Get Low: Roguelike Deckbuilders

Get Low 01.09.23	Enemies in your first 3 combats will have 1 HP
Ryus 01.09.23	aint nothing else as good just grind ascensions ad infinitum
Mort. 01.09.23	yeah theres really nothing as good as slay the spire. ive been hooked for about a year and a few months now. Monster Train comes up as a similar thing quite often but honestly i thought it was easy as hell. Ring of pain is ok although i only tried it briefly on a friends xbox so cant vouch for it much. Inscyrption has had pretty good reviews but honestly you can play slay the spire for months and months and barely scratch the surface of possible runs. just climb the ascensions until you get to a20 heart attempts
Get Low 01.09.23	I don't even know what Ascension is tbh. Right now I'm just trying to beat a run with the Ironclad because he's the only I can't beat it with. I've done done 200 attempts with him and I just can't do it. The other three were easy, especially the poison girl.
Ryus 01.09.23	the easiest deck archetype (for me at least) for ironchad is to gain strength expeditiously. limit break (esp. upgraded), spot weakness and some deck manipulation are the best tools here. if you get a reaper or two then blocking is basically a non-issue. building strength as quickly as possible by using cards like offering is also helpful
trilo 01.09.23	Slay the Spire is the peak of the genre so i don’t think you’ll find anything as good but Monster Train is a great alternative if you’re open to sorta similar games, i’ve been hooked on Slice & Dice. it’s a dice rolling roguelike-ish dungeon crawler. it scratches that same depth of strategy itch of Slay the Spire with a lot of content and game modes. i also love that it has an undo button allowing you to play out/visualize your turn
Get Low 01.09.23	I'll give strength spam a try. I usually either do Firebreathing (I love that card) or Perfect Strike, but I'm pretty Perfect Strike is a bait and it actually sucks.
Get Low 01.09.23	Appreciate the rec but I really don't wanna play anything dice-related. I have Monster Train downloaded and I'm going to give it a try as soon as I win a run with the Ironclad.
Mort. 01.09.23	'I don't even know what Ascension is tbh' its difficulty modifiers that escalate and stack. ascension 20 is the hardest version of the game
Get Low 01.09.23	that sounds terrible i can't even beat the normal game
trilo 01.09.23	eh you'll get better and crush normal mode every time to the point of boredom. are you new to deckbuilders or just the roguelike variety? oh i guess there's Griftlands too but idk i basically think it's Slay the Spire on top, Monster Train a tier below and then everything else lol
Get Low 01.09.23	I'm new to roguelike stuff, I've played many of other standard card games
Mort. 01.09.23	you slowly ease into it. the difference between each ascension is minimal. ascension 1 is literally just the normal game but with more elites spawned. but it all adds up so by the point you get to a20 youre playing a very different game if youre struggling and want to get better i reccomend checking out Jorbs youtube channel. i can also give some tips if you want to get better but it would help to know what youre struggling with
Get Low 01.09.23	I feel like the main thing I'm struggling with is not being being able to build deck synergies quickly enough, and too many times in the beginning fights I get random ass card rewards that have nothing to do with each other. I can't get a synergy going and I usually can't even beat the first boss. The starting deck being to large also always feels like a problem.
Ryus 01.09.23	definitely prioritize card removals when you can. i would say take the best card for the next fight, not for whatever synergy youre trying to build. if your deck is in need of another attack or more block or whatever, take it when offered, even if it doesnt perfectly fit your overall deck type. also i'd say prioritize fights over question marks most of the time, just so you can see as many card rewards as possible.
Get Low 01.09.23	Thanks Ryus. I'm always trying to avoid fights I need to stop doing that lol
WeepingBanana 01.09.23	I go thru pretty intense waves of STS and I’m in the middle of one right now. Hoping this one will get me to a20 with the silent. I’m like a2 with ironclad, a16 with silent, a6 with defect and a0 with the watcher
Mort. 01.09.23	Ryus' advice is exactly what you need. In act 1 im often trying to remove as many strikes as possible while picking up good damage/block cards. Synergy is good but one of the main issues new players encounter is they get locked into this idea of only picking cards that contribute to synergy. thats a very quick and easy way to lose. you dont want to think in term of archetypes (eg with the silent 'poison' or 'shivs' archetypes.) youre goal isnt to build a deck that follows an archetype. the goal is to build a deck that will simply get you through the next floor. plan out what route youre going to take in act 1. you usually want to be hitting at least 1 elite (often 2) and a good amount of standard fights to build up a deck. look at where the rest stops are. nothing wrong with healing (even though theres probably some juicy upgrade you want) and for starting boons, Ironclad has the best starting relic so i never switch it out. the rest are harder to gauge because its all situational (a choice that adds or removes gold entirely depends on the shop placements in the act)
Mort. 01.09.23	i got to a20 on everything on my ps4 and am now redoing it on my laptop after not playing for a few months. its crazy how much practice matters on this game. i used to be able to do a20 on ironclad. now i cant get past a12 im so rusty.
trilo 01.09.23	lol i also go thru intense waves of StS. it flows counter to my day job because i’m basically brain-fried after work but when things are slow the urge kicks in. i kickstarted the board game so i can bring it to the table w/ my board game buddies. lookin forward to that dangit thread got me wantin to fire it up rn i got unfinished ascension business with the watcher
Get Low 01.09.23	Appreciate the advice, guys. I definitely have been hard-locking myself into building archetypes and apparently I need to stop.
