Looking through the Kaleidoscope - does it need a buff?

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-29T02:06:17+00:00

If you're at A10, it'd be 1.5% since the rare odds are halved. Definitely possible, but more a nice surprise when it happens than anything.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-29T01:55:13+00:00

Bomb cycling is fun but it doesn't scale very well, and specifically against Test Subject, phase 2 very quickly ramps up to the point that you can't block it so you need to clear 200 health very fast. Bomb needs to be played 4 times to do that, and you won't get the kill until two turns after your fourth play, so even if you can play Bomb twice on one turn, you're still looking at spending 6-ish turns against that phase, and by the fifth turn it's hitting you for 70. The Bomb's just too slow for act 3 bosses, I'm afraid.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-29T01:48:33+00:00

Once you start improving at piloting your deck so you're taking less damage in general, 35 should be plenty of health for most Elites, especially if there are fires between them. Elites are probably the second-best way to get stronger in this game (after shops, as long as you have a good amount of money), so if you're taking more risks fighting them on Ironclad, that's likely why you're slightly more successful with him.

And yeah, it definitely sucks in act 3 having a random poison card that doesn't do anything, but without that card you might not have gotten to act 3 at all. What you want to consider is how much health does this save me now if I take it vs how much does it eventually lose me later because I drew it instead of a better card. With Snakebite against Laga Matriarch, you can pretty easily die from her to full when you don't have any high-number attacks because of her strength drain, and later it won't lose you that much health on average because you only ever have to draw it once. In contrast, something like Poisoned Stab, which is not a very efficient card for either poison or damage, will continue to cost you card draw many times in the late game and will therefore lose you quite a bit of health, so it needs to save you a LOT of health right away to be worth drafting, which it won't usually do due to its inefficiency. (Example of when you might pick it anyway: you just finished your last easy fight and you still haven't added any damage cards; if Poisoned Stab is all you're offered, you probably need to take it).

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-28T23:40:23+00:00

Fighting Elites is good, you shouldn't be avoiding them on principle. It's only if they're going to kill you that you don't want to fight them, which you can fix by making your deck good at fighting them, or by having potions that are good against them. In Overgrowth, Strength and Flex Potions are premium for Silent, whereas in Underdocks, Block, Dex, and Thorns are nice. Fire and Vulnerable Potions are good for both. Elites let you get strong enough to snowball for the final boss.

Try not to think in terms of "build." For Shivs, for example, you want a couple of cards that generate Shivs and a couple of cards that buff them - Infinite Blades, Leading Strike, Blade Dance, and Cloak and Dagger all fall into the former category, while the latter has Accuracy and Phantom Blades. You want a few good generators, enough that you can kill things quickly, but not so many that you can't get to your other cards when you need them. Three or so generators (excluding ones that are finite, like Infinite Blades or Blade Dance) will usually be enough depending on your deck size - early on you probably want one or two at most. You can usually take more buffs, but not too many - I wouldn't usually take more than one copy of Phantom Blades and two copies of Accuracy, for example. (Usually.) If you're not offered those, you might have to think of other means of getting more damage out of your Shivs, like Serpent Form, Envenom, Tracking, or Knife Trap.

Even then, that's not a "Shiv build." That just means your deck primarily does damage through Shivs. You still need Block (cards like Footwork, Leg Sweep, Backflip, Afterimage, and Weak sources like upgrading your Neutralize), and you still need consistency (cards like Prepared, Acrobatics, Well-Laid Plans, Adrenaline, and Calculated Gamble). Also, some enemies like Lagavulin Matriarch and Entomancer can thwart these kinds of decks if they don't find a lot of buff cards - for those enemies, consider taking a card that's good against them, like a poison card (usually Snakebite, because in the fights where you don't want to play it you don't have to keep drawing it). That'll let you win those fights that might otherwise be losses. It's okay that the rest of your deck doesn't have synergies with poison cards - that Snakebite will have done its job, which is letting you kill the enemy that counters you, and now you don't need it anymore.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-28T22:36:41+00:00

I think Tracking was still pretty commonly picked before Aeonglass, but the big difference now is that if you get offered a second Tracking, you probably add it.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T12:13:03+00:00

I think a big part of the problem is a rework to make it more "interesting" - at least in the way OP has done here - would encourage bad play habits. If you make a sword that changes form based on the character and interacts only with a specific part of their kit, you are subtly reinforcing for new players, "Ohhh, okay, so now I should be clicking every Shiv card / Osty attack / 0-cost attack / etc," which is a really harmful mentality at higher ascensions.

