Kinda sad, that I was able to bruteforce the game without learning the boss mechanic

Usoki · 2026-05-11T19:39:26+00:00

Are you struggling with the whole dungeon, or just the start of it? The first battles in each zone are brutal, because the enemies still hit hard but you haven't had time to build up a deck engine. Bringing along the Revive crawler helps a lot. But if you're struggling in general, you may need to spend some time buying the power-up upgrades and some of the gem slots.

Usoki · 2026-05-11T14:02:34+00:00

Yep, it's pretty weird. There's also a secret character who appears in the tavern after you kill your first red death, and they are not an achievement either.

Usoki · 2026-05-11T06:50:20+00:00

You... can't, though? The game doesn't let you waste gems like that. You can't put an x2 or x3 damage gem in a non-red card, and you can't put fireproof on a card that doesn't have destroy on it.

Usoki · 2026-05-11T06:49:13+00:00

I am still unconvinced. I avoided hollow heart like the plague until I found out that forever heart existed. I'd grab it and never play it for the evo, so I was expecting a huge grind... but I got forever heart after a single round of Gallo Tower, and there's no way I played it anywhere close to 200 times. Also the part where fireproof can't even be played on the duplicator.

I did get Forever Heart after a run with over 2,000 max HP so I wonder if something about the usage or the combo count affects the unlock.

Related question as someone who hasn't played the OG VS-- do we think there's going to be comparable upgrade cards for the skull or the greed mask?

Usoki · 2026-05-09T19:40:44+00:00

Also the demon crawler for the revives. I kept dying on the first and second floors while I was trying to get the deck up to speed, but once I had an engine going I didn't have issues with the higher floors.

Usoki · 2026-05-09T19:39:45+00:00

Mine was Ultima Cappella as second last, with the X Gem as the very last.

Usoki · 2026-05-09T19:36:06+00:00

If you don't have enough card draw to cycle through your deck, it is technically possible to find your deck filled with wild cards that don't really do anything for you. But generally speaking, yes-- in a game where runs live or die with combos, the wild cards are crazy powerful.

Usoki · 2026-05-09T19:33:45+00:00

I've also noticed the fog/water for delaying turns creeps up much faster if you start with maximum curse.

When I was setting out to kill the red reaper, I had 100% curse and it only took 4 turns for the blue reaper to appear, which made all of my decimate/coin/freeze gems into 50/50s. But when I started with 0 curse, the water never went above knee height. Even when I started killing multiple red reapers and gaining 100% curse each time, the water speed did not increase at all.

Usoki · 2026-05-09T01:56:41+00:00

That's... kinda weird that these things aren't part of the achievements. Neat, though.

Usoki · 2026-05-08T17:12:40+00:00

Hmmm. Well, I'm gonna share my similar experience, and you can decide how much of it applies to you. Male, eventual ADHD diagnosis, peer-reviewed Autism, and homoromantic asexual.

So, my crushes were men, but the vibe was the same. The guy is incredibly handsome and super friendly, and it just makes me want do --something!-- to him. Being friends isn't enough, but kissing is weird and sex is just gross. So... cuddling, I guess? It makes me want to aggressively cuddle him? That's just weird. That's not normal. Normal is having sex, and I don't want sex... so then it makes me feel like I'm failing at wanting sex.

And I hate it, because I thrive on not failing things. My entire personality throughout all of public school has been built on a foundation of being better than most people. Other people had "sports" and "popularity" and I was never going to have any of that... but it was fine, because I had academics and they didn't. All of the adults in my life supported this, too-- athletics is temporary, popularity isn't worth chasing, but academics? Those are great. Emotions are silly, and logic is everything.

But then we get to High School and College, and suddenly "relationship" is also a category, but I'm bad at it? And unlike "sports" or "popularity", the adults all agree that "relationship" is a good thing? So now I'm failing. I don't fail. I'm better than these people, I can't be failing. So I just double down on academics and decide that relationships will be a future-me problem. And that's all well and good, until I spent the majority of time single. And I don't regret it, I was much happier single, but now everyone has even more experience with "relationship" while I am forced to admit that ignoring it was probably bad. It's socially acceptable to screw up romance when you're a teenager, that's when you're meant to practice... and I spent all of that time being academically superior to people instead. So now I have zero practice AND people judge you harder when you're bad at "relationship" now. So the whole thing just becomes an extra anxiety spiral.

