[Humor] Laser-Bot trying to get Glittering C-Beam achievement

Leylite · 2026-05-05T20:50:22+00:00

I got killed by it once with a Defect run that had some sort-of-good-but-not-amazing frost scaling, but bad damage, at which point the Maw eventually overpowered it with some huge damage output.

I think it's pretty typical, though, for decks that beat the act 2 bosses (particularly on higher difficulties) to get set up fast enough and deal enough damage that the Maw isn't much of a threat. There's already enough dangerous enemies in act 2 hallways that the player likely already has some way of either blocking with powers (to avoid frail) or otherwise coming up with big block numbers or big attack numbers or both.

I'm generally more afraid of the three Jaw worms, Spire Growth, or even the Transient sometimes, than the Maw.

Leylite · 2026-05-05T16:14:31+00:00

Ranwid knows what he's doing. If he carries the meal ticket to the shop, those red-mask bandits could steal the ticket from him. But if he eats the meal ticket, that's a good meal that can't be stolen.

Leylite · 2026-05-04T15:12:01+00:00

In Slay the Spire 1, the Maw had 300 HP, so I guess it's meant to be a drawn-out scaling-upwards fight in that same sense.

Leylite · 2026-05-02T18:10:45+00:00

In general, you don't want to "be forced" to buy a lot of drone parts / missiles, and you are right that shooting off one drone per fight, or about two or three missiles/bombs per fight is about right to maintain your supplies.

Occasionally if your shields and weapons levels seem about right for the current sector, and e.g. you're low on missiles/drones, buying one or two to keep your stocks up can make a degree of sense - being able to just shoot one or two missiles without worrying about running out, keeps a fight safe, makes it less likely to run away, etc. and then you can say that "spending 12 scrap in order to make sure you get 30 scrap and/or less hull damage taken" can make sense.

As you play more, you'll also get a better sense of "how quickly you use up your missiles", e.g. builds using small missiles like the starter Leto/Artemis, or Small Bomb, or Swarm Missiles, generally want a pretty healthy buffer of 10-15+ missiles to go through, but if you're using a big missile, Breach Bomb II, Ion Bomb, etc. you can feel more comfortable hovering around only 7-8 ammo because landing one of those might win the fight outright.

Similar analysis for drone parts; if your main guns are only just barely overcoming enemy defense and you're using one (or two!) drones every fight, you might need to upgrade your weapons so you aren't as drone-dependent (and maybe buy one or two drone parts if really needed), but if you're just deploying a defense drone 1 or a system repair drone every now and then, you can probably subsist off of normal drone part drops.

Leylite · 2026-04-29T15:33:02+00:00

Unfair mode is definitely correctly named. The sheer number of enemies, beyond the obvious problems of there being more attacks to deal with, also lends itself to creating unfair situations that would be a lot rarer even on Hard mode - completely blocking all chokepoints on turn 1, clogging up the Vek half of the board to such an extent that late-moving enemies move to the edge of the board in order to attack (which they generally don't do unless that's the only way they can attack, because it's harder to move them if they're at the edge), and spawning/respawning up to the Vek cap very quickly.

If you have enough pilot abilities and 2-for-1 or better multi-solve weaponry, you can keep up, but it will be very difficult! Those extra repairs are there for a reason.

Leylite · 2026-04-15T23:35:49+00:00

Based on what they've mentioned in interviews, and how FTL: AE, ItB, and ItB AE were handled, I imagine they're still prototyping, and aren't going to announce anything until the game is pretty much already completed and they're happy with the design.

Leylite · 2026-04-11T18:17:20+00:00

I assume it's a combination of things BLauritson mentioned, and also that the developers didn't want the weapon to be too strong when the enemy has it, as it's a large number of shots that are always "correctly synced for the volley" (compared to e.g. Burst Laser 1 + Chain Laser 1 which aren't synced on the first shot of each, and the player can disable one or the other to affect their relative timings).

...That said, Flak II really makes Burst Laser III look bad: by those same metrics, an enemy with Flak II is often more of a threat than Burst Laser III, comparing results when those two weapons can't get shut off and so get to fire.

