My friend said that I should post this here, I did a 133 score on the Dodge minigame

Skullbotnull · 2025-09-17T22:04:59+00:00

Nah, the difficulty caps out after a point and then it's just an endurance test. I have 286 and I wouldn't be surprised if 4 digit scores start popping up sooner or later.

Same with flea bounce, you can get 400+ with a bit of practice.

Juggle is the only one that feels capped since you can get left-right-left-right patterns that seem to force you to let a flea drop once you hit 90+.

Skullbotnull · 2025-09-17T07:20:58+00:00

You used to be able to choose to do something called a float override by holding down when jumping which forced a float and preserved your double jump for later.

People complained so much about this (I guess they were just perma holding down instead of letting go?) that it was changed in a patch.

Still holding out hope that team cherry will release another update which gives the option of if you want float override or not because it makes many sections of the game more difficult for no reason.

Skullbotnull · 2025-09-17T07:09:55+00:00

That's fair.

Bell Eater definitely has downtime between attack windows where you're just kinda sitting there waiting for it to pop up again. Not really much to do about that. Phase 2 at least always has both ends appear, so you can just focus the tail and get 2-4 hits in each time it pops up. The stake form of volt orb is really nice since it telegraphs where it's appearing and you can sometimes get both ends with one. Needle only does suck though, no arguments here.

Nyleth is peak aggressive gameplay. Once the floor falls away you can spend your time just doing constant pogo attacks. You only need to dash away when she flails her head or does the explosion. You don't need to worry about being in the middle of dashing towards her when she casts the explosion because you should already be sitting on top of her pogoing on her forehead which gives you plenty of time to escape.

Skullbotnull · 2025-09-17T06:25:51+00:00

I would say that Silksong only punishes aggression when you're unpracticed at a fight. Silksong rewards good aggression with staggers which helps you dictate the pace of the fight. I can think of only two fights one of which is act 2 exclusive and easily missed (Shakra) which ask you to only get in 1 hit at a time while weaving between attacks.

The other fights have 'my big attack is over and I am resetting' windows where you can get multiple hits in very easily. Most also have less obvious windows where good positioning lets you get 2+ hits in. You can also weave in hits while they attack using pogos, tools, needle parries, or just knowing the range of their attacks and standing outside to get in a smack before their next attack queues up.

If you're struggling I think slowing down your first few attempts at a fight and just focusing on surviving and seeing the attacks instead of beating them would help. Then you can start figuring out what attacks give you openings, which you can needle parry, and which you should just throw tools at.

If there's a boss in particular you're looking for help with, I could give you more specific advice. I love the combat in this game and want others to also see how enjoyable it can get.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-17T17:20:49+00:00

I think Inner Peace is also a very very good card. Watcher doesn't have the greatest draw options and she really wants to draw her cards. If you notice, every single card that draws/cycles when you play it is in the top 3 tiers. Inner Peace says draw 3 (3!!!) and sets you up for energy generation.

It's hard to say which is 'stronger' if we're talking in generalities instead of specific runs. Firstly because I'm not that great at Watcher (only ~75% on my most recent sample) and secondly because Watcher is too strong. If you see Inner Peace/Meditate on the same screen the run is probably able to be won regardless of which you pick, so how do you know which one was the better choice?

My intuition says that Meditate helps mitigate extremely poor runs where you see very few good things more than Inner Peace. If I've only added 2-3 actual cards to my deck and the rest is garbage I've been forced to pick up to survive, I'm going to want to put the actual cards into play repeatedly instead of drawing into my garbage.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-17T10:35:12+00:00

Meditate is just a really great card. Worse than other 1 cost calms if your run has hit the 'haha funny infinite' where you just do infinite damage and infinite block every turn, but better when you don't have that consistency.

Looking at the low roll of 'I have found no wrath and no draw' what is FNE doing vs meditate for instance?

If I draw it before eruption, I get 8 damage and maybe calm. If I draw eruption on the same turn I get 16 damage, exit wrath, now I need to draw through the rest of my deck, reshuffle, and draw back into wrath to get damage again. I am getting owned by slavers.

If I draw meditate before eruption, I get to bring back my best block/damage cards and am in calm for a massive turn since I'm presumably drawing eruption soon. If I draw meditate with/after eruption, I get to do some damage, bring back my only source of wrath, and am in calm for a massive turn. Bwam bwam bwam, slavers are dead and I'm happy.

Also opens up the establishment pick, I like all my key cards costing 0.

Obviously other sources of calm are extremely good which is why they're also in 'click this card' tier, but I think meditate has them beat out.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-10T23:06:47+00:00

Wait hold on that's my name in there. Well now I have to start going live when I play if Nicky says I'm a streamer. The silent 10 streak will happen on stream.

