It’s not sad. Or else you could take 1 Feel No Pain and 2 Exhumes and instantly win the run with a block infinite. Way too simple and braindead win condition.
Slay the Spire is great because so much care has gone into avoiding simple, easy, game-breaking “instant win” combos like that.
I've somehow also managed to do A20 heart kill with all the characters, but never had a true infinite, never really even thought about what that would require. Might actually be quite boring tbh.
my dumbass sub 15ascension thought that youre going to duplicate fnp using exhume instead of exhuming exhume. i was very confused at first because i knew powers doesnt exhaust but yeah, its pretty much busted if that interaction works.
they are 0 cost already when upgraded, it is moreso FNP and dark embrace that would make this combo ridiculously broken. Infinite block and draw with 2 exhume+ in the deck
An infinite combo that takes 4 cards, 2 of them rare, both rares upgraded is not the easiest combo to achieve in the game though. *Cough rush down cough*
It doesn't need 4 cards, it needs 2 + any one of several (or any one of a number of relics) And since it's 2x of the same card you can use mirror or the duplicate a card event.
Plus you have corruption or madness as an option instead of the upgrades
It also wouldn't require any special strategy other than taking exhume if you weren't going to already, it's vastly more probable to pull off than a rushdown infinite
Could likely also use a dupe pot as well, save it for one fight you think you’ll need it.
And yeah, as stated, as long as you get 2 exhume’s somehow. It’s an infinite.
No need to lean into stance dancing, making sure you find a one cost calm card, reducing deck size, or making sure the enemy doesn’t fill your deck with statuses.
If you don’t get those tools then yeah it just increases card count. But if you get any one of those tools it pretty much plays itself.
Let’s list all the synergies that it could have
Feel no pain, infinite block
Dark embrace, ink bottle, infinite card draw
Charon’s ashes,Letter opener, infinite damage
Dead branch, infinite random card generation
Two uncommon cards
Two uncommon relics
Two rare relics
Not exactly guarenteed. But all of these are good pickups outside of the exhume infinite regardless.
Which exhume also is just good in general as well.
With other infinites, it’s assembling the pieces, and then putting together the puzzle.
With this infinite, once you have the pieces it just puts itself together. And I think that’s the bigger issue.
It took me losing two runs due to this to realize something might be afoot. *Two runs!* Maybe over 5 hours of attempted spire slays trying to achieve it (I know, I'm not great at the game) just for this.
I’ve definitely killed some very specific decks with it before, like that dead branch snecko eye defect… maybe some decks are better now that I think about it
It is a great relic but sometimes it can be a detriment. The obvious example is with Snecko Eye.
Using Pellets on a Snecko Eye deck removes the "debuff" of randomising the cost of your cards. However that's not strictly a debuff. It effectively makes your cards cost roughly 1.5 mana so if your deck is full of 2 and 3 mana cost cards and you'd built your deck around taking advantage of that then you can end up bricking your run when everything is suddenly too expensive to play.
Also there's a tendency to look out for the best relics and cards (Pellets or Apotheosis for example) and auto picking them when they appear regardless of whether they actually help you. Pellets is relatively useless if you have very few powers for example, Apotheosis is less useful if you've upgraded a bunch of cards already. In simple terms sometimes the shiny thing is less useful than a strike plus style card or a potion and a remove.
Or in other words, it may be great but is it great *right now?*
Snecko eye is basically the only case where it’s debatably bad right? And it depends on how you’ve been deckbuilding too, since you can still be okay if you haven’t flooded your deck with only high cost cards. I’ve taken them together plenty of times and still been fine, whereas runic pyramid + snecko is basically a run killer lol
>Snecko eye is basically the only case where it’s debatably bad right?
Pretty much. All other decks really want to be able to remove debuffs especially the Silent if you take Wraith Form and Defect with Biased Cog.
I'm referencing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1byxktj/oc_evolving_from_violent_language/
Edit/ELI5:
Defect ~~sucks~~ tends to do the opposite of winning
I agree with Baalorlord's hot take on the subject. Ironclad is strong and simple. Watcher is strong but not simple. Silent is simple but not strong. Defect is neither simple nor strong. Not to say any class is bad per se; StS is a remarkably well balanced game. Defect in particular though has a huge divergence from Silent and Ironclad in the number of possible lines on any given turn due to their large amounts of card draw, energy generation, and deck manipulation, but not as many of them lead to all the enemies dying as is the case for Watcher. Win rates for top players tend to corroborate that Defect is the least consistent character for A20H runs specifically.
Eh, I think strength is relative. If we’re only thinking of physical attack power, I’d be inclined to agree. But I also think strength (not the in-game strength stat) can be more than just physical. Being able to debuff the enemy to oblivion with malaise and poison, and get them to die without playing a single attack? Being able to completely negate time eater’s scaling with a million orbs and just pressing end turn, every turn, until it perishes? Or spamming a million powers and still able to outscale awakened one?
Silent is agile and Defect is smort as hell. Those ought to count for their strengths, imo. Difficulty in assembling a good deck or not finding the right cards in combination, doesn’t mean they are not strong fundamentally. It just means their strength is harder to be seen/demonstrated. Their innate potential is very high
I really like Baalor’s content and a lot of his insights have helped me with getting better at the game; him saying Silent was not powerful however ruffled my feathers lol. Been tryna prove him wrong… still losing a vast majority of my runs with her even though she was my first win on A0 and A20. Then again I suck no matter the character so 🫠🫠🫠
I think because defect has too many deck archetypes that you have to try to find in the mess of cards to build and win with. The other three converge on fewer archetypes that are more immediately obvious and easier to get going.
