The Last Divinity at Covenant 25 - Are you finding it fun?

[Loviatar]

So I've been hard at work with the new DLC, re-mastering cards, unlocking the new ones, and now searching for crowns for my clan combinations before attempting expert challenges all over again.

But, I'm finding myself losing enjoyment for the game. I really enjoyed the early games, playing at lower covenants to get used to the new clan, re-gild some cards, and gradually get used to the Pact Shard system.

But upon hitting Cov25, I seem to be hitting a wall. I've won a couple of games, but after dozens of tries. I'm finding it difficult to even get to Seraph, nevermind the Last Divinity itself. And yes, sometimes I get too many pact shards too early, sometimes I just don't have a good deck/setup. But there are times where I feel I have a strong deck, get to the Last Divinity, and just finding I don't have the overpowering Damage and Health/Mitigation I need to survive more than a few rounds.

And for me, it's just not feeling as fun as before. I don't typically play hard modes on games, but I feel I'm not a stereotypical "casual" gamer either. I found unlocking the crowns and expert challenges of the base game fun, even though I only won every few games/tries.

My three wins so far have all been due to Little Fade/Melting Remnant. All completely broken runs: duo mini-Dante's with burnout and rage, hulking Legion of Wax with Eternal Flame Little Fade backup, and a multiple endless burnout Bounty Stalker run. Everything else so far has just gotten eviscerated at the end, if they even get that far.

I don't want to suggest nerfing anything; I am sure there are those who are doing well and enjoying the difficulty. I guess I just wanted to get some frustration out and maybe some hope to find fun again in challenging myself with Cov25. Because currently, I have no idea how I'm going to manage all the crowns, nevermind even thinking of tackling most of the expert challenges.

[BeastofBones]

@Loviatar:
This is good. Post a few more.
My initial impressions for the linked run would be your deck isn't very focused.
It's quite surprising that across 4 banner units, you have zero multistrikes, besides the innate feature of the Kinhost Pupa.
Most serious decks don't support that many banner units, simply because due to the way the game works, you often need to have your setup somewhat in place by turn 3, otherwise enemies are already knocking at your Pyre. As you've noted yourself, sharded heavy enemies late game have like 290 HP or something ridiculous. Simply playing beefy units that don't die doesn't help you much, because the actual challenge the game is asking of you is to be setup to deal X damage by turn 3. Drawing your beefy shardsoul carver doesn't help with that plan at all. It's fat, takes up most of the floor, but doesn't help you much endgame. Due to the nature of the game, you cannot visit enough merchant or steels, nor will you be offered or even afford to pay for the upgrades for 3-4 units anyways. Depending on clan combo, duping a properly upgraded unit provides immense value because the hellvent is copying the best upgrades and infusion, you don't have to find the upgrades elsewhere on the map. This is especially if the unit is 1 pip. Your best units would've probably been your duped Bogfly eggs, but they have no infusion. So focusing your gameplan around that might've yielded better results. Again, I'd have to play the run myself to see, but a typical answer would've been multi-strike + HP or quick on the bog fly eggs, with an infusion.

You have no frontloaded damage, all of your stuff takes time to come online, and your only premium removal is double Crushing Demise, with no upgrades. Because you went double capacity upgrades as your boss reward as well, and the size of your deck is large, you're at tremendous risk to not find the removal you need on the first 3 turns. This is especially true, because your final boss was Seraph the Diligent. Your deck doesn't have a reliable way to get to the backline, so your draw is going to severely hampered by the Purifiers dumping curses in your deck. Effectively drawing only 3-4 cards per turn is a death sentence, especially since your deck already needs time and cards to scale.

Your spells are also a mishmash, you have some decent cards in there, but most of them are all unupgraded. Especially with a low energy low draw deck, I'd expect to see more cards 0 costed with appropriate upgrades (e.g. spelllchain/holdover on crushing demise, permafrost/doublestack on Guilt, etc.)

Just from the above, I think you should be aware that you have a lot of fundamentals to work on. You're probably upgrading your units too early, and need to greed more holding out for proper upgrades. If you are going to largestone something just to help you through the early-mid rings, that's fine, beating sweep boss and Ring 3 is important. You can often remove a crutch unit later with an infusion, or outright purge it if necessary. But you do need to start doing stuff like scoring a good unit then digging for MS + good infusion, then dupe it, then start grabbing some proper upgrades on your spells.

