Who Needs Relics Achievement

[KooshtaKaa]

I came super close with a Barricade build, but came up short w some bad draws against the Awakened One. It’s super time consuming to go for that specific build, since I usually don’t know if I’ll have Barricade until after Act 1.

If that build doesn’t work out, what other builds have gotten people this achievement? I’ve tried a Corruption* build, but ultimately couldn’t build my damage up early enough in battles. Aside from that, I’m failing pretty hard at this achievement. Just looking for ideas. I also decided that I like sticking w burning blood relic so I can focus on upgrades at rest sites. The other times I tried swapping out boss relics are even more inconsistent. Would love to hear people’s thoughts on all of this.


*Edit*

Barricade Build won it for me the very next run!

Burning Blood relic
Barricade+
Berserk
2 X Entrench+
2 X Body Slam+
Impervious+
Battle Trance+
Seeing Red+
2 X Shrug It Off
Bash+
2 X Defend
2 X Defend+

PS I hated this achievement.

[Burdpal]

I took an energy relic by swapping my starting relic at the start. 4 energy is a solid game changer that allows you to play more powerful cards, which is probably one of the few saving graces of playing with only 1 relic.

My run entailed using Fusion Hammer, Spot Weakness for scaling, and Limit Break. Was pretty smooth since the achievement can be satisfied in Ascension 0, but it's certainly annoying not taking relics.

Doing "Who Needs Relics?" really opened my eyes on how important Elites are in normal and ascension play, and how much even the weakest of relics make a profound difference when paired all together.

EDIT: Just noticed your edit, grats on your win!

[KooshtaKaa]

I finally got this achievement after a solid 10 hours (I'm guessing) of trying. See OP for more info on my run, if you want.

Having Berserk and Seeing Red definitely alleviated some of the stress of having to play a lot of cards, or getting my Barricade out, and Berserk has a pretty minor drawback for how it basically replaces a boss energy relic.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the importance of elites. It's so much more difficult with all of those minute buffs of a dozen relics taken away!

I didn't think this achievement would take such a specific build for me. Most of those cards were 100% necessary for my run and I happened to get them at the right times (this time).

[DJDiceZ]

I did it with Silent, you could also have rerolled your relic with Neow. It's pretty much a gamble, but it can give you a freebie if you get something like Snecko Eye.

If i may, one of the mistakes you made here was trying to make the deck happen before having/seeing it. Sure it'll work at some point, but unless you don't care about losing a lot until it does happen... well you will.

Additionally i'm not sure if i'd go for this deck if i tried to do it on Ironclad. You want cards (especially attacks imo) that are strong by themselves a bit more than in a typical run, things like Immolate, Heavy Blade. If you manage to pair that up with strenght and Reaper, you already got something pretty good to fall back on if a fight goes poorly.

Berserk seems counterintuitive to your strategy, two Entrench cards... might be a bit excessive.

Originally posted by Burd!:

Doing "Who Needs Relics?" really opened my eyes on how important Elites are in normal and ascension play, and how much even the weakest of relics make a profound difference when paired all together.

It also shows that the game can be won consistently if you do things right at lower Ascension. If you can win without relics, you can probably win with them.

[KooshtaKaa]

Rerolling with Neow is how I started out my first bunch of runs, and tried to roll with the punches, building decks with cards I thought fit with them, and I'd always get killed in Act Two, or Steamrolled by the Act 3 boss.

The thing I'm still not good at after all my hours is seeing value of cards like Immolate or Reaper if they're offered to me at the beginning of a run. Those are easy passes for me, because I've never had deck success with them.
I guess that just means I need to explore more synergies, especially since things aren't going to get easier with the only achievements remaining for me being Ascensions (currently doing Silent A10).

IDK what you're talking about that second entrench being excessive; That made my deck more consistent by the time I picked it up in the back end of Act 3.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Donkey Belly:

Rerolling with Neow is how I started out my first bunch of runs, and tried to roll with the punches, building decks with cards I thought fit with them, and I'd always get killed in Act Two, or Steamrolled by the Act 3 boss.

The thing I'm still not good at after all my hours is seeing value of cards like Immolate or Reaper if they're offered to me at the beginning of a run. Those are easy passes for me, because I've never had deck success with them.
I guess that just means I need to explore more synergies, especially since things aren't going to get easier with the only achievements remaining for me being Ascensions (currently doing Silent A10).

