Board 8 > Post Slay the Spire things and I'll talk way too much about them.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I hear some of you are also addicted to the Spire. I love talking about this game and play it way too much, so post anything about it and I'll ramble.

• Cards
• Relics
• Monsters
• Elites
• Bosses

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Runic Pyramid

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Snecko Eye

I avoid this thing like the plague but I've always wondered if I'm just bad and it's actually super great

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ranking of the classes

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Runic Pyramid is so situational. It's really good with certain decks! If you can get your strikes and defends out, or have a way to remove cards via exhaust/discard/whatever, then it works really well.

Runic Pyramid's biggest strength is that you can control when you shuffle your deck or delay playing cards until you're ready. Take Watcher, for example - you can hold onto your Flurry of Blows or Weave until you shuffle your deck, and then it's there for all the hits you could want. The same is true for Aggregate or All for One on Defect. Silent can finally play grand finale with some level of reliability too. Ironclad can get a lot out of armements+ with Runic Pyramid too.

The other cool thing about Runic Pyramid is being able to decide when you play things. Holding onto Limit Break until you've played Spot Weakness or Inflame is super helpful. (It also helps for when you draw Spot Weakness turn 1 vs. a boss that's not attacking you.) Silent can hold onto Blade Dance until after you've played accuracy, Defect can get Core Surge before Biased Cognition, Watcher can hold Talk to the Hand until you get rid of the artifact charges, etc etc.

But you've gotta have the right deck. If you've got, say, Bludgeon, then your deck is going to get really clogged. It's also important to be able to deal with bad cards. Nothing is worse than runic pyramid vs. the slavers where you end up with 10 wounds in your hand. Battle Hymn is probably not the right card either because you'll end up with 6 Smites and no room for any other cards.

I find Runic Pyramid best if you already have 4 energy, or if you're living on 0 cost cards like Claw or Anger. Even that can screw you over. I think it's a really strong relic in the right situation, but can be the absolute worst thing in the wrong one.

Speaking of bad situations: don't take Runic Pyramid with Dead Branch, and definitely don't do it with Snecko Eye. What a disaster.

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Mobilezoid posted...

Snecko Eye

I avoid this thing like the plague but I've always wondered if I'm just bad and it's actually super great

I have this same thought.

Mummified hand

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Snecko Eye is the best relic in the game. One thing you have to learn in STS is how important card draw is. You basically have two resources, energy and card draw. Beginning players understand the importance of energy easily but card draw isn't as obvious. Snecko gives you two extra cards every turn which lets you get through your deck quickly and play the best stuff.

Snecko's best on Defect, I think, just because some of his power cards are crazy and you can get them into play quickly. They're also usually pretty expensive. Cards like Sunder are a lot of fun with Snecko too. Defect also doesn't have a lot of card draw in general. On the flipside, I don't really like Snecko on Watcher because 0 cost cards like Just Lucky/Flurry of Blows/Weave become more or less useless, and also because Watcher in general just needs to play very exactly. If you draw a 3 cost Empty Fist and you're in Wrath, it's going to be a problem.

Snecko's best if you boss relic swap at the beginning because you can build your deck that way. If you get Snecko after the act 1 boss and have been picking up things like Anger or Deadly Poison, it's not going to go great. If you can build with cards like Dual Wield (an AWESOME card with Snecko) or other high cost cards then everything is super easy.

So is Snecko good? It depends on the situation, but it's almost always better than not having Snecko. I can talk about it more specifically if you have more questions about it.

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How awesome/stressful it was to get that one achievement/trophy to beat a boss in one turn (since it pretty much has to be the 3rd level boss I think for your deck to be good enough). If you got it. I did and it was a ton of fun but scary (though tbf I wasn't ashamed to reload and start over from the start of the battle when I messed it up)

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Storm of Steel

I had a small card draw deck with some essentially 0 cost cards, potioned into a panache, and just had to use my calculated gambles and expertise as smartly as I could

Also had slavers collar, nunchakus, and pen nib. The decisions on when to play those card draw cards were wild

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WiggumFan267 posted...

How awesome/stressful it was to get that one achievement/trophy to beat a boss in one turn (since it pretty much has to be the 3rd level boss I think for your deck to be good enough). If you got it. I did and it was a ton of fun but scary (though tbf I wasn't ashamed to reload and start over from the start of the battle when I messed it up)

can you get this if you get the event where you can choose to fight a boss from Act 1?

