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

Roujin

I am the slowest boiiiii evar, but thanks to that super cool (pun intended) frost Defect run I have now cleared Ascension 1 with every character!

That last run though had the jammiest ending of all time. Can't lie. When you think you're dead but you forgot to calculate the armour coming off the frost orb getting hit which gets applied BEFORE the damage and you survive on 2hp and draw sunder ftw.

Facewon

Lol. Once I have a raft of relics, I frequently win rounds by saying fuck it and throwing attacks randomly.

Easy to lose track of buffs and debuffs.

Obviously, I have also lost stupidly that way.

Tempy

Can't crack Ascension 1 with The Silent. The lack of sustain really knackers me, I never seem to manage the smart plays despite having killer decks.

Making my stats screen look embarrassing now.

(I have nearly triple that play time but most of my hours were racked up on a torrented copy)

Facewon

I was about to say...

Roujin

STATS SCHMATS.

Until we're level 20 ascension clearing badmen I'd just try and enjoy the ride!

Tempy

I just can’t click with the Silent, and it’s annoying. That said, three of my runs definitely ended due to me making stupid mistakes.

Dark Soldier

I keep getting close to the last boss but making stupid mistakes. Its a lot of info to digest and rummage through when listening to jungle at the same time.

Facewon

Tempy wrote:

This is the guy I was talking about yesterday btw. JoINrbs. He's the only Spire streamer i've bothered with because I found him early on and he is very calm, analytical and good and knows the game inside out. His Spireside chat videos go so deep into the theory behind the game.

A recent video about Nemesis and Optimal players in Poker versus the idea of a StS "perfect" run, and one where he talks about the ways the game fails to challenge his decks in meaningful ways in the most recent patches, are both amazing.

His "over explained" runs tend to come in at around 3hrs or more, but if you want to understand the game properly, they're essential viewing.

My problem is that to get as good at the game as he has, you really need to be very good at holding a lot of info in your head all at once, and know optimal times to use potions and so on during boss fights. My win rate is really poor right now, under 10%, whereas on Normal it should be around 90-100% possible to win every single seed you play. JoInrbs at one point had a 22 win streak with The Silent on Ascension 15 (back when it was the highest difficulty) and last night my loss streak with The Silent last night was 25 deep, and that's as someone who kinda knows what they're doing.

My issue is macro vs micro. I am ok at telling what cards are good for my deck in the long run, but not what I need right now, or I might need next Act, as I am not familiar enough with the bosses. With regards to the idea of the game "deck checking" via bosses and so on, the bosses at first seem similar but in actual fact they are all checking your deck for a variety of things such as ability front loading damage on specific turns, ability to deal AoE, ability to control your deck and so on. It's all very interesting, and why this game is so incredible.

90 minutes in on the second vid. He's very pleasant. I have learned things.

Tempy

Ascension 1 done with the Silent, ridiculously good deck though.

That combo dealt 458 damage to Deca.

Tempy

Ascension 2 as the Ironclad, woo

Roujin

Noice! Can't wait to get home and make a start on Ascension 2 as well!

Tempy

That's Ascension 3 done now, took me like 13 attempts, felt I got very lucky. Snecko Eye so OP.

Deck was brutal, I bottled Bludgeon and Limit Break, had 4 curses which gave me 4 strength, and because of the Bottled Bludgeon and Snecko Eye I could almost always drop it for 0-1 cost. Dead Branch was just the icing on the cake, giving me a free card for playing Limit Break on turn one

Roujin

Nicely done Tempy.

I've just discovered something shitty imho. I have rupture, which gives me 1 strength everytime I lose hp from a card. I also have 3x combustion.

I think that I should be gaining 3 strength per round, when the combustion triggers, but the game stacks all the powers and they happen at once so I only get 1 strength. Boourns.

Facewon

That video opened my eyes to snecko, which I always have avoided due to the fight being so annoying.

Also disarm. For some reason my brain kept thinking it would work like vulnerable and wear off.

Tempy

Trying to beat Ascension 2 as the Defect has show I have no idea how the character works at all. Every time I hit the boss in Act 3 I lose. Granted, this time it was severe bullshit, I whiffed Echo Form and it ended at the bottom of my 40 odd strong deck against Awakened One. I pulled it the turn I died.

Facewon

I got grand finale on a transform yesterday and I actually managed to use it twice to beat a boss and elite when I had no health left.

Lololol.

Facewon

Woah. Strolled to final boss with snecko and gambling chip on ironclad. Amazing.

Actually fucked myself on second last battle with relic that zaps debuffs because I was relying on confusion for 0 cards. Played an attack power and skill and everything was normal price. Oops.

