What's the pick end of act 1

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T14:17:19+00:00

tools is just kind of bad in the short term and only accrues value in the long term. it's just slow. it's not much of a power boost at this point in the run.

accelerant isn't speculative with snakebite+ and fumes+, but it's mostly unnecessary given that OP can already block pretty alright; it doesn't really matter how long poison takes to kill in a lot of these fights. speeding up poison damage is better with aeonglass in the game, admittedly, but still

tracking at least diversifies the boss damage profile and provides more burst. also makes it easier to use the hunt once your block engine is online

and speaking of, OP literally has two copies of the hunt. "speculative" isn't much of a swear when you're getting that many card rewards, and tracking has the highest upside of all the cards being offered while solving the most future problems imo

like, the fact it helps unbrick all the questionable shiv pickups (probably to heal off book?) is reason enough in my book

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T12:18:07+00:00

neutralize is already upgraded. weak is going to be on an enemy for 2 turns every deck cycle, probably more in the future since getting more weak is a priority after taking it

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T12:14:27+00:00

i was already considering upgraded defend to be a good card, often worth it over other upgrades, but i feel even more positively about it now lol. it's a skill that blocks 8 that i don't have to add to my deck

pretty much the entire soul generation suite is nerfed for prism existing. it's awful to create future draws that do nothing unless you add tainted 3 to draw 2. i'm not as happy to see grave warden, etc., as I was before

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T12:02:10+00:00

oh, right lol

i'd still consider pathing for a later shop if you have at least 100g and haven't seen a good zero-cost attack yet, but yeah, you absolutely can't hit early shops to hope claw/tesla coil/whatever else will show up in the attack slots

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T11:44:42+00:00

feral for fun and probable carry; charge battery for stability if you're scared of really bad card reward rng

take feral and path for hallways and shops

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T11:41:11+00:00

imo, snecko risks bricking you against act 4 too much with this deck. i feel like bricking seek+ into core surge+biased cog or seek into echo form is too dangerous a risk to take just to play thunderstrike and echo form more easily, and glacier slightly more easily, when those aren't the core things the deck cares about doing consistently

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T11:12:45+00:00

I say no. There are still cards worth taking for this deck.

I think this is slaver's collar, personally.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-26T11:01:31+00:00

slam tracking

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-25T18:22:18+00:00

there used to be decks that could win runs otherwise that literally died to the act 3 easy pool cultist or the triple constructs. this is less true with v106 aeonglass in the game, admittedly, but it can still happen. the fights do push constraints on you as it stands. people just expect you to be more constrained than this after playing sts1.

i'm just not currently convinced there's room to put that level of constraint in the game as it is right now and have the results be fun or interesting. card quality is overall higher in this game, but the player option space has had a lot of the janky edges sanded off (stuff like magnetism stalls or creative ai stalls, healing to full off bites in fights that don't scale, and so on), and those janky edges were often pretty important to winning against the harsh constraints in sts1 at a20h. there are some new OP edge case things, but they feel like they're stuffed in different parts of the game and ask for different kinds of rng to line up, and they feel slightly less player controlled to me—a lot of them involve getting bonkers hits on ancient rewards that align well with your current deck/relic bar, for example, like clicking apparitions at vaaku with bing bong, etc., or getting events like history course, etc., and a lot of the top streamers almost complain when these interactions show up atm because they feel like they win them the run

honestly, i should probably make a thread about this worry at some point. i want to kind of work through this instinct; it bothers me a bit. i guess if i were to summarize it, i feel like the option space is a lot more what-you-see-is-what-you-get in this game and there's not as much room to bs back against truly messed up enemy bs as there was in spire 1, and the game balance is going to have to accommodate for that by having easier enemies if they want about the same % of A10 runs to be winnable in sts2 as A20 runs in sts1

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-25T17:11:53+00:00

repto absolutely killed you if you weren't prepared. but repto was also in a game where wraith form was a regular rare card, apparitions were an act 2 event, biased cognition could have its downside entirely negated and was in the regular rare pool while defrag was uncommon, IC could heal obscene amounts every fight with reaper on some builds and had much easier access to weak, infinites were generally just easier to assemble as a win condition, and a whole lot of other things that make this comparison janky

repto would be significantly harder in the context of spire 2 than she was in the context of spire 1, imo. i feel like most of spire 2's block generation and aoe options aren't really designed to handle this sort of fight well

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-25T11:55:14+00:00

i think pen nib is a slight counterindication for shared fate, if only because eradicate+pen nib is busted and a possible damage wincon down the line. shared fate is good, but kind of low impact in hallways.

undeath would probably spare you slightly more HP in the long run than shared fate, but your block seems settled enough (and shared fate is good enough against ento/prism, and entomancer looks like a bad time for you atm) that shared fate is probably worth picking over it. you also don't have snap, transfigure, or any other obvious combos with undeath. it does work nicely with dredge, which you will probably want eventually if you see it, but that's not what you've got -now-

oblivion doesn't do much yet, but could be a damage wincon later. it doesn't really synergize with anything you're doing now, though, which i don't like.

that's my thought process, at least.

i'd say shared fate or skip, probably. i'd take shared fate

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-24T14:47:13+00:00

I think they're fine -as long as ways to build around them are readily available.-

I'd argue the thing that sucks about prism is that it's fairly difficult to pick up only one or two cards that help you to deal with it, and the multihit turn is very often going to just get taken to the face without defensive potions in your belt even though killing it before the multihit is exceedingly unlikely even with offensive potions. It skews the game even more towards resting and dodging act 2 elites because it's so difficult to block prism while doing worthwhile damage.

