I don't play any of the other deckbuilders out there, but man I love Vampire Survivors and after three runs on the demo I'm gonna love Vampire Crawlers.
I sometimes like to look up challenge runs or speedruns after beating a game to see what interesting ways people have managed to break the game and its a good demonstration of your point.
With other genres people get so good at a game that they can beat a 10h+ campaign in 40 minutes or play one handed and beat the whole game without taking a single hit while also not upgrading anything or only using useless items/skills.
Roguelikes though its usually "I bashed my head against a wall 150 times and finally got the lucky RNG I needed to complete this challenge run" or "I played the game for 3,000 hours and now my average run success rate is 57.6% on a good day".
They are well made slot machines and if thats your poison then power to you but I personally quickly lose interest in a game when I realise its primarily luck based.
For people who like these games I'd recommend checking out Shogun Showdown if you haven't played it already.
Its similar to Slay the Spire in that its essentially a card game, except your deck is usually 5-6 cards. There is also a slight tactical element where you have to manoeuvre on a 2D grid. I had fun with it but got bored eventually because I don't like RNG based games but if you like this sort of thing give it a shot.
Ok so I've figured out the secret to good regent runs and it's all in his multihits
Terraform adds damage to your next hit, stardust hits once for every star you have, heavenly drill hits once (twice if you spend at least 4 energy) for every energy you have, etc
His multihits are absolutely insane
Edit to add: Convergence gives your hand retain and gives you energy and stars next turn, so it's amazing for setting up combos too.
There's also a colorless power card (Prep Time) that give you 4 Vigor (extra damage) per turn, letting you charge your multi hit up like fucking Goku before you unleash it.
Stardust / Barrage / Skewer with +20 damage on every hit will burst down pretty much any boss.
Just unlocked the last epoch and unlockables.
Here's my character-ranking on fun and ability so far:
Silent: Consistently good. Has a hard time in the first Act due to low defense but the Act 3 boss felt the easiest. Relics seem to gel best with her.
Necrobinder: Incredibly fun. Might get a bit same-y after a while but I need to play more to say.
Defect: When it works, it works well.
Regent: Incredibly aggressive playstyle. He does well in the many damage-races early on up to the Act 2 boss. From there it becomes difficult to get enough block. He got the most attention in the latest patch so I assume he's still actively in development.
For people who like these games I'd recommend checking out Shogun Showdown if you haven't played it already. https://youtube.com/watch?v=i6tP6bBTaZ0Its similar to Slay the Spire in that its essentially a card game, except your deck is usually 5-6 cards. There is also a slight tactical element where you have to manoeuvre on a 2D grid. I had fun with it but got bored eventually because I don't like RNG based games but if you like this sort of thing give it a shot.
I've been trying to do A10 with all the characters and so far I've done Ironclad, Defect and Regent... I only did A20 with Defect in the first game, and in fact basically played no other character than the Defect (RIP my GOAT Stack). I gotta tell you, I am getting tilted with RNG sometimes. Every single time, without exception, you are at low HP and there is a ? spot and then a fire it is scientifically impossible for that space not to be a random encounter. I swear, ? spaces are 90% encounters and 10% events.
As a guy who barely played the first game, I'm around 0/20 regent runs and having a ton of fun. Something about the aura farming does it for me, I haven't tried necro or defect yet. I'm clearly not good enough to make forge decks work, but popping conqueror on a high forge sovereign's blade and one shotting something after it's beat the shit out of me the entire fight is a real rush
She's the best-looking playable character in my opinion, maybe tied with Necrobinder. Ironclad and Defect both got too wide, and Regent looks like he's stylized for Slay the Spire 1
I'm struggling on the v0.102.0 beta branch. The Doormaker. Every Act 3 boss right now I can usually beat a little too easily on Ascension 6, except this fucker, he just curb stomps me now. The first turn is a wash where I can really only do set up and power cards, then the second turn appears and every card I play exhausts. Then turn three with no card draw, followed by turn four where every card now eats up one more energy after it's played, then repeats back to exhausting all played cards. I can't come up with a strategy that can handle that combo with any consistency. I either can't draw cards, or I run out of energy after one or two cards, then I get back to being shafted by exhaust, then taking massive damage regardless of what I do. It probably doesn't help that it feels like the last few games where I get that far has been him without exception. I would probably have higher ascensions by now if it wasn't for him being such a great gate keeper.
I'm not playing infinite strategies, except for the high card count Silent can do with sly cards or the occasional lucky Defect power card trip, which has so far been the only way I can beat that nigger in his current form. I cannot seem to scale my damage fast enough.
I'm struggling on the v0.102.0 beta branch. The Doormaker. Every Act 3 boss right now I can usually beat a little too easily on Ascension 6, except this fucker, he just curb stomps me now. The first turn is a wash where I can really only do set up and power cards, then the second turn appears and every card I play exhausts. Then turn three with no card draw, followed by turn four where every card now eats up one more energy after it's played, then repeats back to exhausting all played cards. I can't come up with a strategy that can handle that combo with any consistency. I either can't draw cards, or I run out of energy after one or two cards, then I get back to being shafted by exhaust, then taking massive damage regardless of what I do. It probably doesn't help that it feels like the last few games where I get that far has been him without exception. I would probably have higher ascensions by now if it wasn't for him being such a great gate keeper.
I'm not playing infinite strategies, except for the high card count Silent can do with sly cards or the occasional lucky Defect power card trip, which has so far been the only way I can beat that nigger in his current form. I cannot seem to scale my damage fast enough.
just Shiv him, its the easiest OP build to go for.
I killed him on Turn 2 with Shiv's, had 2 Adrenaline Rush+ 3 Accuracy+'s, and all the shiv fixings, including Knife Trap, just on turn one I threw 14 shiv's, which simply set up for the turn 2 kill with knife trap.
The strongest button in the game is the skip button, as always, the skip button and the remove card button.
I love playing the Regent so much but he just has so few options and viable builds compared to the other characters. Defect has a million different builds you can play while Regent just has stars and sovereign blade, and sovereign blade isn't even good.
I love playing the Regent so much but he just has so few options and viable builds compared to the other characters. Defect has a million different builds you can play while Regent just has stars and sovereign blade, and sovereign blade isn't even good.
they did the classic fuck up of having cards that actually don't do anything at all without other cards, and its 1/3 of his kit, Stars and their lower tier generators are bad design.
MTG already did this fuck up, Energy, but they at least had most energy generating cards do something to go along with it, the ones that don't? bad design, period.
Energy Cache or w/e, in a vacuum does what? nothing, just makes stars, what can you even glean from it alone?
I went on to kill the Doormaker with an 800 damage attack. It's complete bullshit that the Architect automatically killed me after that, I was basically a god and no way his gay ass was taking me down.
