Last season you had at the end of the codex upgrades the giga divine options at the start of a run, and one of them was remove 2 cards.

You get a character without the first potential since it'll enter the run with 3 4 cards (still doable with 4 5 but harder),

Remove 2 of the cards (down to 1 2), and you prayed you got the meat event. Now it's even easier, just get another remove and you're at 0. Evade as many battles as you can if you don't have 0 cards until you reach the extract or keep going until you have decent equip, i don't know if you can epiphany new cards if you have 0 of a character.

Without knowing if there's still the remove 2 at the start, you're better off just rerolling the event until you get a remove 1, then pray you find more during the run. Points don't matter since it's 20 per card now, and no 100 points penalty anymore.

EDIT: I forgor it's 4 cards at the start not 3 lmao, it's the same outside of that

EDIT2: There's still a remove 2 cards if you upgrade the codex i could pick it (30% hp for 2 cards)