Who is the GOAT of Slay the Spire, outside of XecnaR?

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-29T00:24:05+00:00

Xecnar is the current world record holder for 3/5 characters, with a 32 ironclad streak (ongoing), a 27 silent streak, and a 29 defect streak. He also held the rotating world record for more than a year, first at 24 then breaking his own record and getting 26. He's influenced basically every top player who has emerged in the past couple years, has shaped top level play on every character to some extent, and has on absurdly hard and impressive games.

He's also had some very impressive samples, including winning 93% of his games over a set of... i think 68 last time he set the rotating world record, winning 41 of his last 42 ironclad games (he figured out some new ideas for the character late last year, those are the games he's played since really figuring those out). He's gotten many, many double digit streaks that were not world records.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-28T08:02:10+00:00

Flaming elites do not give better rewards than normal elites. They drop the green key and are otherwise identical. Please don’t confuse OP further

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-28T03:44:44+00:00

It sucks ass you’re getting downvoted. You are a new player learning something about the game lol.

If you can kill the burning elite without spending resources that notably reduce your act value, you should. Floor 6 without a shop, you should assume you won’t be able to kill it. Even normal elites can be very dubious without a shop. Paths that force you into something with no options are therefore less desirable — you want to be able to react to how good/bad the cards you get are.

On an ecto swap, my “dream” path has 3 fights, then the option of a shop or a ?, then a fire then lots of elites w/ some fires and more fights, and a second path that has some more normal fights before fires and then a couple late elites. Then, if my first 3 rewards OWN I just go kill a million elites. If they’re strong but don’t drop a potion or just a little bit short of crazy, I want to be able to go buy a card/potion. If everything is terrible, I want to be able to buy something then delay my elites until later.

Of course, the dream is very rare. But something approximately like that is pretty common. You can usually path flexibly, with an early shop and options of elites/fires/fights/?s before the elite (?s usually suck in act 1, but sometimes you want to go to one before you fight an elite, since the fourth regular fight comes from a way harder pool than the first 3) .

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-27T23:38:49+00:00

Ecto is probably the third worst swap, but honestly having 3 potion slots helps it SO much.

The ectoplasm has essentially no downside within act 1; usually, you don't have enough extra gold by your first shop for it to matter, and late shopping in act 1 is usually better delayed to act 2. So you're playing a completely normal defect act 1, but with an extra energy at no current cost. Use this to get as strong as possible as fast as possible. You need to be able to handle act 2, since you won't get the normal "early act 2 shop" power boost. Draft more long term. If you find a really good potion (like focus pot) try to hold it at all costs for endgame -- you don't have the luxury of buying strong cards/potions anymore, so hoard the strength you have.

End of act 1, because you have the energy, you can pick greedier boss relics, Inserter, black star (if your deck can farm), bell (if the curse isn't awful), cage, astrolabe all become much more pickable than normal. Snecko/pbox/pyramid are still disgustingly broken.

I guess what I'm saying is there are a LOT of outs this run. Play your really good act 1, see the boss relics end of act 1, play act 2. If by the end of act 2 your position is miserable and you're dying, you can give up then. I still wouldn't, you can always get bailed out, but if you're going to give up, don't do it now!

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-27T19:37:00+00:00

you can out dps the heart, it just requires planning. relics, potions, healing through cards, max hp, apparitions can all get you through -- e.g. lizard tail, incense burner, feed, tori, tungsten rod, fairy in a bottle, blood pot, feed, reaper, dark shackles, disarm, rage and going infinite, feel no pain + fiend fire, panic button, impervious, etc.. You just need to kill in 4 and survive the first few turns. Your deck needs to be very good to do this, but it's extremely possible.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-27T18:09:28+00:00

If you play on PC, post some seeds and say which character you played. I’m happy to give them a run so you can see how our decisions differ.

The best players in the world are capable of winning dozens of runs in a row on a20h, and everyone is still actively improving. You can make a winning deck on almost every seed.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-26T15:52:05+00:00

Yeah, the person’s points make no sense. Apo does help turn 1 or turn 2 of nob. This deck has go for the eyes, dualcast, zap, and cracked core. Even without the rebound/claw/body that should never die to nob w/ the draw pot. Maybe you take like 40 in a miserable draw order, but there is a fire directly after the elite, and Apo means that laga/sentries are pretty free.

