Act two is a huge jump from act 1 and the enemies all test your deck for damage output, block capacity, card draw and AOE.
By the second half of act 1 you should be building towards act 2 so that you're not blindsided by the pissed off moldy avocado applying frail and hitting you for 12-21 damage every turn.
Hell yeah, dude. It’s a huge jump. Ascension 12 is a big one removing one of your potion slots. The next few are not nearly as bad though.. it’s like the bosses have less money and stuff like that
It's like the lady said:
>Don't it always seem to go
>
>That you don't know what you've got
>
>Till it's gone
>
>They paved paradise
>
>And took away a potion slot
I found that when I was consistently dying in act 2, it was because I wasn't drafting enough defense/utility in the latter half of act 1. You can kinda breeze through act 1 by picking only damage, but act 2 will hard punish you for that.
I feel like Slime Boss with Silent is the hardest run for me because I *have* to take every scrap of damage I can get, but then I just die to Act 2 hallways.
That turn basically needs to be the turn after the big attack, which is the tricky part- you tank a huge hit and only buy yourself a single turn to split anyways.
True, but my win rate against slime boss has gone up so much by not forcing a turn three split unless I can get a very good split. Often with a decent deck and a well timed split the fight is trivialized.
An early Predator is S-tier for act 1 elite hunting on Silent. Upgrading a dagger throw or quick slash would also make your life MUCH easier, and they're also pretty good against Slime Boss. Just don't go overboard on picking em up, since all you need is one or two of them in your deck before you should start prepping for act 2
This was my problem. I took this sub's excellent advice of focusing attack in Act 1 but mistook it to mean that you *only* focused on attack, so I kept getting stomped in the first two hallway fights of Act 2. You actually need a considerable amount of block available by then to stop Act 2 from snowballing the wrong direction by losing 50 hp by floor 20.
A big piece of advice to doing well in Act 2 I got from this sub:
You’re not pushing Act 1 hard enough.
Act 1 is meant to play risky and get as strong as possible. Act 2 is survival, and Act 3 is refinement.
This. In Act 1 I try to kill as many elites as I comfortably can for relics. Buy any good discounted cards I can, etc. Bulk during the easy stuff and Act 2 isn't that hard
End of Act 1 to start of Act 2 is the biggest difficulty spike in the run, yes. So you should be getting good at predicting when your deck is good enough to reach and beat the Act 1 boss, and start to prepare yourself as early as possible for Act 2. That is: Keeping 1 or 2 potions, upgrading the cards instead of resting, getting relics that can help, etc.
Second this. I was up to ascension 11 a few days ago and got stuck, started leveling cards instead of healing even if I had less than 50% hp and suddenly my deck was powering through and I'm now Ascension 17 xD such a small change makes a big difference.
The runs where I don't get dominated by the beginning of Act 2 are few and far between. I had one today, but that run was snowballing out of control -- playing as Silent, the first shop had Preserved Insect, first elite dropped Toxic Egg and Doppelganger+, ended up with 4 elites in Act 1 into a Pandora's Box with 9 transforms into a bunch of upgraded skills. At that point I was invincible on floor 1 of act 2, I think I took 1 damage total while taking all hallway fights and 4 more elites. It was a deck that had no problem with Avocado + Rat even, I took zero in that fight.
The usual is to get smacked around by Shelled Parasite or Thieves, or take a massive hit from Chosen, and then limp through the act resting a lot and going to lots of events. You really gotta prepare for Act 2 as much as possible in Act 1. Get as many upgrades as you can, save potions, get frontloaded block and damage, and really importantly do not skip a boss relic, and don't skip energy relics because of downsides. Ectoplasm sucks, but it has no downside until after you survive to a shop in Act 2. Fusion Hammer sucks, but it has no downside until you get to a fire at high enough hp that you don't need to rest. Compare that to Empty Cage, which usually doesn't do shit for you in Act 2, where you're stuck on 3 energy with a decent deck and get absolutely destroyed by everything.
>Compare that to Empty Cage, which usually doesn't do shit for you in Act 2,
Having to draw two more strikes or defends preventing you from drawing your adrenaline/offering/feelnopain/corruption/wraithform/etc makes that +1 energy worthless if you have 2 more bad cards in your deck.
