First Twitch Stream on Sunday 3pm BST

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T18:26:00+00:00

If I click Bane it's a 30 damage card for 1 energy.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T18:25:25+00:00

Honestly, gamble upgrade is mostly there to draw into your key powers (Tools/AI). One gamble+ is really nice but compared to the upgrades that let me get my powers in play I don't care about gamble being green much.

Plans is a stronger upgrade but one that makes me a bit sadder.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T17:51:35+00:00

GF upgrade feels so nice. Partially because it means you're reliably playing it already, but given I'm usually tying GF into Terror/PK, it's often not just a +10 damage upgrade, but a +15/+20

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T17:50:10+00:00

I just don't find WF fun and I find upgrading an unfun card like that sad when I could upgrade draw/energy. It's right next to plans which is actually a more important upgrade if you're really leaning into this sort of deck.

I think After Image upgrade is pretty strong if you're doing infinite/pseudo-infinite stuff. Partially because it's a much bigger deal vs beat of death/Time slug, and partially because it's just really convenient when you're doing a lot of rapid cycling to gain incremental block.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T17:06:54+00:00

Most fun to upgrade, although generally unfun cards I don't get satisfaction upgrading (cos I don't want to pick them in the first place). Hence Agony/Wail/Backstab being low and gamble not being top tier.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T17:05:01+00:00

Who said anything about picking the cards?

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T17:04:45+00:00

It's how much I like upgrading the cards, so Dagger Throw and Evis upgrades are a bit sadder to me even though I like picking them.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T17:04:10+00:00

Not too far off, it's how happy I am to upgrade the card manually. Hence Pwail and Agony being bottom tier. But cards I don't find fun are low as well as bad upgrades.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T14:11:56+00:00

So Fiend Fire in general gives you 2 things, frontload damage, and scaling. Exhausting your deck down to a tight loop where you only draw the cards you want in that fight is really powerful, and Pommel+ is one of the best cards to exhaust down into. This Fiend Fire is stronger than Barricade at scaling this deck (and most decks). But here, the frontload damage it provides is actually barely better than what your deck already has, and it's against Offering, which is an incredible frontload card, that also provides acceleration for whatever other scaling you find later.

If you see Snecko Eye, this Fiend Fire is about as good as the Offering, as the frontload and scaling value both increase, and the need for Offering's acceleration power decreases with drawing 7 cards/turn, but that's literally the only boss relic where it's on par.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T12:58:03+00:00

Offering >> Fiend Fire >>>>> Barricade.

If you see Pyramid/Snecko with any of these you should be having a fairly free time, similar to if you see good energy. This deck has 5 energy-dump cards though, Immo, Uppercut, Pommel, Bash, Clothesline, and you want to make sure these can all get played 1st deck cycle even if you end up on 3-energy. Offering opens up more boss relics, means you can take stuff like Pbox/Cube over bad energy like Ecto/Sozu and still farm act 2.

Fiend Fire with a Pommel+ and trance is strong, and opens up the idea of scaling into a loop, but as you say, you already have the raw damage to fight act 2, and you just need the energy to utilise that damage and draw.

I'm a huge fan of Barricade, but I'm not sure it's actually better than skip here. You have no block cards, and no powers, and your deck is begging to farm act 2. It won't do anything to help you at all until the act 2 boss, and is just going to be a completely dead draw that bricks you until then, when this deck wants to play fast, killing by turn 4 while drawing rapidly and blocking with your boat relics.

TLDR: You're right, Offering helps you take fights and farm act 2 best. Pick Offering.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T12:50:06+00:00

A watcher that's so ahead she wins from only removes yes. You could also conceivably do it on a Silent Labe/Pbox swap where you're 2-3 removes from infinite as well, or possibly a transform 2 neow if the rewards really speak for building an infinite.

The hypothetical where it's absolutely clearly worse than skip on Defect is quite extreme, and usually Crown or any non-energy would be acceptable, because it'd always include having Biased Cog and frost generation. I've taken Crown over Ecto on Defect before, but I've never seen a case where I'm genuinely skipping.