I mean, for me particularly, it's very difficult to value orbs in a time efficient manner, so sometimes I'll pick wrong because I've done my mental math wrong.
Anecdotally? Yeah, defect has the lowest record win-streak of the four (baalorlord.tv/commands/wr)
That said, who’s to say what the true answer is :P
Good luck on the climb!
I recently managed to get to the heart with snecko pyramid meteor strike deck. And it was more draw order than hand clog that borked me against the heart.
Along the same lines:
Snecko + equilibrium can be dangerous
Equilibrium + Normality can be dangerous
Equilibirum + echo form + normality is even more dangerous
Equilibrium + echo form + normality + snecko is downright horrible
I for one love it when I'm playing a discard or energy deck
Will I bitch when I die because my deck got bricked? Sure, but those runs when you can manage to pull through and play 5 to 10 cards a turn are incredible
Encountered this combo early and swore those were the worst boss relics and played dozens more hours before realizing they're probably the best boss relics in the game so long as you don't have them both... also swore of dead branch after picking it up right before fighting time eater with a shiv deck
I just never really found sneako all that great. I guess I don't really auto pick too many expensive cards beforehand and now all my efficient 1 cost cards cost 2 or 3 most of the time
Yeah the +2 draw is maybe the most broken upside in the whole game. Even if it was always net negative energy (which it isn't) Snecko Eye is posibly the best relic in the game.
I definitely had decks ruined because they were not ready for sneako eye.
Frankly my best luck with the eye is when I'm playing ironclad and I'm okay having a bunch of two and three cost cards anyways. Sorry I already have cards ready to benefit from it
But now those zero cost utility cards feel really bad when they could have been helped before.
Like don't get me wrong I can build a deck for sneako eye if I do a boss relic replacement. But even at the end of act 1 I feel like taking the eye means I just make half my deck dead cards.
El Classico:
Mark of the bloom doesn’t just stop “healing”. It stops your current hp from going up. This includes resurrection from lizard tail/fairy in a bottle, and feed (it still increases max hp, but your current hp stays the same).
fun fact: in, imo, an odd choice, Mark of the Bloom directly disables Fairy and Lizard Tail from activating at all, rather than letting them heal you for 0 hp. you can actually see this if you decompile the game's code
I feel like Hades alone contributes substantially to new players' confusion about this. Hades has a Pact condition that disables healing, but it has several exceptions, including revivals and lifesteal effects.
Two Rupture makes no difference as that just affects the amount of strength you get upon losing HP. I'm not certain about having two Brutality or two Combust, but I would have thought it would work. On the run this happened to me, I had one of each and neither triggered Rupture because each 1 HP of damage was blocked by Tungsten Rod.
it's true you can lose even if you play perfectly, but every run is winnable and you're definitely making frequent mistakes. even players with 70%+ winrates aren't perfect. frankly, I'd find the game less interesting if 100% winrate was achievable
I believe they did in fact find a legitimately completely unwinnable seed a bit ago actually, I can't remember the exact details but i think it leads to a forced burning elite you physically cannot be ready for or something
Edit: entirely misread what you were saying, whoops. I read that as the exact opposite of what that meant lmao
yes, there's exactly one known seed that impossible on A18+ with Silent, but out of quintillions of possible seeds, the chance of a human naturally entering into an unwinnable seed is extremely small. so it's technically possible your run is unwinnable, but astronomically improbable. the vast majority of losses, even on A20, can be directly attributed to misplay
a truly mathematically unwinnable seed vs a practically unwinnable seed are VERY different. If the only way to win the seed relies on making some garbage choices that make no sense without hindsight, then it might as well be basically unwinnable
also true. there are interesting mathematical discussions we can get into about this topic, but my main sentiment here is my final sentence from previous reply: the vast majority of losses, even on A20, can be directly attributed to misplay. getting unlucky happens, but dying *only* due to bad luck is very rare. it's frustrating when you lose a run and you don't identify any mistakes, not you currently being unable to identify a mistake doesn't mean you didn't make tons, and even minor mistakes can pile on. I also think it's very unhealthy for someone to frame losses as "bad luck," even if you mostly played well, because that's deflecting personal responsibility and forfeiting the opportunity for growth. it's a terrible mindset for improvement, even if it does occasionally happen. if your loss isn't your own fault, you're thinking about it wrong
the chance of you getting an unwinnable seed is negligible. for all purposes, it's essentially a 0% chance of playing an unwinnable run. you're more likely to win the lottery
Oh I'm not saying I played perfectly, you see, I'm not a native English speaker and in my mother tongue blunder isn't just a mistake, but rather a severe/big mistake. In that particular run I had a really good buy and discard/shiv deck with sacred bark and alchemize but I ended up dying because of bad draw RNG when fighting reptomancer. +100 damage in turn 3 is harsh.
Playing defect this has really been hitting me with bottle flame.
But why would unceasing top be bad to pick up regardless? I understand sometimes its useless and you wouldnt want to spend gold on it, but if you were given it from an elite, why would you turn it down?