(just checked and I have this achievement so I assume this is how I got it)

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Class rankings

1. Watcher
2. ...Silent
3. Ironclad
4. Defect

The only thing I'm sure of is Watcher is first. The other three are just about equal which is part of the joy of STS.

If you get a dead branch/corruption run with Ironclad then it's an easy win, or shuriken/kunai on Silent, or mummified hand/bird faced urn on Defect. I don't think there's really much there. Silent used to be the worst but the buffs that came with v2.2 made her a lot better. (I'm generally better with Silent and Defect than Ironclad, but I do think peak Ironclad is as good as any character. It isn't easy to get one of those decks though.)

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WiggumFan267 posted...

How awesome/stressful it was to get that one achievement/trophy to beat a boss in one turn (since it pretty much has to be the 3rd level boss I think for your deck to be good enough). If you got it. I did and it was a ton of fun but scary (though tbf I wasn't ashamed to reload and start over from the start of the battle when I messed it up)

I have all of the achievements! I got this on Slime Boss with Watcher. I think it was Eruption + Carve Reality + Ragnarok + Flurry of Blows. It was a really lucky draw. I think the best way to get this is with the act 3 event where you fight an act 1 boss but I got it naturally on act 1. I think this was the last one I got. it's probably the toughest besides maybe the 5 card deck.

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as an aside I played a bunch on PC for awhile then stopped

then picked it up again on Game Pass

Seeing all the buffs for silent made me so happy

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Mummified Hand

Gotta be a top 5 relic in the game. I had a silly Defect run recently where I had almost all power cards, mummified hand and Heatsinks. I would play like half my deck on turn 1 and the other half on turn 2. Awakened One was trying to hit me for like 100 and it didn't matter because I would block for like 300 a turn by turn 3 or 4.

if you play your cards right, you can discount some really strong cards. Being able to scale quickly is super important in STS and Mummified Hand is one of the easiest ways to do that. When I have Mummified Hand, sometimes I pick up mediocre powers like Machine Learning or Combust just to use the interaction. Great relic.

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Do you feel like there are any cards you have to have for beating the heart?

Ill also ask do you finish every run no matter what or do you get halfway, know you are missing necessary stuff and just end it there?

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That defect card that gives 1 block and gains 2 more every time it's played

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Storm of Steel

So much better after v2.2. The card itself goes from 2 cost to 1 cost which is huge of course, but even more than that is the Shiv buffs. Blade Dance giving you 3/4 shivs instead of 2/3 and Accuracy increasing damage by 4/6 means that you really go for those cards, and they make SoS so much better as a result. With the right deck, this can do like 100 damage for 1 energy!

It also synergizes heavily with some relics. Shuriken/Kunai are obvious, but also Ornamental Fan or even Silent specific things like Tingsha/tough bandages because it discards your whole hand.

Oh, and this card is crazy with Dead Branch. Use 1 energy, do a ton of damage and get a whole new deck! It's like opening pandora's box.

This card can be a little dangerous though because you might want to play your block cards and then play Storm of Steel which can get you like... 4 damage. SoS is best in act 2/3 when you have 4 energy, and ideally some draw cards like Acrobatics. SoS is a really interesting card with a lot of uses, but you can't just pick it up and use it without considering your deck. Some cards are like that - Wraith Form is always good, for example. but SoS, not so much.


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Dr_Football posted...

Do you feel like there are any cards you have to have for beating the heart?

Ill also ask do you finish every run no matter what or do you get halfway, know you are missing necessary stuff and just end it there?

Not really, though I do feel like it's hard to beat the heart with Defect without focus. You can do it, but on higher ascensions you really need to be able to build up that block. Ironclad can do it with Feel No Pain, Silent can use Footwork or After Image and Watcher has stuff like Nirvana or Mental Fortress, or Talk to the Hand. Defect? It's kinda tough to deal with the beat without things like high focus, Loop, Capacitor, etc.

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Heart Spear and Shield

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Genetic Algorithm

This card is really hard to assess. You have to really invest in it because it's utter garbage when you start. You also ideally want to pick it up in act 1 because it's just too late later on. Sometimes you draw it on a turn where the enemy isn't attacking, and do you play it anyway at the expense of doing damage or hope you can cycle your deck again? It's hard.

