Slay the Spire: B&B GOTY 2018, 2020, 2021, and Forum Pariah 2019 - The Bear and Badger

RedDave2

What's s&s?

Minnesänger

Spear and Shield. Elites before Heart.

RedDave2

Oh yeah, those pricks.

nick_md

Absolute cunts the pair of them. That turn 2 against them is cuntish every time.

nick_md

Up to asc11 with clad now, 8 silent and 7 defect, although clad's been where most of my gametime's been for the last couple of weeks.

Only just got my first really decent exhaust deck going yesterday with branch, super fun. Now ofc I'm leaning into trying to get an exhaust deck going and failing whereas I should just be playing the choices given, but hey ho.

Confession time: I actually save scummed time eater in asc9 because it was the third consecutive time I reached the act3 boss on asc9 (died the previous two), and I forgot he regens after a while. The turn before he regen'd he was sub 20hp and I had a 20dmg potion but thought I'll keep that for act 4, will kill time eater next turn - then he regens and gets me to a lethal position. Couldn't bring myself to climb to the boss yet again so I quickly saved and exited then loaded back and killed him. I feel scummy.

Anyway, gonna stick with clad for a while then back to silent, got no desire to play defect atm and watcher remains at asc0 for when I'm done with the others.

equinox_code

nick_md wrote:

Absolute cunts the pair of them. That turn 2 against them is cuntish every time.

Yea the real fucker isn't even the heavy damage, rather it's the status cards the go direct to hand. I've usually got one eye on sourcing a card draw potion from act3 onwards and saving it just for this turn.

equinox_code

for this very reason evolved is pretty much an auto-include for ironclad from the start of act3 too

hylian_elf

I tried to sell/explain the game to someone who hadn’t heard of it. I think it was a bit lost on him. I’m not very good at explaining how good something is.

JMW

I’ve thought a few times how I can get this across to mates, who like me wouldn’t normally go anywhere near this sort of game. Trouble is, I don’t think they’d like it if they tried it once, either; they’d wonder what the fuck I was on about. But once it’s got you, jesus.

nick_md

Ironclad asc11 heart done, nice little exhaust situation with plenty of card draw and block from exh + corruption. Absolutely twatted s&s which was proper satisfying but needed my fairy bottle and held on just long enough against heart to clutch it out.

Think I'm going to stick with clad for a bit still.

hylian_elf

Just did an early asc run with IC on PS5 that included the following in my deck:

2x Fire Breathing+
Immolate+
Wild Strike
Evolve
Power Through
2x curses

Felt good when I was just blocking and waiting, and then a turn comes when I just drew lots of status cards and BOOM

nick_md

Yeah I do love those fire breathing decks, very satisfying especially against the likes of sentries or slime boss. Difficult to scale up though.

I've been cracking on also, asc12 & 13 done, 12 was a nice exhaust deck again (no branch, mind) but died to s&s in act4, 13 got all the way to the heart with a sweet strength deck leveraging the power that gives strength+ for loss of hp, a few hp sapping cards, tungsten rod to mitigate a bit and a cheeky corruption to make sure I could still play skills whilst scaling a greedy 2x demon form. Took quite the battering from s&s tho so the heart just insta killed me.

Anyway, hoping to hit 15 this weekend.

nick_md

Up to ascension 17 IC now, Jesus Christ 14, 15 and 16 were brutal, so many losses. Am only doing ironclad atm and think I have to focus on him alone until asc20 is done then I can shelve him and move to silent. Fuck me though it's been brutal on IC for the last 3 asc levels, nearly always making it to act 2 but failing there so often, only made it to act 3 a handful of times in the last week. Act 2 is definitely the run killer; act 1 you can limp through mostly, and if you make it to act 3 you tend to be set up fine until the boss deck checks you, but act 2, that's a bastard.

