the LUCK factor

[Pain]

Having played several hours I am starting to think that luck plays a bigger factor than skill when deciding how well your run is going to go. IF you get the right relics and cards, you win easily, regardless of ascension level. If you get awful combinations that dont synergize at all, u either lose, or scrape in a very close victory (on low ascension. on high ascension, impossible).

I just had a game with silent where it was pretty much impossible to lose. Block, energy, and dexterity kept stacking, and the cards kept drawing themselves thanks to the Unceasing Top. Elites and Bosses all fell without doing any damage to me. Only the heart managed to do a bit of damage. So basically, if u get this kind of combination, u are going to win no matter what ascension level it is.

[Izaro]

Thats why there are reported 50+ winstreaks on ascension 0, 20+ winstreaks on ascension 15, and 30%+ winrates on ascension 20 heart runs, the very hardest difficulty of the game?

[geuse juice jazz]

It does feel bad when you just steamroll the game like that. One session wastes a lot of time and yet never poses a threat. It's much harder to watch the balance in a game with so much random and deck archetypes. It is kind of a mess.

[Delthea]

Luck is only a factor if you're trying to force a certain playstyle. The real skill in this game is adapting to what the game throws at you.

If you've upgraded two consumes (-1 orb slot, +3 focus), but haven't found any capacitors (+3 orb slots), that's on you.

If you've picked up a "zero cost cards +3 damage", but refuse to pick up Unlimited Blades, in favor of trying a block/poison build, that's on you.

Do what you can, when you can, with what you have.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Silent is easier to play and more popular because he was op in the begining.
I have been playing with the ironclad a lot and he is just as good but so far i have found only 2-3 builds viable for him and some runs you simply lose because his basic cards are terible.
I just beat the level 3 boss and it was a piece of cake with my build but other times i didn't even get past the first boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0DflhocAYc

[Firedancer]

Yeah, just had a run where I only got ♥♥♥♥ cards on the first two encounters and then a negative event on top of it. At that point it's just better to quit and restart.

And there are a lot of cards that seem interesting, but their deck ideas just don't work at all... so in effect most of the game is junk cards. Which is a pity.

[LaChouette]

Unless you're playing on high levels of ascension, luck is not a factor. I recently started playing again just to unlock the 4th act (now gonna wait until the end of early access), and won on my first try with each character, even though none of my decks were the conventional ones. If you know the cards and enemies, you can win no matter the RNG.
Ironclad run: Bites*5, Reaper, Anger*3, Demonic Form. No defence cards, I just took the hits and healed with Bites and Reaper until the Angers and the strength really started to kick in.
Silent run: early Prismatic shard, had lots of Ironclad and Defect cards in my deck
Defect run: got the two shop discount items plus restocking, and the relic that made a card free when I used a power. Ended up with 53 cards, half of them powers and defeated the Awakened One with this.

None of those builds are the conventional ones people will tell you about (heck, most people would tell you a deck with more than 30 cards is complete madness), but they all work, at least on lower Ascension levels. The RNG plays a huge part in what kind of deck you'll make, but it leaves more than enough wiggle room to get a viable deck. It will only ♥♥♥♥ you if you try too hard to make, say, a Strength deck for Ironclad because you got Heavy Blade early and just pass some great cards or pick other stuff that will only become good once you get strength up cards.

[Blood Flowers]

Originally posted by LaChouette:

Unless you're playing on high levels of ascension, luck is not a factor.

I *mostly* agree with this. There are a few runs every now and then in non-ascension/lower ascension where you'll just get completely screwed over. Predominantly though, luck doesn't play a huge role until later ascensions.

The only times I really consider luck to be a major factor in runs are later ascensions and gunning for certain achievements.

[Sentient_Toaster]

It may not play a huge role on average at lower ascensions, but things like being forced to enter Act 3 with 3 energy (because you weren't even offered any of the +energy relics at any point, even including the ones with nasty downsides like no upgrading cards or no resting, at any point) will hurt... whereas at the other end, you can have things like the very first elite you kill literally offering you both Dead Branch and Corruption, which is pretty much amazeballs.

Defect also feels a bit vulnerable if you're seeing more lightning cards than frost, because without Electrodynamics you can't be assured that lightning won't be targeted badly.

[Iduno]

The balance between relics is ♥♥♥♥. If you don't get the cards for your build (you don't get good orbs for defect, or good anything with ironclad, or enough poison/knives with silent), and the difficulty is suddenly higher. The higher ascension you're on, the more imporant it is what drops you get.

[Benkyo]

Relics are not intended to be balanced.

[Songbird]

Originally posted by Delthea:

Luck is only a factor if you're trying to force a certain playstyle. The real skill in this game is adapting to what the game throws at you.

If you've upgraded two consumes (-1 orb slot, +3 focus), but haven't found any capacitors (+3 orb slots), that's on you.

If you've picked up a "zero cost cards +3 damage", but refuse to pick up Unlimited Blades, in favor of trying a block/poison build, that's on you.

Do what you can, when you can, with what you have.

More like, if you think that having +3 damage on 0-cost cards (I assume you took this relic because the other choices were actually run-endingly bad like Velvet Choker, because this is a terrible boss relic) means that you should run only front-loaded damage cards like shivs, you shouldn't expect to win all that often.

An unupgraded Deadly Poison is 5 damage per turn ongoing (assuming it's not literally your only source of poison), per time you play it and actually has an effect on the turn you play it, too, so without additional synergies besides "higher damage shivs" it's almost always better than Infinite Blades, for example.

The real trap is the exact opposite of what you seem to think it is: not taking cards that provide what your deck needs because you're trying to take cards that fit your "build". Every deck needs a way to mitigate enough damage to survive fights. Every deck needs an answer to the specific bosses, elites, and hallway fights it faces in each run. Sometimes that answer is to just use your HP or avoid fights. Sometimes it's picking up a specific card that is good for only a couple fights just so you don't lose a ton of HP in those fights.

You don't need a deck that does exactly one thing to a crazy extreme, like gaining 40 strength and then play Heavy Blade. A much better deck would have a plan for hallway fights where you don't need 40 strength but really want to avoid taking too much damage, and have a way to deal with Reptomancer hitting you for 70+ damage on turn 2 if you don't kill her minions, but then also have a way to get 20+ strength for when you want to fight something with 500+ HP.

[Thalai]

My suggestion is watching youtube channel videos titled "overexplained slay the spire". that guy goes really in depth into the strategy for minimizing the RNG of the game.

[👽🐬 Old Black Nerd🐬👽]

luck is a made up concept by people who need excuses for their own failures

[Pain]

Originally posted by 👽🐬 Old Black Nerd🐬👽:

luck is a made up concept by people who need excuses for their own failures

I bet you think global warming is a made up concept too eh?

[Pain]

Originally posted by Dynamod123:

My suggestion is watching youtube channel videos titled "overexplained slay the spire". that guy goes really in depth into the strategy for minimizing the RNG of the game.

I have watched all of his videos. I love them. But I have observed that even at his skill level, luck plays a huge factor. Seen him literally steamroll when he was lucky enough to find the brokenly OP relics. And I have seen him lose games that had bad luck, despite all his hours of practice and mastery of the game.