mistercrayon wrote:

I beat ascension level seven with IC and I realised a couple of things 1) ice cream + x potion + snecko + whirlwind upgraded is a pretty hot combo (the snecko just increase the chances more than anything). 2) I feel like the game I want to play is somewhere inside this game (my favourite challenges are the draft ones) and I have to really tear up my desire for purity in decks - a machine that is entirely predictable and Elegant.

Monster Train might be what you're after as it has more tools for honing your deck each act - lots of opportunities to purge cards and duplicate cards, upgrade powerful cards easily etc.

Ah cheers temps. I’ve heard a lot of things about that one. I wonder if the thing I want only really exists in a theoretical space and the game I want is inherently less satisfying (it’s hard to believe that Slay the Spire devs had the game I’m describing in front of them and didn’t make a conscious choice to move away from it).

Monster Train is good and is less of a time investment than StS imo, since I'm already on the max difficulty in wayyyy less time than I put into Spire. 

Key differences are Monster Train practically encourages you to break your decks, but also on the flip side, at higher levels this does lead to an average run being a lot less likely to clear than an average run in Spire. It's like more of everything, more ability to create broken combos of things, but on the flip side the game is balanced towards that at the higher difficulties, which sometimes leaves you on a run where you might as well abandon the run 3/4 of the way through if you know you aren't going to get the opportunity to visit a merchant or event you need to get a chance at getting the item or upgrade to get your broken stuff going in the final boss fight. 

At the regular difficulties though it plays like Spire, except everything is just MORE. More cards, more monsters, more crazy spells and stuff exploding and all the colours children, etc.

I think it's a wall everyone reaches. You're not necessarily gonna get past it, but i've been banging this drum for years even though I rarely play it now - Jorbs is spot on in the interview I did with him where he goes on about learning to pick what you need immediately, and for the future based on what you have, not what you might get. There are definitely times where you pick a card because at the minute it is a 5/10 and in the future it might be a 10/10 vs a card that is 8/10 now and will end up a 3/10 at the end. The balance is hard.

It's not a game about builds, is the thing.

It's a game about using cards and relics to meet the challenges that are between you and clearing it. Reducing it to builds attributes winning to lucking into the right circumstances to complete a set idea, vs the adaptive and reactive nature of creating your deck. It's not drafting an MTG deck with a specific purpose.]

Not to say you're enjoying it wrong or anything, just trying to help you pry open the part of your mind that lets you see the game for what it is vs. what it looks to be.

Turns out flattening things down to genre names can be unhelpful in understanding their complexities! 

Anyway, enjoy it, have fun, don't expect expert status until you're a few hundred hours deep. Don't assume the three or four ways it looks like a character can win are anything other than the tip of an unfathomable iceberg.

317th in Daily Climb today, which was a great Silent variant with mods of Big Game Hunter (loads of Elites), Slow on enemies and pick 10 cards from a deck of 30. Got Time Slug and beat him on my last turn - was doing crazy damage on first turn with Backstabs, Shivs, Finisher and relic combos.

Ooh, snecko eye is good. Not as insane as some of my earlier runs with IC or defect but comes close. Game's a lot easier with it.

It’s very doable.

Ac20 with ic is a struggle. Have made act 3 twice. Final boss once. Act 2 boss a handful more. Then a bucket load of first act pummelling.

Yeah, I've been messing with that a few times. Especially if it's the blob first boss.

I've beaten the game with every character but The Silent... it's getting frustrating. I'm finding it hard to have decent runs if I don't get any poison cards.

She is the toughest to do well with, I find. 

The jorbs vid talking about how silent is designed to be powerful first turn was useful for me. It's sorta obvious, but is worth remembering, if the drops lean that way, or you've lucked on a relic, loading up with innate and stuff first turn can be surprisingly awesome.

But yeah, she's weak, so you need to think about block more, and you need to use other trickiness to get real big damage per turn, especially if you haven't got poison going hard.

Haven’t played with Silent in ages, I wonder if they fixed Accuracy on Switch as it wasn’t doing anything when I last played months and months ago.