Slay the Spire is a pretty cool game

[Grunker]

Cool beans, can't wait. Even if I have tons of shit to play currently.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

It's not a pretty cool game, it's the pinnacle of human achievement. 230 hours racked up and 99% done on all achievements except getting an ascension 20 win, where I've been squeezing my nuts with a vice for a week or two in asc20 with no luck. In my defense it's possibly because I picked the Silent to aim for it because she was (Is?) the one I most consistently won with but she's got less completely busted scaling options than the other two which is what's more important in ascension 20. Especially when you have to do a double act 3 boss fight, which I've gotten to a few times and whiffed it since I run out of steam.

I see you finally got your final achievement.

I've enjoyed playing it as well. 248 hours for me and that's without even bothering with ascension yet. So I've achieved everything the developers have marked out as notable achievements/fun goals except for the two ascension ones (& my last one, see below), of course. TBH, I'm not sure I could cope with double Dropkicking my way to Asc 20, lol, so I just faff around with it mostly, constantly trying out new combos, like one tonight with the Defect: Card reducing minimalistic deck: Only additions:

Darkness Orb card+
Plasma Orb card+
x - block+
+ Zap & Double Cast cards+ from the starter set.

Gradually taking every opportunity to ditch all strikes & defends. Also picked up the drawer power card at one point & the Focus Power card+ later, in case I couldn't get rid of enough cards by the end & then because I had. I collected the Pyramid so, buy the last map I was playing the same hand every turn & the two defends I was left with weren't needed anymore either. You could probably even do it without the Zap, though it did help speed things up occasionally & came in useful for orb moving when I got shafted by Burns here and there. But yeah, all you need for a 4 card Defect deck is a simple Dark orb card, Plasma card, Double cast & the X-Defend (& possibly Zap).

I didn't plan it, I just picked the Dark Orb card as my first reward & took it from there.

I've tried planning runs, like trying to get the 9 Plasma in one turn Achievement, but I just die ten times before I even get close. The 9 Plasma is the last of my remaining Achievements to get & it's kinda infuriating. I'm guessing most people get it by doing the bizarre daily runs where there was probably one where you get all the right cards & relics, but on normal runs, wow, that's a tougher nut to crack than a 3 card Ironclad.

There's only two cards which guarantee giving you Plasma & one is uncommon while the other is rare & the rare one costs five energy before you can even play it to get its energy bonus. But that's not all, both these cards only provide 4 Channelled Plasma in one turn, where are the other 5 going to come from? One from a Relic maybe, still leaves 4. Maybe get lucky with a chaos card? Leaves 3, so maybe 3 x Recursions? All in the same turn? 6 Cards?

The only 'easy' way I figured was the Relic then Echo Form to play the triple Plasma card twice & then either two Recursions or a Plasma & Recursion. But even then, that's a tough nut to crack & even just finding a run with both Echo Form & the triple Plasma takes forever. Meh, I got real close once in about 10 runs, but for the first half of the run everything died to the massive damage of the Triple Plasma card's attack damage & later monsters had too much attack for me to last long enough to cycle through to the right combo. I gave up looking. It's so easy to go a whole game without seeing any Plasma, let alone trying to build round it as your main Orb.

How did you get your 9 Plasma Achievement?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

You can get pretty similar results just stacking up some frost orbs. Stacking plasma and X-Defend (Can't remember the name of it either. Reinforced Body? Something like that) is a much cooler way of doing it. In fact one of the ideal ways of killing the Time Eater as the Defect is just fill up on enough frost orbs and focus that he can't damage you and have at least 1 lightning orb to chew on him and end turn without playing cards 500 times. He doesn't gain strength and doesn't scale up if you aren't playing cards so you can just wear him down through attrition/building up a dark orb.

You can't get achievements on daily runs, but IIRC what I did was something like runic pyramid to hold cards in hand as-needed, playing plasma so I had a lot of energy to prepare, then running a lot of draw cards to cycle my deck and running things like Hologram+ to play more plasmas. I know I was doing it with meteors too. It was a toughie, had to specifically shoot for it when picking cards. Might've had echo form too, don't remember. Sounds likely.

