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Slay the Spire - PS4, Switch and Xbox One |OT| Heart of the Cards
- Thread starter TeamLeftMatch
- Start date
My only experience with the Watcher is some very early stuff on PC, I'll be interested to see how she's changed when she eventually hits the Switch version.
I do remember having to pay much more attention to how much potential damage I had available as a result of stance changes and making sure to not accidentally let myself get trapped in Wrath form.
I do remember having to pay much more attention to how much potential damage I had available as a result of stance changes and making sure to not accidentally let myself get trapped in Wrath form.
Asc 1 is just more elites, which makes relic farming easier. Might as well start now.
A bit pissed at losing to the Awakened with a very good Defect-build. Made a couple of expensive mistakes but I am still curious, is there a sequence to the attacks or are they random? Felt like I was handed 40+ attacks all the time. Obliterated the Awakened with the Silent yesterday.
Any good tips or guides for playing The Ironclad? I'm having a hard time learning this one than the other two characters.
On when the new patch will come to console:
Megacrit: Consoles will have a small delay for porting process (already begun) and QA.
Megacrit: Consoles will have a small delay for porting process (already begun) and QA.
Did you happen to be running a Powers based build because that'll buff The Awakened hard
Just cleared Asc.1 with Silent and Ironclad, didn't realise there was an Act IV as been staying away from the orb dude. Thanks for this, just looked it up. Going to get a win with them and then go for it.
I must have downloaded and waded through about a dozen Slay the Spire-likes in my impatience for this coming to mobile, of widely varying quality. None quite manage to scratch the same itch, despite some, shall we say, being very heavily inspired by StS.
Just such a compelling game, I want it with me everywhere, all the time. Deserves to be a smashing success on mobile, whatever the price... just hurry along that QA phase, please.
Just such a compelling game, I want it with me everywhere, all the time. Deserves to be a smashing success on mobile, whatever the price... just hurry along that QA phase, please.
I like the Watcher quite a bit, she's probably my second favorite character after the Defect. It's a little weird how basic the first two characters feel now. It'd be cool if they do another big update, or even a sequel, where instead of new characters there's new sets of cards for the existing ones, I'd love to see Ironclad and the Silent get some sort of analog to orbs and stances.
I'm at Ascension 2 with Watcher so I still have a ton to learn about playing her, but Wrath seems pretty pointless to me so far. It feels a little too easy to focus on building up block in Calm while you accrue Mantra. I've had a few runs where I can pretty easily get over ten Mantra in a single turn. The other upside I can see for Wrath is you can keep it going for multiple turns if you want, but all the Scry and draw cards make it easy enough to get a few attack cards when you go into Divinity.
I'm curious to see if other characters can use the stances if the Watcher leaves a stance card in the even where you find a card in a crack in a wall. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to, it'll be fun to see what people are able to do with this.
I'm at Ascension 2 with Watcher so I still have a ton to learn about playing her, but Wrath seems pretty pointless to me so far. It feels a little too easy to focus on building up block in Calm while you accrue Mantra. I've had a few runs where I can pretty easily get over ten Mantra in a single turn. The other upside I can see for Wrath is you can keep it going for multiple turns if you want, but all the Scry and draw cards make it easy enough to get a few attack cards when you go into Divinity.
I'm curious to see if other characters can use the stances if the Watcher leaves a stance card in the even where you find a card in a crack in a wall. I don't see why they wouldn't be able to, it'll be fun to see what people are able to do with this.
Is there any patch notes with changes to what things actually do rather than generic text, having just picked up the game, i'm still trying to learn everything and it would be helpful. No issue if not.
Silent is my fav character by far, that poison scaling is sooooo fun.
Silent is my fav character by far, that poison scaling is sooooo fun.
I surely used a couple of power buffs, but mainly attacks and skills.
The v2.0 patch notes does describe some things in the Balance section but you're probably best off wiki-ing anything specific you want to figure out, a lot of the patch notes just mention 'rework' or 'added' without describing what that means.
