Can someone make a guide?

[Uncertain Farts]

I didn't read the intro, and it would be great if someone had a basics guide.

[Showho]

Hit the assassinate button constantly. There is no need for a guide because the game is completely unbalanced and the enemies can kill you unfairly

[detheagle666]

Lol, it's a rogue-like card battler. Figure out a combo, and generally focus on just a single "suite" of cards.

Every elemental suite of cards (fire, earth, wind, lightning, water, poison) has some form of massive combo.

My very first run I beat the Lust boss with a earth combo that was basically stack as much shield as I could, then use a card that deals damage equal to how much shield I have.

The one I particularly like is with water, where you can basically "draw" cards and keep playing them, sometimes cards that you had in your hand, usually cards you don't even own, sometimes from other suites, and just bash the hell out of everything in front of you in like 1-2 turns.

I didn't experiment much tbh, I did a run focusing on lightning but I didn't like it much, that one focuses on reducing your own health down to do massive damage, then heal yourself back up. To much of a "glass cannon" for my taste, that's the only attempt I did where I died part-way through.

Additionally, pay attention to the items you get, these can really combo hard with your chosen suite. My first water run I ended up with two different items that had a thing where you play a card, then ~20% chance to create a random card, usually water, plus the final "upgrade" you get for the Snake sect nets you another 20% chance to create random water cards, PLUS the Snake sect's special move, which create 2 water cards, plus more water cards creating water cards... Not quite infinite loop, but damn close. I think I took out Hate or Delusion in one single round, it was glorious.

This game is really easy when you read what each card does, then extrapolate what it would do with another card. You can always check your deck when the game offers you cards, and see if this or that will be a good fit or not. Frankly, if you NEED to use the assassinate button, either you've never played/or don't like card battlers of any stripe, or are not reading the bloody card. Especially with this game not being all that complex, really. Showho is partially correct, in that the game really is unbalanced, but it's in the players favor if you take a few seconds to game out what your cards do.

[Showho]

Saying the game is really easy is a massive stretch when there's layers of RNG built in the game for different things such as orbs, cards and items. And is certainly not balanced in your favour even if you're familiar with rogue-like deck builders. I've had multiple playthroughs where i never got any good cards and items and ended up just getting powercrept in a few turns.

In hard mode the game will unfairly kill you with RNG and debuffs easily. As a matter of fact the debuffs some enemies have are so OP that they overshadow the fiend in that stage by a large margin, makes you wonder why they implemented the assassinate button even in hard mode at a later date because even the devs knew it was unbalanced.

Having story locked behind in hard mode also makes it worse. If it was just optional content that was unbalanced i would say fair enough and leave it to those that like save scumming, grinding or resetting.

Anyways the scenes are great but if you're looking for an actual good game just play slay the spire.

[Schraube]

Originally posted by Showho:

Saying the game is really easy is a massive stretch when there's layers of RNG built in the game for different things such as orbs

Skill issue lmao.

Nah but for real, on my current inferno run, my deck pushes 1-2 thousand damage and over 100 shield per single turn, and it looks like I've managed to go truly infinite as I generate over 20 freeze stacks as well, making enemies unable to attack. Short of a very unlucky agony/karma debuff I am not aware of yet, that run isn't going to ever end. And I can reach that kind of power consistently.

The game is unbalanced, very much so, but it's clearly in favour of the player. Just play a poison or a water deck and focus on card creation; they are completely bonkers compared to every other element. For poison, try to get Neithercourt; for water, you just want to stack any card creation cards. Likewise, pick up any items that have a chance to create cards. Together with your sect buff, you're going to generate several dozen cards per turn, and any items that scale with the amount of cards played are going to scale good as well.

That being said, the other elements do fine enough for the story mode to beat it consistently too; the only stage that even remotely gave me trouble was the third stage on hard, because of the confusion debuff.

The trick is to only take either good non-coloured cards or 1-orb colored cards of your chosen colour until you get your passive orb, and then go ham on your chosen colour, sticking to a single element. Between the passive orb and your rerolls you can near guarantedly play the corresponding 2 cost cards, and if you throw in a card that converts another orb into that colour, even the 3 cost cards are basically guaranted to be playable, thus minimizing Orb RNG.

As for OP debuffs or enemies - you can avoid particular enemies your deck struggles with. Once you've leveled up enough the game shows you what the next set of monsters are going to be, and the sets are always the same. It becomes apparent pretty quick which enemies are the "easy" ones and which are not.

[Uncertain Farts]

I appreciate the responses for help