Slay the Spire - Catch all

bbk1980 wrote:

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.

The defect run did not go well…

I had not played STS in quite some time and I resumed a game in progress last night. As it turned out, I was on the last boss and breath them with 8 remaining health. The next screen I attacked a heart, died and a message popped up along the lines of I had unlocked ascension.
In layman’s terms what is that and why would I want to play a harder run—as I understand it—as my character has not achieved all of their unlocks?

Thank you for any guidance and suggestions anyone can offer on what’s next!

Chad

You want to ascend at least once with each character to unlock an extra act. People want a harder version for the challenge but you don’t have to interact with levels other than bragging rights and a cool bit of art.

Thank you. Have I done that already or did I just unlock? I think the latter.

I once again find myself on two A20 heart kills in a row with Ironclad and Silent, can i string together a third tonight with defect? Probably not

bbk1980 wrote:

I once again find myself on two A20 heart kills in a row with Ironclad and Silent, can i string together a third tonight with defect? Probably not :)

Fail again, despite getting to the heart, damage just wasn’t quick enough and the heart out scaled my block. Might do a load of defect runs in a row and spreadsheet out somethings to try and improve with that character.

I did it! A heart kill with each character at ascension 20 with no losses. I slowed down a bit for the watcher run so took me about two hours to finish that. I did a mini lap of honour and everything. Still a perfect game and I am never getting bored of it.

bbk1980 wrote:

I did it! A heart kill with each character at ascension 20 with no losses. I slowed down a bit for the watcher run so took me about two hours to finish that. I did a mini lap of honour and everything. Still a perfect game and I am never getting bored of it.

Well Done, it really is a great game.

So having finally completed a rotation of all characters at A20 killing the heart with no losses, I needed a new challenge for my ongoing obsession with Slay The Spire. I thought it might be fun to chart progress here.

I have decided to see how my practice will speed up the climb from the easiest difficulty across all the characters. Here are the rules I have set myself.

1) To "beat" a difficulty level I must kill the heart,
2) I keep playing the same character until I get a Heart kill at that level. I think this is more to help me once I get above A15 as i think you do get into a groove if you practice a bit.
3) I will then move onto the next character at the same difficulty level, so I will move to a new ascension each time I win with Watcher.
4) I have started in my current save file as it has all the unlocks, I didn't want a fresh save and have to grind out cards, plus I couldn't have gone for a heart kill till I had won with each character.

So during today I have played my base difficulty games and here is my first report

Ironclad: 3 games to clear. I think my 2 losses were down to a bit of Hubris and a couple of poor misplays. After 3 years of only A20 i was definitely thinking oh this will be easy at this level. Dear Reader it was not and killed me twice in Act 3 because I was pushing my luck to try and get brokenly strong, a nice reminder to be on my toes.

Silent: 1 game to clear Early Toxic Egg in a shop put me in a strong position and after a wraith form pick up at the end of Act 1 never looked in doubt.

Defect: 1 game to clear Mmm power spam got so out of hand I could turn my brain off after Act 2.

Watcher: 1 game to clear Usual Watcher things of stance swapping and an abacus allowing me to go functionally infinite just before a Time Eater fight kept me on my toes a bit. Lucked into a Mental Fortress that solved the blocking in the heart fight.

Total: 6 Games to clear the 4 characters at this level.

Overall thoughts Base difficulty is still fun and can still challenge you after 1000 hours of play if you are not careful. I really thought I was sure to go 4/4 for the first few but glad I didn't Looking forward to the first Ascension during the week.

Impressive. Sometimes I think about going back to this one and trying to push higher ascension.

O.K Ascension 1 clear. Some interesting thoughts on this. I think A1 may be easier than A0 as the extra elites give you a chance to get stronger with no other penalties being applied. My tiny data set doesn't play that out obviously but I would be interested if there was any meta data about success at A1 compared to AO. Quick report:

Ironclad 1 run to clear:
All the broken stuff for Ironclad in 1 run. Corruption, Dark Embrace Feed and Reaper.

Silent 2 run to clear Interesting to note how much easier discard decks are these days, I haven't played A1 ina number of patches and it really is a stronger synergy these days

Defect 2 run to clear Really should have been 1 but i played the Act 4 elites very badly.