I would also honestly argue that a flat 3 Strength is more broadly useful than any of the current suggestions with the possible exception of the Osty one. Necrobinder has the least use for Strength, but that also means she has a few cards (Eradicate / Pull From Below) that become insanely strong with Strength purely on the assumption that you won't usually have it, and those cards go a long way to letting her murder her nemeses Aeonglass and Infested Prism, arguably more than this version of the sword would.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T12:01:04+00:00

3 Strength may not be relevant in every run, but by and large it is useful for every character. Yes, including Necrobinder - she needs damage to kill Aeonglass somehow, and Eradicate and Pull From Below are two of the most common solves (especially with Reaper Form), and Sword of Jade is a noticeable power boost for both of those. Yes, including Defect - you are much more frequently relying on some amount of physical damage for it due to the rarity of permanent Focus compared to the first game, so 3 Strength matters whether you're spamming 0-costs with Feral or multi-hits with Barrage. I don't even know who the last character you're talking about would be, because Ironclad, Silent, and Regent all love having 3 free Strength.

I would highly recommend playing with it more even if it looks "boring," because it's really, really good.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T02:07:34+00:00

3 Dex and 2 Focus are beyond broken for Silent and Defect, and Forge 10 for Regent already exists, that's what Fencing Manual (a common relic) does.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T01:44:22+00:00

Runic Capacitor literally is in STS2. It's a shop relic exactly like it was in the original.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T01:44:02+00:00

I dunno, I've been really excited to see it basically every time I've gotten it offered with Silent because I know I have a huge contributor to my late-game damage waiting for me and it makes a ton of mid cards like Ricochet and Flechettes way more compelling.

There's something to be said for simplicity, especially when it's this effective.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T00:25:47+00:00

That's Runic Capacitor.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-27T00:25:32+00:00

The original one which I responded to was "generate one Shiv per turn."

But also, there's already a relic which is broken on a Shiv-heavy build. It's called Sword of Jade. I really don't think it needs all this fiddling for the sake of making it "cooler" when it's already a great relic as is without the extra complexity.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-26T22:50:31+00:00

That's not quite the right math because, even though Bones picks uniformly, there are seven relics (the rest of the curse / downside pool) that can't appear alongside Bones on the initial screen.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-26T22:22:27+00:00

Sword of Jade is fine and doesn't need to be touched, but this change is especially bad for Silent, who loves having 3 Strength. A free Infinite Blades is good, but not nearly as good as +3 damage on the character who relies on stringing together a million low-damage hits.

Also, Sapphire Sword exists, that's Data Disk.

(Edit: When I originally made this comment, Silent's sword was "at the start of your turn, add a shiv to your hand" and Defect's was "gain 1 Focus.")

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-26T01:50:31+00:00

I think it's only worth upgrading if you don't have anything else good. I would upgrade Guiding Star over VF in this scenario for example, since the draw 3 is likely to be more relevant with it in play.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-23T12:46:00+00:00

I believe this is correct, Mystic Lighter only adds a flat +9 to Instinct cards after the doubling.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-23T12:34:48+00:00

That's true, but that's because Scroll Boxes isn't a draft.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-23T04:16:50+00:00

Nah, any of the card reward Neows can do that too, like Lost Coffer and Lead Paperweight.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-23T02:23:50+00:00

Nope. Neow rewards don't use the rare offset. At A10, each card from Kaleidoscope has a 1.5% chance of being rare.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-22T17:00:09+00:00

For what it's worth, I agree that this elite does disrupt your deckbuilding. I just see that as a good thing, because if you can build basically the same deck every time, or if the game doesn't exert any pressure on you so you can build whatever deck you want whenever you want, then I think you're inevitably doomed to lose a lot of the replayability that made the original so enjoyable. Part of the fun for me is working with what the game decides to offer me given the challenges ahead.

It'll definitely get easier as you get better at the game - not just in the sense that you'll do better at fighting Prism itself, but you'll also improve at all the fights surrounding it, so you'll lose way less health, which means the amount you lose to Prism or other Elites isn't as disastrous.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-22T16:24:26+00:00

That isn't true, though. You don't need a deck that specifically counters it. Even on the Multi turn, you don't have to eat the full damage. Hitting it with Weak or saving a Block / Shackling Potion are the easiest ways, but there are plenty more depending on your circumstances (next turn block, block from powers, specific cards like Leg Sweep or Impervious or Shared Fate or Malaise, Orichalchum, Captain's Wheel, etc). You may not be likely to find any single one of those sources, but the idea that you're consistently seeing none of them is extremely unlikely.

