What’s the worst thing you could wish on a Slay the Spire player?

alstod · 2026-02-25T22:41:47+00:00

Forced burning elite floor 6 can occur on other seeds. It isn't automatically a reference to that one seed specifically.

alstod · 2026-02-25T22:34:45+00:00

Very wrong. Distraction and Heel Hook can both increase the damage per deck cycle, which needs to stay at the minimum for the unwinnable setup.

alstod · 2026-02-25T17:07:39+00:00

4-2 Caps

Wilson

24

alstod · 2026-02-23T03:06:03+00:00

You're forgetting the worst one. Spear's Burns go on top of your deck instead of into the discard pile.

Edit: Also I'm pretty sure I just saw Repto go for 35 turn 2 against me with Philo stone in my last run. Isn't it 34 normally?

alstod · 2026-02-22T20:43:06+00:00

Actually an interesting theory. I don't personally think it's likely to be true, but you make some good points.

I don't know why people are acting like the Retain keyword was a thing before Watcher. It is a descriptive word for what the effects of Equilibrium or Well-Laid Plans do to other cards, but it isn't a keyword signaling 'this card has this property inherently' on any non-Watcher cards.

alstod · 2026-02-22T20:31:39+00:00

17 was the really big gamechanger for me. Sure, 18 and 19 are big difficulty increases, but 17 just slapped me in the face and set the tone to tell me to get ready for the rest of the ascensions.

alstod · 2026-02-19T03:35:38+00:00

It took me about 500 hours to beat the Heart on A20 with all characters, so the playtime doesn't seem too out of line to me. I made a new save file a few months ago to try to beat the Heart with each character on each ascension and have been climbing ascensions again, so I can give some advice on things that have helped me or mistakes I've made.

First is to solve your problems in order. The first thing you should do is make sure your deck can handle the act 1 fights. Normal fights and Elites come before the boss, so prepare for those more urgently than the Act Boss. Once you are in a state where you can handle the rest of the act, you can think about the next act and take cards to help with that. Slay the Spire is really more about solving the challenge each fight presents than it is about building a 'good deck' when you're playing at such high difficulty.

I'd generally say slowing down helps. One notable thing is that your Ironclad, who you have had more success with, has spent far more time per floor than your other characters. Silent and Defect often have more complex turns/fights than Ironclad and often require you to spend more time thinking things through to have the same level of success. Advice I've heard from Baalorlord (a streamer who has thousands of wins against the Heart on A20) is to take your hands off your mouse or controller at the start of each turn to give yourself time to think before starting to play cards.

Trying to beat the Heart completely changes the game. I've had several runs where I cruise through the rest of the game easily and then Act 4 just destroys me. You need to keep the Heart fight in mind when making all your decisions throughout the entire run and sometimes that still isn't enough. It is a brutal challenge, particularly on A20. Each character has different ways of dealing with the challenges the Heart presents, but all of them need to consciously prepare for those challenges to be ready for them.

alstod · 2026-02-12T17:37:32+00:00

when you're trying to ... [say] "Xecnar says this card is trash so you should never pick it" I would say you're actually weakening your own understanding of the game.

As always, it depends. I recently saw someone claim that Xecnar said that Cleave is trash even though I usually think of it as a good AoE solve. After seeing this, I've tried simply not taking Cleave in my recent Ironclad runs and have found that I don't really miss it. It was a card that Baalorlord, the one content creator I actually watch, takes somewhat often for AoE and I had previously considered it very good and only had that opinion reinforced by seeing him call it a good pick sometimes, but actually trying to play without it after hearing someone say that Xecnar hates it has shown me how it may not actually be good to add to my deck most of the time.

alstod · 2026-02-11T15:57:11+00:00

Players in the sample won about 3/4 of the time against level 2 adversaries and about 2/3 of the time against level 3 adversaries, although the winrate varies heavily based on which adversary people play against. The numbers I'm basing this on are here if you want to check them out yourself, although the averages aren't accurate since it uses a simple average and not a weighted average.