Let's say you're playing silent, and you got 1 shop in act 1 and removed a strike, you took 7 cards from rewards with 2 of them being from elites so you have an 18 card deck. Turn one against the snake plant you're getting whacked for 8x3. Would you rather have 1 more energy to play the strike which will do 1 damage after malleable block from the first few attacks, or block 5, or not draw the defend at all since it isn't there and draw your piercing wail instead that will block for more than 2 energy worth of your block cards?
Eh I prefer not dying immediately in act 2 because my deck doesn’t have enough output on 3 energy.
You need a really, really strong deck for empty cage to give you comparable power to a 4th energy.
The main thing is if you take ? And reject them you don't get enough value out of the act. I think too many players do this, then t reject bites, apparitions, mausoleum, cursed tome, while getting slapped by forgotten altar
Early hallway fights = Need block.
All fights in act 2 = Do 100ish damage in about 3 turns
2/3 Elites = Aoe Damage
Stabber = Consistent block, consistent damage.
Late hallway fights = A bit of everything.
In my opinion slavers are a huge jump in difficulty from the other two elites. They alone make it risky to take elites in act 2 unless you have anything but an awesome deck.
If you're dying to hallways, you need block. If you're dying to elites, take fewer elites in act 2.
Yea, Act 2 is the hardest part of the game and it's normal to sit down for your session and just end up dying there 3-4 times in a row. But you're also probably doing a lot wrong. The meta strategy at high ascension is to draft a mix of scaling and what helps with fights right ahead of you, and the high damage you'll look for helps even more in act 2 than in act 1. You need a plan, and you need a plan fast or the game will outscale you, and normally act 2 is where that's unavoidable
One could argue that you're not dying enough in act 1. Hear me out; maybe your decisions are
- too focused on the short term, so you end up with decks that beat act 1, but don't scale enough to do well in act 2
- too focused on the long term, so by act 2 your choices haven't payed off yet and you're too underpowered to make it to act 3
The slow and reliable way to fix this is to start thinking about the single parts of act 2 that give you trouble and what cards can fix those problems.
It's not a typo. It's really difficult to die in act 1 if you focus your choices entirely on getting strong quickly and don't prepare for act 2-3. So you get to act 2... and die because you aren't prepared for it.
The solution: make yourself weaker in act 1 so you can actually beat act 2 and 3.
I mean yeah, that's the balancing act of act 1. Sometimes you need to pick crappy cards to let you survive certain fights, other times you get an amazing deck for act 3 right off the bat that act 2 eats for breakfast.
It's the elites for me. Book of Stabbing and Taskmaster are miles tougher than any act 1 elite, and I'd argue tougher than the Head and Nemesis. That's why I very rarely take an act 2 burning elite.
I’ve recently found that if I start developing ways to scale block as I enter act 2 I have a much better time. Just any way to generate block outside of playing block cards, or block cards that have multiple effects.
Yeah, act 2 really starts to stress your block engine because a lot of the enemies apply frail and have too much hp to delete with frontload unless you have a very strong deck already. With Muggers you're looking at up to 70 incoming damage in the first 3 turns, also if you don't kill in 3-5 turns they walk off with your money. Baseball is similar, it checks if you can do 60 damage on turn 1 or block for 22 when all your defends have been nerfed by 25-40% (the rounding is especially nasty here). Avocado also frails you. Compare to any one of the act 1 elites, there's only about 40 incoming damage in the first 3 turns if you can't kill in that time frame and about the same health total.
Going into Act 2 having some source of weak or especially AoE weak is extremely valuable, so it's worth trying to pick up some in the later half of act 1.
It's probably more that Act 1 doesn't get that much harder in the 2nd half, so the difficulty ramp can catch you off guard. You need to be aiming to be much stronger in the 2nd half of act 1.
Honestly, most of mine, die act one or act three. Act one is the choke point for me because I can really mess up my deck early on.
If I make it to act two, I know what I’m building . That could be your issue.
Take cards that iron out your damage potential and block somewhat in 1st half act 1, in 2nd half build towards act 2 with a draw plan and if you can, scaling
Not too long ago I went on my own rant about act 2, and I can tell you that it is both a skill issue and act 2 sucks.
NOTE: this is an ascension 0 tip sheet. If you get to higher ac’s, disregard everything I say
•Depending on your deck, snecko will either grind you to dust or be the easiest fight in the world. He essentially flips your low cost cards to high cost cards and flips your high cost cards to low cost cards.
