10-Win Streak On Floor 20

[johan4623]

https://www.reddit.com/r/LuckBeALandlord/comments/15wqr03/10_win_streak_on_floor_20_i_am_finally_free/

I posted this on Reddit, but wanted to share here too. More details + lifetime stats in the post itself. I'm not playing much these days but if you're looking for tips to improve feel free to ask and I'd be happy to help.

[Groove Wizard]

Good job, man!
My personal best is 11 (yeah, I'm gonna be that guy, haha) [edit : it's 13 now]

I saw you said you might write a guide at some point. If you get around to doing it, I'll happily contribute!

[johan4623]

Congrats!! Glad to see other people pushing the limits in this game. If you have any cool strats that you think wouldn't be used by most players feel free to talk about it, I'm down for any type of discussion about LBAL.

[Groove Wizard]

Cool! I don't know about strats, to be honest, as I'll probably say "yes" to any question that starts with "have you ever been carried by". But there's so much to say about every symbol. I'd be happy to discuss anything as well!

Apart from the basic stuff, like "don't reroll unless you're guaranteed a rare drop", "don't blindly pick pear", "disable gold-generating essences if you can to keep extra damage for the landlord fight", etc... Here's what comes to mind :

- Crabs and Cultists are potential run-winners, but can be detrimental if you don't find enough, so I have a "2-coal rule of thumb" for those. If I'm offered a crab or cultist during or shortly after the filling phase, I'll usually take it, because I need as many options as possible for late-game scaling. However, I won't if I already have 2 coals. In my experience, it's enough to last long enough to find less risky stuff to build around, and you'd better play safe until they've hatched. On that note, I generally avoid having more than 2 coals at once. Whether or not you can afford to pick Coal mostly comes from practice though.
Also, if I don't have more than 2 cultists, I will start removing them as soon as I find anything that can carry me. Otherwise, I'll take the risk and see where it leads me.

- I consider flower synergies to be some of the weakest things you can do, and I'll remove it over Cherry if I didn't pick a Bee or Rain during the filling phase. I generally remove Coin last, as it's the starting item that's most likely to either turn great or be naturally removed thanks to items.

- 20 gold is a lot, so I'll take Mouse or Cheese over symbols that give less than 1.5 on average during the filling phase. I'll also take Miner if I have a lot of empty slots left. However, I rarely pick Toddlers, and almost never pick Monkeys.

- Deck-thinning's often a problem, and I usually love an early Hex of destruction. I'll usually wait until I have 3 really good symbols before removing it.

- Silver and Gold arrows are great, but I never take Bronze ones, unless I'm in that weird spot where I don't have anything special going and just a lot of 3-4 gold symbols.

- When I've reached 20 symbols, I'll keep taking symbols that give at least 3 gold, or potentially great 2-gold ones like Hooligan or Dame, but only if I'm not relying on a strategy that needs me to keep the deck thin (Crabs and Cultists, typically).

- I find card symbols to be too unreliable, and I never blind-pick them unless they're offered next to cherries and seeds.

- Umm, Frying Pan can win on its own if you find it early.

- The landlord will always prevent seeds from growing at some point, so Watering Can (and essence) is actually a decent pick if nothing better is offered, as it turns seeds into permanent 12-gold symbols.

That's all I can think of without getting either too obvious or too specific. Generally my advice to anyone who wants to get better would be to always try and do the math. Knowing how much the upcoming rents are and that a whole run is only 90 turns-long notably helps a lot to decide whether or not to take a Coal or a Dwarf that will drink Wine. That, and carefully reading what everything does. It took me a while to realize that Carrots turn rabbits into monsters.

[johan4623]

Thank you for sharing! My thoughts,

First of all, can't believe I never thought of the disabling essences idea for the landlord fight. I don't think it would have budged my overall winrate by much, but there have definitely been times where I lose against the landlord with like less than 100 coins to go and I'm sure you know how frustrating that is.

- Completely agree with crab/cultist. I pick them pretty aggressively early on. Also agree about prioritizing coals if they are found early. Coals are guaranteed to be useful throughout the duration of the run as opposed to the more situational crabs/cultists. On Reddit I've had users argue with me about picking 2-sided dice early on over coal/crabs/cultists which I feel is very dumb.

- Flower is bad. Relies on water drop essence or sun to be good, but by the time I find those I've probably removed flower.

- I cannot believe you don't take Toddler! It's the best common eater because of all the destruction options it has. With Jack O'Lantern, I'll usually stack up 2-3 toddlers and they'll easily contribute to a win especially with additional synergies later on. Toddler is normally an auto-pick for me as I'm filling up the board. But yeah monkeys are not great and I'd rather take a mouse than a monkey.

