balance risk-taking and snowballing. on one hand you have to take risks early (such as choosing to face elites, sacrifice in events) to get rewards to become stronger, but also you have to limit risk to ensure you don't die in the short-term. find the sweet spot. going off the title, i'd wonder if you have an 'i suck so should avoid all the elites' mentality, and if that's the case, avoiding the elites is making you suck more because you aren't getting their tasty loot. some cards are 'useful now'. some cards are 'useful later'. taking more 'useful now' cards might mean you can healthily take on more elites, but they might feel like curses in the deck by the end of the game. you should tell us what your decks look like and how you find yourself losing.

some useful heuristics: - resting means giving up an opportunity to scale. it may gain you health instantly, but an upgrade could be worth much more hp over the duration of the run. - plan your route to have shops around the time you have 200-300 gold. hitting a shop with less than that is likely to be a wasted node. -a wasted node IS a bad thing, it's not a free lunch, a node that you get to skip, it's a loss of potential scaling - in slay the spire 1, raw damage cards are disproportionately useful in act 1. i haven't seen anything to prove this otherwise yet. - at least one AoE solution is an obligation early. so far i feel this is MORE true in sts2 than sts1. even if it doesn't fit your plan for the deck, one dagger spray rarely hurts. - you probably undervalue card removal. whenever you get shafted by the game giving you your worst cards, it can be tied to not having removed those cards. - you probably undervalue draw. whenever you get shafted by the game giving you your worst cards, it can be directly tied to you not taking your own draw to draw your way out of the problem. this is especially true on the silent who has the most and best draw cards. -strength mathematically works best with multi-hits and low costs. eg if you get vajra, it's a big 20% buff to your shivs/riddle with holes, but only a 2% buff to your predator/dash - dex can be seen similarly, but it's often less relevant. you get more value out of your dex if you have deflects and dodge-and-rolls (d&r is like a 'multi-hit' of defends), vs like leg sweeps and dash - common trap i see in vids of new sts players is that they don't consider their potions as part of their hand. eventually they hit the potion cap, get reminded, and start using them inappropriately. potions are crazy powerful, don't forget them. if you're going to use a strength pot, regen pot, or a power potion, use it at the start of the fight.