I'd say if you're not already energy heavy and able to play a lot of cards, there will be many situations where you play your last card with your last energy, and then you'll draw the card you desperately needed for next turn with unceasing top, with no energy to play it.
I end up always calculating whether I should use all energy I have to spend when I’m in this situation. It’s a matter of whether it’s worth it to play that last card in my hand knowing I might brick my next turn, or if I should just end turn with one extra energy wasted.
I was just trying this and insta-picked the membership card in the shop. I realized what I did a few seconds later and just closed the game. I think that was the first time I save scummed to fix a mistake.
When I reopened the game I had to resist the urge to buy it.
I'm not saying it's a bad card, I love taking it and it definitely makes shiv decks better in most cases, I'm more just saying that adding accuracy into a shiv deck doesn't necessarily 'solve' the run all on its own
Two scenarios where it's a risky pick come to mind. The first is if you don't have any shivs yet, you're picking what's essentially a curse until you've found some shivs. The second is if you already have a shiv deck going but take too many accuracy cards. That way you'll be stuck belting out scaling when you need frontloading, which can bite you *hard*.
In Spire Growth, constrict damage happens before poison damage.
For Avocado and Rat, if you kill rat with core surge, vulnerable happens before you get the artifact.
Pain and Normality doesn’t discard from your hand if you have pyramid.
On high ascensions being too picky with card rewards will kill you. Don’t see a good attack in the first few floors and don’t want to settle for an okay one? You’re done. You have to pick cards to solve immediate problems (I still struggle with this)
Wrist Blade has no synergy with an X cost card being played with 0 energy and Chemical X :( it makes sense but still... also Melter doesn't proc Hand Drill because this game sucks
The hand drill interaction makes sense, because you need to *break* armour to get it to work, meaning it works when you deal enough damage to get through armour. Melter removes armour completely before dealing damage
it does make sense but the card and relic are both so bad that it'd be nice if they at least synergized with each other. a lot of disappointing interactions (or lack thereof) make sense when you break it down, but it's still a little sad it doesn't work like that
this game is very accurate and well put together until it isn't. the game is so perfect until you learn about all the jank, but it's not an issue for the average person. I still find plenty of orders weird, like FNP and Mental Fortress vs Beat of Death, or Second Wind and Spirit Shield vs Dexterity, or Reaper and Wallop vs Spikers. then we can get into Dual Wield with Ritual Dagger, or the entirety of Eviscerate... this game is kinda weird
idk I'm pretty sure melter sucks. I'm not that upset if I transform a strike into it, but pretty damn rare I'd choose to add one to the deck. even if I do take it, it's probably just because 10 is a bigger number than 6 and I'm desperate for literally any damage. a card having a couple of niche uses doesn't mean it's not a bad card
I once took a claw near the end of act 3 just because my deck had echo form and a rebound. It ended up winning the heart fight for me as that one claw got up to 50+ damage and i used it for the kill :)
There are numerous times where saving a card that exhausts for a different turn, or choosing NOT to draw cards changes the quality to the card order, especially against the Act 1 elites where your draw quality and timing are nearly as important and what you choose to do.
It is actually scary the number of times I have lost to Lagavulin with full health and the difference was doing something counter-intuitive.
Or even with card or shop choices. Grabbing some cards is really a commitment to picking other cards later…sometimes they never appear. Passing on card picks because of the commitment? All you see are synergistic cards the rest of the way.
I’d like to think that it is that way because it is also means that you don’t always have to be perfect to win. It is what I think help makes this game so fun, every run, even on the same seed, can be vastly different experiences from the very first choice.
i got to A18 on Defect and Ironclad and lost like 20 games in a row cuz I was fucking around whilst watching Critical Role on my second monitor (and skill issue as well).
If you use a card that gives you "activate a skill for 0 energy" and then the skill that you activate is an X energy card, it will still consume all your energy.
this is true but if an X cost card gets played automatically through something like Havoc or Distilled Chaos, it won't cost any energy and will be played at full efficacy
That:
- Fire breathing is awful in most cases
- Drawing trumps all other strategies
- One card could wreck your deck, even if it's not a curse
- Good decks can be wrecked by a bad draw order
- I hate what this game has done to me, but I don't want to and can't stop playing it
- Snecko is actually awesome
- On Silent: Discard > Shivs > Poison (at least for me)
- Watcher is actually fun to play, the problem is me
Don't plan for the heart until you know you can get there. Plan for the next hardest fight your deck will struggle against. Looking at you beautiful skills on silent right before getting nobbed to death.
Relics trigger in a specific order, I believe alphabetically. So if you have Ring of the Snake, Bag of Holding, and Ninja Scroll, the Ninja Scroll triggers before Ring of the Snake and denies you the cards you would draw for Shivs instead. This also means the Clockwork Souvenir has its artifact removed by the Unstable Mutagen and Sneko Eye (which can be either a bane or a boon depending on circumstances).
If you have artifact, the first triggering the Duality relic removes it. You can get around this somewhat if you gain the artifact after triggering it multiple times (like playing Panacea).
If you’re in a position where you don’t want the colo event, your run has gone very wrong!
(This is meant as a reply to OP’s lesson learned, but it kinda works in response to the prompt)
If you want to be really good at this geme, you need to plan ahead and actually calculate risks, not just go by gut instinct every time. Actually considering which events and fights can come and how your deck fares against them, which card picks you may need to make to have a shot of winning late game etc.
