I haven’t been able to get one of those upgrade a bunch of times yet.
My biggest problem is that playing the Defect I cannot resist trying to play the zero-cost/Scrape deck, such that if I see a Claw anywhere on the first act I’ll go for it. It’s only worked once, on Ascension 3, but boy it was satisfying when it did. I guess it could have worked on Ascension 4 but I lost on the final boss.
Have the developers ever explicitly said that the game chooses the final boss that’s best against your current strategy? I pretty much always get the Time Eater on the zero-cost plan and the… whatever it’s called, the thing that gains strength when you play a Power and resurrects after it dies the first time, when I’m playing a deck with a bunch of Powers.
I dont think it does, or it d ruin the purpose of seeded runs.
I do often wonder if it’s not equally weighted random or if there’s something else going on… I’ve seen Donu and Deca exactly three times, and I’m between Ascension 8 and 10 on all three classes (with an appropriate share of Act 3 failures along the way).
I got it early in the first act, then had a ridiculous luck with ?'s giving an upgrade, a relic that upgraded it, and i made my sole focus campfires to smith it.
I also got double tap early, and had 5 energy - so I could run double tap, searing blow, headbutt, pommel/shrug it off to let me hit with it sometimes twice a turn.
Does this game have a “too easy” vibe to it?
Not for me, I’ve yet to beat it in 10 tries but reading peoples comments above maybe I’m just really bad at it.
I find the ascension modes pretty difficult.
I mean, I think now that I have a grasp of the card combos, it will get a lot easier… but it took me nearly 30 hours to beat the first spire - I felt it was plenty difficult.
If you’re experienced with deck builders, then you will probably grasp this much faster then I did.
Apparently I’m awful a deck building games because it’s not playing that way for me, I’ve yet to make it through once. Clearly I’m missing something. ;)
I’d love to watch a YouTube video of people that keep saying this playing, so I could see what they are doing I’m not. I still don’t reliably win with standard games (no modifiers), with any given class. I have great runs, I have terrible runs, and I think I’m pretty good at making good choices, but I never feel like the game is “easy” and I barely touch Ascension mode stuff.
Once you know what you are doing, the basic game is almost trivial. The common mistakes I’ve seen my friends make IRL are things like - Not skipping card rewards nearly frequently enough, not removing enough cards at merchants (in fact, people generally make terrible choices at merchants from what I’ve seen), not knowing when to fight elites and when to avoid them, and a general lack of understanding that you need to establish your playstyle by the end of the first floor and not just take cards that are generically pretty good.
For example with the Defect, let’s say you just started and your first card is a Ball Lightning, which is a decent an extremely likely card to get first. After that, a lot of people just keep picking up more of them because their mentality is “it’s been than a Strike”. And while this is technically true, it’s an excellent way to lose the game by diluting your deck too much.
If you want to try and improve your game, my best recommendations are:
- Watch someone amazing play on Twitch or Youtube
- Work on Ascension leveling. The higher difficulty is a good teacher.
- Note your Seed before going into a run. If you lose it, replay it and make different choices this time regarding card rewards/gold spending/map pathing and see if you cant win it.
You don’t need to be a genius to beat Slay the Spire on Ascension 15. Sometimes you’ll just get so lucky you couldn’t even bad-decision your way into a loss. So in that sense I can see why some people think it’s too easy. I imagine they’ll add stuff past A15 at some point.
One of the fun things about Slay the Spire is that not all the crazy edges have been sanded off yet. For example, with a couple of upgraded Catalysts in your deck you can build poison levels that can kill a boss right quick.
All good advice I’m sure MisterMourning, but also a good bit more work than I’m going to ever put in for a genre I’m not much of a fan of. It’s a testament to the fun nature of the game design I’m even playing a card game, and still more so that I enjoy it so much while repeatedly losing.
I may yet dumb my way through a victory w/ some luck, but I’m perfectly fine if I don’t as it’s still really quite addictive.
I have not been playing near as much as I’d like but I have zero experience with deck builders. Would anyone like to give some basic tips that won’t ruin the fun but will still be helpful getting started?
Here are some from another deck-builder noob
- Keeping your hand size as small as possible is your best bet
- As such, it is often the best play to focus on removing bad and mediocre cards from your hand so that you have higher probabilities, and higher frequency of running whatever combo you’re using for that run
- It’s ok to skip the card rewards - even the elite ones. In fact, you should probably be doing that the majority of the time!
- While fighting elites can you get you those relics, they often come with their fair share of risk, so I would be careful going out of my way for those battles (unless you can tell that you hand is super-powered)
- Likewise, as you get higher in the spire, even the normal battles carry quite a bit of risk with very little reward, and I started avoiding those as well
Hah, same. I do enjoy card games, but I tend to be mediocre at them at best. I just seem to be pretty bad at deck building in general. I have yet to win a regular run, though I’ve managed to win two dailies so far - and those I feel were stacked in my favor from the start.
But with the regular runs, I apparently make a lot of bad choices. I do think I’m improving though, and I think I learn something on every run; and at least I’m enjoying myself even if they end in failure.
The daily climbs are great. They’re usually stacked in your favor like you mention, which gives you more latitude (and availability) to try out card combos you normally couldn’t. An example: I try to play very damage averse and would pass on the Ironclad’s Offering card because it cost HP to use. But a few weeks back there was a daily that stacked your deck with rares. Having Reaper or Feed in my deck made Offering much more attractive.
Can you provide a bit of guidance on this? In general I go for an elite battle – how do I know when to avoid?
If you assume that most elite battles will cost you 25-50% of your hp, and you want to be at or near your max going into the boss battle, you should be able to look at the remaining enemies and camps and figure out if you can afford to do it.