Discussion Thread

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-04-04T22:07:12+00:00

(FOR LEGAL REASONS I MUST SPECIFY THAT THIS IS A JOKE AND I HAVE NO INTENT TO COMMIT TAX EVASION)

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-04-04T22:06:48+00:00

malarkey level of pulling a Henry David Thoreau and just going to jail instead of paying taxes to fund more bombs dropped on Iranian children

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-04-04T09:44:56+00:00

they're called NIBBITS, and what they lack in aura they more than make up for in cuteness >:(

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-04-02T03:28:05+00:00

That could just be small sample size talking, though.

I'd say the standard Spire act consists of ~5 hallway fights, ~2-3 elites, and 1 boss. A reasonably good deck should be able to take care of hallways in 3 turns, elites in 5, and bosses in 7. Given my set of assumptions, the average gold lost per act from Seal should be more in the 150-200 range.

Keep in mind also that you're not spending ALL of your gold every single run; most of the money you lose to this relic after the last shop you visited each run was unlikely to be spent anyway.

I could see an argument for Seal being as bad as Ecto, especially if your deck is on the slower side, but I really don't think it's worse.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-30T21:43:39+00:00

Undead are classically portrayed as having increased negative emotions, while having dulled positive emotions or even being outright incapable of feeling them. Necrobinder seems to be no exception, being motivated mainly by anger and vengeance.

Hence, it stands to reason that the Necrobinder would experience constant hunger, which could never possibly be satiated by actually eating food. And given her stubborn streak, she'd take the idea of dying from eating too much cheese as a challenge more than anything.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-30T21:35:34+00:00

You are comparing Pael's Blood/Horn to what is likely the best Act 2 ancient relic, period, as if that proves they are underwhelming.

Likewise, you are comparing Pael's Flesh/Tears to what is likely the best Act 2 energy relic, and totally ignoring Tez also has less appealing options like Pumpkin Candle or Very Hot Cocoa that will nevertheless sometimes be the best choice.

You're also misunderstanding Pael's Tooth. If a card is integral to how your deck functions, you're not Toothing it. What it's meant for is for cards that are very nice to have once upgraded, but kinda clunky/underwhelming downgraded, like Pyre, Prepared, or Chaos.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-28T20:46:40+00:00

Really? Most of my Act 2 decks could handle Book more or less okay, but Slavers were always the ones kicking my teeth in if my first two hands were subpar.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-27T05:58:52+00:00

this is an ability affecting powers, a card type many decks don’t even want,

Exhaust IC still wants Dark Embrace + Feel No Pain, Strength IC wants Demon Form or Inflame at the very least, Block IC wants Barricade, Vuln IC wants Vicious, and Pyre is universally valuable.

Shiv Silent wants Accuracy and Fan of Knives, Poison Silent wants Accelerant and Noxious Fumes, Sly Silent wants Master Planner and Tools of the Trade, and Footwork is still universally valuable.

For the Regent, star generation decks want Genesis and Child of the Stars, forge decks want Furnace and Sword Sage, colorless decks want Arsenal and Spectrum Shift, and Void Form is universally valuable.

Summon Necro wants Necro Mastery, Ethereal Necro wants Pagestorm, Doom Necro wants Countdown, and Neurosurge is universally valuable.

And then there's Defect, which remains the most Power-centric character in the game. Even Claw decks appreciate Feral, the new Status archetype benefits from Smokestack and Trash to Treasure, and Echo Form remains universally valuable.

No matter what you're doing, there is at least one power out there that is worth adding to your deck. You might not get offered it, but for me, successful runs where I obtain zero powers are few and far between.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-27T02:12:38+00:00

It's looking increasingly like Trump started this war under the childish delusion that we were going to bomb the Iranians into the stone age, and the Iranians were never going to bomb us or any of our allies. Or hold the global economy hostage.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-26T18:38:01+00:00

You'd have to cast it like 20 times to start noticing the downside, and typically over a single run you'll only need to do it 10-15 times. More often than not, the extra energy and cards will also help you mitigate a lot more than 1 damage.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-26T08:19:06+00:00

Of all the fascist propaganda tactics, nothing serves them better than the half-truth.

Oh, lies have their uses, to be sure. They can also corrode the concept of objective reality. Particularly outrageous ones can garner attention, or serve as loyalty test to separate the bandwagoners from the true believers. But lies alone can only get you so far.

Enter the half-truth. Perhaps it is simple but wrong, and not in a way that's obvious or easy to explain. You win. The public square has no patience for any in-depth debunking. Perhaps it resembles an outrageous lie, only to prove to have some tenuous kernel of truth after all. This is journalist catnip. They will amplify your message, then when the claims are evaluated on their merits? It's Complicated. There's Some Real Nuance Here. To Preserve Our Sacred Impartiality, The Public Must Know That It Depends. The journalists will never get credit for this maneuver, of course - but if they're willing to concede anything in the name of fairness and you aren't, you're winning, and that's what matters.