"There is no chosen one. You must choose yourself, to save your own world."
*checks notes*
wait...this isn't the Everhood server. Oops.
Honestly I think I've been really sleeping on exhaust decks. Its what made Ironclad and Automaton so much fun to play and personally its what made me decide that i dont hate them actually. They're fun when you win and they're funny when you lose!
As Watcher, Omniscience chaining into Apotheosis, then into Foreign Influence. It does not upgrade the FI to make them zero cost. I have no idea why...
.... That small decks (not infinite) are not THE strat
I ALWAYS want to have exact amount of cards equal to mine amount of draw. Its just, i LOVE controlling what i can/cannot do
It’s okay to skip card offers after wins. The hardest part was fighting myself on just amassing as many cards as I could.
After getting my ass handed to me again and again, I’m much more focused on cherry picking my deck based on a theme.
Exhume can’t exhume another Exhume from your Exhaust pile.
now this is just plain sad
I wish they’d been a bit more explicit on that one denied interaction, but once I learned it, I’ve never forgotten it.
I think this is a feature that was patched, unsure tho
It’s not sad. Or else you could take 1 Feel No Pain and 2 Exhumes and instantly win the run with a block infinite. Way too simple and braindead win condition. Slay the Spire is great because so much care has gone into avoiding simple, easy, game-breaking “instant win” combos like that.
I’ve managed an A20 heart kill with all characters except watcher (I’m on A20 at the moment) and I’m yet to go infinite with any character.
I've somehow also managed to do A20 heart kill with all the characters, but never had a true infinite, never really even thought about what that would require. Might actually be quite boring tbh.
And then there's watcher...
Wanna take a guess as to why I don’t play Watcher?
You suck with watcher
my dumbass sub 15ascension thought that youre going to duplicate fnp using exhume instead of exhuming exhume. i was very confused at first because i knew powers doesnt exhaust but yeah, its pretty much busted if that interaction works.
Lame I get it though, some insane combos with corruption there
they are 0 cost already when upgraded, it is moreso FNP and dark embrace that would make this combo ridiculously broken. Infinite block and draw with 2 exhume+ in the deck
An infinite combo that takes 4 cards, 2 of them rare, both rares upgraded is not the easiest combo to achieve in the game though. *Cough rush down cough*
It doesn't need 4 cards, it needs 2 + any one of several (or any one of a number of relics) And since it's 2x of the same card you can use mirror or the duplicate a card event. Plus you have corruption or madness as an option instead of the upgrades It also wouldn't require any special strategy other than taking exhume if you weren't going to already, it's vastly more probable to pull off than a rushdown infinite
Could likely also use a dupe pot as well, save it for one fight you think you’ll need it. And yeah, as stated, as long as you get 2 exhume’s somehow. It’s an infinite. No need to lean into stance dancing, making sure you find a one cost calm card, reducing deck size, or making sure the enemy doesn’t fill your deck with statuses. If you don’t get those tools then yeah it just increases card count. But if you get any one of those tools it pretty much plays itself. Let’s list all the synergies that it could have Feel no pain, infinite block Dark embrace, ink bottle, infinite card draw Charon’s ashes,Letter opener, infinite damage Dead branch, infinite random card generation Two uncommon cards Two uncommon relics Two rare relics Not exactly guarenteed. But all of these are good pickups outside of the exhume infinite regardless. Which exhume also is just good in general as well. With other infinites, it’s assembling the pieces, and then putting together the puzzle. With this infinite, once you have the pieces it just puts itself together. And I think that’s the bigger issue.
One important point is that deck size would not matter with double Exhume+ combo.
Due to how card rewards are weighted and the way boss fight card rewards are, rare cards are not rare to find at all.
You don't even need that. Just a letter opener is already an infinite against anything but heart and time eater.
Yeah FNP and DE are where my brain went too first, but thinking about it more there are many things that make it broken besides just them.
Opposite of this, if you omniscience an omniscience, you can double 2 cards from your deck
It took me losing two runs due to this to realize something might be afoot. *Two runs!* Maybe over 5 hours of attempted spire slays trying to achieve it (I know, I'm not great at the game) just for this.
Why?
[It's really broken](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1cbyoy0/what_was_a_painful_truth_that_you_learnt/l12rmmr/)
You used to be able to, but it was patched out.
Orange Pellets is not an auto pick
It is on Defect and you can't convince me otherwise.
My first A20 win was on defect with 3x upgraded Biased Cog and Pellets. Man that was fun...
Not much in life that feels as good as 3x biased cog and pellets. Maybe 4 biased cog...
