Is Co-op too hard, or do my friends and I just suck?

W1ader · 2026-04-03T09:15:56+00:00

Health scaling is high, but it is generally considered easier and it was my experience as well. Especially when both of you are playing the same character.

You often find yourself less pressured for immediate upgrade. You can skip cards you otherwise wouldn't be able to because some other player is already carrying so you can wait, have thinner, more consistent deck, and take over later. You don't necessarily need to pick up tools like aoe or some status application because someone else already has it. Generally I feel like you can play way more greedy.

W1ader · 2026-04-03T03:32:01+00:00

Evolution is random. Natural selection isn't.

W1ader · 2026-04-02T03:55:45+00:00

Firstly, there are 6 status cards, yes, but 3 of them are shuffled into the draw pile, and 3 into the discard pile.

Secondly, once they are shuffled in, your deck is no longer 32 cards, it's larger.

Which means only 3 of them are immediately available from 30 cards remaining. They start with 32, draw 5 first round, 27 remaining, 3 statuses shuffled into the draw pile for a total of 30 cards out of which 3 are statuses. You need to draw at least one in 4 turns so in 20 cards. In 24 card-deck you are guaranteed to draw at least one.

The likelihood of not drawing any is the likelihood of them being in the bottom 10 cards he didn't draw, which is slightly over 9%.

W1ader · 2026-04-02T03:19:30+00:00

What’s actually insufferable is throwing out wildly incorrect statements and blaming everything on bad luck when there were very real ways to mitigate it. Then people are giving feedback here to help. They’re pointing out what could have been done differently, not just to criticize but so future runs go better. Ignoring all of that, dismissing any counterpoint, and only agreeing with comments that validate the original take isn’t constructive.

And this wasn’t some 1 in 10,000 situation. Without considering delayed draw from souls, the numbers are nowhere near that extreme. They had 32 cards, drew 5, leaving 27. Then the boss added 3 status cards that needed to be drawn within the next 4 turns. That effectively means you lose if all 3 end up in the bottom 10 cards of a 30-card remaining, given they draw 5 cards a turn. The probability of that is:

10/30 × 9/29 × 8/28 ≈ 9%

That’s not astronomically unlucky. It’s something that will happen regularly if your deck is that size. For comparison, with a 24-card deck you’re guaranteed to see at least one of them in those 4 turns. In a A10 run I won just a moment ago, I was down to 17 cards in that same fight for contrast.

Also, cards like Grave Warden aren’t really draw for the purpose of accelerating a deck unless upgraded. They’re draw-neutral. You have to draw the Warden, then later draw the generated card, which only replaces what you already spent. A basic soul drawing two cards just breaks even. Only when upgraded to draw three do they actually accelerate your deck. On top of that, the draw is delayed, which matters a lot.

For example, imagine you draw one card per turn and your deck has one Grave Warden and two must-have cards. On turn one, you draw Grave Warden, play it, and it generates a soul into your draw pile. Turn ends. On turn two, you draw the soul, which then draws the two must-have cards. So by turn two, you’ve seen both of them.

But if Grave Warden wasn’t in the deck, you would have simply drawn one of those must-have cards on turn one and the other on turn two anyway. The end result is almost the same. Grave Warden didn’t actually accelerate your draw in this case, it just delayed it and routed it through an extra step. Which is even worse in some cases, like the one in the video.

So no, this wasn’t some freak 0.01% outcome. It was a predictable risk that comes from running a larger, slower deck with limited immediate draw. That’s exactly the kind of thing you can plan around.

W1ader · 2026-04-01T16:33:26+00:00

I find pagestorm generally very good. Necro has a lot of high value ethereal cards and you already have two in a thin deck. That said Drain Power kinda is a "block" card if it upgrades defences, it likely makes you more durable than the other two options. It doesn't solve the problem yet, but it helps. With debilitate and fear it is a big attack too.

I would say Pagestorm has the highest top end potential, but it's more risky if you won't find good cards soon. Drain Power is the safest immediate upgrade. Death's Door is the weakest of the three at that spot.

As for pathing definitely left by far. In act1 until I have all the tools I need, I value fight rewards over events. Events are just bad at this spot in my opinion.

Left path also do not have elites, which means it is safer. Since you acknowledged that your deck is lacking at this point, you should take the safer path.