[ShinryuEXE]

Escrito originalmente por Loviatar:

My latest run was a Wurmkin/Melted one

monstertrain://runresult/91fe9086-12d2-4f92-b340-b801abd6187f

I got to Seraph with it, but couldn't get myself set up in time to take out the pact charged tanks in the first couple of lines. But I felt this run was pretty weak to begin with. The Egg strategy was mostly working, but I ended up diverting a couple of times. I picked up a Baron, and that led to the endless Remnant Host, but I was finding I couldn't get the Baron upgraded and fused it out of the deck. I didn't feel confident enough to take the last trail, and the Engulfed in Smoke was the last card I actually obtained. I didn't even get to play it; not that it would have helped the situation, taking damage on units wasn't the issue, it was getting out enough damage to kill enemies before they got to the Pyre. I feel that even if I got past Seraph, I wouldn't have been able to deal with the hordes with TLD.

Looking at what you ended up with I think you had the makings of a pretty good egg deck. Right off the bat looking at the deck I'd say taking less units is something that would've helped a lot. Many of those units synergize with each other well but since you can't fit them on the same floor together that doesn't end up helping.
I'd have passed on or dropped the Shardsoul Carver altogether and left it to either the Kinhost Vessel alone, or the Kinhost and Bog Chrysalis together since you could fit them and the Spine Chief on the same floor with just a single capacity upgrade (well, without the Largestone at least).
With the Baron infused on the Kinhost I would've probably dropped the Chrysalis and used the Remnant host to block a bit for Spine Chief and help scale the Kinhost's Harvest (although Quick on the Kinhost sometimes doesn't work great with the Remnant Host since you want it to die every round in combat, which doesn't happen if you kill the enemies before they attack).
With the Kinhost as your only Banner Unit in the deck you'd be guaranteed to draw it first turn and with your intrinsic Soul Siphon and the Hardened Hull you're essentially guaranteed to hatch it first turn, so I would've tried to keep the deck a bit smaller and lean into that strategy.

Also, you said it yourself, if a card doesn't have a direct purpose in your deck, don't pick it up. There are a lot of good cards in the deck, though some of them seem at odds with one another.

[ShinryuEXE]

I played the same seed, here's my deck, though to be fair I did have an advantage going in since I had seen your deck:
monstertrain://runresult/95ccdc2c-8ef7-4638-bf9a-a02e2b053baf

I made some mistakes, namely having put a Largestone on the Bogfly Chrysalis since I spaced out that the bogflys it hatched would then each be 2 capacity instead of 1, which did not work with the Endless Molten Encasement I wanted to use.

I also went Corrupter Spine Chief instead of Infector.

Because of my mistake with the Bogflies, I transitioned to using the Kinhost Carapace and spent every ring searching for Multistike, but it was never offered. So I infused Baron into the Kinhost and used a combination of the Spine Chief's buff and the harvest + Endless Remnant Host to scale up through fights. If any multistrike had been offered it would've been much stronger, but as is it still worked out, though I made some mistakes on some fights and leaked a lot of damage.

Dante was also offered during the run, which would have been a much stronger pick to use with Corrupter Spinechief since his many stacks of multistrike are incredible with the damage buff, but I skipped it to run a deck closer to what you had originally shown off.

[Loviatar]

Yes,perhaps I shouldn't had posted that run, it was just the latest i had done, and somehow one of the more successful ones. The deck definitely didn't have focus; I had changed gears which made prior decisions compound on making the deck not flow well.

I think the Carver was the first, maybe second unit I had obtained. I was planning/hoping for an egg oriented deck, gambling on the egg relic at the start. I would have loved multistrikes, but I just wasn't finding them. I went Largestone on the Carver to have a beefier tank, with the idea of putting an egg behind it as well - not really the best plan, admittedly. Largestone on the Kinhost was a mistake, I had forgotten the size of Spine Chief, so that hurt a bit against Daedelus, and prompted going for Capacity gem. I got the Baron and the tomb units midgame, with the usual multi-strike harvest floor idea. But I think it was around after floor 6 that I was seeing I probably wouldn't have a decent Baron, prompting the fusion with the Carver. Which then left me the tomb units sort of no longer being too useful as they couldn't really fit.