Edit: Might've done it with snecko eye too. I forget how I got the ball rolling with the meteors as it were. Might've had energy manipulation to boost myself up since snecko sounds wrong (Though potentially would work)

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

As per usual, after playing for a while, the same old, same old problems with the game start to emerge and grow into a bubbling froth of general frustration and irritation that embodies the most common complaint with the game, that of it not feeling quite right in the card drawer department. Like with most random games, one is never sure whether the devs have designed their random so that it simply functions as a means to fuck over the player whenever they want it too or if one is simply being paranoid to the mercy of random. With Slay the Spire, continued play tends one to think towards the former, and quite noticeably so. And it's the noticeability of it that irritates more than any individual case of 'bad luck'. I'll illustrate the point with my latest run, the kind of thing that happens throughout the game & every game:

I'm half way up the third floor, I'm going great guns. I haven't rested once apart from perhaps once before one of the big end-of-floor bosses, can't remember which one. All my cards are upgraded and I've only a couple of Strikes & Defends left each. Most combats I've gone through taking zero overall damage and even when I have taken the odd 20 damage hit then I've gained it all back in the following combats using the Ironclad's starting relic. It's a pretty damn strong hand. The following Elite is the only Elite I've encountered and, aside from this one Elite, going through this guy presents the 'easiest' path through the Third Floor, so this is all still the sensible, low-score but easier win path.

Turn 1:

It's the Intangible, of course. And, oh look, first draw-based irritation already, a no-drawer, defence strong hand when there's no attack incoming & my only attack is the Heavy Blade before I've had a chance to add any strength from all my strength cards, oh, and the True Grit comes in the first hand, the only hand that wont have any Wound cards. Not sure it could have dealt a more irritating first hand from my deck (remaining deck shown in second picture):

All my relics are optimised relics:

Enemies drop 25% more Gold Relic - to help with card removal at shops & buying ideal relics, I have a nice neat 14 card deck (plus 2 wounds from another relic) which includes 2 exhausting cards & an upgraded True Grit to get rid of wounds.
+1 Energy & +1 Card Drawer when an enemy dies Relic - adding to my two Shrug it Off additional drawers, so, of course, it's a solo Elite I face.
+1 Strength Relic - so even a bum Limit Break starting hand has a use.
+1 Energy but you get 2 Wounds Relic
+1 Energy but you get no Potions Relic - so energy is no longer an issue at all.
+2 Energy every 3 Deck Shuffles Relic - but the combats rarely last that long, can't remember any.

but most importantly, my latest purchase:

Vulnerable Enemies now take 75% more damage instead of 50% Relic - Boom.
Can Play Curses Relic - for those late game bummer Events.

As you can see from my deck below, it's really just a matter of going through the motions now...

So I play the first two no-brainer cards, the heavy Blade & the Disarm.

The green circle cloud above the Intangibles head mean he's about to shove 3 Burn cards into my discard pile:

Turn 2:

He's now intangible, so attacks are useless. His attack is weak at this point so this is a great opportunity to buff and debuff… oh, wait, it didn't drawer me the more useful strength cards, it drew me the most unfortunate one that will simply double my single strength. Oh well, guess I better use that Shrug-it-Off to drawer something more useful:

Oh...

It drew me a Strike...

Hmmm, Well...

I'll need to Bash him anyway, to apply the Vulnerable & I'll need to use the Limit Break so that leaves just one Energy left, so it would be pointless playing the other SiO for another drawer. The game does seem to like bunching-up identical cards. It really does.

So the best option here is just to play the Bash, double my strength & finish off with a Strike. You never know, that one extra HP might be crucial at the end of the fight:

Turn 3:

So far, so good. But also nothing actually good, just nothing bad happened yet. It's an exercise in time wasting atm.

What do I get now? Now that I've had 2 turns to prepare & he's now no longer intangible with a weak attack? Zero defending cards, zero drawer cards, both the Wounds and, finally my preparatory cards. Again, it's a no brainer what to play, I have no decisions to make here:

So, a full three turns before my strength is respectable & the only damage I've dealt has been pecks.

And now I'm going to take damage from an attack of just 6 because my 40% defensive deck couldn't see fit to drawer just one of them in one out of three five card hands:

Turn 4:

First shuffle of my deck & I now have those three burns in my drawer pile.

Well there's a surprise (not), my Spot Weakness has been dealt on a turn where the enemy isn't attacking. And then it's just Strikes and Defends. This would have been a great hand to cycle through some burns as well, but, no, they're all gonna come in one hand I'm quite sure...

Again, I don't want to use the drawing card, the SiO, as I don't want to drawer the Heavy Strike while the Intangible is... Intangible. All the Vulnerable is now wearing off this turn as well, just to rub it in. Oh look, that green thing again, so three more burn cards are going to go into my discard pile. My quick death dealing deck is somehow now suddenly a slow playing 'worst deck ever'.

So all I can do here is two Strikes for 2 damage:

Turn 5:

Oh look, there they are, all the dead cards all dealt at once, precisely when the enemy is about to deal it's mega-damage... and zero attacks for that moment where he's not intangible...

