Slay the Spire - Ascend a big tower and kill stuff because you can. Is responsible for the "roguelike deckbuilder" fad

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Dr. Ricearoni said:
I want to like the sovereign blade mechanic but its just worse osty. Costs 2 to osty's 1-0, cant block attacks, and doesn't ignore status effects. I think regent would definitely benefit from significant buffs
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On my way to spend 2 energy on a sovereign blade just so I can deal 9 damage to a triple cockroach fight start of 2nd act. That's if the game was kind enough not to give me vantom as the 1st act boss
 
Runescape Sperg said:
On my way to spend 2 energy on a sovereign blade just so I can deal 9 damage to a triple cockroach fight start of 2nd act. That's if the game was kind enough not to give me vantom as the 1st act boss
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Honestly, you know how I'd rework sovereign blade? I'd give it a special property that lets it ignore special statuses like that. If it's really so sovereign, let it overpower damage reduction, go through thorns, etc.
 
Dr. Ricearoni said:
Honestly, you know how I'd rework sovereign blade? I'd give it a special property that lets it ignore special statuses like that. If it's really so sovereign, let it overpower damage reduction, go through thorns, etc.
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It could honestly hit through statuses and block and it still would be average at best. Also, why does necrobinder's Osty get to hit for full damage while you're weakened but sovereign blade suffers from your debuff when it's also a different entity
 
Runescape Sperg said:
It could honestly hit through statuses and block and it still would be average at best. Also, why does necrobinder's Osty get to hit for full damage while you're weakened but sovereign blade suffers from your debuff when it's also a different entity
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Don't worry, for just 1 energy more you can dedicate a power in your deck to getting a whopping 6 block every time you use sovereign blade.
 
Dr. Ricearoni said:
Agreed. I really wanna like regent but he seems to lack strength and synergy. The stars mechanics are cool but it feels like they should either be less costly or more rewarding, and forge should be changed to differentiate it from Necrobinder's summon mechanic cause they're functionally identical (build up big number, build up big damage) except Osty cones with a free blowjob and a million 0 cost cards.
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Regent is probably my favorite character in StS2 currently. Forge is a trap, I assume they'll buff it eventually but it's currently best left to the side. Stars can dominate with a few pretty common cards:
  • Stardust does X hits to random enemies, based on your number of stars. It's not too hard to get over 20 stars, so in a lot of cases the random targeting almost doesn't matter. It's uncommon but I rarely fail to find one.
  • Radiate, which deals 3/4 AOE for every star earned this turn. Costs no energy or stars, so you can spend your energy building stars and then use Radiate to dump damage with no cost. Two of these is almost always worth it, and they're common cards. You can succeed with just a couple of these and a bunch of the stars cards I list below.
I did recently have a run that didn't find either of the above (I wound up with a Prismatic run). There's a handful of damage cards that cost stars and are good - Seven Stars does good damage, and Astral Pluse is good AOE and 3 stars is pretty cheap. But the deck hardly needs them.

There are two great stars powers, neither of which is rare:
  • Black Hole, which does AOE damage every time you interact with stars at all.
  • Child of the Stars, which heals you when you spend stars.
To block:
  • Particle Wall is a very good block card if you're accumulating stars with the above. If you manage to make it retain it's difficult to lose.
  • Cloak of the Stars is a decent defense card that synergizes with the two powers above.
  • Monologue and Resonance can both help you add strength which is very impactful since you'll be doing a lot of multiple hit attacks.
  • Reflect can do crazy damage if you're not doing enough already, and it's a very good block card besides.
To drown in stars:
  • Hidden Cache is a common card that earns 1 star current turn and 3/4 the next. It's a really good way to earn stars.
  • Royal Gamble costs 5 stars, but gives you 9 - getting 5 is easy, so this is a very easy way to add stars. If you have Child of the Stars and Black Hole in play, Gamble does 5 block procs, 2 AOE damage procs, adds 9 damage to your Radiance play for the turn and is a net 4 stars for future use.
  • Glow draws and builds stars. It's not amazing, but upgraded it's 2 stars + draw which is nice.
  • Big Bang is obviously good, but it's generically good and doesn't do much for stars specifically.
  • Genesis is good, but honestly excessive in most decks.
To pop off, Decisions Decisions costs a lot but if you can apply its triple play mechanic to something like Hidden Cache or Royal Gamble you gain a load of stars.

The minions thing seems more like an alternative flavor to the cards than a full mechanic to build around, and his use of Colorless cards feels as much of a side gig as the Forge mechanic does. He's very effective with stars and that allows you to tinker with other things while the stars do the heavy lifting. His main downfall is the same as Watcher's - his main thing is so strong and everything else is harder to make viable, much less make them great. I think he's fun but I'm looking forward to some rebalancing.

Still at A2 on Necrobinder. Should probably give her more attention.
 
Dr. Ricearoni said:
I want to like the sovereign blade mechanic but its just worse osty. Costs 2 to osty's 1-0, cant block attacks, and doesn't ignore status effects. I think regent would definitely benefit from significant buffs
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I'm on iirc A4 with regent and forge is decently broken if you build around it correctly.

The cards you want are cosmic indifference (2 or 3 of them), bulwark, the smith and void form.

Void form in general is just hideously fucking broken : First 2 (or 3) cards you play every turn are free, and that includes star cost. Thin your deck as much as possible, get void form out early even if it means you need to eat an attack, and then spam bulwark (+13 def, forge 14) and cosmic indifference (+6 def, put a card from discard on the top of your draw) to pull bulwark, the smith (forge 40), or soverign blade onto the draw so you've got it again next turn. Gets even dumber if you throw in the power I forget that makes blade doublehit for an extra energy cost (which is free because void's negating it).