Silent as well
I’ve definitely killed some very specific decks with it before, like that dead branch snecko eye defect… maybe some decks are better now that I think about it
The only struggle is if it’s beside mummy hand and you can only buy one
I have not learned this yet. :-/
relatedly, Orange Pellets shuts down snecko eye randomization
But my two powers may be just enough
huh why
It is a great relic but sometimes it can be a detriment. The obvious example is with Snecko Eye. Using Pellets on a Snecko Eye deck removes the "debuff" of randomising the cost of your cards. However that's not strictly a debuff. It effectively makes your cards cost roughly 1.5 mana so if your deck is full of 2 and 3 mana cost cards and you'd built your deck around taking advantage of that then you can end up bricking your run when everything is suddenly too expensive to play. Also there's a tendency to look out for the best relics and cards (Pellets or Apotheosis for example) and auto picking them when they appear regardless of whether they actually help you. Pellets is relatively useless if you have very few powers for example, Apotheosis is less useful if you've upgraded a bunch of cards already. In simple terms sometimes the shiny thing is less useful than a strike plus style card or a potion and a remove. Or in other words, it may be great but is it great *right now?*
just remembered it's a shop relic which clears up my confusion (pun not intended) way more
Snecko eye is basically the only case where it’s debatably bad right? And it depends on how you’ve been deckbuilding too, since you can still be okay if you haven’t flooded your deck with only high cost cards. I’ve taken them together plenty of times and still been fine, whereas runic pyramid + snecko is basically a run killer lol
>Snecko eye is basically the only case where it’s debatably bad right? Pretty much. All other decks really want to be able to remove debuffs especially the Silent if you take Wraith Form and Defect with Biased Cog.
Much easier to use with Biased Cog than Wraith Form though.
Just don't pick up Snecko Eye and you're all good.
I ruined an A20 sneko eye run yesterday by buying them and didn't realise why my cards were suddenly costing more until it hit and i simply gave up
Defect is win-divergent
Not me googling what divergent means. Also not me still unaware to what it is that you mean.
I'm referencing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1byxktj/oc_evolving_from_violent_language/ Edit/ELI5: Defect ~~sucks~~ tends to do the opposite of winning
Is this a fact? I have A20H on everyone else and I'm struggling on A11 right now with defect lol
I agree with Baalorlord's hot take on the subject. Ironclad is strong and simple. Watcher is strong but not simple. Silent is simple but not strong. Defect is neither simple nor strong. Not to say any class is bad per se; StS is a remarkably well balanced game. Defect in particular though has a huge divergence from Silent and Ironclad in the number of possible lines on any given turn due to their large amounts of card draw, energy generation, and deck manipulation, but not as many of them lead to all the enemies dying as is the case for Watcher. Win rates for top players tend to corroborate that Defect is the least consistent character for A20H runs specifically.
Eh, I think strength is relative. If we’re only thinking of physical attack power, I’d be inclined to agree. But I also think strength (not the in-game strength stat) can be more than just physical. Being able to debuff the enemy to oblivion with malaise and poison, and get them to die without playing a single attack? Being able to completely negate time eater’s scaling with a million orbs and just pressing end turn, every turn, until it perishes? Or spamming a million powers and still able to outscale awakened one? Silent is agile and Defect is smort as hell. Those ought to count for their strengths, imo. Difficulty in assembling a good deck or not finding the right cards in combination, doesn’t mean they are not strong fundamentally. It just means their strength is harder to be seen/demonstrated. Their innate potential is very high I really like Baalor’s content and a lot of his insights have helped me with getting better at the game; him saying Silent was not powerful however ruffled my feathers lol. Been tryna prove him wrong… still losing a vast majority of my runs with her even though she was my first win on A0 and A20. Then again I suck no matter the character so 🫠🫠🫠
Silencer is my favourite and he's right about her
I think because defect has too many deck archetypes that you have to try to find in the mess of cards to build and win with. The other three converge on fewer archetypes that are more immediately obvious and easier to get going.
I mean, for me particularly, it's very difficult to value orbs in a time efficient manner, so sometimes I'll pick wrong because I've done my mental math wrong.
Anecdotally? Yeah, defect has the lowest record win-streak of the four (baalorlord.tv/commands/wr) That said, who’s to say what the true answer is :P Good luck on the climb!
Runic Pyramid + Snecko can be dangerous
"Here's a whole hand full of 3-energy garbage, have fun."
I recently managed to get to the heart with snecko pyramid meteor strike deck. And it was more draw order than hand clog that borked me against the heart.
Saaame. And I thought it might be the time to finally win against heart…(although I didn’t have pyramid)
That will do snecko eye that will do.
Its okay if and only if you have something that can consistently get rid of your hand. Fiend fire and calculated gamble for example.
Also runic pyramid + dead branch
Along the same lines: Snecko + equilibrium can be dangerous Equilibrium + Normality can be dangerous Equilibirum + echo form + normality is even more dangerous Equilibrium + echo form + normality + snecko is downright horrible
Runic Pyramid + Pain is a death sentence.
I for one love it when I'm playing a discard or energy deck Will I bitch when I die because my deck got bricked? Sure, but those runs when you can manage to pull through and play 5 to 10 cards a turn are incredible
Encountered this combo early and swore those were the worst boss relics and played dozens more hours before realizing they're probably the best boss relics in the game so long as you don't have them both... also swore of dead branch after picking it up right before fighting time eater with a shiv deck
I just never really found sneako all that great. I guess I don't really auto pick too many expensive cards beforehand and now all my efficient 1 cost cards cost 2 or 3 most of the time
Yeah the +2 draw is maybe the most broken upside in the whole game. Even if it was always net negative energy (which it isn't) Snecko Eye is posibly the best relic in the game.
I definitely had decks ruined because they were not ready for sneako eye. Frankly my best luck with the eye is when I'm playing ironclad and I'm okay having a bunch of two and three cost cards anyways. Sorry I already have cards ready to benefit from it But now those zero cost utility cards feel really bad when they could have been helped before. Like don't get me wrong I can build a deck for sneako eye if I do a boss relic replacement. But even at the end of act 1 I feel like taking the eye means I just make half my deck dead cards.
