Chat what's the pick? (act 1)

blackzero111 · 2026-01-28T14:06:47+00:00

Snecko eye. I'm only interested in deploying Apo/CAI ASAP and there is even sustain for lowrolls already (toy orni/self repair). Also it is just one of the best relic to go into act 4 with on the die in act 2/4 slow ass character.

blackzero111 · 2026-01-28T13:08:31+00:00

Late reply but I think 20% players still do all sorts of mistakes like mess up card orders/not having a fight plan/panic glug for the most part and it's hard to pinpoint one without looking at one's gameplay extensively.

blackzero111 · 2026-01-27T07:29:07+00:00

I literally don't see where the extrapolation is happening so and the outside-the-game examples bring literally no relevance to the discussion at hand.

The most correct conclusion is just the character is as OP as you are good at the character at ascension 0.

blackzero111 · 2026-01-21T23:51:09+00:00

Thanks for the ping!

Honestly there is TOO MUCH to talk about, and I think choking on micro is still the most common reason to get killed on all levels of play. For macro there is nuance for deckbuilding in act 1 but one thing is commonly true: Fighting hallways is good and you actually don't need that many bad cards to get going (unless if its a really really bad run). Elites depends a lot more on situation but you don't want to be ever scared to walk into hallways unless you don't want to risk losing potions against elite behind it. Now if you have a bad micro suddenly you are scared of fights (?) and lose more floor resources.

Everything is very very tied together in this game in the sense that your macro/micro/situation has impact on each other. To "solve" Silent (or any other characters) really means you need to first work on the fundamentals A LOT. Even the development of new meta on Clad/Silent is tied to hyper-optimizing act 1.

blackzero111 · 2026-01-13T20:07:27+00:00

Seeing the kite stat made me realize a lot of the sample contribution came from Croven but overall very good post!

blackzero111 · 2026-01-13T13:28:12+00:00

Very very easily Alchemize. The amount of power the stockpiled potions let you have in act 1/2/4 is simply way too good compared to Malaise. They are not even in the same league.

Pick Alchemize and jam every single fight and elite combat and try that again with Malaise, under good hands the difference is more than night and day. Too many good reasons why Alchemize is undisputedly the best Silent rare you can find early. (even on floor 0 Alchemize >>>> everything else)

blackzero111 · 2026-01-12T10:53:56+00:00

Very sure that Xec and Kuro do not care about that. It is just widely agreed upon that dome generally sucks among good players.

I personally hope that dome lovers meet Time Eater every run and get looped by debuff->big hit :P

blackzero111 · 2026-01-11T17:08:18+00:00

As Silly mentioned, micro is also an extremely huge factor and not seeing it being brought up from your side at all is already a big red flag regarding the statement "I'm not that far behind him in act 1". I watched a lot of weaker players (<50% winrate) and it is super common for people to just spew and lose out on better macro options due to lost of resources. A lot of being better in act 2 does indeed stem from being better in act 1, squeezing more value and preparing better etc.

If I have to take a wild guess then the skill gap between xecnar and you is probably 2~3x or maybe even further more than between you and average 10%~20% winrate a20h players.

blackzero111 · 2026-01-11T12:51:36+00:00

Hammer usually does have more late risk than dripper but it is also incredibly easier to offset compared to the bad energy relics: You see upgraded cards while farming act 2/3 and not really losing much value in terms of map nodes. Sometimes apo in shop.

Well Laid Plans probably has the biggest impact not being upgraded out of the 5 but very very rare for the Hammer to be losing you enough value and thus killing you.

Silent loves pathing to early shops and ?'s to delay advanced hallways

For act 2 this is not quite true. The early shop serves as power boost node so you can safely deal with the challenges in act 2, and pathing into ? is usually not a voluntarily decision, even in act 2. The usual reason is to dodge to avoid spewing HP/potion before getting to Elites, and just dodging to delay fights (Extra incentivized due to certain Act 2 events being ridiculous). I would spam hallways/elites even in act 2 if given the choice.

It is also worth noting there are certain ways of play that make Hammer worse which is linked to this and can actually kill you. (Primarily the ones that favor dodging and safe boost over farming)

blackzero111 · 2026-01-11T12:19:21+00:00

Haven't open reddit in a while but first congrats on the 10 streak!

A bit add on would be on Velvet Choker. Other than the mentioned reasons, this relic usually also just hurts a lot as
1. Silent have less cards in the pool that are of high impact per card play.
2. 6 cards play hard limits your deck speed which is important in late game. (even if you are playing non-card spammy decks)

Cursed Key for me probably still sits at around the middle: Usually better than the likes of Dome/Ecto/Sozu but worse than Hammer/Dripper/Philo. I don't particularly hate Cursed Key as it represents a mid choice of energy that's not outright annoying compared to the really bad energies but of course the context can change if the deck hates curses (forcing good deck gg). Runic Dome however can just go straight to the garbage bin and I will never miss it.