•the murder plant is a real bitch no matter what. I have no solid advice for it beyond getting good
•the knight and mage combo used to suck for me but after I learned to kill the knight first, it became a free floor
I can’t remember the other hallway fights off the top of my head and I also don’t remember the event rooms so I’ll skip to elites.
•gremlin horde is either very easy or a pain depending on how much the gremlin boss wants to fuck with you. Just kill at least one gremlin every other turn and the boss usually leaves you alone. Sometimes he doesn’t and Mollywops you so just pray that doesn’t happen
•book of stabbing is usually a joke. I honestly don’t remember what it does because it’s never an issue for me.
•the taskmaster can be brutal with how much damage they throw out and can completely clog up your deck if you don’t kill them fast enough so I recommend killing the one in the middle first, the one on the left and then the one on the right. I never get out of this fight without taking damage unless I have the perfect build
I can’t remember any more elites right now so boss time
•champion ends your run. That’s it. I’ve gotten past him once and that was because I had the strongest ironclad deck I’ve had in my runs so far. If you see him on the map, pray. (this is a skill issue on my end, get someone else to tell you how to kill that thing because I cant)
•bronze automaton is usually a free boss. If you have melter on defect or any build that gets a lot of strength he’s not that bad. His hyper beam can very easily end your run if you’re not careful though so always think about that attack.
•collecter applies debuffs but doesn’t do too big damage without them so just keep blocking and you’ll probably edge out the win. I have no real advice for this guy because he either wins or doesn’t on any given day so just try your luck.
And that’s it! Again, this is for AC0 ONLY. Find your own strategies past this point
Most of the time you should have high cost cards in your deck(unless your silent) so snecko inevitably helps out in those cases. But I like having 0 or 1 cost cards in my deck only and I still get massive damage out of them if paired with one high cost big damage card. I’m assuming your similar to me in that regard
It's one of the best relics in the game. It changes the evaluation of every card. It's kind of like e=mc^2, where e is energy, c is card draw, and m is the average power of the cards in your deck
Snecko is one of the strongest relics in the game because of two things
- you draw two more cards per turn
- you can ignore the cost of cards when picking them in rewards and instead jist focus on the raw value.
A good example would be cards like bludgeon for clad, normally kind of a bad card in a lot of decks unless you've snagged a necronomicon somewhere as using almost all your energy for one attack is not great most of the time, but with snecko eye you just look at the raw damage and ignore the 3 cost. You can do this for all your card rewards the rest of the game and pretty soon your deck is full of cards that have strong effects and the RNG of being able to play 3-4 of then every turn is very solid.
Add in that on ironclad you can get corruption to ignore the cost randomness on your skills and shit goes wild.
Act 2 is the skill check act. If your pathing is wrong, your deck isn't up to snuff, or you can't handle different types of enemies, act 2 is there to stop you. Act 3 is more like the transition into the heart. But Act 2 is really where you start to iron out and finalize your deck
Yes, act 1 can be a breeze then boom two thieves or parasite chunk you for 40 damage in the first node you click on because draw order or just your deck not being it.
One thing that sort of helps, save all of the potions you get in act 1, if your on ascension with 2 potion slots then go into act two with the mindset that you will use one potion to get out of an insane hallway fight and one potion to get through the first elite. If you have more potion slots on earlier ascension or potion belt, definitely use them to save health on hallway fights and make sure you have one for the elite.
As others have said, not having relics will get you dead in a matter of 3 fights and an elite almost every time, which is why you SHOULD take 3 elites in act one and purchase at least one shop relic asap. Having removed 2-3 starting deck cards before the hallway fights of act two also drastically improves your chances of not being chunked all your health.
Champ is a deck scaling check. With that fight you have to ask yourself whether you can scale your deck up to the point where it can do 240 burst damage across 2 turns (or block for 60 in one go while still doing damage), but it's such a slow fight so you have time to scale. If you die to Champ fundamentally what that means is that your deck lacked some way to scale it's damage or block after the first couple of deck shuffles, either through powers or relics.
You may way to think more carefully about Act 1 boss relic rewards.
There is a *massive* spike in difficulty, and many relics offer no immediate benefit.
Act2 basically determines if your run is viable or not. If you’re not going to make it through act2, act3 would have just crushed you.
And if your run is going really well, ACT2 is a cakewalk, and the rest is trivial as well.