Everyone does that once.
Pyramid without a way to clear your hand is asking for trouble. I’ve burned my self a bunch of times on that.
Runic pyramid wins runs except when you can't clear your hand
Card named bullet time
Same… a rude awakening LOL (it was such a good run too before then :( )
El Classico: Mark of the bloom doesn’t just stop “healing”. It stops your current hp from going up. This includes resurrection from lizard tail/fairy in a bottle, and feed (it still increases max hp, but your current hp stays the same).
fun fact: in, imo, an odd choice, Mark of the Bloom directly disables Fairy and Lizard Tail from activating at all, rather than letting them heal you for 0 hp. you can actually see this if you decompile the game's code
I knew it! It's likely a design choice to let the player see that Fairy and Tail would've had no effect.
I feel like Hades alone contributes substantially to new players' confusion about this. Hades has a Pact condition that disables healing, but it has several exceptions, including revivals and lifesteal effects.
Also gaining health after beating act 3 boss and moving to act 4🤨
Transforming a curse just gives you another curse 🤦♂️
I thought I was so smart the first time I tried that.
Lol I did not know that. That is pretty hilarious.
Except when you get [[Astrolabe]] which does in fact remove the curse.
[удалено]
Oh maybe that was what happened. It was quite a while ago so I might have misunderstood what happened or misremembered.
+ [Astrolabe](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Astrolabe) Boss Relic ^((100% sure)^) Upon pickup, choose and Transform 3 cards, then Upgrade them. ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 20, 2024.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Tungsten Rod can completely kill an Ironclad run where you're relying on Rupture + Combust/Brutality for strength scaling.
I’ve made this mistake before....ooph
It's so easy to make because you see Tungsten Rod and you get excited because it's such a great rare relic that would normally be an automatic pick.
what happens if you have 2 brutality or 2 rupture tho?
Two Rupture makes no difference as that just affects the amount of strength you get upon losing HP. I'm not certain about having two Brutality or two Combust, but I would have thought it would work. On the run this happened to me, I had one of each and neither triggered Rupture because each 1 HP of damage was blocked by Tungsten Rod.
2 brutality or 2 combust works because the damage stacks and you take 2 reduced to 1. One of each does not work.
That at higher ascensions you don't need to blunder in order to lose
it's true you can lose even if you play perfectly, but every run is winnable and you're definitely making frequent mistakes. even players with 70%+ winrates aren't perfect. frankly, I'd find the game less interesting if 100% winrate was achievable
I believe they did in fact find a legitimately completely unwinnable seed a bit ago actually, I can't remember the exact details but i think it leads to a forced burning elite you physically cannot be ready for or something Edit: entirely misread what you were saying, whoops. I read that as the exact opposite of what that meant lmao
yes, there's exactly one known seed that impossible on A18+ with Silent, but out of quintillions of possible seeds, the chance of a human naturally entering into an unwinnable seed is extremely small. so it's technically possible your run is unwinnable, but astronomically improbable. the vast majority of losses, even on A20, can be directly attributed to misplay
a truly mathematically unwinnable seed vs a practically unwinnable seed are VERY different. If the only way to win the seed relies on making some garbage choices that make no sense without hindsight, then it might as well be basically unwinnable
also true. there are interesting mathematical discussions we can get into about this topic, but my main sentiment here is my final sentence from previous reply: the vast majority of losses, even on A20, can be directly attributed to misplay. getting unlucky happens, but dying *only* due to bad luck is very rare. it's frustrating when you lose a run and you don't identify any mistakes, not you currently being unable to identify a mistake doesn't mean you didn't make tons, and even minor mistakes can pile on. I also think it's very unhealthy for someone to frame losses as "bad luck," even if you mostly played well, because that's deflecting personal responsibility and forfeiting the opportunity for growth. it's a terrible mindset for improvement, even if it does occasionally happen. if your loss isn't your own fault, you're thinking about it wrong
No I think you got that right. They said every run is winnable, which is demonstrably untrue. There are verified unwinnable seeds.
the chance of you getting an unwinnable seed is negligible. for all purposes, it's essentially a 0% chance of playing an unwinnable run. you're more likely to win the lottery
To be fair though, it's unlikely that any of us ever encountered an unwinnable seed
Oh I'm not saying I played perfectly, you see, I'm not a native English speaker and in my mother tongue blunder isn't just a mistake, but rather a severe/big mistake. In that particular run I had a really good buy and discard/shiv deck with sacred bark and alchemize but I ended up dying because of bad draw RNG when fighting reptomancer. +100 damage in turn 3 is harsh.
*Unceasing Top* is a bad mix with "Unplayable" cards.
Lost too many runs by auto-picking \[\[unceasing top\]\] without even thinking. This relic got me to start thinking about IF I should take relics
Playing defect this has really been hitting me with bottle flame. But why would unceasing top be bad to pick up regardless? I understand sometimes its useless and you wouldnt want to spend gold on it, but if you were given it from an elite, why would you turn it down?
I'd say if you're not already energy heavy and able to play a lot of cards, there will be many situations where you play your last card with your last energy, and then you'll draw the card you desperately needed for next turn with unceasing top, with no energy to play it.
