What's a good Ironclad build?

[Protectron]

I finished the game with the Silent - fiirst time I tried a poison build with him.

But I am yet to finish the game with Ironclad. I have tried defensive builds, attacking builds, power ramp... nothing works!

I have managed to construct builds that wipes most enemies off the floor effortlessly... and then I encounter something that the build cannot possibly deal with. Like Giant Head. I came very close once, but succumbed in the end with the Head at around 50 health, one turn from victory.

Couldn't find good advice or discussion in here. Any tips?

[My Little Omi]

You can google "tier list" or "deck rating".

Easiest build for ironclad is str staking - either Limit Break+, or Demon Form, and then add Heavy strike. Good things to compliment this build are Flex,r Spot Weakness, Double Tap

Another easy build is barricade. A lot of blocks, +body slam. Entranch can ramp your block up to 999.

Cards that really help you live in any build:
- armaments+ (after few turns, all cards in your deck are upgraded)
- battle trance (allows you to cycle your deck faster to build your synergy faster)
- flame barrier
- feed (if you grab it early, you can get up to 120 hp)
- reaper (with enough str in your build, you'll end most of your fights with ~full health).
- recently added Immolate is an OP card for act 1.

Another tip - consider your life regen passive as another tool. Remember that you'll heal 6 every battle, and keep that in mind while planning your turns.

[davidgol3p]

You should never be forcing an arcetype. Just let it happen and use your best judgment on wich cards to pick

[Starchy Warhead]

i'd say demon form, black flame, blugdeon, and heavy blade

[ravengage]

Some of my favorites:

1) Full defense, you need Barricade, lots of block and body slam. This can get really powerful but I usually don't commit to it unless I find a Barricade. If you find one early on though you can start stacking block and body slams and removing all your strikes, it will usually scale extremely well.

2) Str stacking, cards which buff str and cards which benefit from str. This is pretty obvious.

3) Searing Blow - only works well if you fet a Searing Blow REALLY early on, then upgrade it on every campfire. Use things like Headbut to cycle it or Dual Strike to duplicate it. By the end it becomes a 2 energy 100+ damage. All the other cards are usually block.

4) Perfected Strike - just stack as many strike cards as you can. Not the best archetype, especially for higher ascentions, but pretty easy to build.

5) Corruption + any exhaust synergy. There's a lot of relics that synergize very well with exhaust, this can get very OP very quickly.

[Protectron]

Thanks guys. How many cards do your decks typically end up with by the end of tier 3?

[slvfire]

Building a winning deck you gotta pick cards along the way which synergize with the current deck, not a predetermined deck. You also have to skip cards which may look good but need another card or relic which you don't have.

Cards i nearly always take:
* Thunderclap, for the cheap weakness
* Cleave, for the AOE
* Ghostly Armor
* Offering
* Shrug It Off
* Body Slam, except its a no block deck (Metallicize & Orichalcum)
* Shockwave
* Uppercut, if i can switch it out for Bash easily

Cards i nearly never take:
* Flex, except i have no strength and a Limit Break card in my deck
* Dual Wield, only if i go for zero-costs attack deck (Clash, Body Slam)
* Heavy Blade, sounds good, but if you have strength, all your other attack cards are also strong, and you don't have to wait around for them
* Whirlwind, gets rid of all your energy and does no dmg at all for what you can get with other cards (except a few multi-enemy encounters)
* Barricade, you really need a lot of block going to make it worthwhile, which means lots of energy wasted on block already
* Cards that costs health (except Offering and J.A.X)
* Cards that add junk or randomness
* Rampage, i tried to get it to work, but the buildup is just too slow, even with Headbutt and Double Tap


Special cases:

* Perfected Strike, if you got nothing going for you deck, a perfekted strike deck is always a good fallback. In that case i go for 2 or 3 Perfected Strikes depending on deck size and only take Pummel and Twin Strike along the way

* Searing Blow: do not upgrade it at every campfire when you need to heal or can upgrade a good supporting card. Also prefer cards which are good without upgrades (Shrug It Off), or where upgrades don't matter much (Thunderclap). Getting Searing Blow near 100 doesn't really matter in most fights where everything above 50 is overkill. Getting it to around 70-80 is usually good enough. Also one or two Armaments can get it going during the fight.

* Demon Form, looks good but really hard to profit from it. First you wanna kill enemies fast not wait around until you build up the strength to kill them. Second, there are better ways to stack up strength: Limit Break & Headbutt and some strength, personally i like Spot Weakness best, but if you can get Gyria relic (lets you gain up to 3 permanent strength) that's enough.

* Bludgeon, if you can get it early it's a fun card to plow through the first stage, but it gets inefficient halfway through the game, so i just don't use it or get rid of it at a shop

[NotEnoughGolds]

Originally posted by androtceran:

Thanks guys. How many cards do your decks typically end up with by the end of tier 3?

