Slay the Spire

You shouldn’t say it like only a newb would love this game, I still think it’s great - it’s just that its formula means eventual mastery (until they release additional characters).

Anyway, some bosses are clearly supposed to go against specific decks. That automaton with sentries works against small decks, I think, which otherwise may be great. They allow you to get most of your deck on any given turn so you know you’ll get what you need when you need it. You can still block this kind of damage in a variety of ways. There’s a status effect that reduces all damage to 1 or some relics make you ignore first damage - you can get it from potion or some talents. You can add a lot of armor with combos, but it’s more viable for Defect or Silent than Ironclad which you’re probably playing.

Also be sure to Weaken that dude. And - yeah, you’ll probably have to eat some damage, but you’re always healed after the boss so sustain is not that big of an issue. It’s unlikely he will shoot this thing more than twice during combat.

new%20record

Well that was a new record.

I’m really struggling with the Defect, and I think I have decided that ‘more orbs!’ is not necessarily right. Focus works well for lots of orb evoking or many orbs, but I think if I’m going to rely on ‘lots of orbs!’ then I need lots of focus and lots of raw block cards, because setup to ‘many orbs!’ can be quite slow, and getting the right orbs evoked at the right time becomes much harder.

So I will play tonight a bit more, and try to keep this in mind.

This seems correct to me, depending on the build. I’ve had builds where I only had 1 orb slot due to cannibalizing several for +2 focus, and then I have effects like when I take damage I generate 2 orbs which instantly fries everyone for like 12 damage twice, thanks to having no free orbs and the power that makes lightning orbs hit all targets. That was a very fun run. I actually had the “gain an orb slot” ever 2 turns and would keep eating the orb slots for +2 more focus, it was crazy powerful.

Good lord.

I do think ‘many orbs!’ can work quite well: huge amounts of passive frost orbs with one dark orb slowly moving forwards, or some meaty Barrage damage, for instance, or a ton of lightning orbs passively dripping damage while making use of powerful block cards. But ‘many orbs’ does not easily synergise wtih ‘many cards channelling orbs’, which I think is where I’ve been going wrong.

I agree with this. I think every successful Defect build I’ve had it was worth drafting Leaps (+9 Block) and it’s usually worth drafting Auto Shields (+11 block if you have none) unless you come up with a combo that starts your turn with block. A lot of my best Defect builds take some time to get going. Having some good block generation to get to that point is so valuable.

Were you deliberately keeping the enemies alive long enough to do that?

Absolutely not: it happened incidently, because I ended with a multiclass deck with too little attack options (Heavy Blade was my best damage dealing card).
I had the awesome Defect’s Nightmare card, and nothing to use it on my hand but trusty Limit Break — I was usually saving it for my 0 cost cards, as a cheapskate.
Before I even noticed it, my strength had went to 368 or something. I quite blinked when I saw that number (and it solved that encounter very fast).
I am sure my initial strategy was very bad for that deck, retrospectively.

And bearing in mind my above musings, I bested the spire… Except I forgot the final key piece to attempt the heart! Oops!

That’s crazy!

Finally!

Beat the heart as the Defect, at long last. The wining combination was a Focus/Loop powered, deck with a single Darkness (that the Loops and Focus would charge up super fast) and a single Multicast I would use to produce a giant pile of damage all at once. I had enough relics to help with setup - including starting with a Loop-effect, and free frost orbs if I had a free orb slot. The real star of the show were the Apparitions I picked up, which gave enough time to setup all the awesome Loop/Focus. Calipers was the icing on the frosty cake.

Me too! Just beat the heart last night with the Defect.

I ran a really small deck (for me) at 15 cards. It had the the power card that double plays your first card, the power card that gives a free power card every turn, and the power card that summons a lightning each time a power card is played. It also had 2 Force Fields which are high defense cards with a huge cost, lowered for each power card played. And best of all, it had the Bird Statue which heals 2 health for every power card played. I ended almost every battle on the final floor with max health!

The run prior, I had gotten the Heart down to like 200 health with a huge deck strategy, which is pretty fun with the defect. I think I had around a 60 card deck plus a bunch of powers adding cards to it every turn. Requires a ton of luck for the cards to come out in the right order and the right random cards to be added. It would go from absolutely destroying one fight to taking 5 turns to get started in the next! But the Stack cards (defense equal to discard pile) were always gloriously effective.

This game is my favorite game I’ve played in a really long time. But I definitely need to take a break.

I just did SO MUCH poison damage.

I can’t even imagine how to get such a high number.

It’s that card that doubles poison, and perhaps the card that gives you three copies of a card you choose?

Bazinga. Well, I had already used one triple effect after several other poison effects, and then used a potion of skill, got a Nightmare, made three more copies of the triple in my hand, so like 5 or so total triples.

… like, the power of compound interest, except with poison!

There is a mobile game (ios/android) with the game gameplay model, or very similar at least, you may want to check it out if you like Slay the Spire, It’s called Night of the Full Moon.

It’s explicitly inspired by Dream Quest. Which was made by the guy who is working on Hearthstone single player content. It’s good too and is not connected to the rest of the game so you can play Hearthstone on mobile or PC as a Slay the Spire style experience. A shame that it still requires internet connection and doesn’t save your progress as well as NotFM.