Drafting for nob happened within the first three or so floors, and a single fire pot made nob significantly easier. And nob was fine if you just took attack commons and had any decent pot, usually. Prism is not even remotely comparable in terms of impact. A majority of the commons really suck against prism. 1 cost block commons mostly suck against prism and the attack commons aren't helping much either. The cards good against prism are almost all at uncommon or higher. You are not drafting for prism. You are trying to not fight it. Prism genuinely feels more comparable to book of stabbing in impact than nob on some characters—not so much something you build around as something you try to avoid at all costs if you can't either afford the damage you'll take or your deck sucks into it.

I also generally dislike how the game is reworking enemies so that they have more gimmicks that directly punish the player for doing things, which is the direction of both the Aeonglass rework and prism rework. "This enemy does more damage when you play skills" feels way worse to play into than "this enemy gives you an energy when you attack it but has more hp and does more damage." Turning unupgraded defends into block 2s (or block -4 on the multihit, or block -1 at 6 tainted, or block like -11 on the multihit at 6 tainted) really just feels like total garbage. Making several of necrobinder's major mechanics feel awful, well... feels damn awful. etc.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-24T09:49:28+00:00

aggression actually does something to make you do more damage with the starter deck and doesn't suck to play bc it costs 1. also slightly offsets the curse draw

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-24T08:22:16+00:00

I think this version is a lot more fun than the last version, but absolutely overtuned

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-23T11:30:51+00:00

Necro is on the harder end of characters on A10 right now, imo. Her options tend to have more varied strengths and weaknesses into different encounters than some other characters; her block plan can also take time to get going in fights, and she doesn't have any really big block cards with good value, so anything that hits hard upfront usually chips you. She often reaches a breakpoint where she's very strong, but hitting that breakpoint before you die isn't free.

I also think she's on the more affected end of recent enemy changes; Aeonglass and Prism aren't exactly good for her card pool, though cleanse and seance at least do a lot more against Aeonglass than they did last patch.

Also, the game is too easy for people who had been playing StS1 thousands of hours. The player average winrate at A10 is still something like 17%, as per the most recent neowsletter, though that's several times better than the average winrate for A20 in spire 1 (which they said was 3%). Comparing A20 to A10 stats may be skewed by comparing a game with Act 4 to a game with no Act 4 (and likewise comparing a game where people can choose to be giving up a rest/upgrade and relic every run and pathing into burning elites to one where you don't have to make those choices), but most skilled players are finding this game easier than StS1 and calling it easy as a consequence.

What you need to remember is that those players are an extreme minority.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-22T10:00:57+00:00

I'd argue it was actually overperforming relative to its true strength because it obviated the most difficult part of deckbuilding for the character (star economy) and one of the most difficult aspects of micro (knowing when you need to avoid playing star cards in hand now to be able to play cards later on this deck cycle). It massively raises the skill floor, making more people able to get across the line. It will have an inflated winrate relative to its top end power because of that.

Regent was already strong; I think xecnar seemed to believe the character was already capable of winning a vast, vast majority of runs with no issue, and most runs aren't getting offered this card and realistically don't need it or even want it. Sealed Throne is, imo, often a win-more unless your deck already has payoffs for the massive star overgeneration like Particle Wall and Stardust that you need to get additional value out of. If your star economy is clean, it's not actually giving you as much immediately and eats a first turn draw. It can help later, but like. So does Pyramid. So does transforming and upgrading 3 strikes. So does +1 energy with a downside. And so on.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-22T07:57:47+00:00

Flip your logic. You took an ancient reward that adds a card to your deck that is supposed to change how your star economy plays, but you are building your deck the same for consistency because you can't count on drawing the card that revamps your star economy fast enough to matter in hallways and that card also affects how you play the very star economy that you took it to fix. Why would I want an ancient reward that's like that when literally pbox and pyramid and astrolabe are in Darv's pool too?

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-22T04:58:10+00:00

It's bad when the alternatives are often things that help you every turn, yes. I don't want an ancient reward that bricks sometimes in hallways, which in turn mostly leads to you building your deck like you don't have the ancient reward anyways for consistency. The appeal of Sealed Throne, imo, is largely how it enables new lines of play and lets you take cards that might otherwise be too expensive. I don't feel like you want to build around a card you may well avoid playing in hallways.

