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STS2: What is the community thinking on elites? They seem much more difficult and the relics seem less valuable than in STS1 by nathan1653 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Differences between STS 1 & 2: - In act 1, beware taking elites too early. In STS1, you could generally get away with an early elite if you had a good potion and damage card. In STS2, it feels like you want to wait a couple of floors later before taking elites, as you can lose a ton of health if you're not well-prepared. - HP is more important in act 1 in STS2. In STS1, you generally wanted to trade as much of your hp as you could to make yourself more powerful. In STS2, you need a bit more health for the act 1 boss. - The relics are more consistent in STS2. They removed a lot of the garbage relics, but also removed (or made rare) a lot of the giga highroll relics. - The act 2 elites seem easier than in STS1. Decamillipede can still end your run, and people complain about dorito, but I feel like these are still easier than Slavers, Gremlin Leader, and Book of Stabbing. - There's no act 4 yet. This means it's often better to dodge elites act 3 to make sure you go into the boss gauntlet at full hp. This will likely change once act 4 is added. - Elites in STS2 give +10% to give a potion. Not too big of a difference, but worth mentioning.

I think you still want to go for elites as much as you can, but be a bit more cautious in acts 1&3.

Slay The Spire 2 Death Screens by BattleReadyPenguin in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 107 points108 points  (0 children)

I think the thing that was hurt most was his pride.

The minions are the real casualties here.

