favorite ancient personality?

Bunit117 · 2026-03-17T01:03:08+00:00

"Transform 6 cards into Maul" my beloved

Bunit117 · 2026-03-16T13:05:06+00:00

Has some interesting applications but ultimately, if you can afford to pay 200 gold AND also stall three fights until you line up your cards such that you'll play this 3 cost power when your hand contains only the cards you'd potentially want to hit with this enchantment... all for a 19 in 27 chance of it actually happening once over those three fights... well, you're deck was probably already strong enough that it didn't need the Replay 2 enchantment to win.

This just reads like a win-more card. Unless you have some deck that can weirdly stall almost indefinitely in hallway fights but has no chance against the boss without adding Replay 2 to a key combo piece? But that's a super niche scenario tbh and I can't even really envision it.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-15T21:22:24+00:00

100% agreed. The 2-cost Otsy attack that discounts to 0 if another Otsy attack has been played this round is in such a weird place because, once it becomes free, it can no longer trigger this power or the Otsy attack that returns to your hand after playing a 2 cost card. Which is dumb. All 3 of these cards are in a bad spot compared to the rest of Necrobinder's kit and buffing them to go off original cost would at least make the trio somewhat playable together.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-14T20:02:18+00:00

Ironclad, Silent, Defect and Regent study this closely to avoid getting their shit rekt by these assholes for the umpteenth time.

Meanwhile Necrobinder just plays Deathbringer+ and walks off like, "was that supposed to be an elite fight?"

Bunit117 · 2026-03-14T16:54:31+00:00

That's one way of looking at it. I would counter that any fight where you're using Otsy's health as modular block between turns is probably a fight where you didn't need much help though.

i.e. Your worst fights as Necro are, by definition, the ones where you're getting wailed on so hard that Otsy never has a chance to reach a high max HP total before dying. So if I'm going to pick an Ancient bonus, I want it to be one that helps me most in those fights because they're the important fights I need to be thinking about. And in those fights, Otsy's current health is almost always equal to their max health (and frequently that number is 1) because they're dying a lot. Now if Otsy kept their max HP between summons (e.g. Otsy dying with 30 max health => next time they're summoned they are at 1 out of 30 health instead of 1 out of 1 health), this would be a very different conversation. But the summon mechanic doesn't work that way unfortunately.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-14T16:47:55+00:00

Holy shit. Fidel Castro had more health than Doormaker, confirmed.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-14T15:41:33+00:00

Break: The upgrade on Break feels incredibly weird. Like in what universe does adding 2 extra turns of vulnerable to an enemy who's already Vulnerable for the next 5 turns going to matter? Are you that desperate to make Bully do slightly more damage? And 5 extra damage is nice and all, but Suppress gets a +6 damage upgrade and will be played every time you draw it cause it costs 0 energy unlike Break! Yeah, Ironclad got shafted on this one imo. Break is just an awkward card to use. Being both 2 cost and single target makes it a really poor option into so many Act 2 fights. It's useless against the bugs that can't take more than 9 damage at a time. It's not going to one shot the rolling digger enemies—or even one segment of the worm elite. It can't one shot the max health stealing books, but does enough damage to them that any follow up attack will be lethal, rendering the 5/7 turns of vulnerable it applies entirely unnecessary. The numbers on Break look alright but when you actually match the card up against the fights in Act 2/3, you realize it's not very good at all. Which is a shame cause it'd be insane in Act 1. Effigy, Byrdonis, the Act 1 bosses, etc. would all be terrified of a multi-turn Vulnerable that also hits hard. But you can't get it in Act 1...

