site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2309 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 6, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

0
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Video Game Thread!

Anyone playing Slay The Spire 2? :D

I'm a filthy noob at this type of game but I'm having fun with it. I abandoned my first run on the second map after realizing I picked what was by far the worst bonus at the start of that map.

Playing my second run I'm using an unlocked character called The Silent. My max hp increases by 5 ever time I rest (a bonus).

Not sure if I should seek out the Elite enemies on the map...?

Also - I'm getting the sense that a smaller deck with stronger cards is better because the deck keeps getting recycled over an over in combat. So should I not pick the normal grey 'add a card to your deck' option at the end of battles?

Yes, I've beaten A20 with all 4 characters and put hundreds of hours in StS. I was hyped for StS2, and I'm loving it so far. Great game, I'm trying to determine how much of a sea change it is, versus Slay the Spire: The Second Time Through. I keep comparing it to pokemon generations. Pokemon Gold is the same game as Pokemon Red, almost entirely, but more. That's what makes it great. This is more different than that, certainly.

Also - I'm getting the sense that a smaller deck with stronger cards is better because the deck keeps getting recycled over an over in combat. So should I not pick the normal grey 'add a card to your deck' option at the end of battles?

This is the first thing you learn in deckbuilding games (see: Dominion). Skipping is better than adding much of the time. Removing is so good, they can't let you do it too often. An ideal deck is the same 5 cards drawn and played every turn (after setting up powers, and exhausting, you can do this with many decks).

So no, don't pick every card. Start skipping at the end of act 1 when your deck is good enough to beat the act 1 boss. You can start seeing upgrade card rewards starting in act 2, and the rarity also improves.

Got it! I've taken to removing un-upgraded strikes/defends on most chances I get. And I'm skipping some mediocre card rewards.

I've got a decent Ironclad run going right now. Just reached act 3 and picked up The Distinguished Cape. :) He's got Barricade+ and Impervious. Those two are pretty good cards.

When I've checked youtube vids of boss fights though, they seem to have conjured up way better decks than anything I've ever had. I'll probably lose to the act 3 end boss for the third time, if I even reach it. But I discovered that there are only 3 acts in the EA, so I've been very close to beating a run.

Got any more solid advice you can spare for a newbie? I've searched for guides but there's little solid info out so far, mostly just clickbaity bloated low-effort videos and few good websites with info for the sequel specifically.

Yes, burn the strikes on everyone, especially defect. Those remove bonuses at the beginning are extra good, as are transforms. Defect especially, not sure about the two new characters. Silent has a bigger starting deck, but the most innate draw, so it balances, but removals are not as good for her. Don't neglect the cost of drawing the cost of drawing the card. You get 5 draw and 3 energy each turn, and every card costs 1 draw. The more cards you add, the longer it takes to cycle your deck to get to the good cards.

In general, you want to consider your immediate future: how do I survive the next fight, how do I beat the upcoming Elite for gold and a relic, how do I beat the Act Boss. That means cards in deck, relics, current HP, and potions. Potions are a great way to get through elite fights and scale your deck.

Try to take 0 damage each round (unless Ironclad), especially early. You will take damage, but you need to have enough HP to get through the Act and beat the boss. Spending HP in fights costs you upgrades if you Rest instead of Smith. You get healed at the start of each Act, so use that HP to get rewards. It's a resource, so spend it, but spend it wisely.

The first few rewards, you simply want to improve your deck. You need damage early, so add it. You can add ~5 cards in Act 1 without worrying too much, but after that you want to start being picky about adding unupgraded cards and synergy you don't have yet. Find a way to deal single target damage, clear multiple opponents, and block.

Don't add cards that require cards you don't have. Really, this is the toughest one, and you can start to relax it as your build comes online and you accumulate relics, but adding dead draws is the surest way to slow down a deck.

Plan your moves. Consider your relics. Look at your draw pile. Read the text of that tiny little icon on the enemy. Do the math on block. Use your potions.

For the characters specifically:

Ironclad has a lot of vulnerable and strength, which multiply. Bash is a decent early upgrade for this reason. Don't be afraid to draw down your HP.

Silent has the biggest starting deck. Neutralize upgrade is great for the second round of weak.

Defect loves removes and loves upgrades. Zap upgrade early is critical, Doublecast upgrade is nice to have, too. You want to be mindful of where you're getting damage, and where you're getting block. Defect has great cards for both, but your orbs can't do everything all the time.

