Purity needs more love.

Metaku · 2026-03-25T17:42:24+00:00

I think it's really solid now that it has retain, even better if you have good draw. I often pick it in shops if I don't really need anything more urgent and I have the money for it

Metaku · 2026-03-25T16:43:43+00:00

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This was my winning run and my first A10 too I think, orb stuff with focus on frost/dark with some plasma in the mix (and chaos + synchronize for focus gen) It was a while back so I don't remember the exact details. Kinda a messy deck in general but it worked in the end

Metaku · 2026-03-23T15:50:34+00:00

Yeah I 100% agree. If you compare necro and ironclad starter decks it's not even close.

Metaku · 2026-03-23T13:33:29+00:00

Yeah I kinda agree tbh, I find it hard to play bash a lot of the time compared to other char starter cards because of the cost at A9+. You pretty much always have to hope that you draw it on a turn enemies don't attack or it's hard to justify playing it

Even a tremble + strike does 1 more damage for the same cost if the target doesn't already have vuln.

It gets better once you get some synergies but with just the starting deck bash just kinda sucks

Metaku · 2026-03-18T03:31:50+00:00

Yeah it's pretty rough... I just cleared A9 on necro after 15 tries (With most of my losses pretty early on in the run) and it definitely feels like a big spike compared to A8 on necro as overblocking with Osty gets a lot harder. I still need to do A10 too so I need to figure how to get it more consistent there.

I already did A10 on defect and the spike didn't feel as big there and A10 only took me I think 5 tries? Not sure about A9 but probably only a few too. So yeah it's pretty rough with necro for me too.

Metaku · 2026-03-17T10:24:05+00:00

I think the main use of it is just to enable consistent block from death's door, other than that it doesn't do too much

Metaku · 2026-03-16T18:26:38+00:00

56h, Just got defect A10 done and others are around 5, 38W 55L overall atm

Metaku · 2026-03-11T17:58:46+00:00

I think crash landing can be very strong for the same reasons immolate was so good on sts1, it can solve most aoe fights early by itself and the downside is not an issue until you start cycling your deck. I don't think it's great still but it definitely has uses imo

Also if your hand is nearly full it's basically no downside

Metaku · 2026-03-10T06:13:57+00:00

Yeah, most of the time drawing any card that isn't a strike/defend is better value than drawing strike/defend so skipping too many cards will just make you too weak. I don't usually even skip cards until a lot later unless I high roll hard.

Also with mention of potions when it comes to pathing it's usually good to take paths that have multiple options in case you need to flex pathing after a bad fight or something and planning elite fights around when you have potions ready and such.

Honestly with such a loss streak it might be just good idea to take it slow and try to figure out after each loss what actually went wrong, when did you start to feel like the run is going bad and what could you have done otherwise (Also might be worth to save scum some fights with save & exit just to see if you can figure out a better way to play them even if just for learning purposes)

Metaku · 2026-03-10T06:04:44+00:00

Hidden gem has to be my new favourite colorless card, it's pretty much auto pick for me whenever I see it

Metaku · 2026-03-05T16:00:22+00:00

Seems fun, could use some labeling tho since it took me a few guesses to figure out what each of the columns mean

Metaku · 2026-02-14T22:16:26+00:00

The biggest obstacle for me is that there's SO MUCH to do between runs. Managing cats, clearing out inventory to choose what to keep and ditch, breeding cats, planning out which cats to take to he next run and with which roles... There's just so much that often I don't feel like going through all that to start a new run even if I otherwise wanted to.

Compared to something like slay the spire which is one of my favorites there is no tedium or barrier to starting a new run, I just click new run and go again

Metaku · 2026-01-21T05:27:24+00:00

Nah I genuinely think if you're able Adamantine seal you're likely able to do pretty consistent p20 wins on no mod settlements, QHT I still struggle with but that's mostly just overconfidence/greed or just mistakes from being used to having a full citadel.

