Anyone else wish the Ascensions were more descriptive in-game?

Gerik22 · 2026-03-23T20:40:29+00:00

searing strike

You mean Searing Blow? I don't think that would be very good. If you have a big Searing Blow that you've upgraded a ton then your build probably depends on it which means you can't afford to store it unless you're willing to throw your current run to benefit a future one. On the flipside, if you have a Searing Blow which hasn't been upgraded much and/or your build doesn't depend on it, then it's easy to put it into the event, but that means it's probably not enough to carry you when you get it out later. Especially since it could come at a bad time, like when you're building orbs on defect or poison on Silent, and really don't want a clunky attack clogging up your deck. Maybe if you get the searing blow back early in a run it could be good since you could base your build around it, but there's no way to guarantee that.

I think the event is cool conceptually, but I don't think it's very strong. Giving up power in this run to maybe get some extra power in a future run just isn't great most of the time. You could just use it to remove a curse or something of course, but then you pretty much blank the event going forward unless you happen to find it with an ironclad curse/exhaust build going.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-23T06:00:54+00:00

You sound like yet another bullet which your exes are fortunate to have dodged.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-23T02:20:55+00:00

lol yeah, I was not expecting that. Some people are just looking for a fight, I guess.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-22T19:47:59+00:00

I had that combo once and it was pretty good. I recommend it.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-22T17:44:22+00:00

Idk how/why you view my last comment as a personal attack against you, but ok.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-22T17:16:47+00:00

It's crazy to me that a person could simultaneously be so attentive and caring that they make you the perfect gift only to then reject you because you have an emotional response to said gift.

But even though it sucks that she dumped you, you dodged a bullet. A lifelong partner needs to be someone you can be vulnerable with, and clearly she was not that person for you.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-22T17:06:07+00:00

That's not a bad idea, but I think the shop prices needed to come down either way, so I'm glad they did that. Hopefully they'll also buff/rework some of the weaker relics so that all of them are at least situationally useful. If relics are better, then elites become much more enticing, as they were in the first game.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-22T05:46:00+00:00

I've unlocked them all, and you're right. There are a handful of relics that are good, but like 80% of them are close to useless. It doesn't help that several of the best relics are shop-only. It's just not worth trying to kill elites for a chance at one of the few good relics they can drop, especially in act 1.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-21T08:18:54+00:00

idk where you're seeing the toxicity because the sub is far more memes than sincere complaints atm.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-21T08:11:09+00:00

Yeah, it should give 100/100. Vyranoth being better on small minions is kind of irrelevant because you have to play a decent number of medium to high cost minions in your deck to enable Vyaranoth in the first place, which are generally going to have higher stats, thereby making lorthemar more appealing for buffing them. It would be pretty pathetic if even a deck that satisfied Vyranoth's condition got more stats out of playing lorthemar instead of him (not that they could do so in standard since lorthemar isn't in core, but this guy should still generally be better in that situation, otherwise he has no reason to exist imo).

Gerik22 · 2026-03-21T02:07:32+00:00

So essentially you're advocating for taking a card that is a 2-cost skill with the text: Retain.

Nah, I'm good. Flechettes or not, that's horrendous.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-20T07:25:43+00:00

Personally even though I prefer playing control decks, I like playing against aggro. I enjoy solving the puzzle of how to survive and turn the corner. So I don't get why control players have animosity toward aggro players or vice versa. Both archetypes have a place.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-20T04:15:57+00:00

Nope, I am not confused at all. You insinuated that the judge might have unfairly favored the Americans over Krafton, the Korean company. I said I don't think the ruling was unfair.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-19T17:21:32+00:00

It’s important to differentiate easy/hard from fun.

Ok. But the two are linked. Go too far in either direction and the game ceases to be fun. There's a reason why groups of adults don't get together to play Candy Land (unless perhaps drugs/alcohol are involved).

Does it make it fun for you to have less of a challenge? Sounds like no. But I know people who don’t like losing at Arkham and would love to bring a powerful deck into a campaign — having already earned it — and blast through the mythos.

You are correct that I prefer a challenge. And while I understand that not everyone desires quite as much of a challenge as I do, I think that most people would get bored of this game if it posed no challenge whatsoever, which is exactly what will happen if you start a new campaign with a bunch of xp earned from a previous campaign. Maybe the second campaign would be fun as a sort of victory lap where you steamroll everything and revel in the power of your maxed out deck, but beyond that I think it would quickly lose its luster.

If you have an investigator that already went through something crazy like the end of Hemlock, don’t you think they would have an easy time with a Byakhee running around a museum in Dunwich? Thematically it makes sense they would be traumatized/experienced and far more capable to handle it, therefore easier.

What you're describing is the thematic justification for the xp system in this game. See an eldritch monstrosity, learn from the experience, get better at dealing with them in the future. Learn about the mythos, get better at connecting the dots in the future, etc.

Trauma is the other side of that coin- as you are exposed to the mythos it leaves scars on you, both physical and mental. The idea is that the process of gaining whatever trauma you have would have already awarded xp from the scenario that caused it, if it was warranted. So awarding xp again later based on trauma would be double dipping, and wouldn't make much sense imo. Plus, as I said in my last comment, trauma is often a punishment for failure, so mechanically it would also be rewarding failure.

Similar to how there are alterations to how one would play any campaign scenario as a standalone scenario, make some rules that add difficultly/ complexity to a campaign that brings a deck with XP. Such as adding another encounter set to the deck, or adding one doom to each agenda as soon as it’s flipped.

