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I play sealed deck custom games a lot because I find it more fun and it annoys me that you can only get bash, zap, etc. through the goblin memory game if you go that route, to my knowledge.
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Sep 9, 2021 22:30
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cheeseboy58 posted:Meanwhile i finished a 62 card deck run as Defect Defect is my favorite simply for this reason. He and Silent just love to spam cards and can get away with a lot of trash builds.
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Sep 9, 2021 22:52
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Also the smaller the deck the worse I do. If I don't have a solid 30 card deck by the end of Act 2 then Act 3 is a real struggle.
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Sep 9, 2021 22:54
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AlphaKeny1 posted:I only read a few "beginner tips" articles and some of them said to keep a smaller deck because then you're more likely to draw the key cards of your archetype which made sense. But yeah after doing it about half a dozen times I'd notice glaring holes in my build. Despite doing 43 damage perfected strikes every 3ish turns I still couldn't nuke down act 2 bosses. I would literally try to lose Bash as quickly as possible because it didn't fit my gimmick, and skipping on a lot of loot cards. I'll change up my general strategy and try to go wider. Since you've played magic, you're already familiar with a lot of concepts that spire newbie guides will talk about. But you do have some biases from M:TG. You're instincts on using skip in the first run were closer to correct. Ignore bad cards, get the ones that make your deck better. The actual niche of tiny decks is pretty small because of the variety of challenges a spire deck is going to face forces you to add cards to meet those challenges. Also because the starting cards are awful, and enemies will put detrimental cards into your deck. A 8 card deck sounds cool, but what about an 8 card, 12 daze deck? Understanding which challenges you need to prepare for, and how to prepare comes from experience. Each act has 3 different Elites and 3 different bosses, you can see which boss is at the end of the act on the map. But you can't tell which elite you're going to face first, so your deck has try to prepare for all 3 when you hit your first elite node. And it takes some experience to be able to think through how your deck is going to do against sentries, nob, and lag. Status debuffs are really powerful in this game, because the amount of damage needed to clear fights scales up so high. +25% is always relevant, and in absolute terms gets even better as your deck and enemies scale up. Bash seems bad when you're partnering and comparing it to your basic strikes. 2 mana for 8, plus 1 then 3 strikes is 8 + 9*4 = 42. 6*6 from strikes is 36. No room for blocking or bad draws and it's barely better. But that's only bad because strike is awful. Once your damage cards scale up, bash improves them so you can still do sufficient damage while also being able to spend mana on blocking. Whatever kind of good attacks you end up with, bash will still be improving them. Getting another turn from the upgrade is also really good, most damage upgrades at 2 mana are 4-5 damage, and increasing a full turn's worth of attacks is easily more than 5 damage.
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Sep 9, 2021 22:56
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Walla posted:Also the smaller the deck the worse I do. If I don't have a solid 30 card deck by the end of Act 2 then Act 3 is a real struggle. 25-35 is the usual range for my decks at the end of the game. With the least cards added in act 3 because my standards are higher by then.
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Sep 9, 2021 22:59
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metachronos posted:I play sealed deck custom games a lot because I find it more fun and it annoys me that you can only get bash, zap, etc. through the goblin memory game if you go that route, to my knowledge. I play sealed deck custom games 95% of the time and I had no idea why I never see bash and zap, thank you!
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Sep 9, 2021 23:01
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jetz0r posted:25-35 is the usual range for my decks at the end of the game. With the least cards added in act 3 because my standards are higher by then. Same really. I generally end Act 1 with around 20 cards. On a good run, 1/5 of those will be powers or power-like.
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Sep 9, 2021 23:03
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I will be honest: I have 400 hours in this game and I could not tell you what the boss icons are.