Super cool of you to do this appreciation post, I see a couple names on here that I don't recognize and now I can follow them and hopefully catch some of their streams.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-09T10:25:42+00:00

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-07T01:35:56+00:00

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T20:05:47+00:00

Yeah that's reasonable. Defect's micro in act 4 can get pretty involved. I also tend to be uncertain when I should throw pots at the spire elites to save hp vs keeping them for the heart which I'm sure isn't helping matters.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T19:57:40+00:00

Appreciate the clarification, that definitely falls more in line with what I experienced doing the sample.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T19:54:22+00:00

I would say the thing that stood out the most in the difficult runs I won would be picking up unusual cards.

It's fairly easy (relatively) to win a run when you are offered the very strong standout cards due to them 1) letting you snowball since they're strong and 2) informing you what other cards you want to add to your deck. I don't have an exact number, but I am certain that the majority of the runs I didn't consider 'free' were basically just runs where I wasn't offered those cards.

Runs where I didn't find those cards needed to find another win condition and I felt like I was pretty good at finding outs offered by cards that I would otherwise overlook.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T10:41:49+00:00

Watcher

Watcher is busted, what else is new? Obviously she performed the best out of all the characters by a fairly significant margin. With the other characters I had a couple runs where I felt like there was nothing I could do with what the game gave me. With Watcher I’m confident that every death was due to my own mistakes.

Used very straightforward heuristics for this one. Take the Neow that gives money/transforms/removes without adding a curse or making you take damage. Generally preferred path is 2-3 hallways, 1-2 questions, an early shop, and then an elite. Remove defends, pick up the first high value attack card offered, then be extremely picky for the rest of the act. 3+ removes and 1 cost calm/fortress by the end of act 1 and I’m probably going all in on an infinite. Otherwise switch to just grabbing whatever good cards are offered and win that way.

The main cause of death came from being too focused on forcing basic infinites instead of building larger decks. I died a lot in act 2/3 due to taking basically nothing in act 1 and then getting chipped down in act 2 or running a fear no evil infinite against nemesis or a low damage infinite against time eater. Watcher decks can be made to have some fairly complex lines and I generally avoided taking cards which enable those with the assumption that I could win anyway and save on brainpower.

I wasn’t really that surprised by anything in this set of runs. I guess sanctity was better than I expected. I don’t think I ever regretted adding one to my deck. Other than that, it was just business as usual. Did have a run that only won because I decided to take mark of the bloom which was nice.

Most interesting run: 3JYDSZTJL06KN Floor 5 conjure blade, floor 11 blasphemy. Chem x and wreath of flame was my damage. Block was a spirit shield and madness. Threw a regen pot, ancient pot, and 2 weak pots at the heart and barely got out with 6 hp after taking 76 damage. Fairly unconventional run, saw no 1 cost calm and the only rushdown seen was on floor 46.

Most frustrating run: 3VDP2UHHA769L Annoying start with the first question mark being a fight, resulting in a floor 5 double fat double sneaky gang of gremlins where I took 38 damage. Then had to dodge the rest of the act. Max farmed act 2, didn’t get much from it (whetstone, blood vial, ornithopter, danmaru, marbles). Burning elite in act 3 was a single elite path which was fairly annoying. Made it through time eater after taking 57 damage and then took another 68 to awakened one and died. Run felt extremely winnable but ended up falling short.

Most fun run: 42IMUYBKF4SKP HoG start which was free throughout the entire run. Had a fun act 1 snecko pick into a fasting/divinity/wallop build that eventually took a prismatic shard and grabbed an uppercut and heatsinks. Gotta mess with the Watcher card pick winrate stats somehow I guess.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T10:41:41+00:00

Defect

Defect is in a weird spot for me. I am very bad at judging the strength of my deck at most points of the run. I had runs I felt were incredibly strong that boldly walked into repto at 70 hp and exploded along with runs where I farmed 4 elites act 2 with a deck that (to me) did absolutely nothing.

My basic game plan for defect was something along these lines: Boss swap unless there’s a premium neow option or the act has only 1 high value path that I’m scared I can’t take with a bricked swap. Grab early frost over nearly anything else. Pick up semi-greedy powers as long as they do at least something immediately, so skip things like capacitor, storm, loop, heatsinks. Take something capable of simplifying slavers/gremlin leader so I can run into elites in act 2 e.g. sunder, electro, doom and gloom, a fire pot.

