user SpadeWolfo is excited to almost beat Act 3 again, only to remember the boss they are about to face.

A newbie question for all you scholars out there. As a fledgeling barely on A10 who never dared to do a Heart run I am curious which is harder in your opinion: An A0 Heart run or an A20 No Heart run?

So I'm trying to refind a mod I used up until like a month ago and now I've lost it. The one thing I remember most vividly was a new start game option that made Neow give you an option between 4 custom "blights" that would give buffs. I also think there was a like speedrun mode or something? I never interacted with it. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Like the title said this is my first time ever having a glitch playing slay the spire. Ive on mobile and have heard its more glitchy than other version. If you clicked on the card you could barely see the strike picture and the only thing i could see was the 5 in red because of the debuff

Other than Neows Lament, Act 1 boss relic and a shop relic my first 6 relics were rares.

Hey, newbie here. I’ve won once each with the other three characters and working now on the Watcher. Usually Eruption is the first card I upgrade (not sure if that’s best practice) but I’m wondering if I start building a Mantra/Divinity deck does it make sense to eventually remove it?

I'm staring at my act 1 boss rewards after having boss swapped and wondering to myself exactly how having done so affects the relative value of "offering".

It seems to me that without burning blood, I'd have to rest like every 3/4 uses of the card in order to sustain it without another form of healing, which feels untenable.

What do you guys think?

Seems I've unfortunately been robbed of my A6 victory with ironclad. It's in the run history as my last run but I cannot choose to play A7 regardless.

Read on other threads it was a mobile issue and that it happens if you quit before pressing continue after winning, which is what I did so this is a sort of PSA reminder to not do that.

Preface: Hi! I'm a long term slay the spire player. I've got about 300 hours under my belt on my current save. I have some time on my old laptop in early access, but since I was like 16 at the time and I took a pretty substantial break, I only really count my currents save. I started playing all the way back in 2017, after my family stopped playing dominion with me (they didn't like that I kept making "draw my whole deck every turn" combos). I fell in love with STS right away, and I can't stop recruiting people to this game. When I recruit people to our cult (CAW CAW) tell my friends to play this game, I always say something to the effect of

It's the best balanced game I've ever played! When you start, winning feels impossible; then, you get kind of good, and it feels effortless to win at the lowest difficulty, but the highest difficulty feels impossible. Then, for top players, super consistent winstreaks are possible at the highest level. You can always tweak it to be exactly the difficulty you want, and it never stops being an engaging challenge.

The claim in there -- that winning at the lowest difficulty is effortless -- is something I've never tested before! So, I started a rotating A0H run. I was finishing up right around when Xecnar hit his 24 streak, and that felt like a nice point to stop. Afterwards, I decided to do 24 runs against the A20 heart, just to see how everything compared. Let's start with A20, to contextualize how I am at this game; but note I did these runs after A0H.

A20H: Results and thoughts

Wins: 8/24 (33%)

Ironclad: 4/6
Silent: 1/6
Defect: 1/6
Watcher: 2/6

Average winning run: 59 mins, 30 cards in deck.

Death breakdown: 2 against the corrupt heart, 1 against shield and spear, 2 against act three bosses, 1 against act three elite, 2 against act two bosses, 3 against act two elites, 2 against act two hallways, 3 against act one elites

Thoughts: This was an atrocious silent record for me, but quite the highroll on Ironclad, and it was a straight miracle I won with defect.. Of my last 15 silent runs (including these 6), I think I've won 6 or 7. Really notably, two of my silent runs during this challenge died to the heart, and both of them could be savescummed into a win. I think that my micro got substantially worse after A0, hence the losses. There was also one silent run where I didn't play block cards I had in hand... since I forgot to check enemy intents against nemesis.

Notably, 8/11 runs that made it to act 4 won; and 2 of those could be turned into a win with savescumming, which means every single run that made it to the heart was winnable there. I think I tend to play greedy earlier on, and build decks that are very heart-focused, while also neglecting mirco in hallway fights that makes me take chip damage that really adds up. I think my deckbuilding is much stronger than my micro.

The defect run that won was a miracle. I usually struggle to win 1 in 10 games with defect, and still don't really understand the character. The run wasn't even that strong, I just felt like I got pieces that made sense.

I'm already back to playing silent runs to redeem this; hopefully I can go 4/10. I'm still so excited to play more games, although I don't think I'll do rotating very often; constantly changing character was hard. My next task is to play 10 silent runs, and I'm aiming to win at least 6 -- with careful micro and slow play, I think it'll be doable. I'm finding myself excited to do this, and this has gotten me more into STS than I've been in a few years.

A0H: Results and thoughts

24/24 wins. not even close. Average win: 49 mins, 27 cards in deck.

I felt like most of these runs were won by the end of act 1. By about 1/3 of the way through the challenge, I was extremely bored, since I felt like everything was on autopilot, and I started dicking around; thousand cuts as my only source of scaling damage? sure! grand finale speculatively? why not. Transform into an early deva form, and built my whole deck around it? ehhhh, no harm done! Actually, that was the only run that was mildly close, since I bottom decked Deva Form, and really struggled to survive until I drew it. Took some incredibly clever + careful micro by my usual standards, and was my favourite part of the run. I had found myself dreading every run up to that point, which was really unfortunate since I love this game.

I felt like my heuristics for card picking were good enough that I could even speculatively take trash cards, then still build a deck so strong it piloted itself with nearly perfect accuracy. I think I could probably go to 100 wins without trouble; none of these felt like they were an issue. I only slowed down to think about micro once.

Closing thoughts

I lose at a lot at A20. Much more fun than A0, 10/10 can't wait to spend another 300 hours.

EDIT: Removed calling myself aggressively mediocre since people seem to disagree, and that's not the point.

I don't get to sit down and play often. I'm normally pre occupied. However I am going for the "win onle using one relic" and for the life of me I cannot stop accidently taking relics. I walk away, come back and just get into the natural progression and totally forget.

If I accidently pick one up, can I just save quit, finish my run and it'll be good? I don't know how any of those technicalities work.