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Sep 9, 2021 23:03
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I know I'm in the minority, but upgrading bash is a pretty low priority for me. Vulnerable is awesome, but IC specifcally has the best access to vulnerable out of any character and nearly every single one of them is better than bash. If I was forced to choose between upgrading a bash and picking thunderclap then I'd pick thunderclap just because it's more reliable to have two different sources of vulnerable floating around in your deck instead of hoping that you find bash before gremlin nob smushes you. Ironclad also is very upgrade hungry even with his commons pommel strike, wild strike, even true grit adding a lot more value when upgraded partially because they don't require any order of operations. If bash is last in your deck, it's probably going to be too late even if it's upgraded but wild strike + will probably make a good impact whenever. And that doesn't even start on some of his uncommons that are downright necessary to upgrade like whirlwind and uppercut. That said, if you're finding it hard to get another source of vulnerable then upgrading bash can still be useful against act 1 elites and hexaghost who is arguably the most difficult act 1 boss.
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Sep 9, 2021 23:15
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I still add cards regularly in act 3 because they are upgraded twice as often as they are in act 2. Gimme them green cards.
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Sep 10, 2021 00:27
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Small deck for the Common Sense achievement was pretty fun, but yeah most of my decks are considerably bigger. This playthrough was still a blast though.
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Sep 10, 2021 00:36
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Upgrading and picking a card are very rarely in competition with each other so a Bash upgrade vs a Thunderclap pick isn't really a decision you ever have to make. There are definitely cards that are more valuable upgrades but it's pretty rare that you will actually pick one up before your first campfire.
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Sep 10, 2021 00:40
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WrightOfWay posted:Upgrading and picking a card are very rarely in competition with each other so a Bash upgrade vs a Thunderclap pick isn't really a decision you ever have to make. There are definitely cards that are more valuable upgrades but it's pretty rare that you will actually pick one up before your first campfire. I dunno, I usually prioritize those cards and pommel strike especially is a very common early game card that has is a fantastic upgrade. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if around 30-40% of un/commons are better upgrades in a vacuum.
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Sep 10, 2021 00:47
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Thanks everyone for their write ups so I can learn the game better. Speaking of elites, i know it's risk v reward but am I generally supposed to go out of my way to fight as many of them as possible?
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Sep 10, 2021 01:02
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In general yes. More money, higher likely hood of uncommon and rare cards and relics. Relics won't really matter until you start climbing ascensions and fighting the Heart but they literally can make or break your chances of winning. More elites more better as long as you can survive them.
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Sep 10, 2021 01:10
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That "if you can survive them" is important though, on higher ascensions you often can't. Also, perfected strike in particular is a "big deck" card, where you load up on perfected strikes, twin strikes, pommel strikes and Wild Strikes IN ADDITION TO adding some sort of scaling and block. Ironclad is great at running small decks, but you'd never ever take perfected strike in a small deck build - and favouring small decks, I skip it regularly! It's one of the few attack cards for a standard ironclad run I just say no to. Of course the ideal Ironclad deck is to load it down with as many cards as possible, including curses, using those cards to create status effects to bog your deck down even more, and then burn the gently caress through it so quickly that by turn 5 you're down to like 5 cards and have triggered your infinite 
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Sep 10, 2021 01:17
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cheeseboy58 posted:Meanwhile i finished a 62 card deck run as Defect I love going fat with Defect, it has literal big deck energy with Aggregate. Plus Stack, Hello World for more Stacks, and Seek to... mitigate.
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Sep 10, 2021 03:48
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This watcher game was hilarious and busted and I'm just sad I didn't go for the heart. Astrolobe gave me ragnarok and omniscience so I leaned in hard. MVP was the second omniscience, and then picking up worship was a beautiful cherry on top. Every fight did become the same, but I finished the time keeper in two turns, and after getting worship every other fight was over on the first turn.