So I didn't really have high hopes for the run early on, but persevered to see what I could make of it.

And I had just finished a new run before coming back here, and thought I had a decent chance. Until I misplayed and didn't see I was dying to an enemy until it was too late to restart. Annoyed at that, but happens.

This one was one of my bigger disappointments; I was feeling the deck was very strong. But I found I just didn't have the damage mitigation needed to survive.

monstertrain://runresult/9f302ab8-72d8-42dc-807e-c8dad7d6538d

It too is a bit unfocused with some iffy card picks, and probably should have tried to purge a couple more cards at least (like the spurious Alpha Fiend that no longer could even fit on the train even if I had the spare energy - it had been an early pick because i find the fusion to be fairly strong if you get it into a multistriker). The main issue I think though was riding high Pact Shards for most of the run, empowering the enemy to the point that I couldn't keep up.

Escrito originalmente por ShinryuEXE:

Dante was also offered during the run, which would have been a much stronger pick to use with Corrupter Spinechief since his many stacks of multistrike are incredible with the damage buff, but I skipped it to run a deck closer to what you had originally shown off.

Too many games recently ... I remember passing on a Dante one run, because at the time I didn't think I could fully optimize him ... I still regretted it a floor later. It could have been this run, perhaps I got the Carver a bit later. I remember thinking I didn't have an effective tank for another floor, or boosts for damage. I'm usually a better judge of things, but that run was just all over the place.

[ShinryuEXE]

Escrito originalmente por Loviatar:

I think the Carver was the first, maybe second unit I had obtained. I was planning/hoping for an egg oriented deck, gambling on the egg relic at the start. I would have loved multistrikes, but I just wasn't finding them. I went Largestone on the Carver to have a beefier tank, with the idea of putting an egg behind it as well - not really the best plan, admittedly. Largestone on the Kinhost was a mistake, I had forgotten the size of Spine Chief, so that hurt a bit against Daedelus, and prompted going for Capacity gem. I got the Baron and the tomb units midgame, with the usual multi-strike harvest floor idea. But I think it was around after floor 6 that I was seeing I probably wouldn't have a decent Baron, prompting the fusion with the Carver. Which then left me the tomb units sort of no longer being too useful as they couldn't really fit.

All in all that sounds like just too many units to me. It leads to an uncertain draw order on your units, which means more time taken to set up (especially with the eggs which are already going to take a turn to hatch, at minimum) and leads to some floors just not doing a whole lot at the cost of better focus on your primary floor.
And if you stacked stealth with the early Molten Encasement you could bypass the need for a tank. Works particularly well for Spine Chief since his large size limits his options, so a 1 capacity unit slots in nicely.

Escrito originalmente por Loviatar:

It too is a bit unfocused with some iffy card picks, and probably should have tried to purge a couple more cards at least (like the spurious Alpha Fiend that no longer could even fit on the train even if I had the spare energy - it had been an early pick because i find the fusion to be fairly strong if you get it into a multistriker). The main issue I think though was riding high Pact Shards for most of the run, empowering the enemy to the point that I couldn't keep up.

The thing that immediately stands out to me about this deck is too many units, and they're waaaay too large. I definitely would've dropped the Alpha Fiend by that point since as you pointed out you can't fit him anywhere.
More than that though, rather than take the Major Refraction for Steelsinger I would've taken the Minor Refraction and made him 1 capacity so you could fit him on the same floor as your other units, especially if you were planning to dupe him. Even morseso since you had the Glimmer and could use that (preferably with Holdover) to heal and buff both Steelsingers at the same time.

That said, yeah, I instantly noticed the 140 pact shards. Waaay more shards than I would've taken unless I was confident the deck could keep pace with it. Mind you, there are plenty of players who take way more shards than I do on average, so it absolutely is doable to take that level of shards, you just have to have good justification for it and a plan to deal with the ramped up enemies.

Escrito originalmente por Loviatar:

Escrito originalmente por ShinryuEXE:

Dante was also offered during the run, which would have been a much stronger pick to use with Corrupter Spinechief since his many stacks of multistrike are incredible with the damage buff, but I skipped it to run a deck closer to what you had originally shown off.