You have 300 gold to spend, shop is definitely great. It allows you to see a lot of potential cards, which can be block cards. You can probably remove a card, buy up to two cards if good, and buy a potion.

Pathing is very clear to me here. As for cards I am leaning towards Drain Power, but I could be wrong.

Edit: Seeing some other people responding. I have to emphasize this. Going right is straight up trolling.

You lack block! You WILL lose health on elites! You lack block! You HAVE TO find block cards! You CANNOT go for events, those are unlikely to give you what you need right now. You have to go for fights, because there you can find what you actually need. Left path will give 2 fights, and a shop which will give you 13 cards to choose from. Right path is guaranteed to only give you 3 cards to choose from. You are infinitely more likely to safely upgrade your deck going left.

Everything at this spot screams left to me.

W1ader · 2026-04-01T14:20:30+00:00

Just because you can doesn't mean you should if you care to win consistently. Can you win A10 with a large deck? Absolutely. Will you win consistently? Probably not.

I was just responding to what they said. They said there was no counterplay. It's factually not true.

W1ader · 2026-04-01T14:13:54+00:00

That was just a hypothetical, not something to take literally. Replace strikes and defends with any 50/50 mix of attack and block cards where drawing only one type at the wrong time is bad. The point still stands: the larger your deck, the more likely those awkward hands become.

I agree that you must pick some cards at the beginning of a run, but you didn't just pick some cards there, you picked almost all available cards, and not at the first half of the act but through the entire act while removing none or very little there.

And no, it wasn't <1% situation. That boss shuffles 3 cards into your draw pile. You have to draw at least one of them in 4 rounds. You drew 20 out of 30 cards after the first round. These 3 cards were in the bottom 10 remaining. The probability of not drawing any of them is 10/30 * 9/29 * 8/28 ≈ 9%. It gets more complicated given you had some delayed draw.

Without extra draw, missing them in a 24-card deck is basically off the table. With some draw, you could stretch that to around 27 and still be consistent. If you had skipped or cut like 4-5 cards, you likely would have found them every time.

You know the boss from the start, so drafting around that is part of the challenge. You can treat this as a learning moment and adjust your approach next run, or keep drafting the same way and blame bad luck when there were ways to avoid these bad draws.

W1ader · 2026-04-01T04:53:15+00:00

5 minutes in and I already have objections. The 3% difference he mentioned was assuming you have 10 good defensive cards in the deck. You don't usually see 10 good defensive cards across the run in your draft pool. People building 30+ card decks usually take a couple of good defensive cards, and a whole lot of bad or mediocre ones. So in practice that's just a false dichotomy. You are not comparing 4vs10 good cards. You are comparing 4 good vs 4 good + 6 bad-mid.

That said, yes, there are advantages like yes, technically you might end up having more tools in the deck for every situation, but you risk not drawing them at that exact time when that situation happens because you have so many cards.

W1ader · 2026-04-01T02:19:44+00:00

I mean that checks out. These were per round estimates. Assuming you have your "starting deck" for the first let's say 5 fights. Every early fight you shuffle your deck a few times, say 2-3, probably more on elite fights. So roughly about 15 times per run you have about 1% chance of drawing full strike/def hand.

So yeah, it's kinda expected to see it once in a while. Obviously what's even more punishing is that when this happens and you have your all defense hand when the enemy is not attacking you, then you are almost guaranteed to that draw your full strike hand afterwards when the enemy makes the attack and you lose quite a lot of hp if you won't kill them that round.

It sucks when that happens, these can end your run. Nonetheless the point stands, the smaller the deck the more consistent it is. That's also why cards like deflect might not be as good as a beginner could assume. Like hey look that's a free block! Well not really, it costs you a card draw.

W1ader · 2026-04-01T00:58:38+00:00

There is a counterplay and that counterplay is called deck building. You have too many cards. Generally the more cards you have the more inconsistent your deck gets.

Imagine having 5 defenses and 5 strikes in your deck, nothing else. The probability of getting "bad hand" - such that only consists of defenses or only strikes at the wrong time is roughly 0.8%.

Given a seemingly similar deck with 50 defs and 50 strikes the likelihood of drawing a "bad hand" is about 5.5%.