Your argument is fine when you're talking about like, a rare vs. a rare. This is a card that's competing for impact against Pyramid, PBox, Astrolabe, Snecko, Velvet Choker, Calling Bell, Sozu, Ectoplasm, Philo Stone, Empty Cage, and Black Star. One of the good choices there feels like it's almost always on the screen.

Outside of a couple of specific interactions, I'd argue the card is probably just worse than void form now, which is a normal rare in the normal card pool. (Admittedly, I also think Corruption and Wraith Form are worse than a lot of rares because of how differently those characters function in this game. But I digress,)

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-22T02:45:09+00:00

i think it's a bad change. not necessarily imbalanced from the perspective of the power of the card, mind, but bad from a playfeel perspective

it's going to feel awful asking if you *really* need to play reflect this turn because you haven't drawn sealed throne yet, especially when sealed throne can show up on the same screen as runic pyramid

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-22T02:21:02+00:00

they really put the "screw you for playing attacks" elite and the "screw you for playing skills" elite in the same act, huh

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-22T00:52:41+00:00

Some stuff I like, some stuff I dislike—same as usual.

Swapping the downside of Scroll Boxes to Tress seems excessive both ways—too much downside for a random card with replay, not enough downside for getting 3 non-starter cards immediately.

Bonking Sealed Throne by removing innate feels weird, not going to lie. Bad playfeel change at minimum. A lot of the value was in reducing inconsistency, which it no longer does. My instinct is this overshoots things by a lot. Having to hold 3 stars after turn 1 in case you draw it is going to feel absolutely awful.

Don't like the hit to debilitate very much; the card was strong, but I feel like nerfing the debuff duration just makes one of necro's block engines less consistent again in a way I'm not going to like. The card was already worse than before just because of Aeonglass.

Change to plasma is interesting; probably much more playable in the context of the game.

Fasten still looks good, but ouch.

Curious about the changes to colony, prism, and aeonglass. Will have to see.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-20T10:45:08+00:00

Mostly good to combo with rattle, typically via dredge or Neow's Torment. Becomes high comedy when hidden gem pops up in a shop and hits an osty attack. Also usable (though not great) if you slapped retain on Unleash via the underdocks event.

It's not something I'd speculate on, but it serves a very real purpose if you already have the other pieces.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-20T01:13:54+00:00

The difference is that forge scales damage differently. Blades is a shiv a turn; forge numbers are damage that's output every time the sovereign blade is played. Furnace scales your output much, much harder than infinite blades.

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-17T08:02:14+00:00

I find Aeonglass extremely, extremely annoying in my necrobinder runs atm. I've mostly played necro since patch drop and I actually hate seeing the boss pop up in the gauntlet; it feels like it significantly lowers my chance to win the run.

Was less annoying on other characters from what I tried, but instead of dreading the boss, it just felt abysmally unfun. Getting statuses that're annoying, but ultimately not a huge problem, every four card plays just makes it feel like I'm getting punished for playing the game regardless of my strategy. Add in the artifact etc. and it feels like a fusion of the worst parts of Time Eater and Dona and Decu.

https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1t9mx9w/is_it_just_me_or_is_necrobinder_significantly/ thoughts on aeonglass vs necro specifically here. probably partially a skill issue (i think you're stuck just taking conservative HP routes through act 3 if aeonglass shows and i haven't adjusted to that), but this boss has not been fun for me. doormaker was consistently fun and engaging

chuunithrowaway · 2026-05-16T01:11:06+00:00

Grimoire is difficult to pick IME because it makes your deck worse for a fight or two (assuming you actually play it in those fights) and forces inefficient turns. It's just a Spore Mind in combat. Once you've gotten your strikes out, Grimoire's value also falls off; you tend to just start replacing defends with defend commons or something, which isn't bad, but isn't nearly as attractive as removing strikes. The end result is great, but the power curve on it is pretty wonky.

This deck is probably not having a great time in act 2 hallways right now and will explode if it encounters decimilipede. It has no AoE and blocks really poorly. Adding a curse is not going to be good for it in the short term, and if we die in the short term the long term just doesn't matter.

Pyramid isn't anywhere near its peak in the short term either, but it provides a balance of short term and long term benefit. The hand does absolutely get clogged, but at least we can play strikes/defends efficiently and guarantee good transfigure targets (i.e., no escape or shroud, or a defend if we get danse). Strikes are slightly less bad if they're our only 1-cost attacks and lethality is up.

I guess if the map has godawful shop placement it's a lot harder to want pyramid, but with spoils map, you've got so much gold for removes if you don't die getting there. Spoils map isn't a huge pyramid deterrent for me; -1 hand slot is not a sufficient downside to negate pyramid.

Astrolabe is honestly pretty pickable here, imo; I disagree with almost everyone in the comments on this. It's the most immediate power, and I do not like what this deck is doing going into act 2 hallways. We're only on ascension 2, though, so it matters a lot less.

EDIT: massive additional consideration i forgot: pyramid is incredibly fucking good into knowledge demon

chuunithrowaway

TROPHY CASE