- I personally never take an early Hex of Destruction unless I'm short on money. I'll often take Tedium or Draining. There was a period of time where I did take Destruction, definitely has its ups and downs.

- Also never really take bronze arrow, glad someone agrees with that haha.

- Interesting, I'll take suits early on because they have so many synergies and if I manage to get 3 then they at least aren't a negative. They've been the centerpiece of a lot of my victories.


Overall it seems like we play very similarly, as is probably the case for people reaching these winstreaks. I feel like I played most games on auto-pilot other than like 2-3 decisions where you have to lean towards a certain strategy and hope for the best. While most games are winnable, with absolutely perfect play I feel only around 80-90% games can technically be won, and realistically if I'm playing well I'm peaking at like 70-80% winrate. Would you agree?

My basic advice would be more or less exactly what you said here "When I've reached 20 symbols, I'll keep taking symbols that give at least 3 gold, or potentially great 2-gold ones like Hooligan or Dame, but only if I'm not relying on a strategy that needs me to keep the deck thin (Crabs and Cultists, typically)."

[Groove Wizard]

Thanks for sharing too! I mostly agree with the numbers you gave on winrate. I do feel like there are unwinnable runs. Perhaps one loss in three, I'm like "Eh, there's nothing I could've done differently". However, I have around 20% WR on ascension 20 in Slay the Spire, and I've watched enough of Jorbs' vids to realize how clueless I actually am, hehe. The fact that even we who seem to be among the best players don't feel the same about certain things comforts me in the thought I still have room for improvement and might eventually look back at these doomed runs and think they were actually winnable.

Anyway, you're making some good points, which gives me a chance to elaborate on certain things :

- 2-sided dice vs. Crab/Cultist/Coal : Well I agree about Coal. It's simple math, really. Now for crabs and cultists, I haven't really made up my mind yet (there's the room for improvement, haha). Second Cultist or Crab definitely makes sense over a 2-sided die. The first one on the other hand... Generally I just pick crabs, because worst case scenario, they'll give me 1 gold, which is fine for a board-filling symbol, and I can live with -1 income. But with cultists being so risky and 2-sided die being so good early on, I generally have a hard time deciding. Wish I had that figured out, but I really don't. I'll usually lean towards dice if I have at least one coal already, or lots of 2-gold symbols. Otherwise, I can go either way.

- Toddler, piñata and candy are all things I just don't wanna see and will only pick over unarguably worse symbols, at which point I start considering picking others. I'm mostly bothered by the fact Toddlers only give 6 gold on destruction, which makes it really dependent on Jack'O Lantern to generate significant gold imo. If I have the item, I'll definitely pick toddlers, but otherwise, I'll generally prefer a Goldfish over it. I do pick gift boxes when I'm filling the board, but I'm happy just letting them disappear on their own.

- Hex of destruction : I actually don't take it that often, since it can ruin a run if you pick it too early and are forced to pick meh symbols to fill the board, which is counter-productive. I really do like it as an answer in cases of "ok-symbol bloating" though. But it's certainly one of the most unpredictable symbols. Other than that, yes, Tedium and Draining are great early on!

- Suits : I find it hard to assess their efficiency. I've experimented a lot with them, and I feel like they have a 33/33/33% chance of doing poorly/fine/great. But you always need a win condition, and they do qualify as such. I suppose committing to suits a little more often might be one of the things I could do to turn seemingly unwinnable runs into wins.

[johan4623]

Do you have any recommendations for games like this one? I like the concept but have gotten kind of tired of the specific game.

Personally I'm firmly on the side of taking that first crab/cultist instead of 2-die unless 1. I'm running low on money or 2. I'm like 2-3 rent cycles in and those symbols will almost certainly be a waste at that point. I play the first few rent cycles pretty aggressively in terms of staying just above rent and holding out for potential game-winners. This tends to work out because the first few cycles are very easy to pay even with a lot of skipping and low number symbols.

For Toddler yeah they have a poor base payout but the amount of destructible options makes up for it and for example a gift will technically yield like 17, bubble machine 3 bubbles, and of course pinata is a 60-bomb even with base toddler. An early toddler/pinata is pretty easy to get and gives you a really nice cushion for selecting better symbols. I agree Toddlers become irrelevant in the mid-game if not boosted by Jack O'Lantern or Comedian... Also toddlers are not affected in any way by the landlord and having 2-3 of them (with Lantern) will put in work for sure.

Suits are tricky - there's times when I curse myself for not picking them up earlier and other times I'll have two of them on the board doing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I feel like they are useful more often than not just because of the number of available items/essences, and card shark is a great win condition that doesn't get nerfed much by the landlord.