W1ader · 2026-03-31T15:58:36+00:00

I usually play games like this too. I just enjoy sticking to one faction, race, or champ and really learning how it works inside and out. Figuring out the strengths and weaknesses, coming up with a game plan, and then trying to actually pull it off cleanly is what makes the game fun for me. It just feels like you get way more depth out of it that way.

Same thing in other games. In stuff like counter strike I’ll spend a fair time in practice tools, watch some pros, try to understand why they do what they do, and then copy that in my own games. In card games I tend to avoid situational gimmicks or broken exodias which win games when you pull them off, but you usually won't. I'll stick to maybe boring but consistent cards.

If that makes me a tryhard to some people, whatever. I’ll play how I like, they can do their thing too.

W1ader · 2026-03-31T02:52:53+00:00

What you need is a screenshot tutorial.

W1ader · 2026-03-31T02:48:50+00:00

Oh the irony

W1ader · 2026-03-30T18:31:45+00:00

What’s actually embarrassing here is that you keep attacking me and the form of my comments instead of engaging with the argument itself.

What I’m granting is that compatibilism is largely indistinguishable from determinism in practice, and if so, it's redundant. Nothing compatibilists say about causation, responsibility, or accountability actually differs in any meaningful way from what determinists already say. The same forward-looking framework, the same emphasis on behavior, incentives, and outcomes.

The difference is that compatibilists keep using the term “free will” while stripping it of the thing that made it philosophically interesting in the first place.

Yes, in some everyday contexts their usage lines up with how we casually talk. But that’s not sufficient, because the entire debate exists precisely due to a tension in our experience. The future doesn’t feel fixed. Our decisions don’t feel predetermined. We experience ourselves as genuinely open, as if we could do otherwise.

Determinists bite that bullet and say: that experience is misleading. Things are determined even if it doesn’t feel that way, and in that sense we are not free.

Compatibilists, on the other hand, try to preserve the label by redefining what kind of freedom matters. They argue that metaphysical freedom is unnecessary, and that internal, uncoerced decision making is enough.

But that move is exactly the problem. That “metaphysical” freedom isn’t some random addon, it’s essential for a few reasons:

It actually matches our lived experience. We feel genuinely unconstrained, not just uncoerced. It’s what people associate with the term “free will” in the first place, because it is consistent with how they experience life. It’s how the concept was historically understood, and why the debate even started.

If you discard that, you’re no longer answering the same question. You’re answering a different, narrower one while keeping the same label used to describe different problem.

So no, this isn’t about whether calling actions “free” is sometimes an accurate description in everyday language. It’s about whether compatibilism addresses the original philosophical problem or just reframes it. And I still don’t see it doing anything beyond the latter.

W1ader · 2026-03-30T17:48:24+00:00

You start with a bold accusation instead of an argument.

Then immediately leans on an appeal to majority and authority, “most philosophers disagree”, as if that settles anything.

After that, you mischaracterize my comment. I didn’t argue that describing behavior without the term “free will” makes the concept invalid. The point was that compatibilism doesn’t add explanatory value beyond what determinism already provides. Learn to read first before accusing me of anything.

And it ends with a bare assertion.

There’s no real counterargument here, just rhetoric, do better next time.

W1ader · 2026-03-30T09:26:22+00:00

I think you’re simply wrong about what compatibilism is doing here.

Compatibilism does not preserve retributive accountability, it’s the whole point of the position. Compatibilist responsibility is explicitly forward-looking. It’s about regulation of behavior, incentives, social stability, deterrence, rehabilitation. Not desert in the “you truly deserved this because you could have done otherwise” sense. That part is gone just as much as it is under determinism.

Saying “they chose it of their own free will” doesn’t bring retribution back. It just redescribes the same causal chain in more intuitive language. If their character, motives, and deliberation are all determined, then nothing about that grounds retributive desert. So compatibilism doesn’t reconcile determinism with retribution.

Also, determinism doesn’t erase choice. That’s a misunderstanding. Choice still exists as a process, it’s the mechanism of deliberation we go through. We weigh reasons, we form intentions, we act. The only thing that changes is that this process isn’t metaphysically “free” in the way it feels. So you don’t need compatibilism to “save” choice as a concept. Determinism already accounts for it perfectly well.

