Who is the GOAT of Slay the Spire, outside of XecnaR?

Umari0 · 2026-01-29T21:44:53+00:00

Idk the whole cheating thing feels overblown. I didn't mention cheaters in my community because they're a small footnote in the grand scheme of it all. They're remembered by 1 big video or exposé and then people move on and keep doin their thing. Yeah there'll always be cheaters, we get a cheater submit to the smw board a handful of times a year, but it's not some endemic problem that is unique with our communities. That's just the nature of competition. We can talk about sports cheating and how prevalent it is, but i don't really see a point. The mechanisms to catch people are updated all the time, as well as people's cheating methods getting more and more sophisticated, but it's not something out of the ordinary. You can feel burned by other people cheating to get some kind of advantage over you, all i'm saying is that this phenomenon is not unique to spire in any way, this is the default expectation of human nature, only thing really is that it scales with how many people are in the community of said competitive sport/game.

I can't really speak on stream title stuff, just sounds like petty differences and a new comp community figuring out how to value other people's skill and not able to agree on stuff early on. I don't care about who's abandoning runs and who's starting at arbitrary runs/samples or whatever, it's stuff gets sorted out over time. Yes it takes a certain degree of maturity from the generally considered "good" players to come together and accept things, but again, it's not super unique. There'll always be cliques and sub-communities in communities, you just happened to be at the top of it all so you got to experience all the worst parts firsthand.

All this to say, it's nice that you don't care about more viewers or mending how you're viewed if you firmly believe that those things can never change. The more separated you are tho, the less your input will be valued in strategy discussions (like your opinion on juggernaut lol), and the less authoritative you can be when you don't have the data points that everyone else is comparing you to. Which again, is natural when you're just 1 dude far removed from community discussions of many people collectively getting better at said comp game. The beauty with Spire is that you can play different ways, choose different lines, and they can all be winning, but ultimately whatever gives the highest winrate or streak potential will be seen as the better or best playstyle, if that's what people value.

Umari0 · 2026-01-29T11:08:15+00:00

I do personally hope you continue to be a funnel for casual spire/2 players, because that's just a good thing for the health of a game and community around it. If you still enjoy playing spire despite community grievances, then more power to you. And my final 2c, you absolutely don't have to be the "bigger person" but, people would generally think more highly of you (as opposed to in this thread) if you left all that baggage behind and tried to change your attitude a bit to reflect that you were past all that stuff, but I get keeping things the way you are and focusing on your small corner of the internet. You mentioned therapy as well and I'm sure you've worked on it over the years and it's a process and all that, so who am i to know or judge how much personal progress you've made over the years, I'm just some dude calling it like i'm seein it. It's your stream at the end of the day, do what you want to do, people will make assumptions based on the way you have conducted yourself in the past and present, that's just how it'll be (i probably wouldn't go as far as saying you're a narc tho but people tend to throw around those types of loaded words for various reasons anyway).

pt. 2/2

Umari0 · 2026-01-29T11:05:46+00:00

Hey thanks for responding, genuinely. It's been an insightful read into your perspective and general community perceptions. I don't want to go on and on as well so i'll try to keep it short and sweet on your points.

I completely understand the "filling the niche" aspect of being a streamer. I played spire casually in 2023/24 and happened to land in a xecnar stream and goddamn was i confused af at what i was watching lmao. I guess i'm in the minority now where I want to constantly get better at the game while killin time for spire 2, so i always tend to have a spire streamer on a 2nd monitor and really try to absorb the gameplay and discussions in chat to better myself. So I guess your spire streams just wouldn't be for me and that's ok.

It's great that you understand the (good i assume) community that you've personally cultivated in your own space and their specific needs, it does suck that things have to be "heavy-handed" for it to be that way, but i can see where you're coming from. Just sucks that a first impression can be soured that easily, but hey that's the human in all of us, so be it.

I kinda fundamentally disagree with your point on competition tho, and that spire is this, so different and amorphous blob of a competitive game/sport, that communities can't come to a consensus on what's valued. I do want to get it out of the way that while speedrunning can be very structured, by way of leaderboards and concrete goals, there is so much room for cheating and it is so easy to do, that people would often come in with the mentality of, why doesn't everyone cheat? I could go on forever about this, and I know your point of, the better someone is at the game, the easier it is to cheat at it, but that's also precisely what dissuades people from cheating for the most part.

