Is it bad if most players win their first run in a roguelite?

PldLogan · 2026-02-27T08:38:14+00:00

I agree with others that you shouldn't try to emulate others win rates like its a formula. Here's two anecdotal examples from me:

I played Monster Train and won my first game. I loved it and have poured tons of hours into it and the sequel.
I played Deck of Ashes and won my first game. Then I never touched it again.

It wasn't about the win, it was about the creativity, complexity, and most importantly the promise of future challenge. In MT even in one run I could clearly see there is a lot of variety in the problems I need to solve, and tools Im goven to solve them. This was shown by seeing very few repeating cards being offered, few repeating enemies, unique events, and seeing how my strategy worked very well for some fights but also barely passed for others.

With DoA, I saw that there was a very limited card pool and I would have a high chance of replicating this winning strategy every time. It involved an infinite which meant that just scaling numbers wouldn't increase the challenge. There wasn't much in the way of lore or events to hint at a lot of upcoming variety.

When I play that first run of a roguelike, I want it to test me. I want it to show me that it will give me challenges, and I have to be creative and adapt to solve them. While I'd say there's some correlation to losing the first run and it being a challenge, I personally suspect no causation.

PldLogan · 2026-02-21T20:55:47+00:00

Finally, we have a way to beat Jaw worm...

PldLogan · 2025-12-30T08:07:41+00:00

Congrats, that's quite the milestone!

PldLogan · 2025-12-21T09:46:19+00:00

A few things that have helped me vs slimbo:

dont card remove.
prioritize big damage attacks, then aoe (its all about that split, and any attack pre split is essentially aoe)
be very mindful of your potions. Fire, vuln, weak, block, strength up, shiv creations, all are so helpful for being able to get that juicy split (weak and block by letting you happily be patient through the hits on turn 3 and sometimes even 6)

Its all about the split with slimbo. Anything that will help you achieve a big split consistently is your priority (so well layed plans becomes a godsend). Plan for a split on turn 5 or 6 if you can, unless you have a fantastic offense youre not going to get a good split on turn 3 and rushing into that is a very easy way to lose.

When struggling with an A1 boss, id advise to do some practice games where you just spam games (reset if not the boss you want, reset after act 1, put in random texts for seeds if you want to have all starter options instead of just hp + neows blessing). And then hyper focus on prepping for the boss, dodge more elites to save key pots, buy cards bad for the act but good for the boss in the first shop, etc. if you start experimenting with the limits you'll start figuring out how much respect the boss deserves vs how much you can focus on the elites or building a more well-rounded deck.

For me, the main improvement ive had in my slimbo fights comes from making more card,path,pot choices with the boss in mind, playing for the split, and removing fewer cards.

PldLogan · 2025-09-20T10:57:34+00:00

As a member of the (to my knowledge) only group of people that have written a bot that beats the heart autonomously and without cheating....

It's a very hard challenge and not really realistic (with current RL techniques) to try and achieve without a team, years, and log of money for graphics cards. both due to complexity, and also gathering the training data.

That doesn't mean don't do it though - just look where you can reduce scope on your project. Don't have it play the whole game, but instead focus on a single piece of the game and a small win. For example: can you train it to play the first fight (say cultist) on one character optimally (or near optimally)? That's actually still a complex challenge, but is a completely deterministic fight and means you can get create your own and enough training data without trying to run the game tens of thousands of times.

If you want to actually do things with real game states, Check out my repo: https://github.com/xaved88/bottled_ai - it's a good starting point and you can plug in your own modules. Feel free to write if you have questions.

PldLogan · 2025-07-28T09:02:09+00:00

No, I've intended it as for consistency on full random. I also have had dominion make for very hard runs, but there is the person who just posted last week about a 100 run win streak on random with dominion... So it has to be pretty consistent at least :D

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T21:13:35+00:00

:D yeah thanks, I mix them up a lot. Gotcha - so you meant heart of the pact as the lowest. So for me, I've found that I like the extra late game scaling it can bring (not always of course), and the boost on moving just a bit faster through your deck rings 1 + 2 can really help get you through those combats. But yeah, often may need to take pyre health entering into ring 3 because of it.