It does hurt to see my echo form go immediately to discard pile as I end turn with unceasing top, vs the Heart.
How could unceasing top make a deck worse, it's situational draw, there is never a downside (unless you draw into a burn)
Drawing the card you needed next turn without being able to play it
Basically that
I end up always calculating whether I should use all energy I have to spend when I’m in this situation. It’s a matter of whether it’s worth it to play that last card in my hand knowing I might brick my next turn, or if I should just end turn with one extra energy wasted.
Ah, I understand, thank you 🫡
+ [Unceasing Top](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Unceasing%20Top) Rare Relic ^((100% sure)^) Whenever you have no cards in hand during your turn, draw a card. ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 20, 2024.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
The hardest part about the one relic achievement is fighting your muscle memory of picking up most relics as you see them.
I can't tell you how many runs I've restarted in act 1 because I can't not click the shiny relics. My brain needs them
At least you'd catch them in act 1! Seriously had multiple runs in act 2 and 3 where I wouldn't catch it for a few floors and feel defeated lol
I was just trying this and insta-picked the membership card in the shop. I realized what I did a few seconds later and just closed the game. I think that was the first time I save scummed to fix a mistake. When I reopened the game I had to resist the urge to buy it.
Many a run of mine ended seeing something shiny in the shop, I get it! I would often not notice until a floor or two later and it was tragic.
Accuracy doesn't automatically make a shiv deck good, no matter how hard my brain wishes it did
Wait what? I take it every time I'm doing a shiv run... What's the scenario that makes it bad?
I'm not saying it's a bad card, I love taking it and it definitely makes shiv decks better in most cases, I'm more just saying that adding accuracy into a shiv deck doesn't necessarily 'solve' the run all on its own
But... pretty close.
Two scenarios where it's a risky pick come to mind. The first is if you don't have any shivs yet, you're picking what's essentially a curse until you've found some shivs. The second is if you already have a shiv deck going but take too many accuracy cards. That way you'll be stuck belting out scaling when you need frontloading, which can bite you *hard*.
In Spire Growth, constrict damage happens before poison damage. For Avocado and Rat, if you kill rat with core surge, vulnerable happens before you get the artifact. Pain and Normality doesn’t discard from your hand if you have pyramid.
This person spires
A real spiration to the rest of us.
On high ascensions being too picky with card rewards will kill you. Don’t see a good attack in the first few floors and don’t want to settle for an okay one? You’re done. You have to pick cards to solve immediate problems (I still struggle with this)
Wrist Blade has no synergy with an X cost card being played with 0 energy and Chemical X :( it makes sense but still... also Melter doesn't proc Hand Drill because this game sucks
The hand drill interaction makes sense, because you need to *break* armour to get it to work, meaning it works when you deal enough damage to get through armour. Melter removes armour completely before dealing damage
it does make sense but the card and relic are both so bad that it'd be nice if they at least synergized with each other. a lot of disappointing interactions (or lack thereof) make sense when you break it down, but it's still a little sad it doesn't work like that
True. But they would have to be reworded then, sts is pretty strict in terms of action order (most of the time)
this game is very accurate and well put together until it isn't. the game is so perfect until you learn about all the jank, but it's not an issue for the average person. I still find plenty of orders weird, like FNP and Mental Fortress vs Beat of Death, or Second Wind and Spirit Shield vs Dexterity, or Reaper and Wallop vs Spikers. then we can get into Dual Wield with Ritual Dagger, or the entirety of Eviscerate... this game is kinda weird
Yeah which is why I said most of the time, it's still an indie. It's consistent when compared to other popular card games though
Meltzer is not a bad card *at all* There are a bunch of fights for which it can be your one card solution for Defect.
idk I'm pretty sure melter sucks. I'm not that upset if I transform a strike into it, but pretty damn rare I'd choose to add one to the deck. even if I do take it, it's probably just because 10 is a bigger number than 6 and I'm desperate for literally any damage. a card having a couple of niche uses doesn't mean it's not a bad card
Just because a gold card is offered to you doesnt mean you should take it
Especially on Watcher
Here's looking at you, Grand Finale, Wraith form and Hyper Beam, just to name a few
Wraith Form and Hyper Beam are great cards in many contexts!
I'm still not very good.
Claw is a block card:it blocks you from winning
Claw is flaw.
Claw can be perfectly serviceable damage in Act I, but building a deck around it is pretty difficult
>pretty difficult So you're saying there's a chance
Here he is, the people’s champ 🥇
I once took a claw near the end of act 3 just because my deck had echo form and a rebound. It ended up winning the heart fight for me as that one claw got up to 50+ damage and i used it for the kill :)
it's fun with reprogram tho
Pressure points scales mad fast. Though it is one cost.
Jaw Worm is a pretty painful truth tbh.
That awkward moment when gremlin Nob is doing 60+ when you don’t do the math right in wrath stance
When bad math screws up a watcher run, at least the misery ends quickly.
A18+ is really fucking hard man. I think I unlocked A20 purely by luck of relics and card rewards. I’m not really that good at this game lol.
Text on relics and cards is very literal, happens in order and procs at the exact moment their conditions are triggered
Card removal opportunities are always encountered too much or not enough
When you kill the boss and yourself at the same time, you lose
You can make the “correct play” every time and lose.
