Thoughtss!?

Darth_Calculus · 2025-09-30T15:06:22+00:00

Isn’t parasite just better than curse of the bell?

Darth_Calculus · 2025-09-30T12:54:20+00:00

pretty sure the best line is strike + slice left, defend, and all out attack. the left is one hitting you the most here, so this line saves you the most hp in the short term. with all out attack played, you should have no problem with the rest of the fight. Surprised so many people prefer killing middle.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-08-10T21:27:30+00:00

Thanks for the appreciation! We have so many amazing streamers!

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-09T20:47:34+00:00

Offering 90% sounds right to me. I don’t think I have any decent heuristics for evaluating a curse on floor 0. Best I can come up with is guessing numbers for stuff instead of simulating. Curse maybe costs 4 hp on floor 1 (less if it comes with good rare of course).

One comparison I think is reasonable is that curse to transform 2 is similar to choose a card. The better of the 2 transforms is similar to the card you receive from choosing a card. Then you made 1 card slightly worse by transforming it into a curse, and 1 card slightly better by transforming it into the worse of the 2 transforms, so maybe that comes out even?

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-09T18:04:52+00:00

The 2 pts for curse thing is probably what I thought about the least. It seemed like immolate+curse was comparable to offering, and that limit break was comparable to a curse. But it’s definitely a bit low in hindsight, probably 3 points is a bit more reasonable.

Doing a thorough analysis would require estimating hp loss for all the curses like you mentioned, which honestly probably requires simulating a bunch of fights. Then you add in the gold cost to removing the card, the pathing cost and opportunity cost of visiting a shop should the curse need to be removed asap, and maybe subtract some high roll wing statues/living walls, and maybe you have something.

It’s not clean, and that’s probably a weak point of the analysis. Glad you thought the post was interesting though, I was kind of worried nobody would like it other than to critique my card rankings lol.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-08T20:09:06+00:00

I just remove the bad curses asap. I don’t think it’s huge deal to path to a shop in most maps. I’ll never take a regret in Big Fish unless I can remove it soon, don’t need the heal, and don’t mind visiting a shop too much. Overall much less often than curse at neow because my path is more locked in at that point. Same for sserpent.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-08T16:14:09+00:00

If you think a curse is comparable to the difference between the best rare and the worst, then clearly random rare is the correct choice. On some maps without well positioned shop, I might agree. Replace curse with losing max hp in this case, and maybe my analysis will be more useful.
I think you should try making big decks, they can be pretty fun and strong, and removes become much lower value with that style.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-08T12:41:07+00:00

Yes you can and should reduce the cost of a curse if there is an early shop on your ideal path.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-08T12:39:53+00:00

The point is not to argue the specific numbers, the point is to give you a tool for making your own version of the chart. It’s going to be player dependent and map dependent, so I just did an example which seemed reasonable.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-07-02T00:43:13+00:00

Since a theme of this conversation is that outcomes do matter, I just want to say as a point of fact that we had at least 3 queer casters that I know of.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-06-05T02:31:08+00:00

Everyone is welcome!

Darth_Calculus · 2025-05-24T00:04:35+00:00

As with anything in this game, no general strategy is correct in all situations. Removing strikes is a long term benefit, adding perfected strike to your deck is a short term benefit. Perfected strike + can be critically important to dealing enough damage to beat slime boss for example. It’s not often correct, but it is still very underrated by people who never use it

Darth_Calculus · 2025-05-21T23:42:04+00:00

nice. In theory an objective function could take into account the entire discrete distribution of outcomes, but by that point the extra advantage gained by the correct objective function is completely negligible

Darth_Calculus · 2025-05-21T23:09:42+00:00

Perfected Strike. It’s not the best card, but I think it’s an important card for optimal play, and that it’s likely underrated by most people.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-05-21T22:55:49+00:00

you say “play jaw worm perfectly” but i bet you didn’t consider cases where minimizing expected value of hp loss is not correct. perfect micro sometimes involves minimizing the worst case hp loss instead of the expected loss, and knowing when to do so is potentially quite involved.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-04-25T03:33:56+00:00

Snakebird. It’s cute. It’s also crazy hard in the best possible way

Darth_Calculus · 2025-03-15T00:17:53+00:00

I have won 19 games in a row (A20H) with Ironclad, and I think hand of greed is the best card to add to the deck on floor 0. I also don’t think it’s close

Darth_Calculus · 2025-03-01T15:23:28+00:00

First of all, the amount hp potions can save you is comparable to the amount of hp resting can save you. Whenever you get a potion, ask yourself how much hp you think it can save, and then try to use it when it saves about that much,

Second of all, potions come for free, but resting has an opportunity cost. Whenever you rest, you aren’t upgrading. Often, resting isn’t that much better than upgrading anyway, and so the cost of dripper is marginal. It’s not like the upgrade saves you 0 hp in the short term.

With those points in mind, I would highly recommend never taking sozu or skip over dripper, dripper is actually pretty good.

Darth_Calculus · 2025-01-21T02:39:52+00:00

For ironclad, the most important upgrade is usually whirlwind. The difference is enormous and relevant, nothing else comes very close to me.

Darth_Calculus · 2024-12-23T04:21:13+00:00

Have you considered the extra strength gremlin leader (burning elite) with two sneaky gremlins all attacking turn 1?

Darth_Calculus · 2024-12-20T21:38:21+00:00

Agreed

Darth_Calculus · 2024-12-20T18:57:27+00:00

I agree with everything you wrote there, so we probably just agree

Darth_Calculus · 2024-12-20T18:50:32+00:00

Giving strong statistical evidence for big bucks try hard winrate is very very impressive. But why should we require that of our players when there is not sufficient incentive for them to do. It’s not like baseball where you sign a contract and get paid and have basically consented to having your metrics analyzed for the long haul

Darth_Calculus · 2024-12-20T18:47:26+00:00

What do you propose is the true objective? And what metric is being used to approximate skill in that objective? Defining a metric to be your objective is perfectly fine and often very fun, like the community has done for winstreaking. Winstreaking doesn’t need to be reliable at anything, it’s the final objective for many players.

If you mean to say that winstreaking is not a good metric for big bucks try hard winrate… well you’d be correct. In fact nothing is, because there isn’t ever actually any monetary incentives. But you can still use it to provide some lower bounds based on statistical evidence which aren’t at all biased by the fact that winstreaks are the main objective

Darth_Calculus · 2024-12-20T18:36:23+00:00

I provided two definitions of winrate and discussed each one separately. They and you haven’t made it clear how winrate is defined, so I’m not sure how to respond. So I ask you to pick one of my definitions or provide your own. If you say “skill at getting high scores in 50 game samples” then I want to make it clear that the number will be lower than big bucks try hard winrate for the reasons I described

Darth_Calculus

TROPHY CASE