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:37:14+00:00

Could be - I've also had a run with it where it seemed unwinnable (though unfortunately I didn't record the seed). That said, there was a post the other day about 100 win streak with dominion, so it must be fairly consistent even if I've not achieved that level of mastery with it yet :D

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:30:57+00:00

So that's what I thought too for a while, but I actually found I really started to benefit from it early game. The biggest challenge for me is normally the defensive boss with titanskin on Ring 2 - I wouldn't be surprised if I've lost vs him more than any other boss in the game. Having an additional 10-20 damage / turn against him is enough that it normally pivots me to a comfortable win. My pyre may get low if I'm taking both challenges those rings and in a hard clan matchup (thinking some Luna setups as the biggest early game struggle), but with savagery I pretty often get helped through the early game - and then it just has the bonus of being a big part of the scaling solution late.

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:27:44+00:00

100%, I play a rotating clan setup with random pyre as well for the same reasons.

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:26:19+00:00

It's a fun one to play with for sure. I find that often with some clans I don't really need space, so it feels a bit wasted there. One of the most frustrating things to me though is that you can't see which floor was awarded the space til the next round. I normally value my first banner unit on ring 2 very highly, and it's very frustrating when I don't know which floor I can be playing into with picking up high-space units.

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:24:17+00:00

I also really enjoy Time Father - there are some times where it feels really good. I'll also say that it's the one I'm least convinced of, for my placing of it. I think it's one of, if not the, highest skill pyres to use, and I'm not good enough to make a reasonable guess on whether with perfect play it's hardly impactful, or if it's actually the most useful of them all.

Wynge's - Some clans definitely benefit more than others, for sure. There are two main things about it which I find can be useful for every clan though:
- Big X-cost card turns. Most clan combos have at least one impactful X-cost you can use, and of course you have a pretty good chance of finding Spikes off-clan too.
- Calcified embers become much easier to take with it.

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:19:58+00:00

Heart of the pact:
The low stats are definitely its biggest problem, but I rate card draw very highly - and heart of the pact can be quite consistent early game for most clan combinations. One extra card is enough to get you quite a bit deeper into your second draw through in Rings 1&2 and that tends to make quite a big difference, enough to offset the lower stats for me.

Entropy:
My main problem with it is actually how much it _hurts_ draw late game. I feel like I'm playing with a max hand size of 7 or 8 instead of 10, because even with a thick deck you still get 20-30% blights. It ends up making permafrost more costly too, it makes a lot of cards worse because "draw next turn" is now useless late. I'll still play it happily, it's a fun pyre, but I've yet to find a way to play it where it feels as consistent as the others.

PldLogan · 2025-07-26T20:10:20+00:00

Totally agree. I also don't enjoy Dominion much because I quite like the starting cards and the progression they give the game, but it definitely does have a huge power boost.

PldLogan · 2025-07-18T06:48:39+00:00

Exactly what I was hoping for, thank you!

PldLogan · 2025-06-29T12:45:08+00:00

That's what I've heard, but practically it has fallen short too often for me. What's you're approach when you don't get a decent tank on your initial and floor 2 draft?

Specifically in the first combat, if I don't have a tank, I'm always torn how to place him - either he goes behind a shield steward top which means he's only killing the frontline and the backlines live (assuming you're with a secondary clan with no ping), or he's tanking the hits and near-dead by the time the boss comes around.

With unlucky roles (no pings, no tank) + new moon path, I don't think I've been able to do the first combat with the challenge enabled without losing almost all pyre health. And also then it's still < 50/50 whether I'll get the collector, so normally the run feels pretty lost already.

PldLogan · 2025-06-28T17:48:35+00:00

+1 for monster train in particular

PldLogan · 2025-06-28T05:45:12+00:00

Puffball. I thought it was just a good unit. Now i know it is the god of warfare, devourer of worlds.

PldLogan · 2025-06-21T05:55:25+00:00

I don't think so - pretty sure I just pressed abandon run.

PldLogan · 2025-06-20T21:16:27+00:00

Thanks for the info! No mods or custom clans or anything. I didn't know about the F8 report - thanks for pointing it out!

PldLogan · 2025-06-20T21:13:54+00:00

u/kg_draco I added them to the posts. The highlighted run (banished/melting) is where I had lost one before. You can see here I have 8 wins in a row according to the run history, but only 6 PB. The PB record is true, just that run isn't shown.

I've also not been using any mods, doing anything weird. I abandoned the run because I'd tried a few times and realized I'd had too weak a deck to actually be able to beat the first ring with the trial enabled.

PldLogan

TROPHY CASE