Evaluating Concealed Caverns: Blacksmith and Shards of the Pyre

[Gentlest Giant]

I've been thinking about a couple of concealed cavern events, both of which I assess an expected value of close to zero. Naturally this is quite extreme so I figure I could be missing out on some angles of approaching them. Growing as a player means challenging your own assumptions but I'm stuck on these two.
For context I'm strictly speaking about cov25, no modifiers.

The cavern that gives a choice of 2 X-cost cards- one that increases pyre attack X3, the other which heals the pyre X2.
In order for the attack increase to be useful, you need to hit a damage threshold where at least one creature gets a negated attack. The provided value during the fight is the total negated damage.
It's simple enough in concept, but I struggle to imagine the deck that would pick this and expect to get higher returns than not picking it.

Let's say you have a deck that can reasonably expect to be able to spare 2 ember to play this card when it is drawn without any further opportunity cost - that's 6 pyre attack.
Normally a full hp Gilded Wing would deal 50 damage to a 40 attack pyre. The extra attack changes nothing. In order to make a difference, the Gilded wing has to have HP in the intervals of 41-46, 81-92, 121-138 or 161-184. If it is, 10 pyre HP is saved.
This is why it's so complicated to evaluate this thing. How likely is it that my deck leaves any particular enemy type, during any given turn, in a range where value is yielded, when the X value is unpredictable?
The utility also gets exponentially worse the higher the value of X. (3 ember is required to prevent 10 from a pristine Gilded Wing, 8 ember for 20, 19 ember for 30, 50 ember for 40.)
Overall I have the sense that most decks will spend the ember better than on this card, so much so that I don't remember ever picking this card. I have the nice border though so maybe I misclicked once.

The 2X pyre health is simpler to evaluate as it scales linearly.
I find that for the opening turns of any battle, 1 ember is valued at a lot more than 2 pyre health. The effect is inefficient, but it has lasting value in a way typical cards do not. It works if the deck is expected to be able to profit from the "win more" aspect; the board state is already established and spending ember on further spells is overkill.
I'm not very confident about picking this card, as the game is difficult enough that I'm hesitant to cut corners like this. I still pick this one on occasion, though the disappointment of getting this event in the first place still lingers.



The other is where the blacksmith gives you the option of an X-cost that deal 10X damage and duplicates itself on a kill or a 1-space 1/1 multistrike 1 that duplicates itself on death.

I have never ever picked any of these two. Not once, which is why I feel I must be wrong.

For the spell, 10 damage per ember isn't necessarily terrible, it's still targeting with all the useful applications that brings. The trouble comes with X-cost being a very awkward price for the typical targeting applications. - and the card punishes me for doing the most routine thing with these spells by giving me another copy.
Obviously, in order to make this good you either have to find great upgrades or take advantage of the X-cost by using it with excesses of ember to nuke big targets or bosses. It has the potential to be like Skewer from Slay the Spire, but I'm not sure that I could correctly identify the need for that when this event pops up.
Overall I think I compare it too much to Umbra's Mine Collapse, which is excellent for the typical 0-3 disposable ember situations the game typically revolves around, and that might be the wrong perspective.

The duplicating spiders.
First off, multistrike 1 and 1 space is a decent base. Sometimes I pick weak 1-space creatures just for the ability to cram in an extra attack. But would I want 2 of them? 4? 20? In order to pick this, I have to feel ready to commit to some weak creature bloat. Picking this also somewhat commits me to visit a merchant of steel, which is awkward considering I visit the concealed caverns after I'm done spending gold at whatever shop might be present in the ring. I'm not even sure what upgrades I would want for this thing. 10/0 and 5/10? Largestone and Quick? 0/25 and Endless? Nevermind what kind of deck would benefit from adding these.

I see some hypothetical merit but considering that you have to do this complicated evaluation on the spot with your pants down, I've never yet ended up believing in the spiders. That's most likely a mistake.


Please help me get a better winrate when these events appear.
This game is hard.