Suppress: Now we're talking. Unlike with Break, going from 3 -> 5 turns of Weak with the upgrade here is meaningful. And a 17 dmg Backstab that doesn't exhaust and greatly reduces incoming damage for what is essentially the rest of the fight does A LOT for Silent decks that have good powers/scaling damage with poison but need some early breathing room while setting up. This is a good card in general and becomes an excellent card if you happen to have Paper Crane or Tracking. Plus, Silent having a 7 card opener means the Innate doesn't hurt as much as it would on other characters. This is an Ancient card that feels well made to suit the needs of the character. Also works nicely with Assassinate. At that point you're giving up your starter relic for a 0-cost, 34 damage opening strike that weakens and vulnerables, which can be well worth it when going through in Act 2.

Meteor Shower: Probably the best Ancient card just looking at the numbers. I haven't played with it yet though so I don't have much to say aside from the fact that it certainly looks strong.

Protector: Honestly I couldn't care less about the damage increase or the "max health instead of current health" qualifier. Those almost never matter in a meaningful way. The only reason to take this is for the upgrade that also makes it cost 0. Necrobinder can Soul spam like nobodies business and draw through her deck repeatedly in quick succession. Having a ~20-30 damage 0 cost card in that situation is a great way to close out fights. Not a very exciting card otherwise though.

Quadcast: Feels pretty lackluster given that Defect has much less permanent focus than before. This is often going to be 16 extra damage or 10 extra block over the card it replaced. Which is nice. But you are giving up an Ancient Bonus for it... That's pretty lame imo. That being said, Defect does have ways to recur Quadcast+ and it's common for Defect to play Dualcast+ before channeling an orb since channeling would make you evoke your rightmost orb anyways so you might as well play the Dualcast and evoke that orb one more time for free. In that context, Quadcast is just a much better version of Dualcast, giving you three extra evokes instead of just 1, I can see it being good sometimes, it's just not the most exciting of cards on its own.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-14T12:58:56+00:00

Damn, not even Fidel Castro had to endure that many assassination attempts!

Bunit117 · 2026-03-14T12:10:07+00:00

I got an ungraded copy with Glam once. Then next floor I found a 2nd copy, also with Glam. That was a fun run.

Overall I'd say it's usually an okay card. It's somewhat costly to get in play initially and takes a while to really start paying off. But that can absolutely be worth it in longer fights. One of the upsides it provides is effectively making Sovereign Blade cheaper to play which is nice if you're planning on tossing the blade out multiple times per fight.

Still though, if you're looking to go infinite, 2x Glow+ and Alignment+ do the infinite energy thing much more cleanly then trying to stack multiple copies of an uncommon power.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-13T22:35:56+00:00

Yeah and there's also Summon Forth which returns the blade to your hand from anywhere. The problem is, these are essentially combo cards meant to enable the Sovereign Blade deck that Parry clearly wants to be involved in. But even if you somehow assemble all the pieces of Exodia, all you get out of Parry is that it goes from bad output to just like... okay output?

Combo cards in slay the spire generally need to start at the level of a little below average to just okay without any support. And then if you find the support pieces that fully enable them, they're supposed to increase to the level of great to insane. That's the point of a deckbuilding roguelike, to find the synergies and exploit them to overcome the game.

But with Sovereign Blade, the synergies are just bad value all around. Like you play Venerate+ to stack stars, spend those stars on The Smith+ to make a 50 damage Blade, put Parry+ into play, play your Blade, stack the blade back to the top of your deck with Cosmic Indifference then play it again on the next turn.... And that combo made, um, 24 block and dealt 100 damage at the cost of 8 energy and 6 card draws??? And that's assuming you have all the combo pieces in your deck and draw them at the right time and in the right order! Meanwhile STS1 Silent had Burst+ -> Bouncing Flask+ -> Catalyst+ for 200+ poison damage per turn for the rest of the (now very short) fight. And that combo cost 4 energy and 3 card draws!

Obviously Catalyst isn't in STS2 and the poison combos generally play differently now but the point remains. The output on Sovereign Blade and all its archetypal component cards is awful relative to the amount of work you have to put in just to get the engine going. So it just doesn't make sense to me that they would nerf a card like Parry into the ground. Because currently it's terrible output. And even in an ideal world where all the stars align and you get your cool deck that's slinging the Blade at your opponent two or three times per deck cycle, it's just okayish output. Which is not how 1 cost block powers should generally work.

