4 ms·

>going over which cards are better than other I mean, that is perhaps part of your problem. There aren't any cards I've not picked at least once and made good

>going over which cards are better than other I mean, that is perhaps part of your problem. There aren't any cards I've not picked at least once and made good use of on ironclad even at A20. The game really is more about building a deck based upon what comes up and constantly reassessing what is actually working in your current deck. Choosing "good" cards based on their overall strength out of context is essentially a brute force approach to winning.

cableshaft 6y ago
I'm aware it's contextual and there are different strategies for winning, and there's a reason for each card being in the game. But I wasn't aware of how some cards combo together, or some situations/battles where they might be stronger than others, etc. And there are plenty of discussions online for pretty much every card on how strong or weak people think the cards are overall (like is it worth picking it up if it's offered to you late in a run because the payoff might not be worth it, or if you see you're getting a specific boss that act, etc), and most of the cards have been buffed or nerfed multiple times since the game has come out, so clearly the developers have been convinced that some strong may end up stronger than others on average too (and are trying to keep things pretty even as much as possible, I assume).
- qazwse_ 6y ago
  One thing you may want to try is sticking to a certain class for a while. It'll give you a better feel for how all of their cards work together, and you won't "forget" about certain aspects of the class. I found that I hit a wall around Ascension 8-10 before I started trying this.
  - cableshaft 6y ago
    Yeah, I agree, good advice. When I decided to win my first standard game, I at first floated around from character to character, but then decided to stick with Ironclad until I won. Took like 20 tries, but I finally made it work. Silent took less tries, currently focusing on Defect.
    - moomin 6y ago
      A really important point with card choice: even ignoring your current deck (and you shouldn't ignore your current deck), the best cards are Act dependent. At the start you want to pick flat high-damage cards that are immediately useful. In act 2 you need cards that scale with the number of enemies, because mobs are common. In the final act it's all about card synergy and things that enable you to manage your deck. With that said, as the Defect, Defragment and Capacitor are nearly always a no-brainer. Capacitor not so much in Act1, because nothing lasts long enough for it to pay off. And if you've got anything that adds orb slots, Consume becomes really powerful (even without, you can do 10 damage a turn from two orb slots instead of 9 from three, which isn't nothing). Loop builds are very strong as well, but trickier to get right because you need to pay close attention to your front orb. Finally focus+frost can easily give you so much block most enemies can't cut through. (Watch out for Reptomancer, though, she doesn't respect anyone without DPS.)
      - cableshaft 6y ago
        I had 1 Loop+, 2 Defragments, and 1 Capacitor that last game I lost this morning :) I got 'All for One' as my random rare card to start with, so I was doing my best to get a bunch of 0 cost cards, and I also ended up with 2 relics that let me pick cards to shuffle in every battle (Nilry's Codex and the Toolbox), along with a Jack of All Trades card, so I got to pick cards to help whatever my situation was each battle and turn. But I was a little too weak on my defense that go (had some frost generation, but not enough), and I made a dumb mistake attacking the Masked Bandits instead of losing all my gold, who did 50 damage to me before I killed them, bringing me down to 18 health, then I couldn't get to a campfire until I fought 3 more regular enemies, and the next enemy brought me down 6 more, then the second enemy after that got me down the other 12. Oops.
        Riverheart 6y ago
        I finally beat defect using, among other things, darkness plus recursion. It never occurred to me that recursion would retain the power generated by the dark orb you just evoked. All for One to pull upgraded 0 cost recursions to hand.

cableshaft 6y ago

I'm aware it's contextual and there are different strategies for winning, and there's a reason for each card being in the game. But I wasn't aware of how some cards combo together, or some situations/battles where they might be stronger than others, etc. And there are plenty of discussions online for pretty much every card on how strong or weak people think the cards are overall (like is it worth picking it up if it's offered to you late in a run because the payoff might not be worth it, or if you see you're getting a specific boss that act, etc), and most of the cards have been buffed or nerfed multiple times since the game has come out, so clearly the developers have been convinced that some strong may end up stronger than others on average too (and are trying to keep things pretty even as much as possible, I assume).

qazwse_ 6y ago
One thing you may want to try is sticking to a certain class for a while. It'll give you a better feel for how all of their cards work together, and you won't "forget" about certain aspects of the class. I found that I hit a wall around Ascension 8-10 before I started trying this.
- cableshaft 6y ago
  Yeah, I agree, good advice. When I decided to win my first standard game, I at first floated around from character to character, but then decided to stick with Ironclad until I won. Took like 20 tries, but I finally made it work. Silent took less tries, currently focusing on Defect.
  - moomin 6y ago
    A really important point with card choice: even ignoring your current deck (and you shouldn't ignore your current deck), the best cards are Act dependent. At the start you want to pick flat high-damage cards that are immediately useful. In act 2 you need cards that scale with the number of enemies, because mobs are common. In the final act it's all about card synergy and things that enable you to manage your deck. With that said, as the Defect, Defragment and Capacitor are nearly always a no-brainer. Capacitor not so much in Act1, because nothing lasts long enough for it to pay off. And if you've got anything that adds orb slots, Consume becomes really powerful (even without, you can do 10 damage a turn from two orb slots instead of 9 from three, which isn't nothing). Loop builds are very strong as well, but trickier to get right because you need to pay close attention to your front orb. Finally focus+frost can easily give you so much block most enemies can't cut through. (Watch out for Reptomancer, though, she doesn't respect anyone without DPS.)
    - cableshaft 6y ago
      I had 1 Loop+, 2 Defragments, and 1 Capacitor that last game I lost this morning :) I got 'All for One' as my random rare card to start with, so I was doing my best to get a bunch of 0 cost cards, and I also ended up with 2 relics that let me pick cards to shuffle in every battle (Nilry's Codex and the Toolbox), along with a Jack of All Trades card, so I got to pick cards to help whatever my situation was each battle and turn. But I was a little too weak on my defense that go (had some frost generation, but not enough), and I made a dumb mistake attacking the Masked Bandits instead of losing all my gold, who did 50 damage to me before I killed them, bringing me down to 18 health, then I couldn't get to a campfire until I fought 3 more regular enemies, and the next enemy brought me down 6 more, then the second enemy after that got me down the other 12. Oops.
      - Riverheart 6y ago
        I finally beat defect using, among other things, darkness plus recursion. It never occurred to me that recursion would retain the power generated by the dark orb you just evoked. All for One to pull upgraded 0 cost recursions to hand.