Just had an awesome run with the ironclad. Things just fell into place. I was able to generate a lot of block and got barricade. I had several costly cards like demonic form (I think that is what it’s called) and bludgeon and then I got enlightenment. I beat the third boss and now get to play ascension mode.
The third character, the Defect, has been added to the beta branch for testing. Revolves around the concept of orbs which can be held for a passive bonus or consumed for a larger, active effect.
Is there a way to view later areas with the map? The two times I’ve really got a shiv deck going with the Silent ended up facing the Time Eater and going poorly; if I knew earlier on that boss was coming it would change deck design. I like the gameplay of the Silent better but it feels like there are a lot more hard counters where the Ironclad can roll with the punches better.
Nope, you only get to see one area at a time. And yeah, the Ironclad is just more resilient to change I think.
I love the Defect so far, by the way, even if some of his powers seem brokenish.
Oh, shit!
Beta branch need any kind of key to get into, or is it publicly available through the Steam client?
Nope, go into preferences and make the switch.
Awesome, thanks! Looking forward to trying this out. I’ve been slaying the hell out of this spire for the last week or so and pretty much loving it. Daily Climbs are such a fantastic idea.
How to get the Defect unlocked: go into the beta branch game, start an ironclad run. Select abandon run. This will unlock Silent- do the same with her and that will unlock The Defect
Just had a bunch of fun losing a run with the Defect. This is always a sign they’re doing something right, I think.
The defect is really hard. hard to get block, hard to survive, the orbs are kinda weak at times.
Agree. Defect is fun but much, much harder than the other two. Even when you can get a bit of a combo going, it’s about as strong as a bad ironclad or silent deck.
I’ve done a handful of runs with Defect and I don’t think I’ve gotten to the second boss yet. And I’m on Ascension 11 and 9 with the others. It’s hard.
There’s a power that says “when you take damage, Channel a Lightning”, which seems really good except for the part where you have to take a lot of damage. The other deck design I’ve had which worked (until it didn’t) was having a handful of 0-cost cards and the attack that puts them back in your hand, along with the attack that costs 2 but gets cheaper as you use it + Rebound (the attack that puts your next card played on top of your deck).
Try a deck based around getting Powers, along with the couple of skills that trigger off of Powers.*
A Power based deck let me put the Ascended One in the ground with little effort, and he specifically gets stronger when you use them!
*I think that’s right.
Static Discharge is great fighting harpies when they all decide to attack at 1x5 in the first round ;)
But yeah, the Defect in general is super-weak. To wit:
- Super hard to build any of the passive/free defenses that have been the keys to most of my wins. Frost orbs suck.
- Dark orbs are great but so, so hard to use effectively. Mostly because…
- Orb channeling is overcosted (in the design sense). Orbs are cool and great, but to really roll with the Defect you need to be channeling them constantly and it’s just not feasible with the current card mix. Which leads me to:
- The whole “get a lot of cards” theme is just terribly weak. It actively makes your deck shittier and hopes to draw the combo enablers, but that’s that much harder because your deck is so diluted.
- The Powers theme is interesting, but heck if I’ve been able to make it work. Most powers have a delay before doing anything terribly useful, and it’s all too easy to get rekt in the meantime while you’re building up your combo.
All that aside, I actually really like the Defect from a design perspective. If the devs do a decent job evaluating the class during this beta period and the rest of EA, it should be great.
I actually have a lot of faith in the devs. I’ve really liked their decision making so far, and they use a combination of a data driven approach (what cards get played, how often are they in winning decks) and conversing with top players to make a lot of their decisions. I’m sure the Defect will end up in a good place.
I won my first game. It was essentially all about the Machine AI and Echo form, which are both insanely ridiculous cards. Echo form lets you get these incredibly strong combos going that really show how the channeling is supposed to function. If you think static discharge is bad, just try the upgraded version on an echo form turn. channel 4 lightning everytime you are attacked? that’s like 36 damage as just a passive. You can then do things like Glacier (gain 12 block and channel 2 frost) which, depending on how much frost you had already, ends up with something like up to 24 + 20 block by itself.
These two cards can combo onto themselves too, since Defect has so many “when you play a power, do x” cards. A machine AI that you doubled using echo form is suddenly giving you two more powers every turn (which can include another echo form, that really gets hilarious when you double an echo form once or twice)
Backed off beta branch. Up to Ascension 3/3 and I don’t even feel close to burning out on this. What a great game.
Holy shit you guys, this game is amazing!
Welcome to the addiction. I’ve got 62 hours in this and I rarely play early access games - although this doesn’t really feel like EA.
No it really doesn’t. It helps that at this point the game is just adding more content (enemies, relics, potions, a third class in beta of course, etc.) and doing so weekly it looks like. Can’t wait to get back in this afternoon!
Everything about the development of this game screams professionalism to me. The devs really have their shit together.