Tempy

This game is extremely under my skin right now and eating all of my time. need to find some arbitrary way of limiting myself. Low mood and addictive game is a bad, bad combo.

Roujin

Didn't make any progress really last night, had a couple of builds with ironclad that didn't really go much further than the second floor. Made it to the donut bosses with a strength build but was sacrificing too much block and time getting my strength buffed to kill them before they killed me.

Game has me in it's grip. For sure. Feels like when I was picking up Isaac and just wanted to keep playing to find new items and try new build ideas.

Tempy

Yeah there’s a lot of stuff I really want to try out. There’s a guy on the C&C podcast who has basically stopped playing regular, and he just builds custom seeds. His reasoning being is he wants to play the good part of the game, not the part at the start where you might not finish Act 1. I get the appeal, but I am generally ok for Act 1 now unlesss my draws are absolutely dogshit, or I make a heavy misplay.

Right now I need to work on my Act 2 solutions for certain bosses and Elites - the Champ and Book of Stabbing tend to be runner enders across all my builds really.

I also really wanna get some of the more enjoyable synergies working. I’ve never managed an infinite draw Silent, or an dead branch/corruption deck as Ironad, or a proper All For One deck with Defect.

Tempy

I am so annoyed with myself! I just tanked a perfect run by picking the wrong relic. I had a Dexterity MONSTER deck going on - Kunai, 2x Caltrops, 3x Cloak and Dagger, Dagger Spray, Footworks Plus, Bag of Preparation

I could basically create near infinite block scaling without breaking a sweat. Champ did ONE damage to me. What did I pick for my Act 2 Relic? Fucking Hovering Kite. I thought I'd be smart and get more energy to build an infinite, but I didn't have the energy generation. I had to shove ever card I could find in my deck to make the draw enginge work and in the end I lost out against Giant Head in Act 3 by failing to block 1 single point of damage. Furious!

Seed is: 1P9JMSCPRWPRR if anyone wants a shot.

Roujin

Unlucky Temps. Kite claims another victim!

I was doing kinda shitty nothing this evening, had a couple of runs, tried some stuff, nothing was really working out. Had one last run for the night, started off super shaky, not really doing that well, you can see in the statistics I think I only fought a single elite on the whole run. Was kind of just a meh shiv deck. Then at some point halfway through act 2 I started just getting useful card after card after card and ended up with not really an infinite deck, but a deck that was able to generate 3x 20 damage shivs at the start of each turn which in conjunction with a lizard tale and that power that generates intangibles but starts reducing your dex by 1 per turn gave me enough damage mitigation on his stupid turns to see him off.

Ascension 2 cleared with the first character, huzzah! (I make no apologies for the fat deck)

Dark Soldier

Just lost to final boss as Ironclad, he had 34 health left and I was due to draw Bludgeon. He hit me for 2 dmg more than I had available block.

RNG is starting to annoy me a tad on this.

Roujin

Yeah, nothing worse than missing a boss kill by a single turn.

In terms of rng though, I find that most enemies follow a reasonably set pattern of attacks, which can help of you're deciding when to use any defensive potions or one use cards.

Temps advice earlier about keeping deck sizes down a bit in most cases is also pretty sage as that helps up the consistency of your draws. I definitely look to discard strikes wherever possible in shops and events unless a juicy upgrade on a critical card is available.

SpaceGazelle

Combust and Rupture combo is Ironclad win.

AndCallMeCharlie

watched one of those videos tempy posted - really helpful as it got me over the "hump" with defect (half way through act 2) and got my first win

Tempy

NICE

Roujin

SpaceGazelle wrote:

Combust and Rupture combo is Ironclad win.

Yeah it's nice, a shame multiple combusts don't stack with it though.

Thinking about it I assume that's because they didn't want multiple combusts and ruptures to combo off each other.

If you had 3 combusts and 3 ruptures, each rupture would proc on every combust and you'd get 9 buffs per turn!

Roujin

Also congrats on the win Charlie!

Dark Soldier

Roujin wrote:

Yeah, nothing worse than missing a boss kill by a single turn.

In terms of rng though, I find that most enemies follow a reasonably set pattern of attacks, which can help of you're deciding when to user any defensive potions or one use cards.

Temps advice earlier about keeping deck sizes down a bit in most cases is also pretty sage as that helps up the consistency of your draws. I definitely look to discard strikes wherever possible in shops and events unless a juicy upgrade on a critical card is available.

I basically follow those rules now, had one strike left. Had a very solid Def/Str/Dmg deck but the way the cards flowed and the fight went I doubt there was much I coulda changed to affect it

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