How do I "git gud"?

[Luna Estrella]

I've seen a lot of debate about difficulty here and I thought it might be more helpful for those of us who are struggling to have a thread with some advice about how to break the skill barriers rather than simply saying there's no difficulty issues.

On a personal level, I'm currently having problems with teeth. I won once with a teeth-based deck, but now I'm not sure how to beat it. Even when I pick a bunch of shell-based cards, I still end up losing anyway. At this point, I'll take any general advice though.

[Aluminum]

If you just want specific advice on how to beat a final boss composition, uploading a screenshot of that boss will probably helpful.

As for general advice, here is a mindset that has improved my play a lot: realizing that 20% of the cards (allies, items etc.) do 80% of the work.

When people tell you to take shell-based cards to counter teeth, what they should be saying is "take Shellbo", what's more, not only should you take that card but you should center your entire strategy around buffing shellbo and playing it as often as possible.

Think of other cards as ways to help you play shellbo more often at best, deadweight at worst.

Assuming the teeth situation you described is the worst case scenario: leader with spike charm and tiger charm, here are a few more somewhat specific counters:

Build up a ridiculous attack number from some allies' innate scaling. Yuki for example can easily build up 20~30 damage with a few snow cakes and Snoffel triggers. Using things like Berry juice, Kernel, charms or even shell shield should allow her to live one 4 damage spike hit, and if she dies on the second hit she won't be any worse for the subsequent battles since injury does not affect her base stat.

Other ways to build big numbers include Fungun with extreme shellbo abuse, Kreggo with lumin latern + cake charm combo, Monch + chicken ally that summons when sacrificed.

More desperate methods be spamming soulbound skull on a team with sacrifice or exploiting a bug where losing to the frost guardian with a lumin vase in your deck replaces the frost guardian with the lost team, but that requires 3 bells already unlocked which I don't know if you have.

Some more generic tips:
-don't click the bell when bell counter is 1 unless playing a card is actively detrimental. Clicking the bell at 1 is the same as playing a card and then clicking the bell for free, just minus the benefit of the card.
-take noomlin biscuit and put a crown on the biscuit and your best reusable defense card or counter reduction card.
-pay attention to combo kills. Gold is important.

[Luna Estrella]

Originally posted by Aluminum:

If you just want specific advice on how to beat a final boss composition, uploading a screenshot of that boss will probably helpful.

Thanks for the help. Here's the current boss set-up. I've not used the bells because I felt under-prepared for making things any harder.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybanfznkmrau0lp/Wildfrost%20boss.PNG?dl=0

[bigm17]

I wouldn't worry too much about losing to teeth. I have 200 plus hours into this, and have had major 3 bell win streaks cut short to teeth, specifically teeth on high hp enemies like the wooly drek. The devs are fully aware of how unfair the teeth are on most enemies, since most characters only have on average 5-8 health, and taking 4 dmg just to attack without shell or healing is a complete run stopper. The Shademancers clan gets this the worst, since they rely on sacrifices, chump blocking and overburn to do/take dmg. I just lost a 15 win streak to teeth charm on wooly drek with a killer overburn build cause i had no way to apply the overburn quick enough on the wooly drek without either killing myself or him killing me. The devs are going to fix this, and I would think cutting down the teeth charm to 2 or jsut removing it from the game altogether would be a start.

I will agree with Aluminum's point that you really want to build your runs around 1 or two cards, whether they be units or items. Shellbo for Snowdwellers is essentially a 99% guarantee win if you can get it, since you can usually just lumin vase it and that will give you enough of a boost to beat most any enemies. Skullmist Tea and Soulbound Skulls for Shademancers are good cards to build around or azul candle if you are doing overburn, while bom barrel/Fizzle decimate enemies. Now that you can skip cards, the game has actually gotten a lot easier since you won't have to take cards you otherwise would not want and bloat your deck.

Lastly, watch some other people play as they will give you different strategies to work with. Good luck!

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Aluminum:

]
As for general advice, here is a mindset that has improved my play a lot: realizing that 20% of the cards (allies, items etc.) do 80% of the work.

Definitely agree with this. I feel like as I've gotten better at the game, I've taken more and more redraws at 2+ counter. Sometimes I'll even take two redraw turns in a row to really dig for a specific card.

