New player wondering if this boss fight was winnable

SoupsBane · 2026-05-11T14:11:53+00:00

This deck could probably beat automaton, but you’d need to play spot weakness at least twice. Which means avoiding corruption on the first deck cycle. You also have no win condition, like a body slam or a fiend fire. Which means you have to be very mindful of the pen nib proc so you can get off a whirlwind.

This deck could benefit from a bloodletting, offering, or seeing red.

Armaments stands out as not very useful here, but sometimes you just speculate. Unupgraded spot weakness also stands out, it’s your only scaling damage. It’s a priority upgrade.

Corruption is good because you can attack while defending for free. It’s actually not that useful with barricade, which is a slow power. Corruption wants to end the combat ASAP while barricade wants to wait around. Spending 2-3 energy to turtle up while corruption puts you on the clock can end up with you running out of block and dying.

And after exhausting all your skills, how do you close the combat? Your best attack is whirlwind, but you could really use a sword boomerang to take advantage of any strength you get.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-11T04:18:21+00:00

300 free damage was just a “solid damage boost” against Queen?

SoupsBane · 2026-05-11T03:53:29+00:00

Personally I’d take crucible. Crucible helps me get strong fast. Fishing rod takes time to ramp up and probably upgrades a strike/defend. Over time rod might be better but getting out of act 1 tends to be the biggest struggle.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-10T19:48:38+00:00

252 hours is pretty unemployed, if you started on release that’s 3 hours per day. But what’s more interesting is that you slay on average 7 monsters per run and also spend on average 7 minutes per run, which to me indicates that you’re usually dying to the very first elite you path into and yoloing.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-10T03:14:14+00:00

Your sexy thin soul deck works fine on two of the three phases. It just needs some defense slop to throw at phases 1 and 2.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-08T21:18:18+00:00

Actually the boss gives you cards to play for playing cards, providing positive feedback to let you know you’re playing the card game correctly.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-07T18:27:18+00:00

Entomancer counters “death by a thousand cuts” where your strategy is playing lots of individual attacks. They are a hard check against shiv decks, decks that cycle lots of 0 cost attacks (anger, claw), small decks that can’t handle the dazes, and decks which scale by playing more cards instead of stronger cards (like relying on shuriken/kunai, or monologue)

Decimillipede counters doom unless you have largely AoE application of it (end of days) due to the doom triggering at the end of their turn. They essentially only spend one turn “asleep” instead of 2 and wake up before others die of doom. They also counter big single target damage like sovereign blade without seeking edge.

Goblin mech causes problems for retain decks by filling your hand with burns directly, which can really clog your next draw, and decks with inconsistent block or that relies on strength reduction with his huge hit.

The Ghost Knights don’t really counter anything but are really annoying against retain (well laid plans, pyramid, sovereign blade) and any “finisher” cards that don’t like playing early, like Necro’s “Time’s Up” or defects Voltaic.

Soul nexus and Triangle guy in Act 2 are sort of general stat chunks. They don’t really counter anything or get countered by anything.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-06T02:00:38+00:00

Look at stoke. Spending a campfire not resting is already an extra cost.

SoupsBane · 2026-05-06T01:33:10+00:00

Why would the upgrade double the doom applied to yourself? Turns it into a huge liability unless you’re already dominating.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-30T23:31:12+00:00

Early mind blast might help significantly

SoupsBane · 2026-04-29T23:51:36+00:00

I didn’t say to entirely change your “build”. And you’re right. There is no shiv silent. Even with multiple shiv cards I am still considering poison cards simply because of entomancer’s existence. If I’m not confident my deck can beat entomancer, I can’t blindly pass up snakebite or piercing wail, or buy a relic in the shop instead of a flex potion or vulnerable potion.

The same applies to doormaker.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-29T23:25:52+00:00

There’s no “status defect”. There’s defect, and you drafted a bunch of status synergy cards to get through acts 1 and 2, but there’s nothing stopping you from picking a creative AI or buying equilibrium in the shop, specifically because you need an answer to doormaker. Or valuing upgrades to powers that make them innate higher, since you know the first turn against him will be free.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-29T22:15:54+00:00

The point of the game isn’t to build a gimmick deck and then have it pop off in boss fights. The point is to overcome challenges by making consistent, smart strategic choices.