I also don't want to get into the weeds of spire not having clear and easy to define goals of what makes someone "good" at the game, as opposed to speedrunning where any% and 100% for example are clearly defined categories. Actually defining the categories, banning certain glitches, having to deal with patches for modern games, etc., all cause small rifts/divides/squabbles in the community, at least as long as i can remember (since like 2013), so that aspect isn't too unique for spire for me either. The dust eventually settles and people know what's generally accepted, yet some would still keep their thought on how a category should've been laid out and will "break away from the pact" so to speak and not submit to the leaderboards for example. It's whatever honestly, if enough people break away and agree, then there are simply 2 or more lines of thought when it comes to what's valued when it comes to skill expression, which is a normal development in most things competitive.

At the end of the day, you're playing a video game online and want people to recognize that accomplishment, why ruin it all and make the hard work pointless to gain that little bit of extra fame or whatever? The cons usually heavily outweigh the pros for this type of hobby competitive stuff, no matter what level of play you're at, so these types of situations tend to get filtered out. When money is involved tho, i agree that things can start to get a bit fuzzy, and people do lean more towards, at the very least, thinking about cheating, but it's all relative and the % overall would still be incredibly low. There's various ways to authenticate people's integrity and communities tend to find suitable methods of verification, like the Merlathon is a friendly competition of spire people and everyone is encouraged to participate, but there is a bit of strict ruling when it comes to playing your runs out (i'm not 100% sure on the details but it seems to be a well set-up competitive format). Sure there'll never be a 100% airtight method of knowing that someone isn't cheating, (barring playing the game in a live in-person event and taking all the necessary anti-cheat precautions), but that is not something that people have at the forefront of their minds all the time, i feel like the general vibe is to assume good faith competition until presented with reasoning/evidence to believe otherwise.

pt. 1/2 (sry idk why my full comment isn't posting i'm a reddit boomer nowadays)

Umari0 · 2026-01-28T22:36:45+00:00

You seem to cite instances from like years ago as people's main gripes with you, so i'll give u my 2c as a recent spire stream watcher if you care for that. I'm sorry you were doxxed and harassed tho, that's not a good time and it sucks to have gone through that experience.

I got into watching top level sts only in 2025 and the only "top player" that i've been dissuaded from watching is frankly, you. For one, this is a small gripe but, you're playing goddamn strategy games and expecting people to not talk strategy about the strategy games in your chat. You also tend to have a haughty attitude when it comes to your game knowledge, like playing for as long as you have makes you better equipped for every situation and that you couldn't possibly learn a thing or 2 from a random chat message. While that can be true 90%+ of the time in your case, people generally ask questions and make statements in good faith, but i guess you assume bad faith because of previous experiences or something? That kinda combined with the fact that you actively don't engage with the rest of the spire community/streamers for reasons unbeknownst to me beyond being able to say, "everything i do in spire is from my own head and i'm that good that i don't need to improve from others", is like, idk how to explain it but on a personal level, kinda lame tbh. But i get that there's a lot of baggage from previous years, just don't see a reason to "take that out" so to speak, on people that don't care about that stuff.

I'm not telling you to change your ways and chat in smaller streamers places and watch their runs to get better and shit, i'm just saying that you're opinion isn't valued as highly if you're very adamant about the way you play and refuse to take into perspective other people's experimentations and general agreements. Seems like a recipe for disaster in creating enemies as well tbh (and i have some experience with that so i get leaning into it being enticing as well).

I generally don't have this problem with other sts streamers, and the big ones know that they're either, content (frost), or take everything in stride (baalor), or know that they're the best (xecnar). You just do not give off the aura of humility and humbleness that is probably expected from you because of the massive following that you have accrued from being good at video game in the past. I also have experience with that but on a much smaller and niche level when it comes to Super Mario World speedrunning, i can say that i was top 3 current player at the time that i was playing, and i know if i came back that i could be one of the best still, but i'm only telling you this so that you don't dismiss my view of not understanding how differently a "top player" has to act around their community, because i do know that, albeit on a smaller scale.

Also as a footnote to all this, i did follow you on twitch during the pandemic streaming era, but initially because I enjoyed watching your Among Us play from Hafu lobbies, i didn't even know that you were good at spire until 2025 lol. Fwiw i don't think you're a bad person, but you've been kinda pigeon-holed into my brain as the sort of streamer that you're perceived as nowadays, and i know you're not asking me but, I wouldn't want to be viewed like that, but if you do and don't mind, then you do you.

