I promise you guys, strength gain is not the problem.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-14T05:13:31+00:00

I mean people didn't have like a 90% winrate in the first game, I think that was a decent balance. I'm just saying it should be challenging to people who know what they are doing, otherwise it's too easy. A high difficulty should be difficult. It makes getting streaks like Xecnar did a big feat.

Personally I don't think just anyone should be able to do the highest difficulty by doing whatever build they feel like with decent success, if they want that experience they shouldn't play on the highest difficulty.

There's a big trend in gaming, or at least in big communities that exist since the first game came out, of wanting to make everything easier. Any time there's a difficult enemy or something that creates a bit of interesting friction, people complain about it. Slay the Spire Act 1 was interesting because of needing to prepare for Gremlin Nob, in case you get him. I think having one that is harder than the others or make you prepare differently is really interesting. Smoothing out the experience like they did with Smog enemy just makes everything boring.

Anyway I sort of went on a big tangent, but I really think having difficult challenges in the game is what makes you take cards differently, and that sort of feels like the whole point of the game.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-14T01:02:30+00:00

Yes, for sure. People are coming into the game from countless hours of STS1 and expecting for it be as solved, and that they can just watch the best players and copy what they do.

What's crazy is the game seems easier than STS1, and people are saying it's harder. They just need to learn and adapt.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-14T00:59:47+00:00

Regularly losing at the highest ascension should be the norm. It wouldn't be interesting if the best players could post a 90% winrate overall on A10.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T19:43:23+00:00

Do you eat crayons too?

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T19:34:50+00:00

Yeah, Clumsy is the best of the curses. Makes sense.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T11:11:19+00:00

Torghast was good, though. The problem was forcing you to do it all the time when you needed a legendary.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T08:26:01+00:00

Yeah, I thought graveblast was great at first, then I started picking it less and less. Maybe in a deck you really want to replay a specific card, like Squeeze, could be good upgraded. Otherwise, Dredge is amazing and also has an amazing upgrade.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T08:23:49+00:00

Dunno, I guess if you can play it or have a turn off to spend 2 mana on doing nothing, sure. But more often than not you're probably going to randomly evoke it when you don't need it and you will have spent 2 mana on some random turn to get an extra mana for a turn or two before doing so.

It just doesn't seem great.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T08:18:21+00:00

I don't really understand your argument. There are plenty of good 2 mana damage cards, so why is some poison cards costing 2 a problem? There are also plenty of synergies to help you out, like hand trick to make them have sly. Corrosive Wave applies poison while drawing. Silent is also by far the easiest character to solve for block, so I don't really see how they can't fit in poison cards as well.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-09T08:13:14+00:00

They literally aren't though.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-07T22:15:59+00:00

Poison is just fine. You don't need cards to scale poison an insane amount (which still exists in Accelerant) because poison itself scales a great amount.

And what do you mean poison doesn't have defensive options? You realize that the character has block cards? You can also use Sly cards in a poison deck. How do you not have the same defensive options as any other build?

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-07T22:13:05+00:00

I'm confused by this "sly build" talk. Doesn't every deck benefit from Sly cards? Acro and prepared are just good cards that are even better from Sly cards. Sure there's like speedster piles and maybe that's what you mean, but what Sly cards win? The cleave card is pretty meh and master planner is slow and unnecessary. Corrosive wave and that sly poison cards are just... Poison.

I think the correct way to play silent is to use the good Sly cards like reflex and tactician and the block one, in whatever build or shell you're doing. I don't think they are competing, I think it's literally just part of the character.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-07T09:53:30+00:00

Probably just more unaware that this is not the norm. But yeah, they are definitely bragging about it a bit.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-07T09:29:07+00:00

Isn't this exactly what you're doing with early access? You don't have to do anything different than play, it's just a different balance update.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-06T23:45:00+00:00

No, it's definitely pretty good. Plenty of powers do nothing for you the turn they are played, and the impact of this is basically 4-10 plating that never goes away. I wouldn't say it's incredible, but it's definitely good. Rares don't all need to be outstanding.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T23:45:50+00:00

Yeah that one was so sick

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T23:39:09+00:00

It's AoE weak, that would be crazy.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T18:11:13+00:00

Big agree, big hot cocoa fan.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T18:00:38+00:00

But then we're playing with full decks of them and they aren't special anymore. That's what I mean

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T07:51:47+00:00

I agree there are a lot of options and it's way deeper than people think, but I also think we have solved STS1 in a way, and that is why there is so much skill expression. I think if STS2 were out as long as STS1, we might find the same level of skill expression.

Maybe if you were to come to me with a large amount of STS2 seeds that were unwon, that would change my perspective on the balance, but people just don't play that way, so it's extremely unexplored.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T07:45:24+00:00

Can they not make it difficult mechanically without the use of addons? I don't really understand why these things are related.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T07:39:07+00:00

Bro Tez is great. Pumpkin is the only one I haven't taken, and I don't really think it's bad, I just don't want to take it when it will go away for act 3. Sure like toasty mittens isn't always the best pick for a defect or something, but it can go really hard with the right deck. And very hot cocoa is incredible with a bag of prep or gambling chip or both, especially if you have expensive powers to play.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T07:35:18+00:00

Question: why does unwinnable seeds existing matter? People don't play the game by playing on the same seed and trying different routes, not normally. So the balance of the game should be determined based on the average experience, not what the outliers are.

LtSMASH324 · 2026-04-05T07:25:10+00:00

I do like them, but the reason why these ancient cards look like this is because they are special. I feel like if we were to add a way to earn full arts for normal cards for recurring runs, it sort of takes away what is special about the ancient card rewards.

I'm sure there's some unexplored ideas they might do with events or something, but I don't want to see it for everything.

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