I don't know much about the two new ones. Regent's sword seems like a trap. Necrobinder seems weak overall. None of their starting cards look like good upgrades to me.

I appreciate you taking the time. :)

It seems to me now that one of the essential things to get a character that can finish a run is to put together some kind of synergy; to plan out a deck as soon as you've got a few rewards because they point you in some direction(s). This is where a newbie has little or no knowledge to feed on to put together that plan. If I knew a few strong builds for the character by heart I could easily decide on a path from an early point and build the deck for synergy.

One related issue I seem to run into is that I try to be an all-rounder with both decent defense and decent attack. Ending up with not having massive attacks and not having massive blocks to survive the most difficult act 2 bosses/act 3 bosses.

I will give Defect another go in the coming days. I failed early when I tried him. The zapping/dual-casting is pretty cool though. Regent seems more hit-or-miss than any other character. But I like his style. I reached the act 3 boss with him. Necrobinder's aesthetic is kinda cool too. I see people getting very strong Silents but she's not my cup of tea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I think I will stop taking the Greed card (+333 gold for an eternal curse that can't be removed at the shop). It makes the run more reliant on RNG; if you don't see something good to spend that gold on in the first shop, you've clogged your deck for no reason. I found a decent guide/rating system to the Ancient rewards here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3680984107 )

I've played a couple of hours and have finished a run with all the characters.

I wish I could say that the game was a clear step up in every way from the first one but as it currently stands it isn't (but it still seems to be a great game!).

First off, there are plenty of things that are better. Animations, character models, relic art, background art, event art, number of character, sound design, act variations etc.

There is a lot of stuff here that is very good and with some refinement will likely be clearly superior to sts.

However, two fairly important (to me) areas are significantly worse: Music and card art.

It's easy to see how things went wrong with the card art because if you view the cards one on one in their enlarged state the new art is superior both in detail and quality. The issue however is that that isn't how you interact with the art 99% of the time. 99% of the time you're looking at the small thumbnails on your hand, and in that case the art is worse than the old, fairly simplistic art of the original because it becomes cluttered and hard to read at a glance. This is unfortunate but perhaps not a major issue as you get used to the cards.

The second and to me pretty major issue is the massive downgrade in the quality of the music. Wtf happened here? Is it a placeholder? The new variation of the main theme is perfectly fine but most of the rest is pretty ass.

Whatever, I guess I can turn the music off but these are such strange things to fumble imo.

Damn, you're quick. So the game is kinda short? If you can run through it in like 30 minutes if you know what you are doing.''

I agree on the music. It's not inspiring or catchy. I think the card art is ok. I didn't play the first game but I've looked at screenshots and the art in 2 is a step in the right direction, though still a bit too 'flat' for my liking, perhaps.

Btw, which of these start-of-map-rewards would you recommend? 'whenever you play 2 or fewer cards, take half damage' vs 'add apotheosis to deck (upgrade all cards for rest of combat) vs 'fill all empty potion slots with random shit at start of combat'?

I didn't mean literally 2 hours, I've played for like 6 hours and I played the first game almost 1000 hours so it was pretty easy to get the hang of things and winning on ascension 0 isn't that hard even when you don't know what the enemies do and what cards there are. Ascension 0 is in some ways the tutorial.

I think the card art is ok. I didn't play the first game but I've looked at screenshots and the art in 2 is a step in the right direction, though still a bit too 'flat' for my liking, perhaps.

I think the art is fine, it's the art design that is lacking in the second game. The first game had a much more clever art design that it perhaps first appears, with rules about color coding for different types of cards, the directions things face, contrast between foreground and background. The art was designed for use in the actual game as opposed to art for it's own sake and I imagine they thought a great deal about it. In the second game it feels like they've handed this off to the artist to a much greater degree, only that person doesn't understand the game design as well as the founders.

Btw, which of these start-of-map-rewards would you recommend? 'whenever you play 2 or fewer cards, take half damage' vs 'add apotheosis to deck (upgrade all cards for rest of combat) vs 'fill all empty potion slots with random shit at start of combat'?

It depends. If you have the potion belt then the potion thing is incredibly strong. Apotheosis is only valuable if you have a lot of un-upgraded cards which you might not in act 3 (which I assume this is?). The play 2 or fewer cards is too situational to recommend. I don't think it's a good idea generally, you should already have your block strategy worked out.