This card is best with Echo Form since you can get the bonus twice, and I like it with Hologram because I can call it on command. If you put in the effort, you can get like 50 block on the heart which is one of the few ways Defect can block its attacks besides frost orbs. I usually don't go for it but if I can't find a frost orb card I might pick it up. The problem is, you need to get it early so you probably don't know if you're going to have a good block machine going yet. Sometimes you have to sacrifice playing Electrodynamics or Storm in order to get it in, and that cost-benefit analysis is something you'll have to constantly do.

It feels like it isn't worth it until you hit the sword and shield on turn 3 and you're staring at 57 damage and suddenly it's all justified. But you still have to draw it on the right turn, you know? The answer to this card, as always: it depends.

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I really feel like Genetic Algorithm is a poorly designed card - best I can think to do with it while retaining the base concept would have it grant something like +7 block for each act ahead of 1 it is drafted so if you draft it in 3 it starts with 15, but maybe that's too good?

I like it. ritual dagger is similar but you see immediate benefit from it. generic algorithm is like buying a penny stock.

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also, Defect has general issues with fast scaling and this card is a way to mitigate that, if you put in the time. thats more helpful here than on, say, Silent.

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Cleric talented.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!!!

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Hello World.
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Spire Sword and Shield

One thing that's really important to recognize with act 4 is how fundamentally different the sword and shield are from the heart. They're basically two different skillsets: the heart is all about scaling up to deal with the big attacks that are to come, while the sword and shield are about burst damage. On turn 2, you're looking at 10x4 damage (at least on A20, not sure what the numbers are on lower ascensions). Turn 3 is often 57 damage from the shield. They lower your attack/focus and they have artifact charges, both things the heart doesn't do.

You can think of these guys as a heat check for the heart. Okay, you made it past the act 3 boss, but are you REALLY ready for the heart? But also, because they're such different skillsets, these guys can sometimes be harder than the heart. Defect, for example, loves getting capacitor and loop and frost orbs galore and just outsurviving you. That ain't gonna work on the sword and shield unless you're really fast with it - biased cognition, glacier, echo form, etc. You might have a Watcher deck that's based around Talk to the Hand and lots of 0 damage attacks, like Weave or whatever. That'll work wonders on the heart, but not here!

Another important thing with these guys is how much a bad turn 1 can wreck you. If you don't have a way to cycle through your deck to find the right cards to play, these guys will mess you up quick. These jerks putting two burns into your deck on turn 2 only exacerbates the problem. Turn 1 Foresight with Watcher is a must! It isn't the 2 damage that's the problem, it's only getting 3 cards to play. Better hope you get a Skim or a Battle Trance, because otherwise that 5 energy build you've got going won't really do you much good.

One of the harder things for me to recognize is when to use my potions on the sword and shield instead of the heart. The heart is the main event but sometimes the sword and shield are worse!

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Hello World

This card's kinda great on act 1! The common cards it gives you are almost objectively better than Strikes and Defends. Compile Driver does more damage and hopefully draws 1+ cards, and Sweeping Beam hits everyone. Leap is obviously better than Defend. Beam Cell, Claw and Go for the Eyes are no cost cards that don't detract from your draw.

But on your second cycle through your deck, you're now dealing with randomness, and that can be killer, especially once you get towards the end of act 2 and into act 3. Does your lean Claw + frost orb deck really want a bunch of random Stacks and Steam Barriers? If you just decide not to play this, then you can treat it like it's a wound or a curse. It's a good candidate for just removing it as you get to the act 4 store or whatever. But it can really carry you through the early parts of the run, and that's not unlike a lot of other cards in this game. For example, Streamline might not be a great card, but it'll help you with a small deck and needing to find damage to finish off Hexaghost!

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Claw claw claw

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is there a good strategy on the event where you can send a card to yourself in a future run?

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? mark rooms

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Claw

Oh boy. Buckle in.

Everyone has an opinion on claw. Some people think it's great, some people think it's awful, and it's got this reputation as a meme card. I think claw is... okay? By which I mean, claw can be good if you have the right deck. But you have to really go all in to make it good.

The right claw deck is something like: 2 or maybe 3 claws (but not more), as many hologram+'s as you can get, rebound, skim, all for one and, ideally, some good focus and frost building. You can play with scrape and go for the eyes and beam cell too, depending on what you have.

If you get all that in a nice row, your deck is... good but not great? Claw scales so slowly that you're never going to be amazing. Maybe you get claw to 30 damage, which is great but how much did you have to do to get there? I really wish Claw+ scaled by 3 instead of 2, instead of just starting at 5 damage instead of 3.