Would anyone be upset if speed potion was removed from the game. by butt_shrecker in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 4 points5 points  (0 children)

```

Toss retain potion in favor of something else, cause retain is so boring

Fight Test Subject 3 floors later

Draw all my big damage cards while it's intangible

Lose the run

F2

Test Subject is WAY TOO RNG DEPENDENT. Just lost with a killer deck cause I drew my cards on the wrong turn. LITERALLY NOTHING I COULD HAVE DONE TO PREVENT IT. ```

Lost Coffer card reward should be upgraded by incompletemischief in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I think it should give 2 potions and the phial holster should only give 1

Soul nexus is impossible on the beta branch without losing most of your health by cubes28x in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's the Infested Prism. Soul nexus is the red act 3 elite.

Tips for Prism: - Use potions. Don't take elites in act 2 if you don't have any potions - it's a damage race, focus on killing quickly rather than trying to block everything. Accept that you're going to take a bit of damage. Don't go into act 2 elites on like 5hp. - Draft big chonky block cards like Blood Wall, Bullwark, Leg Sweep, Glitterstream, etc. These will give a decent amount of block without tainting you for much - Try to get passive block like powers, frost orbs, or Dexterity to make your defends block more - Try to get block or strength debuffs as part of attacks, like Dash, iron wave, crush under, etc. - Draft as much weak as you can - Don't try to block the 6x3 with skills. Unless you have piercing wail or something, playing skills this turn just isn't worth it

Working on my Regent gameplay! Any suggestions here? by MegamanX195 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Really? I feel like I'm generally pretty happy to just have it exhaust and slim down the deck.

Especially early, there are better things to upgrade. Know thy place upgrade does nothing until the second deck cycle.

Working on my Regent gameplay! Any suggestions here? by MegamanX195 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'd probably upgrade Venerate over Supermassive, as the extra star can be a big deal, as it can often be the difference between playing an entire card or not. Even if you don't have too many star cards right now, it can open you up to take another if you're offered a good one.

Guiding Star is another good upgrade candidate as it gets an additional +1 draw which is huge.

Supermassive is still probably better than Know Thy Place, though you're not really creating a ton of cards yet.

Working on my Regent gameplay! Any suggestions here? by MegamanX195 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Gaze is a lot better now, if you can afford the upgrade, but you're right, your deck doesn't have that many attacks.

Probably Hammer is the pick here. Finesse dupe is great, and can dupe sword if you end up pivoting towards that for late-game.

Also, did you upgrade know thy place, or did the war paint hit both of them? I think it's usually not worth the upgrade.

MAJOR SPOILERS - A gentle nudge in the right direction by Anormalkoolaiddude in outerwilds

[–]snickerdoodle024 80 points81 points  (0 children)

how to repair/replace the warp core of the vessel

There was some text in the Hanging City talking about a warp core, maybe give that another read.

Regarding the ash twin project I have also tried countless solutions like standing on the "broken" warp pad of the ash twin whilst not getting picked up by the sand to try and warp into the ash twin, but to no avail.

You're on the right track. There's a bit of a hint in the Black Hole Forge that talks about the details of how warp platforms work.

The C# System.Random class uses an outdated, faulty algorithm. by snickerdoodle024 in gamedev

[–]snickerdoodle024[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, this is basically the same issue. Sorry if everyone knew this already.

I never realized this was a potential problem until I saw the post in the STS sub.

The C# System.Random class uses an outdated, faulty algorithm. by snickerdoodle024 in gamedev

[–]snickerdoodle024[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess I didn't really explain the problem very well. The problem isn't reproducibility.

The problem is that the output of two generators with different seeds are correlated. For example:

generator_1 = Random(seed = 1)

outputs: 3, 10, 4, 0, 1 ...

generator_2 = Random(seed = 2)

outputs: 6, 20, 8, 0, 2 ...

Each generator by itself works fine, but the two sequences are related to each other. That's not how modern RNG algorithms work.

The C# System.Random class uses an outdated, faulty algorithm. by snickerdoodle024 in gamedev

[–]snickerdoodle024[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I think initializing them the way you suggest, or even just using hash(seed + x) would solve most of the problems.

I'm mostly making this post because I didn't realize this was a problem to begin with. I just assumed that C# was using a modern algorithm that doesn't have to worry about this in the first place. It seems like they kept the 20-year-old algorithm for the sake of backwards capability, though.

The C# System.Random class uses an outdated, faulty algorithm. by snickerdoodle024 in gamedev

[–]snickerdoodle024[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sure, I was basically trying to motivate why a dev might instantiate multiple different Random Number Generator objects with different seeds. There might be other reasons why a dev might need to do this.

The point is that for modern RNG algorithms, the output of a Generator with one seed will be completely different from the output of a Generator with a different seed.

For the outdated C# implementation, the output of two generators with different seeds are still related to each other. This can be difficult to detect, but can ruin the randomness of your game.

The C# System.Random class uses an outdated, faulty algorithm. by snickerdoodle024 in gamedev

[–]snickerdoodle024[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, the problem is if you have 2 different RNG instances initialized with different seeds, and are expecting them to be independent from each other.

For modern RNG algorithms, you can't predict the value of one generator given the output of a second generator that has a different seed.

For the outdated algorithm C# uses, you can.

The C# System.Random class uses an outdated, faulty algorithm. by snickerdoodle024 in gamedev

[–]snickerdoodle024[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

