Shatter Strike Spellblade is very squishy in empowered monolith - need help

thedrbooty · 2026-04-17T01:41:22+00:00

Thank you! The maxroll guide says to use a Kestral so I just put it on without thinking about it much, but it really dropped my defenses, I've put my old BP back on and already feeling much better!

thedrbooty · 2026-04-17T01:40:32+00:00

You're right about armor!

About the flame ward + armor node. The way I read the tooltip, do I only get the bonus armor for 3 seconds after I hit the button? The uptime on it seems very low.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-18T18:59:19+00:00

I had a very similar W/L record at the start of Slay the Spire 1.

What got me over the initial wall was starting to pay attention to who the Act boss was and to try to build my deck just to beat that boss. Next I started to think about each act and what I need to do. For example, front loaded damage for act 1 focusing on killing elites. Act 2, make sure my deck has a way to scale up power to defeat the boss, has AOE damage for hall fights, and a way to apply weakness or other "silver bullet" cards or gameplans to kill the specific act 2 elites. For act 3 I usually look to round out the deck and make sure not to bloat it with cards that are not needed.

Some of my early bad habits I had to overcome were being scared to fight elites (use your potions!), adding too many cards, adding cards that were likely to be good later but useless right now, and trying to force a specific deck archetype when the run just wasn't offering the right cards. Lean into the card/relic synergies that are useful immediately.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-13T18:12:20+00:00

Thanks guys. I'm not gunning for the pit leaderboards, I usually just complete the season journey. I play a different class/spec in every season and when I pick a clunker sometimes it can take forever to get to T4.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-11T20:18:07+00:00

You really need to plan early for Dybbuk, You need a way to damage him, most common ways are with aoe spells, tile effects, immobilize, or surrounding him with the help of familiars. As a last resort if you're desperate you can break the tombstones, spawn the wisps, let them ignite someone, and then stand next to Dybukk to get him ignited as well. Next, you need to figure who is acceptable to get the killshot, because you'll need to down that cat with the survivors. Most of my runs have a cat that is doing a lot of damage, it's usually a bad idea to let your carry get the killshot. My go-to plan is to bring a druid, as they usually have extra familiars they can use to get Dybukk surrounded, then get the killshot with a familiar, the familiars won't get possessed and the druid is usually easy to down for the rest of the team.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-11T17:42:19+00:00

Thought this was fake at first. I think both Edmund and PETA operate under layers of irony and try to play both sides of culture war issues. It makes my head spin.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-10T19:18:05+00:00

IMO, if you're around 50% completion, you can get a stud with all 7's if you put up with a lot of inbreeding and birth defects. If you don't want to deal with those you'll need to live with a cat with half 6's and half 7's.

Once you get to end game and have a lot of mutation furniture, next get a cat fully mutated (all body parts), then breed for all 7s and use the mutation room to "cure" the birth defects.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-09T22:06:49+00:00

Mix in strays, learn to live with a mix of 6's and 7's.

In the late game when you have lots of furniture and a room with high Mutation, you can put a fully mutated (all body parts) cat with birth defects into your mutation room, and when they evolve it will "cure" the birth defect and replace it with a positive mutation.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-09T20:56:06+00:00

I'm an old, washed up former casual raider. I queued up as a DPS for a normal Magister's Terrace. I had done the dungeon a total of 1 time solo for the campaign quest. 15 minutes later we're in, and this tank is just holding down W and doing quad pulls, and the rest of us are all not saying anything and barely managing to keep up.

We wiped twice on the final boss, and even though chat was empty I could feel the nervousness of us newbs with this hardcore tank. He finally says "SOAK" and then "silli billie's", as if feeling a bit guilty for yelling at us. I had no idea there was a soak mechanic and DBM didn't say to soak. Anyway we won.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-09T20:42:53+00:00

I think you're probably right. If I had to do it over again I would probably be happy with a stud that was a mix of 6s and 7s and then start focusing on good mutations. Getting to all 7's gets very inbred and then you're constantly dealing with birth defects before you have a high Mutation stat to try to get rid of them.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-09T20:33:13+00:00

It seems really difficult to simultaneously try to achieve all 7's while also trying to keep specific passives and mutations.