Oh dilemmas dilemmas, whatever shall I do? Lol.

So let's see what magic can happen if I play my only defence/drawer card available:

I'll tell you what magic will happen.. it drew me another dead card, of course, because cards have to arrive as twins.

Oh well, guess I take the hit & buff up that strength doubling again.

*shrugs*

Come at me bro...

Yeah, you can nearly wipe me out in one hit, but just you wait, I've got 18 Strength bro...

Not long now bro...

Turn 6:

At last, a real hand!

I can deal 104 damage &... &... &... oh, wait, he's intangible this turn isn't he... so that's just going to be 1 damage. Oh well, at least I can use the True Grit to Exhaust the Burn & defend myself adequately.

I get the strongest feeling this isn't going to end well...

Six turns in and all I've had is bum drawer after bum drawer...

Turn 7:

Whelp, I'm fucked.

Let's see if the SiO can drawer me a bit of last minute magic...

Yeah...

It drew another Burn... obviously.

So I play my cards anyway... a quick Bash & another doubling of Strength.

I'm going to die with 36 strength, lol. I could kill it with two strikes, but I'm gonna die to a whole combat of fuck all after fuck all.

Game Over.

Only it's not. Because I decided to reload the fight & see if I could effect the drawer by playing my drawer cards differently & running the random generator ragged.

I know full well this is a winning hand & I feel 'cheated' by going down like this. So Im'a gonna cheat back.

Which is the whole irony of dev-designed 'random'-cheating, they think it makes the game more engaging, because people will rush back to play "that hard game" again, but, in reality, it puts off the observant completely, frustrates & probably causes violence in the households of the blindly dumb & just results in a desire for counter-cheating with more level-headed gaming autists.

Try 2:

Oh look, got him down to 3 health this time before it drew me 3 Burns in one hand:

Try 3:

Yup, he's dead.

I knew my hand was fine & it was just the drawers.

I even have over half my health still (Ironclad regens 6 at the end of combat):

What a load of old bollocks this game can be when you get too used to it.

Two fights later:

Triplets eh... So I guess adding that third Shrug it Off doesn't really help spread defending cards across my deck at all really does it...

Just to prove it was a winning hand:

Bye-bye Donnu, t'was fun I'm sure...

As you can see, a fairly boring and routine run as well:

I got the Speedster score, as I do with most runs now, as it usually takes less than an hour to barge through the game, but that does neglect the half hour of reloads required to 'work around' the game's internal bollocks.

Which is wearing when you find yourself doing that kind of thing more often that you'd like to.

And there you have, summed up, the crux of the continuing issue with the game. The same issue that was a complaint when it started & is still the no.1 complaint today:

Is the 'difficulty' entirely dictated by the internal algorithms & is it trying to pretend it's random when really it's not? A sort of fake roguelike, if you will. A simulated rougelike.

I'm personally not too bothered as, for me, this game represents a more entertaining version of desktop Solitaire & I have about the same amount of trust in it to boot. It's just something I play in those times when in yolden days we'd just play Solitaire for a bit & in that regard the game is a much, much more entertaining version of Solitaire, by a country mile.

But do I 'respect' it as a specifically 'great' game? Not in that sense. It's fun to try and get achievements & it's fun to bash some enemies for a bit, but if you get too into it you'll just start sticking your fingers up at it & need to close it off for a bit.

One of those "You've played 1,000 hours and you hate it & think it's crap?" kind of games? Yeah, kinda, but with this one its more facepalming frustration than hate in the long-term. I wouldn't care if it died but at the same time it serves a useful purpose while it's here. Just like computer Solitaire.

 

[CyberWhale]

I've read the thread title as Slav the Spire. Pretty disappointed right now.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Is the 'difficulty' entirely dictated by the internal algorithms & is it trying to pretend it's random when really it's not? A sort of fake roguelike, if you will. A simulated rougelike.

The RNG is seeded at the start of a run, which is why reloading doesn't change the order of things (Although the exact order you draw those cards can change based on if you play card draw yourself. Like something might be earmarked as "The 12th card drawn" internally, but if you reach that on turn 3 (Drawing 5 a hand) or turn 1 or 2 depends on how many draws you get on your relics and other cards. So it is random since every game is a different seed (Except see below) and it only really reveals itself if you savescum or replay games on the same seed. It's not actually shuffling your deck, how your deck is shuffled is predetermined based on the seed so for regular gameplay it functions as a normal shuffle, it just seems weird when you use timelord powers.