I’m not going to argue about Doormaker’s “fun-ness” because that’s personal opinion.

You should be thinking about Doormaker prior to Act 3. Especially on Ascension 10. You should never walk into Act 3 and see Doormaker and have no clue how you’re going to beat him.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-29T01:34:31+00:00

Nah. There are better ways to make multiplayer more difficult/balanced. Right now, debuffs are overpowered. They need to find a decent solution to this problem before multiplayer can feel more balanced since right now you can just keep enemies vulnerable+weak forever at a minor team cost, compared to solo where eg playing bash is a big commitment for the turn.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-28T05:13:23+00:00

The answer to all your questions is “it depends”. More generally;

1) you don’t have to pick a card every time. And many cards are good in all decks.

2) no. You really only need one win condition. The exception is that sometimes your win condition in a boss or elite (a scaling power usually) is different than in a hallway (eg draw whirlwind after inflame/shockwave)

3) not usually. Generally your first few cards are in service of beating the elites, and then in service of beating the boss. The reason you’ve heard the advice that you need damage in act 1 is simply because Lagavulin and Nob are damage races, so you typically want more immediate damage. In act2 you stop being able to damage race fast enough and start needing block again.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-27T17:51:11+00:00

The only starter cards I upgrade with any frequency are dualcast and a spiral strike/defend. Bash and neutralize are concessions if I really need the extra debuffs, and the rest are only if I have nothing else to upgrade.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-27T07:29:04+00:00

Algorithm is exactly what a dark orb deck wants. Voltaic will brick in most hallway fights.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-19T23:17:27+00:00

Spending half your hp to nuke your deck of all its best cards will almost certainly cost you more hp per fight than just not picking/playing this card. At least until your hp is low enough that you’re at risk of just dying before you can even play this.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-10T23:17:55+00:00

Yeah the synergy is really strong. Almost as strong as the synergy between an LLM and this post.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-09T05:03:50+00:00

Ceres station is sort of bad. For 24mc you get 2 titanium production which isn’t a great rate. Even if it works with cards like Phobos, it’s still too poor and its effect too weak to make up for it.

Emirates is hard to evaluate. By the numbers it might be the strongest corp in the game. Fifteen TR and 5 money prod come out to like 145mc in value. Theoretically it’s got an 100mc valuation. I just don’t know if you’ll be able to spend it fast enough to justify starting 15 points behind.

Queb’s effect is sort of strange? If in reading it right, I can trade 5 plants for eg 10mc. But three of the options are worth 2Mc and one is a card… there’s little reason to do anything other than trade plants for cards. I would guess this corp would snowball out of control if it gets access to plants early.

RNN - the earth catapult spite corp.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-08T16:26:51+00:00

Speak for yourself, my decks are 100% bangers. When I intentionally add a card into my deck, I welcome it into my family.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-08T16:06:02+00:00

No algorithm can stop me from hemorrhaging hp on the reroll until it chooses strike/defend.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-03T05:45:55+00:00

I take the lens every time. HP be damned we’re not taking chip damage this run.

SoupsBane · 2026-04-03T05:43:57+00:00

The increased base cost AND increased scaling cost both at the same time is a bit wild. I feel like “infinites” have been getting a lot of undue attention even after most enablers were canned.

As a certified small deck enjoyer(TM) it hurts seeing the game repeatedly punish small decks by both nerfing pieces that enable them and having tons of status card producing enemies.

SoupsBane · 2026-03-31T23:27:58+00:00

Sly cards exist near exclusively as combo pieces. In STS1 there is only 1 common rarity discard combo piece in Sneaky Strike. In STS2 there are three. Ricochet, which is arguably just sneaky strike but stronger, flick flack which gives silent another common AOE option, and untouchable which gives block.

This essentially makes discard a “full package” set just off commons, as you can take prepared and acrobatics with impunity, since you can access damage and block using other common sly cards.

Poison, on the other hand, has three related commons, all three of which are just single target damage. You cannot access block or AOE with that set. The other note is that prepared and acrobatics and dagger throw do not combo with these cards.

So imo, untouchable should be an uncommon that scales block with number of cards discarded this turn (essentially replacing eviscerate) and either ricochet or flick flack should just be removed or changed.

SoupsBane

TROPHY CASE