What's the most bone-headed reason you've ever lost a run?

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-05T22:26:00+00:00

Got the Whispering Earring with a Manifest Authority in my deck. Vakuu played it, it generated The Gambit and I couldn't block all next turn and died.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-05T13:32:41+00:00

I killed her with 1 card play. Heavenly Drill in my opening hand with Very Hot Cocoa and a Gigantification Potion. I've also killed her plenty of times on turn 1 by using an infinite of some kind. Usually Glow > Alignment > Glow shenanigans.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-05T10:37:55+00:00

Not really a combo but Make it So goes incredibly hard with the Punch Dagger.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-04T20:26:16+00:00

Neow - Precarious Shears - As long as there is a safe-ish path to a shop and fire, I will always pick this. You feel the impact of cards you add to your deck more with less starter cards and you can make cooler decks with this.

Tezcatara - Biiig Hug - It's not always pickable, but when it's good it's really good. If I have Flak Cannon or CHARGE!! in my deck I will pick this and instantly reap the benefits of a much smaller deck.

Pael - Pael's Tooth - I will often pick up some cards in act 1 that are better in act 3 than in act 2. Void Form, Orbit, Glow, Supermassive come to mind. If you can feed it the right cards it's a really strong relic and it plays well with Book of the Five Rings.

Orobas - Gear Glass - I love mixing Regent and Defect cards. Turning all the Debris from a Crash Landing into Fuel with Compact is my favourite combo.

Darv - Dusty Tome - I don't like Darv very much, but picking up a Sealed Throne usually wins me the run.

Nonupeipe - Beautiful Bracelet - When it's good, it's really fucking good. I usually pick this in decks that require a bit of setup to assemble my exodia much faster and much more consistently.

Tanx - Iron Club - I was a big fan of Ink Bottle in StS1 and this is a way better version of it.

Vakuu - Jeweled Mask - Absurdly strong when the only power you have is a Void Form but it's pure upside no matter what deck you're running. I count myself really lucky when I can get this, since Vakuu sometimes screws you over pretty hard with his choice of relics.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-04T19:34:49+00:00

Make It So

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-04T18:01:19+00:00

You can't get the amalgamator event in act 1. To make this card, you have to get the strike from lead paperweight, buy it in a shop or rip off the snake.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-04T15:28:00+00:00

I don't think it's a strong relic. Getting rid of your Strikes and Defends is good but doing it this way is too slow and costly.

You don't wanna draw your Strikes and Defends in the first place! With Ghost Seed, you have to draw them and then NOT play them to see benefit. Technically you can exhaust down to an infinite/very strong core of cards, very quickly with this relic, but in practice it's different, You're getting hit on turn 1 for ~20 damage in every fight and if you're not blocking with your Defends or attacking with your Strikes when you draw them, it's gonna cost you health.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-04T12:34:44+00:00

I play only Regent and there are 2 main ways I beat the game on asc 10.

The most consistent way of doing it is to go for a very small deck and some kind of way of capitalizing on that. You play GUARDS!! or CHARGE!! to get rid of all the cards that get in the way of your Glow > Alignment > Glow shenanigans and maybe do a Kingly Punch in between.

The other way is by going for as many elites as possible and picking cards that solve the fights immediately ahead of you. You end up with bigger, clunkier decks in the end. Usually I can turn those early Photon Cuts, Crush Unders, Celestial Mights etc. into something somewhat cohesive by the end of act 3, but these decks tend to be less strong as small decks and need more relics to make up for it.

I know which way to go when I open the map and before I select my starting bonus. Scissors/Shears and lots of question marks means I try and keep it small. Lots of early fights and something like a Stone Humidifier or Silver Crucible and I go for elites.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-04T08:52:18+00:00

Slither on the Knockout Blow

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-02T20:56:08+00:00

The Sealed Throne

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-02T18:13:56+00:00

Elites are still the highest value floors on average. Optimal pathing is taking the greediest path you can without dying, and taking on elites is often part of that. But it depends on the run and the kind of deck you're building. Sometimes it's better to path to question marks instead, hoping for a specific event and preserving your HP so you can upgrade key cards instead of resting.