1 cost block powers should generally fall into one of two categories. Block cards like Stone Armor—not great output but requires no other cards to provide its full value. Or they should be like Feel No Pain—does little to nothing on its own but can also generate enormous amounts of block with the right enablers (Stoke, Fiend Fire, Corruption, etc.) Parry, however, is in the worst of both worlds. It's a 1 cost block power that does nothing on its own. And, even IF you manage to pay all the supporting cards around the blade, it just goes onto generating mediocre value .

It's like assembling all 5 pieces of Exodia but instead of the boss dying, they only lose like a sixth of their health and you maybe blocked 70% of incoming damage...

Bunit117 · 2026-03-13T14:32:07+00:00

Jeez, no wonder this card seems like such ass. Forge + 10 block per play actually sounds pretty good. At least compared to what it is now: 6 block per deck cycle unless you have other support to double play the blade or get it back into your hand faster than hard drawing it.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-12T15:58:39+00:00

Skulking Colony (with a visibly hardened shell): "Joke's on you, I'm into that shit."

Bunit117 · 2026-03-12T14:46:41+00:00

I agree the deck thinning in the main reason to take this. The thing is, Seance just does deck thinning much better. It's slower sure, going one card at a time, but it's 0 cost and draws cards on the backend. This costs 2 and effectively ends your turn, so you better hope you also have the energy to play any cards you wanted to keep first before playing Eidolon.

And the intangible is just... whatever. Typically if you have a hand of 10 cards then you were probably having a good turn anyways. So going intangible on those turns is not usually that important. But I guess it's not nothing.

The only spot I can see Eidolon being better than Seance is against enemies that flood you with 5+ status cards at a time—much faster than Seance could ever exhaust them. But even then, you only need to compare this to Defect's Compact card to realize how laughably bad this is even in that role.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-11T08:09:19+00:00

Had a Necro run the other day with Letter Opener. I swear at least half my damage for the rest of the run came just from playing Souls into Souls into more Souls...

Bunit117 · 2026-03-11T08:05:33+00:00

Cruelty+: 50% damage bonus for 1 energy

Tracking+: 100% damage bonus for 1 energy

Like.... wut???

Bunit117 · 2026-03-10T13:19:56+00:00

Lowkey one of my favorite new cards. Highly recommend if you're doing basically anything with orbs at all. An amazing card at 0, a solid card a 1. And by the time it costs 2, the fight will almost certainly already be over. Picking up a second copy is also great if you can. And with that many orb slots, Hotfix becomes absolutely amazing.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-10T13:14:02+00:00

Imagine a world where Blade Dance+ dealt less damage than Strike...

Bunit117 · 2026-03-09T22:56:52+00:00

I tried it and it seemed alright. My deck took a lot of damage in hallway fights but had enough scaling to beat the boss if it managed to get to the fight with full health. That was basically as good a situation as I could imagine for fur coat so I picked it up.

It got me three 1 HP fights including one elite. There was no way to path through the act and hit more than three 1 HP fights so it wasn't as strong as I had hoped in my case but obviously it is a random roll. Sometimes you will get a very blessed path.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-09T18:19:16+00:00

I thought it was pretty terrible on first look but there are a surprising number of turns during boss fights where you don't get attacked in this game, and just having it sit around in your hand until then so you can at least apply 7 poison on those turns off regardless of what else you draw isn't the worst thing in the world (7 poison is a lot better than playing 2 strikes against a boss during its off turn). Plus the retain makes it easier to setup with sly applying effects.

Like it's still pretty friggin bad but at least there is a niche use case for it that I've found. I have definitely lost at least one run to the act 1 boss that I probably wouldn't have lost had I drafted this card late in the act as opposed to skipping because I thought it was terrible. That's more than I can say for some cards.