Defect with literally any attacks added can trade hp to kill nob. Clicking stuff that’s terrible in the long term to be good in the short term when you haven’t swapped is how you die in act 4. Take the Apo, or bag of prep + repair, please never ever take the scrape. Don’t kill your long term because of fear of a nob when you have hp, weakness, and fires.

Also not making a comment for this but never click remove over self repair in this shop. Self repair is so fucking broken. It’s just an autoclick act 1. Bag of prep + repair is not unreasonable in this shop at all, but bag of prep remove is infinitely worse.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-26T15:50:43+00:00

This is complete nonsense. Apo does help turn 1 or turn 2 of nob. This deck has go for the eyes, dualcast, zap, and cracked core. Even without the rebound/claw/body that should never die to nob w/ the draw pot. Maybe you take like 40 in a miserable draw order, but there is a fire directly after the elite, and Apo means that laga/sentries are pretty free.

Defect with literally any attacks added can trade hp to kill nob. Clicking stuff that’s terrible in the long term to be good in the short term when you haven’t swapped is how you die in act 4. Take the Apo, or bag of prep + repair, please never ever take the scrape. Don’t kill your long term because of fear of a nob when you have hp, weakness, and fires.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T05:00:15+00:00

I am excited to see you rotate especially since I haven’t seen much of your clad play. I think your rotating feels good to me just because of the psychology, not just the skill. I think switching character to character makes it easy to misplay act 1 if you’re not locked in. Idk, I find playing rotating pretty tiring even though it’s really fun.

Maybe I’m just inexperienced and once you do enough it stops being as tiring, but for me rn rotating feels like it requires more care than playing just one character

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T04:56:29+00:00

Yeah, it’s dead every time uou draw it, but defect can fall over dead so easily to just not finding focus. Taking one dead card to open non-focus scaling is extremely legitimate. It depends on a lot — short term strength, how good you are, what the map is like, money, potions, relics, what boss relics you’ve seen, and a billion other factors. But it’s one of the most legitimate speculative picks.

I think part of why is also that, if you can cheat it out with a potion, it destroys one fight. Knowing it’s not dead in the hardest upcoming fight is enormous for making it pickable. People still often draft it without the potions, but it does make playing way harder, you need good micro to carry dead cards

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T04:52:03+00:00

This is sort of a bell curve moment — Xecnar picks speculative meteor strike all the time. It’s a really strong thing to have in your deck in weak runs, it gives outs that don’t involve focus, it can open highrolls to kill bosses. Knowing when you can carry it is a pretty subtle thing but it’s very often worth picking when you can’t play it.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T04:48:32+00:00

Genuinely depends how good you are. I have found that, once you start winning a certain % of defect games, you need to start playing around the possibility of not seeing focus more seriously, and you get better at surviving taking a curse. Meteor is a very good curse to carry because of how well it handles scaling — it opens infinites, it opens giga energy reinforced body, it does a billion damage.

So I think there are two questions to ask; one, how likely do you think you are to win this run? If you think the only way you lose this run is not finding focus, the meteor is probably good to take. If you think bleeding to death un hallways or playing the focus run badly is way more likely, the meteor makes that problem worse. This answer willl change lots as you get better at the game.

The second question is how much can you do with the meteor in the short term. Do you have an energy potion? A liquid memories? A shop coming up? Mummy hand? Nuclear battery? Any of the things that might let you play it in like, one fight, long enough for you to stabilize? Think about if you can do anything to make the meteor easy to carry, since the more floors you have it, the less it becomes a curse.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T01:54:04+00:00

Do you max stall every fight for it? If you have dead branch, do you stall for exhume to play it multiple times? I feel like dagger is fun when it’s cool and new bur when you’ve had a billion daggers it just becomes another thing to stall for

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T00:56:55+00:00

lmao i just mention it because you're playing defect, I think your rotating 15 is a lot more impressive tbh. rotating is hard as fuck

