How to beat Slay the Spire

[Zeekin]

Just beat the game for the first time and thought I'd share my thoughts on how to beat it.

Step 1: Get really, really, really lucky. That's all there is to it... Almost.
Step 2: Win!

Nah... Luck is a HUGE factor, but there are a few items that make the game complete faceroll, basically hope for 1-2 of those and pray, and you should win. The majority of the relics are borderline useless, more often than not it's not worth swapping the default relic for a boss relic.

The OP Relics:

Relic - Necronomicon
Effect - your first attack EVERY turn that costs 2 or more casts twice

Crazy broken. One shot stuff with 'bludgeon' or 'perfect strike'.

Necronomicon is particularly potent with whirlwind, which costs X, apparently equates to costing 2 or more - so basically if you do a 3 energy whirlwind = 6 energy whirlwind with necronomicon. if you get necronomicon + 1 or 2 whirlwinds GFG, you can pretty much clear house on turn 1 in a lot of cases - completely ridiculous.

Relic - Snecko Eye
Effect - cost of cards is randomised, draw 2 extra cards each turn

This thing is probably worse than necronomicon, suffice to say if you combo this with cards that duplicate - you can duplicate a heap of 0 cost cards and play 10+ cards in a turn doing heaps of damage.
Stack your deck with high cost cards (2-4 cost), and more often than not you get really cheap bludgeons / clotheslines / uppercuts / perfect strike's etc. And then if you duplicate say - bludgeon x2 or x3 when it's 0 cost, you've got 2-3x bludgeon costing 0 energy. Balanced.
You can somtimes get unlucky, but more often than not, you don't.

Skills you should probably take most of the time in no particular order, all very good:

Perfected Strike - stack a heap of "strike" cards (including itself), and by the end of the game this thing *destroys* bludgeon in terms of damage

Dual Wield - duplicate those overpowered cards, nuff said. Duplicating the especially potent 'power' cards is especially effective

Whirlwind - once upgraded it's straight up better than plain old 'strike' any time there's more than 1 monster on screen



Weak / trap skills:

Basically anything that costs a lot and delivers little immediate value, single use (exhausts) or has very specific clause before it can be used. Some include:

sentinel
metallicise
shockwave
spot weakness
demon form
barricade
immolate
impervious
juggernaut
limit break
entrench

From my limited experience, stacking buffs / defences just doesn't work endgame - it's all about killing them before they kill you - and if your hand is full of buffs and defence, it's not gonna work - by the end monster damage is so high you just can't keep up.

Well that's all I can be bothered to write for now, I hope someone out there found this useful.

[Bomjus]

stopped reading after the first 3 lines because you're not wrong lmao.

it's 90% luck and then 10% arithmetic in your head for doing most damage while taking the least damage.

also, i lied. and i did read it. and i beat the game for my first time stacking defense. i had 2 metallicizes a barricade and some other defend cards.

[ShortBlink]

I don't think it's that much about luck, I just won after owning the game only 7 hours. I had a pretty terrible set of cards, and what I considered bad relics (I had so much money but no merchant spawns)

The last fight is surprisingly easy.

[King Joshington]

Luck plays a part, but a smaller part than you're claiming.
Also, it's weird that you've just decided what is OP and what is absolutely useless ... especially considering how many people would disagree with you (many, many people don't like the Snecko Eye, for example).
I'd say add an In My Humble Opinion, but your opinion doesn't sound humble :)

[Flavorable]

More than half of the cards you listed as useless really aren't, it just depends on the type of deck you're going for.

And also:

Originally posted by King Joshington:

I'd say add an In My Humble Opinion, but your opinion doesn't sound humble :)

+1

[Sealer]

Those people with 35 win streaks must be reaaally lucky ;)

[MiKeFuRy]

Originally posted by Sealer:

Those people with 35 win streaks must be reaaally lucky ;)

euuuuh.. who ? do u have link ?

[Traveler]

With my meager win rate of 40%(many others would do a lot better than I do) with both characters across ~120 playthroughs, I have little to say.

You can rely on luck as much as you wish, but that alone will not always carry you.

[moleo]

Luck certainly helps, but I don't tink it dominates.

My winrate is about 50%, and I know some of those loses are likely my fault, because I noticed play mistakes I made.

Then of course there are the mistakes that I *don't* know I made, which could easily be a 'tip of the iceberg' type situation, where there are several times more mistakes I didn't notice than mistakes I did.

After all, it is the same skillset that allows you to both recognise and avoid making errors!
Therefore, somewhat ironically, the fewer mistakes you think you are making, the more you probably are making (ut not noticing).

Of course I can't discount luck completely, but if you think luck is dominating then I strongly disagree.

[Cleanfear]

Except that limit break is OP and you listed it as useless...

[Fyre]

You literally just listed every card that wasn't part of the deck archetype you built as useless, if you manage a small enough deck with barricade and entrench you literally (read: practically) cannot die.

You didn't even mention headbutt, probably one of the most underrated cards imo. Limit break, headbutt, shrug it off/wait until next turn.

[Sealer]

Originally posted by MiKeFuRy:

Originally posted by Sealer:

Those people with 35 win streaks must be reaaally lucky ;)

euuuuh.. who ? do u have link ?

On the beta branch of the game there are leaderboards, few days ago I saw 2 top players have 35 wins in a row. Personally I put the game on the shelf after I started winning like 80 % of the runs.

[Sealer]

Originally posted by MiKeFuRy:

Originally posted by Sealer:

Those people with 35 win streaks must be reaaally lucky ;)

euuuuh.. who ? do u have link ?

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/941683898037210516/07109B3CA2350FD4B0CD3595786A5F5A607621E3/

[tradi]

Originally posted by Lord of Change:

With my meager win rate of 40%(many others would do a lot better than I do) with both characters across ~120 playthroughs, I have little to say.

You can rely on luck as much as you wish, but that alone will not always carry you.

I have a 10% winrate on the same number of playthroughs, so yea... I suck, but I'm also very unlucky >__> I'm getting better though, won 3 out of 5 games today.

[CosmicMagpie]

So for those at the 50% or higher win rate, how are you doing it? I'm loving the game have played 5 rounds and have yet to win. Farthest I've made it is past the second boss and dying almost immediately. I've interested to know how you improve, and how it is not pure RNG.

[Sealer]

Originally posted by szarkamichael:

So for those at the 50% or higher win rate, how are you doing it? I'm loving the game have played 5 rounds and have yet to win. Farthest I've made it is past the second boss and dying almost immediately. I've interested to know how you improve, and how it is not pure RNG.

Card draw directly reduces your rng. Here's a hypothetical scenario : if you have 4 strikes and a pommel strike, 4 blocks and a shrug it off, you will never be in a situation where you cannot block or attack. Consider warcry or calculated gamble, these cards directly reduce rng by giving you options you would not have because of poor draw.

Limit your deck size by removing bad cards and not picking up every card you come across. Take elite fights unless you literally cant beat certain elites. If you pick up relics that can be built around early, do that.

There are 2 ways to reduce rng of your deck - making it small and having card draw.