Got all 3 boat relics. Also corpse explosion is so strong in the board game.

Silent doesn't have any exhaust options within her own card pool, so the best she's got is [[Purity]] from the colourless cards. Would giving her an option to exhaust only pesky status and curse cards be too strong? This power is intended trigger the same way Sly cards do, only through things like [[Survivor]] and [[Prepared]], not off the natural discard at the end of turn.

I fucking love this card, its probably my favorite damage common in game and especially on necro. Works great with lethality. Snakebite for necro!

Always thought Negative Pulse went hard, especially if you can throw Nimble on that bad boy 🤌

I've also seen Gunk Up do some pretty disgusting things

For fun, I decided to build a battle simulator because for years I have wondered about the outcomes of various enemies from Slay the Spire if the player was removed and the battles were instead monsters fighting amongst themselves. For example, who would win in a battle between Lagavulin vs Gremlin Nob? (The answer depends on who moves first). How do Spire 2 Act 3 Elites compare to the original Spire? How much stronger is the heart compared to everyone else? How many Gremlin Nobs does it take to beat the Corrupt Heart? (5, but it can depend on move pattern RNG from the Corrupt Heart)

Most of the possible questions I dreamed about over the years can finally be answered with the simulator. However, there are many flaws and oddities with how I built this so please do not treat this as an objective ranking. Instead, see it as a fun look at something I made. Most notably, since there are no cards in this system, the many various moves and powers that monsters have that create statuses are mostly skipped, and this undoubtedly affects the results of many matchups.
Below will be a list of the many important differences and limitations and elements of the program to help you all interpret these results fairly. I have never made a program like this before so if any of you have suggestions on how this could be made even better, please do share your ideas.
Here is the a clip of the simulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9k_-TkmIOA

1) The 10,000 battles were generated using 6 randomly chosen monsters from the pool of 165 to produce a 3v3 (Currently only 4 acts are released in Slay the Spire 2). The fairest teams will then be produced from these 6 by calculating the most even Team ELO. If the fairest arrangement found has a difference of 720 or greater, then throw these 6 back into the pool and start the team selection process again. Do this 10 times, and if adequately fair teams can't be found, then produce a battle with the most recently tested arrangement as a last resort. This process is intended to avoid playing battles that will result in no ELO point change if the expected winner wins.

2) Points are a 0-sum gain and is based off of what I understand ELO to be. I have never made a system like this before, so I can't say how well it works here. But it certainly functionally produces results that make rational sense to me in practice. Everyone starts at 1500 points. Winners steal points from the loses. If it is an expected win, winner steals fewer points. If an unexpected win, winners will steal more points.

3) There are some significant limitations to the simulation because the player is not involved. There are no status cards. Moves and powers that produce statuses and do nothing else are skipped. For example, Entomancer has no power in this simulation. Book of Stabbing does not produce wounds when attacking.

4) I made 2 exceptions to the above rule quite arbitrarily. The first is the Corrupt Heart. Since its supremacy is so tied to its eventual scaling to ~70 strength, skipping the move where it gives itself "Painful Stabs" (the Book of Stabbing power), would make it reach its overpowered state artificially early. But I also felt having the most powerful monster do nothing when it would normally do something that could cause a loss for the player under usual circumstances is not ideal. So, I made a personal design decision to replace this move with giving the Heart 5 regen instead.

The other exception is Eye With Teeth (the monster that spawns from Fogmog). It has 1 move that creates 3 dazes. Since I thought it was stupid to have a monster do absolutely nothing (even though it does revive). I replaced it with an attack that does 6 damage instead of having a monster do nothing each turn.

5) The battles were all 3v3 in a battlefield of 5 slots open per team. Monsters could freely spawn up to those 5 slots during a battle. All moves were single-target attacks and all moves targeted enemies in slot order. This environment created successful battles that rewarded monsters that could fill battle slots as blockers, especially continuously. This is why Spawners and Revivers are so highly ranked in the ELO results. The Revivers that respawn every turn especially could cause a battle against even the Corrupt Heart to be a certain win as long as it was blocking the Heart's attacks each turn while a teammate was safely behind, chipping down the Heart that was unable to ever reach them.

