics that benefit from having tons of cards that you can run through, but for the most part, I follow this general rule.

I usually take the "replace or upgrade a card" option at the start. Then I think about the innate weakness of the character - does it need defense? Is it low on high damage cards, requiring you to mill cards each turn to do real damage? I decide on a tentative approach and as cards are offered, I ruthlessly take only the ones that fit that strategy. Each time I get a new attack card or defense card, I will try to remember to dump one of the starter cards so that overall my deck is stronger.

At that point, I'm at maybe 15 cards, and the random draws will have started me on a distinct path that can make use of various synergies. If I need to pivot strategies, I am only a few cards in. I now usually have a few very good cards to build around, and that's what I do. Reinforce strengths, plug weaknesses, but above all, take cards for synergistic effects. Again, only take what you need; keep your deck strong and quick to roll through so the heavy hitters show up as often as possible in a fight.

It's hard to discard cool cards, but you have to remember that each *type* of card needs others of the type to really shine. There's no point building yourself up to use debuffs and then trying to add in one or two blade storm cards. They just break your run. Either go with one or the other, OR, create a debuff/physical build. But don't then add in a third type of attack or defense. You want to mill cards efficiently while having enough defense to stay safe. You *don't* want to show off your multicolor unicorn one of everything variety pak build, because that will get you killed against opponents that drill you hard in a single way. Which of course the bosses will do.

bigred wrote:

So I've really relasped into StS in a big way. Trying to move up the Ascension ladder for Ironclad but struggling. For those of you who have made it to double digits, any advanced tips? I suspect I am adding too many cards to my deck making it unreliable in later fights.

The biggest one, which even I forgot or ignore at times and always back fires, is when it comes to picking cards, pick ones for right now and not later. What I mean by this for example is sure Catalyst is a brilliant card in ACT 3 posion but in early ACT 1 it's an awful card that may as well be a curse.

onewild wrote:
bigred wrote:

So I've really relasped into StS in a big way. Trying to move up the Ascension ladder for Ironclad but struggling. For those of you who have made it to double digits, any advanced tips? I suspect I am adding too many cards to my deck making it unreliable in later fights.

The biggest one, which even I forgot or ignore at times and always back fires, is when it comes to picking cards, pick ones for right now and not later. What I mean by this for example is sure Catalyst is a brilliant card in ACT 3 posion but in early ACT 1 it's an awful card that may as well be a curse.

This is a great piece of advice. I have a fair number of ascension 20 heart kills at this point and the thing that changed for me was thinking about what fights were coming up and what my deck lacked and solving those problems as opposed to trying to force a specific deck type. Its been mentioned here a few times but Jorb's twitch and youtube pages are great resources if you have a few hours to watch his runs. I was solidly hitting a brick wall at ascension 15 till I started watching them. Good luck and enjoy one of the best games ever made

Jorbs's "Overexplain" videos are particularly good for learning how to get better. If you're going to him to figure out how to improve, I recommend looking for that word in the video titles.

So after beating Ascension 4 for Silent on my Switch, I now can confirm I am not leveling up the ascension and the runs don't seem to record in my run history.

I wasn't sure if I was beating Ascenion 3 or 4 the first two times as I would put the game down after a victory and come back a few days later. I was suspicious and just beat Ascension 4 again to find that it had not unlocked Ascension 5. I decided to take a look at the run history data and none of my victories are recorded there since January and only for Ironclad. Only my failures show this month.

Anyone know what's wrong? I'd like to avoid reinstalling but it won't be the end of the world. I like this game that much.

Some googling found a similar issue on the Mobile App version. The resolution steps were to kill the app and then reload before starting a new run. I tried closing software on Switch but no luck.

Edit: This was in standard mode, no custom seed, etc. It even says at the end during "The end?" and final score screen at the top, "Ascension 5 unlocked!"

Edit 2: On top of killing the software, I also hard rebooted (holding down power button for 5 secs). No luck

Ugh that's an ugly bug

Hard rebooting the Switch seems to have fixed it. Just beat Ascension 4 (again) and now I can play 5.

bigred wrote:

So after beating Ascension 4 for Silent on my Switch, I now can confirm I am not leveling up the ascension and the runs don't seem to record in my run history.

I wasn't sure if I was beating Ascenion 3 or 4 the first two times as I would put the game down after a victory and come back a few days later. I was suspicious and just beat Ascension 4 again to find that it had not unlocked Ascension 5. I decided to take a look at the run history data and none of my victories are recorded there since January and only for Ironclad. Only my failures show this month.

Anyone know what's wrong? I'd like to avoid reinstalling but it won't be the end of the world. I like this game that much.

Some googling found a similar issue on the Mobile App version. The resolution steps were to kill the app and then reload before starting a new run. I tried closing software on Switch but no luck.

Edit: This was in standard mode, no custom seed, etc. It even says at the end during "The end?" and final score screen at the top, "Ascension 5 unlocked!"

Edit 2: On top of killing the software, I also hard rebooted (holding down power button for 5 secs). No luck

I’ve been dealing with this issue intermittently for years now on switch, but i think I’ve finally figured out a solution. My last two runs that should have moved me up an ascension did in fact do so.