[gruetoo]

for the Blacksmith event, the cards stop duplicating and get an upgrade once you get 4 or more in your deck. the spells gain +10 magic power and consume, while the units gain +20 attack. 42 damage per turn at a minimum for 0 ember and 1 capacity each is a steal. I agree that the railspikes are a bit underwhelming when compared to mine collapse, but sometimes your clan combo has a hard time dealing targeted damage and a couple free knockoff mine collapses is just what you need.

the pyre booze just plain suck, as far as I can tell.

[Gentlest Giant]

Huh - you get another event like Dante or the lost Clergyman?
That changes the situation quite a lot. The upgrades are great too. A soft limit of 4, with possibilities of duplicating more in a fight if so desired? (I'm assuming the event does not interrupt the fight.)
Interesting.

[dacarnix]

Correct. And if you upgrade the first one before you start duplicating, they'll all have the upgrade.

My favorite run where I got that event, I put +10A stone and +5A/+10H stone on my first Spikedriver Colony and was able to get from 3 of them up to 7 of them in the battle against Fel. That gave me seven 36A/11H Multistrike Colonies for the last couple of battles.

The Automatic Railspikes are more conditional on what you're running, but I had them with "The First Hellpact" artifact (+3 to X when playing X-cost spells) with an Incant deck, and they were amazing. That's a lot of free damage and Incant triggers.

-----

I have no advice to offer on the Boneshine / Bone Rattler event, though, I'm afraid. That's my least favorite event, too.

That said, the devs have made updates to some of the events already, so it's possible this one will get a fresh coat of paint at some point.

[gruetoo]

Publicado originalmente por Gentle Giant:

Huh - you get another event like Dante or the lost Clergyman?
That changes the situation quite a lot. The upgrades are great too. A soft limit of 4, with possibilities of duplicating more in a fight if so desired? (I'm assuming the event does not interrupt the fight.)
Interesting.

yeah, she tells hints at the possibility of the upgrade in the body text of the event, but it is not listed in the choices, so a bunch of people miss it. the upgrade event happens after a fight, but the duplicates are added to your deck immediately when triggered, so you can even farm them up to some extent if you can draw the fresh copy often enough.

[Gentlest Giant]

Thanks - this was certainly useful information!

[somethingoffensive]

I came to your exact conclusions tonight as a new player, although not quite as intelligently as you OP :). Any card/event/trinket that buffs the Pyre is crap, by the very nature of this game. By the time the enemies have gotten to the Pyre, the run is out of your control. General card game logic (more health = lose slower) says the event is crap. Whether you pick a card or leave I doubt it will be the reason you won or lost.

As for the Blacksmith, well, I did what you did at first and didn't take either option. I thought the same thing, "what am I missing here". On a Red/Blue run, I chose the multi spike robots and the upgrade conditions are super easy to complete. I think I had 8 copies and you only need 4 to get the upgrade (you get too keep them all, 8 is probably too many). Multistrike is under-costed in this game (look at Hearthstone, Windfury costs ~2 mana alone) and you can upgrade these bots. 42 damage a turn for a 0 cost minion is pretty efficient if you can keep them alive. I took 2 space upgrades to squeeze more of them on the board. The run ended in success, but it was only covenant 1 since I just started this game tonight.

[Smuckem]

Agree with the Shards of the Pyre evaluation, can't really argue anything to the contrary since I have never taken them since Mastering both cards...the only real use they tend to have, I find, is that the one you pick at least gives you a card to sacrifice to Diligent Seraph, if you happen to roll him.

Automatic Railspikes I tend to find as a neat bonus rather than a staple to my deck, due to how rarely I've taken them. While in agreement with gruetoo's above point, I would take it a step further and say that it can be a godsend since you won't always be playing Umbra (and thus lack Mine Collapse): Remnant suddenly has a backline-targeting spell period; Hellhorned suddenly has an offensive spell that doesn't require serious investment to be useful late-game (Torch) or have serious risks (Inferno); Stygian suddenly has another (self-replicating) Incant weapon in its arsenal, and something focused to either supplement or replace Flash Freeze.