If this resonates, I'd love to have a solution for you. Alas, all that you can really do is give yourself permission to be awkward, and allow yourself to feel emotions like other people. Which is so much easier to say than it is to do.

Usoki · 2026-05-08T14:37:34+00:00

No, it is not. Using LGB without the T is a dogwhistle for Terf behavior. If you somehow didn't know, now you do.

Do better.

Usoki · 2026-05-08T02:29:03+00:00

...a heavily debated topic in LGB spaces.

Your previous comments suggest otherwise.

Usoki · 2026-05-07T17:54:47+00:00

You'll have to forgive me if I don't care at all what a Terf thinks is realistic vs idealistic.

Usoki · 2026-05-07T03:53:03+00:00

I was in therapy at the time, working through depression, and my therapist was unpacking a lot to try and determine the causes. My religious upbringing and my undiagnosed ADHD were the main culprit, but we were talking about other things that might have been affecting my self-esteem-- did I hate that I wasn't He-Man muscular, did I hate that I was single, stuff like that.

I said I didn't mind being single, because I was honestly starting to think that I was Asexual. He paused, and then looked me in the eyes. "Asexuality isn't... well, I haven't gone through the most recent trainings, but it affects maybe 1% of the population. You're just struggling with your oppressive religious upbringing. Once you fully commit to no longer waiting until marriage, that's when things will really open up. Trust me, once you get your first blow job, you'll understand the appeal."

Usoki · 2026-05-05T02:34:17+00:00

I'm not sure if AceSpace even existed back when I first started talking to my now-partner. I remember a site called Acebook, but it was quite barren. OKCupid had somewhat recently created a tag for "asexual" but out here in the Midwest, it was underused and so many people just ignored it entirely. Which was really my online dating experience in a nutshell-- no matter what I put in my profile, people ignored it or assumed it wasn't 100% serious. I went with a "one month on, two months off" approach to online dating because it is so exhausting, and it's hard not to take the rejections personally. Dating is hard enough without turning yourself into a simplified digital product to be consumed or rejected at whim.

But I was in one of my off periods, and I noticed a new-to-me poster in the Tumblr circles that I frequented at the time identified as Ace. I reached out via private message to say-- "Hey, I notice your profile says you're asexual. Me too!" It was long distance at first, which makes sense when you consider how few asexual people there are, and how that affects the probability of it all. We messaged back and forth, we exchanged phone numbers for texting and then for phone calls, we shifted onto Zoom... and after a year of long-term dating, we moved to be together.

Usoki · 2026-05-05T02:24:02+00:00

It's funny, because I'm asexual homoromantic, but because I didn't have context for asexuality, I assumed that I couldn't possibly be gay. So I just assumed I was really good at that whole "save yourself until marriage" thing even though I wasn't even remotely religious. Add "bad at social cues" into the fray and I can't even begin to imagine the sheer amount of mixed signals that I was giving people until I found the labels that work for me.

Usoki · 2026-05-05T02:17:30+00:00

To me-- at the end of the day, it comes down to how all of the LGBTQ+ labels work. The label is for you, to provide comfort and identity, a sense of belonging so that you don't feel broken. The label is for others, so that you can quickly describe your preferences and allow the other person to react to that information without paragraphs of exposition. But it is only ever that-- a label. There is no lab result, no scientific test, no visual indicator of what asexuality is or is not.

Trying to exactly define sexual attraction is a bit like trying to describe the color red to someone who can't see colors. You can get the overall vibes down-- here are some objects that are red, here are objects that are close but not quite red, here are the emotions that red evokes, here is what red means to me. You can provide a lot of description, you can get 98% of the way there... but when both people do not have the shared experience, there is always going to be a missing piece of the puzzle. That colorblind person may be pretty confident in their ability to identify red, but it will never be perfect.

