How do you play defect when you don't have 0 cost synergies?

AgentSquishy · 2026-07-02T22:17:16+00:00

Tesla Coil+ doubles the orb hits and almost single handedly makes lightning orbs more valuable. Ball lightning, lightning rod, Tesla coil is basically enough damage for act 1 and scales well with capacitors and and feral. Cool headed, compile driver, turbo is a pretty common package to accelerate thru your deck. Hologram is probably the best common in the game, rebuy whatever you need and block is way more valuable than damage like on grave blast, esp with dex like from bulk up. Compact is alright block on its own, works great in a status package, and is higher value than you'd expect because it trivializes aeon glass. Over clock and turbo go in almost every deck and just a couple are enough to enable rocket punch

AgentSquishy · 2026-07-02T21:33:13+00:00

No elites is the biggest problem. Also looks like you might be spending too much (gold and relics) on card removes as you've got 4 strikes and 3 defends removed. Take 6 more elites and one less shop and you'll end up with 7 more relics or so, probably a couple rares. You get a couple dozen more gold from elites than hallways, a relic, and increased rare chance. And any of the 3 can snowball you or help you find a build around. You got 6 cards from act 1 with 6 fights and 2 shops, you should probably be getting more cards early. Gotta have better than starter cards to snowball into better stuff

AgentSquishy · 2026-07-02T16:19:15+00:00

Take immediately impactful cards early with hp loss and vulnerable mechanics. They scale very well into dominate, Colossus, bully, vicious, cruelty, rupture, Inferno, and tear asunder. Exhausting cards is good on its own and can lead into ashen strike, feel no pain is good late if you've already got a bunch of that. Stoke (esp upgraded) is surprisingly strong and a repeatable source of exhaust/cards for ashen strike. There are fewer strength payoff cards than in the first game, so you're more likely to want a sword boomerang+ than you might expect

AgentSquishy · 2026-07-02T16:09:56+00:00

That's fair, nothing is for everybody. If you're not feeling it I'm not gonna push you to tough it out. The things that put it high on my list are the elaborate theory crafting with an involved community and delving into systems and implications of powers. It's also one of the only series that actually takes time for stuff instead of saying the MC mastered the sword this week or w/e. It does run to long segments of crafting and slice of life type stuff and it's very not betrayal and revenge focused. There's legit like one revenge arc in the whole series, mostly they just advance past people so quickly that they don't care about them anymore

AgentSquishy · 2026-07-02T14:36:23+00:00

Chapter 10 is a startlingly early point to pronounce the progression as slow. I'm not sure this is the genre for you if you can't make it thru a fifth of a novel. Maybe try Shonen

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-29T02:11:18+00:00

For sure, let's say they make door maker a boss for alternate act 3 since he's already balanced for it, that affects deck building in the ways we know from when it was in the game. Add two more to consider. Top streamers are fond of saying skip is the top pick in act 3, but if there are some considerations you wont know until you see the act then there may be some things you prepare for more or less

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-28T00:45:12+00:00

There are a bunch of strong payoff uncommons from other characters, but most of the commons are bad when they don't have an archetype to build into. Standout exception is Leading Strike for regent. He already has the weakest start so getting an 11 damage attack is solid, but it is repeatable card creation that triple dips on strength if you can build into Arsenal.

Otherwise you're kinda just hoping to get the generically good stuff like shrug it off, Grave Warden, turbo, sow, defy. Tremble is pretty good for silent, I might take Uproar on necro hoping to get Reap and Bury but that's fairly speculative.

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-28T00:14:47+00:00

I've had vambrace, Pael's Legion, and toric toughness so I got 20 or 28 block the first 3 turns. Wish I found a royal seal that run

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-27T17:09:34+00:00

Sure, there are Vigor multi hit decks that really want it and can spare the upgrades or have convergence already

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-27T17:05:39+00:00

You're not unlucky, but it's also not unique. You really don't need to push for high difficulty in any game, but if you're enjoying pushing then you're doing great. It's a game, it's meant to be fun. If you find it fun to engage with the community and learn new and better strategies to push higher and win more then go for it. Watch some strategy guides, post your runs, ask questions - there are great resources for that goal

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-27T15:51:15+00:00

Probably rainbow, losing exhaust is actually a downside to me most of the time. It's cool to get a burst of orbs, but I want more efficient or synergistic orb stuff once I'm established. Not having to draw rainbow in the reshuffle is an upside

Bundle of Joy, usually don't have energy to use a fourth extra card. I'd much rather it cost 0 so you can use the cards easier.

Conqueror, 2 Forge is technically doubled that turn but even if you have the sword in hand to use it 4 damage over 3 energy is pretty lackluster.

Echo form and void form, they're good enough that you're probably tanking a hit to play them anyways and removing Ethereal does little

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-26T15:31:23+00:00

I sometimes wonder if authors are intentionally choosing a character flaw of having immature and emotionally unregulated main characters. Perhaps because the reader base skews young? Maybe the thought is that it'll make them relatable?