Too many games recently ... I remember passing on a Dante one run, because at the time I didn't think I could fully optimize him ... I still regretted it a floor later. It could have been this run, perhaps I got the Carver a bit later. I remember thinking I didn't have an effective tank for another floor, or boosts for damage. I'm usually a better judge of things, but that run was just all over the place.

To be clear, without using Corrupter Spinechief I wouldn't have recommended taking Dante there. But yeah, with the damage buff from Corrupter, even if you only splashed to Corrupter 2/Infector 1, Dante would be a potent force (just give him some hp to survive until Molten Encasement is up and to survive spikes)

[BeastofBones]

@Loviatar:
Honestly, just send out links to your last 10 runs. The 2 runs you posted have suggested some bad habits, being able to confirm whether they're present across a large # of runs allows us to more accurately identify your big ticket items that are likely preventing you from winning.

Based on the 2nd run you posted, I'd agree with Shinryu. Generally taking the Behemoth Stone is a mistake, and the fact that you did so suggests that you're running multi-floor setups. The weakness of going multi-floor is with most single floors, you can often sustain the floor by spending a single card. Multifloor is bad if you're spending 2-3 cards just to keep your floors alive, splitting your focus. It also means that when relentless rolls around, you're getting less value per unit, as the boss picks off each of your dudes individually. Your upgrade pattern suggests you may be prioritizing early/mid game too much, and not thinking enough about what your final endgame setup should be. Like you said it yourself, even if you reached Divinity, would your Steel Singers survive more than a few rounds? It's highly unlikely you're controlling Divinity across all 3 floors, which means you're taking damage on all 3 floors. And your deck isn't setup to handle that.

Looking at your deck, I'd have serious concerns about how well your deck is handling endgame backline access. Your non-quick Steelsinger would be at serious risk of outright dying against some late game waves, as now that Lightwings deal 25x2 and Shadewings are 15x3 when sharded, it doesn't take much before your dudes start getting oneshotted, 80 health is not a lot, tanking with Raw health alone is not a good idea. Holdover on the Focused Growth is fine through midgame, but it won't be enough lategame when you need it most. I agree with Shinryu, preventing the damage outright with a Glimmer on Holdover is a much better solution.

As you said, relentless was an issue. You either needed to commit to making regen work with a dupe and -1 energy on your double stacked wildwood sap, or go for an alternate solution for relentless (e.g. double stack / permafrost on tiresome climb, possibly duped).

[Plerr]

I didn't find the DLC to be as fun as the base game content. Once the "new" bias wore off, I came to realize that I don't appreciate the changes the shard system brought into the game. Most champions are simply too weak to keep up with the scaling of the empowered enemies, deck building is a lot less exciting since less strategies are viable, and the game feels even less balanced than before. I simply wasn't having fun at Cov 25 like I used to.

Eh, maybe i'm just over the game in general and the DLC failed to pull me back in.

[Loviatar]

Thanks again for all the advice and analysis. Though don't get me wrong, I really do enjoy the Pact Shard mechanics, it adds a lot of additional options for a run, and I really enjoy the potential fusions that can be made. But it becomes clear that you there are only a few fusions worth the shards and difficulty spike at cov25, which I feel restricts things a bit much. I realize this is part of the idea and difficulty at cov25, I'm just finding more frustration than fun now with it.

As requested, here are a few of my most recent run attempts at Cov25

This one I kicked myself over. It seemed to be going well, even though it was an odd setup at the end. But I ended up messing saving/restarting the run from not fully paying attention. The base idea was the Railbeater on a floor below the trampling Penumbra. Applies melee weakness to the front unit, then the next turn, the Penumbra smashed through the floor with doubled attack damage. But I didn't notice that at one point the Penumbra wasn't killing the entire floor, and then I got it in my head that my pyre could handle what got past; until it registered that it was a 19x2, which killed my Pyre before I could save it. No idea if it would have really done well against TLD in any case.
monstertrain://runresult/ba165494-2d3a-43ae-a5cd-71c06b63999f

Don't remember the loss for this, likely just wasn't getting enough damage out to overcome the enemy waves.
monstertrain://runresult/686cf002-6be0-44ff-b39e-8e87d06713da