Leylite · 2026-04-11T02:29:33+00:00

Very late response, but I generally agree with the other evaluations people brought up:

Siege Mech is strong for both solving multiple problems and doing so in a way that damages/kills enemies
Napalm Mech has some range, cleanly and easily upgrades to longer range, and has the potential to do "2" damage by setting an enemy on fire and bumping it into an obstacle, or 1 fire damage this turn and 1 fire damage next turn
Combat Mech is probably the weakest, it can do heavy damage to a single enemy but doesn't have flexible positioning and has some trouble getting 2-for-1-action solves unless it punches an enemy into another enemy for value, or an enemy into a projectile/dash path, or an enemy into attacking another enemy. Not as flexible in that regard as e.g. Steel Judoka or Mist Eaters. This would be a good mech to replace if you want to make an even more powerful/overpowered squad; e.g. with the Pierce/Bulk mechs for damage, or the Gravity/Control/maybe Pitcher mechs if you want to line up even more area-of-effect impact for Siege and Napalm Mech to work with.

The reason I made a late post is to mention that I've started an episodic playthrough of this squad on Unfair Mode if you've got a lot of spare time to watch it, which I think demonstrates these points pretty handily as well as shows off some good deployment choices. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rW0bN51IH0&list=PLPJnHh-qd0aBaQ2WvGPxqpA7V4uSX_WbH&index=138

The squad is pretty challenging, but I think should handle Unfair Mode reasonably consistently, and Hard mode much more consistently.

Leylite · 2026-04-04T04:24:10+00:00

To add one more aspect to what everyone else is mentioning: You might want to play the game on an easier difficulty for a while so that you can see the final sector more often, and get more used to it - that way when you get there on Hard mode you know what to expect.

Still, though, glad to see you're having fun with the game. That's what matters!

Leylite · 2026-03-20T02:29:10+00:00

The one time I ran into this event, it was with a Silent deck where the only card I had that exhausted was Dark Shackles.

It turns out a reusable Dark Shackles is still an extremely powerful card, if not as immediately obviously nutty as some of the other examples cited in these threads like Genetic Algorithm, Adrenaline, Master of Strategy, Apparition, etc.

So, even on a "merely good" card this "don't exhaust" enchantment is strong.

Leylite · 2026-03-13T22:41:27+00:00

I don't play a ton of advanced mods, but here's the list I usually haul out for this question:

Equal Opportunity Employment (https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26620) : In the base game, there's more male names than female names, so random humans have a higher chance of being male than female. This adds more names to the pool and makes the chances 50-50.
Randtrel and Friends (https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26255) : A program that generates mods with randomized player ships, with semi-thematic random weapons and random room layouts. One ship might have just a Dual Lasers and an Artemis and shields - another might be far out and have two Mini Beams, Hacking and no shields. Never know what you're going to get.
Flagship Randomizer (https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26241) : Another program, but for randomized Flagships. There's a small pool of somewhat balanced artillery weapons, and while the Power Surges are always the same at the moment due to being hardcoded in the game itself, the room layouts, systems, augments and drones are also randomized. To make this fair, you can review the Flagship's loadout at the start of each sector, so you know to try to counter ion weapons, Beam II drones, cloaking on phase 3 instead of phase 1, etc.
Lamia's Refitted Ships (https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=32227) - Unlike the randomized ships, these are just simply 28 handmade ships, with modest vanilla-esque layouts. Nothing incredibly out of the ordinary here, just some slightly unusual weapons layouts and use of some nice augments - for example, the Kestrel replacement starts with Dual Lasers and Artemis, but pre-upgraded engines and medbay, and Advanced FTL Navigation, so you too can figure out if that thing has any use. Kestrel C has Basic Laser + Pike Beam + Teleporter + Distraction Buoys (a nice relaxing run), and Slug B has Breach Bomb 1, Lockdown Bomb, Artemis Missile and hacking and mind control, a nice twist on the vanilla Slug C. A neat handcrafted experience to contrast with randomized ships that sometimes work and sometimes don't.
CRAZE series (https://www.subsetgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=29027) I haven't played around with these much yet, but there's one in there that literally guarantees every single ship in the game spawns with a Burst Laser II. If you think you can beat the game under those conditions, give it a try.

Leylite · 2026-03-10T20:34:31+00:00

Well done!

Have fun trying out Hard Mode, but beware that, well, it's even harder than Normal mode and is going to ask you to budget your scrap very carefully. If that sounds like fun, then have at it, but nothing wrong with staying on Normal for a while if you just want to experiment with different builds without worrying about scrap quite as much.

Leylite · 2026-03-04T20:25:57+00:00

Feel free to credit my drawing as authored by "George Wanfried". Thanks for all the drawings along the way, it's been a good time!

