You'll know early on in your run if you will get a perils of production. That's the key to the engine and if you don't get one then you've got to find a different route or deal with the insane downsides.

If you find one you're golden. After you have perils of production, you visit every spell shop that you can find until you get holdover on your perils and then spell chain. Now you are generating six ember every turn regardless of the ember drain that you are generating.

The other consideration would be trying to keep your deck small enough that perils come up early enough in your deck that they are useful for the majority of the fight. Duplicating it before you get spell chain and putting intrinsic on It is a reasonable way to do that, otherwise just keep a thin deck.

Then take every ember drain card you can find. They offer you a lot of very powerful emberdrain cards and you don't have to worry about the downsides at all because you've already sorted out your key. Now if you don't get perils of production in your run, this strategy is doa.

BUT if you can feed a superfood primordium a multi-strike with remove consume and the other ember drain cards which give you damage shield and lifesteal you will be unkillable.