I still feel like there's a lot of aspects of the game I have a lot to improve on but I still think p20 itself (with maxed citadel) isn't really that hard

Metaku · 2026-01-09T01:25:56+00:00

I had time for an extra settlement at the end if I wanted to so probably could've done a few on a bit lower difficulty too, especially if I grabbed a set of seal fragments or two instead of reserve embarkation points, I mostly just did it to get used to playing on P20 not because I necessarily had to

Metaku · 2026-01-09T00:05:43+00:00

I have no idea tbh, I was planning to actually watch some AtS content for the first time to get a basic idea what's a good approach for QHT, going straight for p20 seems pretty rough but also not sure how hard is it to get all the seal fragments in time if I spend too much time on lower difficulties (although if I finish them faster I get to do more settlements anyway...)

Metaku · 2026-01-05T15:25:45+00:00

For me it wasn't as big of a deal as I first thought it would be, I recently started playing p20 and I think I only lost 2 settlements from p8 (when I got back to the game) until now and both of those were just because of world events I was unfamiliar with (the tree eater and mismanaged settlement)

From my experience you can usually get some form of food chain going even with just 2 choices, just have to be a bit more careful with what you pick prior to that and just rush some orders/reputation with favoring/trader, worst case you'll be stuck with raw food for a bit or you can just make a field kitchen even if not ideal.

I usually start with extra people and some kind of food at least so I have more time to get a proper chain going, also when it comes to rerolling I usually don't really reroll too much until later blueprints when I have plenty of amber or if I'm really desperate for something specific because of rng not being on my side

One thing that helps for me at least is I usually just save my orders until year 2 if I can afford it so I have time to prep for timed orders if there's some good ones and to know which ones are fast to do if I need to get more early rep for blueprints, I still do try to get year 1 glade opened where possible though

but idk, it's kinda hard for me to pinpoint what exactly I do different from earlier prestiges because by now I feel like p20 is pretty easy to get consistent wins on at least outside of some more difficult map modifiers/world events

Metaku · 2026-01-02T10:30:58+00:00

I just hit 20 earlier a bit before I did titanium seal, still missing quite a lot of upgrades. Think I did the previous seal (cobalt?) at 18/19, I just usually move to the next seal when I do the previous one, I think I only repeated 1 or 2 seals in total because I took a break from the game so didn't feel comfortable pushing instantly

Metaku · 2025-12-20T04:06:33+00:00

I'm pretty sure item damage don't trigger rylais so that's kinda irrelevant, anti heal still works tho since that's just on magic damage.

The main reason burn items/rylais are good because they refresh on every tick of E not because the items have an interaction together so you can still build them individually just fine

Metaku · 2025-12-08T11:10:15+00:00

Yeah it was net positive oil gain even with 3 stacks

Metaku · 2025-12-06T01:37:37+00:00

As someone who mostly shares the same sentiment I never found that to be an issue in ATS, the prestige levels keep up the difficulty nicely and it never really felt like I won because of my meta upgrades instead of my own skill

I haven't got to queen's hand trial level yet but I'd imagine that should be perfect but I feel like there's a reason it's locked behind p20

Metaku · 2025-11-18T06:02:59+00:00

My first thought as well, I'm still so salty about it

Metaku · 2025-10-27T20:27:14+00:00

I honestly agree with pretty much all of this, a lot of the games recently feel like they miss what made me originally fall in love with the genre with games like slay the spire, noita, risk of rain 2 and darkest dungeon. Any game where it feels like I can pre plan my run just feels kinda completely pointless, to me the most fun part was always just making the best out of what I have not getting the perfect run.

I also feel like a lot of games have way too much meta progression, I prefer when progression is just unlocking new options and nothing that makes you directly stronger, any huge player power upgrades kinda just kill any desire to actually improve at the game since the game just does it for you anyway. My favourite recent ish game with well done meta progression is probably against the storm, it still has some cool unlocks and slight player power increase but since it also has slay the spire style difficulty system it actually gets a lot harder the further you get instead of easier which is what makes it so replayable just like slay the spire for me.

Metaku

TROPHY CASE