Help with the Void

[soulpelt]

Can anyone give advice on beating the void with the first three characters? I've consistently gotten to it using its kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 'heres 45 damage lol' move then I die because 45 is basically impossible to block without a good hand of blocks.

[Ric]

So all of my successful Void-kills have had the same general strategy in common across all four characters: High-burst within the first 3 rounds to kill both of his minions before they can flood your deck with remorse/bane/void cards, and then the ability for you to keep the Void in control & under pressure.

Keeping the void in control means having a few cards that can slow down his punishment by having strong blocks (don't put too many in your deck or you won't be dishing out damage), and having access to weak/slow is a major push-back. A well placed weak/slow can turn that 40-60+ damage attack down to sub-20. Having sifts/discards are also handy because if any remorses go through, that starts a nasty snowball-effect that tends to not be recoverable unless you have lots of draw to tank through those.

Keeping the Void under pressure revolves around vulnerability in order to maximize your character's best heavy-hitters, and this can be difficult since he consumes stacks faster. Unless you're mass-producing energy, I don't recommend expensive vulnerability cards. Cheap 1-stack placers will serve you for the turn you're in. If you get bad luck and draw vulnerability + a ton of block? Or vulnerability + just one attack card? Hold them and block with the rest. It's better if you can maximize your damage and get one good chain of strikes, this way.

Good luck!

[Dabor]

I certainly wouldn't say it "revolves around" vulnerability.

There's a solid amount of cards in every class that are much better against the Void than anywhere else - a lot of Hidden bleed stuff prone to being wild overkill, anything Monk that scales to big piles of Fatigue or Shii, for Tempest it's just building up a mountain of Shock for a rage-fueled OTK (you'll only need to drop vuln on him once there, not keep it up).

Once you've got a good grip on the rest of the game, knowing when to make decisions in terms of cards/artifacts specifically to seek out stuff that'll be great at chewing through a 10+ turn fight against a 2000 HP boss becomes a big part of pushing your win-rate higher. Does anything scale its offense or defense well? Can I build up to a critical mass of bleed/shock/shii/fatigue/corruption to just go nuts with on round 6+? What's my plan to deal with the minion trash cards - kill them fast? Sift or discard them out? Do I have some cute option to straight up expel them? Etc etc.

Blocking 45 is also pretty viable to do repeatedly if you've been collecting strong artifacts and planned some expensive, black gemmed buffs in your deck to be a greedy grind. If you're using combo to trigger a yellow gem 5 times while also drawing 5 cards with your nick (and applying a ton of bleed too!), or have an Aegis letting you double trigger an upgraded Bide to get 44 block while you also refill with 4 combo - there's plenty of ways to just block *that much* constantly while also doing powerful stuff on the side.

Look for cards and artifacts with the potential to be *abused* - not just decent numbers you're playing for mundane face value every time.

[Ric]

I probably shouldn't have said that keeping the void under pressure revolves around vulnerability. There are other factors to consider. Character-specific stackers are going to be the lifeblood of your damage-generator (depending on your build), but I find that vulnerability can be a strong cap to help push those numbers up to where they need to be. That said, yes, it isn't to say that it is the sole reliance.

One more advice I have that came to mind is to learn the flow of the Void fight, itself, even if it means failure. This way, on subsequent runs, you can approach each floor with the mindset of choosing cards and artifacts that will specifically serve a purpose in that final showdown. My early failures came from not taking that fight's flow into account; the fact that the minion-phase floods you with junk and the post-minion-phase turns into a damage-race. I'd end up either ready for killing the boss w/out good preparation against the minions (thus flooding my deck with junk) or I'd bypass the minions fast, only to struggle with the pressuring the Void.

These issues can be avoided with good floor-preparation and recognizing strong synergies. Put that route-planner and map rewards feature to use. The moment you see cards that you know will work together, prioritize snagging them.

[ShadowDark3]

I've only played through with each character once on normal difficulty so far, but each time I just saved all my souls and was able to reduce the Void's health by more than half. Along with fighting the guardian that grants a 20% reduction to its health I don't think it has had much more than 500 health any time I've fought it, so have been able to take it down before the timer runs down on it "powering up" (I forget the exact phrasing on it). Best of luck on your next run :)