[Groove Wizard]

Interesting remarks. Our playstyles may actually be more different than I thought. I do very little skipping early on - usually not at all, except when I'm down to less than 3 empty slots, and yet I'm not even that picky at that point. Rent 6 (300 gold) is the biggest run killer for me, and the flat loss from a couple early skips roughly amounts to what makes ok runs unable to go any further (Especially when Coal is in the picture).

I also... pretty much don't care about fine print, haha. I'm confident losing to the landlord happens to me less than 5% of the time. A build that's solid enough to make it past rent 9 is generally gonna win, even with half the income being denied in the last bit.

When it comes to Toddlers, well. I do take gift boxes when I'm filling the board, but to me the "toddler food" aspect is really anecdotical. It basically gives you 0.83 gold a turn, and every turn you have both gift and toddler on the board and they don't connect, that automatic 0.83 value is effectively deducted from what the toddler actually brings you, which makes a toddler destroying a gift probably more like 10-11 gold on average, instead of 17. And piñata sure can be great, but only if destroyed very early on, as the bloat from the candy will also make you lose gold. It rarely generates the full 48 gold bonus, and absolutely can do more harm than good by delaying coal timers and hindering cultist strats. Whenever I do the math when I'm running it, I always feel like it's a lot worse than it is on paper.

And suggestions, well... the only deckbuilding game that didn't feel like a poor man's Slay the Spire when I started figuring it out was Nowhere Prophet. Runs are really long though, and it takes a while to get used to, but it's absolutely worth it!
If we expand the search to "strategy roguelikes", I had a great time with Ring of Pain too.
I'd be happy to hear your suggestions as well!

[ANYMOUSE]

Originally posted by johan4623:

Do you have any recommendations for games like this one? I like the concept but have gotten kind of tired of the specific game.

If you're interested in a recommendation for games like LBAL, you can try Endgame of Devil. Gameplay is very similar, except that it's presented as more of an autobattler. But the drafting mechanic and the way symbols or units are arrayed randomly on a board each turn is very similar.

I actually played that game first and then got LBAL. Both games are very fun and scratch a similar itch. I also like this game concept, and hope we continue to see more of these types of games, like how Slay the Spire inspired so many offshoots.

[Groove Wizard]

Originally posted by ANYMOUSE:

Originally posted by johan4623:

Do you have any recommendations for games like this one? I like the concept but have gotten kind of tired of the specific game.

If you're interested in a recommendation for games like LBAL, you can try Endgame of Devil. Gameplay is very similar, except that it's presented as more of an autobattler. But the drafting mechanic and the way symbols or units are arrayed randomly on a board each turn is very similar.

I actually played that game first and then got LBAL. Both games are very fun and scratch a similar itch. I also like this game concept, and hope we continue to see more of these types of games, like how Slay the Spire inspired so many offshoots.

I'm gonna have a look at that!

[johan4623]

Originally posted by Groove Wizard:

Interesting remarks. Our playstyles may actually be more different than I thought. I do very little skipping early on - usually not at all, except when I'm down to less than 3 empty slots, and yet I'm not even that picky at that point. Rent 6 (300 gold) is the biggest run killer for me, and the flat loss from a couple early skips roughly amounts to what makes ok runs unable to go any further (Especially when Coal is in the picture).

I also... pretty much don't care about fine print, haha. I'm confident losing to the landlord happens to me less than 5% of the time. A build that's solid enough to make it past rent 9 is generally gonna win, even with half the income being denied in the last bit.

When it comes to Toddlers, well. I do take gift boxes when I'm filling the board, but to me the "toddler food" aspect is really anecdotical. It basically gives you 0.83 gold a turn, and every turn you have both gift and toddler on the board and they don't connect, that automatic 0.83 value is effectively deducted from what the toddler actually brings you, which makes a toddler destroying a gift probably more like 10-11 gold on average, instead of 17. And piñata sure can be great, but only if destroyed very early on, as the bloat from the candy will also make you lose gold. It rarely generates the full 48 gold bonus, and absolutely can do more harm than good by delaying coal timers and hindering cultist strats. Whenever I do the math when I'm running it, I always feel like it's a lot worse than it is on paper.

And suggestions, well... the only deckbuilding game that didn't feel like a poor man's Slay the Spire when I started figuring it out was Nowhere Prophet. Runs are really long though, and it takes a while to get used to, but it's absolutely worth it!
If we expand the search to "strategy roguelikes", I had a great time with Ring of Pain too.
I'd be happy to hear your suggestions as well!

I'm surprised at your lack of skipping because I feel it's so critical to setting up a board with a higher 2-3 coin average early on. But I can totally see how skipping negates a lot of potential money from a fuller early board of symbols (even if they don't amount to much later).