[Aluminum]

Originally posted by GothLoliLunatic:

Thanks for the help. Here's the current boss set-up. I've not used the bells because I felt under-prepared for making things any harder.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ybanfznkmrau0lp/Wildfrost%20boss.PNG?dl=0

I gotta say that is a really rough final boss. It's unfortunate that the natural selection of the final boss mechanic usually end up creating such monstrous teams without anyway for you to make progress by grinding (some people proposed the final boss retain any damage dealt to it from previous runs but there's no news of that actually being implemented)

Just eyeballing that composition, I'm thinking the best counter is probably ink spam, at least enough to neutralize Tusk as well as preventing kill triggers from Luna. To make ink spam work, you're mostly looking at barrage units with squid charm or ink leader with barrage charm. (Barrage can also be generated with Gachapomper, which is a lot stronger than some people give it credit for at first glance.)

Other than that, 5 turn trigger might be enough time to set up soulbound skull plays before Luna attacks, but even then you're looking at 1/3 chances to soulbound Luna herself.

If you get lucky you might have burst damage teams from stuff like cake charm + flame water + multiattack, and you might kill tusk and then burst down the boss, but that'll require a large amount of grind and luck.

Overall this team is looking rough to go up against. I don't know if you have all 3 bells, but if you do it might be a good idea to do the Lumin Vase exploit where entering the final battle with Lumin Vase in your deck replaces the frost guardian regardless of victory or defeat.

Another exploit that might help is this: if you go to the main menu before you play all your crown cards, you can continue the run from outside of the boss fight so you get a peek at the enemy's initial spawn arrangement, which allows you to plan stuff like yanking Tusk or feeding splinter a useless ally ability etc.

[Luna Estrella]

So I finally managed to beat that boss. Tbh, I just got insanely lucky. I had Berry Sis crowned with the boar charm and I had also crowned Blank Mask and a Cake charm boosted Pinkberry Juice. I picked Booshu as my pet and managed to get a balance charm and lumin charm on it too, so I was getting a decent amount of healing done. I also had the card that summons Tigris. Also, my leader had smackback rather than a countdown, so it was much easier to ensure my leader wasn't taking too much damage from the teeth (though that became less of an issue thanks to Tusk being positioned at the front while Taiga was behind the boss). Because the other cards were so important to my strategy, I think it's going to be a little easier to handle the next boss.

[Dlanor]

Winning boils down to exactly 2 components: Memorization, and Patience.

You gotta learn and then memorize stuff. Learn what cards actually help you win, what cards combo well together, and how to use cards/companions correctly. For example if you're not using Recall, BomBom and Blunky are both just not that good, you MUST recall to get maximum value out of them most of the time. Plinker is a great clunker with anything that makes his effect go away, like the Durian charm or Frostbite Shard card.

You gotta have patience. There is no timer on how long you can take. You can usually see 2 or 3 or even more turns ahead, there is absolutely no benefit to playing a card without even considering what you will do on the next turn first. Most of your losses are because you are committing to losing plays instead of taking advantage of options that might let you win. If you NEED to snow an enemy within 3 turns to not lose, and you have 0 snow cards in hand but 3 turns until you can redraw for free, you are guaranteeing your own loss if you keep playing cards in your current hand instead of redrawing instantly, even twice in a row if you need to, so you can get to your snow card.

Redrawing a full new hand can be done at any time, if you never redraw except when it is free you are misplaying often. Recalling companions is a free action you can take at any time, if you're rarely recalling units you are misplaying often. If the result of a turn wasn't what you thought it would be, but you didn't learn anything new by seeing the outcome, then it's a misplay you could have avoided if you were more patient and looked at the board more closely.

[rad_knight]

just get better at luck, mostly. hope you get better cards, hope the better cards you get are the right ones for your deck, hope the enemies you get matched up against are ones your deck is good against. just pick a god and start praying my guy

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by rad_knight:

just get better at luck, mostly. hope you get better cards, hope the better cards you get are the right ones for your deck, hope the enemies you get matched up against are ones your deck is good against. just pick a god and start praying my guy

Luck is a minor factor but it won't help you win consistently. This is just coping essentially, you're putting the blame on luck when it's not the deciding factor in most cases.

There are people that have gone on 100+ winstreaks, you do not need luck to win runs IF you have a strong understanding of the game and how to win.