Slay the Spire

I finally beat ascension level 3. Just squeaked by with 3 HP left. I had a curse that damaged me 1 HP with each card I played (while the curse was in my hand), but I had to keep playing cards because there was no way I’d win if I didn’t kill the boss that turn. I was able to string together drawing more cards and getting more energy. I must have done a ton of damage that turn.

I just realized the game lets you cheese battles by exiting and reloading. It only saves the game at the start of a battle, so if you’re going to fail you can exit and try the battle again from the start. I made use if that to beat ascension level 4, but it felt kinda cheap.

I was rolling along up until the final boss. I got the weapon early that lets you increase max health if you kill an enemy with it. I got my HP up close to 140. It took me 5 tries to beat the time boss.

Picked this up the other day. Fantastic game! Best deck builder I’ve ever played, although I do have more fun playing the table-top board game Dominion since I can play it vs my wife, but this is the best single-player deck builder I’ve played. So good.

Heh, I figured that out a while back. I salve my conscience by only reloading when I make an unintended UI error (ending turn early, usually).

Now I know why the Steam popup keeps saying Slay the Spire lately. This is like the FTL of 2018. (If I’m wrong, please tell me what to go buy right now…wait don’t say Into the Breach…)

3 hrs in. 1st run failed at the first boss, 2nd run in progress, just beat the 2nd boss (The Champion, OMG he has 5x my HP, how the heck did I survive?) The cards are so neat, but I’m worried that I’m accumulating too many of them. I’ve got 30 cards now, should I stop picking up new ones?

Unless you have a real specific plan in your deck (which is pretty rare to put together), you should probably keep taking cards as long as they’re better than the average card in your deck, and in act 3 you’re mostly getting upgraded cards that are that good. Unlike Dream Quest/Monster Hunters it’s pretty hard to remove enough cards from your deck to get a real stripped-down machine.

Learning when to skip cards is a big part of getting better at this game. In my experience I have a core engine identified in my deck by late a1 - early a2 in most successful runs. I only pick cards that support that (or are intrinsically fantastic) once the deck has a theme.

Like, Whirlwind for the fighter is one of the strongest cards in the game. I’ve won several runs with it as the backbone of my deck. But in late a2 when I’m running an exhaust theme with no strength and still just 3 energy? It’s just going to get in the way of drawing the cards I actually need to activate my core combo.

I have successfully resisted the Steam sale so far but it looks like I’m going to cave and pick this up. Can’t beat the price given all the accolades being heaped on it here.

OK, I caved and bought it. Made it to the Spire and just barely killed the boss on my first run through, although I really had no idea what I was doing. It is a fun game and well worth $10.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I like this so much. I liked Dream Quest and Monster Slayers but I didn’t stick with them nearly as long. I think part of the difference is that (iirc, it’s been a while) in both of the previous games it was realistic to think that by the late game you would have removed all of your bad starting cards from the deck, and while having sweet well-oiled machines is kind of fun, it loses its allure when it happens almost every game. I like that I’ve accepted that I’m going to have some Strikes and Defends in my deck at the end because it makes the games where that isn’t annoying more special.

New patch, new game mode:

Weekly Patch 31: Custom Mode
JUNE 28 - DINOSAURS

Hello!

I hope everyone’s having a good week, we’ve been quite busy with a bunch of new players thanks to the Steam sale. Hello new players!

This week brings in a 3rd game mode called Custom Mode.

Custom Mode
This third game mode allows players to turn on/off various modifiers to create and share unique challenges! This can be unlocked by unlocking the “My Lucky Day” achievement, which is done by winning a Daily Climb.

Our aim is to expand this mode to allow new challenges such as Endless mode (which is still being worked on in Beta) and eventually allow players to create, incorporate, and access mods through this flexible interface :).

FULL PATCH NOTES

Also worth noting:

One Million?!
Just a few days ago, we reached 1,000,000 players for Slay the Spire! It’s been a wild ride as the two of us (and a great number of collaborators!) started work on this game almost 3 years ago. The feedback and reception for the game has been far more than any developer could hope for and we’d like to sincerely thank all of you for playing the game, creating amazing content, and even starting riots over boots.

We hope to pay you all back by working our butts off.

…Dinosaurs?

I somehow failed to realize that you could skip picking a card. Thanks for pointing that out.

Oh, that’s the guy’s Steam ID who posted the patch notes for the game;

Related (at least partially) to your thoughts are the realization I had playing Monster Slayers that I think more and more I’m enjoying games that don’t have a meta game but instead expect that any run could be won with careful choices and a little luck (not every game, like Spelunky for example is supposed to be, but more than a few for sure). Player experience counts for a lot in this kind of game design, for instance.

I was playing Monster Slayer and realized that the first few runs you (or at least, I) just have no chance to do super well as enemies were just crushing me in the second dungeon, and then I’d unlock new passive abilities for future runs, and I wondered if games that allow for unlocks like that aren’t for me as much as I had thought? After all, my favorite rogue like/lite games tend to not have that actually. Slay the Spire, Brogue, Spelunky, and etc.

Monster Slayers has all the ingredients of a game I should enjoy, but I don’t. I avoided Slay the Spire up until a few days ago only because I had formed bad Monster Slayer associations with it in my mind. Two completely different experiences for me.

Yes, Monster Slayers expects you to grind out passives and upgrades before you can realistically win. StS has a small amount of unlocking, but you can absolutely win before cranking them all out and it’s really just variety for each class. Totally different philosophy.

Not only cards: you can (and should) skip relics sometimes.

Having watched the guy who wins 75% of Ascension 15 games for a couple hours on his stream, I can tell you he skips a TON of cards, and uses the Remove Card feature almost every merchant.

I have a hard time skipping cards because they all look so interesting!

Four hours in, I beat my first boss (with Defect) and it was down to the wire. Very exciting. I thought you start over at that point, but I see there’s an Act 2!