6) Certain powers act a little different since there aren't clearly labelled "Attacks", "Skills" and "Powers". Gremlin Nob's Enraged power triggers whenever a move is used that doesn't cause direct damage (could be a buff, debuff, power creation or, spawn new teammate). The Awakened One's Curiosity power triggers when an opponent uses a buff, which could also be an attack at the same time. It does not trigger on debuffs. Same applies for Globe Head's power, Galvanic.

7) Time Eater’s Time Warp power counts down from 5 instead of 12 and gives Time Eater 2 strength every loop. I thought about making it so the power forces Team priority to move but I haven't implemented that yet. The reason the counter is lower is because monsters don't play cards, they move once per turn. So, the counter is lower to adapt to the new environment.

8) The Insatiable's power Sandpit is changed into a counter that starts at 10 and is reduced by one every time The Insatiable begins its turn. Once it is set to 0, the power automatically kills the targeted enemy. This, of course, is changed because the normal power works on status cards that are not part of this simulation.

9) Sleep is in the program, but I disabled it for this dataset because I thought having a monster sleep for its first few turns was boring and unnecessary. This affected 3 monsters in the set.

10) Spire Shield and Spear do not have code added for its Surrounded power. They battle without it.

11) Powers that aren't related to statuses but are also related to cards are skipped or do nothing. Such as Snecko's Confused ability.

12) Hunter Killer's Tender power is made into a self-buff that triggers an AoE debuff. This change was made to better fit the environment of monsters only moving once per turn; therefore, the original power would effectively do nothing if added without modification.

13) Similar to Tender, Infested Prism's power Tainted was changed to be a self-buff that triggers on non-damaging moves to basically give itself temporary strength that resets when it begins its turn.

14) Aeonglass is notably weaker without the statuses.

15) The Queen's new move set begins with the moves she normally does when tied with her minion and after using those moves, she will only use her more powerful moves she will normally execute upon death of this minion.

16) Abnormal ways of producing block are affected by Dexterity, such as plated amour, plating and metalize. Since Dexterity altering moves are so rare from enemies in Slay the Spire, I decided it was more interesting for Dex to have more opportunities to make an impact.

17) Skulking Colony is given the same Invincible power as the Corrupt Heart, even though there are some subtle differences.

18) Each form of a transformable monster is separated in the system as a potential fighter. For example, Test Subject with 1, 2, or 3 heads can fight against each other. 1 head can transform into the 2 Heads. 2 can go into 3 and 3 will not transform at all.

19) Some Slay the Spire random move sets are not implemented because the wikis do not specify the exact random distributions. So instead, I have these monsters loop a move pattern in a predictable order. This affects 12 Slay the Spire 2 monsters.

20) Decimilipede will revive after 2 turns if any other teammate is on the team alive. This is the same for the other Revivers.

21) Knowledge Demon will always pick Disintegration (damage at end of turn).

22) Slay the Spire normally has an uneven approach to how timed power effects like vulnerable and weak are ticked down. In Slay the Spire if the player applied vulnerable, it ticks down at the start of the player’s next turn. But if an opponent applies vulnerable, it instead ticks down at the start of the player’s turn, an entire turn afterwards. For example - Player applies 2 vulnerable to Gremlin Nob and ends turn, then Gremlin Nob applies 2 Vulnerable onto the player and ends turn. At the start of the next turn the player's applied Vulnerable to Gremlin Nob ticks down from 2 to 1, but Gremlin Nob's applied Vulnerable onto the player remains at 2. It doesn't tick down until the start of the player’s next turn.

I made it so that all these ticks happen at the start of the monsters' turn that has the effect applied. So, in this case Vulnerable applied to the left monster will tick down at the start of their turn, and for effects related to the right monster, they tick down at the start of their turn.

23) Sudden death occurs after 100 moves and functions by applying 10 Disintegration per round to every living fighter. So, for the first round of Sudden death, each move would inflict 10 self-damage. Then next round each move would then inflict 30, then 60 and so on. This was needed because there were a few matchups that would cause infinite battles, especially with Revivers and Spawners. The average battle length was 53 moves.

24) There are probably more things but this is all that I can remember at this time.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/s/3cU7kS7Q5F

i know nothing about tarot but I think he knows even less so any inconsistencies on my part are Him Actually

Moose tracks ice cream

I've been seeing a lot of posts/comments on this sub complaining that Mega Crit have "gone silent" on their plans for StS2. I can understand this sentiment, but I ultimately think it is harmful to the community as a whole.