My favorite claw decks have unceasing top, shuriken/kunai, and cards to help out your deck like machine learning or recycle. You want to be able to play as many cards as you can and to scale in ways besides just the claw card itself. The biggest problem with a claw deck is.. let's say you make it to the heart. Are you going to be able to deal with the beat and its damage while you spam a billion claws? It's tough.

But claw can be useful when you're not going all in and just using it for some moderate damage. It's great for things like procing Orange Pellets or if you've got a thin deck and have your frost orbs sorted out. If you can't be hurt, claw can scale as slow as it wants and you'll have no problem.

This card isn't easy to play and takes some specific decisions, but it's also really fun to just poke at enemies with claw until it becomes godlike. Cool card and cool concept, and it's alright. I tend to pick it if I see it by floor 5 or so, but not usually after that because if I'm going claw, I want to refine my deck with it in mind as much as possible. That's the thing with claw: you can't just add it for funsies.

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A Note for Yourself

I've actually only encountered this event once and it blew my god damn mind. You only encounter it up to ascension 14 and only if you've beaten the ascension before. I always just played the highest ascension until I beat it and then moved on, so it wasn't until I did an endless run that I came across it.

I can't think of too many galaxy brain uses for this event, except maybe storing searing blow after it's upgraded a few times? That's so situational though. In reality I would probably just store a strike to get it out of my hand and then ignore the event (assuming you can?). I dunno. There are a lot of good act 1-2 cards like Dash, Conclude, Anger, etc that might be good for the event since you can get it out of your hand and pick it back up at the beginning of another run. That's about all I've got?

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transcience posted...

I like it. ritual dagger is similar but you see immediate benefit from it. generic algorithm is like buying a penny stock.

My issue with it is that if you see it in drafts in act 2 or later it's just dead... you could MAYBE start using it if you draft it in act 2 but honestly, that's rough, it's a dead card for a while and act 1 is really the last time you can be fucking around

Oh I know what I want you to talk about. Talk about the act 1 event "The Ssssserpent" (take 150 gold and a Doubt or not)

Paratroopa1 posted...

My issue with it is that if you see it in drafts in act 2 or later it's just dead... you could MAYBE start using it if you draft it in act 2 but honestly, that's rough, it's a dead card for a while and act 1 is really the last time you can be fucking around

I guess I think of it like a common card at that point. I'm not going to take, say, sweeping beam or iron wave on act 2/3 pretty much ever but they don't bother me when they show up.

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How do I get better to slay the spire

Granted I've only played a handful of hours but have only had real success with the first class

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? mark rooms

I don't really have a strategy for ? vs. monster rooms unless I can think of a specific purpose:

• if I take the first 3 enemies have 1 HP reward from the starting event, I'll go ? hunting for an elite path. (I used to think this event was a waste but being able to get through half of act 1 for free is pretty good, and it lets you be a little bit riskier. +6/7 hp isn't really all that great.)
• one important thing is that you get enough decent cards to balance out your strikes/defends before you hit the act 1 elites, especially gremlin nob. a card like Headbutt isn't great or anything but it's better than a strike when dealing with lagavulin's debuffs.
• if I get cards that offer bonuses in battle like: feed, alchemize, self repair, genetic algorithm, wish, lesson learned, hand of greed, etc then I'll prioritize encounters.
• if I have toxic egg, I might hit more ? in act 2 to see if I can get the apparition event, since they'll be upgraded. I guess the same is true for the bites but bites are really situational and I've usually removed 2 or 3 strikes by then anyway.
• various relics like tiny chest or whatever can offer some more value for ? events.
• my HP dictates a lot, so if I have like 8 hp and a campfire is coming, maybe hit the ? events.

but outside of those very situational uses, I'm not really picky. I just do whatever I feel like at that moment. if I thought about it, I might say that act 2 ? events are overall better than 1/3 because of stuff like the apparitions or that event where you can get jax or transform 2 cards. but I dunno.

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150 gold vs. Doubt

What I'm going to say here probably goes for similar events as well, e.g. the one where you get 50 gold vs. 275 gold and regret, or the event where you can upgrade a card vs. getting the upgrade relic + pain.

The first thing I look at is where the next shop is. You can get a net of 75 gold for removing doubt, and doubt itself isn't the worst curse if you're not reliant on attack cards (see: poison, orbs). If it's a long way to go, I probably won't take it, though sometimes if I see a sea of ? rooms on my path I might go there and hope I get one.

