I've never loaded a single STS mod but this is great.

wtf.

Fucking PC twats! Boo!

Gremill wrote:

Fucking PC twats! Boo!

Well, the kids have one. I could try it on that. I don’t use anything but my work one really.

My son just came downstairs and told me that
he was wrong and that StS is an amazing game. It's clicked. #prouddad

That's ac2 of Downfall first character done. Actually starting to get the hang now.

When I realise there's 8-9 new (playable) characters, all bar one who work in Downfall mode, which has so many new wrinkles, one who is new to reg mode, I can't actually comprehend what's happening here as far as new content. There's new relics, new potions, new events, wrinkles to old events, obviously new character cards, but there's also new neutral cards too.

It's actually insane.

And it doesn't feel like a mod at all. The quality of the design and every step along the way marries with the base game perfectly.

If this was paid DLC, you could charge the same as base game and it'd be value.

Mental.

Gremill wrote:

My son just came downstairs and told me that he was wrong and that StS is an amazing game. It's clicked. #prouddad

YAS

Asc15 Heart dooooone.

Will try downfall once I grab StS on PC. Enjoy this game enough to justify double dipping.

Also, Asc16 Heart done.

Just beat AC4 with the slime boss.

The balance has arrived. Actually took a few goes, and had to think about deck balance and what I was doing a bit more. Have unlocked everything for slime boss now, but am still seeing new tweaks in ? rooms even now. 

Still brilliant.

Over the weekend a very good friend of mine came to visit. Our intention was just to recreate and relive the exact conditions of our wasted teenage years. In other words; alcohol, weed, nothing to do, and lots of games to play, just like we used to back in the day before adult responsibilities. 

Anyway is was great fun, but I post this here because StS was the undisputed star of the show. I'd introduced my mate to the game about 3 years ago and, like me, he had played it a lot. I think he's done a20 with all characters but no heart victories, so although I'm presumably quite a bit better than him, he's still a very accomplished player. 

So we set about with a little experiment to see how far we could go if we played together as a team, ultra carefully, combining our insights and understandings and leaving no room for inadvertent errors. basically we tried to play as if our lives depended on it, with no allowances for reloading a misclick, and the only way  to survive was by beating the heart at a20. 

Honestly it was the best fun I have ever had with this game. Maybe it was the best fun I have ever had with any game. In the time he spent here we started just 3 runs total, that being one run for each of the main [good] characters. We considered every possible permutation of every outcome that we could conceivably map. No decision was taken in haste, even the (seemingly) obviously good  ones. Every choice required a pre-emptive refactoring of what all our future critical outcomes might look like. We dare not even use a potion without consulting and considering every possible item it might yield, and how likely we might be to need said item in upcoming fights. With no room for oversight it was hard work, and time consuming too. The 3 runs we managed to play in total came in at an average of about 4 hours each. 

But Jesus what runs they were. With IC we got to the second a20 act 3 boss, but then with Silent and Defect we got back to back a20 heart victories. So that's two out of 3. Really I was not expecting us to be so good when we put our minds to it. It's crazy how in depth you can go if you have  the patience, which is usually something I'm lacking (I wouldn't ever say I typically rush my plays, but a normal run time for me would be much closer 90 mins).  That said, the thing that took me most by surprise was how useful my friend was. I sort of assumed that our output would only be as good  as good as our best player- presumably me- but actually  I realise now that this is completely the wrong way of looking at it. Regardless of who is better or worse, the key factor contributory factor here is that we were different players. My mates trials and errors were his own,  guided by his own whims and experiments. The layers upon layers of knowledge he had accumulated over the years were uniquely his, and in essence looked nothing like mine. His intuition had been trained and optimised differently, meaning that we both had different 'right' answer to the same question. Unpicking and restructuring these differences to reach a shared and agreed decision was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had with a game. 

The result was that neither of us would have gotten 2 out of 3 a20 heart victories when playing alone. In fact, given how the run played out, I'd be surprised if either of us got anywhere close on a single run (the silent run had- no joke- maybe 10 times where we knew we were fucked, either in the present moment, or failing that a future unavoidable moment, and yet somehow each and every time we got out pens and paper and we theorycrafted an escape, and then another, and then we compared them, and we brainstormed obstacles, and then we set about minimising the chances of those outcomes/obstacles occurring, and then we pooled all those variables together to finally make a given decision. I lost track of how many times we rebounded from 1hp. Okay I'm labouring this point a bit now but actually I sort of need to because it was the best thing about this. We went into act 4 with Silent being 100% sure it was unwinnable. we'd run the numbers. But then suddenly we got frozen eye in the last shop,  and that gave us a tiny glimmer of hope, if we were prepared to put in the enormous amount of work,  which we did. I think we paused for 40+ mins at the start of the heart fight before we even played a single card. In the end we won, but we had 2hp for most of the fight.)

Anyway all this really just underscored what an outrageously incredible game this is. The best ever for sure. I'm not sure  I will take this level of care again in a hurry- it's just too exhausting- but it was a wonderful treat to share with a friend.

Cool story.

But I think...

Do you guys abandon runs when it looks like the deck isn’t going to be strong enough for a win? I don’t, but I might start doing that as I’m wasting a lot of time where I have a deck that can see me through to Act 3 then fail on a strong enemy or elite or the boss. I’m just not good enough to win with a sub-optimum deck.

Really? I may start doing that too.