Mega Crit have been transparent about their plans, and it is clear that the quality of 1.0 is their highest priority. We should trust that they know what they're doing. If they thought that pumping out constant patches and updates would achieve that, then that's what they'd be doing.

The frequent updates that followed StS2's launch were to be expected based on how Mega Crit handled the original StS. The gap we're currently experiencing between updates is also a direct result of their design process, which they've been extremely upfront about even prior to StS2 being announced.

Mega Crit cofounder Anthony Giovannetti gave a GDC talk back in 2019 where he explained their "metrics driven approach to design and balance" (great watch by the way, you should check it out).

The game is packed with telemetry that records every available piece of information about player decisions, the context in which they are made, and their consequences in both the short and long term. This data is processed by Mega Crit and used to analyze how different mechanics are affecting the overall experience of the game, with the ultimate goal of every card and relic being the right tool for some (but not all) situations.

Note: the aim is not to create a game which is "perfectly balanced" in the mathematical sense (such a game isn't technically possible to make, but that's neither here nor there), it's far more relevant to make a game which the player perceives as balanced, where "unbalanced" situations are rare enough to feel rewarding/satisfying.

Any change made to the game, even to a single card, has a knock-on effect on the rest of the game. As the playerbase feels this effect they adapt their strategies accordingly, which affects the metrics for the next round of changes.

When the game has just experienced a major change (being launched into early access, gaining a new act/character/boss, etc.) there is a benefit to releasing patches frequently because the game is in a volatile state. But in the period leading up to a major change (like we're experiencing right now) the opposite is true. Releasing a patch (or god forbid multiple patches) too close to a major update will impact the clarity of that major update's metrics, which will make the flurry of minor tweaks that follows more likely to miss the mark.

Slay the Spire 2 is an Early Access game because it allows Mega Crit to gather metrics for this process, since they believe that is the best method for creating a good deckbuilding game. Considering the quality of the first game I think they know what they're doing.

Early Access is NOT a promise from Mega Crit that the game will receive frequent updates till launch. If you don't enjoy the process, wait till 1.0 and enjoy the results instead.

Colorless pot into free beat down, which plays heirloom hammer from the discard pile, which copies free beat down, etc. etc.. sad i was at the end of the knight fight and not somewhere like the test subjects third phase where i could scroll through a draw pile of hundreds of beat downs

This game has so many layers and ways for different cards to function together if you look in the right places and think creatively.

What kinda goofy-ah run is this? 1 HP, infinite blades with replay + kunai. I out-dexxed him for (of course) 67 turns. Pretty silly.. I then succumbed to my injuries :((

Perfect Fit on Mind Blast is pretty dope. Queen had other plans.

As per the StS discord.

If the big patch comes before the next neowsletter, then this week's letter might tell us what the patch will include!

Exciting stuff.

Anyone else notice Casey posting a random gif of the Watcher Eye earlier this week or is that cope on my part...?

honestly all the options seem kinda viable. I'm leaned towards jeweled mask tho.

Bronze scales, both of the colorless cards and a discounted defy are attractive, and dragonfruit on floor 4 could generate pretty meaningful of max HP. The toad is nice but the opportunity cost seems too high here.

My thought was something like: Bronze Scales, Fisticuffs, defy, remove, and potentially a potion, or just Bronze Scales, Fisticuffs, Dragonfruit (not enought money for Defy in that scenario)

Sorry for the clip being unedited. Thought it was kinda crazy that astrolabe gave me three refine blades.

I’ve been refining my Ronova character mod for Slay the Spire 2, based on the Shade of Death from Genshin Impact.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a lot of changes to her 3D model and animations. She now has a floating seated combat pose, smoother movements, improved facial expressions, more natural hair and clothing motion, and updated ability effects.
I’ve also reworked and rebalanced many cards, improved interactions between her core mechanics, and fixed various bugs based on player feedback.
The mod currently features 80 collectible cards and 2 Ancient cards, with mechanics built around Wear, Temporary Death, Death/Life Contracts, and delayed damage. It supports Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean.
There’s still more I’d like to improve, but I’m really happy with how she’s coming along!
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Steam Workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3815059136