15-25 on Iron Clad

[Protectron]

I actually won with Ironclad now for the first time. I also usually pick the must-haves stvfire mentioned, but the difference this time was not the cards I picked, which was nothing special, but that I got so many artifacts this time around. I got not one but two that gave me +1 energy every turn, among other things. While 3x whirlwind for 8 is nothing to boast about, 5x8 is an entirely different beast - and when I regularly had 5+ strength (+7 in the two last battles against Giant Head and Time Eater), smacking the whole board with 5x15 damage with Vulnerability active is nothing but cathartic.

Some of the battles I won because I had Barricade and several Shrug it Off, Armaments and a Rage. Others because I had massive damage build-up as shown above.

Some enemies are designed to counter aggressive decks, and some are designed to counter defensive decks. I think I managed to win this time due to the luck of the draw and the fact that I had good defense AND good offense, that both got OP over time.

Both my wins have been based on having more than 3 energy to play with, so now's the time to see if I can do it without those artifacts.

[slvfire]

Congrats! Yea, you need to balance your deck a little and 4 energy is minimum i agree.

Good luck with the ascension modes :)

[Protectron]

Ok now I beat Donu and Deca for the first time.

Just yesterday I was furiously complaining that it can't be done. They ramp damage quickly, protect each other and disrupt my deck.

The deck I beat them with now had plenty of useful and synergistic relics and the deck itself was providing both good offense and defense.

The offense was hilariously good, as I had Whirlwind+, Double Tap AND Necronomicon, as well as 4 energy. With Spot the Weakness in the mix as well, I smacked the enemies with double 4xWhirlwind and sometimes triple 3x for 60 or more damage. The secondary offense was Juggernaut+; 2x Metalicize+ and Thread and Needle pinged them for at least 10 damage a turn (I usually played at least one defend spell per turn in addition).

The defense was based around Barricade and Metallicize, but Champion Belt certainly also helped.

What made the victory possible was an incredibly well-timed Reaper, which saved me from ceartain death the next turn, healing over 60 life and finishing Deca. I then killed the donut next turn.

To me, the reliance on specific rares and relics in order to stand a chance against some of these opponents is simultaneously a good and a bad design decision. The randomness is what make me play "just one more time", but at the same time, it is frustrating as I can tell halfway through part 1 that there is absolutely no way I can beat the game with this start.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1377708797

[Sinsling]

Originally posted by androtceran:

Ok now I beat Donu and Deca for the first time.

Just yesterday I was furiously complaining that it can't be done. They ramp damage quickly, protect each other and disrupt my deck.

The deck I beat them with now had plenty of useful and synergistic relics and the deck itself was providing both good offense and defense.

The offense was hilariously good, as I had Whirlwind+, Double Tap AND Necronomicon, as well as 4 energy. With Spot the Weakness in the mix as well, I smacked the enemies with double 4xWhirlwind and sometimes triple 3x for 60 or more damage. The secondary offense was Juggernaut+; 2x Metalicize+ and Thread and Needle pinged them for at least 10 damage a turn (I usually played at least one defend spell per turn in addition).

The defense was based around Barricade and Metallicize, but Champion Belt certainly also helped.

What made the victory possible was an incredibly well-timed Reaper, which saved me from ceartain death the next turn, healing over 60 life and finishing Deca. I then killed the donut next turn.

To me, the reliance on specific rares and relics in order to stand a chance against some of these opponents is simultaneously a good and a bad design decision. The randomness is what make me play "just one more time", but at the same time, it is frustrating as I can tell halfway through part 1 that there is absolutely no way I can beat the game with this start.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1377708797

There is less reliance on relics than you think. It looks like you are getting the hang of things from the look of this deck though. There are some picks there that I would of skipped based on deck direction at the time the appeared though. Most notably the Juggernaught and armaments.

[Protectron]

Yey! Beat Awakened One too, on the same day. A good day for slaying spires, it seems.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1377833256

The second Whirlwind was unnecessary, though. I liked the Firebreathings. One is very underwhelming, but once I got the chance to grab a second one, I thought that would be decent after the first shuffle, and then I got a third from a trader.

The deck is basically the same as the one I beat Donu and Deca with, just that the 3 Firebreathings took the place of the Juggernaut. The free area damage given by both in conjunction with casting attack/defense respectively was a huge asset, I think.

Having one Armaments+ in there to upgrade the whole deck after a few shuffles has been very useful. It's much more available than that yellow (rare) skill that does it to the whole deck, which is of course better. The Armaments take the place of a Defend anyways.

I got an achievement called "Ascension 0". What is that?

[Sinsling]

Means you have unlocked hard mode :p

[Lord_Abaddon]

if you're not pushing accession strike decks are pretty much easy wins. if you get a perfected strike early on stacks strikes and pick up mind blast if you can. head butts are good to recycle stuff you need back to your hand and pick up some defence and you;re good to go. boss relic choices are generally anything that gives you more energy.

[slvfire]

For the ascension modes you gotta refine your deck. I'm curious how far you can go with your Whirlwind build.