A previous Sentient attempt, I was trying a few runs specifically to get Explosive, but wasn't really panning out.
monstertrain://runresult/37c0d7e0-86ca-4852-8844-dc43791b681f

I had some success with Imp Parade Queen before, so was looking to emulate that, focusing on rage building. Being too spread out on floors I believe killed this one.
monstertrain://runresult/9e7fee7d-8b65-40bb-bffa-16722b302bec

An early loss, I think just bad draw and now being able to set up quickly enough.
monstertrain://runresult/f25e2fb3-ee88-4b5e-acff-dac1e1bf1e3f

Midgame loss, again just getting overrun ... probably too high with Pact Shards without a correspondingly OP deck
monstertrain://runresult/615b8775-08cf-42d0-b7af-7d678b240b19

Two floor setup with big Railbeater and Siren on one floor, other Railbeater and Queen on another.
monstertrain://runresult/60e2cedf-9742-487c-b07a-2f982958cc3f

Deck wasn't incanting fast enough to unphase Solgard in time
monstertrain://runresult/ccc0f1fe-697f-458d-9fd5-3a6ab379376a

My last best run actually reaching TLD. Still ended up getting overrun
monstertrain://runresult/f591077c-09ac-4208-a9a0-489afc7b141d

[Loviatar]

Well, vindication has come. A win! *fanfare*

Seems like the Melted Remnant are my lucky clan. This time with Rector Flicker. The real MVP though was Legion of Wax fused with Entombed Explosive, Waxer Snuffer, endless and Intent on Death.

monstertrain://runresult/1e14e01b-ecc8-47df-ade0-88a2f9a4567c

It was still a struggle, and required a couple of rretries against TLD. Often found Spellshield making my Memento Mori spells useless. But the real trick was to manipulate around all the "+armour on unit death" buffs. Not so bad when it's just the unit, but when it's applied to the whole enemy floor, it nearly made my strategy impossible (based on either the Legion dying and exploding, or my attack line harvesting the Molten Encasement fuse with Remnant Host).

I would have chucked the Carver given the chance, but it was a strong unit getting me towards the endgame. Waxer Snuffer came late, which changed the Legion from a good unit to OP.

So it's at least perked my spirits up a bit. It was still a struggle, and for a time I was considering the run a lost cause due to the armour buffs. Luckily a lot of explosions and some tactical dripfalling won the day.

[BeastofBones]

@Loviatar:
I'd like to actually play through some of these runs before giving a full comment. Will most likely have to wait till the weekend. My gut intuition from looking at the deck lists is still that overall you're not holding out for the right upgrades on units. You seem to have a very strong habit of taking non-scaling upgrades, most likely too early, which I think is why you're struggling late game. If you are watching videos from other players like Narninian, I would really focus strongly on noting on which upgrades they're valuing, and minimum viable unit composition. Narninian in particular is a very good judge of knowing whether his deck already has enough juice to make it without requiring further adds and he plays extremely quickly, making him great watch for figuring out how to make certain cards work. I also do not think your spell upgrade priorities are correct, there's quite a few questionable upgrades in your deck lists, while ignoring spells that should be prioritized. This leads to a bit of a focus problem, where you're trying to add more value to your deck because it always feels like you come up short, but really what you need to do is make the proper upgrades and cut speculative picks that you simply will never use.

monstertrain://runresult/686cf002-6be0-44ff-b39e-8e87d06713da

I don't think the Hollow is the right call here. Even if you did want to use it, I don't think you place both a Largestone and the Hollow infusion on it at the same time. Doing so strands the Hollow capacity wise, as it can only scale itself and nothing else without access to overstacking. Infusing Coldcaelia to Siren seems like a waste, pretty sure there was something else you could've done, possibly duping the Siren then infusing to it self, then duping it again late. Spikedrivers can be good, but you really need to think about what your endgame setup is. If you're aiming for an incant strategy, drawing the drivers doesn't help you, as they're not incants, and you likely have no way to safely play them lategame. Also, since Seraph the Chaste is your boss, it seems kinda questionable to go Bristling Sentient, as your champ is going to be deadweight in the Seraph fight.

