For a more in-depth look at how the randomness in Slay the Spire works and how events can spawn, modder and speedrunner @ForgottenArbiter wrote an explanatory post about it. It is quite verbose and technical, but you can find it here: forgottenarbiter.github.io/Correlated-Randomness/
Baalor, thank you. I could NOT beat the heart. I’ve been watching you play for several weeks and I finally beat heart with all 4 characters tonight. You’re by FAR the best teacher of this game
@@whirlwindskyId argue its the difference between solid fundamentals by the book play and going with the flow. Obviously you need both to be great but I think Frost puts you more in the mood of "Heck yeah lets make this shit work" what with all the craziness.
17:33 Just out of curiosity, I went and ran the math (well - I wrote some code that ran the math for me) on the Scrap Ooze event. The expectation value of HP lost to gain a relic here is ~11.3 (at low ascension) or ~16.7 (at high ascension). Obviously as a stochastic probabilistic process, these numbers are impossible - at default values you will lose 3, 7, 12, 18, ... and at higher ascension, it's 5,11,18, 26... - but it should give you some sense of the value trade for the relic over many attempts. The nature of probability means that any time you arrive at this event, there is a ~14% chance you'll have to click at least 4 times, at substantial (18/26) HP cost. There's a ~4% chance you'll have to click one time more than that.
I prefer the way Downfall does Wheel of Change. If you don't like your spin, you have the option to fight the Gremlin's bodyguard Gremlin Nob in exchange to instead obtain the Wheel of Change, which lets you spin the wheel again for free at every rest site until you get a spin you want.
Awesome dude thank you I’ve recently stumbled across your channel and it’s actually allowed to me to get better I finally beat my first ascension 1 because of you
Keep At it! once you beat a few in a run it's a non stop addiction to make it to the end. then you find yourself 100's of hours in and dreaming about the game lol
@@3hourgames This is so true, I started playing three weeks ago and I got so into it! These videos helped me so much and I'm at ascension lvl 12 with silent now, I've also literally dreamed about this game multiple times hahaha
I also weigh curses an extra 25g because that is the increase in card removal cost for the next card. Just a thought; also assuming you are removing at every shop you can.
For the golden idol, and similar events, when I was new, I used to think if the card didn’t do anything, it couldn’t hurt me, and I should usually take cards that seem good, rarely skipping 😅 Now I understand that what you draw is important
Yeah, it's an unintuitive consequence that every new card you add makes your good cards rarer to draw and take longer to redraw. My girlfriend recently started playing and I was always talking about how good card removals are, and even though she hears me say it all the time, she just intuitively can't grasp how removing a card or skipping a card can be beneficial. I was also the exact same the first time I read the advice online. How can *removing* something make you stronger? Equally how can *adding* something make you weaker?! Made no sense to me, but that's because I was only considering the immediate effects of the card and not the secondary effect of having worse card draw. Hearing Baalor talk about card draw as one of the two major resources (along with energy, which is far easier to understand as a resource) was the thing that helped me finally understand it.
@@Zxv975 I think this applies to all deck builder games, roguelike or not. Usually each of these games have a card draw aspect and a material system, something used to pay for playing cards (in this case its energy) The reason most newer players in each of these types of games find energy easier to understand is because its frequently blocking you. The game spells it out for you. You can't play your cards BECAUSE you can't pay for them, it shows right in your face that you have 0 energy and all your cards in your hand cost 1 or more, so it would be easy to understand why it is important. Card draw on the other hand is harder to see cause the game doesn't spell it out for you. The point of card draw is getting the cards you need to play at the right time. While energy shows you that you don't have enough, card draw doesn't. If you have poor card draw, draw all the cards you don't need and then die cause you didn't have good enough card draw to get the cards you need, you may assume that you just didn't have the right cards in your deck or that you got unlucky, when the reality is you could've lived but because you didn't have card draw, you didn't get the cards you needed on time.
I just want to say that you are my favorite slay the spire youtuber. Like your video style, and in general the content is of a high quality. Keep up the good work!
