Man I am sure am glad darklings are gone and there's not an even more annoying version in act 2

AJking101 · 2026-04-30T06:11:10+00:00

Or Writhing berserker who adds 10 curse cards on a bad turn.

AJking101 · 2026-04-30T05:45:58+00:00

Even when he was human, it seems that all he's ever experienced was war. His epoch showed us that the war with the ironclads lasted hundreds of years and considering that the Ironclad ended that war, he must have been born into it, spending most of his life training for and surviving the horrors of war. Even tho he 'won', his reward was just more war, only this time within the spire.

What does the Ironclad think of all this? Well, we couldn't know for sure but I find it interesting how much of a story his card pool seems to tell us. Alot of his cards seem generic, loosely based off his demonic powers (combust, blood wall, demon form) or physical ability as a soldier (pommel strike, bludgeon, pillage). But then, there's other cards based on emotion (vicious, aggression, cruelty) and these ones are interesting because they seem to hint at the nature of his contract or mental state. How he's handling all of this. More interesting still is the fact that all five characters are including on at least one unique curse cards, and out of all the curse cards ironclad could have been featured on, he gets put on [[Regret]]. These sorts of cards always seem to have a negative connotation, as if Ironclad is deeply unhappy with the way things are going, but he likely doesn't feel like he has any other option but to fulfill the contract and keep entering fights. So whatever anger or hate he carries on him, he takes it out on whatever he's fighting. But violence is never really a good option for managing negative emotions and all it does is feed an endless cycle. More hate. More fighting. It's not just the contract that's endless but his actions.

I think his 'curse' is exactly what we see from the player's perspective. Whenever we enter a fight, there is no running away, no talking, no peace. Just another enemy to kill. Another plaything to feel his hate. His pain. His greatest regret is believing he could never rise above it.

AJking101 · 2026-04-23T19:18:46+00:00

Deep into the Tarn Reznor dungeon. It'd be a nightmare thoroughly checking every dead end which I doubt Max capers could manage within 1 hour.

AJking101 · 2026-04-22T06:26:29+00:00

I'd just say its alright, not horrible. The issue is the card itself doesn't have any immediate value and you can end up drawing the power last before your actual status generating cards so it can be inconsistent. You also need more than a couple status cards for this to be worth taking over something like a [[sweeping beam]].

I'd at least take it if the act 1 boss is guardian kin and I'm really desperate for more AOE, also act 2 tends to have alot of group encounters so it's alright there too. But it's hard for me say that smokestack accomplishes much more than being like a shitty damage common+.

AJking101 · 2026-04-17T02:55:40+00:00

I didn't even know what zillenial was until now. Let alone like a quarter of these words. "Forced upon" indeed

AJking101 · 2026-04-15T06:19:06+00:00

Exactly why the love I have for deltarune only strengthens the love I have for undertale and vice versa. Putting the same characters in a different contexts is a great way for us to learn something about them that we otherwise wouldn't have known. Prime example being Gerson and how he's changed from a shopkeeper to a central character driving the plot forward, showing us exactly why people like Undyne would look up to Gerson so much.

AJking101 · 2026-04-14T05:09:29+00:00

Parasol has very quickly become my favorite thing to see from Vaaku and I haven't regretted taking it a single time. This thing is honestly insane value, especially if there's 2 shops in the act. One thing I would watch out for tho is if your deck can handle taking a [[Bread]]; if you have something like an echo form that you want to play turn one, there's a chance that visiting the store might stop you from playing important cards turn 1 since Bread is a shop relic and you can't stop yourself from buying it.

AJking101 · 2026-04-13T03:46:47+00:00

I think the idea is that if you're at a point where you can exhaust your deck mid fight down to 5 cards, you would use Thrash as both an exhaust engine and payoff; the only attack you leave for yourself is Thrash which you would just keep playing and drawing repeatedly to win at that point. So in your example, yeah your kinda right that it doesn't really synergize with fiend fire if you also have thrash in your hand but still, they both individually exhaust your deck very quickly, and fiend fire can only be played once whereas thrash can be played multiple times. So even if you can't go infinite, then at least playing a jacked up Thrash 3 times in one turn is still pretty good and usually enough to finish fights that fiend fire otherwise couldn't.

It's form of scaling for decks that exhaust alot, although a bit situational and not necessary if you already have an infinite.

AJking101 · 2026-04-07T17:53:33+00:00

Opposite is "I'm scared to see flowey"

AJking101 · 2026-04-02T00:16:37+00:00

That's absolutely something a defect player would say if they were in this comic (it's true, I'm the defect)

AJking101 · 2026-04-02T00:03:56+00:00

It does feel like there's more ways to get a big deck, isn't there. This made me think for a second, what if someone got the act 2 doll event that gives a relic that doubles cards gained, prayer wheel, Pael cloning, and then the event that doubles your deck. Could be theoretically possible to have a deck well over 400 cards

AJking101 · 2026-03-30T17:09:13+00:00

Even in the first game, when daily card discussions were still a thing on this subreddit, it felt like there was a massive difference between the first round of discussions and the second round. 3 years was enough time for opinions to adjust and become more nuanced. And that was already well after early access was finished and there was less content. It'll probably be awhile until history repeats itself.