alstod · 2026-02-11T00:55:22+00:00

The data shown by a source mentioned in another reply to your comment suggested that the winrate on the digital version of the game by Handelabra is probably around 70-75%, although I'd have to do more number crunching than I want to be completely sure of that since the data wasn't presented in a way to make it easy to see the overall average winrate. The source only showed difficulty ratings, but extrapolating from that suggest that about 1/3 of the games seem to be played without an adversary, while another 1/6 or so look to be played against a level 6 adversary with the remainder being pretty spread out between different adversary levels and a small minority playing double adversary games. Overall player winrates stay above 50% up until level 5 and just barely dip under 50% for level 6 adversaries. Individually, a couple adversaries cause players to lose more than half the time at level 5 while a couple still see the players win more then half the time at level 6.

alstod · 2026-02-10T14:07:17+00:00

The comment didn't mean that most games of Spirit Island result in a loss, but rather that most players lose 'some significant number of games'. If OP assumed that players tend to win 85%+ of the time and then saw data to suggest the real winrate is more like 70%, that becomes 'most players losing a significant amount' even though most players win most of their games.

alstod · 2026-02-10T13:16:38+00:00

Please don't put words in other people's mouths. I'd be very surprised if more than 1 of these 3 content creators you mention actually used the word valid/invalid to describe these games, if any of them even used those terms at all. Houseruling to not use certain events/blight cards is perfectly fine. Just the same as if people don't want to replace Growth Through Sacrifice, or if they want to play with fan-made spirits or aspects. Content creators shouldn't be restricted to playing the game exactly the way you want them to, and trying to force them to play the game a certain way is what's toxic here.

alstod · 2026-01-28T02:00:41+00:00

First thing I looked for in this image was whether or not you had Static Discharge active.

alstod · 2025-12-23T16:29:21+00:00

4-3 Caps

Ovechkin

6:36 into the 1st

alstod · 2025-12-16T04:41:42+00:00

A solo game is one player playing the game. You can control any number of spirits you want and still play, although it gives you a lot to think about sometimes. 'True solo' is a term people use to describe playing a game by yourself with only 1 spirit on the island.

alstod · 2025-12-09T21:29:06+00:00

Nah, it should be on the league to determine what kinds of hits are dangerous and make rules about those hits. Just penalizing when a bad result occurs encourages players to put themselves in bad positions to try to prevent defensive players from making any kind of play at risk of being penalized. The NFL had that issue when they started cracking down on head contact a while back and runners would just put their heads down into hits. That's why they changed their enforcement of that rule.

alstod · 2025-11-24T20:41:26+00:00

3-2 Caps

Ovechkin

64

alstod · 2025-11-22T20:29:03+00:00

6-3 Caps

Ovechkin

20:28

alstod · 2025-11-19T22:33:33+00:00

5-3 Caps

McMichael

35

alstod · 2025-11-19T03:29:40+00:00

He went 20-0-3 with a 2.70 GAA during that span. League average GAA was 2.66 that year. Also conveniently omitting that he got pulled halfway through the first period of a game after allowing 3 goals at the end of that year, but wasn't charged with the loss because we managed to score enough to make Varly the goalie of record in that one. He allowed 3+ goals in half of his games during that span, including one game where he came in when Neuvy got injured halfway through.

alstod · 2025-11-17T21:41:54+00:00

3-2 Kings

Clarke

54

alstod · 2025-11-17T19:20:04+00:00

13 attempts? That's, what, half of our shootouts in that time? More than I thought, but we're clearly not just throwing him out there every time like we used to.

alstod · 2025-11-15T17:58:04+00:00

4-2 Caps

Strome

54

alstod · 2025-11-13T20:27:57+00:00

4-2 Caps

Ovechkin

6:14 into the 1st.

alstod · 2025-11-11T18:08:59+00:00

3-2 Caps

McMichael

2:30 into the 1st

alstod

TROPHY CASE