I'm basically happy to skip if it not a symbol that can potentially win or at least has the potential to have strong synergies. It's relatively common for me to take like 5 symbols in total within the first 2 rent payments so that I can fill up the board with as many 2+ coin symbols as possible. I'm super conscious of board management... but maybe I go too far.

The 300 rent payment is brutal! My #1 killer might be 600... the jump from 450 -> 600 is big and you need a really solid board at that point. 300/600 have definitely caused the most pain.

For toddler, I'm only really taking toddler food before my board fills up because yes having it lying around becomes a negative when mid-game is reached. It's often just an early-game moneymaker that helps me wait for better symbols. An exception is Jack O'Lantern at which point toddlers generate enough money to be useful all game.

[Groove Wizard]

Yeah, I feel like early skipping or not decides the outcome of a lot of games... It's also one of the hardest things to theorize I believe. Usually, if I was lucky enough to find some anchors and 2-sided dice very early on, I'm ok with skipping stuff. On the other hand, if I mostly just have 1 gold symbols, I'll just take more to build up some savings to make it through rent 6, hopefully finding stuff like Pizza the cat or the banana item along the way. That, or some ridiculous rare symbol. Just a habit I took up after finding that too many times, the answer to the "why did I lose ?" question was me being too picky early.

I'm still learning new things anyway! Recently I've had a lot of success blind-picking Amethyst, which I used not to do, and I also figured out how absurdly good Thief can be if you have Wanted Poster and a way to destroy them. With time I'll certainly find more definitive answers to stuff I'm still unsure about.

I saw a screenshot on Discord from somebody who's done a 17-win streak, and also happens to have played almost twice as many games as I have, which makes sense. In my experience, you never stop improving as long as you keep questioning what you do. :)

[nu]

is there any chance you could record some floor 20 runs and post them to youtube? i'm stuck on 17 and just don't know what i'm doing wrong.

i try to pick potential synergy and such early on until filled w/ 20 symbols, and then either skip crap, pick 1/limited life items for temp bonus to fish for high value symbols or build-making bombs. the 225 and 300 rent breakpoints keep eating me alive though.

[Groove Wizard]

Originally posted by nu:

is there any chance you could record some floor 20 runs and post them to youtube? i'm stuck on 17 and just don't know what i'm doing wrong.

i try to pick potential synergy and such early on until filled w/ 20 symbols, and then either skip crap, pick 1/limited life items for temp bonus to fish for high value symbols or build-making bombs. the 225 and 300 rent breakpoints keep eating me alive though.

Hey. :)

Well you seem to be doing things right. Honestly experience comes a long way in this game, and there typically isn't any good practice or rule that is valid just 100% of the time. Sometimes I'll keep adding stuff beyond 20 symbols even if I'm running cultists, sometimes I won't pick a second Coal early, etc. Generally you want to set rules for yourself, and then slowly develop the instincts to guess when it's right to break them. Basically you can only improve. :)

To answer your question, I have recorded stuff in the past, so I could do that.
Although since there is generally much more to say about every move than is likely bearable, I think it could be more productive for you to record a few runs and let people give you their thoughts. I'll be happy to if you do! But I'll start recording anyway, will keep you posted if I have any interesting runs (probably not just yet though as I'm a bit busy these days).

Also, at some point I was looking for F20 gameplay too, and happened upon a guy's channel called Alien's rock. I didn't watch much of it, but his stat screen for F20 said something like 80 wins / 140 games, so there's probably some good stuff there.

[nu]

Originally posted by Groove Wizard:

Hey. :)

Well you seem to be doing things right. Honestly experience comes a long way in this game, and there typically isn't any good practice or rule that is valid just 100% of the time. Sometimes I'll keep adding stuff beyond 20 symbols even if I'm running cultists, sometimes I won't pick a second Coal early, etc. Generally you want to set rules for yourself, and then slowly develop the instincts to guess when it's right to break them. Basically you can only improve. :)

To answer your question, I have recorded stuff in the past, so I could do that.
Although since there is generally much more to say about every move than is likely bearable, I think it could be more productive for you to record a few runs and let people give you their thoughts. I'll be happy to if you do! But I'll start recording anyway, will keep you posted if I have any interesting runs (probably not just yet though as I'm a bit busy these days).

Also, at some point I was looking for F20 gameplay too, and happened upon a guy's channel called Alien's rock. I didn't watch much of it, but his stat screen for F20 said something like 80 wins / 140 games, so there's probably some good stuff there.

thanks for the tip, i'll check out the channel and try to learn something.

also i assume people here are playing the base game, no mods or anything?

and i am totally the kind of person who would sit through minutes of explanation for every spin if it meant i was learning things. in case you'd like to do some super chatty runs :)

[Groove Wizard]

Ok, I'll keep that in mind. :)

And yes, we were talking about the base game only.