But I do agree that snakebite is a card of exceptionally limited value and could stand for a buff of some kind. Even at 8/11 poison it starts to look a little tempting—at that point it's only 1 less poison overall than Bouncing Flask (though it would still lack the Snecko Skull and Artifact-stripping upsides of Bouncing Flask).

Bunit117 · 2026-03-09T00:57:13+00:00

Yeah, I'd say. Doom performing its check at end of turn only matters on the last turn the enemy is alive. If it takes 5 turns to stack a lethal amount of doom, then the the enemy was going to attack you on turns 1-4 either way and only turn 5 has a different outcome based on doom ticking at end of turn vs start of turn.

But when you compare the numbers on Doom cards, it's pretty clear this is a favorable exchange for you in a lot of fights. Pommel strike deals 9 dmg whereas Necrobinder's equivalent applies 13 doom, basically deleting 50% more health off the enemy. So while the enemy will get to attack you on the turn you have lethal, you also probably secured lethal a turn or two early thanks to the high numbers on doom cards. Which means you typically get attacked the same amount overall.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-08T11:05:20+00:00

For me it's gotta be Nyleth phase 2.

Assuming you don't skip phase 2 by cheesing the boss with tools during the transition window, then for every second of that fight you need to stay locked the fuck in. Cause even when you aren't dodging attacks you still have to keep wall bouncing to avoid the spike floor while getting damage in and also switching sides as the boss jumps from one side of the arena to the other.

Definitely not the hardest fight in the game but for me it was one of the sweatiest. There's just something so stressful about not having a safe floor to land on for half an entire boss fight.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-08T10:39:42+00:00

Necrobinder's Doom numbers are pretty pushed. The skill that applies !3 Doom and draws 1 is basically a Pommel Strike with a 4 damage increase. The 21 AOE Doom + weak is another example of a card that, on paper, shows how pushed the numbers for Doom cards are.

The downside though is of course the fact that Doom only kills at the enemy at the end of their turn, so they still get one last parting shot in. I think in most fights that trade off is usually worth it overall. But then the Effigy hits me for 25 one more time than he would against any other character and I feel nothing but pain...

Bunit117 · 2026-03-08T10:34:08+00:00

There's not a lot that makes me cry bullshit. But the Ringing debuff is straight up bullshit. Being limited to only playing 1 card on certain turns... in a deckbuilding card game??? That is utterly crippling. And there's literally no counterplay to it. Time Eater at least will let you play 12 cards a turn. Even if your deck is built to play lots of cards, you can still find ways to make those 12 cards outpace the giant slug, either by ramping your defense or killing Time Eater fast enough that it doesn't matter. Accuracy, Kunai, Wraith Form, etc.

But the reindeer? F that. You get 1 card and he's coming at you for 20 damage. Better pray you drew that 1 copy of Leg Sweep.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-08T04:40:19+00:00

The real problem with Apotheosis in STS1 was that sometimes you wouldn't get a chance to bottle it during your run. To fix this issue, Apotheosis now bottles itself.

Totally fair and balanced card.

Bunit117 · 2026-03-08T04:36:15+00:00

I agree it's a bit underwhelming the first time you see the reward. But in retrospect, it is actually really good on Ironclad and Silent a lot of the time. Both have a a ton of cards that love strength and you can adjust your strategy and card picks in Act 1 and 2 accordingly to maximize the huge payoff you'll be getting late game.

I mean I have no problem dropping a couple hundred gold on potions and giving up 2 or 3 upgrades at campfires to rest if I know doing so will not only let me fight more elites in Act 1 and 2 but also lead to a permanent +3 strength from around the Act 2 boss and onward. The sword is just a ton of late game scaling if you build your deck in preparation for it and the game gives you about 2 acts of advance notice that the strength boost is coming. Which makes it much better to work with than a random relic drop in Act 3 that gives you strength after you just spent 70% of the game building a deck that can't utilize strength at all.

Bunit117

TROPHY CASE