An easy way to see that is to replay the same daily run multiple times since they're all the same seed (For each day). The events are basically the same, enemy encounters, card picks, store contents, etc. It's how you can replay the same encounter and get essentially the same draws but influence it with how you play your cards/draw things yourself, since you can sorta try to brute force that heavy blade to show up when he isn't intangible.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It always seems bizarre to me when people accuse a game of doing outlandishly complicated RNG manipulation to fuck them over when they "should" be winning. Do you have any idea how much work it would be just to get the game to understand if you're winning or not? It doesn't know if your 5 card deck is worthless or brokenly OP. It certainly can't judge whether you'd want attacks or defenses in a given turn, considering all the mechanics attached to those cards like Blur and extra draws and relics that activate off attacks, etc.

The actual answer is it's just dumb luck, and your deck is shittier than you thought it was after the confirmation bias of getting that far relatively unscathed due to good luck.

 

[Grunker]

so nov 15 huh

It always seems bizarre to me when people accuse a game of doing outlandishly complicated RNG manipulation to fuck them over when they "should" be winning. Do you have any idea how much work it would be just to get the game to understand if you're winning or not? It doesn't know if your 5 card deck is worthless or brokenly OP. It certainly can't judge whether you'd want attacks or defenses in a given turn, considering all the mechanics attached to those cards like Blur and extra draws and relics that activate off attacks, etc.

The actual answer is it's just dumb luck, and your deck is shittier than you thought it was after the confirmation bias of getting that far relatively unscathed due to good luck.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who complain about digital TCG shufflers and people who have no trouble accepting the world doesn't revolve around their axis

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Final boss/content released. Game still in early access. Taking a mini-vacation so next patch is due December 6th. Grunker forced to remain blueballed.

 

[Gregz]

It always seems bizarre to me when people accuse a game of doing outlandishly complicated RNG manipulation to fuck them over when they "should" be winning. Do you have any idea how much work it would be just to get the game to understand if you're winning or not? It doesn't know if your 5 card deck is worthless or brokenly OP. It certainly can't judge whether you'd want attacks or defenses in a given turn, considering all the mechanics attached to those cards like Blur and extra draws and relics that activate off attacks, etc.

The actual answer is it's just dumb luck, and your deck is shittier than you thought it was after the confirmation bias of getting that far relatively unscathed due to good luck.

The worst mechanic of this game is that the more things you 'unlock' the more your deck and potential relic list gets flooded with sub-par items.

The game literally gets harder to beat the more you play it. Which sounds fun, but isn't.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's not even that they're sub par necessarilly, a lot of the new cards and relics are great, but having such a large pool makes it much harder to plan around a specific strategy, and it's not good enough to have a random smattering of good stuff. You need a bunch of strength stuff, or a bunch of card draw and energy stuff, etc. When you get like 2 great things of each type it's still shit. And culling your deck isn't reliably safe because the pool is so big you have bad odds of getting those one or two relatively common things you need.

The problem is, of course, much worse on higher difficulties, and encourages only trying optimal strategies, which sucks out all the fun. Still, I put in 135 hours and will probably do more after it's 'gold'.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

The biggest problem for trying out different builds is also the format in which they're provided to the player.

For example, I've played Ironclad a bazillion times, but I've never once tried either the Exhaust build nor the Blood Magic build. The reason is that the cards come in the wrong order. You basically 'make your deck' on the first map, possibly even after the first few combats. Let's say the first monster death offers you:

Hemokenesis: lose 3 HP deal 14 damage.
Whirlwind: Everyone knows what Whirlwind does...
Sentinel: 5 block but 2 energy if exhausted.

At this point in the game you have no idea if the deal-breaker for blood magic is going to drop, which is Rupture, where you gain 1 str each time a card costs you HP & even then to get anyway half decent str to make it worth it you're losing loads of health, which is the opposite of what you are aiming for.

Likewise, Sentinel is a completely dead card until you get another card that lets you exhaust cards, which isn't that many for Ironclad & even the most common of them will struggle to actually appear on the same turn as Sentinel in anything around a 15 card deck.

Whirlwind has no dilemmas attached to it & works whatever build you're making.

It's like when the game gives you the option of a Double Block card before you know if you'll see a Barricade, it's kind of a dead card otherwise, where as the Double Str card is going to be useful at some point & doesn't even require a power card to function. So if you're going to carry a dead card it might as well be the one that will definitely be least dead the shortest.

If you don't mind having long bouts of losing streaks then there's lots of interesting potential builds, it's just impossible to ever force one & as soon as you start playing it's very tempting to just go with what you know wins.

I know I was doing it with meteors too. It was a toughie, had to specifically shoot for it when picking cards. Might've had echo form too, don't remember. Sounds likely.