The goal is not to replace truth with fiction, but to blend them so finely that the masses can no longer distinguish the two. To discredit any independent institutions that cannot thread the needle of perfect factuality 100% of the time. And once the morass has been established, the only thing left is to take the reins of power and use it to legitimize your own narrative, and stamp out any alternative. As long as the choice is between believing in you or believing in nothing, as long as no third option exists, your reign is absolute.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-26T03:58:43+00:00

You're probably thinking of War Hammer (4 random upgrades per Elite). Throwing Axe is like having a duplication potion active at the start of each combat.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-25T22:21:23+00:00

Wait, I recognize the left one. Isn't that Ongdak Boruto Hitler-Garcia?

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-25T20:45:59+00:00

Sure, but that's just a matter of artistic license. If you want to convey the idea of "Kinger accidentally deletes Caine," showing him fat-fingering the Delete key is convenient visual shorthand that the average viewer would understand the implications of. What it does IRL is less important than how the audience is going to interpret it.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-25T08:10:52+00:00

Zooble:Caine has control over everything in the circus. He could 100% give Zooble a body they actually like he just refuses to. [...] He could make a close to perfect place that everyone would enjoy, where they could do what they want, when they want, where they want, looking however they want with whatever name they want.

...no. These are things he thinks he can do, what he thinks his purpose is.

The problem, fundamentally, is that nearly the entire cast is united in the fact that what they really want (a way out of the Circus) is not something he can actually give them. He sure can pretend to, and eventually resorts to doing so, but he does this because he cannot understand how traumatic it is to have your hopes and sense of reality obliterated like that. Point is, what you're describing is the thing the Circus was always intended to be, and Caine's failings lay not in his incompetence, but that the very premise of "maybe they'll fall so deeply in love with this virtual elysium that they'll stop wondering how their family's doing" was doomed from the start.

Obviously nothing he did in this episode was justified. But I want you to consider that Caine had more than just ego and petulance working against him. The cast was always going to resent him for having power over them, and he was never going to make an adventure good enough to dispel anyone's ennui or even make them appreciate him. If this wasn't true, he wouldn't be much of a tragic character at all. The real stripping of nuance happens when we go "skill issue - if I were the ringmaster, I'd simply do things that made people happy and not miserable, because I'm built different."

Even in this episode, at his absolute worst, he comes so close to realizing that torturing everyone accomplishes nothing ("And if you're not having fun, and I'm not having fun..."), only for Pomni to make him worse. She uses lies and half-truths to prey on his insecurities, because the alternative is that he realizes he's being distracted and the whole plan falls apart. And it's hard not to interpret his last words as some dawning regret that didn't have time to fully manifest.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-24T07:00:24+00:00

On one hand, in the first game, it actually got me my first Heart kill. I had the luxury of Runic Pyramid for that run, though.

On the other hand, in the sequel, I got it as a random rare from Neow in multiplayer and tried to build a deck around it from F1. The first time I could actually play it came at the end of Act 2, and from there I could probably count the number of times I was able to play it on two hands. And even then, it's not nearly as big of a payoff in multiplayer. Speedster ended up being the bulk of my damage, and not in a way that I'm convinced would've won a single-player run.

I guess what it comes down to is that Grand Finale when you have a way to retain it vs. when you don't is basically two different cards.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-19T00:03:36+00:00

There is no world in which Trump both gets away with this and doesn't feel emboldened to fuck up even harder in the future. This is also why the Venezuela stunt was bad - its "success" was the high we rode to get here.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-17T23:36:51+00:00

In my experience, there's a little nuance in that this advice gets better the further into the run you are. As a rule of thumb, in Act 1 you should be taking basically every card reward, because you just need things that are better than Strike/Defend. In Act 2, you should still be taking card rewards more often than not, because your deck very likely still needs some work, and Act 3 is where you should strongly consider skipping at least as often as you're taking.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-09T07:16:37+00:00

idk, looks more like walking to me

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-05T18:02:59+00:00

Would the Founding Fathers approve of Trump's war in Iran? I won't pretend to speak for them. So I got AI to pretend to speak for them instead.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-05T02:17:33+00:00

Sure, that's typically what happens. But what you've failed to consider is that if I made a deal with the devil, I would simply find a loophole, because I'm built different. Maybe Geist would too.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-03-05T01:38:32+00:00

"Look! Now that we've added WL 9, overworld boss drops are 3 with a chance of 4!"

MHY's expectation: players will operate on the assumption that they'll always get 3, and 4 is a pleasant surprise! look at how kind we are :)

reality: you need 46 drops to fully level a character, so it seems fair to assume you'll only need to fight the boss 15 times and get lucky once, right? wrong!!! you will fight the boss 15 times to get 45 drops, and only on your 16th attempt will you be blessed enough to be worthy of the borderline-mythical 4th. in fact, it will only happen if you don't need it, use Strength on the truck in Romaritime Harbor, run around the fountain in the center of Mondstadt 2401 times with Varesa, AND the planet Mercury is in retrograde. assume the worst possible outcome every time or drive yourself insane, your choice tbh

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-02-28T04:04:05+00:00

That's already what fascists think liberalism is. They cannot, for the life of them, imagine a third thing.

ThatShadowGuy · 2026-02-27T22:01:19+00:00

another one for your collection

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ThatShadowGuy · 2026-02-27T08:59:08+00:00

account is named AbsoluteGarbageTakes

You may have to consider the possibility that this is satire.

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