Last run I did got Door as the floor 3 boss and I was hitting him every turn for 130*2 from blade alone starting on turn 4-5 and got through the fight only taking a single hit on the turn I had to get void out.

E: Also, fun detail I noticed with the blade. It gets larger depending on the forge count and if you manage to clone it during a fight you'll get multiple blades orbiting you.
 
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Runescape Sperg said:
It could honestly hit through statuses and block and it still would be average at best. Also, why does necrobinder's Osty get to hit for full damage while you're weakened but sovereign blade suffers from your debuff when it's also a different entity
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because Osty is its own entity and Sovereign Blade is just a card.
 
It fucks me up that just picking every power card as the defect and spamming them without any strategy is a viable playstyle
 
Dr. Ricearoni said:
It fucks me up that just picking every power card as the defect and spamming them without any strategy is a viable playstyle
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Live Defect Gamplay.
 
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.
 
I recent beat Slay the Spire's (the first game) Third Act for the first time with the Ironclad.

I feel like I cheesed the game, because I managed to make the Power card that made draw cards when you drew Curses or Status effects Innate and I had all kinds of cards that just gave me Wounds.

Also corruption, demon form, combustion, and rupture.

I was fighting the main boss with like a hundred strength.
 
I've been living like a cave goblin ever since SLS 2 came out, I'm too addicted.

I played one run of every character first then decided to focus on Silent. Getting to A10 wasn't too bad but beating it took a long time. I only managed to beat it twice out of soooooo many attempts (too embarrassed to say).

Shiv builds are insanely fun but it's too hard to do them reliably. The bee-guy from Act 2 counters them HARD. I'm excited for the alternate Acts for 2 and 3.
 
anti SJW said:
I like to do custom runs as Ironclad.
Endless
Draft 15 cards
Flight
Time dilation
Heirloom

I try to get searing blow as high as I can smithing it. I don't think its overkill.

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Floor 883 is impressive. I somehow managed to fluke it out and got an infinite build with Searing Blow going on A20 but on lasted to floor 300 before getting bored. It is technically possible in the base game just very unlikely.
 
After seeing this thread I remembered I had the first game installed on steam deck and decided to give it a try.

I sank about 20 hours into it over the last 2-3 days and reached the same conclusion as every other rogue lite game I've played - these games are 90% RNG and 10% autism and I just don't have the tism needed to mathematically map out every aspect of the game to increase my odds of success from 5% to 35%.

I spent time learning the cards and trying various builds but no matter what I did I got ganked either midway through act 3 or on the act 3 boss. Then one run I got the sneko eye and some book that let me shove a random card in my draw pile every turn, a couple of high damage and high block cards and I went full YOLO. Not only did I beat the act 3 boss (the toughest one for me, the time lord or whatever) but it wasn't even close, he never got me below like 75% health. Its all fucking RNG.

I think the fun is mostly the slot machine effect and your monkey brain getting a dopamine hit from every new shiny card, relic or potion.
 
TheArtilleryman said:
Nigger if you can't enjoy it whilst losing 90% of the time you're playing the wrong damn game! After a certain level of experience it becomes mostly memorisation of the enemy patterns, planning for the most troublesome ones from the start and having contingency plans for the couple that will hard counter whatever build you go with. You do need to play for a hell of a long time to approach maybe even a 50% win rate, so you gotta be okay with losing very often. If not, time for another game.
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Are you happy now? Time Lord btw
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brokenexuberance said:
but instead the regular battles that sometimes are even more difficult than the elites
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Having finally completed one winning run with every character (Reagent was my holdout), I really feel this. StS2 is waaay more dependent on basic enemies having extremely niche gimmicks than the first to the point every fight after Act 1 can be a run ender through no fault of your own.
 
Stasi said:
After seeing this thread I remembered I had the first game installed on steam deck and decided to give it a try.

I sank about 20 hours into it over the last 2-3 days and reached the same conclusion as every other rogue lite game I've played - these games are 90% RNG and 10% autism and I just don't have the tism needed to mathematically map out every aspect of the game to increase my odds of success from 5% to 35%.

I spent time learning the cards and trying various builds but no matter what I did I got ganked either midway through act 3 or on the act 3 boss. Then one run I got the sneko eye and some book that let me shove a random card in my draw pile every turn, a couple of high damage and high block cards and I went full YOLO. Not only did I beat the act 3 boss (the toughest one for me, the time lord or whatever) but it wasn't even close, he never got me below like 75% health. Its all fucking RNG.

I think the fun is mostly the slot machine effect and your monkey brain getting a dopamine hit from every new shiny card, relic or potion.
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Roguelikes are slot machines only you gamble with your time rather than money. At least the action game ones are usually beatable with bad luck, but anything else has a good chunk be mathematically impossible.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Roguelikes are slot machines only you gamble with your time rather than money. At least the action game ones are usually beatable with bad luck, but anything else has a good chunk be mathematically impossible.
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If you want to get real meta with it, you're always gambling with your time, and determining whether you've won or not is a whole thing in itself. Just enjoy game. (Unless you can't. Then don't)
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
Roguelikes are slot machines only you gamble with your time rather than money. At least the action game ones are usually beatable with bad luck, but anything else has a good chunk be mathematically impossible.
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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.
 
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