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Sep 10, 2021 04:50
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cheeseboy58 posted:Man Replay The Spire and Reliquary are some great addons after youve done the base game 100s of times. Some absolutely busted deck builds can be had and with more different type of cards for main chars it really freshens things up. You can create some super busted decks if rng allows 🙃 I just tried Replay the Spire for the first time. After three hours/three endless loops the mod seemed to basically give up on beating me and just let me kill the heart. The weird anime-ish superbosses with real time rage modes were entertaining. I had like five pages of relics. I just gave up on understanding what was actually going on and played to general base principles (make sure I had enough block for incoming damage, just churn through powers and goodstuff). My deck was north of 80 cards near the end. Hilariously enough for a heavy power-based Defect deck I only saw Creative AI twice (and skipped it the first time for the all enemies lightning power I always forget the name of, with the second time being spoils from the Heart) and NEVER saw either bird faced urn or mummified hand. I wonder if the mod removed them? Whatever it’s not like it matters anyway. Fun times but I’m not going to pretend it’s remotely as well balanced as the base game. Some very cool ideas though.
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Sep 10, 2021 07:11
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Ironclad also is very upgrade hungry even with his commons pommel strike, wild strike, even true grit adding a lot more value when upgraded partially because they don't require any order of operations. Llamadeus fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 07:19
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When people say e.g. "I just got an Ascension 15 win", do they usually mean with or without beating Act 4?
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Sep 10, 2021 07:46
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If someone is climbing the ascension levels, and they don't specify, my guess is they didn't go for act 4. I think they'll usually specify that. If they're at A20, though, I assume they're going for the heart every time.
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Sep 10, 2021 07:48
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Yoshi Wins posted:If someone is climbing the ascension levels, and they don't specify, my guess is they didn't go for act 4. I think they'll usually specify that. If they're at A20, though, I assume they're going for the heart every time. It's common to talk about A20 and A20H as if they were separate difficulty levels.
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Sep 10, 2021 08:41
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When do you take a non-upgraded Body Slam in Act 2? I have Horn Cleat, Impervious and Panic Button. 
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Sep 10, 2021 16:13
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Jedit posted:It's common to talk about A20 and A20H as if they were separate difficulty levels. I haven't found that to be the case. Almost every time I see someone talk about A20 they are going for the heart. They're going for maximum difficulty. I see people just going for the act 3 bosses from time to time, but not commonly.
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Sep 10, 2021 16:56
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Well I just finished A20 on all characters so I guess it's time to start doing heart kills. My winrate is already like 10%....
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Sep 10, 2021 17:30
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For those of you who are experienced or good at this game, what would you say your winrate is? I consider myself a pretty bad player but recently had a promising run end due to some bad luck. I find I definitely 'push my luck' too far with smith upgrades and end up getting crunched in one turn by a mob of hard hitters when luck deals me a hand of powers and strikes (my last run).
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Sep 10, 2021 17:46
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Walla posted:When do you take a non-upgraded Body Slam in Act 2? I have Horn Cleat, Impervious and Panic Button. Sounds like you know the answer. And if you have a campsite coming up soon, body slam gets even better.
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Sep 10, 2021 18:12
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GlyphGryph posted:God drat, that hurts. Hopefully you had two armaments and could afford to get rid of one, then you just have to waste an upgrade on the other to get back up to almost-par. Nope! I had to give up the armaments and deal with it. I got to the heart through the awakened one and donuts. Heart "beat" me though. NihilCredo posted:When people say e.g. "I just got an Ascension 15 win", do they usually mean with or without beating Act 4? When I was climbing ascensions, I would go for the heart if the path to the elite was good but I didn't go out of my way for the heart until 20.