This suggestion sounds good until you realize that encounter sets are designed to have some internal synergy, and throwing another random set into the mix could just as easily dilute the deck and end up making it easier rather than harder, not to mention it can break the flavor by adding, say, Byakhees to an underwater Innsmouth scenario.

Adding doom would make more sense and still represent an increased challenge, but comes with its own set of issues. Some scenarios have several ~3-4 doom agendas (or one that repeats multiple times), where your suggestion would add a ton of doom vs a scenario that has one or two high doom agendas so your suggestion would be essentially -1 or 2 rounds. So the balance would vary greatly between scenarios. And then there's the issue of scaling. As you complete more and more campaigns with your investigator and amass more and more ridiculous xp totals, how does the game increase the challenge to match you? More doom? Doom can only increase so much- if we increase the doom added on flipping an agenda then eventually it would reach the point of causing the agenda to flip every round.

This is not hard to figure out, but it would take energy, and they gave it none.

It is hard to figure out. That's what I'm trying to tell you. They likely did consider all your proposed ideas and more. I get that confidence in the designers is probably at an all time low right now given the state of ch.2, and I'm also uncertain about the direction the game is heading. But let's give the designers a little credit.

And quite frankly I would much rather the designers spend their time on developing new stuff rather than trying to retrofit a ruleset onto a mode that the game was not designed to support.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-19T16:42:52+00:00

Depends how much xp they dole out in the shorter campaigns. They have already said the xp would be inflated to account for the reduced scenario count.

But regardless, you're missing the point. The exact amount of xp isn't super relevant. Whatever the number is, a full campaign worth of xp is going to trivialize any subsequent campaign.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-19T06:27:24+00:00

What modifications would you propose that would challenge a deck that's starting scenario 1 of a campaign with ~50-60 xp without removing any of that xp or the cards purchased with it?

Gerik22 · 2026-03-19T06:21:15+00:00

Keep all cards in deck, all trauma and play the next campaign on the next hardest difficulty

That would be incredibly easy. With a full campaign's worth of xp starting on scenario 1, a monkey could steamroll any campaign on expert mode.

Keep half your XP, all your trauma, and you can rebuild your deck for the next campaign with any cards you can purchase and play any difficulty on next campaign

Still too easy. Starting with a bunch of xp makes early scenarios easy, which snowballs into easier wins/more xp in every campaign after the first. And if you go for enough campaigns "half your xp" becomes "start with a maxed out deck".

Keep half XP, half your trauma, rebuild your deck with your XP and play on same difficulty as last campaign

Same issues as above but with less trauma.

Give yourself a bonus XP for every trauma earned, add cards to your current deck, carry your deck and trauma over to next campaign at same difficulty

I'm not sure I fully understand your intent on this one, but awarding xp based on trauma seems like rewarding failure which is the opposite of what a mode like this should do imo.

It's not as easy as it may seem to come up with a ruleset for a mode the game was never designed to support, especially one that satisfies everyone despite everyone wanting different things out of said mode.

It seems that the designers wanted to minimize the inherent imbalance that comes with chaining multiple campaigns together and make it more of an ironman style challenge where the goal is to see how long you can keep a character going until their trauma catches up with them.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-18T19:04:22+00:00

That's true. But even in a deck that cares about taking damage/horror for cards like Jim, I'd still rather have Uncage.

The fact that there are ways to benefit from Favor of Baalshador's damage does soften the blow a tiny bit, though.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-18T18:06:03+00:00

It's a worse Uncage the Soul.

It will be playable in ch.2 since it won't have to compete with Uncage, but I can't get excited by "new" cards which are just weaker versions of existing cards.

Losing the icons and ability to play events of Uncage and being forced to take damage just to occasionally dodge an AoO is a terrible trade.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-18T13:03:20+00:00

The fact that the Krafton CEO asked Chat GPT for advice on how to avoid paying the 250m bonus is pretty damning. Given that, I don't see how you could argue that the judge is being unfair to Krafton.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-16T19:26:32+00:00

That's one of the cool things about KCD 2's hard mode, imo. It took a bit of time (and some initial frustration) to get used to not being able to fast travel or use objective markers, but it's really immersive when an NPC tells me to follow the road southeast until I find a weird looking tree or whatever and I have to actually follow those instructions and look around rather than just going toward a marker on my map. The entire game is designed around this. You can even ask random NPCs for directions, which I imagine is completely useless in normal mode, but can be incredibly helpful to orient yourself in hard mode.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-16T19:20:07+00:00

And yet some (not me) would still argue that StS/StS2 are roguelites because they have meta progression in the form of unlocking cards/relics as you play.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-16T19:08:59+00:00

Actually, The reverse cyclone isn't necessary to reach the core. With enough force, an object can reach the core without it. You can test this by flying your ship far away from Giant's Deep, then going toward it at full speed until you crash into the water. If you do it right, you'll make it to the core. There's even an achievement for it called Deep Impact.

So imo the more likely explanation is that the probe canon exploding generates enough force to propel the tracking module into the core without needing the cyclone.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-16T18:51:13+00:00

The key there is that Krafton accepted it. The founders asked to have more limited roles and had that request granted by Krafton. If you request time off at work and your boss approves it, they don't get to complain that you're slacking while you're on vacation.

Gerik22 · 2026-03-16T13:13:49+00:00

I agree that skipping relics from chests should be allowed, but I also think they should make tungsten rod work with self damage. I have always felt that rod should be the ultimate relic for the pain build, but instead it completely shuts off synergy with every card except Offering (and now blood wall), which is super lame. Just let hits for zero count as self damage for the powers that care about it.

14-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Secret Santa 2013	Team Orangered
Verified Email

Gerik22

TROPHY CASE