Railspike Colony is arguably one of my favorite cards in the game: it nabbed me my 1st Custom Challenge victory and has outright won me (though not on its own) one of the Inferno Cup Ranks (though I forget which one(s)). Get a Strengthstone + Speedstone on it before the event upgrade, and...well, even four-five of those shred through things pretty fast...and I had the benefit of seven of them once, utterly mauling enemies and Fel, softening up Living Armor so that my top floor could topple him after with a stiff breeze, and even handily handling Temperant Seraph. This is way easier to accomplish with Awoken or Stygian, since you have spells available to somewhat help control how fast they die while you try and get the purchased upgrades on them.

[Gentlest Giant]

Alright, so an interesting situation showed up as I got the spiderbois.
https://imgur.com/a/4fc9pvO

I have 2 spooders, one naked and one with extra Multistrike and +10 attack. A monster in his own right already.
However, now I face the option to give it the Monster Railspike - +20/+20 and Purge.

I'm in a bit of a tight spot on a streak so I would like this to play out in my favour. Anybody got any knowledge how this interaction works before I go yolo and pray?

[Frosty the Pyro]

Publicado originalmente por Gentle Giant:

Alright, so an interesting situation showed up as I got the spiderbois.
https://imgur.com/a/4fc9pvO

I have 2 spooders, one naked and one with extra Multistrike and +10 attack. A monster in his own right already.
However, now I face the option to give it the Monster Railspike - +20/+20 and Purge.

I'm in a bit of a tight spot on a streak so I would like this to play out in my favour. Anybody got any knowledge how this interaction works before I go yolo and pray?

This is all speculation but I would expect it would make a copy as it purges (assuming it dies to make a copy, so you always run the risk of it surviving the battle and disapearing). However if you reach the 4 of them needed to get their special upgrade, that (according to the wiki) removes their self copy extinquish, and then its just gone.

[gruetoo]

the spiked colony would purge when played, but you would get a copy (with purge) added when it dies. you would not accumulate additional copies of the spiked one (and it would be lost entirely if you win a fight with it not dying in the process), but the other one would duplicate like normal. In this case I would spike the 'clean' copy so the conventionally upgraded one duplicates and the other one doesn't become a dead draw in the meantime.

[Gentlest Giant]

You were both correct and I ended up playing it safe, yielding an overall satisfying result. Could have been better, but still frakkin' great.
I suppose the purgy boi will be useful with the Preserve I just picked up as an emergency resort.
https://imgur.com/a/snPtL8G

Edit:
Spooderboi ended up carryying the deck. There was only one good unit on the bottom floor.
https://imgur.com/a/cKWZirh

Jokes aside, I would most certainly have lost in circle 4 against the tanky Protectors of the Clipped if it was not for the power spike one upgraded spider provided. If not for the discussion of this thread, I would have passed, stumbled and lost - so I'm grateful to you all.

[Songbird]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2190796923

I gave my spikedriver colony +10 attack and +5/+5/burnout 1 before going into Fel, and I ended up with ten of them by the end of the fight (kind of a whoops, probably more like 6 would have been better). But I mean, they were 1 space 36x2 attack units that got +15 attack from Rector Flicker reform and +10 attack from Resin Block every time they came back. Just let them chump block for each other or fight behind Lady of the House while killing enough stuff to get Big Sludge going. These things are insane with reform (as are most fragile, high-attack units).

The spell version of the event is less commonly desirable, but it's not bad if you are lacking in targeted or full-floor damage. You do need something to deal with Purifiers and the like. It's ultimately not TOO much of a commitment to take (worst case it's like 4 mediocre cards you can play for 0 and they're gone, kinda like leaving Dregs in your deck if you don't use randomly selecting reform), and there's some other nice things about having consume cards in your deck.