Edit: Took a look at the actual seed. Went Cultivating Sentient 3. Banner combo I went with was Awoken Hollow, Animus of Will (go left on ring 3), Siren of the Sea, Rage Siren. Rage Siren is attractive as DPS as despite it being the Chaste, as there's no Razorsharp Edge or other attack buffs to be had, besides sharpen, and the Hollow infusion can give it some non-removable stats. You can also keep a fat Trainsteward in the deck to force Seraph to debuff you less often. In order to utilize Hollow to keep it more similar to your build, I did Hollow infused into Siren of the Sea to frontline, Animus of Will into Rage Siren, which meant it turned into a triple striker. Rage Siren shop upgrades were multistrike, incant armor +2, Siren of the Sea had +25 HP, didn't use the 2nd slot. The armor incant + hollow infusion let's you go top floor against Divinity. If the draw order had worked out better, it's also possible to overstack everything on mid which was done on other fights, but it's not necessary and the draw order didn't work out for Divinity.

At the end of the day, approaching this one as a standard incant run would've probably given you a good shot at winning. Going experimental on your banner unit choice and infusions did you in. Since you're struggling to pull in wins, I'd strongly recommend you learn how to make regular bread and butter builds work before dipping into oddball builds.

[Loviatar]

And finally, a win without the Melting Remnant! Hellhorned with a smidge of Stygian. It struggled against TLD, as I hadn't fully thought out the plan to fight it, and the setup required vulnerable units up on the top floor. Luckily, judicious use of armour and Thy Holiest Shield.

monstertrain://runresult/2a4e3b46-6f03-4113-97e7-200ece7c4f2f

To give an idea of my planning, i have developed perhaps an overfondness of Railbeater and the melee weakness debuff. The plan formed to have the Railbeater on one floor, to apply melee weakness for the Prince, allowing it to get kills and armour up to tank for a heavy hitter behind it. Inferno was to help weaken/wipe out the bottom floor. This made the fights before Relentless pretty automatic; Pyre Chomper for extra energy, Inferno the bottom floor, then other spells to buff and mop up. Did take a little planning to not overkill things, to let weakened units get to the top for the Prince.

Enemy Spell Shields seem to happen far too much as well. Mid-fight, I saw that all three floors I was fighting has spell shields, and I am pretty sure the floor before had it as well.

@WraithCo, thank you for the analysis. Though I am not sure what you mean by 'holding out' for the right upgrades. I often feel I hold out too long, and end up not getting what would be ideal, but have already passed on ones that would have probably been sufficient. Example; the Inferno in the above run, I was holding out for a -2 energy stone, but it didn't show in any of the temples. Luckily, I could work with it as it was, and then a late Split Anvil solved mana issues. That said, I have found many runs stop dead because I didn't have upgraded units, from not picking up stones that are useful, but maybe not ideal. Sometimes that's just from luck, though, fishing and not finding the stones you want.

For the run you analysed, I cannot fully remember my thoughts. It was a game amongst a bunch of Awoken/X attempts. I wasn't having success with Explosive, and likely the opening cards didn't have any healing/regen beyond the restores, so decided to try a different tactic. The Spike Drives were a poor decision, agreed. Still, the deck was doing decently until, well, it didn't.

I do think I am starting to do better with my bad habits. I'm looking at cards a bit more now and trying to think of their overall use, rather than grabbing whatever seems useful. I'm still not timing my duplication opportunities well, but focusing more on that. Upgrade stones, I do need to look more at. I know I use largestone (and by extension, Behemothstones) fairly often, when that seems to be against popular play. I have been looking at Endless a bit more as a viable option for tank units, but other than the +25 heatlth Heartstone, I don't see many viable options unless playing Stygian or Umbra. A couple of Heartstones seems pretty ineffective against the tide of damage that comes from the TLD fight.

I also maybe value Quick a bit too much as well, though as they say in the roleplaying community, the best debuff is the Death debuff, so killing stuff before it kills you sounds like a plan. Of course, the issue comes up when your Quick damage isn't killing stuff. So, will have to look at the damage upgrades more closely as well.