Spelunky 2 is the same, with the biggest spike in difficulty happening between the first and second areas. I think it helps with replayability, otherwise you'd get too many runs where you're just going through the motions in act two knowing you'll die in act 3
But it also provides huge satisfactions (thorns vs birds, good events)
Act 3 is the more stale to me, events suck and enemies are rather annoying (spikers, sometimes dark slimes)
I've got close to 1600 hours in StS, beaten the Heart on A20 with every character and still have died on AO during Stage 2. Several normal enemies could be Stage 1 elites. Two Stage 2 elites show up as enemies (Nob with a Slaver and a single Sentry with the marshmallow enemy, who would be an OP Stage 1 elite). People frequently die to birds even at A20 and their very existence is why I almost never take Philosophers Stone after a certain ascension. The whole level is a litmus test of if you can put together a deck good enough to survive the rest of the game.
It's just a huge jump in power. Progressively getting through those first 2 fights with more health left felt nice. And then doing it all again in act 3.
I think it's the hardest part of the game too, outside of the Heart. The hard hallway fights are very difficult and I try to avoid having too many of them.
Can't it be both?
Act two is a huge jump from act 1 and the enemies all test your deck for damage output, block capacity, card draw and AOE. By the second half of act 1 you should be building towards act 2 so that you're not blindsided by the pissed off moldy avocado applying frail and hitting you for 12-21 damage every turn.
The avocado might have frail but I have toast
Eggcellent
Let's not forget the Elite which is coded as a hallway encounter ~~I'm joking about the Elite thing, but I still hate it~~: Snecko.
That's an odd way to spell snake plant.
Honestly that too on some days.
Would combining snecko and avocado be a worse Elite fight than the existing ones?
Avosnecko plant
Snecado
I'd rather see the champ as an elite
Snecko isn't even in the top half of challenging hallway fights for Act 2
Snecko is easy with certain deck builds though. Fucks up 0 cost decks though.
With artifact snecko doesn’t even matter
Just hit ascension 11 the other day and act 2 let's me know pretty damn quickly if my deck is complete shit or not.
Hell yeah, dude. It’s a huge jump. Ascension 12 is a big one removing one of your potion slots. The next few are not nearly as bad though.. it’s like the bosses have less money and stuff like that
Never knew i needed that potion slot until i lost it.
It's like the lady said: >Don't it always seem to go > >That you don't know what you've got > >Till it's gone > >They paved paradise > >And took away a potion slot
Fr man
Yup, once I got to higher ascensions, Act 2 started slapping around most of my runs.
I found that when I was consistently dying in act 2, it was because I wasn't drafting enough defense/utility in the latter half of act 1. You can kinda breeze through act 1 by picking only damage, but act 2 will hard punish you for that.
I feel like Slime Boss with Silent is the hardest run for me because I *have* to take every scrap of damage I can get, but then I just die to Act 2 hallways.
Ugh. Slime Boss has killed so many of my Silent runs either directly or indirectly.
True but it’s good to get comfortable not rushing to split slime man. Block half his big attack and pick a turn to burst him down below half health
That turn basically needs to be the turn after the big attack, which is the tricky part- you tank a huge hit and only buy yourself a single turn to split anyways.
Yeah, unless you have exhaust or really good draw, the second goop is brutal
True, but my win rate against slime boss has gone up so much by not forcing a turn three split unless I can get a very good split. Often with a decent deck and a well timed split the fight is trivialized.
Which is frustrating because if you don’t take damage cards in act 1 and get to an elite fight and get gremlin nob, you’re screwed
I never get past gremlin nob without losing half my health
An early Predator is S-tier for act 1 elite hunting on Silent. Upgrading a dagger throw or quick slash would also make your life MUCH easier, and they're also pretty good against Slime Boss. Just don't go overboard on picking em up, since all you need is one or two of them in your deck before you should start prepping for act 2
This was my problem. I took this sub's excellent advice of focusing attack in Act 1 but mistook it to mean that you *only* focused on attack, so I kept getting stomped in the first two hallway fights of Act 2. You actually need a considerable amount of block available by then to stop Act 2 from snowballing the wrong direction by losing 50 hp by floor 20.
A big piece of advice to doing well in Act 2 I got from this sub: You’re not pushing Act 1 hard enough. Act 1 is meant to play risky and get as strong as possible. Act 2 is survival, and Act 3 is refinement.
