Slay the Spire

There are some broad soft newbie traps, particularly if you’re not used to deck builders. Like how good it is to get rid of your shitty starting cards, how adding “good” cards is a net negative if they don’t fit your deck and/or mana curve.

I think the time when I started winning games was the time I started saying no to cards, even the rare ones, if they didn’t fit my deck.

This is true, but at the same time I’ve had the best runs with the largest decks full of stuff that only “most” of it worked well together. You need card draw then, something to fill your hand when you are low on cards and have energy left or to cycle through your cards quickly to get to the key ones, which is why this seems to work best with the Silent maybe.

One of the most powerful relics in my mind is the Mummified Hand, which reduces a random card to cost 0 when you play a Power. Every time I get that I fill my deck with powers, because it can cascade quickly into putting a handful of powers into play all in sing sweep and still drop a few attacks/blocks in the same turn as well. I get that relic and my decks tend to get real big, but they work well because powers are one and done, so you don’t see them as draws once they are played.

Oh man. I finally beat the heart on Ascension 20 with Ironclad. It only took about 100 runs and the luckiest deck I’ve had on this game yet (Dead Branch - Corruption - Charon’s Ashes - Feel No Pain - Juggernaut - Dark Embrace). I swear beating the Heart on A20 is 3 times as hard as making it there in the first place.

Congrats, maybe by 2025 I’ll get from ascension 16 to 20! I need to get lucky to even have a chance.

Congrats! That’s no mean feat.

Nice. I’ve been stuck on 18 for a couple weeks. Quite a feat!

PSA: This comes out of Early Access on the 23rd, and as such the price will increase so if you were waiting for it to be a full 1.0 release (even though it looks like this next patch isn’t adding much other than trading cards and a bit of balance updates) you may want to bite now to save a few bucks. Or, alternatively, wait until the price hike to more support the dev! :)

I can’t recommend this enough, I’ve bought copies for several people already and have put over 200 hours into this masterpiece. Just the best little game out there right now.

I’m surprised that it didn’t win the Qt3 game of the year!

I think I voted for it. I suspect its Early Access status held it back.

I guess I will have to vote for it in the 2019 quarterlies :)

There are too many nerds of stompy robots here!

I came so close last night to beating the initial game (non ascension) with the Defect.

Had loads of cards and a deck that worked using loads of cards (several cards to give +2 orbs, several to channel x lightning, quite a few claw cards, and items that let me heal whenever I played a power card, and a card that let me play a power card for free…) but it was shut down by that time keeper.

Was close. Got him to 25% health.

Will try again tonight.

I don’t know all the terms but I had a fun game with, I think, the guy who gets to draw 7 cards on the initial turn. I was at the end boss who had either split or had a powerful minion, both over 200 hit points.

I had a card that transferred poison when one monster died. I had a card that let me make three copies of a card in my hand for my following turn. And I had a card that tripled poison. I made three copies of the triple card and then next turn I used it three times on a monster with 8 poison and laid 224 poison on the monster, which died at the end of the turn, and then the poison transferred and killed the other monster. The whole battle only took 5-6 turns.

YEEESSSS These are some of my favorite builds!

I love how you can play this game a thousand times and A) realize something new about a card you previously thought you knew all about and B) never play the exact same deck twice, especially with how the relics you end up with change everything.

Just had a run with a Dead Branch (gain a random card when you exhaust something), Charron’s Ashes (deal 3 damage to all enemies when you exhaust something), and filled my deck with cards that provide block when I exhaust, prevent block from going away at the end of the turn, and make my skills cost 0 but exhaust them when used.

The end result is I’d have a hand full of 0 cost skills that gave me block or other benefits, exhausting them gave me block and hurt everything, plus would draw me replacement cards, would give me extra cards, many of which would be 0 cost skills, rinse and repeat for ever. I sometime’s had a block of over 300. I never gave Barricade (lose no block at the end of the round) much thought because I rarely had a surplus of block, but oh man sometimes with the right relics, it becomes god tier.

Also, Dead Branch is broken af, but super super fun so I hope it never changes.

You played with the Silent.

I had a similar build with her.

Corpse explosion and double/triple poison were the core of my deck.

I finished it with the Defect. The core of my deck was the geentic algorithm card, which starts witg +1 block but gains +3 everytime it is used, exhausts. By tyhe end it gav +35 block. For 1 energy. I also had a bunch of tempext x cards plus double your energy cards…quite amusing when you start with 5 energy and play a void +, to get to 8 energy, then double it, and play tempest, to channel 16 lightning orbs…

And then 2 turns later get the thunderstrike card in your hand, costs 3 energy, hits the enemy for 7 damage per lightning channelled…

Extra points if the enemy is vulnerable :D.

I think a deck could be made up of 0 cost cards plus the card that lets you recall all 0 cost cards played so far.

Claw is 3 damage but makes every other claw deal +1 damage I think (permanently or per combat?)

Per combat

But yeah, it you combine that with the card that pulls 0 cost out of your discard plus Scrape (which does damage and draws cards that cost 0), you’ve got something that works pretty well.

I ended up with the prismatic relic once and built a deck that combined the above cards with Anger (a free attack that copies itself every time you use it), Headbutt (do damage and place a card from discard on top of your draw pile), and DoubleTap (play next attack twice). That’s the one time that I actually beat the “real” boss.

I definitely find that I am drawn to the strategies built around zero cost cards.

Still good if you get a bunch of them and get them back into your hand.

The beauty and horriblenes of this game is that you can’t really plan a deck ahead. Just roll with it.

My base strategy is to fight as much in level 1, go for elites and merchants level 2, and try to find the route with the most ? on lvl 3.

Merchants are almost always worth gunning for so you can use their card-removal service. Deck-pruning is pretty limited and super, super powerful.

I’m such a noob that I’ve never once removed a card.

I have passed over card rewards before though.