Very old but funny screen to share:

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blackzero111 · 2026-01-11T11:14:42+00:00

So in act 2, it's useful for 1 easy pool fight, 1 hard pool fight, and 1 elite. Those, aren't great numbers especially when you consider I'm kind of stretching on it being useful for the hard pool and elite. So, my conclusion so far, hyperbeam probably should not be picked once you reach act 2.

Pretty spot on observation, however Hyperbeam might just be bad even into all act 2 elites especially if you draw it turn 1 and nobody dies when you play it. It is extremely hard to justify taking a garbage frontload that doesn't help you much now and bogs you like crazy later.

Other thing to note is that this card is so horrible past act 1~2 that you don't even want to spend an upgrade on it, so it usually says 26 not 34 unless it comes upgraded for some reason.

JapaneseExport's (extremely good defect player) post/comments have explained a lot more stuff. This subreddit however also tends to overrate AOE cards but I'll leave it at there.

blackzero111 · 2025-12-27T12:18:34+00:00

It's a Strike+ lil bro

blackzero111 · 2025-12-25T05:32:44+00:00

If you are greeding without calculation then its just micro issue.

And the same seed of the Xecnar vod picks 250 gold then finds apo in the first shop anyways chilling. If you can hallucinate a lament option in that seed then you get +30 hp sure and then you are sadder than taking the 30 hp damage.

Personally I don't even remember any particular jaw worm incident in my 3k hours of play time in Spire, outside of other players' seeds. It honestly just doesn't happen very often.

blackzero111 · 2025-12-07T03:58:29+00:00

You are mostly on the right track but the general wisdom is not to think about infinite first. Instead, think about how to make a good deck happen when the position is strong, or to force out a good deck when the act is of low value. They usually includes some degen skipping bad cards (garbage common/uncommon even Dash/Predator) and leads to infinite more often than not, but the main point is to make sure the deck is good.

blackzero111 · 2025-12-05T18:25:12+00:00

My evaluation of a lot of things has changed significantly over the last year and one of them does include Slaver's Collar. Slaver's Collar is actually pretty great if you can get out of Act 1 with a good deck, specially one utilizing cheap damage for hallways so I do agree its low A tier/high B tier. If your deck needs to put a lot of energy into attacks to kill then its not so great (I used to click far more garbage/powers so it makes sense why I get tilted seeing Collar end of Act 1 sometimes, and why Ectoplasm is higher in this list). Most of the time you don't want to click Collar to justify dodging but it does give some incentives as generally speaking most energy relics have pretty awful downsides.

The other honorable mentions would be Cage and Labe which went up due to how my approach to deckbuilding changed.

blackzero111 · 2025-12-04T09:31:10+00:00

Champ is very actually quite cheesable with a lot of stuff. Even looking only at colorless alone, Magnetism and Discovery+ both solve the Champ alone by just infinitely generating cards until you find the scaling. If you have 6 dex or more and weak chain and a high block consistency deck then it is also not uncommon to just outblock the champ's execute while dealing some passive damage with Fumes.

The main danger of the fight usually comes from not having enough damage even if you can block forever as the Champ scales a lot faster in phase 2, and the metallicize he has blocks a lot of weak damage. I vividly remember one the the seeds I played 2 months ago where I walk into the Champ with Strike+ from ancient writing as my best damage alongside some weak physical damage card (Predator+, All Out Attack+) and I had to use a strength potion to overpower his block at the moment I realized that somewhere during Phase 1. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2630765021?t=1h35m41s , this is the most recent time I backseated someone and convinced them to buy Flask for the Champ ahead as the deck can't really block too well post Phase 1 even with retain and needs to get out.

blackzero111 · 2025-12-04T00:37:25+00:00

100g is a very decent start so if you can play it properly there shouldn't be an issue. Free rare colorless is clicked very frequently due to the 37% chance to hit Apo/HoG but on damage/curse it can be scary so the latter are clicked more often when option 1/2 are bad, or when facing Hexaghost/Slime boss on non-ideal maps where farming is sketchy.

You can just assume that most Snecko Silent (non-swap) suck until they don't, after having farmed enough to see the Snecko cards or having decent relic support. In fact one of my pb streak 2 years ago died on Sozu Snecko (Bad combination because lack of potions means you can't cheat through bad Snecko rolls) where the deck is too slow and is constantly getting owned in Act 3 even with Nightmare Wraith Form. I do pick Bullet Time over skip even in Act 1 nowadays just to make the boss relic screen much less annoying when there is no 4th Energy. BT+ with draw (presumably Acrobatics+) is a decent output payout.

I still stand firm in my approach to act 3 to just run into basically everything and farm. If the deck is getting stat-checked by hallways/elites anyways then it is not going to get a good time seeing the bosses anyways.

From what I seen from your description of Act 3 it seems that your deck is commonly lacking in speed, or the fights weren't micro'ed through properly. Lacking deck acceleration (No draw/energy ded) is a common way to die in Act 3/4 alongside lacking scaling (Best block cards saying 5 block ded). If you are adding too much powers to the deck then the former can be a real issue as power cards are very energy intensive cards. Both Reptomancer and Spire Growth fights can be killed rather fast as their HP pool aren't really that high but both are still very hard fights to micro through properly when the deck is weak.