Edit: Might've done it with snecko eye too. I forget how I got the ball rolling with the meteors as it were. Might've had energy manipulation to boost myself up since snecko sounds wrong (Though potentially would work)

I forgot about it, then one time I had Echoform it offered itself later & I thought, hey, why not. I then got the Necronomicon, so playing Meteor as your first card then doubles from Echoform & then doubles from the Necronomicon.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hemo and whirlwind both would be solid first card picks though. Whirlwind's pretty useful in a wide variety of situations (Blows out the sentinels, really good in act 2, gets better if you get an energy relic, etc) but hemokenesis is also pretty reasonable. The immediate whomped damage really helps against lagavulin and gremlin nob (Especially lagavulin who is brutal against multi-hit cards like whirlwind) and the extra cost of taking 3 damage often isn't that bad because of the Ironclad's starting relic anyway. Not to mention the damage it deals can potentially kill something and prevent a hit which saves you more than 3HP. Only one I'd skip is sentinel, both because it's a defensive card (Almost always want to dodge defensive cards in the first few picks since getting offense to deal with the early elites is huge) and it's a weak one. I almost never take sentinel unless I've already got something like fiend fire, corruption, and maybe true grit+ although even then odds are I wouldn't take it. So the gist would be hemo is a better act 1 brute force pick that you'd be reasonably happy to have in your deck later in the game (That big damage benefiting from vulnerable too), whirlwind's a stronger act 2 pick that basically necessitates an upgrade since vanilla whirlwind's kind of shit, and sentinel which is a hard pass.

I forgot about it, then one time I had Echoform it offered itself later & I thought, hey, why not. I then got the Necronomicon, so playing Meteor as your first card then doubles from Echoform & then doubles from the Necronomicon.

Ayyyyyyyyyy. That's definitely a way to do it.

 

[Haba]

Is done.

Spoiler

Wasn't terribly hard. But having to play through the same old shit 4 times again just to see it was ass move.

 

[Haba]

This deck has broken endless mode.

I literally can not lose.

Spoiler

It isn't even optimized, there is plenty of trash cards.

Double ritual daggers, double genetic algorithms. Slightly optimized opener ends w. 750 dmg ritual dagger. Usually fights end before enemy even gets to hit me. Haven't lost a single HP in the past 6 runs. In desperate situations (where I burn both ritual daggers and the boss heals up) double catalyst poison will still wreck any fight.

The only challenge is getting the removals for the curses, which themselves are just an annoyance due to the gambling chip.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Today's patch is mostly a wet fart of some super minor balance and quality of life changes, but most important of all is what they said in the intro-blurb: "We're also working on Steam Trading Cards and Steam Workshop support but they aren't ready just yet."

STEAM WORKSHOP FOR EASY MOD SUPPORT MEN
(there are already some cool slay the spire mods out there, steam workshop should just make it smooth and easy to keep shit up to date)

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Slay the Spire release date (And price increase) January 23rd

So you should probably buy a few copies when the Christmas sale hits Grunker and maybe buy a few keys from the sale on Humble at the moment too, for good measure.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

ITZ OUT

 

[Haba]

But is there anything new?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

But is there anything new?

Depends on when you're comparing it to. If you're asking if the release patch changed things from like a week ago, not really. The last semi-major thing they did was add Steam Workshop support so you can easily grab (And keep up to date) mods and they did that around a month ago, everything since then has been pretty small shit like adjusting graphical doodads and localization and such. And a bit before the Steam Workshop support they added the hidden and optional final boss/mini-act for the super sekrit ending.

 

[tripedal]

Man, this shit is addictive. Incredibly well-designed game, and it's got the perfect balance of variety and constancy where you keep learning and getting better but not doing the same thing over and over.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Forgot to cancel humble monthly and got this. Through reading this thread I got an impression it wasn't a grave error after all.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Forgot to cancel humble monthly and got this. Through reading this thread I got an impression it wasn't a grave error after all.

Slay the Spire is the pinnacle of human achievement so you done good. If you like deckbuilders at all, anyway.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Beta for the fourth character starts on Monday, fellow stalkers.

(incidentally, they're making a fourth character dlc which will be a free addition. i don't remember if i made a post about that. looks like i didn't but there's no news other than when the beta starts, so come monday we'll know something about it)

 

[Eyestabber]

22 hours in and finally managed to win with the power of BODY POSITIVITY! Body Slam FTW!

#beautifulatallsizes


DAMN, this game is fucking good. Like, REALLY good. Steam says I bought this game yesterday and clocked 22 hours already. You do the math.