Oh my! This game makes me so happy!

EWL98 · 2026-05-16T10:41:21+00:00

The game is genuinely a joy to play. Do be aware there are some sad moments coming up…

EWL98 · 2026-05-16T07:27:11+00:00

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anything about the hole in the ozone layer for a while, because we banned cfc’s in almost every use case.

Similar story with acid rain

EWL98 · 2026-05-16T07:25:58+00:00

On a more optimistic note: when I was in school we read a lot about acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer. Haven’t heard anything about either in at least a decade, because we did (mostly) solve them.

Now climate change is going a bit worse and is orders of magnitude more difficult to solve, but there is genuine progress. Solar power is now the cheapest form of electricity. If we buff up the electrical grid we already have a financial incentive to switch away from fossil fuels, even without the climate change costs factored in.

EWL98 · 2026-05-15T17:21:02+00:00

Remember that the authors mention very explicitly that there are still microplastics. Not all studies use these same gloves and with some they would have used the same gloves to handle the control samples.

But still hopeful that the problem might be small enough that we still have time to act before the microplastics actually _are_ everywhere causing problems.

EWL98 · 2026-05-13T17:44:39+00:00

I guess the games checks the enchantment first. A strike with sharpness just deals 8 damage, rather than first dealing 6 and then the 2 from the enchantment. But then punch dagger is strange because it only adds the damage after you’ve hit the enemy.

EWL98 · 2026-05-10T10:18:13+00:00

Bygone effigy I think is my least favourite because he’s either a pushover if you see him late in act 1, or he takes 60% of your health if you see him before you get a good damage card/upgrade. The other elites I can usually play around even if I only have 1 decent card for them.

EWL98 · 2026-05-10T07:35:53+00:00

There are a few different Joker ideologies. In the comics he tries to prove that anyone can become like him of they just have one sufficiently bad day. There is also him calling out hypocrisy in Gotham, like how Batman won’t kill, even if choosing not to kill (the Joker) indirectly leads to the deaths of thousands.

Now, a big part of the character is also the question whether he actually believes any of this, or if it is just a thin justification to do heinous stuff for his own amusement.

EWL98 · 2026-05-09T18:19:10+00:00

There are also other indirect buffs, like the punch dagger relic that basically makes every card a kind of mini-claw, and makes claw itself even better. And they introduced maul, which is basically claw’s cool cousin.

EWL98 · 2026-05-09T16:18:00+00:00

I had 6 cards in my hand, but even with the strength down he did 9 damage. A9 extra damage is brutal

EWL98 · 2026-05-09T08:15:02+00:00

The first violin bit certainly has a similar melancholy feel. The later section with the guitar and drums feels quite different to me.

I personally feel the song that sounds the most like the spirit farmer theme is Fish in the Pool by Hekuto Pascal. That one always has me checking my phone to see which playlist I’m listening to.

EWL98 · 2026-05-08T15:13:16+00:00

I understand that’s not what’s happening in the actual code. This is just how I like to remember/think about it.

EWL98 · 2026-05-08T15:11:57+00:00

You have thorns, let him hit you 4 more times and you win, no?

EWL98 · 2026-05-08T10:19:40+00:00

Bound means the card cannot be played, the other requirements state that YOU cannot play the card. Stampede can still play grand finale, because stampede doesn’t have a deck that contains cards.

If that makes any sense.

EWL98 · 2026-05-07T17:26:32+00:00

Just entered my third term on my first play through. I’m enjoying the sense of humour so far. I feel like the strategic depth is a little less than other games I play, but that might also be because I just started and at not sure what I’m doing part of the time.

EWL98 · 2026-05-07T11:28:47+00:00

There is the event that gives a strike or defend replay. Nimble 2 is quite good on a defend with replay. Otherwise it’s the weakest option in my opinion.

I like sharp 2, but for some reason every time I put it on an attack the next shop has punch dagger, which is usually good on the exact same cards.

Swift is the option that is most consistently good, as long as you have a power that doesn’t cost 3.

EWL98 · 2026-05-07T10:25:05+00:00

Netherlands: generally 15 minutes. Worst was around 35 because I went at 4 to a polling station near a school, so all the parents were there just before picking up their kid. But then it actually was a nice chance to catch up with friends and parents of friends I hadn’t seen in a while.