One detail that I think is important to mention on the living wall, especially for newer players is you DO NOT want to use the transform on a curse card. Transform will only transform a card into the same type or color of card (if it's a colorless card, it will give you a different colorless, if you got prism and you feed in another character's card, it'll roll to give you another one of that character's cards, etc.). Transforming a curse will just give you a DIFFERENT curse, which was definitely not what I was hoping for, the first time I tried to transform a curse. Transforming a curse is useful maybe in the same instance of you having curse synergy from a relic or two but you've got a particularly nasty curse (Regret, Pain, Normality, etc.) and you'd like to lose that particular curse but not the bonus it's giving you. Otherwise, if you're looking to remove a curse, just remove it. Transform isn't gonna do what you want it to.
Prismatic shard only affects combat rewards. If you're playing Ironclad and you transform a green, blue, or purple card, you will always get a red card, for example. Colorless cards and curses do always transform into a different card of their respective type, though. Also, transforming curses when you have Omamori *does* effectively remove the curse at the cost of an Omamori charge. That said using a transform on a basic card to reroll for something better is usually much stronger. If I get an early Omamori I'd rather save it for something like Ominous Forge, Calling Bell, Cursed Tome, Mind Bloom etc.
Thoroughly insightful and enjoyable as always. I really appreciate how accessible and non-technical this is, so well thought out and well presented. Thanks very much
I think this guide is gonna be pretty great. I'm the type of player where i advance a few ascension rankings in a row and then struggle for a while to get the next.
A video packed of useful informaiton once again baalor, Your explanation for each of the choices of and what is best choice for specific circumstance and you shed light on importance nuances rather than just saying one option is always bettter compared to the rest and that "bad" options could very well be viable depending on the circumstances.
I barely ever read the events text boxes, and the we meet again one is especially interesting. You can see two ways. The first would be Randwid doesn't know you in the first place is just a goblin making his living by being overly friendly to strangers. Your character doesn't know the guy right ? Or maybe the character doesn't remember it since he died ? That's the second way to see it. As the character, and you the player, die over and over you have many encounters with this guy. He remembers you but you don't. Meaning Meow's resurrection powers does not make you restore your memory. Happily we players do, else we'd all be locked at ascension 0 like newbies all our lives and would have interest in this magnificent gem that is STS. Thanks a lot to Anthony and Casey !!
Re: Scrap Ooze advice of figuring out how much health we need to survive the remainder of the Act -- is there a rule of thumb for how you usually calculate this? E.g. How much on average HP are we expected to lose per floor fights? Then for elites and boss?
As the other comment said, it just comes with experience. For example, Gremlin Nob attacks for 0, then 8, then 24, then 24 again (on ascension 20 assuming you don't play skills); that means you need to know whether you can kill on turn 3, turn 4, or turn 5 - you will take 8 damage if you kill Nob on turn 3, but 32 damage if you kill on turn 4 and then 56 damage if you kill on turn 5. If you think you can kill Nob on turn 4 and you have 38 health now, then you might be willing to click the Scrap Ooze fight once (losing 5 HP and dropping you to 33); any more than that will mean you don't have enough health to face Gremlin Nob. If you think your deck can kill Nob on turn 3, then you could be willing to click up to four times instead.
I had to force myself to stop spam grabbing everything no matter the cost to get relics! It's so easy to get into the mindset early of "well it's only a little bit of health" but then you end up with a ton of curses and can't afford to upgrade either. Great vid!
I used Note for Yourself to force a Defect game with Juggernaut..... One of the nastiest runs I've ever played. Sure, I cheated, but holy crap was that fun.
So what I'm really getting from this is avoid early ? spaces unless you have Neow's Lament and can path to an Elite or two. Then at floor 7+, preferably after 3+ fights, a campfire, and an Elite, go for a mix of ? spaces and combats/Elites. Makes sense to me!
The Sssssserpent is kinda like "Gain 75 gold and add a Strike/Defend to your deck" because you will spend the 75 gold to remove the curse instead of a strike/defend. So it kinda end-up being the opposite of the shop removal of paying 75 gold to remove a strike/defend.
btw the recommendations here do not translate for when you are playing the daily challenge. In daily challenges you pretty much always take the curses unless you are almost certain you won't make it to 5 curses by the end of the run
I would "argue" (not like anyone really disagrees) that the items that give you benefits from curses in slay the spire are all underpowered and NEARLY useless. I wish they had done more with them. Awesome tutorial as always baalor
Also, wtf I had no idea you could search the dead adventure completely. I have 800 hours in the game and search as much as possible (as long as I think I could survive it) and have never seen that once. Lol
@@josephward4918 while I agree that du vu has early act 1 relevance, that doesn't carry on to the later acts. Which still makes it half decent at best. Best case scenario with a cursed key start it's still just okay IMO.