Every Power you use buffs The Awakened One in the first phase. If you use more than a few he can snowball really hard so be really careful.
He's also relatively harmless in his first phase if you don't use powers, but in the second phase it gets massively buffed so you need to be ready to kill it asap.
Mantra is great because you can use Divinity to end a fight right away. But even with Scry, sometimes you need to just kill things very quickly before they scale up (triple Jaw Worms in Act 3 come to mind). I find myself relying on Wrath a lot, especially in Act 1. I usually stay in Wrath for a couple of turns in a row, even. But I make sure to pick up cards that can bring me out of that stance, or change to Calm stance. Fear No Evil, Empty Body/Mind/Fist, and Tranquility are good for that. Cards that rely on Stance changing (Flurry of Blows, Mental Fortress), then benefit when leaving Wrath. When remaining in Wrath, Halt and Wallop are good cards that give you nice Block, as well as Sash Whip for the Weak debuff.
Block cards like Protect and Perserverance can be retained, so you can use them at opportune times, and if you have Establisment, then you'll eventually get free Blocks. And if you're retaining a lot of cards, Spirit Shield is one of the best sources of Block for the Watcher.
Best thing to do is to just mouse over every card and read the description of what each card/relic/potion does. Be sure to mouse over your character and the enemies to see what buffs or debuffs they currently have. It'll take take some time to learn and remember everything if you're new. You can always refer to the wiki as well: https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Slay_the_Spire_Wiki
Also, for a new player, one of the best tips is that you don't always have to choose a card. You can skip if the choices offered aren't going to help improve your deck.
Thank you. Appreciated.
The tip at the bottom is something i've just grasped. Especially in the daily challenge with defect a few days ago where the deck was like 50 cards. Too much drawing of cards you don't want. I've beaten all three characters but getting smacked around by Ascension 1 because of my mistakes, but that's what i like, never feels unfair, can always pick out moments where it was my fault.
Oh, I'm not saying I don't use Wrath at all, it's awesome in Act 1. But so far I'm not seeing much reason to prioritize additional cards that enter you into Wrath or that have bonuses if your in Wrath. But so far if it's been pretty easy to enter Divinity every second or third time by Act 3, and at that point Wrath seems pointless.
You take so much more damage in Wrath that I've found it's too easy to get stuck in situations where using all of your energy on Retained block cards isn't enough to prevent taking damage.
I'm really liking some of the card updates. Fire Breathing and Reprogram in particular were really cool changes. They almost feel like they overcompensated in buffing Fire Breathing, it went from nearly worthless to borderline broken in the right deck. I just had a run where I got it early and loaded up on cards that give you status effects and it was really fun. I died late in Act 3 but it felt like it could have been really great with a few more ways to exhaust excess statuses.
So I bought this for the PS4 last week as it was on sale. The gameplay is very addictive but I have to say I'm not having much luck. I've made it to the act 3 boss once and most other times I die at the act 2 boss or very early in act 3. I understand the concept of building a deck but not having any sort of control over what cards or relics show up doesn't make it easy. Enemies doing 50 damage in one attack and not having any block cards shuffle into the deck is frustrating.
Love the concept but I think the RNG is probably going to ruin it for me much the same way as it does for games like Darkest Dungeon, Isaac, Rogue Legacy, etc. I don't think I have the time or patience to get the most out of it which sucks.
I wonder what small delay means. A week? A month?
Love the concept but I think the RNG is probably going to ruin it for me much the same way as it does for games like Darkest Dungeon, Isaac, Rogue Legacy, etc. I don't think I have the time or patience to get the most out of it which sucks.
I wonder what small delay means. A week? A month?
