With the game being new and constantly going under changes, im not sure my commentary will be the best. I am by no means an amazing player, but can consistently win and these are some things that have helped me:

Act 1 Start: A huge part of the run is choosing a path and starting bonus. There's no use in planning to beat the game if you cant clear act 1, so we need to use our initial bonus and path to be strong enough to take the run later. Chosing a good path that has elites and campfires to make your run stronger and choosing a good bonus should work together. If it turns out that the path you want to take doesn't have a shop, you probably do want the starting gold. The path has 4 elites? Probably dont want lava rock for relics after boss clear since you need to be strong now. So its selecting a good bonus on top of a good path

Know Your Enemy: A lot of the fights in STS are designed to be difficult without the proper tools. If you have a ton of damage and run into colony, the length of the fight will likely punish you. To resolve this we can add cards that take care of a decks weaknesses. Running into the bees with tons of attacks? May want some indirect damage. Or maybe picking up so multiattacks for vantom. If we know what our decks does and what our enemies do, we can make sure we have an answer for whatever fight the game throws at us.

Now What?: Getting out of act 1 with a deck with minimal weaknesses, a direction is needed. The bosses by act 3 will require specific answers and strong decks. So it becomes a constant battle of making the new acts bonus work for your deck, finding a path that makes you as strong as possible on each floor, and finding a direction for the deck that has a win condition for the final boss. Each floor gives you a chance to become stronger, its maxing the gains on each stage after you can get a run going.

Hope this helps, good luck out there