Slay the Spire

While I liked Monster Slayers quite a bit, success did require more grinding.

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Edit: better with a link

Slay the Spire is more complete, better designed and better balanced than the large majority of games on Steam right now.
The developers are still constantly adding new stuff but I don’t see that as a reason for shelving what for me is the best and most enjoyable game of the year.

Is it just the Early Access tag that is bothering you?

I too, just last night, finally beat my first normal run, with the Ironclad. I’ve managed to beat several daily climbs now, but this is my first “regular” win.

I credit my success to an upgraded Demon Form (gain 3 strength every turn) combined with liberal use of the card that doubles your strength. I also made good use of the 0 cost card that does damage and adds a copy to your deck along with a card that gives you two extra copies of an attack or power card in your hand - along with buffed strength, I was often able to do massive damage in one turn. I kept a fairly small deck, and got lucky with quite a lot of good relics.

The final boss was the Awakened (I’m not sure if it’s random or not - is it?), and he did actually kill me, but I had picked up the relic that lets you survive one time and get back 50% health. I normally wouldn’t pick that relic, but it was a boss relic, and the other two choices were worse.

It felt good to finally win a run through my own decent choices (and some amount of luck, of course).

No. It’s just that, as with any game, I’m only going to play it for a certain amount of time before I get burned out or move on to something else. The game is good enough that I feel like I should save that time for when the game is pronounced “complete” by the developers.

I also was concerned I was putting too much time into it, so I stopped for a while there until it was ‘complete’ but the truth is, it’s a full game right now and it’s fucking awesome, so why deny myself the fun of playing it once or twice a day? So I have, and I have more hours into this early access title than just about any other game released this year (or last, for that matter).

If you get burned out on it and move on, that’s totally fine as long as you had fun with it. It’s your decision to stop playing something, you should never feel bad when you lose interest in a game. Spend your time doing what you enjoy. If you are enjoying Slay the Spire, I wouldn’t be concerned with what “might” happen, enjoy what IS happening.

I have found the Silent is much easier than the first guy. The first one has a harder time getting the ability to summon the appropriate defensive/nerfing measures it seems.

The trick for me appears to be trying to grab as many relics as you can as early as you can. By the end of the second board, either your cards are clicking with the relics, or you will be talking to the whale again soon.

I also don’t really start grabbing more than a deck of 20 cards until they come in already upgraded. And Bites are cool.

is there anyone here, who can beat the 3rd act reliably with ironclad? How much “luck” is there really? If I get the good relics (icecream, bag of prep etc) and the good cards (demon form, bites etc) I can get usually to the end boss … but more often than not I fail. Not enough blocking, not enough damage output … some cards I do not have any idea how they could be useful in any build

With no ascension on? I could probably win with any of the characters more often than not. But where’s the fun in that? ;)

Really? That sounds promising … when I started, I had trouble to win the first act … no I can make it to act 3 pretty regularly … Sometimes some elite in act 3 gets me, usually that greek statue head…

How do you turn on ascension? Not that I’m ready I’ve beaten the game once with ironclad, but am struggling with the second act with, umbrella, the second guy.

It unlocks once you have beaten each of the current last bosses.

You need to beat all three of the different act 3 bosses or beat act 3 five times.

While relics can have a huge impact on your run cards are generally more important. Overall a lot of the boss fighting is more reliant on experience than on anything else.

Different bosses require different approaches and benefit from you adjusting your deck as you play act 3.
Don’t take cards that are useless against the boss and try to get stuff that matches their weaknesses.
Saving specific potions is a good idea.

Having one scaling source (something that makes you stronger in longer fights) makes most boss fights much easier. For the Ironclad strength is the easiest to get with any of Demon Form, Shuriken, Spot Weakness or Limit Break (+any source of strength to start).
Just Demon Form and a handful of average block cards alone is definitely enough to beat all three Act 3 bosses -very- reliably.

Other than that or in cases where you don’t have great scaling it mostly comes down to experience. If you keep playing you’ll learn attack patterns and values and become better at accumulating synergies.

There is much less luck involved than it appears. Without ascension Ironclad is the easiest to complete in my opinion. If you get Demon Form you can eventually expect a 95%+ win ratio for act 3 once you played enough Slay the Spire.

I agree. The relic hiding enemy intent becomes almost a no-brainer, giving a free extra energy, once you are familiar with the toughest enemies.

Oh man, I am terrified of that relic, because I feel like I need to know whether I need to block or not on a given turn… so I never pick it. But then again, I’m not nearly as good at this game as some of you are, hehe.

Extra energy is definitely always nice though.

Yeah I don’t count rounds enough to ever take that one.

Ditto. I like to know what’s going to happen too much. Then again I do love me some extra energy.

Today’s daily is such an incredible slog.

Incase you’re not aware their behaviours are pretty much scripted and you can look it all up on the wiki.

Personally I don’t, I like to vaguely recall what they do.

Finally slayed the spire with ironclad … I wonder if I can repeat ? At the moment I am trying to beat it with the Silent … it is all poison for me now (like I had a strength build with ironclad) … But HP is really an issue for The Silent … maybe I need more blocking, I can kill most enemies in 2-5 turns, but take too much HP loss…