The best relic

[K E N N I]

is Membership Card. Change my mind.

[johnruby80]

It depends on the context. There's no gaurentee that there will be shops later in the game. You need to have 400+ gold to buy other things in the same merchant. If you take Ectoplasm then this relic become useless.

[Scathe]

membership card is a shop relic, it has to be bought to start returning value. The courier and smiling mask both can be acquired outside shops for free, smiling mask would get my vote for most valuable relic effecting shop prices, card removal is the most important shop service, and it is cheaper to remove a few cards with smiling mask than with membership card, especialy if you count in the cost to buy the membership card.

[Electro Spaghetti]

Totally best relic when you get it in the last shop of act 3. Yeah. Totally. Most relics can only really be used by certain builds, so it's hard to pick a "best", but I'll list a few of mine:
Kunai/shuriken: free buffs!
Shovel/peace pipe: more campfire options, makes finding relics/removing cards in plentiful supply.
Brimstone: a dash of risk/reward to push your strength deck to the next level! Combine with limit break+, and the scaling is rediculous!
Gremlin horn: refund the card that kills? Yes please!
The specimen: pretty much a ultra-nerfed corpse explosion, but being free and automatic certainly makes up for it!

[Zu]

Sort of a meme thread, but incense burner tho.

[Requiem31]

The piece of poop.
Especially when Niloth really wants it

[johnruby80]

Originally posted by Scathe:

membership card is a shop relic, it has to be bought to start returning value. The courier and smiling mask both can be acquired outside shops for free, smiling mask would get my vote for most valuable relic effecting shop prices, card removal is the most important shop service, and it is cheaper to remove a few cards with smiling mask than with membership card, especialy if you count in the cost to buy the membership card.

imho, I think card removal is generally a little be overvalued. In certain deck, which highly rely on specific key cards to function, making deck smaller is very beneficial. But for most of my runs, I often end up having 30~40+ cards in my deck. When you have a huge deck, removing a single card is relatively irrelevent and ineffective.

Originally posted by Requiem31:

The piece of poop.
Especially when Niloth really wants it

Don't judge a book by its cover! (or a poop by its appearance)
It may be tasty. YOU NEVER KNOW.

[K E N N I]

Let me explain why I like this relic. Outside of a couple of events that give you tons of gold in act 3, it's pretty easy to estimate how much gold you will earn until the end of the run. If it's at least twice the Card's cost, it's always worth buying, otherwise you ignore it. And it doesn't care one bit what your deck looks like, so it's probably the most consistently useful relic. The only things that can ♥♥♥♥ up this calculation, as you guys have pointed out, are:
- Ectoplasm: you can choose not to take it
- Smiling Mask: this doesn't really devalue the Card, you just get more money for relics/cards/potions
- not finding a shop towards the end of the run: solved by going to act 4
I agree that many relics have arguably more powerful effects, but they are all situational, unlike Membership Card.

[johnruby80]

Originally posted by patryk.drobinski:

Let me explain why I like this relic. Outside of a couple of events that give you tons of gold in act 3, it's pretty easy to estimate how much gold you will earn until the end of the run. If it's at least twice the Card's cost, it's always worth buying, otherwise you ignore it. And it doesn't care one bit what your deck looks like, so it's probably the most consistently useful relic. The only things that can ♥♥♥♥ up this calculation, as you guys have pointed out, are:
- Ectoplasm: you can choose not to take it
- Smiling Mask: this doesn't really devalue the Card, you just get more money for relics/cards/potions
- not finding a shop towards the end of the run: solved by going to act 4
I agree that many relics have arguably more powerful effects, but they are all situational, unlike Membership Card.

The Bandits event in Act 2 require player to give up all money or fight Pointy, Romeo, Bear. Sometimes you have to choose to pay because the deck is too weak.

Furthermore, sometimes the cards and relics in shop are just not good enough. Its still a little bit risky to save a lot of money for Act 4 shop. But I agree Membership Card is a consistently strong relic. But I probably prefer Sozu because I usually don't rely on potions and one more energy is just awesome.

[Scary_Turtle]

but Dead Branch /thread

[DuckSonata]

Turnips or no nips.

[Nightmyre]

For me, it's mummified hand. That relic has single-handedly won me games. Power cards are usually amazing, but the cost is that you can't play other cards. This lets you kill two birds with one stone - not only can you often reduce the power cost of the power card to zero (by playing a cheaper one first), but then you get to play ANOTHER card for free.

[K E N N I]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

For me, it's mummified hand. That relic has single-handedly won me games. Power cards are usually amazing, but the cost is that you can't play other cards. This lets you kill two birds with one stone - not only can you often reduce the power cost of the power card to zero (by playing a cheaper one first), but then you get to play ANOTHER card for free.

Actually, I can get behind this too. Just yesterday, probably for the first time I got a proper power deck going, with Amplify and stuff, and then I found Mummified Hand in act 3. I jizzed my pants.

[Blood Flowers]

Originally posted by n3th3raid3r:

Kunai

As someone who primarily plays the Silent, I low-key have an orgasm if I find Kunai at the start of a run.

[Terratrox]

Mummified Hand. suddenly every power is good.