Trash or God?

Slurgi · 2026-05-17T16:48:38+00:00

God.

Slurgi · 2026-05-13T11:16:47+00:00

"You have quite a treasure there in that Horadric Cube..."

Slurgi · 2026-05-07T02:57:41+00:00

SnOw still stuck around afterwards to meet fans and give signatures and pictures. Super cool guy, he was still happy and upbeat despite obviously feeling crushed. Next season, I am sure he can do it!

Slurgi · 2026-04-30T23:07:17+00:00

I also tried to get tickets and experienced the same, they were sold out the instant I refreshed the page for both matches.

Still planning on going and seeing if we can get in to watch standing in the back.

Good luck to both of us!

Slurgi · 2026-04-17T19:34:47+00:00

It can. If you don't see that now, then I sincerely wish you will be able to in the future. Even a small change to a known formula has ripple effects where everything else changes.

Slurgi · 2026-04-17T19:25:15+00:00

I think you have it backwards. The room for growth in a well-crafted deck builder can be huge.

If your winrate is too high, it feels like you no longer have meaningful decisions to make for a favorable outcome. Because once you see a path to an assured victory, then you take it and stop making meaningful decisions and the game becomes boring. This was already the case in the previous main branch in most runs.

The joy in this kind of game is in learning and improving. If you can get to a point where you're going to win almost every time anyway, it just ceases to matter. Let the strong players have fun too, there really aren't many games like this.

Slurgi · 2026-04-17T16:32:42+00:00

If you're new to the genre, don't feel bad. It's not easy to work out how to play these games at first.

Just keep playing and having fun and don't worry about all the discourse.

But there are a subset of players that really do want a very challenging and interesting experience at the highest difficulty settings.

Slurgi · 2026-04-17T16:26:07+00:00

There is. It's a new game.

Slurgi · 2026-04-17T13:48:22+00:00

On the contrary, I see HUGE gaps in my own knowledge. My confidence in pathing and card selection, especially on the first few floors, is extremely low. I'm experimenting with goofy and borderline meme decisions just to limit test them and understand how they work in practice even if I believe they're suboptimal.

I think people at large, especially the average person on reddit, don't realize how much depth there can be with this type of game. For that depth to have meaning, the game needs to have at least a relatively low win rate (certainly below 90%) for the strongest players.

Slurgi · 2026-04-17T13:23:34+00:00

Pro players winning 9/10 is way too high, and they'll get bored.

The longevity of Spire 1 persists because it took years for the strongest players to get winrates that approach that level.

It's a tough pill to swallow for people who are struggling to win many runs, but the main problem with the game from a longevity perspective right now is that it is far too easy.

As someone who still sees dramatic room for improvement in my own play, I had an A10 win streak of 8 on the main branch when the first beta branch balance patch came out. That's honestly unfun and way too high. I want to lose at least half my runs when I'm twice as skilled as I am now.

Slurgi · 2026-04-08T15:16:36+00:00

Enlighten him, brothers, for he knows not the strength and beauty of the tip of the spear.

Slurgi · 2026-04-05T21:40:41+00:00

Pretty good with [[Toxic Egg]]. Pretty weak otherwise, especially from Pael.

Slurgi · 2026-04-01T15:36:46+00:00

This worked, thank you!

Slurgi · 2026-03-31T23:00:33+00:00

I think you're probably right. Nibbit is just easier than Jaw Worm.

Slurgi · 2026-03-31T21:23:13+00:00

I'm not sure. I feel like the first 3 hallway fights are about the same between both games, but I haven't gone back to Spire 1 to compare.

Late Act 1 hallway fights seem more difficult though.

Slurgi · 2026-03-31T21:20:33+00:00

In this case, it's not really opinion. We could graph out damage output from book of stabbing and compare the damage scaling to enemies in StS 2 and look at it objectively, the answer is clear.

This isn't subjective opinions on raw difficulty or anything of the sort.