Mort. 01.09.23	oh and one last thing, some cards seem really strong but actually suck depending on the situation. take demon form with ironclad. it put your strength up each turn, which is great and can therefore add loads of damage to your deck in a fight. But being 3 energy its rarely actually useful in act 1. When you enter a fight is it actually going to be useful to play it when the enemy will die in say, 5 strikes over 3 turns, and is currently attacking you for 10? no, youre much better off playing 2 defends and a strike. with regards to the silent i see this all the time with catalyst. doubling (or tripling poison) can be great, but when the fight is over in a few turns anyway, its often better to just get immediate damage and block in. basically, people overvalue cards that can contribute to getting 'big number' attacks.
Ryus 01.09.23	am def guilty of taking catalyst even without any poison cards lmao
Get Low 01.09.23	The first run I ever won I blew up Deca and Donut with Catalyst and Corpse Explosion that was a hoot
Mort. 01.09.23	limit break and catalyst are two tempting motherfuckers 'we're one energy, youll find a card to pair us with soon, dont worry about it' then they sit in your deck as a dud til you learn your lesson
Get Low 01.10.23	I was looking into speedruns of the game and there are a bunch of broken ass glitches that make the game a lot easier.
Get Low 01.11.23	I finally completed a run with the Ironclad and I'm done with Slay the Spire for a while. I've been playing some Ring of Pain and it's super chill. I also tried Monster Train and it's goofy. I'll go back to it probably once I win a round of Ring of Pain. There's also a new one out on Steam called Nadir that looks awesome, but I don't currently have a means to play it.
artiswar 01.11.23	try Rogue Book, it scratched the itch for me when I beat Slay The Spire
Get Low 01.11.23	I'd probably pick up Faeria before I tried Rogue Book tbh
artiswar 01.11.23	Faeria is a dumb pay-to-play online game. Rogue book is single player deck-builder like Slay The Spire. I thought that was what you wanted.
Get Low 01.11.23	It is, but the reason I'm not interested in Rogue Book is because you have to actually move around your characters on the map and stuff and I ain't tryna do all that
artiswar 01.11.23	ah I see. Well there's no random battles on the map, and running around looting was actually fun, at least for me. Also the DLC character with the coin mechanic was an absolute blast to play as, like old-school Hearthstone Rogue on steroids. If you plan your turns correctly you can do like 20-card combos, it's pretty rad if you like nerdy shit like that
Get Low 01.11.23	Would be my kind of thing if it wasn't for the map
artiswar 01.11.23	The map in Rogue book is actually way better than the binary path in Slay The Spire where you get like 2 choices of how to progress. In this game you can actually be more strategic about the order you want to do the battles in, or which you want to skip entirely by running around. It's actually pretty sweet
denboy 01.11.23	I can't decide whether I should be proud or ashamed for 100%ing StS (including beating the heart on a20 with all characters, which disappointingly does not give you an achievement) I... Wouldn't mind getting those 300 hours back
denboy 01.11.23	Mort's got you covered. Except he's wrong about Catalyst :P
artiswar 01.11.23	I breezed through the game but for whatever reason it took me like twice as long to beat the heart with the watcher. It was an absolute nightmare, and you don't even get a cool ending or anything. Indie games lol
denboy 01.11.23	"I breezed through the game" you mean the tutorial? :)
artiswar 01.11.23	I didn't beat a20 with anyone, I got bored of the game way before that. I got like maybe a13. The problem is the game stops being fun at that point and you have to high-roll artifacts and synergies unless you're obsessed with the game
ffs 01.11.23	inscryption is cool, probably doesnt quite have the depth of sts but the flavour is way more engrossing and there are a still tons of deck possibilities and hard modes for a good amount of replayability. also, figuring out how to make ridiculously broken op cards is v fun
artiswar 01.11.23	is that the one where you fight with squirrels? should I buy it?
ffs 01.11.23	kinda, you mostly sacrifice squirrels to play bigger/cooler animals. i feel like people who love sts might take issue with some of the extra puzzles and other flavour stuff in inscryption that takes you out of deckbuilding mode (though these arent that frequent) and the story mode is pretty disjointed with a very variable difficulty curve but the replayable hard modes (think you need to beat the story for these) should definitely appeal. its certainly a more imaginitive game for better or worse
denboy 01.11.23	Inscryption is a great game, definitely worth the price. The deck-building part is pretty meh though, it makes up for it in other areas
Get Low 03.12.23	I wish literally any big time company would try their hand at making a roguelike deckbuilder instead of the genre existing solely in the indie world. Like what if Nintendo made a deckbuilder with Mario characters? That would be sick.