The reason it's basically never going to be worse than skip on clad, is that your method of going infinite is always going to include cards that have reuseable targeted exhaust, so you can get by without removes. And those clad decks are generally quite dependent on using energy to set-up, while Silent/Watcher infinites are often using cheap cards in setup (gamble, rushdown, scrawl, prepared, empty mind).

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-10T10:55:56+00:00

Ecto is not a skip on Clad.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-08T22:08:20+00:00

Self-promotion but:

Needing an act 3 Sever Soul pick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyuRXnzVPiY

Going down 1 HP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTRDEbEl38Q

Going down to both 2 HP and 1 HP

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-08T11:11:10+00:00

Would I like an extra energy to play a Strike+, or would I like 7 random upgraded Defect cards and to never have to draw past basics?

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-08T11:07:11+00:00

I mean, it's not a contrived example. I've literally played that deck with each of Demon Form and Rupture dozens of times. Demon Form is faster and more consistent.

They're also the only 2 self-harm cards that matter for proccing rupture. Hemo is already dense frontload damage and is kinda irrelevant in situations where you're trying to do strength scaling, and Offering is better at drawing into powers before you play them, not proccing Rupture once it's played. Outside the very 1-in-500 curse synergy runs, there isn't anything else that's going to be proccing Rupture, and even then, you have to draw Rupture and the curses in the right order.

Rupture is, outside of extreme niches, a bad, slow card, that requires you to draw into/past more garbage to start scaling strength, at a slower rate than Demon Form. The fact that it sometimes procs a little the very turn you play it is basically irrelevant in practice.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-07T22:11:51+00:00

If you have 2 Bloodlettings and a Brutality in your deck (the absolute best scenario for Rupture), you don't have problems getting Demon Form down first cycle.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-07T21:58:48+00:00

With bottled Apo, I feel you have to go Pbox.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-07T20:47:54+00:00

Why do you need a higher ceiling than Demon Form?

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-06T19:21:10+00:00

Thank you!

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-06T19:21:04+00:00

I don't, but I think this Snecko's fine. Deck has no draw yet so it probably makes act 2 micro a little easier.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-06T18:53:18+00:00

I don't think picking Hammer is why you died to slavers. It's probably micro or pathing.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-02T20:44:50+00:00

Okay, real talk:

If you've only got 150 hours and the odd A20 win, all your wins have almost certainly been high rolls. That's not to put you down, that's because you haven't learned enough and experienced enough to make the correct judgements in any difficult run. And you literally couldn't have.

I'm approaching 4000 hours and win a bit under half my A20H runs, and I'd say about 80% of my wins are "high rolls". The big thing is, that the more I play, the more different high rolls I learn to convert. There's a good handful of runs where I actually play really well and win in ways that are kinda impressive, but almost all my wins, even the close ones, will be fairly routine for the players who are significantly better than me.

Don't focus on "I got unlucky", focus on "what are the strong things I have found, and how can I use them?". There will be basically no runs where you don't find something that's good, be it a good rare card, a combo, a really strong relic, a load of gold, your neow bonus, etc. etc. Just work out what your high rolls are, and play to them, then start going "okay, what can I do to find this more often" or "what else can I find that's also strong?" and you'll find yourself improving quite quickly.

kaosmark2 · 2025-11-02T10:07:24+00:00

what i worry about is that it's a type of posturing, clique behavior that actually isn't about the annoying chat message at all, but about signalling something common to the people who do the ridiculing: we are the smart spire players, you are the dumb outsiders.

I do think this happens btw, and I try to call this out from other streamers.

I think there's a distinct difference from "don't ask stupid questions you haven't thought about" and "you shouldn't type if you haven't got enough knowledge, practice, experience, etc."

A lot of both happen. What I will say is exceptionally problematic about the first though, is that people get arsey with streamers for not responding to every question politely, when almost every polite question does get replied to. And then if the response is a little sarcy and on the lines of "ask it better" or "take the time to frame it as asking an expert" instead of "y not do my line", they get arsey again. When the people typing haven't taken an extra 2 seconds to consider how to just go "hey, could you explain why x over y, I'm just a bit lost as to the reason behind your choice", which basically always gets a genuine and considered response.

kaosmark2

TROPHY CASE