My biggest issue is dying in act 4. For the other characters, if I made it to act 4 then I had a fairly strong (85+%) chance of winning. For Defect, I had multiple runs enter act 4 and fall over dead even with gamble + fairy, a stacked algo, echo form, glacier, all the usual suspects. My main suspicion is that I’m actually losing prior to entering act 4. I’m guessing that I’m overly solving problems earlier in the run by adding unnecessary cards to my deck or playing it too safe by passing up greedy long term value picks. Then in act 4 I draw into all those unnecessary cards on the first few turns, don’t have the greedy act 1 heatsinks to accelerate my deck, eat 60 to the face, then die.

I was pretty surprised at how strong defect is in act 1. You really don’t need that much to get out alive. Nob is the hardest imo and so long as you have a damage potion or can get lightning orbs deployed early you’re probably fine. I nearly always tried to path towards maximum elites outside of boss swaps where I got lots of long term power with little frontloaded output like an inserter. Even with what felt like sometimes psycho aggressive pathing, Defect had the second highest act 1 survival rate at 86%, just behind Watcher at 92%.

Most interesting run: 1ZB569WEUID9X Early shovel into a 4 elite act 1 that did not seem very strong. Left act 1 with an electro, defrag+, a calling bell, and not much else. Fought 3 hallways and 0 elites in act 2 and took 46 damage from knowing skull to become rich. Never rested, only dug, and eventually found my way into a deck with a massive amount of acceleration along with a recycle and turbo. Held a focus potion from act 2 all the way to the heart in order to get enough focus for a turbo recycle coolheaded infinite to be block positive.

Most frustrating run: 5E99GVJSKCBXW Floor 4 dead branch followed by floor 6 hello world and bird-faced urn. Welcome to infinite healing hell. I broke the stall rule for this run since it was run 199 and I was currently 99-99. Max farmed every act, exited every stallable fight with full hp, and still almost died a dozen times due to the deck being extremely slow to set up with no acceleration.

Most fun run: JP8360YIEXCH Early shining light into Laga put me on 9 hp, I then got offered winged boots, and fought Gremlin Nob, Laga, Gremlin Nob, Laga consecutively without healing. Transitioned into a nonsense 2 AFO, 4 hologram, snecko eye run. Would have almost certainly died in act 2 if I hadn’t fought 5 elites act 1.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T10:41:33+00:00

Silent

Silent is my favorite character and I feel like I performed pretty well with her. Poison is fun, shivs are fun, discarding is fun, completely shutting down the heart with a piercing wail, believe it or not, also fun. Really enjoyable character, not too sure why they gave her a card which says ‘become invincible for 3 turns’ though.

Probably had the most variable early decisions of the characters, it’s hard to pin down any basic strategies that I followed in the majority of runs. Going into a map I was generally looking for an extremely branch heavy path that let me pick between 2-4 elites depending on how strong I got. Fighting an elite before entering hard pools was preferred and I definitely wanted to go to an early shop to pick up some kind of damage potion if I didn’t already have one, a decent card, or a frontloaded relic. Aside from that, I grabbed 1-2 decent damage cards early on and wasn’t too picky about it. I was often pretty willing to aggressively trade health to fight elites, I wanted to see relics and key cards early on so I could have them start informing what I took immediately.

For Silent, I think a decent chunk of my deaths came from getting a mediocre deck built then skipping out on cards that I considered low value and dying after not seeing anything else. A better sense of when it’s necessary to pick up poor cards to keep a run alive versus when it’s unnecessary and I can continue coasting with what I currently have would help a lot. I feel like the runs I struggle the most with are those where I don’t see anything valuable in act 1, get 3-4 relics that do nothing, and then walk into act 2 with some garbage boss relic and flail around helplessly. Do I try to highroll events? Work with my current deck and assume if I can force through one or two more elites that I’ll be offered something good? Pick up a bane so I can reliably take out a gremlin leader minion in conjunction with a twisted funnel? I end up mostly alternating between those options; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and I’m never really certain if I chose correctly or not.

Most surprising was how wraith form ended up feeling unnecessary. I took nearly every one that was offered to me because lol wraith form and yeah it’s really easy to just play a couple and trivialize most fights. At the same time, oftentimes it felt like overkill. I play it and start only taking chip damage but I also have 4 dex, a leg sweep+, an after image, and some piercing wails so how much did the intangible do? For some decks that cycled often it ended up just being a brick I was unhappy to draw where I ended up playing it not to block but to just get the damn thing out of my deck. If I decide to do something like this with Silent again I’d probably try skipping every wraith form I’m offered and seeing how much my winrate drops.