Watcher 2 runs to clear Again definitely my fault for the one loss against the heart.

Total Games to clear this level 7

Total Games to get to A2 13

Onward and Upward!

A2 cleared for all the characters. Really enjoying this experiment not least as a slight power trip on how much I have improved since I did my initial climb, that said the figures are bearing out the slight difficulty increase. One thing that has cropped up in my data is that none of my winning runs are over an hour yet. I suspect I could massively increase my win rate with some more thinking time but I just enjoy playing at this pace. To the A2 figures!

Ironclad 2 runs to clear I noted that I got a lucky Demon Form out of a power potion against the Heart or my damage would have been too slow and I would have clocked another loss.

Silent 2 runs to clear A very easy win with Nightmare/ Wraith Form / Mummified hand.

Defect 4 runs to clear! Including an Act 1 loss where I definitely overestimated what my whale bonus would allow me to do... Power spam again got me there.

Watcher 2 runs to clear This REALLY should have been 1 but was in autopilot against the heart and left myself in wrath Doh!!

Total games to clear this level 10

Total games to get to A3 23

Good luck as you continue to ascend!

I have slay the spire on PC, switch and phone and at some point they must have integrated saves between them. The last time I played on pc I got the message that I didn’t have the latest save, and would I like it to update to the latest save? Without thinking I said yes only to find that my ascension to 20 and my 100% completion of achievements was wiped out. I was back to ascension 0 and the heart not even unlocked.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the motivation to regain all that progress. In the meantime I’ll just watch as others report their progress.

Tscott wrote:

Good luck as you continue to ascend!

I have slay the spire on PC, switch and phone and at some point they must have integrated saves between them. The last time I played on pc I got the message that I didn’t have the latest save, and would I like it to update to the latest save? Without thinking I said yes only to find that my ascension to 20 and my 100% completion of achievements was wiped out. I was back to ascension 0 and the heart not even unlocked.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have the motivation to regain all that progress. In the meantime I’ll just watch as others report their progress.

That is a real pain. For what its worth I believe unlocking everything is quite easy on PC as per this post on the forums

Alternatively just laugh at me as I hit a wall around A15 for about 50 games

For an inexperienced player, what are the best resources to improve? I feel like I'm just banging my head against the system, and feel there's something more I should be doing. Do y'all use any mods?

I am on console so no mods for me I’m afraid. I continue to recommend Jorbs videos as a good way to learn the game if that takes your fancy but they do tend to run quite long.

Edit this one might fit the bill better.

I found Jorbs's "Overexplain" videos to be quite helpful. Those are where he talks about every decision in fine detail and explains his reasoning.

The plague is passing in the BBK household and so the ascent has continued . I still dont think I am seeing a significant spike in difficulty from any of the ascension modifiers. The biggest thing for me is the lack of ascenders bane and an extra potion slot which really has been clutch in some runs. On with the figures

Ironclad: 1 run to clear: First serious use of blockade in the game. Three potions really got me over the heart line here.

Silent: 3 run to clear
A few misplays and one horrible act 2 for pathing on the losses.

Defect: 4 run to clear This should have been won on the first run but some tired and a bit ill play against the heart.

Watcher: 3 runs to clear Really enjoyed a scry heavy deck for the win and I got to play Omniscience into Wish with courier for comedy amounts of shopping in Act 3.

Total Games to clear this level 11

Total Games to get to A4 34

A trip away slowed things down but Ascension 5 is clear. I think the ramp up still feels slow and most runs are winnable at this Ascension.

Ironclad: 2 runs to clear. I think a lot of damage and block sources are viable at this level but my word is life easier with corruption dark embrace, probably the synergy I have leaned on the most across all the runs and it comes in once again

Silent: 1 run to clear. A tricky Timeeater fight with a deck that spammed a lot of cards against everyone else but through first time. Would have been much harder had i jumped straight to a second boss ala A20

Defect: 4 runs to clear: Looks like I am worst with defect at these levels

Watcher: 1 run to clear. Watcher really can blow away act 1 whilst taking the least number of "bad but needed at the start cards"

Total Games to clear this level 8

Total Games to get to A5 42