IDK what you're talking about that second entrench being excessive; That made my deck more consistent by the time I picked it up in the back end of Act 3.

Reaper is still an easy 8-20 heal on Act 1 multi-enemy fights. But with strenght, it can end up healing you from 1 hp to full health pretty much. Immolate doesn't need a synergy, it's ridiculously strong by itself. Upgraded it's 28 damage on ALL enemies. That makes it an incredibly valuable card by itself. It can be paired with things like Headbutt, Double Tap, Snecko eye or Necronomicon to make a joke out of some encounters.

EDIT: Didn't see that last part, Barricade and Entrench are kind of traps for begginers. You put a tiny bit too much value on them, even if they work decently as a synergy. One Entrench is usually enough especially if your deck is small, but it's slow to even set up Barricade and get the block going in the first place.
From my experience block decks are hit or miss, kinda all or nothing. It was okay since you already got this far into the build, and you had upgraded both, but trying to make Barricade work so hard, i guarantee costed you several games.

You probably should have done Ascension before Who Needs Relics? (and probably should before you do Common Sense), you kind of got lucky here after bruteforcing the challenge with a preplanned strategy, and probably don't have enough experience to take on those achievements. But you wanted to do them, and all power to you, i don't intended to sound harsh if i do, i'm not trying to deter you from the game and its challenges either. Not judging, discouraging or devalueing you. Anyway, it's my opinion, you can take it with a grain of salt if you want.

[eternalreturn]

I decided some time ago I want this relic "next." After I'd gotten my 2nd *not* Who Needs Relics? achievement, whilst trying to score WNR, I realised this was not an easy prospect. I am still trying to get it, with Ironclad and the original starting relic. I often mess up my maths early in the 2nd part, and whilst I may walk away from a few confrontations alive, I'm almost never able to beat the 2nd boss, and even if I do--I can have all my health, even health well over 100--by the 6th or 7th battle in the third part, something dreadful happens. Very Spelunky-like in how my massive surplus of life is quickly erased.

I've read all the advice here and I'm plugging along, but am at a weary point, so I'm posting here about how impossible it is, in hopes this will be the magic faerie dust I need, like the OP, to get the bloody achievement next time I play. If this doesn't trip the cosmic switch for acquisition, I reckon I'll just slowly gather other relics as I continue to strive for the one.

The one thing I've gotten really good at, is knowing which ? to skip, whenever possible, b/c there's a risk of picking up a 2nd relic, with no chance to refuse it (like searching for loot on the dead warrior and finding not gold, but a relic, which you can't leave or otherwise refuse)...

[shteev]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2367178257

I played with the Defect. Looking at the deck now, there's nothing really remarkable about it... it doesn't even have a lot of powers in it, which is certainly an area The Defect shines. There's a Fission in there but Fission isn't a top tier card.

The Defect just has a lot of good common cards which work well together :)

I always try and cram as many 0 costs into the Defect as possible, which includes often upgrading your Zap and Dualcast. There are many many highly playable 0 cost common cards, like Steam Barrier, Claw, Go for the Eyes, Turbo and Overclock... some great dedicated support with All in One and Scrape, and they also work well with maxi card draw like Compile Driver and Skim.

The random cards White Noise and Hello World are both much better than they look.

Hello World also has the useful side effect of making your deck bigger so that Aggregate and Stack become even better. These two are monster cards you probably want to play multiple times and Rebound and Hologram will help with that (remember if you upgrade Hologram it doesn't Exhaust any more!).

So you have all these neat cards to play with and that's before you even decide how you are going to play with your orbs.

This is all very generalised strategy... maybe I should have posted this in it's own thread...

[eternalreturn]

Likewise, a massive fan of the 0 cost cards. I've begun to expect I may well get the Minimalist Achievement before Who Needs Relics, because with the Ironclad, a topped up Anger multiplies right fast, especially in a small deck. I'm assuming Minimalist means 5 card in the actual deck and doesn't include cards generated by cards in combat, though. ? I've switched back to the Defect a few times as I try to get Who Needs Relics, as you write here, because really, there's lots of fun and possibilities with the Defect, but my brain has been in a rut of thinking Ironclad is the best b/c of that starting relic

I *almost* got Finish Donu w/a Feed the same run I got Powerful, but I sadly underestimated my strength, and too quickly stripped Donu till ... there was no way I could keep it alive waiting for Feed to cycle back in my hand.