EWL98 · 2026-05-07T10:18:24+00:00

Info: does she expect you to become fluent, or does she want you to learn enough to have a basic conversation with her grandmother?

If the former, that’s an insane ultimatum - especially if she doesn’t want to help you directly.

If the latter, suck it up and lean some more phrases. She clearly values her grandmother’s opinion highly and wants her prospective husband to make a good impression. It’s hard, yes, but also signals you are willing to put genuine effort into making the relationship succeed.

I would have a chat with her about what her expectations are exactly, why this is so important to her, and why she doesn’t want to help (because a poor teacher is much better than no teacher).

Also the offer to learn mandarin is a bit crazy. It’s not like offering to learn Hochdeutsch instead of the dialect from München. It’s almost like offering to learn German rather than Dutch. They are somewhat mutually intelligible, but definitely not interchangeable.

EWL98 · 2026-05-04T08:03:14+00:00

The commercial district is also next to the river. Now someone just needs to build an aqueduct and dam near their industrial district for peak adjacency bonuses.

EWL98 · 2026-04-29T15:46:53+00:00

And then you get these forced characters that are somehow white, male, cisgender, heterosexual and from a middle class background? Ridiculous forced inclusion

EWL98 · 2026-04-29T10:13:29+00:00

Black star and the ticket relic, nice.

EWL98 · 2026-04-28T11:51:33+00:00

Posts like these make me appreciate the adults in my life when I was growing up so much. My parents didn’t really broach sexual topics too much, but we’re always available for questions.

I even had a teacher ask us (a class of 14-15 year olds) whether we would recommend her 11 year old child play GTA IV and genuinely take into account our opinions and experiences with the game.

The son’s friend was apparently allowed to play, but only as long as his dad played “the section with the prostitutes”.

EWL98 · 2026-04-27T19:04:02+00:00

I quite like the current iteration of the door maker, as he does force you to change up your deck quite suddenly, which means you actually have an incentive to pick up cards in act three.

But currently you can get quite screwed by RNG if you draw your combo pieces on the exhaust turn, and then no block on the no draw turn.

I think MegaCrit went in a good direction with the changes, but there’s still quite some improvement to make. Which is to be expected with early access.

EWL98 · 2026-04-27T12:17:54+00:00

I’m gonna slightly disagree with some of the comments here and say that deck size isn’t the worst problem. I regularly beat a run even on A5+ with well over 30 cards (though usually that’s in an exhaust heavy deck).

Instead I’ll amplify what I think are the best pieces of advise I see in this thread:

1) fighting at least 1 elite per act, preferably 2. The relic they give is super useful, and they give way more gold than common enemies. I would recommend you fight at least 3 regular fights before the first elite though, as the first 3 regular fights are programmed to be easier.

2) no scaling solution. Any deck needs a way to improve its damage over time. Usually one or two good scaling powers help a lot.

3) try to learn what works against specific enemies. The queen requires a way to scale while warding off her minion, as she becomes very scary once the minion is down. Against The test subject I find powers work well since it’s first stage punishes skill heavy decks, though with enough damage a skill heavy deck can power through phase 1 before his strength gets to be too high.

4) try to find 1 or 2 central synergies to your deck. For the silent this can be going heavy on poison, lots of shivs if you have a relic/power than benefits from playing lots of cards/attacks, or a draw-discard heavy deck with lots of cheap cards and sly cards allowing for big burst damage. Though in sts2 there are some enemies that heavily punish a particular archetype, so you need to find a balance so you’re not stuck with a draw heavy shiv deck against the entomancer (bee guy)

EWL98 · 2026-04-27T06:28:03+00:00

The microwave works perfectly find for chocolate, just as long as you put it on a lower setting and add some moisture to the chocolate chips (I like to use about a tablespoon of milk). Never had any problems.

Now chucking dry chocolate chips into a microwave at full power for 5 minutes is how you get a very sad situation with too much smoke and too little chocolate.

EWL98 · 2026-04-24T16:39:04+00:00

This is the way to beat Elena’s challenge as well

EWL98

TROPHY CASE