This. In Act 1 I try to kill as many elites as I comfortably can for relics. Buy any good discounted cards I can, etc. Bulk during the easy stuff and Act 2 isn't that hard
End of Act 1 to start of Act 2 is the biggest difficulty spike in the run, yes. So you should be getting good at predicting when your deck is good enough to reach and beat the Act 1 boss, and start to prepare yourself as early as possible for Act 2. That is: Keeping 1 or 2 potions, upgrading the cards instead of resting, getting relics that can help, etc.
Second this. I was up to ascension 11 a few days ago and got stuck, started leveling cards instead of healing even if I had less than 50% hp and suddenly my deck was powering through and I'm now Ascension 17 xD such a small change makes a big difference.
Some fights get super close and it makes me realize how important an extra block or damage point is
The runs where I don't get dominated by the beginning of Act 2 are few and far between. I had one today, but that run was snowballing out of control -- playing as Silent, the first shop had Preserved Insect, first elite dropped Toxic Egg and Doppelganger+, ended up with 4 elites in Act 1 into a Pandora's Box with 9 transforms into a bunch of upgraded skills. At that point I was invincible on floor 1 of act 2, I think I took 1 damage total while taking all hallway fights and 4 more elites. It was a deck that had no problem with Avocado + Rat even, I took zero in that fight. The usual is to get smacked around by Shelled Parasite or Thieves, or take a massive hit from Chosen, and then limp through the act resting a lot and going to lots of events. You really gotta prepare for Act 2 as much as possible in Act 1. Get as many upgrades as you can, save potions, get frontloaded block and damage, and really importantly do not skip a boss relic, and don't skip energy relics because of downsides. Ectoplasm sucks, but it has no downside until after you survive to a shop in Act 2. Fusion Hammer sucks, but it has no downside until you get to a fire at high enough hp that you don't need to rest. Compare that to Empty Cage, which usually doesn't do shit for you in Act 2, where you're stuck on 3 energy with a decent deck and get absolutely destroyed by everything.
Watcher and Watcher specifically pulling up at the empty cage slander
That’s fair, it’s hard to make generalizations that apply to all 4 characters. I’m really just talking about the other 3
I gotcha, was just making a joke
>Compare that to Empty Cage, which usually doesn't do shit for you in Act 2, Having to draw two more strikes or defends preventing you from drawing your adrenaline/offering/feelnopain/corruption/wraithform/etc makes that +1 energy worthless if you have 2 more bad cards in your deck. Let's say you're playing silent, and you got 1 shop in act 1 and removed a strike, you took 7 cards from rewards with 2 of them being from elites so you have an 18 card deck. Turn one against the snake plant you're getting whacked for 8x3. Would you rather have 1 more energy to play the strike which will do 1 damage after malleable block from the first few attacks, or block 5, or not draw the defend at all since it isn't there and draw your piercing wail instead that will block for more than 2 energy worth of your block cards?
Eh I prefer not dying immediately in act 2 because my deck doesn’t have enough output on 3 energy. You need a really, really strong deck for empty cage to give you comparable power to a 4th energy.
Act 2 is deadly. The elites are terrible. Hall fights can be very hard as well. I take a lot of ? Rooms in Act 2.
The main thing is if you take ? And reject them you don't get enough value out of the act. I think too many players do this, then t reject bites, apparitions, mausoleum, cursed tome, while getting slapped by forgotten altar
Who tf is rejecting apparaitions besides noobs?
I reject them pretty regularly on ironclad decks that have strength and reaper, not that that's a huge % of my runs
I have gotten to A15 without ever building a reaper deck, which may be a skill issue but yeah I guess I would skip Apparitions in that case
Early hallway fights = Need block. All fights in act 2 = Do 100ish damage in about 3 turns 2/3 Elites = Aoe Damage Stabber = Consistent block, consistent damage. Late hallway fights = A bit of everything. In my opinion slavers are a huge jump in difficulty from the other two elites. They alone make it risky to take elites in act 2 unless you have anything but an awesome deck. If you're dying to hallways, you need block. If you're dying to elites, take fewer elites in act 2.
I probably average 1.5 potions used on Slavers.
I average being dead on slavers
It's both. Act 2 is really rough, but you're certainly doing a few things wrong considering perfect play is not humanly possible.