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Sep 10, 2021 20:28
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No Wave posted:You had it right the first time! Making big decks is better than in most deckbuilding games (for a variety of reasons - weak starting deck, extreme difficulty of act 2 being the main ones) and 25+ card decks is how very experienced players usually play the game when trying to win. Zore posted:Successful decks are also almost never about forcing any kind of 'pure' archetype like you might do if you're building a MTG deck or whatever. You'll pick up a bunch of cards early that won't be good later and sometimes skip cards that are great late game because they're just a curse if you pick them up early in Act 1. These two were some pretty solid tips. After dying to the Heart several times with "focused" IC Block, IC Searing Blow, Silent Poison, or Defect Power decks, I finally got my first Heart kill with a "just grab a ton of good cards" Silent deck. At Ascension 2, accidentally. Pretty satisfying considering I didn't even have all the unlocks for that character (and I still don't!), and that I only decided to go for the Heart in Act 3 when I noticed I was flawlessing almost every battle. 
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Sep 10, 2021 20:52
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drat Dirty Ape posted:For those of you who are experienced or good at this game, what would you say your winrate is? I consider myself a pretty bad player but recently had a promising run end due to some bad luck. I find I definitely 'push my luck' too far with smith upgrades and end up getting crunched in one turn by a mob of hard hitters when luck deals me a hand of powers and strikes (my last run). For ascenscion 0-1, probably over 95% unless I'm deliberately trying to do something funky. On ascenscion 20 with the heart? Maybe 10% for the heart with ironclad and silent, and 30% with the watcher. My impression is that the top players have 50+% winrates with the everyone except watcher, where they can top 95% at ascenscion 20.
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Sep 10, 2021 21:04
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military cervix posted:For ascenscion 0-1, probably over 95% unless I'm deliberately trying to do something funky. On ascenscion 20 with the heart? Maybe 10% for the heart with ironclad and silent, and 30% with the watcher. My impression is that the top players have 50+% winrates with the everyone except watcher, where they can top 95% at ascenscion 20. Watcher's not quite at 95% but generally yeah. Winrates in general have been going up patch over patch though as the last 2~ years have almost exclusively buffed the player in various ways. Back before the 2.0 update winrates for top players were a lot lower, like mid-30's or so consistently. Better boss relics being added to the pool while bad ones were removed, making potions good, all the card buffs etc have really pushed that up a lot. Zore fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 21:07
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Jedit posted:It's common to talk about A20 and A20H as if they were separate difficulty levels. The Heart is always a separate difficulty though. I'm still climbing ascensions but I've had numerous runs where I handily destroyed everything, including Spear and Shield, only for the Heart to kill me on turn 5. Cpt_Obvious posted:Sounds like you know the answer. The run is still on hold from last night, but Body Slam was my first combat in Act 2. Definitely an immediate upgrade and if I can bottle Panic Button and grab Barricade/Calipers it will be nearly flawless.
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Sep 10, 2021 23:18
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I've been climbing and have only been going for The Heart if I feel my deck could take it (+ Sword and Shield) on. There have been a few decks where halfway through Act 2 I was like "Yeah, I think I'm set" and steer to The Heart. Other times, I'm scraping by and place a lot of value that extra chest, campfire, and easier elite. If I'm unsure I normally just skip The Heart though.
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Sep 11, 2021 01:39
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When I climbed a win didn't count unless I killed the heart and y'all are cowards for doing otherwise. 
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Sep 11, 2021 02:18
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Finally got the heart with IC thanks mostly to picking up an almost flawless set of relics and cards as I went. Really fun run. I appreciate all the tips in here when I asked a few days ago.
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Sep 11, 2021 02:31
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Patrick Spens posted:When I climbed a win didn't count unless I killed the heart and y'all are cowards for doing otherwise. But sometimes the path is really heart and I wanna just get my Ascension climb. 
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Sep 11, 2021 15:29
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Deckit posted:But sometimes the path is really heart and I wanna just get my Ascension climb. You protest, but something is clearly on your mind.
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Sep 11, 2021 15:57
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Crescent Wrench posted:You protest, but something is clearly on your mind. I really just wanted to make a pun before anyone else beat me to it.
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Sep 11, 2021 16:09
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Crescent Wrench posted:You protest, but something is clearly on your mind. Incredible av post combo.
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Sep 11, 2021 17:29
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