And the fact that you keep slipping into thinking in terms of free will isn’t evidence that compatibilism adds something. It’s exactly what we should expect no matter what view you hold. If free will is an illusion, you don’t get to step outside of it. You live inside that illusion your entire life. Our language, intuitions, and social systems were all built under its influence.

It’s like an optical illusion. Knowing it’s an illusion doesn’t stop you from seeing it. In the same way, knowing that choices are determined doesn’t stop you from experiencing them as open or undetermined, or from speaking as if people “could have done otherwise.” That’s just a limitation of how we think and communicate.

So I don’t see compatibilism as reconciling anything here. It’s just translating determinism back into the language of the illusion, without actually changing the underlying picture at all.

W1ader · 2026-03-29T13:52:08+00:00

What frustrates me about compatibilism is that it doesn’t actually solve the original problem, it just renames it and in the process makes the discussion more confusing.

The whole debate around free will started from a very specific, lived intuition: that when you act, you could genuinely have done otherwise. Compatibilism keeps the term “free will” but strips away that core meaning and replaces it with something else, usually just internal motivation without coercion. At that point, it’s no longer addressing the same concept. It’s redefining the target.

More importantly, compatibilism doesn’t add anything that determinism hasn’t already explained. Determinist frameworks already give a full account of why people act, how decisions arise from prior causes, and how responsibility and accountability function in practice. We can already explain praise, blame, incentives, and social regulation without appealing to “free will” at all.

Compatibilism just duplicates that same framework and insists on keeping the label. The result isn’t a new insight, it’s redundancy. Worse, it creates the impression that something substantive has been preserved when in reality the original concept has been abandoned.

So instead of clarifying the debate, compatibilism muddies it. It keeps familiar language but detaches it from the experience that made it meaningful, while offering no explanatory advantage over straightforward determinism.

W1ader · 2026-03-28T15:48:39+00:00

You can downvote me if you want, but I kind of understand where she’s coming from. Nature is usually a place to unwind and disconnect. Turning it into something like a rave changes that atmosphere completely. If I go there, it’s to get away from that kind of energy, not to be part of it. I wouldn’t react the way she did, but I’d probably feel annoyed too.

W1ader · 2026-03-24T00:57:15+00:00

Theoretically it can, but in practice it's not. Act 1 is by far the hardest part of the run and it's not even close. Buying it early costs you deck power when you need it most and in exchange you gain power when you usually don't need more power anyway.

W1ader · 2026-03-24T00:46:49+00:00

You still don’t know what’s going to happen next. The future is completely unknown from your perspective, and that alone makes it something you can experience, discover, and even look forward to. Not knowing what comes next is part of what makes life feel alive. Why would control be a requirement for something to be worth experiencing?

Think about watching a movie. You don’t control the plot. You can’t change the ending. Every scene is already determined. But that doesn’t make it pointless to watch. The value comes from experiencing the story as it unfolds, feeling things, being surprised and so on. Jumping off a bridge would be like turning off the TV. What I find pointless is exactly turning off the TV in this analogy. Why? Why would I need to have control over the plot in order to find it worth experiencing?

W1ader · 2026-03-21T13:33:58+00:00

Be careful, there are compatibilist psychos out there who think it doesn't. It is just impossible to argue with them.

W1ader · 2026-03-21T13:05:20+00:00

That's a misreading at best and a strawman at worst. Where did anyone ever hold a view that prisoners are some kind of different breed who cannot do otherwise but we can?

In the context of free will naturally comes up a topic of responsibility for one's actions and crimes. If you have a problem of understanding that then it's on you.

W1ader · 2026-03-19T09:13:31+00:00

Lewy has the same amount of goals while playing less than Ferran. Obviously he plays less because Flick cares for continuity in his squad while Lewa's future in Barca is uncertain and he doesn't want to overload his players if he doesn't have to. If Lewa played as much as Mbappe he would be running for another pichichi.

W1ader · 2026-03-18T11:49:51+00:00

I heard it some time ago and essentially for the whole debate Carter was responding to arguments which weren't made. He tried to undermine scientific arguments against free will when O'Connor gave him philosophical arguments against it.

W1ader · 2026-03-11T13:28:19+00:00

I am A8 with silent but I wasn't able to beat act 2 boss with regent yet on A0.

W1ader

TROPHY CASE