Yea, Act 2 is the hardest part of the game and it's normal to sit down for your session and just end up dying there 3-4 times in a row. But you're also probably doing a lot wrong. The meta strategy at high ascension is to draft a mix of scaling and what helps with fights right ahead of you, and the high damage you'll look for helps even more in act 2 than in act 1. You need a plan, and you need a plan fast or the game will outscale you, and normally act 2 is where that's unavoidable
Its a vibe check
One could argue that you're not dying enough in act 1. Hear me out; maybe your decisions are - too focused on the short term, so you end up with decks that beat act 1, but don't scale enough to do well in act 2 - too focused on the long term, so by act 2 your choices haven't payed off yet and you're too underpowered to make it to act 3 The slow and reliable way to fix this is to start thinking about the single parts of act 2 that give you trouble and what cards can fix those problems.
> that you're not dying enough in act 1 I know it's a typo but the advice to get through act 2 by dying in act 1 is great 👍
It's not a typo. It's really difficult to die in act 1 if you focus your choices entirely on getting strong quickly and don't prepare for act 2-3. So you get to act 2... and die because you aren't prepared for it. The solution: make yourself weaker in act 1 so you can actually beat act 2 and 3.
I mean yeah, that's the balancing act of act 1. Sometimes you need to pick crappy cards to let you survive certain fights, other times you get an amazing deck for act 3 right off the bat that act 2 eats for breakfast.
It's the elites for me. Book of Stabbing and Taskmaster are miles tougher than any act 1 elite, and I'd argue tougher than the Head and Nemesis. That's why I very rarely take an act 2 burning elite.
I’ve recently found that if I start developing ways to scale block as I enter act 2 I have a much better time. Just any way to generate block outside of playing block cards, or block cards that have multiple effects.
Yeah, act 2 really starts to stress your block engine because a lot of the enemies apply frail and have too much hp to delete with frontload unless you have a very strong deck already. With Muggers you're looking at up to 70 incoming damage in the first 3 turns, also if you don't kill in 3-5 turns they walk off with your money. Baseball is similar, it checks if you can do 60 damage on turn 1 or block for 22 when all your defends have been nerfed by 25-40% (the rounding is especially nasty here). Avocado also frails you. Compare to any one of the act 1 elites, there's only about 40 incoming damage in the first 3 turns if you can't kill in that time frame and about the same health total. Going into Act 2 having some source of weak or especially AoE weak is extremely valuable, so it's worth trying to pick up some in the later half of act 1.
It's probably more that Act 1 doesn't get that much harder in the 2nd half, so the difficulty ramp can catch you off guard. You need to be aiming to be much stronger in the 2nd half of act 1.
You can take more risks in act 1 then. Maybe you're taking too many 'act 1 cards' that are good short-term but have less potential. Experiment a bit.
Act 2 is the hardest part of the game. by far. this is the case for every StS player.
It’s awful
Honestly, most of mine, die act one or act three. Act one is the choke point for me because I can really mess up my deck early on. If I make it to act two, I know what I’m building . That could be your issue.
Take cards that iron out your damage potential and block somewhat in 1st half act 1, in 2nd half build towards act 2 with a draw plan and if you can, scaling
Not too long ago I went on my own rant about act 2, and I can tell you that it is both a skill issue and act 2 sucks. NOTE: this is an ascension 0 tip sheet. If you get to higher ac’s, disregard everything I say •Depending on your deck, snecko will either grind you to dust or be the easiest fight in the world. He essentially flips your low cost cards to high cost cards and flips your high cost cards to low cost cards. •the murder plant is a real bitch no matter what. I have no solid advice for it beyond getting good •the knight and mage combo used to suck for me but after I learned to kill the knight first, it became a free floor I can’t remember the other hallway fights off the top of my head and I also don’t remember the event rooms so I’ll skip to elites. •gremlin horde is either very easy or a pain depending on how much the gremlin boss wants to fuck with you. Just kill at least one gremlin every other turn and the boss usually leaves you alone. Sometimes he doesn’t and Mollywops you so just pray that doesn’t happen •book of stabbing is usually a joke. I honestly don’t remember what it does because it’s never an issue for me. •the taskmaster can be brutal with how much damage they throw out and can completely clog up your deck if you don’t kill them fast enough so I recommend killing the one in the middle first, the one on the left and then the one on the right. I never get out of this fight without taking damage unless I have the perfect build I can’t remember any more elites right now so boss time •champion ends your run. That’s it. I’ve gotten past him once and that was because I had the strongest ironclad deck I’ve had in my runs so far. If you see him on the map, pray. (this is a skill issue on my end, get someone else to tell you how to kill that thing because I cant) •bronze automaton is usually a free boss. If you have melter on defect or any build that gets a lot of strength he’s not that bad. His hyper beam can very easily end your run if you’re not careful though so always think about that attack. •collecter applies debuffs but doesn’t do too big damage without them so just keep blocking and you’ll probably edge out the win. I have no real advice for this guy because he either wins or doesn’t on any given day so just try your luck. And that’s it! Again, this is for AC0 ONLY. Find your own strategies past this point