I'd rather see du-vu doll than Vajra on A20, as du-vu can scale if you get other curses and makes the book event in act 2 less of a dud if you get necronomicon and Vajra will always be only 1 strength.
@@zaclittlejohn2701 sure, but again vajra isn't exactly top tier tier after the beginning of the run. Yeah, du vull can be good in the right circumstances (so can any item in them game), but most of the time it's not. It's not like you can depend on getting calling bell, necromicon, etc regularly though. All I'm saying is, it duds out way more than the majority of items.
I wonder if you can win on a bloat curse Act 1. What do I mean by that? The first 7 card rewards, take something no matter what. Keep taking curses from events in Act 1 until you have taken at least 3 from events (except maybe for the Donut one, most of the time you take a curse you get some benefit, but here to get the relic you not only take a cruse but miss out on some HP). And third, no shop card removals until Act 2.
lol, I've been wondering about A Note For Yourself "Why is this event always receive a strike and store a card?" I'm not sure if I've ever stored anything else.
Yeah I used the note for yourself event to remove a doubt curse back when I was very new to this game. Now whenever I play on a low ascension to look for achievements the doubt curse is there mocking me. Thankfully I just got my last achievement aside from the A20 achievement, so I won't have to see that any more
List of the effects of the curse cards from events, for others like me who don't have them memorized and couldn’t see them behind the facecam: Big Fish/Golden Shrine: Regret - Unplayable. At the end of your turn, lose 1 HP for each card in your hand. Golden Idol: Injury - Unplayable. The Ssssserpent: Doubt - Unplayable. At the end of your turn, gain 1 Weak. Mushrooms: Parasite - Unplayable. If transformed or removed from your deck, lose 3 Max HP. Match and Keep!: Random Curse - Can generate any of the following: Clumsy, Decay, Doubt, Injury, Normality, Pain, Parasite, Regret, Shame, Writhe (I’m not listing out all those effects lol) Ominous Forge: Pain - Unplayable. While in hand, lose 1 HP when other cards are played. Wheel of Change: Decay - Unplayable. At the end of your turn, take 2 damage. Some of these were already visible or not shown at all, but I included them to be comprehensive. As a bonus, the relic from offering a Curse in the Bonfire Spirits event: Spirit Poop (In-game description: “It’s unpleasant.”) - Has no gameplay effect, but reduces your final score by 1 point.
People don't see A Note for Yourself?? I saw it in my first run ever. I see it fairly often. Last time I got it, I left a spare Omniscient for me later. That's gonna be a fun run.
10:43 Is it actually worth it to mitigate this curse even if you have Omori? Since you can only mitigate 2 curses with it, wouldn't it be best used at another time to mitigate a curse like Regret instead?
Yeah, I've finished many runs where I had leftover Omori charges, effectively wasting 50-100% of a relic. I'd say take the curses you can (if the reward benefits you the most, of course) rather than waiting for the optimal curse to skip, as it can very easily not happen as curses aren't that common.
Best to use omamori asap since many game you don't end up using the 2 curse charges the whole game. If you use up your omamori and then get a bad curse later, you can always try and remove it at a shop. But it's never really worth saving the omamori for later
How about the lore of the game and of these events. LIke who are the charactors you play why are they "Slaying the spire" . Who is the whale that gives you things? Why are we killing the heart of the spire?
sorry for the obvious question, but why remove the curse instead of transforming it? Event was analyzed perfectly but this point was not addressed I think.
You transform cards into cards of the same color. Curses are black, you will get black color card (curse). People often unfortunately learn it hard way. Exception is status cards in moded version turn themself in curses for some reason
"Unfavorable Events" doesn't add any new events to the pool, it just makes lots of events worse at A15 and above. For example, the sssserpent gives you 175 gold for a curse at low ascension, but only 150 gold for a curse at high ascension.
First time through the 3 faces event, i thought I'd be greedy by transforming a curse... didn't realize that they transform into other _curses_, which made me worse off in my case even before grieving the opportunity cost
@Baalorlord - thanks for your video, but please please edit your videos to remove your verbal tics, dead air and mistyped key words. You could have cut 20 minutes out of this effort.