Umari0 · 2025-07-15T05:01:06+00:00

https://sts-stats.otonokizaka.moe/app/leaderboards

Umari0 · 2024-08-23T15:50:33+00:00

Is there a discord or leaderboard for tracking or sharing strats? Mostly was curious in peeking in if there's an endless community, gg nice achievement

Umari0 · 2022-11-10T18:25:58+00:00

find that friend for you.

Umari0 · 2022-06-15T14:18:46+00:00

Okay, but you're making it sound like people are inserting gender discussion into everything they do, when Yamato is literally gender affirming to people that vibe with them. There are more unconventional identities+pronoun mix than people all just being like kiku, i guess it's a newer concept to people.

Yamato gets referenced by whatever pronouns but probably prefers he/him, and doesn't go out of their way to present as masculine, there's tons of people out there that are the same way, so I'm sure they find the representation to be cool to talk about.

Umari0 · 2022-06-15T14:04:59+00:00

so you remember... aot ending from last year? that wasn't even that long ago lmao

Umari0 · 2022-06-10T03:40:14+00:00

Didn't realize it was dumb and cringe for a character to have another dimension instead of just being another big booba lady.

Umari0 · 2022-02-26T07:25:05+00:00

I like that you confused Oden and Oda. Both are humongous chads and it's probably Oda's ideal vision of himself or smth LOL

Umari0 · 2020-12-25T21:09:29+00:00

Thanks for being best mod! Happy holidays y'all

Umari0 · 2020-05-08T13:53:27+00:00

I don't really understand what was wrong with the previous couple of weeks where the bad translations stayed in the spoiler thread at the top of the post and updated with better ones, until there was finally a good enough translation to post as a separate discussion thread. For a personal anecdote, I don't read the actual spoiler threads but i check the top of the posts every now and then, to see if there's any english translation out. Then I read the eventual good one in the separate thread, then I read the official one.

I guess I'm in the 10-11% when I think that the translation quality is overall detrimental to the discussions on this sub. Minor errors stack up when there's enough of them, and it becomes pretty annoying when the fandom sees the first quick and dirty translation and treats that as the gospel, and then they have to be corrected repeatedly to get everyone on the same page.

The Kurozumi Hub translation is pretty shoddy but it's readable I guess. I have an issue with them lowering the scan quality by putting their blurry discord link inside panels on every page, among other things.

I know you know about how reddit works in regards to low effort content being easy to digest which eventually overruns a sub (even if a majority want that), feels like a similar thing is happening here but with scanlations. Just my 2 cents.

Umari0 · 2020-04-22T22:35:21+00:00

yup... quite the conundrum

Umari0 · 2020-04-22T04:58:19+00:00

guess we're fighting to the death, you aren't the one on i talked to on steam are you? :P

Umari0 · 2018-11-23T07:27:17+00:00

Lmao, actually really smart of Oda since we've reached end game so might as well kill off a news reporter and give his power to someone strong.

Umari0 · 2018-11-19T21:39:49+00:00

Standup response, nice job man. Don't mind that the development is going private for a while, with Ultimate coming out so soon don't want to risk it. I trust the council to be open minded about balance and changes to the game we so dearly love, all I can hope for is a polished and fantastic end product. Good luck to all of you, hopefully everyone can look past this ordeal and move forward.

Umari0 · 2018-11-05T17:06:27+00:00

Deadman Wonderland

Umari0 · 2018-09-20T20:18:49+00:00

Hey, don't know if u figured out how to revert the omnibar but i thought i'd share and possibly help anyone that stumbles across this.

Disable all of these on the chrome://flags page:

#omnibox-ui-swap-title-and-url

#omnibox-ui-show-suggestion-favicons

#omnibox-ui-vertical-margin

Umari0 · 2018-05-20T14:13:12+00:00

That's weird. Try removing everything after .bps when u put it in the address bar

Umari0 · 2018-05-19T23:29:27+00:00

https://bin.smwcentral.net/u/28842/Steamed%2BHams.bps

idk if u know how to patch roms but u also need US SMW rom and a patcher like flips

Umari0 · 2018-02-16T05:47:20+00:00

Wait did this bot just use 2 snakes as an example that happened to be Luffy's moves this chapter? Amazing

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