My goal of late, before I delve into Ascension, is to beat the game with every combination. So far that’s going well, and it’s a great way to unlock the cards/relics so that when I start playing with my favorite combinations on A1 and above, I’ll already have everything unlocked (in theory).
Volatile Gauge is just as good as Snecko Eye. It’s absurdly powerful. Spitballing, the only way I wouldn’t take it is if I were heavily invested in a thin, low-cost deck on circle 5 or later. “Reducing average card cost” is not the way to look at it. Instead, think about good turns vs bad turns when you have it. And think about how much higher the ceiling is.
Ha, as we were discussing this, I lucked out with the Volatile Gauge (Sneko Eye) on the 1st artifact pickup with a Stygian and Hellborne combo.
And early on I picked up an Inferno (100 dmg to both friendly and enemy units) which I added Holdover. And duplicated it twice. I ended up with Spell Weakness potion which I added Double Stack (x4 Spell Weakness).
With those 2 cards, I went through all the bosses before they got to the top floor. Seraph did not even reach relentless.
I took @MisterMourning’s recommendation and picked up 2 points of ember generation because I cant cast inferno on the level my Stygian hero is at to take advantage of his cost reduction bonus.
Was cake walk. The Consumer of Crowns (10 Ember cost Hero) was just decoration that can hit bosses if they float to my top floor where my units are stationed.
I think this combo can go up all the way to Covenant 25!
monstertrain://runresult/b2d9c6c1-395f-4616-8f19-67abe46ec75e
I wonder how the MT devs feel to know that many people are playing and loving their game but referring to all their cards and artifacts by the names of their Slay the Spire analogues, hah
I feel like if I took the concept of relics directly from a popular game and then copied exactly what those relics did and just changed the name and the artwork, I’d probably not be too offended when people drew the comparison.
Won’t do it. When I can have an important card at zero cost in my hand every turn, why would I want that?
Bad turns in this game can end your entire run.
Sure, Holdover on something zero-cost and awesome is also a reason to not take Volatile Gauge. But Holdover on something free and awesome is unusual (if certainly to be striven for).
I do that nearly every run with something. For instance, Gorge is a prime candidate if I’m playing umbra and don’t have as much morsel generation as I would like.
Finally got my first win with Hellhorned primary. Holdover 1 cost battering ram is nuts (had 3 Slots on spells) And holdover vent doing 26 damage to a row every turn when I had no energy was awesome.
My advice is to do this while climbing the ascension tiers. You don’t want to burn out on the game by winning the easiest difficulty over and over! If you reach a point where it’s getting too difficult you can always finish off all the combos on a lower ascension tier.
I could have sworn when I first started I could add upgrades to my champion card, but I can’t now. Am I misremembering?
I believe so.
After reading this thread, I just had to have this game, and I’m glad I got it! I played all afternoon. I lost my first run but won my second, using the Hellhorned as my primary and Awoken as my secondary. In my second run, I relied almost entirely on Awoken cards for heroes, even though Awoken was my secondary: 4x Awoken Hollow, one Wilting Sapling, and the Hellhorned Champion. (I’m a bit surprised there’s only one champion per clan, but maybe this will change?) Most of my support cards were Awoken too – various heals to pump up the Hollows. I suppose the primary/secondary thing affects only the choice of champion and the starting deck? In my first two runs, I didn’t have any chance to customize my starting deck. Will that change?
I got rid of most of the Torch cards except a couple that I buffed up, and I eventually got rid of all the Stewards too. I had around 20-22 cards for most of the run. Is that typical?
Also, once you play a hero and it dies, you never get it back, right? How many heroes should one have in the deck? With my big fat heroes taking up 3 slots each, I had only six in my deck total, I thnk. I picked Channelsong but never used it because I’d get my heroes out before I drew it, so I ditched Channelsong mid-run.
So was that just the tutorial run, on Covenant 0? I suppose now I should try to win on Covenant 1? If I do, do I just keep going to the next Covenant level?
I see a couple of you guys in the high-score list. I’m Spock on steam if people want to add me. Here’s my run: monstertrain://runresult/a6e46ec6-d3f2-4d1a-b46f-4492c32e3c51
Yeah, climbing the covenant ranks is the main difficulty progression in the game. As others have mentioned though, Covenant 1 isn’t necessarily more difficult than Covenant 0 (although 2+ are bit by bit more difficult).
What do you mean by never? If you just mean in that one fight, then yes (unless you are playing one of the later unlocked factions who can bring units back). You never lose a unit permanently unless you’ve added the keyword ‘Purge’ to their card.
The cards in your starting deck are determined by who you pick as your main and allied faction, as well as any modifiers brought in by covenant ranks (i.e. in covenant 1 you get 5 random cards given to you, and they are showed when you start a run).
Thanks for your speedy reply! I see you way ahead of me on the leaderboard, @Tim_N – good job!
Sorry I wasn’t clear about my question on heroes. Or should I have said “units”? I mean, in a given battle, if a unit dies while fighting on the train, does that unit return to my discard pile (or deck) during this battle? (I know it will reappear in my deck for the next battle.) For that matter, once I play a unit onto the train, the unit no longer appears in my discard pile or deck, right? By contrast, if one plays a spell, it enters the discard pile and soon is reshuffled back into the deck (unless the spell has “consume”). Do I understand this correctly? I’m trying to figure out how many units I should have in a deck, as opposed to spells.
Also, what is “mastering” a card? I Googled it and looked through some reviews and still haven’t figured out what it means. (One reviewer even confessed he didn’t know, either!)
I suppose it’s no accident that the game echoes Dante’s Inferno! 9 circles, frozen bits, etc. Is every run 9 circles of Hell? The notion of a freezing bit of Hell is cool (ha!).
Yes, units are “consumed” instead of discarded when they die, and don’t reappear. You can actually click on an icon in the lower right of the screen to see what cards have been consumed. The one exception is that there is a mechanic to bring them back that is related to one of the factions you’ll unlock later.
When you win a match on Ascension 1+ with a card in your deck, that card becomes ‘mastered’ for all future runs. Don’t get too excited though, it just means you get a nice gold outline to the card. There is no gameplay benefit when a card is mastered (which is good).
You can use cards that add stuff like temple or multi strike. The only direct upgrades come from dark forges, not shops.
Not the only exception. The endless upgrade is one of my favorites, and returns a killed unit to the top of the deck. Great for imps and some melting remnant units.
That’s typical yeah, especially with consume on a bunch of them (cheap way to get rid of stuff like torches). Once you get through your deck the first time, you want to be able to cycle your best cards.
It kind of depends. Think in terms of how you want to set up your rows. I’ve had spell heavy builds that only needed two units by the end. There are also some fights where lots of units can be problematic if you aren’t careful (like an enemy that sweeps and applies Emberdrain).
I think what you will find going forward is that the best approach tends to be as few units as you can get away with and buff one or more as much as possible.
If you could force channelsong into your starting hand, it would be sooooo good
oh yeah
Just wanted to say that anyone who has @jesnell as a steam friend will be humbled on the Monster Train leaderboard, the dude is on covenant 20!
Please teach us your ways, oh great one.
I’m actually extremely surprised there isn’t a spell mod or a relic that allows you to force a card into your starting hand.
In other news, I just beat Cov20 and I have been doing about 4 runs a day so this game is quite a bit easier than Slay The Spire. Stygian primary Hellhorned support is the easiest win I’ve found by a pretty fair margin. The Stygian champ getting nerfed to take 2 capacity is something I could foresee happening, and they probably just have to remove the sap totem from the game, I don’t see a way to balance it unless they rework sap completely.
Bah. Who cares about balance?