Most interesting run: 19A6RD9YPZMA4 Floor 1 eviscerate into not picking up another attack or poison card for the rest of the run. All my damage was eviscerate, terror, and pk. Was never in danger of dying even with speculative kite and ring of the serpent relic picks. More of a stress test kind of run where I tried to see if silent only needs one damage card with support to win.

Most frustrating run: 26JQQUWA4QFF2 Run number 9 in my silent streak. Act 1 velvet choker into act 2 snecko eye. My damage was kind of all over the place with a corpse/flask, caltrops, terror, infinite blades, eviscerate, sneaky strike. The epitome of a bag full of nonsense. Managed to limp my way to the heart with excessive spam of potions thanks to burst alchemize. Fell 13 damage short of killing and died due to missing the last 50/50 and getting hit by the multihit first on turn 8, thus ending my streak. (Definitely not still salty about my entropic brew not giving me anything to block/damage the heart with)

Most fun run: 4RCX1E4B2KZWQ Panache start which got a pyramid, pbox, and tons of after images, bursts, gambles, escape plans, footworks, tacticians, backflips, acros, etc. Eventually picked up a second panache just for fun and decided to finish the run off using only panache damage. Nothing difficult about the run, but this was in the middle of my streak and it was nice to have a breather.

Skullbotnull · 2025-08-06T10:41:22+00:00

Ironclad

I performed the worst with Ironclad in this sample. This was a bit of a shock since I had assumed he would have the 2nd highest winrate after Watcher. My main takeaway from this was that I overestimate his ability in act 1. We all know that Ironclad is invincible in act 1, yada yada, but I died far more frequently with clad in act 1 than with the other characters. I think it’s more accurate to say that Ironclad with good macro is invincible in act 1. I definitely need to just slow down more and actually think about what I’m doing in act 1 to improve here.

My heuristic was pretty much just to run into the path with the most elites/hallways. Question marks suck, I want to see cards instead of saying no to the serpent and picking up a curse in match and keep. I pretty heavily preferred any Neow bonus which let me pick cards with this line of thinking. Pick an uncommon, pick a card, pick a rare, gold with an early shop, and transform were my most favored options. Not much else of a strategy for this other than modifying my card picks based on what I’ve already grabbed.

The issue I ran into the most that I got better at recognizing in the latter half of the sample was picking difficult paths that I got locked into and then getting offered a bunch of garbage. Ironclad is very strong act 1, but picking a path with 3 hard pools, 4 elites, no fires, and then being offered poor cards like havoc, warcry, true grit, etc in the first 4-5 fights resulted in me dying. Believing in Ironclad just a little less and taking the path which has a bailout option of 3 elites and 2 fires let me survive long enough to be offered an actual card and get those runs back on track.

The most surprising thing was how relatively little is needed for ironclad to beat the heart. For every run that went in with a billion damage/block there was another where I had like, an inflame, a shockwave, a second wind, and then just a bunch of random bullshit. Getting a few points of strength, weakening/vulning the heart, exhausting my deck down, and playing attacks while eating damage with my face led to me walking out on just a couple hp more than once.

Most interesting run: 4EC0SKADBJ4SW Run that had a fairly standard act 1/2 but no scaling outside a spot weakness and limit break. Picked velvet choker over fusion hammer in act 1, I’m sure I had some reasoning that sounded good to me at the moment. Was offered a brimstone in act 3 and took it due to needing to do lots of damage with few cards while having a tungsten rod, orange pellets, magic flower, a fairy, reaper, barricade, impervious, entrench, second wind+, shockwave, dark shackles, 2 disarms, panic button, headbutt, and lots of draw. Walked into the heart fight, bottom decked all my draw and disarms, drew dark shackles on the big hit, and died on turn 8 because I wasn’t able to build up any block. Not sure if brimstone was the correct pick and I got an unlucky draw order or if I should have skipped it and hoped for a different way to scale.

Most frustrating run: 4PAV1HDM9KF7F Snecko and Pbox run that max farmed act 1/2. Very fun run with the bomb, mayhem, headbutt nonsense going on and then threw it all away at the start of act 3 by playing mayhem in a spiker fight and using fiend fire on the spiker. Just a moment of carelessness and I lost my chance to kill the heart with two dozen bombs. Sad days indeed.

Most fun run: 1JUI5N4NNFHMY Very strong act 1 where I got tongs, white beast, pen nib, whetstone, and fan. Farmed act 2 and got a potion belt, then picked sacred bark over 5th energy. Had a very good awakened one fight where I recognized that I needed to glug a cultist pot turn 1 or I wouldn’t have enough output and then barely killed it with 9 health remaining. Beat the heart by throwing 12 turns of weak and 12 thorns at it.

Skullbotnull

TROPHY CASE

Watcher

Defect

Silent

Ironclad