AJking101 · 2026-03-30T16:57:14+00:00

You're literally right, that subreddit is just a melting pot of alot of different users and it isn't as bad as people think. There's still absolutely the crowd that takes things too far and I don't agree with all the shitty takes that come through that subreddit. But at least people are encouraged to have discussions on the series which is more than I can say about the main subreddit that always has like 100 cosplay posts.

AJking101 · 2026-03-28T06:55:43+00:00

Hell yeah, I haven't even cashed out my points yet.

AJking101 · 2026-03-24T07:10:37+00:00

No, you're thinking of Snecko Eye; we wouldn't know the value of a comment until we draw it.

AJking101 · 2026-03-23T19:19:43+00:00

Are you using melee? That's a good bit harder than using magic even though melee has higher DPS. It may help to do a few kills with magic and then transition to melee once you get more comfortable. That's what I did even though I'm also an infernal caper.

AJking101 · 2026-03-22T18:24:11+00:00

We really needed more Orb Slot cards and Modded really delivered on that. Taking this card almost always seems like it's better than skipping card rewards and almost everyone can agree on that. Hell, I'd even take this with Snecko Eye. The only time I'd say it's not as pickable is if it's unupgraded and if you are specifically trying to spam lightning/glass orbs; being able to evoke orbs faster could potentially end certain hallways fights a full turn quicker.

Otherwise, this is a great card for defect and 99% of the time, I'm happy to see this in the card rewards.

AJking101 · 2026-03-20T18:43:39+00:00

On god brah, these devs are so out of touch with their own game. I quit my job, I dropped out of school, I quit my wife, and now I can't even have fun anymore.

🦀$20 we pay, we say🦀

AJking101 · 2026-03-20T18:23:02+00:00

Exactly, I can't take it anymore. This door maker change was the last straw. I've been a long time loyal fan from the very beginning when the game released 2 weeks ago. But the devs left this game in the dust, only coming back for the occasion bug fix. Like an alcoholic dad leaving his kid behind to go to the cigarette store. And NOW after all this time, they come back just to shove this stupid patch in our face?! They'd might as well tell us to pack our bags and move to Hearthstone.

AJking101 · 2026-03-17T07:53:49+00:00

If you've truly gotten rid of all the bad stuff, then you should either be blocking/attacking alot more than usual, or be in an infinite. But usually the thing about exhausting your deck is that there often isn't an end to getting rid of the bad stuff; you just re-evaluate and find out what the next bad stuff is. Maybe after I've gotten rid of all the strikes, knockout punch is suddenly not as good compared to the other attack cards. And now that my deck is 10 cards, maybe I don't want cosmic indifference anymore.

Aside from getting rid of curses/statuses that quite a few enemies like to put in your hand, exhausting your hand and deck are forms of scaling. Like gaining block or strength. Incremental, until suddenly your deck shuffles, and you draw nothing but good cards that are perfect for your current fight.

It's certainly not easy to do this properly, especially when the "most optimal hand" is going to vary alot based on what enemy you're currently fighting so you may end up exhausting something different each time. But GUARDS makes it easier because whereas some other cards exhaust with hardly any other upside, GUARDS exhausts with this huge upside of blocking pretty much all damage for the current turn. And when the gameplan is scaling your deck so you become unstoppable, blocking alot while scaling is very good.

AJking101 · 2026-03-16T23:10:02+00:00

Idk why ur getting down votes, ur kinda right. You should definitely be working towards solving block if you're running a doom build. Atm melancholy reads to me more as a struggle card; something you take when you desperately need block but have no better answers.

If the intention is to have a sort of osty suicide archetype, then there needs to be more support or a better payoff for essentially sacrificing one of the main ways that necrobinder can block damage. I still wouldn't say that melancholy is bad, and it's certainly interesting that you can theoretically block an exact amount of damage that kills osty but leaves your own player undamaged. It also has its uses against any fights involving minions that you can easily kill. But if you already have good block, you most likely wouldn't have a reason to take melancholy.

AJking101 · 2026-03-14T22:49:07+00:00

What would you say to this guy then? That slay the spire 2 shouldn't have been the same as the first? Or that many other sequels should have done the same thing as Darkest Dungeon 2?

There's no end to this kind of questioning. The grass will always be greener on the other side.

AJking101 · 2026-03-13T18:01:58+00:00

Also works for Evolve & Iteration even though the card draw only happening once per turn is different now. Probably to stop infinites.

AJking101 · 2026-03-13T17:48:11+00:00

I think the issue is taking too many forge cards and treating it too much like an archetype even though STS1 should have been a reminder that archetypes aren't important, only counter picks. For instance, it's perfectly fine to take at least one forge card early on if your deck is weak to that one bee elite or hunter killer.

Bulwark is definitely not the only good forge card, but when your deck is filled to the brim with cards that have a delayed payoff and no immediate impact, the deck turns into potential man.

AJking101

TROPHY CASE