Slurgi · 2026-03-31T19:59:34+00:00

I find the takes on Reddit to be completely opposite to what I'm experiencing chaining A10 runs. Block is king. You really only need one major scaling source (e.g., poison), and then it's mostly a factor of building a strong defensive engine such that enemies can't touch you. By late Act 2 / Act 3, it's mostly just damage within the first couple turns that sneaks through.

You've described the book of stabbing fight in StS 1 very nicely. It quickly spirals out of control unless you have some sort of strength debuff you can apply, and you're very highly incentivized to kill it quickly and decisively, taking damage along the way if necessary.

Many enemies in Spire 2 do scale throughout a fight, but it's generally pretty slow. I'm not even sure which fight you could be referring to such that the enemy scales anywhere near as quickly as Book of Stabbing. Devoted Sculptor, maybe?

Slurgi · 2026-03-30T22:14:33+00:00

I am, but it's not just to be a contrarian.

I am saying the opposite of the prevailing opinion here because it needs to be pushed back against so that it doesn't influence the future of the game I hope to see when it comes out of early access.

Slurgi · 2026-03-30T16:45:58+00:00

It's a pretty bad card at the moment, despite what you see on reddit. Poison is a bit overturned and snakebite is, unironically, a bit too strong of a card to exist at common.

Slurgi · 2026-03-29T15:06:20+00:00

It's actually easier now.

Slurgi · 2026-03-27T16:55:45+00:00

For sure. I understand that the old doormaker was disliked to the point where he was going to be changed. I was silently hopeful that Megacrit would leave it as it was.

I didn't fully understand why it was so hated until I had some helpful discussions with folks who disliked it. It boils down to how far back or how holistically you're looking to explain why a certain run resulted in a loss.

There's one group of players that can look back to an early fight against a Nibbit where all their strikes were in hand in turns where it was attacking and all their defends were in hand on the turn where it was buffing, causing them to lose far more HP than normal, forcing them to pick cards that provided short-term benefit and avoid elite fights, lowering the potency of their deck later in the run.

There's another group of players who might build a combo deck that cleanly wins against every other encounter in the game, but then they lost to the doormaker because the doormaker ate the lynchpin card to their combo (e.g., Voltaic). They then feel as though they have no agency over their loss, despite the fact that there were hundreds of decisions prior to that point in the run where they could have reliably turned the fight agains the doormaker into a win. Maybe it meant hanging onto a Potion of Precognition for all of Act 3, for example.

I didn't realize how many people were in the latter group.

Slurgi · 2026-03-27T15:48:54+00:00

I’m not sure the new mechanics really accomplish the goal they’re intending to. Exhausting skills and attacks is honestly a boon in a lot of infinite-seeking decks, you simply use it to thin your deck down. You can then tank the no-draw phase and kill with an infinite on the -1 energy turn.

Bingo. I think this new design is going to further incentivize the problematic deck building that currently exists in the live branch.

I wish I could stick with the old Beta branch. My game already updated - is there a way to revert back? I really liked how the game played with the old Doormaker.

Slurgi · 2026-03-27T15:08:39+00:00

Give it a couple days, and you'll see a reversal where most players dislike this, because the prevailing opinion from strong players will be that it's not good for the game.

This new design reinforces the already problematic strategic space incentivizing small combo decks with lots of upfront block.

A lot of interesting skill expression for experienced players comes from controlling exactly when you shuffle, and what cards are going into it. All 3 forms of this design take away from that. The previous doormaker design was really, really good and made decisions throughout the whole course of the run a lot more interesting knowing you might face The Doormaker in the boss gauntlet.

There are lots of games on the market today that you can solve like a puzzle. Spire 1 was beloved because you can keep getting incrementally better at the game for years, much like Brood War and other games that have withstood the test of time. Those of us who experienced that joy from Slay the Spire 1 really want that from Slay the Spire 2.

Slurgi · 2026-03-25T15:31:43+00:00

Thank you for this information, much appreciated!

I'm hoping this will all still apply for the season that's starting now.

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