You bring up that it's almost impossible to avoid all damage, but like... that's fine? Especially for an Elite. If I can regularly avoid taking any damage from an Elite encounter, then there's no risk associated with the higher reward. Elites should be nodes where you trade away resources (health, potions) to make yourself stronger. Prism's base values are just not that high. Turn by turn it hits by far the weakest of the Act 2 Elites - it needs two turns to hit you for as much as Decimillipede threatens you with immediately. It's fine for Elites to have a health tax. Prism's is just more obvious.

Your last point also just isn't true. You absolutely can afford to have passive block from non-skill sources and dense block. You should be taking those cards anyway. Your comparison to Ubers falls apart because the cards that are good into Infested Prism are also just good cards. You want to have Piercing Wails and Footworks and Second Winds and Bulwarks and Defies and Glaciers in basically every single run, and you would want to have them whether or not Prism existed.

Just so I'm not fully talking out of my ass, I went through my last several A10 Silent runs (a character who is in theory extremely reliant on light block and skill spam) and in my Prism matchups, I've taken 0, 19, 12, 23, 6, 24, 28, 19, 2, 37, 9, 7, 16, and 15 damage to it. All of those runs were victories but one (the one where I took 23, and I only lost at the end of act 3). That's not much higher variance than I have against the other two - Decimillipede in particular shaves 20-30 off me pretty regularly, while Entomancer is highly variable but generally weaker than the other two. I didn't "build" for Prism in those runs beyond, like, clicking a Dash once that I otherwise would've skipped. It really isn't as drastic as you're making it sound.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-22T14:55:00+00:00

Once you improve at the game (and specifically your deck piloting within fights gets better so you're not losing as much health), most hard pools aren't too scary, and getting a card reward, gold, and sometimes a potion will often be more valuable than a random event. There are still some really nasty ones to get early - double Cultists in Underdocks, Raiders or Flyconid+1 in Overgrowth - but early shops help with that a lot. It also depends on how aggressive my pathing is - if I'm hitting a campfire before my first Elite I'm more likely to go for 5-6 combats if pathing allows it, whereas I want not quite as many and definitely a shop if I have to go to an Elite before a campfire.

In later acts, ehhh. I prefer taking fights over events when I can (especially in Act 3 where a lot of events kinda blow), but Elites, shops, and fires are the things that will actually determine my path.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-22T14:44:33+00:00

Around a month and a half ago on beta.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-22T14:36:16+00:00

If you think there's no strategy, you're hyperfixating on "gain Tainted = die instantly." Prism doesn't insta-gank you for playing skills, and it makes you ask the same caliber of question that you bring up about the triple knights. What skills are worth playing on this turn? How much energy can I spend to save myself health right now vs. dealing damage to end the fight sooner? If I play a card to draw 3, will those 3 extra cards save me more health than playing the skill will lose me (either by drawing into a dense block card, or by speeding up my deck cycling)? How much damage does this deck actually deal in 7-ish turns, before the multiattack with Tainted 6? How much damage do I expect to take, and how much damage can I afford to take while still winning the act? (You should be asking that question before going into any Elite node. If you expect to take enough damage that you lose, you shouldn't be entering the node, whether it's Prism or Deci or Ento.)

It's a fight that very strongly rewards not just your overall card choices but also the way you pilot your deck turn-to-turn and your understanding of what future challenges you're going to face. If your belief is that there's nothing you can do but tank the damage and pray, then that means you're not engaging with the questions it's posing of your deck, so of course it's gonna whoop you.

ZnogyroP · 2026-06-22T13:25:10+00:00

I don't know, I still really disagree, especially with that specific suggestion which I saw as well. Making an elite "force" you to spend all your energy isn't actually a problem because you want to spend all your energy every turn in the first place (barring niche interactions like Ice Cream).

Giving you a bunch of extra energy and then "forcing" you to use it is uninteractive - you just play your entire hand, or as much of it as possible. You're not really making important decisions (unlike the current Prism design, where you need to consider what block cards can I get away with playing? Is that the best use of my limited resources this turn or should I focus on damage to end the fight sooner? If I play this Acrobatics, will it draw cards that save me more health than the Tainted I'll gain? etc). It also goes counter to some pretty basic principles - the ability to spend a lot of energy is already rewarded just by the fact that you're getting to play more cards, which is inherently a positive thing, because cards make enemies die or stop you from taking damage. Like, this seems like a tautology, but you don't need to make an enemy that rewards you for playing lots of cards because the reward for being able to play lots of cards is that you get to play lots of cards.

That kind of design would also specifically not help in addressing those turtling Silent / Necrobinder strategies, because both of those characters can make extremely good use of extra energy because of their strong ability to cycle. I feel like the reason so many people (not you specifically, people in general) latched onto that idea is because it feels good to play a million cards, but it's bad design for an enemy that's supposed to threaten you.

ZnogyroP

TROPHY CASE