[BeastofBones]

@Loviatar:
Whoops, didn't attach the run summary. Maybe there's a bit of extra info you can gather from seeing the full decklist.

monstertrain://runresult/eb5f3266-bf5c-4e2a-b30a-265fbb7ffa51

I think once I get a chance to play a few more of your runs, it'll become more apparent what I mean by holding out for the correct upgrades and infusions. You said it yourself, the deck seemed to be doing well until it didn't. I think looking at your decklist, I could kinda tell that was going to happen, as your scaling in the deck won't keep up with tier 3 enemies or Divinity. My general feel is you tend to prioritise getting beefy raw stats onto units, and that often isn't going to be enough to win alone. Most of your decks tend towards ignore scaling your banner units via spells, and I think that making that adjustment might be the missing piece you need to start seeing more success at Cov 25.

Typically when we select and upgrade our banner units, we're already looking ahead to Seraph and Divinity. Making a super fat Awoken Hollow while fine through midgame, isn't going to be enough long term, as it simply won't scale fast enough, nor does it deliver the required # of hits to deal with Divinity waves. At 5 pip, it also doesn't fit on the same floor as something else. If you were using him to buff up a Siren or Animus of Will, then it would make more sense. You could also cut the Hollow entirely, and simply dupe the Siren of the Sea after finding multi-strike on it. Then your final floor setup would be double Siren + Sentient on one floor.

Largestone can be fine in certain scenarios, but you really are most likely committing to a 2 unit floor in that case, unless you can overstack. So you really have to ask yourself, does this 2 man unit beat Seraph and Divinity? Sometimes the answer is yes, e.g. Sweeper + multistrike or Animus of Will behind a Cultivating Sentient, and you have extra attack buffs. In which case go for it. Often times for generic units though, the answer is no, and you need another unit on the floor. If you apply the Largestone upgrade on a 2 pip unit, you're also locking yourself out of a 6 pip setup which is champion, infused unit, duped infused unit. In the case of units like Siren's, the incant +2 armor offers better long term value than the largestone, as 20 incants matches the 40 HP from largestone, and it does so without a capacity drawback. Yes it doesn't have the benefit of initial health, that can often be worked around.

[BeastofBones]

@Loviatar:
Original run:
monstertrain://runresult/ba165494-2d3a-43ae-a5cd-71c06b63999f

This was the one where you went Railbeater / Monstrous Penumbra. You went really heavy on banner units. I think in some ways, you're too clever for your own good, working really hard to setup Railbeater + Penumbra trample combo. It's a lot of effort spent, and the payoff isn't really quite there. Here's what you could've done instead.

https://imgur.com/a/lIDgMVY

Link to my version of the run:
monstertrain://runresult/bbf928fa-09e6-4dc1-9239-f90dcc573bf4

If you're playing to win right now, it's highly recommended you take Architect Penumbra over Monstrous or Gorge, as it's significantly easier to work with than the other two. Since you're at the point where you're just trying to get any kind of win, take the advantages you're offered for now, then revisit the harder options when you have a better understanding of the game.

Because of the starting cards shown in the opening hand and the starting artifact (Light's Gift), Robot becomes extremely powerful, as it doesn't even need quick to preserve it's health. Now there's only three questions left.

1) How do you buff Robot's damage so it can basically take on the world by itself?
You actually have an immediate answer in your starting cards here. Rage Imp infused to itself is an AOE Ritual of Battle. I put Endless on it which basically makes it a holdover card, then Malicka Artifact obviated this need. Rage imp infusion is going to be a very common way to scale out your damage in Hellhorned, as normally you can chump block with it to return it to your hand every turn, it's cheap, it's repeatable, and it buffs the whole floor. In this case due to Light's gift, you have to torch the Imp, but that's OK. Finding Rage double card basically sealed the deal here, as it was offered twice during the run. Once you generate some rage from the endless imps, stop suiciding them so you can draw through your deck, then simply suicide the Impish scholar every turn to repeatedly your rage. This puts the game out of reach fairly quickly. Poor Seraph was staring down 12k x3 from the Robot alone there, plus a bunch more from the others.

Also, correct upgrades on Robot were just the +25 health for most of the game, left one slot open till the final shop, where I had a choice between another +25 and multistrike. Largestone doesn't make sense here, because the flat +15 attack doesn't scale, whereas having the extra slot to place down Imps and morsels willl quickly make up the 15 attack difference and beat it handily. The extra +15 HP largestone offers over Heartstone also isn't worth it. There are situations where Largestone is correct on Robot, but this is not one of them. Quick is normally good on Robot, but because you have Light's gift, it only gives you value if you're forced to setup mid against Divinity. Otherwise it does nothing and is a wasted upgrade. Since the Welder Helper was offered fairly early, I was guaranteed a way to setup top, the Winged Technology that I dug for later was just more icing on the cake.