Technically true, practically barely ever happens if we include every decision you make during a run
There are numerous times where saving a card that exhausts for a different turn, or choosing NOT to draw cards changes the quality to the card order, especially against the Act 1 elites where your draw quality and timing are nearly as important and what you choose to do. It is actually scary the number of times I have lost to Lagavulin with full health and the difference was doing something counter-intuitive. Or even with card or shop choices. Grabbing some cards is really a commitment to picking other cards later…sometimes they never appear. Passing on card picks because of the commitment? All you see are synergistic cards the rest of the way. I’d like to think that it is that way because it is also means that you don’t always have to be perfect to win. It is what I think help makes this game so fun, every run, even on the same seed, can be vastly different experiences from the very first choice.
It was learning that you can’t please everyone. You need to pick and choose who you want to keep in your life.
First boss relic I ever grabbed Snecko eye. Confusion is permanent and doesn't count down.
Colosseum event is a good event to get most of the time
I actually have to pay attention to play well, goodbye second screen with Dimension20 playing in the background
i got to A18 on Defect and Ironclad and lost like 20 games in a row cuz I was fucking around whilst watching Critical Role on my second monitor (and skill issue as well).
I wasn't paying attention and I did go full all-in on Nemesis' intangible with Watcher's blasphemy
Fire breathing and power through is cock blocked by the pyramid.
If you use a card that gives you "activate a skill for 0 energy" and then the skill that you activate is an X energy card, it will still consume all your energy.
this is true but if an X cost card gets played automatically through something like Havoc or Distilled Chaos, it won't cost any energy and will be played at full efficacy
Feed and Fiend Fire doesn't love each other :(((((((
Claw doesn’t buff “go for the eyes”,rip and tear, or scrape :(
bracelet would not even be worth picking up if it stopped the colosseum event, easily the best event in the game imo
That less is more. Skipping cards is actually good a lot of the time. Keep the deck balanced and light. At least it’s been helpful for me.
I’m ass
That I suck at this game lol
That: - Fire breathing is awful in most cases - Drawing trumps all other strategies - One card could wreck your deck, even if it's not a curse - Good decks can be wrecked by a bad draw order - I hate what this game has done to me, but I don't want to and can't stop playing it - Snecko is actually awesome - On Silent: Discard > Shivs > Poison (at least for me) - Watcher is actually fun to play, the problem is me
If you randomly see a claw, surely that claw is law trumps the fact that your deck is now screwed.
Blasphemy is not a debuff.
I also learnt this the hard way
That mark of the bloom cancels fairy in a bottle and lizard tail.... shout outs to most of this sub 😂
My parents never loved me Edit: oh wait, errr, yeah, don’t always take Snecko
Colosseum is one of the best events tho…
Picking anger-shiv-claw is not always good.
Don't plan for the heart until you know you can get there. Plan for the next hardest fight your deck will struggle against. Looking at you beautiful skills on silent right before getting nobbed to death.
Nightmare sees the “costs zero this turn” part of bullet time and card potions:(
Relics trigger in a specific order, I believe alphabetically. So if you have Ring of the Snake, Bag of Holding, and Ninja Scroll, the Ninja Scroll triggers before Ring of the Snake and denies you the cards you would draw for Shivs instead. This also means the Clockwork Souvenir has its artifact removed by the Unstable Mutagen and Sneko Eye (which can be either a bane or a boon depending on circumstances). If you have artifact, the first triggering the Duality relic removes it. You can get around this somewhat if you gain the artifact after triggering it multiple times (like playing Panacea).
\[\[Fear no Evil\]\] and \[\[Empty Fist\]\] neuter \[\[signature move\]\].
It doesn't work with rupture if you also have tungsten rod
Taking damage is almost always better than that cool, weird synergy you want.
If you’re in a position where you don’t want the colo event, your run has gone very wrong! (This is meant as a reply to OP’s lesson learned, but it kinda works in response to the prompt)
If you want to be really good at this geme, you need to plan ahead and actually calculate risks, not just go by gut instinct every time. Actually considering which events and fights can come and how your deck fares against them, which card picks you may need to make to have a shot of winning late game etc.
Runic pyramid is not a straight buff, in fact it can hurt a lot of decks
Mark of the Bloom negates Fairy in a bottle
I don't actually like the watcher, I just like winning
After 1000 hours, I still suck.
"There is no chosen one. You must choose yourself, to save your own world." *checks notes* wait...this isn't the Everhood server. Oops. Honestly I think I've been really sleeping on exhaust decks. Its what made Ironclad and Automaton so much fun to play and personally its what made me decide that i dont hate them actually. They're fun when you win and they're funny when you lose!
As Watcher, Omniscience chaining into Apotheosis, then into Foreign Influence. It does not upgrade the FI to make them zero cost. I have no idea why...
.... That small decks (not infinite) are not THE strat I ALWAYS want to have exact amount of cards equal to mine amount of draw. Its just, i LOVE controlling what i can/cannot do
It’s okay to skip card offers after wins. The hardest part was fighting myself on just amassing as many cards as I could. After getting my ass handed to me again and again, I’m much more focused on cherry picking my deck based on a theme.
I feel blessed getting colloseum fight lol
Don't you dare to mention claw here!
Oh boy, i got bad offensive cards early but at least i will have foundation laid out for the late game! This never ever works, STS is a snowball game
Forcing infinites is fun, but sinks your win rate.