The RNG really isn't bad. At the point you're at in the game (base difficulty) you should be able to win basically every game. It's less that you're getting unlucky, and more that you don't know how to pick the right things or how best to approach fights. At the start of each act you can check what boss you're going to fight by going to the top, and then use the wiki to find strategies and plan ahead of time. Watching jorbs overexplained videos is long but will give you the tools to massively up your game. The game actually has a reasonably shallow pool of enemies and cards, so while you can't guarantee certain cards or enemies, you can predict and plan around potential outcomes. It's super well balanced.
The very basic advice is to get damage in Act 1 to quickly beat enemies and try take out Elites for relics.
In Act 2 focus on AOE tools, defensive tools and avoid Elites because it's the most dangerous act.
In Act 3 focus on scaling (stuff like buffing strength, focus etc) to get as strong as possible..
In Act 4... survive by any means necessary.
Like the above poster said, you can win every game, but your decision making sucks. I'm right there with ya. I'm getting better as I play but I have a long way to go.
I've learned, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, that you can't go into it thinking "I want to go for this certain type of deck" and instead you have to build the best deck you can out of what's presented to you. That's why, in theory, you should be able to win most games, if not all.
I've put 50 hours into the game already, in less than a month, and I don't see myself getting bored of it anytime soon. It also helps that because of the nature of the game I can play it while doing other things.
I've learned, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, that you can't go into it thinking "I want to go for this certain type of deck" and instead you have to build the best deck you can out of what's presented to you. That's why, in theory, you should be able to win most games, if not all.
I've put 50 hours into the game already, in less than a month, and I don't see myself getting bored of it anytime soon. It also helps that because of the nature of the game I can play it while doing other things.
I'm also completely hooked, 60 hours so far. Finally made it to
with the Defect A1, but died there. Still mostly owned by the game but it speaks to it's quality that I could basically play this indefinitely at the moment. I love that it is seriously challenging and that there is still so much to learn. So I try to avoid picking up too many tricks from this thread and instead figure out as much as I can on my own. Will see if I press on for a Defect A1 win or move on to the new character or start Ironclad A1.
the Heart
That's true, passing over a better card for one that fits a "build" you're aiming for has screwed me over many times. Since you don't know which cards are coming, you can't really plan ahead that way.
That's not to say you shouldn't pick cards for synergies you already have just don't count on getting more poison cards in the future for example because you might not.
Well I finally had my first win this afternoon. Ironclad with the relic that changes up the cost of cards. The other run that I did well on also had that relic. Probably just coincidence and sheer luck but I found it easier because a lot of the cards I had cost 2 and 3 yet quite often they were 0 or 1 because of the relic. Anyway I'm happy to have my first win, here's to many more.
And to the above people who responded to my previous post, yes I know I am inexperienced having only played for 15 hours or so but you have to admit that there is definitely RNG that can make or break your run. I was watching a guy on twitch last night going for his 7th consecutive win in A20 and even he had some pretty bad luck. He overcame a lot but eventually fell short. RNG does play a part whether people think so or not.
And to the above people who responded to my previous post, yes I know I am inexperienced having only played for 15 hours or so but you have to admit that there is definitely RNG that can make or break your run. I was watching a guy on twitch last night going for his 7th consecutive win in A20 and even he had some pretty bad luck. He overcame a lot but eventually fell short. RNG does play a part whether people think so or not.
7 wins in a row on A20 is an incredible streak. That's extremely high level play where great players are only have 30-40% winrates.
You're not playing on A20 where it's much more difficult. You're playing on A0 where 95%+ winrates are possible. Nobody is suggesting that the game doesn't have RNG, but at the level you're playing at, I can basically guarantee that you're the person making the mistakes, not that you're getting RNG screwed. You won't know the enemies or card interactions well enough to pick and plan, you think you're playing correctly but you've probably made a bunch of mistakes that put you in a position where some random element took you out.
Again watch the over explained videos, and every enemy take a look at the wiki, they all have clear attack patterns you can plan around.
Oh I know this for certain. Just saying that there is definitely RNG in the game.
Thanks for the suggestion re: over explained videos. Will check them out!