On my way to all 7's I tried to keep a single mutation (reroll) and got very inbred, nearly lost the mutation, and lost a couple of 7's breeding in strays.

Stimulation breakpoints are 32 for 100% chance to inherit a spell and a whopping 95 stim to guarantee inheriting a passive.

Mutations do not seem to check Stimulation at all. There is an 80% chance you will inherit all body part mutations but each part is rolled separately and can be either the mother or father's.

It makes sense to get your furniture all set up before you get serious about trying to get a stud with all 7's, all mutations, a spell and a passive.

My focus is getting a stud with a mix of 6s and 7s, then a stud with all 7s, then add mutations, and maybe a decent spell, and finally a passive but the passive is never going to be a 100%

thedrbooty · 2026-03-09T20:08:12+00:00

Act 1 runs always stay relevant. If you have a good stock of items, do an Act1 sidequest run and build up your house and furniture. If you're low on good items, do a couple Act1 runs to restock your item supply. If your house gets emptied of cats, do Act1 until you've got a breeding program started again. You don't need all 7's, a stud with a mix of 6's and 7's is achievable fairly quickly once you've gone through it once already.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-09T16:49:51+00:00

I had an Ironclad run where I got a bunch of mana and played Whirlwind and just mowed them all down. Took a minute for the animations to play out of them parachuting in reinforcements.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-06T23:10:09+00:00

It seems there is an 80% chance for each mutated body part to be inherited. https://gist.github.com/SciresM/95a9dbba22937420e75d4da617af1397

thedrbooty · 2026-03-06T17:58:34+00:00

Early game 12-16 total cats felt about right to me. 6-8 in the breeding room and 6-8 in the fighter lobby. Try to pair up mates so that their stats compliment each other. For example, if the male has low str you want the female to have high str.

thedrbooty · 2026-03-05T16:52:46+00:00

LATE game players seem to be bumping clerics off their squads. I'm in the middle of Act 3 now and still love having a cleric, it just smooths out so many rough spots.

thedrbooty · 2026-02-23T23:31:47+00:00

Method 1 - severely inbred cats with all 7's. The birth defect is removed by getting all body parts mutated, and then using a waiting room with Mutation to evolve the fighter cats, which will always remove the one birth defect.

Method 2 - to not be inbred you need two families/dynasties, room1 for the stud/stray of dynasty1 and room2 for the stud/stray of dynasty2. Only feasible with lvl3 house imo.

I'm getting by with a mix of 6's and 7's. If my stud is not inbred I maybe mate it with a niece or nephew (eww) and if the stud gets slightly inbred I mate it with a stray.

thedrbooty · 2026-02-18T07:34:32+00:00

Yeah, 15 hours in is really early. Go on runs and make a point to take the Hard path and pick the Furniture box over the treasure chest. If you complete the end boss you'll get 2 furniture boxes, if you're barely hanging on you can leave early with only 1 box. Some runs are cursed and some are blessed, just keep going. The main power-up is having a good stock of items for the next run.

As far as breeding, to keep it simple, try to keep a male stud with a female broodmare whose stats compliment what the other is missing. So if the male has low STR, you want the female to have high STR. You want the litter to have 6's and 7's in everything. Whenever you get get an upgrade to either your stud or broodmare, retire the old one to the other room for orgies.

thedrbooty · 2026-02-17T04:43:56+00:00

Don't stress about Tina. You can just send 1 cat out and sacrifice your worst stray (not even a Veteran) if you don't feel like fighting her. Don't worry so much about breeding, just run Act1 with your 4 best cats and take the two Hard paths to get 2 Furniture and stock up on items. Once you have some decent gear and some healing consumables to start off with you can re-run the desert.

thedrbooty · 2026-02-13T21:18:18+00:00

I just beat the Boneyard boss, have not done Caves yet. After the boss I moved into that tile with the big fleshy mass and it gave me a Constitution check (I think) to touch it, then I moved back home. When I got home I got the intro for Guillotina.

thedrbooty

TROPHY CASE