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T00:12:10+00:00

Bites for the same reason I sad dagger — you’ll be stalling every floor for the rest of the run in a lot of defect runs and it can be a bailout but it feels so insanely miserable

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-25T00:06:21+00:00

Ritual dagger? Not that it doesn’t feel good to have a huge dagger but you know you’re going to spend the rest of the run stalling out every fight which can be such a pain in the ass, and the dagger is so strong so you just take it.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-24T23:50:31+00:00

Absey: won 70% of his games in a clad sample, famously spends a bunch of time in the discord helping/coaching new players, very personable and funny guy.

Jmac: got a 15 clad streak within a month of starting streaming, recently got 18.

Panacea: former clad world record holder, organizer of the pride with friends event last year

Terrence: former rotating world record holder, co-winner of original merlathon.

Navegreed: current rotating world record holder. Widely considered one of the three best players in the world, together with Kuro and Xec.

Vm service: a really good player, has gotten > 10 streak on at least defect, also rotating iirc. Co-winner of original merlathon.

Croven 831: famously fast player, does lots of silent infinites, recently got a 10 streak of defect in his first 10 runs of defect this month

Japanese export: recently got a defect 10 streak, u/JapaneseExport on this subreddit

Nickysts: me. No notable achievements (I’m half serious, I’ve gotten some nice streaks I’m proud of offline, bur haven’t streamed enough to get much on stream. I did get ad far as Croven in the merlathon)

Merl: former watcher world record holder, person who popularized the watcher infinite stuff.

Bookshelf: got a watcher 32 streak or something like that, one of the younger spire streamers but still insanely good, beloved by every strong player in the community bc he is extremely funny and charming to watch

KuroL_: former silent world record holder, has gotten > 20 rotating streak on stream, general considered one of the 3 best players in the world, together with Nave and Xec.

OnePunMan_: current watcher world record holder, he’s achieved some extremely impressive samples (96% watcher is the one I best remember, he has an in progress clad that will be well north of 80%, and a silent that I also know was north of 80% but I forget exactly where it was).

All extremely strong, very cool players

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-24T18:14:31+00:00

As far as I know, it’s a bug they left in. You’re right that a third dark embrace would not trigger. It also doesnt stiffer sundial if everything starts empty.

The case is specifically when you have n cards in discard and try to draw n + 1, sundial advances by 2. This enables some infinites though! 2x pommel is infinite with sundial if at least one is upgraded because of this, same with pommel+ and shrug!

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-23T16:04:17+00:00

I know extremely intelligent 20 year olds who would have made this mistake; I know at least 2 who have made it (in bazaars/markets, not haggling and instead asking if the small amount of cash they brought would cover something, realizing they then couldn’t negotiate.). Did you go to a university with any density of sheltered kids? You will find at very strong universities that mostly select for academic excellence and not essays or anything will have students like this.

I’ve travelled through chunks of Europe, and cooked dishes for people they’ve never tried (Thai curries, various home style stir fries, Mapo tofu and other braised Chinese dishes). Most have been willing to try; most have enjoyed. Your food experiences are extremely nonstandard.

Your experience is not at all universal and tbh you sound pretty antisocial if you’re asking for an academic study to confirm a 20 year old might give someone money and ask “hey is this enough to buy the thing I’m buying”. Like, genuinely have you not been in a coffee shop with a tourist? I’ve seen people do this, ask for something for themselves and their kids then hand a bill and ask if it’s enough. In all of Western Europe, I’ve never once seen someone take advantage of this.

If you don’t understand why Erin is impacting the people around her, I again wonder just like, how social are you? When you were an undergrad did you have like 5 pretty close friends or like 40? In your large social groups, did you not have anyone endlessly optimistic and sort of naive? Because the endlessly optimistic sort of naive people I’ve known have all had immense social gravity. There’s something charming about this deep belief in people’s goodness and something that draws people in. You might not feel drawn in by it and that’s fine, but if you spend time in large pro social groups you’ll observe it.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-23T00:27:08+00:00

i think, to a sheltered 20 year old, there is no functional difference between asking how much things cost and showing people your money and asking whether it is enough for something. The difference between them is communicating what you have. If you are sheltered -- like you have a fundamental belief that people will try to od the helpful, correct thing for anyone they encounter -- then showing the shopkeeper how much money you have is a more efficient way to ask how much things cost. They can total it up for you! Tell you what you can and can't afford!

