I’ve had no trouble making use of trample Penumbra
Trample Penumbra is great. It’s just not your primary combo engine.
There’s nothing wrong with having BEEF to drop for zero that gives you time to set up your combos.
Some of you have never played Turbostasis before and it shows ;)
I love their “balancing” approach. Instead of nerfing and making everything suck, they beef the weak stuff to make it more fun and approachable.
I think a lot more devs can learn from this. And for all those who complain about OP, add more Covenant levels! Which will make it even more fun for all who already love your game!
Now that is a winning approach.
I hit a cliff for awhile on cov 17 and now 19 (doing random/random). What I’ve found is if I prioritize upgrading spells over units first, I seem to inevitably lose. I can upgrade them eventually, but not right away. Not sure if that’s something about the way I’m playing, or higher cov, or what. It could easily just be duplicating the wrong thing, or making a subtle misplay…
My favorite run recently was umbra/wax where i got an artifact where dying candles exploded for 5 damage across the entire row. That was highly entertaining.
I’ve been playing this sooo much, I think I need a break. But just one more run…
I tried the Monster Train demo, and something about this game reminds me of Artifact (and Dota). There is the lane defense + tower setup and respawning hero, but also the idea that anything can be overpowered in the right situation, and that this kind of design can be fun and interesting rather than something to “fix” by balancing it out of existence.
I had the exact same thought about Artifact. If Monster Train is Artifact then Slay the Spire is Hearthstone or if you’re being more charitable MtG: Arena.
I can’t think of a setup where going for the unit + unit upgrade path for the first reward was is not the right choice.
There’s two reasons for that. One is the pure economic argument: a unit will do damage many turns in a row, a spell helps you only right now. In the long term the spells can become the more efficient option, since spells have some amazing upgrades, but that’s only true once you have reached a critical mass of good and upgraded spells. You just won’t play a spell more than twice in the early game, since it takes a long time to go through the deck.
The other one is more subtle: I’m pretty sure the card draws are not random. As long as your draw deck has any non-basic units, you’re guaranteed to draw one of them in each hand. So those units you drafted + upgraded after battle 1? They’ll be kicking ass from round 1. The spell you upgraded? Might get it in the opening hand, might get it in round 5.
Heh, I frequently go for spell shop first. Often I don’t have a unit to upgrade yet after the first fight and the banner can be a crap shoot. If I go for a banner and shop, I’m going to feel like it was a huge waste of I don’t take something from the banner, even if it isn’t what I wanted.
Well it’s 10 coins for your bank if you decide to skip cards, so it’s not really nothing…
My three wishes for this game:
- A nerf to Lodestone Totem, which is by far the most powerful card in the game.
- Less RNG in the value of the Crystal Cavern random events. You get so few and they can range from useless to almost game-breaking. In StS this felt better because you hit so many events. Here you’ll only get 1-3 a run, with 3 being pretty uncommon.
- A higher max difficulty level.
I actually find it more fun to play than StS, but less rewarding to beat. If that makes sense.
I think many would agree with this.
Congrats on your win!
That’s where I was and I also won tonight. I don’t recall the names of things but I had the plant-like hero with tons of regen and they also did damage when they were healed. They healed faster than the final boss could damage them.
No, I mean because I will have gone to the unit upgrade shop when I could have gone to the spell shop.
Got it, I was confusing the banner with the shop.
The mix of choices in the available stations on the paths also pose interesting cost/benefits decisions also. For instance, there are times when I wanted a healing pool instead of a card reduction and vice versa!
Yeah, it can be a difficult choice, but I like that.
Grats backatcha! It’s satisfying finally to win one, isn’t it! I’m looking forward to a new run tomorrow.
I also have been thinking about Artifact as I play this. The three-rooms-at-once thing. And of course the tower-defense thing: hit 'em with those DoTs in the first room, and let them tick…
Nicely done! That mechanic where the awoken boss does damage when healed is fun to use, especially with the spell that also damages based on healing done.
Just had a fun Stygian/Hellhorned run to beat Cov8. Not an easy run, so making the mix of sap/spell weakness/armor I was using work was quite enjoyable. The Seraph fight was the sort where the slightest mistake could doom me and I had to restart it multiple times because I made dumb mistakes like buffed the wrong character or played two cards out of sequence. Getting the railhammer (+4 armor whenever armor applies) saved my bacon or I don’t think I’d have won).
It ended gloriously, though:
Is there some mechanic for this or are you just save scumming?
Thanks! Yeah, I had a couple copies of the healing explosion (or whatever its called) that does 10x the healing amount in damage. It was fun to have the boss hit me, then automatically heal up back to full health each time due to my regen.
Well, there’s no undo button., but the game also doesn’t save mid-fight, do if you make a mistake, you can just quit to the menu and continue your run.
I only had one row of units on the last two fights. I had one other dude, but never got him on the field (and he clearly want necessary at that point).