2) How do I protect my Robot in relentless with bosses?
You already have the damage shield card in your starters. Doublestack and -1 on it was good, especailly due to the fact that the deck ended up high energy with both Perils, Rubble morsels, and the Abandoned Stave artifact. So that's basically another problem solved. Impish scholar was later taken to return it to hand if necessary.

3) How do I setup top against Divinity?
Taking the Welder Helper early was an out. Because I actually settled my Merchant of Steel upgrades in Ring 2 (purchased +25 HP on Robot, endless on Rage Imp), I was under zero pressure to visit any future merchants of steel. This meant I got to visit a lot of magic shops, and even got to reroll a trinket shop looking for damage shield for morsels artifact. Found it in Ring 5 or so, and the game is pretty much over at that point. If you're not confident about setting up top, then you could snag Quick + go mid only for Divinity, although sustain would become a larger concern.

Because I already saw a scaling solution, and defensive solution straight out of my starting cards and artifacts, I already determined very early on that other banner units are not necessary at all. Some banner units in Monster Train are pretty much capable of carrying a run single handedly with proper buffs. Recognizing when you're in such a situation will let you do powerful things. This run was arguably a nut draw, as the starting cards were good, you saw your banner + infusion very early, and the artifacts offered were excellent, as you potentially could have had high energy and high draw with no capacity issues (Wingmaker, and you can suicide endless Penumbra to repeat the +capacity increase and make a ridiculously large floor.) These are definitely the kind of runs you want to be able to win. If you're not familiar with using Robot, then perhaps you don't have the confidence to shove all in on him here. But that's where watching other players play can help with making judgement calls. Narninian's has done many runs with Robot that are similar to this, in a lot of cases, the only thing that changes is how you buff the Robot. In this case, it's endless Rage Imp + Damage shield, in another run it'll be Ritual of Battle instead of the Imp, the preferable option is actually Double stacked or holdover Void bindings backed by holdover Perils, as that's an all in one solution.

Looking at the deck lists from your other runs, I do think if you want to up your win percentage, learn how to recognize when it's appropriate to chase a buffing deck that only has 1-2 banner units. It's probably one of the most common ways to win right now. Yes you will take more banner's than that early, as you will often carry extra units for infusions, or may want to hold out till ring 4 so that you've seen all the units before making your infusions, but watch other players and really pay attention to what their final setup looks like. As above, once you've seen a working setup, you can often make card substitutions that essentially have the same end result, and that will widen the number of runs you can use your knowledge to secure a victory.

[Nathaniel Prime]

It seems like a lot of people here know a guy who knows a guy who has a nine hundred streak playing on cov25, but, like, what's the percentage of actual wins for everybody else? There's always going to be "that guy" who has just played so much that he always wins, but that doesn't mean the game is well-balanced. There are people who I win Hell Rush as often as not and am just about done getting all the hero/clan combos on cov25 TLD, but the game has not ceased being too hard to be nearly as much fun as pre-DLC.

There are also people called fire eaters who, in real life, put torches into their mouths and extinguish them without incinerating themselves. You can certainly say that "the skill ceiling is very high" for that act, but it doesn't make it fun or doable for most people.

[Loviatar]

Things have been going better lately, a couple of non-Melting wins now, as well as a win while doing an Expert Challenge. Though it could be said to be a 'cheat' as it was True Hero, the one where you get Dante rather than your champion.

Still, it might be a path I'll look at for a little while, since some of the Challenges are actually easier to run with certain clans and strategies (not all, I have no idea how the Blighted Existence one can be done, but we'll see at some point).

@WraithCo
The Railbeater/Penumbra run, was mostly my mistake. I was simply not paying attention as was just assuming the floors were getting wiped. Reflexes too slow to save the run to see what I could have done better. I feel I could have done well, though again not sure against TLD.

I'm also curious on the thoughts about Architect Penumbra over the other two. Personally I've found Architect the hardest to win with. My preference is Gorge, which is my usual choice given the chance.