constantly drawing awful cards

[COBRA COMMANDER]

I'm at the end of the first area and have drawn a smattering of cards that don't go well at all with each other and junk relics.

I've probably wiped at least 20 times now. Farthest I've gone is to the 3rd area boss.

Anyone else struggling to actually get cards? Really not having any fun here.

[paolo.bera]

Pick less card, picking card is not mandatory.
With which character do you play?

[COBRA COMMANDER]

I'm playing as the silent. Mostly a draw / discard & poison type deck- so the decks I build really only even start to get going in the second area -- but if the cards don't jive you've gotta just start over constantly before the second boss.

This last run I did I hit both stores with like 300 gold and couldn't pick up anything useful before the boss. Sucks.

[Zu]

Don't build archetypes. Pick cards to improve matchups.

[RespectGiovanni]

Personally I believe the Silent to be the hardest character to win as. The game is based around semi-controllable RNG so instead of picking up useless cards just dont take any.

[COBRA COMMANDER]

Originally posted by Zu:

Don't build archetypes. Pick cards to improve matchups.

What if nothing matches up properly before I get to the second area? The deck only really takes *some* shape once you're mid way through the second area

I've been skipping picking anything up if I can't see a use for something - but that can lead to me having nearly just the starting cards by the time I get to the end of the first area - depending on what the shop has usually

[Zu]

That's not what I meant with matchup. I'm talking about picking dagger spray if you feel the need for it against slimes, gremlins, byrds, gremlin leader, sentinels, etc.

[COBRA COMMANDER]

Originally posted by RespectGiovanni:

Personally I believe the Silent to be the hardest character to win as. The game is based around semi-controllable RNG so instead of picking up useless cards just dont take any.

I think it is. Sometimes I struggle to beat the first area boss and equally as likely if I get a bad run I wipe to it.

[COBRA COMMANDER]

I just legit don't understand how people are completing the game with this character. If you're missing crucial cards for whatever "deck type" you just fall apart: like after image in a shiv build, etc. Or burst and whatever doing poison + block stacking. Stuff just doesn't work.

[felda]

Cobra watch some Youtubers that play Slay the Spire if you want to improve,because it's not the cards fault that you get wiped in 1 area.
If you want to build a fun Silent build than i suggest you skip most question marks in the 1 area and get a stable/consistent deck.

[b_o_b844]

You're not the only one. I'm having trouble with building a consistent deck for the Silent as well. Either it is too slow and I get killed before I have the necessary cards or it works reasonably well but doesn't scale enough for the 2nd/3rd level elites.

I think I'm getting closer but it's still way harder than Ironclad or Defect imo.

[MechaTails]

I found that it helps to not skip fights in the first area since every fight is a chance at a useful card, plus the fights are "easy" so you can make it to the boss with either a decent deck, or at least high health after a rest or two.

Also, don't give up so soon, despite RNG trying to keep you down, the game is fun once you get the hang of what cards and relics work well together. Odds are you won't build your dream deck, like, ever, but you can get like 80% of the way there, which is enough to win. Often I beat the bosses with like 10 health left, just keep playing no matter how dire the situation looks. The game is surprisingly well balanced, to the point where you often kill enemies with the exact amount of attack power needed, or defend with exact Block, etc.

[Perfectibilist]

Originally posted by MechaTails:

I found that it helps to not skip fights in the first area since every fight is a chance at a useful card, plus the fights are "easy" so you can make it to the boss with either a decent deck, or at least high health after a rest or two.

Also, don't give up so soon, despite RNG trying to keep you down, the game is fun once you get the hang of what cards and relics work well together. Odds are you won't build your dream deck, like, ever, but you can get like 80% of the way there, which is enough to win. Often I beat the bosses with like 10 health left, just keep playing no matter how dire the situation looks. The game is surprisingly well balanced, to the point where you often kill enemies with the exact amount of attack power needed, or defend with exact Block, etc.

Dude's right. You can't go in imagining you'll build a certain kind of deck, you just have to try and increase your general deck viability and survivability until you notice you might be getting some potent synergies along the way. If you go in thinking "this is the kind of build I'll make", you'll get creamed over and over again.

Just try to pick whatever uncommons and rares you come across that seem like they could improve your deck IN GENERAL, not only for a specific path you've thought out. It's a game about thinking on the run.

Of course if you pick a rare card from the get-go as Neow's boon, then you can try your best to build around that - but keep in mind that your deck should be ok to function all the time, not just in 30 floors if you get your mega-combo killer deck going.

EDIT: Oh, and it's good to keep in mind the kind of enemies and other encounters you'll face along the way. You'll memorize them in time, and it helps a lot to know what's coming.

[Kalarima]

Well silent is my favorite character... the only cards you need are infinite blades, Cloak and dagger, blade storm and as many panache as you can :D if you grab kunai and shuriken relics along the way your set for incredible combos. backflips help for armour and card draw so they are also usefull and acuracy for shiv dmg buff... most of these cards are pretty common so its not hard to build her like this. I would also kinda recommend avoiding poison since it dilutes the deck too much and do didly di...

And if you really want to use poison just try to get envenom with this deck... since this tends to generate like 5-7 shivs per turn you can aply 1 venom for each while trigering two or three hits from panache in a turn :)

[Bishop]

Porblem that I always have with Silent is how reliant on footwork he is. Im getting 2 footwork in first location means I already won the game. Getting zero and his survivability just goes into slumbs. Cards that debuff Weakness or drop target's strength helps him for a bit, but there's no way they can replace footwork when some tagets just deal 50+ damage in single turn.
Im not talking about things like kunai/shuriken, because 9 outo f 10 run you won't get these anyway.

[van the man]

Don't even worry about synergy so much as just expanding the capabilities of your deck. Dagger Spray is an incredible early pick up and ends up in all varieties of winning decks, for example. You don't skip a room 2 Dagger Spray "because I'm going poison".

And that has become the common advice in this thread, "don't build archtypes", however, switching modes to devil's advocate, silent has some very obvious archtypes and some extremely conditional cards. In that regard, learn the inroads to the archtypes. What I mean is, don't take Catalyst before you actually have poison, don't take Reflex before you have a few discard effects and/or some hand retention. The general rule is don't take cards which do nothing before you get other cards which you might not get. The other thing is don't over-commit to archtypes so much that you disregard weaknesses of the deck. You get a Bouncy Flask, that's great, it's an awesome high value card, but how do you AoE if you skipped Dagger Spray?

About poison decks specifically, a really big component of them is having lots of block. You need like 3 block cards for every 1 poison card, or more. You can win the game with 1 noxious fumes and the rest of the deck being block, but you can't win with a deck of all poison cards and no block.