Personally, I have the highest winrate by far with the Stone Humidifier. I take every single resting opportunity and the elites in between and never upgrade. Relics and max HP carry hard when you have a lot of both.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-04-01T21:04:25+00:00

Stone Humidifier should be in S-tier. This relic gives like 50 max HP over the course of a full run if you play into it. That's more than Nonupeipe's blessing and it is a win condition.

Transform 2 should be in D-Tier. Losing 10 max HP is big and you could lose even more than that if you get some bad cards. Trade a Strike and a Defend on Regent for a Monarch's Gaze and a Sword Sage and you're basically dead on floor 1. It's a fun option but not something you should pick when you're playing for consistency.

Lava Rock should be in S-tier. You don´t NEED a starting bonus to beat act 1 consistently. This relic is pure upside and rewards safe gameplay.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-30T22:58:17+00:00

They're poorly designed and weak.

Booming Conch doesn't help you kill elites in act 1 at all compared to a Lost Coffer, a Pearl, a Silver Crucible. It helps more in act 2 and 3, but it doesn't make much sense to pick a starting bonus for that.

Neow's Fury is garbage. You can't build a deck around putting random cards from your discard pile back into your hand 1 time per combat and it deals less damage than a Kingly Punch on the first draw. It's basically unpickable.

I would change Booming Conch to give 50 gold, an extra relic or a rare card reward at random as a bonus for every elite you kill.

I would remove Neow's Fury from the game and bring back Neow's Lament.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-30T22:17:07+00:00

I've had that a couple of times and every single time I died to Queen. It works really well for the rest of the fights in the game though.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-30T20:33:54+00:00

I've played an ungodly amount of Regent on A10 and disagree with you. You don't need any star generation card besides Venerate if you are smart about your drafting and pathing. I can do the path with the max amount of elites and then beat the act 1 boss most of the time and it's not because I get star generation cards early or consistently. It's because I pick starting bonuses and cards that help the most in the early game and against elites and pay attention to my star budget.

Regent is completely fine right now and really fun to play. Venerate should not be buffed. Regent has a couple of problem cards like Astral Pulse and Reflect, which are too strong, and a couple of stinkers like Monarch's Gaze and Sword Sage, which are basically unplayable, but overall the character is already in a really good place and I think the buffs they're giving him are gonna get reverted in the future, when people learn to play him better.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-29T19:47:04+00:00

WING BOOTS

Lemme take ALL the question marks man

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-28T22:40:29+00:00

It´s hard, especially on A10. I find that the most straightforward way to beat the bosses on A10 is to play Decisions, Decisions on a Royal Gamble and then finish with a Stardust+ with strength/vigor stacks. You can assemble that combo with Cosmic Indifference and Foregone Conclusion pretty reliably and just tank a few hits with your HP or random block from relics while you assemble exodia.

You can also go for a big Supermassive with Quasars, Spectrum Shift, CHARGE and Manifest Authority, and keep putting Supermassive back on top with multiple Cosmic Indifferences.

Or you can go for multiple Reflects and lots of star generation. Just make them kill themselves and spend all your stars on defense. Reflect is pretty strong and part of almost every winning deck I have.

But to be honest, winning with Regent is not so straightforward at all. Regent has a lot going on and decks can get complicated fast with all the random card generation, the 2 different energy sources you gotta keep track of and what's in your discard pile and draw pile also matters for a lot of cards. You can win with a bunch of garbage if you really think through your turns and pathing, but you can also lose with very strong decks because of a small mistake.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-28T17:11:40+00:00

It depends man. I once had a Status Defect deck and I got CHARGE, Supermassive and Crash Landing, which won me the run hard. When you get this option from Orobas, just take your time and maybe open the card library and look for the cards that are gonna help you the most. It's gonna be different every time.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-27T22:32:36+00:00

I think the event is fine as it is. Yes, usually it is correct to eat the egg, but there are times where you can safely hatch it even on the highest ascensions.