Started my first run, got to the second boss and died but I almost had him.
Extremely fun so far.
First statistics:
Extremely fun so far.
First statistics:
I've played the game for about 10 hours, choosing only the Ironclad because I thought the game is easiest with that character. I chose the second character and had a lot more fun and thought it became a lot easier
Playing on Switch and I've made it to Ascension 14, 13 and 11 respectively with IC, S and D. Defect remains pretty challenging for me, I often feel like my orbs are not doing enough and I struggle to win unless I have Defrag, Biased Cognition, and Glacier. Scaling the deck in both damage and block is too hard otherwise. I think I need to experiment more with other deck synergies.
Still loving the game after 140 hours and I'm excited to play as the new character when she's released for Switch.
Still loving the game after 140 hours and I'm excited to play as the new character when she's released for Switch.
Finally got my first Act IV win with The Watcher. Got a decent score to boot. Act IV boss went down with a combination of Snecko Eye, 2 x Ragnarok and 2x Talk to the Hand.
I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of her. Great character, great addition to the game.
I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of her. Great character, great addition to the game.
Got my very first normal win a few days ago with The Silent.
Got a bit lucky with the "Apparition" event, but it was still really hard and a single mistake could have fucked up everything. Lost a bit enthusiasm after reading the thread and seeing so many people writing "won in my first try" while I got roadblocks everywhere, but it feels great to finally have one victory.
Got a bit lucky with the "Apparition" event, but it was still really hard and a single mistake could have fucked up everything. Lost a bit enthusiasm after reading the thread and seeing so many people writing "won in my first try" while I got roadblocks everywhere, but it feels great to finally have one victory.
Got my very first normal win a few days ago with The Silent.
Got a bit lucky with the "Apparition" event, but it was still really hard and a single mistake could have fucked up everything. Lost a bit enthusiasm after reading the thread and seeing so many people writing "won in my first try" while I got roadblocks everywhere, but it feels great to finally have one victory.
Hey, I played Silent for ten hours before finally getting a win with her, and it was just last night also due to Apparition haha. I feel pretty happy with it! The feeling of realization when I used After Image the round after getting Apparitions was a "this is why this game is great" moment. Got to a bonfire ASAP and upgraded it to make it a surefire combo. I wanted some more mulligan cards since my deck was way too fat, but luckily I never ran into a problem missing an Apparition. That one Acrobatics saved my butt twice when Run would have ended otherwise.
After a little pause I immediately got the next victory with Ironclad. Felt great. Had a good combination running of keeping my cards in the hand, keeping the defense after a round and having basically all cards improved in a fight, plus a lot of extra strength as the fight goes on.
Really jonesing to play, it's been a few weeks, but I'm still set on waiting for the patch beforehand. Got the game on both PS4 and Switch, this is torture.
Nothing*.
But for your first few hours you unlock more cards for future runs. And when you beat act 3 you unlock the next difficulty level.
*technically there's an event where you can store a card for future runs but it's rare
It took me 20 hours to learn about the card storing, because I always stored a Curse card LOL. Thought it was just a way to thin deck out, I finally thought on it in one run and put a Strike in just to see if my new hunch was right... and yeah, it's what it actually is.
Yeah, the heart is really difficult. You need a way to stop a giant amount of damage starting on turn 2, and all those status cards make it even more difficult. I assure you though, you'll beat it. As I've said before in this thread: try boss runs on Ascension 1, that way you'll have a better chance at more relics.
Yeah, i just couldn't survive basically the turn 2/turn 3 account because i didn't draw that stuff and didn't have enough health, basically. I was on Ascension 1 and did have a lot of relics, so will keep trying. Was a good feeling getting there at least!
Having a reliable source of weak is a huge help, and any thorn damage does a nice chunk of damage with those x12 attacks.
After 496 hours of playtime, I finally beat A20! And with the Watcher! And I also got the achievement for killing the Transient in this run as well.