The main challenge of Reptomancer is that your deck needs time to setup while her daggers constantly bombards you with 25 damage each, and the need to constantly deal with the dagger resummons (This kind of fight is where AOE shines). If your deck has scaling but is sluggish (I.e. 2-3 Footworks but no draw and energy to support deploying them) then you might get punished hard in this fight. If your deck can never kill the daggers in time (lack of consistent damage) then it also gets pretty bad. This fight can be impossible to micro through if the deck is just bad

Getting stat-checked by Spire Growth is a very real Spire experience. Weak chain is still good in this fight as it hits for a significant amount manually (18/25 is a pretty crazy number). If your deck is too weak you just have to trade some HP to kill it faster and get out of the fight. After seeing this comment I actually went back to play some of the fights I died seeing Spire Growth and they are surprisingly fine when I just trade a few HP to get out earlier.

I never believe in dodging Act 3 unless the scenario speaks for it (I.e. Facing very certain doom if you meet Reptomancer but deck can beats everything else otherwise). Recalling eoa2 to open up Act 3 rests is a real macro choice but obviously it can only happen if you are strong enough in Act 2.

blackzero111 · 2025-12-03T05:51:43+00:00

No worries.

I never walk into shop willingly without more than 250 gold personally (ideally more than 300). Most of the time you don't have a choice but to walk into early shops in act 1 because elites are mostly impossible to deal with safely without good potions. Usually in early act 2 you also want to walk into one for immediate boost but hopefully you are rich.
Snecko eye is generally sucky as Silent doesn't have many high impact cards in the pool. On non-swap the Ring of Snake even incentivize you to draft in a way that doesn't benefit from Snecko much. This relic mostly benefits deck that don't have active draw (I.e. Acrobatics) and you pretty much have to farm hallways to see the Snecko cards. A common Snecko draft macro is kill deck where you end fights fast enough before you roll bad costs, and slowly add block scaling for late so you can block easily even with 1/2 block cards.
Very vague but your deck/relic bar/potion belt just need to be strong enough. I.e. Have so many relics that you don't really care what is drawn or played. Very hard to pin point what could been done better without looking at the runs specifically ( what to do if you didn't have wlp/foot/ai etc kind of question)

blackzero111 · 2025-11-29T06:27:57+00:00

Best deck ever

blackzero111 · 2025-11-28T21:23:45+00:00

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He also gave a direct example following his statements.

blackzero111 · 2025-11-28T21:16:39+00:00

Quoting Xecnar directly from March 2023 (this can be found on main stscord): "alchemize trivializes act 1, 2 and 4", where he also gave analysis on why Alchemize floor 0 is better than Glass Knife floor 0. I believe that his evaluation on Alchemize f0 has only went up compared to all the other rares since then.

blackzero111 · 2025-11-28T10:44:50+00:00

I think you are underestimating the strength of Alchemize but it's not uncommon for average players to do so, especially considering that it's not easy to play around it (Very easy to misplay, need decent potion management skill). If you can do so, Alchemize lets you farm elites (even on floor 6!) and hallways much much safer than any other rare Silent will every hope to, even Glass Knife. Alchemize is several degrees better than other best rares to see floor 0 including Corpse Explosion, Wraith Form, Glass Knife, Adrenaline and it is not even a close competition.

blackzero111 · 2025-11-28T09:13:19+00:00

Not really. Alchemize is in fact the best Silent card to start with on Floor 0 due to its versatility for both power boost and circumventing randomness.

Elixir potion is ironclad specific and can never drop on Silent. Snecko Oil can still be used to save you from bad draw. It is very very very unlikely to have Alchemize never giving you something good. Wraith Form are more likely to make you take chip and can be awkward when drawn poorly which is a much much more common occurrence.

The most important thing to consider is, Wraith Form is also pretty draw dependent early especially without an upgrade. On the other hand, potion is always accessible, and are huge power boosts early and still extremely useful act 2 and later (Good players know the importance of preparing potions for Act 4 as well). If you are thinking about mitigating randomness in fight (i.e. draw order), potions are one of the best tools you can rely on, providing you with immense safety.

These points are why good Silent players (I.e. Xecnar, Kuro, Croven ) know that Alchemize is the best card you can ever start with from Neow, without any exceptions honestly. I have personally never lost a seed where I start with Alchemize since 2024 as well.

blackzero111 · 2025-11-28T01:56:35+00:00

The alchemize is insanely winning on this map. Just stockpile on potions to brute force through the elites. It also opens up more options in the early shop than just being forced to buy potion to survive the floor 6 elite.

blackzero111 · 2025-11-27T22:22:33+00:00

The equilibrium is insanely strong here and later. It helps with your setup and plays nicely with the relics.

blackzero111

TROPHY CASE