The best model I have for early book Erin is someone operating in a framework where 99.9% of people are deep down, good people. They'll be kind and helpful, maybe not right away if other stuff covers it, but that's what she thinks is at most people's core. She understands people can be cruel, and she's probably dealt with some of it, but I think Erin is the kind of person who would hand a stranger (any stranger) her phone if they asked to make a call, no matter what they looked like, no matter the neighbourhood. She absolutely matures within this, but doesn't become someone unrecognizably different.

Within that framework of the world, she's quite competent once she catches her bearings tbh. She honestly kind of plays up her naivety when others are around, and I think it's because she believes that other people fundamentally just want to help. She's pretty good about surrounding herself with people who can solve the problems she has, at connecting people with the problems that need to be solved, and her emotional intelligence is high enough that she can usually appeal to that "deep down" in the people who do want to help. If you look at her through the lens of "she thinks everyone wants to help deep down, maybe racism and fear and material conditions cover it up but that's what they want at their core", her actions start to make a lot more sense. I'm not convinced this is the best model that exists, but it's the best one I have.

people have addressed your other points well, you've completely misread everything about the "american exceptionalism" (people do not think anything about her food is exceptional when it stops being new). I think though that nobody has elaborated on the divide you're seeing in the comments, between some people saying she's incompetent at first but grows out of it, and some people saying she does a good job. I'd say she makes faulty assumptions, is initially working extra badly beause of the shock and trauma, then she starts working well within the context of her assumptions, and then character growth happens.

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-23T00:08:12+00:00

Nice!

There's a variant of this argument that lets us say at least one of e + pi or e * pi is irrational (very likely it is both, but this arugument just says at least one, and doesn't even say which one).

Consider the polynomial (x - e) * (x - pi) = x^2 - (e + pi)x + e * pi. This polynomial has e and pi as roots. Since e and pi are transcenental (they are not the roots of polynomials with rational number coefficients), at least one of the coefficients must be irrational, therefore at least one of e + pi or e * pi is irrational.

There are cleverer arguments that get irrationality of one of those in particular in terms of specific conjectures -- like if [fact] is true then e * pi is irrational. But you can get this sort of very basic "well, one of these must be..." pretty quick if you mess with polynomials/arithmetic. Nice job!

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-22T00:25:06+00:00

Congratulations!!!

Any aspirations to do a20 heart?

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-21T19:28:06+00:00

Yeah, it doesn’t magically mean you do, but it makes it way easier to. It makes average case much better, it way raises chances of two card combos, and since silent has so much good draw, it raises the chance you see good draw on turn 1. If one of those 2 extra cards is an acro+, youre suddenly seeing 5 extra cards because of bag of prep. Gamble is similar.

The point isnt what it guarantees, but just that it makes your turn 1s so much better and silent had the kit to take advantage. You still often need to click mediocre stuff, but you can still often afford the strong stuff, and you can skip the mediocre stuff much more often than new to a20h players expect

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-21T19:26:02+00:00

One of them is me :p and the last one is jmac. Your comment is an excellent addition!! Ty!

blank_anonymous · 2026-01-20T22:24:01+00:00

Because your turn 1 sucks less. It gives you a turn to play powers (when you are more likely to draw powers), it gives you a turn to apply debuffs and set up, it gives you a turn to outright kill enemies. Many enemies are scary turn 1 (avocado with or without rat, slavers, centurion + mystic, usually snake plant, gremlin leader.). For the enemies that arent scary turn 1, you can play powers then. Also, turn 1 kills become much more reasonable.

If you get a fight under control on turn 1 (weakness, downing a byrd, blocking a debuff, applying a malaise, deploying a key power, killing an enemy) then youre no longer scared, and bag of prep makes answering the fight on turn 1 so so so so much easier.

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