But overall, I don't love this event because removing a curse means I can't remove a strike. I probably turn it down a lot of the time, but I also have a sunk cost fallacy going on sometimes where not taking it means that I went through a room with nothing to show for it, and the spire isn't kind to those who don't improve their deck. But, you could make the same argument to say that skipping a card is the same thing, and obviously there are many times where skipping is the right move. So yeah, definitely a fallacy.

Oh, and if you've got some of the curse relics like onomori or du-vu doll or that one that increases max hp, then go for it. This is usually an early act 1 relic though so chances are you don't have that unless you got it from neow.

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Aecioo posted...

How do I get better to slay the spire

Granted I've only played a handful of hours but have only had real success with the first class

suffer for dozens of hours like the rest of us

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What's the best choice for the J.A.X. event?

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transience posted...

but outside of those very situational uses, I'm not really picky. I just do whatever I feel like at that moment. if I thought about it, I might say that act 2 ? events are overall better than 1/3 because of stuff like the apparitions or that event where you can get jax or transform 2 cards. but I dunno.

I don't think I realized you get different events in each act.

Also the thing I'm curious about is how you treat shops. Do you go for them a lot or only when you have a ton of gold. I typically hit 2 maybe 3 shops a run total.


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Chemical X

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Not Dave posted...

What's the best choice for the J.A.X. event?

it depends! usually it's transform 2 cards.

• if you have the artifact relic, you retain your 3 strength from the relic, so that's probably objectively better than jax in all cases
• some classes (silent, watcher) benefit from strength a lot more than others (ironclad, defect). watcher's damage is essentially doubled/tripled in wrath/divinity per point of strength and silent loves those shivs, not to mention other multi hit cards like riddle with holes.
• being able to remove 2 strikes can often be more valuable than what you get. even if you get, say, compile driver and leap, that's a nice improvement to your deck.
• I struggle with cards that damage you in classes where you don't have a way to heal, so I'm often scared of taking jax. but it's a great way to scale in fights where you might need it.

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Chemical X

I always never buy it, but it can really do wonders in the right situation! on Ironclad, Whirlwind (and especially Whirlwind+) can pretty much clean up act 2, especially the slavers fight which can be mega dangerous. for Silent, you've got Skewer and Malaise, and Malaise especially can really nerf the right boss (sup guardian, awakened one, time eater, heart). Defect gets a free 14/18 block from reinforced body and 2 lightning which is pretty good, and Watcher can get free miracle+'s and have a legit expunger which can be used for some gigantic damage, especially when paired with Talk to the Hand.

so, I'd say it's good, but you have to be bought in. it's hard to buy chemical x without having the right card, and I don't often take x cards. Malaise and maybe Whirlwind is the only one I really try to get, and Whirlwind is for the possibilities with strength scaling as much as anything. I'd rank it as a good relic, but it's a shop relic so you have to be willing to invest. with shop relics, I usually only buy them when I have excess money, or if it's going to break the run wide open. I'm conservative that way.

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Colegreen_c12 posted...

I don't think I realized you get different events in each act.

Also the thing I'm curious about is how you treat shops. Do you go for them a lot or only when you have a ton of gold. I typically hit 2 maybe 3 shops a run total.

it depends on what I have and what I need. one thing I'd recommend to you is to focus on removing strikes. I don't often buy potions unless I'm heading into the heart fight, just because I like to horde my money on other things like relics and power cards. I generally don't go to a shop unless I have more than ~170ish gold so I can buy a relic if it pops up. nothing drives me crazier than seeing something I need and being like 15 gold short. (I wish you could sell cards!)

I've also had times where I've died on the act 3 boss with like 1100 gold, so yeah, I can be bad at this too.

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Snecko and where it ranks on your list of worst enemies in the game

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Emeraldegg posted...

Snecko and where it ranks on your list of worst enemies in the game

not in the top 5, I don't think! let's make a top 5, from 1 to 5:

https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Snake_Plant
https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Writhing_Mass
https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Spire_Growth
https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Shelled_Parasite
https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Shapes

(Snecko might be 5, but on high ascensions the spikers can be real pains)


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That's just out of non-elites I assume

I'd sooner rank elites in terms of difficulty. that's suuuuper dependent on character, let alone deck, but let's go with

act 1: Gremlin Nob > Sentries > Lagavulin
act 2: Slavers > Book of Stabbing > Gremlin Leader
act 3: Reptomancer > Giant Head > Nemesis

this is for ascension 20, I'm not sure what they look like on lower levels at this point. well, I have an idea, but not the experience of dealing with them on a regular basis

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