I had a pretty defensive deck, relying on Calm and using multiple Like Waters to generate free block. I got Teardrop Locket at the end of Act 1, so that let me start in Calm right at the start of a fight. I ended up getting rid of Vigilance, and I used Fear No Evil to get back into Calm if I ever went to Wrath. I also used Wave of the Hand to weaken enemies, which synergized well with Like Water and Orihalcum. This allowed me to safely run Alpha->Omega. I picked up a Snecko Eye at the end of Act 2, so that let me play Ragnarok more frequently. All in all, a truly satisfying run :D
I had a pretty defensive deck, relying on Calm and using multiple Like Waters to generate free block. I got Teardrop Locket at the end of Act 1, so that let me start in Calm right at the start of a fight. I ended up getting rid of Vigilance, and I used Fear No Evil to get back into Calm if I ever went to Wrath. I also used Wave of the Hand to weaken enemies, which synergized well with Like Water and Orihalcum. This allowed me to safely run Alpha->Omega. I picked up a Snecko Eye at the end of Act 2, so that let me play Ragnarok more frequently. All in all, a truly satisfying run :D
I don't know if many people play the daily challenge or not but i did my first one yesterday and it was really, really cool. Got an incredible build with the silent which won easily as i had so many relics, and basically fought every elite and only took damage like three times. Finished up 45th and got the achievement so feels good.
Daily Challenge is a good way to get tricky achievements, you can't use custom/seeded runs, but AFAIK dailies still count for them.
Can any high-ascension players give me some advice? I've played for a bit over 150 hours, and I'm about halfway up the ascension climb so far (A11 cleared with Ironclad and Silent, A10 with Defect and Watcher). At this point, I'm starting to feel pretty confident in my understanding of Ironclad, Silent, and Watcher... But the Defect baffles me. My wins always feel the same: get focus, get frost orbs, tank all day long, kill with whatever. It feels like I get consistently punished for deviating from this strategy, since the Defect seems unable to block effectively without focused frost orbs, and also unable to scale rapidly enough to kill late-game threats if I'm not setting up a wall of ice. It feels like my success is more dependent on the RNG of finding focus + frost cards than it is on any real strategy, and I just can't imagine that's a correct assessment.
I'm probably just thinking too linearly, but I'm really not sure how to evaluate things when I'm not finding focus boosters. Can anyone give me any tips?
I'm probably just thinking too linearly, but I'm really not sure how to evaluate things when I'm not finding focus boosters. Can anyone give me any tips?
I find Defect pretty hard too, since it's hard to think about Loop scaling vs Frost scaling vs Blizzard scaling vs Thunder Strike scaling etc., but there's definitely different viable builds - you could let a Dark orb build up over time with Loop and then Recursion, Hologram, Recursion for big damage to single targets or take out multiple weaker targets; there's Claw + All For One + other 0-cost upgraded cards to scale itself that way; you can try Capacitor + Barrage + orb generation with Glacier or Rainbow to scale damage.
Fast scaling with Defect tends to rely on Ethereal Form or Creative AI, since you can then double up on Equilibrium for ~30 block and retain for two turns or just outright block damage with Buffer, or double up on heavy damage dealers like Streamline or Sunder.
The thing that I've been trying to do is weigh the value of the relics I get VS the cards I have and vice versa - Claw does better when you have Shuriken / Kenai, but obviously Darkness is better when you have Symbiotic Virus. The only cards I never tend to take are Scrape (and even then I'd only consider it with Hologram) and Meteor Strike without Snecko Eye.
I have the same problem with the defect. I did stumble on a crazy deck that had two seeks, all for one, multiple upgraded holograms, turbos, claws, upgraded duelcast + zap. Basically allowed me to chain 0 cost cards and have unlimited energy. Beyond that I've had ok success sometimes with power cards and mummified hand and mass lightning channeling. But I struggle way more consistently with defect than any other class.