Anyway, at this rate I'm doing 1x asc level a week I think, but hopefully I'm improving so will climb a little faster. Still too greedy on card picks tho at times.

hylian_elf

I’ve been only doing IC too. Been stuck on 15 on Switch for aaaaages. Caught up to 15 on iPhone now too.

nick_md

Goty 2023

Ed_Flanders

I've been stuck on A18 for ages with the ironclad, losing all the time but still having fun.

Facewon

Ac15+ is just varying degrees of utter brutality. I think I did 20 with IC faster than some of the others, because I've always dug IC. Took way longer with Silent. But I'm sure there's others who are silent fans where the reverse was true.

I'm up to ac17 with slime boss in downfall.

This is as close to the main game in difficulty as the mod has gotten.

The other bosses have been awesome fun, and challenging enough, but all had a mechanic or 2 that could tip even an AC20 run in the players favour.

Minnesänger

Been working on doing some of the challenges now that Asc20 heart is done with all the characters. Had a go at Minimalist and Who Needs Relics? today and, luckily, managed to get both. Happy with that.

nick_md

It's been a real slog for me since my last post. I was getting nowhere with IC 17 so went back to Silent and got her up to 11, then got Defect up to 9, now have gone back to IC and am sat on 18. Every climb seems a struggle now though.

Top work on the cheevos cinty.

Olimite

Best single bit of advice for a beginner who has tried multiple times to click with the game?

Proper last-chance saloon, here I think.

SpaceGazelle

Gamble a bit on the first map and don't rest. Look for cards that go with your relics.

nick_md

Olimite wrote:

Best single bit of advice for a beginner who has tried multiple times to click with the game? Proper last-chance saloon, here I think.

Go with ironclad because that healing after every fight is great for starting out.

Choose front-loaded damage cards for the first half or so of Act 1 - you want things that just smack in the face and do good dmg, your starting block cards are good enough for the early game for the most part, but your start attack cards are lame. You want to pivot to thinking about your defence towards the end of Act 1.

Like SG says, don't avoid all the elites in Act 1, take a least a couple on if you can.

I don't think I'm particularly good at the game tho so there may be better advice.

hylian_elf

Try and upgrade at bonfires in Act 1 rather than resting. Specially upgrade Bash as the extra turn of vulnerable can be so helpful.

Choose cards that help with the elites and the boss. Example an AoE damage card which would help against the sentinels or whatever they’re called (3 bunch of triangles with orbs or something).

If you die (on or?) before the Act 1 boss, the whale will offer an option where first three enemies have 1HP each. If you get lucky with a route, you can maybe reach and beat an elite easily. Makes upgrading rather than resting at first bonfire the obvious option.

hylian_elf

So once you start doing a bit better, you can think about which cards and relics work well together. The fun comes in finding out and seeing how magnificent some set ups can be.

SpaceGazelle

It's also tempting to always choose a card if offered, because you think they're better than a strike/defend so why not? But smaller decks see more useful cards come around more often and this is how you build powerful decks when the cards work well together.

nick_md

Yeah that's a great one too.

I'd go with:

- Look at who the boss is on act 1 and play the act accordingly
- Pick dmg cards initially
- Don't avoid Act 1 elites if you can help it
- Upgrade cards at Act 1 rest sites, rest only if you have to
- You don't need to pick every card

Sniping an elite with the 1hp Neow bonus can be good but if it means taking loads of ? or shops instead of actually picking fights and cards, it can hobble you later.

Olimite

Thanks all. I’ll give it (another) shot tomorrow.

SpaceGazelle

Stay with it, if it clicks you'll get a few years out of it. I'm still playing a lot.

nick_md

Hundreds of hours into this game and I only just realised that Flex only removes the amount of strength it adds when applied, meaning you can use Limit Break after Flex to double the buff, then keep the extra that was added at end of turn. e.g. Flex adds 2str, Limit Break it to 4str, end of turn you go down to 2str.

May be old news to some but I just assumed the Flex would remove all strength gained that turn for some reason.

voices

Ha! I thought the same thing, and I was sure I'd seen it remove all the strength. It makes the flex card a bit more interesting.

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