The fix was to completely disable the internet connection on the switch, which I had to by completely forgetting my WiFi SSID. For me at least I think the issue had to do with me moving from areas with a connection to areas without one over the course of a single run, which may be broken up across multiple days. Even though I don’t have a Nintendo online sub and don’t have any cloud save features enabled, this was the only thing I could think of after literal years of trying to troubleshoot this, and so far it seems to have worked.

Yeah, I have noticed error messages lately about STS losing internet connection due to sleep mode. Was wondering if that affected it. Airplane mode it is!

Another STS relapser here.

I managed A20 on all chars on the Steam version, then mid-last year bought the iOS app, and now that it is with me all the time it is so hard not to just spin up a run and see where it goes.
The ability to put it down at any time, and pick upand be exactly where you left off is amazing, and I'm up to A18 on all but the Watcher (whom I don't really enjoy playing that much).

At the higher ascensions you can't really pick a strategy early, and trying to get a nice slim deck is also pretty much impossible. As Onewild said is to build for now, and in addition think about how your deck can possible beat the Act 4 enemies.

Just had a run that was a good example of this.

Playing Silent, got an early upgraded Caltrops (5 dmg when attacked), and then a Wraith Form from the second elite fight. Okay now I'm already thinking I have the bones of a deck that can beat the heart. Just needs more damage mitigation and either another Caltrops / Bronze Scales / Thorn potion.

When adding cards I tried to stay away from adding any attacks where possible, and my entire offense came down to
2x Caltrops
4x Deadly Poison
1x Corpse Explosion
1x Quick Slash
1x Flechettes

Act 2 was pretty tough, but then I picked up a Nightmare at the start of Act 3, and I knew all I needed was to play tight and I could go all the way.

My best runs with the energy ball person have been with huge decks that give lots of energy, powers, and attacks. But iirc that’s the only one I purposely don’t worry about deck size. The others, it’s dependent on the card dependencies.

Vargen wrote:

Jorbs's "Overexplain" videos are particularly good for learning how to get better. If you're going to him to figure out how to improve, I recommend looking for that word in the video titles.

So I watched his first one the other day. 3 hours! I did not come away with 3 hours worth of information. Sure, he knows the game. He didn't really explain anything. Threw a bunch of numbers up without really saying how he came up with them. He said "this card is bad, this card is good" without saying way.

I think I'm going to need a little more direction into which of his videos are worth watching before spending any more time on them.

Moggy wrote:
Vargen wrote:

Jorbs's "Overexplain" videos are particularly good for learning how to get better. If you're going to him to figure out how to improve, I recommend looking for that word in the video titles.

So I watched his first one the other day. 3 hours! I did not come away with 3 hours worth of information. Sure, he knows the game. He didn't really explain anything. Threw a bunch of numbers up without really saying how he came up with them. He said "this card is bad, this card is good" without saying way.

I think I'm going to need a little more direction into which of his videos are worth watching before spending any more time on them.

Hey Moggy, totally understandable I mostly just learned from watching standard runs but I think a good starting point might be his coaching run with the magic player LSV which is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfKy...

Still two hours but i think it gets a nice balance of him talking LSV through decisions without taking forever.

Moggy wrote:

So I watched his first one the other day. 3 hours! I did not come away with 3 hours worth of information. Sure, he knows the game. He didn't really explain anything. Threw a bunch of numbers up without really saying how he came up with them. He said "this card is bad, this card is good" without saying way.

That was the exact reaction I had to his typical videos. Someone had to point me to the "Overexplain" ones. I don't think I started at the beginning though. Very few of these folks have training in education/instruction, so most people's early videos royally suck.

I remember watching that run with LSV. Louis didn't even know there were difficulty levels he was so green.

This is the one I watched:

I thought that as the "building blocks" video it would be better.

I'll try the one you recommended, bbk.

If anyone has other, specific recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

The problem with the Overexplain videos is they were done a few versions ago. A recent big update did a lot of rebalancing/buffing of some of the less used cards. Now cards like Blade Dance and Accuracy have their usefulness greatly improved and thus get picked more often, whereas in the overexplained video he likely was inclined to skip them every time.

I'm sure I've said something similar to what I'm about to say before, but I got the most value from Jorbs by watching normal runs and trying to figure out what card I'd pick from a given card reward and see what he chose to do. If it differed from my choice I'd watch and see how he used the card he picked and try to figure out why he thought it was the stronger pick.

100% agree with this. I was trying to improve with Defect recently but his overexplains for that class are way out of date. He does sprinkle a lot of insight into his regular runs, though.

What's the strategy for Wraith Form? I still struggle with affectively using it. My suspicion is its great for aggressive decks and when you know you're near the end of the battle.

How do folks use it and any must-have cards to align with it?

Personally I think wraith form is one of the strongest cards in the game especially one upgraded. Three turns of intangible is basically enough block for most fights in the game. Once you I have it some sustain to deal with the chip damage and solving damage are usually my concerns although another wraith form or reliable way to draw it are nice. Nightmare is good too.

Fired up a few runs last night as I downloaded some other games and got two in a row A20 heart kills on Ironclad and Silent. I have never achieved 3 in a row so will nervously have a defect run in an attempt to set the BBK Personal Best.