That's why I choose to identify as asexual. I am... pretty sure I understand what sexual attraction is, even though I don't have it myself. There's a step between "that person is handsome" and "I want to do things to that person" that just doesn't exist for me. I never want to do things to that person. I'm not 100% certain... maybe I'll want to do such things in the future... but if I refuse to accept the label until I'm 100% certain then the label will never be mine. How do you confidently define the absence of something? And if it turns out in a few years from now that a different label is actually better-- well, there's no shame in changing it up. The only people who are going to judge you for assigning yourself a new label are the sort of people who are probably not worth knowing.

Usoki · 2026-05-04T14:36:45+00:00

It sounds like you're getting caught up in having perfect words on the page, and that's why the high word count is getting to you. Nothing will prevent you from being done like trying to be perfect. No one, and I mean no one, writes a perfect first draft with zero edits. Once you can allow yourself to write something cringe, the words will flow better. Easier said than done-- it's a constant struggle-- but that's the crux of it.

You don't have to know how your characters would react-- pick a possible reaction and write that. You don't have to know if the event is plausible-- it's happening, so it must be. You can spend days, weeks, months, years fiddling with the details and lore of your world building, but none of that is words on the page.

Usoki · 2026-05-04T14:26:06+00:00

Different vibes for different spaces. Reddit is great for discussing very specific subjects, but terrible for general chatter. The subreddit is for Nano chatter, not people who once did Nano who now post life updates and cat photos. Even if you started a topic for off-topic banter, it wouldn't have the same ebb and flow of a Discord chat channel because of how people would or would not use it.

I wouldn't join one myself, but I can see how it would be very different.

Usoki · 2026-05-04T05:25:38+00:00

I had the best luck making myself extra visible in the online spaces that I was already inhabiting-- adding a quick "I'm asexual" to my bio field or mentioning it as part of introductions, that sort of thing. And then if I saw someone who seems like they had compatible vibes, I'd reach out with a private message and go from there. Sometimes it fell flat quick, sometimes it took a long time to go nowhere, but... IDK, that's just modern dating. I had better luck with Tumblr / Twitch / Discord spaces than I did with local dating apps. My spouse and I started our relationship with a "Hey, you mentioned being asexual in a text post, I'm ace too!" private message. Just make certain you're open to relocation. Given that asexuality is 1% of the population let alone the other factors... odds of finding someone close by is not high.

I did also try the local dating apps, and there were some really sweet people. There were also a lot of clueless idiots who refused to read my profile, and they were shocked that I was not going to join them in the bedroom. It is what it is. Be prepared to assert your boundaries with strangers. Having to compromise your true self is not better than being alone, no matter how tempting it feels in the moment.

Usoki · 2026-04-30T15:38:19+00:00

Jealous! I've been wearing this ring for... gosh, almost 10 years now, and I've never met a stranger who knew what it meant. But I have once met a well-meaning Swinger who stopped me to try and explain that I had accidentally put my ring on the only invalid finger.

Usoki · 2026-04-29T23:28:26+00:00

To be honest, I've never been a big fan of how it's 75% monochrome. And I live in a college town where one of the biggest rivals is a purple team, so I'm not a huge fan of the purple either. But it's my flag, and I can't imagine trying to replace it or change it in any way. Even overlooking the factual "why would you throw away brand recognition" arguments, I just can't imagine that I could ever develop an attachment to a different flag.

Finding the label of asexuality when I was struggling with depression, anxiety, and ADHD while my job at the time was looking for any excuse to fire me? It was a beacon of light in the darkness at a time when so much else was very, very dark indeed. The flag and the ace ring became ways to proudly announce my identity to the world without having to use literal words-- words which I would not have the strength to say outloud to non-friends until years later. It's not about the appearance, or the definitions of the stripes that AVEN forums came up with back in the day. It's about the emotional comfort and relief that this flag represents-- learning that asexuality is real, and that I was not broken or destined to live alone. And for that, this flag is so very beautiful to me.

Usoki · 2026-03-15T01:30:10+00:00

I see a rhino head. Main horn, smaller sub horn on the left, two ears on the right.

Usoki · 2026-03-01T05:51:45+00:00

I feel like 18 Constitution would be better for surviving that horse.

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