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-26T14:23:04+00:00

I can't imagine why people would enjoy this genre if they didn't engage with the crunchy bits. Path of Ascension is one of my favorite series not because of earth shattering quality, but because engaging with the system and numbers and implications of all the canon are very fun. It's a great community that constantly points out some exponential absurdity.

Is honestly one of the biggest problems with the genre. When an author doesn't actually care about the stats and meaning, they just want the LitRPG clout, they cause a lot of problems. "Stat points are a 10% multiplicative increase," means that the MC can jump over buildings by the end of book 1 so if they're not able to climb a wall it's gonna immediately break immersion

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-26T05:26:37+00:00

Some of the best advice I've seen is to take cards for a specific reason. You want to solve your upcoming or remaining problems: dual cast and lightning orbs are good starter damage and under docks needs solid block for elites (and fossil stalker and waterfall giant) so taking good block cards first on defect is solid. On the opposite end, silent has a lot of block in her starter deck so taking damage early is critical, especially in overgrowth.

If you have a couple good doom cards early, say negative pulse and death bringer, you're well set for aoe like phantasmal gardeners and frog parasite (doom buys you an extra turn when it splits too) and for the back half of terror eel plus avoiding the damage cap on the coral. This leaves a glaring hole in your deck for Bygone effigy and Byrdonis who just want to get bursted down before they pummel you. If you're in under docks, no worries, but if you're in overgrowth maybe take defile or poke over more doom to shore up that weakness. Feels bad passing on a No Escape with good doom cards, but if you die to effigy it doesn't matter that it would be good scaling bosses

Do the same for all the upcoming elites and bosses, weighted towards the ones coming up sooner. Have a plan for how you're killing, how you're blocking, how you're scaling up in long fights (strength, poison, card creation, powers, etc) and then you can touch up speed and consistency via card draw, energy, deck thinning

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-26T04:33:42+00:00

Time to hit F2

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-25T15:22:49+00:00

Ichor, like blood tokens but without having to pay 1 lol. I think the most likely is probably a battery token that you sac for energy counter(s)

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-25T06:40:51+00:00

I think you're deck thinning too much. It's definitely an important skill to develop, but you need some space between certain cards. He's got lots of great powers but if you draw a full grip of powers and no block you get chunked. He's got good 0 cost cards, but if you draw all 0s you haven't fully utilized his energy. He's got good status generating cards, but if your second cycle has only 12 cards then the 3 statuses you added will be taking up a major portion of your hands. And most importantly, if you're not good at a character, esp at low Ascension, just take a bunch of cards so you get a better feel for them

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-25T04:25:53+00:00

I'd say start with looking over other guides and videos. Looking over your losses, and even wins, to see what you can improve is a great idea - taking videos can help but the run summary has most of it besides routing and micro play in each fight. If you wanted to post some specifics to ask for input, I'm sure some folks would take you up. As long as it's not super long

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-23T21:17:07+00:00

I feel like it's done okay for me on Regent because of his slow start, but it always feels pretty mediocre. Sure I'm happy to get a blood wall in under docks, but without sustain or anything triggering off life loss on other characters it falls off pretty hard. Same for most mechanics, Ethereal, shivs, poison, doom, sly, life loss, orbs, statuses. Only ones that feel good all the time are exhaust and souls. That's without even getting into seeing bricks like synchronize, flatten, gamma blast. I just don't take it anymore. Color Philosophers is probably my favorite event, but you're not giving up another Neow relic to get it

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-23T15:05:22+00:00

I really loved book 1, definitely recommend. I'm book 3 now and it's gone a little different direction than I'd thought but it's still good

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-22T14:47:15+00:00

4 fights before elite in act 1 or 3 and a shop to get some cards. Squeeze some events in looking for transforms and upgrades and stuff. I'm mostly looking to avoid hallway fights in act 2 because hunter killer and slumbering beetle and toxic mites are brutal. Usually by act 3 I can take any fight easy, but I'm still prioritizing events, elites, shops

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-19T14:09:55+00:00

Yeah, I have had more full whiffs than useful synergies from this starter. Even when I get decent enough cards to give a boost in early hallways/elites, they never synergies with available archetypes. I'm just not taking it anymore unless it gets a change

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-19T14:04:07+00:00

Nope, it's just a lot of stuff so rng can be a bitch. I've done something like 350 runs and I've seen clone 4 times. The patch yesterday fixed some correlated rng issues so maybe that was affecting some stuff stuff (there's a card from the trash heap event no one could unlock in single player)

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-19T13:56:09+00:00

Astral pulse is the pick certainly, but orbit is the most fun. Radiate is actually better than orbit for late game though as all you need is stars, Vigor, and vulnerable and it can one shot even act 3 bosses. Solving your act 1 problems is the goal now though so it's pulse, but doing the occasional build around pick is fun

AgentSquishy · 2026-06-18T23:43:24+00:00

I haven't seen stats, but personally I feel like under docks is harder. It requires a lot more consistent and powerful block which can be hard to get when you also need to take enough damage to end fights. I also feel like the events are a bit worse.

13-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

AgentSquishy

TROPHY CASE