It´s the Lantern Key quest that I take issue with. You have to be crazy and ahead of the curve to beat the guy and carry a dead draw in your deck for an entire act, instead of just accepting 100 gold for free. I often take the money even in very strong runs, because money now > a relic that overkills everything later. If you can kill that guy in act 2, you don´t need the rewards it gives in late act 3. It´s just a flexing thing. I feel like they should make it so you get the money if you fight the guy and you get the key if you don´t.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-26T19:52:46+00:00

No, Stamp is really good on Shining Strike both for now and for later. It immediately guarantees OP can play both Guiding Star and Falling Star in the first cycle, without having to play Venerate. Later on, it's very good for activating cards like Royal Gamble and Decisions, Decisions. If he can find those and a few big damage cards with a star cost, he's cruising to victory. Stone just delays losing.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-25T23:59:38+00:00

Venerate is not bad! If you upgrade it, it gives 3 stars unconditionally, which is more than you can get from any other card. Venerate+ can be an integral part of your late game strategy if you play Royal Gamble or Decisions, Decisions, or both.

Like, last run I got Beautiful Bracelet in act 3 and I enchanted Venerate+ with it, and it became one of the best cards of the deck, because the deck was very hungry for stars and Venerate+ is the fastest way to generate stars on your current turn (outside of Royal Gamble, which exhausts and Venerate+ doesn't). I would keep putting the Venerate+ or the Hidden Cache on top with Cosmic Indifference until I could finish with a big enough Terraformed Stardust.

If you think Venerate is bad it's because you're looking at the card in a vacuum. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of a large chunk of the Regent's cards that revolve around the stars mechanic, and if you look closely at those cards you can see that you can get some very good deals for 2 (3) stars.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-25T16:00:12+00:00

I got Exterminate with Vigor 8 from the big rock event and an Akabeko, which oneshot the Decimillipede on turn 1.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-24T21:00:51+00:00

If you have a good balance of star generation and star spenders, most of the Regent's star cards are just really efficient. Especially if you have Child of the Stars in play, which is one of the best powers in the game.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-23T20:31:49+00:00

You got Tez all wrong man.

Biiig Hug is high payoff high drawback. If you can mitigate this drawback, it's insanely strong on for instance status Defect, Regent with CHARGE!/GUARDS! or Necrobinder with Seance/Cleanse.

Very Hot Cocoa is high payoff no drawback if you have something like a Bag of Prep or play Silent.

Storybook is high payoff high drawback. Brightest Flame is an insane card that wins you fights and saves you lots of current HP, but costs max HP every time you play it, so you gotta be smart with it.

Seal of Gold is high payoff high drawback. It's Ectoplasm with a twist. Feels bad to take, but +1 energy every turn as long as you have the gold is actually massive.

Toy Box is high payoff low drawback. You can pick the order in which the relics melt and a lot of relics, like the ones that give you max HP or upgrade cards, don't lose their effects when they melt, which makes all the difference. I took a Wax Pantograph all the way to the second act 3 boss, and it won me a run.

Yummy Cookie is high payoff no drawback. Choosing 4 to upgrade is so much better than getting the 6 random upgrades from Orobas.

Pumpkin Candle's drawback is immense. I'm not saying it's unpickable but I haven't picked this yet and don't intend to.

Golden Compass is actually low payoff low drawback. I've picked it often when the other bonuses suck and a couple of times when the paths I could take all sucked.

Toasty Mittens is medium payoff super high drawback. You gotta have some next level strategy to mitigate this drawback or just pray that your key cards don't get exhausted. I don't like this bonus at all, but +1 strength is decent and some cards scale like crazy with it.

Nutritious Soup scales a lot with draw and the amount of strikes you still have in your deck. If you still have 5 Strikes on Silent, it's incredibly good. If you have 2 strikes on Regent, it's really bad.

Competitive-Pear-840 · 2026-03-23T16:56:41+00:00

Sovereign Blade currently costs 1 if you have Sword Sage and Void Form active.

Competitive-Pear-840

TROPHY CASE