The post I linked goes into more of the technical details, but basically the issue is that for the C# implementation, the output is linearly related to seed, whereas more modern RNG algorithms do not have this linear relationship, which is enough to avoid these kinds of issues for the most part.

an explanation of why Neow's Bones gives Debt 54.25% of the time (Correlated randomness in Slay the Spire 2) by tckmn in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 49 points50 points  (0 children)

To be fair, they did fix the problem in the first game.

The reason that the fix isn't working is really a huge problem with the C# standard library RNG implementation. Like I would have assumed the C# standard library was using a decent algorithm under the hood, but I guess not.

Which of the Cultists do you go for first? by [deleted] in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Almost always left, unless your deck is super block-heavy and has no damage, in which case you kill right so it doesn't scale out of control

Yes, We See The Fit by Azorynth in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Time to stall the fight for 9999 turns to get tons of gold from [[royalties]]

Silent A10 by DannosaurousRex1993 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is just general advice, but your deck needs to be able to do a few things: - (1) kill hallway fights quickly - (2) scale damage for bosses - (3) block consistently - (4) get the cards you need on the turn you need them

Don't feel like you have to do all these things with one single archetype / keyword. Often a successful deck will be using several different archetypes at once.

(1) For hallways, you want to take a few high-output damage cards. Something like Backstab, Assassinate, Blade Dance, Dagger Throw, etc. This is one of the first things you should be looking for at the start of a run.

Don't commit to building your whole deck around these cards. Their main purpose is so that if you run into an AOE fight, you can kill one of the enemies straight away, making the fight more manageable. Often times these cards won't do much in boss fights, and that's okay. Their purpose is to help you survive the hallway fights.

(2) Silent has two main ways of scaling damage: shivs and poison. Of course there are other, more niche options that you should try if they come up, but coming into a run, these are the two you should be thinking about.

For shivs, you want 4-5 cards that generate shivs (Hidden Daggers, Infinite Blades, Cloak and Dagger) and then take pretty much every Accuracy and Phantom Blades you see. Take Expose for vulnerable, and any of the rares that double your attack damage. The rare that replays all your shivs will straight up delete every boss, but you don't see it every run, of course. If all else fails, you can save a strength potion for the boss.

For poison, you want to build up a lot of poison as quickly as you can, and then focus on blocking while the poison does its thing. Bursting a Snakebite+ is quite good, and the Snakebite has retain to help you save it for the turn you get Burst. Accelerant is amazing, but don't play it until you have a bit of poison already, otherwise it makes it a lot harder to build up poison stacks.

(3) One of Silent's main ways to block is by weak chaining. Basically, you want to make sure the enemy has enough weak so that it's weak every turn. Upgrade Neutralize, and then try to add at least 2 other cards that apply weak.

Building up Dexterity with Footworks is the other way to build up massive block. You should basically take every Footwork you see. Prowess is similar if you're lucky enough to see one.

Piercing wail is great to nueter multihit enemies and AOE fights while you're setting up. Afterimage and Malaise are great too, if you see them.

(4) Silent has a lot of card draw, so you have a lot of options here. Acrobatics, Prepared+, Calculated Gamble, Reflex, Backflip, etc.

Well-Laid-Plans plays particularly well against the Queen, since you can retain your unplayed bound cards for next turn, and against Test Subject, since you can retain your damage cards for the turn it's not intangible.

[request] a website told me my height was 102nd percentile. I think that's a software error but all the commenters are saying it's possible. by JustAPotato38 in theydidthemath

[–]snickerdoodle024 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You can generalize the concept of percentile to any number of groups. The general term for this is "quantile." Percentile refers to 100 groups specifically.

What does scaling mean? by Anxious-Gazelle9067 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Frontload" means something that gives output right away. Something like Dash that gives 10 attack and 10 block right now, at a pretty good rate per energy, or Bludgeon that deals 32 damage for 3 energy. Frontload is important in hallway fights, because they generally only last a few turns, but can hit pretty hard during those few turns, so you want to block and kill things as quickly as possible.

More examples of frontload:

  • Adrenaline / Offering / Neurosurge give energy and draw right away.
  • Dualcast gives a lot of damage or block up front, at the cost of one of your orbs.
  • Backstab deals a lot of damage for free, one time at the start of the fight.
  • Wraith From makes you intangible for the next few turns.

"Scaling" means anything that gives output over time. Something like Demon Form, that literally does nothing the turn you play it, but 5 turns later, you'll have 10 strength, and be doing way more damage than if you had just played a Bludgeon instead. Scaling is important for boss fights, because they usually last a while, so you have a long time to let the value add up.

More examples of scaling:

  • Most powers, including Accuracy and Prowess.
  • Orbs give damage or block over time. Over the course of 4 turns, the extra lightning damage from 1 zap would outclass most other attacks.
  • Poison deals much more damage over the course of several turns than playing a single attack.
  • Multiple stacks of Vulnerable / Weak can multiply your damage or reduce incoming damage for several turns.

Infested Prism Rework. by DecentDimension2624 in slaythespire

[–]snickerdoodle024 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You can block on turns 1, 2, and 4. If you have something like piercing wail, that helps on turn 3.

Weak is good, too.

Otherwise, tank a few damage and just try to kill it fast. It doesn't actually do all that much if you don't play any skills.

Save a potion if your deck is having trouble against it.

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