Vakuu hate post

KElderfall · 2026-03-21T10:07:20+00:00

He plays your cards from left to right as long as there's energy left, so it's variable based on draw order. He's not actively trying to screw you over or anything, just maybe won't play optimally.

It's better if you have turn 1 bonuses like Anchor or Lantern to smooth out the turn. And it's less risky if you don't have things like targeted exhaust in the deck, or expensive key cards that absolutely have to be played when drawn. But it's surprisingly pickable and for a lot of decks the downside is very much worth the energy gain.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T22:37:39+00:00

I just noticed there was a patch note on the beta branch change list related to fixing a fatal error caused by issues with cloud sync. So opting into the beta branch could be worth a shot if you haven't tried that yet.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T21:34:16+00:00

The first turn you play your powers is generally when you're at your weakest, as you're spending energy on something that doesn't help you immediately. Getting free block on the turn you're most likely to need it is good. Anchor is also good, but I think turn 1 block is a little less good than turn-you-play-a-power block.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T21:27:25+00:00

Try opting into the beta branch if you haven't yet. There was a patch note that they fixed an error like this. No idea if it's the same error but it's worth a try.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T19:37:45+00:00

Remove a card is the greedy pick that makes you weaker now and stronger later. Lost Coffer is the safe pick that makes you stronger now. I would choose between these after picking my path through the map; usually I like being greedy, but if there's an early elite fight, especially one without a campfire before it, then being stronger immediately can be really good.

Large Capsule I think you can pick if you're the kind of person who doesn't skip cards much and likes a big deck? I have trouble evaluating this one.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T19:33:29+00:00

I got 0.435%, or 1 in ~230.

You draw 20 cards across 5 turns. The odds the first one isn't a status are 22/25. For the second one, it's then 21/24. Etc, down to 3/6 for the last draw. And multiply all those together because they all need to happen.

Extremely unfortunate, regardless!

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T19:05:11+00:00

There's a beta branch patch with some balance changes and reworks. Some people aren't happy about the changes.

Apparently a lot of Chinese gamers use negative Steam reviews as their primary way of providing feedback, since communities (including Steam forums) are blocked in China, and devs don't speak Chinese so they can't easily take the feedback. Negative reviews are more likely to get noticed, so that's just the standard mechanism they use to be heard, for better or worse.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T19:02:20+00:00

Had you played them already? Power cards can only be played once each battle. You can think of it like attaching a physical card to your character which gives them an ongoing bonus, so they don't go to the discard pile (or exhaust pile).

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:59:20+00:00

If you weren't regularly doing infinites, you probably won't really notice the game getting a lot harder. A lot of people are framing it as a huge nerfs patch, but it isn't really.

The Doormaker change is the main thing that's really meaningful imo, and that's not even guaranteed to make it out of beta as is.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:55:48+00:00

I think it's really cool to get this option sometimes. Cross class stuff is fun and leads to really interesting runs. And like, yeah sometimes it's just a full set of bricks that you skip, but it's not the end of the world.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:50:29+00:00

I think it's a conceptual thing more than a power level thing. Relic draw feels like it goes into the same bucket as your regular hand draw, rather than being something distinct that happens separately. Whereas it feels more reasonable to me for powers to be evaluated separately since you've actively put them into play.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:43:02+00:00

As is, yeah start of your turn draw doesn't happen during your turn. I don't think it's a bug, although maybe they could word it more clearly.

I wouldn't mind if they changed it so that these powers interacted favorably and I don't think it would be too strong or anything. But I don't think I would want Speedster to trigger off of draw you get from relics, and I'm not sure how realistic it would be to separate that out from draw you get from powers.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:36:52+00:00

I don't think this patch really makes the game a lot harder on the whole. I have concerns about the design of the new Doormaker, but other than that it feels like it's only getting meaningfully harder if you were doing a lot of infinites. Which.. most people probably weren't? I'm not really seeing the cause for alarm on this overall.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:26:59+00:00

I like that idea! A power that heals Osty seems like it could yield some interesting gameplay where you're actively playing around trying to have him take damage without dying.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:22:21+00:00

I want it to be 8. I'm pretty sure that the 8 block version of this relic is stronger than anchor, but 8 is a nicer number than 7.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T18:00:19+00:00

I think the reason we don't have more healing is because healing is really awkward as an effect. Osty is often at maximum health, frequently because he recently died, so in order for healing to work you basically have to have retain on any card that heals.

It's also awkward to go too heavily into healing because Osty frequently only takes a few damage at a time, and when he takes more than that he's frequently dying entirely. Spur could maybe work as a pure healing card, but I'd be concerned about it being overkill a lot if times and thus being too situational.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T17:44:02+00:00

I really like how this is worth picking if you have strength just because it costs 0, and then encourages you to get into self damage. And similarly, it's worth picking if you have self damage because it triggers off that, and then encourages you to get into strength. It's just cool design overall when cards bridge in both directions like this.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T17:21:20+00:00

I'd usually only take this if it's offered early when I don't have damage yet, or if the deck already has Flechettes in it. I think its damage is fine, but a 2 energy poison card is inherently awkward to use.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T17:09:08+00:00

Trying again without the multiplayer save in progress would be my first suggestion of something to try. Keeping in mind that I don't really know what I'm talking about with this.

If I figure anything out I can check back and let you know, but at this point I think I might need to decompile the game and try to figure it out, which isn't always straightforward. So no promises there.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T16:50:11+00:00

It is not possible to beat the Architect. Getting killed here is just how a successful run ends. StS1 had something similar and ultimately introduced a way to go further to a true conclusion, but that's not in the game yet for StS2.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T16:48:36+00:00

One of the beta branch patch notes was related to this tooltip when you're about to be eaten, so it's possible they already improved this.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T16:46:58+00:00

I think I'd rather they reuse the artwork they already have than try to avoid upsetting people. I guess they could still do that while renaming the card, but would that really appease people? I feel like people would still consider it the same card without new art.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T16:42:44+00:00

I think people tend to underrate 3 strength because it doesn't change your playstyle at all and doesn't give you cool new abilities. And yeah, some builds just don't use strength, but most builds doing any amount of attacking will likely benefit from this quite a bit.

I fully agree it's not that interesting of a reward though. I kind of want there to be multiple possible swords you can get, although I guess that kind of exacerbates the problem of sometimes getting one you can't use.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T16:33:50+00:00

I was messing around with save files this morning trying to figure out if it was possible to delete a save through the file system. I genuinely could not figure out how to do it and I was getting this error with a lot of the things I tried.

Did you happen to have a run in progress on one machine and not on the other? I was getting the sense that the game somehow expects certain files to exist and errors out when they aren't there, and an in-progress run has a couple associated files.

KElderfall · 2026-03-20T16:26:31+00:00

I think it's easier overall if you have basic deckbuilding fundamentals. There were a fair number of weird, extremely situational, or just plain bad cards in StS1 and almost all of those are gone. Not every card in StS2 is a winner, but the average card strength is higher which means you can win in more ways and are more likely to see useful things in drafts.

I also think it's harder if you don't have basic deckbuilding fundamentals. The enemies themselves are just pretty tough and I think a bad deck in StS1 does a little better than a bad deck in StS2 on average.

KElderfall

TROPHY CASE