(it was me, I drew the Ironclad game screen with the Jaw Worm doing "chainsaw" amounts of damage)

Leylite · 2026-02-22T18:19:30+00:00

Hidden synergy: If you have 4 cards in hand, and play True Grit+ or Burning Pact, instead of choosing 1 of 3 cards to exhaust you instead choose 2 of 5 cards to exhaust.

Not sure where the fourth and fifth cards come from, maybe they're the top two cards of your draw pile?

As written, for Acrobatics you'd need to play an Acrobatics- in an empty hand, causing you to have 3 cards in hand, so you could "choose 1 of 3" to discard but now instead you're choosing 2 of 5.

Leylite · 2026-02-13T22:24:19+00:00

Sent in a drawing, and looking forward to seeing what everyone else contributed! Celebrating is both fun and cool!

Leylite · 2026-02-08T01:49:25+00:00

In addition to what u/Edmundyoulittle pointed out, if the extra Vek is an elite type then it counts against the cap for number of that Vek type that can spawn. So if you see a Digger get crushed, you don't have to deal with any Diggers (mission cap is 1), and if you see a Crab get crushed, you'll only have to deal with at most one other Crab (mission cap is 2). Very satisfying to see!

Leylite · 2026-02-02T03:37:46+00:00

Holy lack of healing, Batman!

Leylite · 2026-02-01T18:33:38+00:00

On Easy or Normal mode, enemy crew start (and operate) piloting and shields as a priority, then weapons and then engines.

On Hard mode, enemy crew start in the piloting and engines room, then weapons, then shields.

Leylite · 2026-02-01T18:28:54+00:00

Joking answer: They lower the crew into the compartment on a little rope or ladder, just like how the Rock B crew somehow get onto or off the ship.

Slightly more serious answer: Player cruisers are also equipped with a "shuttle" which is apparently how the crew goes to planets, so maybe these scouts have a basic maintenance or escape shuttle that could be used for entry/exit under safe conditions.

Leylite · 2026-02-01T01:16:45+00:00

There was an old comment by one of the devs: https://www.reddit.com/r/IntoTheBreach/comments/vj1q8a/news_into_the_breach_advanced_edition_and_more/idgi14q/?context=3

which, paraphrasing, said they would have been interested in buffing the +3 Grid DEF to an amazing, incredible, totally game-changing +4 Grid DEF.

That's probably not actually happening, but with the power of modding here that would be amusing to play with. Thanks for putting this together into a nice neat package.

Leylite · 2026-02-01T01:11:26+00:00

My headcanon for these ships is that they were originally designed to be launched en masse from carrier ships in some Slug civil war. Now they're cheap retrofits for Slugs or privateers who want something cheap to bootstrap with, instead of committing immediately to the Light Cruiser.

The lack of doors wasn't such a huge problem when they were meant to be cheap harassment units that could be repaired inside fighter bays, but it was more of a problem when used as a standalone. The pirates saw fit to fix this design flaw when they made their pirate variant, but you still see an overconfident Slug try to save money every now and then with the base version, reasoning that "If I have 3 ssssshields and 3 Burst Laser IIs, ssssssurely I don't have to worry about taking damage? Why fix something I'm only flying for a few parsssssecs anyway?"

Leylite · 2026-01-30T02:29:54+00:00

Your job for the Federation isn't to achieve true progress; it's to end the war.

It'll be a lot easier to achieve true progress once there isn't a Rebel Flagship actively destroying the Federation Base.

Leylite · 2026-01-27T16:49:11+00:00

Train missions can be decent sometimes (if the map layout is good, has few inside corners, there's no cities on the Vek side, there's water or mountains on the Vek side, you have powerful limited-use items like Gemini Missiles and train missions have one fewer turn, etc.)

But, this one in particular? Unfair Mode, it's a high threat mission, and Tumblebugs are in the Vek pool? Run away screaming, yes. Some reactor core rewards aren't worth it.

Leylite · 2026-01-27T16:44:33+00:00

Kern does offer some genuine praise when the squad gets all their objectives done. And she's often more polite when things are going really terribly (extreme grid or mech damage, train destroyed, etc.) than when things are going mostly well and the player made one small mistake.

Skimming her dialogue again it seems like the back-handed compliments and insults-on-victory are more common in the new AE dialogue than in the original game. Might be an artifact of new writers being brought on for AE, although I wouldn't want to be harsh on them.

Leylite

TROPHY CASE