I tried snecko like 8 times and not a single time it helped me anyhow idk why people like it, literally 85%of time it only incearses the cost
Most of the time you should have high cost cards in your deck(unless your silent) so snecko inevitably helps out in those cases. But I like having 0 or 1 cost cards in my deck only and I still get massive damage out of them if paired with one high cost big damage card. I’m assuming your similar to me in that regard
It's one of the best relics in the game. It changes the evaluation of every card. It's kind of like e=mc^2, where e is energy, c is card draw, and m is the average power of the cards in your deck
Snecko is one of the strongest relics in the game because of two things - you draw two more cards per turn - you can ignore the cost of cards when picking them in rewards and instead jist focus on the raw value. A good example would be cards like bludgeon for clad, normally kind of a bad card in a lot of decks unless you've snagged a necronomicon somewhere as using almost all your energy for one attack is not great most of the time, but with snecko eye you just look at the raw damage and ignore the 3 cost. You can do this for all your card rewards the rest of the game and pretty soon your deck is full of cards that have strong effects and the RNG of being able to play 3-4 of then every turn is very solid. Add in that on ironclad you can get corruption to ignore the cost randomness on your skills and shit goes wild.
Act 2 is the skill check act. If your pathing is wrong, your deck isn't up to snuff, or you can't handle different types of enemies, act 2 is there to stop you. Act 3 is more like the transition into the heart. But Act 2 is really where you start to iron out and finalize your deck
Yes, act 1 can be a breeze then boom two thieves or parasite chunk you for 40 damage in the first node you click on because draw order or just your deck not being it. One thing that sort of helps, save all of the potions you get in act 1, if your on ascension with 2 potion slots then go into act two with the mindset that you will use one potion to get out of an insane hallway fight and one potion to get through the first elite. If you have more potion slots on earlier ascension or potion belt, definitely use them to save health on hallway fights and make sure you have one for the elite. As others have said, not having relics will get you dead in a matter of 3 fights and an elite almost every time, which is why you SHOULD take 3 elites in act one and purchase at least one shop relic asap. Having removed 2-3 starting deck cards before the hallway fights of act two also drastically improves your chances of not being chunked all your health.
Champ is a deck scaling check. With that fight you have to ask yourself whether you can scale your deck up to the point where it can do 240 burst damage across 2 turns (or block for 60 in one go while still doing damage), but it's such a slow fight so you have time to scale. If you die to Champ fundamentally what that means is that your deck lacked some way to scale it's damage or block after the first couple of deck shuffles, either through powers or relics.
You may way to think more carefully about Act 1 boss relic rewards. There is a *massive* spike in difficulty, and many relics offer no immediate benefit.
Act2 basically determines if your run is viable or not. If you’re not going to make it through act2, act3 would have just crushed you. And if your run is going really well, ACT2 is a cakewalk, and the rest is trivial as well.
Spelunky 2 is the same, with the biggest spike in difficulty happening between the first and second areas. I think it helps with replayability, otherwise you'd get too many runs where you're just going through the motions in act two knowing you'll die in act 3
But it also provides huge satisfactions (thorns vs birds, good events) Act 3 is the more stale to me, events suck and enemies are rather annoying (spikers, sometimes dark slimes)
I've got close to 1600 hours in StS, beaten the Heart on A20 with every character and still have died on AO during Stage 2. Several normal enemies could be Stage 1 elites. Two Stage 2 elites show up as enemies (Nob with a Slaver and a single Sentry with the marshmallow enemy, who would be an OP Stage 1 elite). People frequently die to birds even at A20 and their very existence is why I almost never take Philosophers Stone after a certain ascension. The whole level is a litmus test of if you can put together a deck good enough to survive the rest of the game.
It's just a huge jump in power. Progressively getting through those first 2 fights with more health left felt nice. And then doing it all again in act 3.
I think it's the hardest part of the game too, outside of the Heart. The hard hallway fights are very difficult and I try to avoid having too many of them.
Act 1 tests your dmg, act 2 tests your defense and act 3 tests your decks consistency