If you want to learn more about the game and you like watching streams, I'd recommend Baalorlord. He is one of the best players, friendly and goes into detail of pretty much all his decisions so even newbies can follow along.

Visual clarity is one of the most key aspects of creating graphics for games, so I get you.

I died at the end of act 3 with The Regent, despite having a pretty good setup, far better than on my previous runs. The boss was called Queen, and she had a very strong 200 hp summon who dealt 12x3 damage quite often. And the boss had 400 hp and kept "binding" my cards.. I had no chance to win, it seemed. Feeling a bit demoralized now. :')

Baalorlord seems ok!

Also - I'm getting the sense that a smaller deck with stronger cards is better because the deck keeps getting recycled over an over in combat.

That is generally true in deck building games, though IDK about StS specifically. Usually, having a small deck means you can have just a handful of high powered cards that you get to keep drawing over and over. It's not the only strategy, but it's often a good one.

There is a reason that MtG imposes minimum deck sized in various formats, but generally not maximum deck sizes (beyond the practical restriction that you have to be able to physically shuffle your deck). Even without turn-one combos defaulting the win to whoever goes first, it would enable efficient, hyper linear decks to an extremely boring degree.

Yeah, I never really understood that rule (being extremely unfamiliar with Magic)... until I started to play Dominion a bunch. Then it made sense to me.

The first time I won a game of the first part was with a huge deck and a card that depended on the deck size. I remember that because it coincided with the "huge d[i]ck energy" meme and I found that funny. Other than that, keep it slim.

Not sure if I should seek out the Elite enemies on the map...?

You've gotta.

I haven't played 2 yet, but in StS1 (and Inscryption, Astrea, etc.) the long-term benefits of high-power fights are nearly required to beat the end bosses. If you fight two elites per Act, you'll reach the end boss with six (non-boss) relics. If you fight four, you'll have twelve. If you play it safe, then you'll be underpowered by the end, and almost certainly lose.

Got it! Seems like fighting Elites is better economics, considering that the regular enemies can hit really hard and produce difficult fights anyway.

Played 8 runs already, enjoying all the weirdness of the enemies and events.

Re strategy: It does make sense to skip card rewards, especially as you get later in the run and have a stronger deck. You want to take a card if it raises the average strength of cards in your deck (or if you need it so you can scale higher in the fight for powers).

Alright. You can actually just press Skip after viewing what cards are available, if none of them improve your deck. :)

I'm having better luck with my 4th run. I've been served some very good cards in some of my draws. Gonna try to make this a good run. Playing The Regent. The reward I picked at the start of floor 2 let me throw out 5 picked cards and get one of them back in upgraded form after each of the next 5 combats. I now have almost nothing but green + cards in my deck. :D

Strangely, if you click Save and Quit and later Continue, it will put you back in at your last decision to re-do it. Weird.

This one is a "feature" that aows you to undo misclicks. I really just wish there was an Undo button for misclicks in the base game.

StS2 is on my list, but not buying it yet because I just recently got Esoteric Ebb (Disco Elysium-esque "chat with your head while the plot makes fun of politics" but in a fantasy setting) and Mewgenics (turn-based XCOM/Into the Breach-like tactics, but you control ugly cats and have to breed more of them between runs), and nowhere near done with those.

In StS, having a thin deck is generally very strong for the reasons you stated. You still want to add cards to your deck at the start because the starting cards are subpar (all of my advice is based on the first game but should hold for the second if they didn't change the formula completely). Just make sure that your build is somewhat coherent.

Fighting elites is desirable when possible because (in StS1) they give a bonus relic.

The game is making me feel dumber than I am. I died on act 2 with The Silent, and then again on floor 2 with The Regent.

I hunted some elites with the latter and then died to one of them just prior to the boss.

I'm starting to think that mapping a good route from the first choice on the map is essential.

I just run out of hp at some point and have no healing potions or the like.

*Act, not floor.

Do you mean on floor 2 or act 2? It's pretty impressive to die to floor 2.

Oh, perhaps I used the wrong terms. I meant, the part after you beat the first end boss, the next map! So tower 2 or act 2 I guess. Assuming that it is each combat that is called a 'floor'?

Yeah

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats