How Synergies Make Slay the Spire Fun 

Came here to offer this same recommendation. As a fan of Deck-builders myself, Slay the Spire now has me intrigued.

Century Spice Road is another one. Start with the most simple starter cards and build as you go

I also wanted to mention Dominion, the board game epitome of deck-building. To add more such board games, I'd mention Thunderstone as well.

I instantly though of these games and how well the deck building genre fits with a roguelike style game. The creators of slay the spire did a good job of noticing that and creating a good game from it.

Yeah, I couldn't help but think of deckbuilders when I was watching this video as well. Trains is my own personal favourite, but all of those are great suggestions as well.

That depends on what kind of player you are. Some might have a bad experience with one card and so henceforth they ban that card from daring graze their deck like some kind of egg head.

I personally just got annoyed that my build was scuppered due to random luck, and wasted the last half hour of my life. After that happened a couple times, and after I realized that your deck was going to be bloated with a load of chaff throughout the whole game, I basically lost all interest in the game.

@@Healermain15 That's not necessarily true, though. I just finished a run yesterday with The Defect which relied on a small deck with lots of claw attacks and ways to fish those claw attacks out of my discard pile, or to replicate them. As soon as I realized that was where my deck was going, I immediately plotted courses that had large amounts of events, shops, and bonfires in them. Avoiding monster combat meant that very few cards were added to my deck, the item shop allowed me to remove chaff when I had the money, and a fair amount of events allow you to remove or transform cards. By the end my deck only had 26 cards, and most of the ones that weren't synergistic allowed me to draw more cards, thus ignoring them. It was really fun to play.

@@PedricCuf one of the best cards on the card select screen is Skip

@@TheDominicProject ... I'm on Ascension level 7, and in all that time I never knew you could do that. That's incredibly helpful. Thank you!

I've never played a game like that (unless it just went over my head), can you give an example? That sounds really interesting.

@@crimsoncat8244 I can think of a few anti-synergies within Slay the Spire. In this video, Mark showed a card called "Anger", which was a 0 cost attack card that's fairly low damage, but when you play it, two copies of it go into your discard pile. The idea being that when your deck is reshuffled you'll have more copies of the card with which to deal more damage for no energy cost with. Snecko Eye is a relic that causes you to draw two more cards per turn, but also randomizes the cost of cards when they are drawn to between 0 and 3. The randomized cost and extra card draw is very good for drawing and playing high-impact cards that often will cost less energy than normal, but in the case of Anger, not only does it lose its main advantage of costing no energy, but it also multiplies whenever you play it, making you draw it more often instead of something that works better with Snecko Eye.

@@crimsoncat8244 binding of isaac is one. There are certain items that just destroy everything like moms knife

@@crimsoncat8244 counter synergy is where one effect dampens another is how I like to think of it. For example rampage is a card that increases it's own damage when it is played for the rest of combat. So rampage may not directly be affected by the twin strike you are adding to your deck but, the thicker you make your deck the less often rampage will come up making it worse then it otherwise would have been.

@@crimsoncat8244 ironically one of the very few countersynergistic relic combinations in slay the spire was mentioned in this video: runic pyramid and dead branch. the dead branch fills up your hand with crap and pyramid prevents you from discarding it

And that's also great design - the game typically tries to give you a final boss that coutners your deck a bit, so you have Act 3 to redesign to fight them.

The game accounts for that??? Ugh so mean hahaha

@@tychoclavius4818 the real end boss is what's mean 😅

@@iamyoursaviour A quick google search says that the bosses are chosen at random, not based on your build.

@@georgiestuff And they also punish shiv spamming)

My thinking exactly. I became obsessive about Hearthstone in its first couple of years (dumping a couple hundred dollars into the game in the process), but I now realize the only part of the game I really enjoyed were the synergies. I didn't care about the ladder or the competitive aspect, I didn't care about having a "complete collection", I didn't care about lore, and to be perfectly honest I didn't even really care that much about winning. I just wanted to pull off satisfying combos. In the end I became super burnt out with Hearthstone because it's a very expensive Sisyphus quest. I'm burnt out with rogue likes as well, but I'm curious about Slay The Spire because it might scratch that Hearthstone itch in a much healthier way.

It came, and it is glorious.

That wait is over.

WISHLISTED!

@Rana Dungeon Tales is the closest so far, I guess?

Blackthornprod card game tutorial (just kidding)

@@acherowyo7555 I mean, he did Spelunky cave generator, so maybe StS map generator or card system? Lol

I've played over 250 hours of slay the spire and I still stumble into strategies I've never had before. For instance, nightmare + ritual dagger is insanity. Basically, the game buffs the ritual dagger in your deck whenever one of the copies is used as well. So you end up scaling it 4x faster then normal. I think it ended up being like 130ish damage for 1mana. And I could clone it with nightmare still. Tons of fun even if I've finally stopped playing it frequently.

Another fun thing about Slay the Spire, is because its single player only, a OP strategy can't really break the game too badly :)

Yeah it was in early access for a while for that exact reason. They did an excellent job with the balance. There certainly are broken combos but there's basically no "guaranteed wins". Card Corruption (skills cost 0 and exhaust) and the relic Dead Branch (exhausted cards are replaced with a random card) is the easiest of the broken combos but it still takes some thought in deck construction to make it work (at higher difficulties at least)

@@stevebob240 Dead Branch is just kinda broken for a lot of builds :)

One of my favorite video game channels commenting on my other favourite video game channel? Yippee

Totally agree with the first point. To be honest I usually don't play MTG and other similar games hoping to win. For me, the objective is just to experience unique things.

Ascension is also a great example.

@@Necroskull388 Love me some ascension. It's on my phone now so there's no where I can't deck build.

Star Realms is another fun one.

@@Necroskull388 I can't believe I forgot Ascension! Used to play it a lot on my phone, super great game.

Just what I was thinking. Coming from the board game scene, I'll confess a lot of the points in this video felt a little trivial. Love Mark's deliberate writing and production, but I couldn't help but feel like he failed to see a whole world of analogue games out there that have been doing this for years.

It is 100 if order within the pair matters

@@ZygfrydJelenieRogi No, it's 90...

No but it’s a card game. Cards are not unique. You can follow a card with another copy of the same card. So it is 10x10.

@@ckannan90 I'm sorry pal, but that's COMPLETELY wrong. Of course you can follow-up with the same card, but if you have a set of 10 cards that aren't all unique but some repeat themselves, then it decreases the amount of combinations, because some of these combinations are the same so there's no point in counting them as "another strategy". For example a set of 10 cards that has 2 same-cards can produce only 37 unique pair-combinations. In short, your idea can only ever decrease the amount of combinations, and has no mathematical connection to "10x10" formula as you suggest.

It's really is 45. I had to think about it for a while but let me try to explain it. Let's say we have cards A-J. The first card, A, can be used with the others to create 9 unique pairs. AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, AG, AH, AI, and AJ. Moving on to the second card, it can now be used to create 8 unique pairs. It isn't 9 again because the AB combination has already been used, so B can be combined with the other cards to form the unique pairs: BC, BD, BE, BF, BG, BH, BI, and BJ. Now moving on the the third card: C. It can be used to make 7 unique pairs, again, not 9 or 8 because the pairs AC and BC have already been created. With C we can create CD, CE, CF, CG, CH, CI, CJ. This continues down the chain with each new card able to make 1 less unique pair than the card before it until the only pair not yet created is IJ. 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1 = 45.

It takes the roguelike idea of permadeath and turns it into a strength. With most decks you simply don't want to be playing them for more than one run, so in a sense the permadeath isn't a drawback it's a feature. And reloading bad saves just doesn't make much sense when you can't predict what the next enemies will be in the next encounter. It's actually one of the few instances where it's combining different genres and patching them together really well.

Not "lost"! You have grown as a tactician, as a warrior and as a person in that time!

Dominion is actually one of the first deckbuilding games, and it became pretty popular among boardgamers.

Apparently the slay the spire devs deliberately wanted to make a game like Dominion. According to the Wikipedia

Slay The Spire is like if Dominion or Ascension had a baby with a Rogue Like video game. All the same type of strategies and knowledge applies. There's even abilities that enemies use that are essentially curses. If you have any love for Dominion Slay The Spire is worth buying.

Honestly I don't think it would work. Since paper Mario isn't a rogue like

@@Nuclearburrit0 Nah it would work. You don't have to be a rogue like to have deck buildings mechanic you just need to put restrictions on how "cards" are obtained and how they are used. (for example having them to be only one time use (wich is already the case in sticker star) and giving you only very specific ways of getting them instead of letting you farm them) I don't know if it would have made Sticker star or the new format of paper mario games better but the bar is already so low that i wouldn't mind it. Plus it would make a way better puzzle feel (which is what those game aim to be rather than traditionnal RPGs like previous ones) than "use this specific item on this boss or overpower him with rare items (which aren't that rare and can be farmed easily)".

@@Izhuark well yeah but at that point it's just magic the gathering. Slay the spire in particular wouldn't work as is outside of its genre without very huge changes in both how cards are collected, how the deck is edited, what relics exist and what they do ect ect ect

@@Nuclearburrit0 Well that specifically what game design is for. Of course you wouldn't put the system as it is but it doesn't mean a tweaked version geared toward a more puzzle-rpg experience would not work. (And it would still be pretty different from mtg or even the Shandalar mtg game.)

@@Izhuark I think Baten Kaitos is a good example of how a long winded RPG with a deck system works, and works well.

Yeah, definitely worth checking out arena mode on hearthstone or draft on MtGA. The newest Ravnica Mtg expansions are a masterclass on synergies, each being about five guilds that have their own strategies, but each combination of "friend" guilds (guilds that share colors) having their own in-between synergies.

Nah, I hate deckbuilding too, Limited has the same problem. Just netdeck c:

five guilds per set actually @@naverdadendada

@@Hamhamsnoozer how does limited have the same problem? You only have a very small amount of cards to choose from every time. Obviously knowing what cards you can get later is important but if you think that's overwhelming, same can be said about slay the spire. Amount of cards, relics and events is massive in this game and having knowledge of what you could possible encounter helps greatly

@@JM-nothing-more Yeah, reading it again I have no idea why I wrote that. Edited it

Thank you , thats all i could thunk about this entire video, and isaac really adds to the whole not every synergy is good, there are a ton “GFYS” moments in that game that make it all the better when you get stuff that works

Please give this one a go! I never thought I'd care about a card game, either - but it's very approachable. It does to card games what Into the Breach does to turn-based tactics.

I also never really got into these kinda game (other better players!), but this is reeeeeeeeeally fun. Do what the thing Mark just said, like I did!

I couldn't stop playing Gwent, even though I'm not much of a deck building gamer. I guess this game really has potential!

May I give a recommendation of keyforge. It is a card game with no deck building because each deck is bought in a pack and randomly generated. Note that it's not totally random to make sure some synergies don't spiral out of control and there are chains to limit the strength of powerful decks. I can't explain all the about how they make all decks equal and you may have to look some of this up, but I can tell you that when I look at a deck, I always find a strategy. Sometimes I find this strategy mid-game and that realization make me feel overwhelmingly smart and powerful.

@@GMTK Thanks for replying Mark, I think I will give it a shot

I can recommend that game as well. The story might seem a bit awkward to some but the gameplay is great. The developers openly admit that they were heavily inspired by Slay the Spire and it shows, with ridiculous synergies and some bosses that can still lead to a sudden death if you start playing too sloppy. I had a lot of fun with it when I was hospitalised for a week, time really flew.

Somebody talking about this game! It's such a cool game!

Yooo that'd be sick!

@@kitthekat6844 I know, right? Last year he talked about Snake Pass, the year before, Downwell. I think this will be the theme!

This is an interesting theme, but I'd say we should just keep it in our radar as things go on. Mark did focus them on particular game associated episodes, but there might be other down the road with more spice, interesting and trickier themes.

@@gustavowadaslopes2479 True. He probably doesn't want it to be too obvious

@@AntiqueGear Yeah. The Snake pass theme last year probably surprised everyone. Very quirky.

A Y E V E R Y B O D Y

I love my egg

Esports legend Northern?

missing tinted rocks as always.

LETS GO

The higher difficulties are much harder :)

@@rowanunderwood Indeed! I'm trying mostly with the defect (love the deck synergies) and I' struggling just a bit to get past the second floor. Still fun though haha

reminds me of my English finals

There's a yugioh format called Trinity which plays with 30 card highlander decks (every card at 1), but in which you can add additional copies of one card by adding four more unique cards alongside it. So by making your deck bigger you actually become more likely to draw that one card.

While this is true, in Slay the Spire having a small deck means having less options and being more vulnerable to aiments cards being added to your deck by your opponents. Also, having a big deck mean you can put in more powers card to eventually buff you out for the rest of the fight while still having a low risk of drawing them all at the same time. But to make a bigger deck work, you need to make sure to have enough draw power and cards that do several things at once.

Mewseeker This is exactly what Jamie was talking about, a reason to break the deckbuilding "rule!" Cool!

@@Mewseeker That's specifically why I gravitate towards Power decks when possible. You have the advantage of having a decently large deck, but the cards you play won't be drawn again, and they give you their benefit each turn, so you're likely to draw the skill or attack cards that synergize with your Powers later in the combat.

Or maybe card games can set the rule that if you run out of cards you automatically lose, which could put endurance into play.

Apparently the Slay The Spire devs deliberately wanted to make a game very much like Dominion, so you're completely right

@@duffman18 Yeah when I first played Slay the Spire it immediately caught me. Dominion's one of my favorite games and I kinda dislike how many deckbuilders intentionally push away from some of Dominion's ideas.

stealth rocks + volt switch + u-turn

@@BlueyMcPhluey a nightmare if it happens in you. Also a nice combination is toxic +hex.

Stealth Rocks + Roar/Whirlwind.

@@Mordalon Or just use your most powerful attack and pray they don't have EV/IV trained their mons like crazy.

I have tricks even better than those ones. You can do crazier stuff in a Double Battle, and you can safely pull off way crazy stuff in a Triple Battle (how would you like a Mega Rayquaza with +1 in Attack and Speed and whose current Ability is Contrary using Dragon Ascent from the corner of the field?).

His name is Krieg not Kreig

froschkoenig4 really? After all that your focus was on a misspelling of a name?

@@philsoldierX78 yep, because i don't really have anything else to say on your comment.

It's the same for almost any game with builds involved

True enough, Isaac just has so many and really interesting ways of doing synergies. Tech 1 wrapping around brimstone and increasing it's damage was one of my favorites.

Here's an example of a synergy that an enemy employs: The Gremlin Mob (an elite enemy on the first floor) starts his first turn by giving himself an ability. The ability gives him strength (bonus damage to attacks) every single time the player plays a "skill" card (ie blocks). On its third turn (2nd on higher ascensions, the game's "hardcore" mode of increasing difficulty via modifiers such as "tougher elites") it does a weak attack that also applies a debuff condition, vulnerable. The weak attack is easily blockable, but would increase its strength for the rest of the fight, so it would be advisable to instead tank the hit. The next turn, it does a big attack (~18 damage). However, this damage is multiplied by 1.5x thanks to the vulnerable debuff it applied on the player, so instead it deals 24 damage, roughly 1/3 of the player's starting health. Again, they could block, but remember it has an ability that makes it stronger for every block the player uses, so instead of just 2 more damage per block, it becomes 3 (thanks to vulnerable), and it persists for the rest of the fight (unlike vulnerability, which only lasts ~2 turns). So again, it may be advisable to simply tank the hits and rush it down with attacks instead, in hopes of killing it before it kills you. The player could make the synergy fail in a number of ways. For one, they could avoid playing skills on any turn that isn't the first (before it gains the ability). There is also a system for nullifying debuffs called "artifact", which is essentially debuff armor. There is a relic that makes the player start each combat with one artifact, there is a skill the player can buy in the shop that gives 1 artifact for free when played (2 artifact if upgraded), and there is a potion (one-time use item given as a reward to some combats) that grants 1 artifact. Note that the artifact must be used before the debuff is applied, as it is debuff armor, not debuff removal. There is also a relic that removes all debuffs if the player plays a power (a once/combat ability that persists for the entire combat, such as inflame), a skill (such as a defend), and an attack all in one turn, but note that playing the skill would come at the cost of the Mob gaining strength, likely a worthwhile trade to lose the 1.5x damage taken modifier. To answer your other questions, not all synergies are balanced. For example, dead branch is considered by the fanbase to be pretty broken and an almost guaranteed win, if you know how to take advantage of it. How many is too much? Well, he lost his dead branch run to the time keeper, a final boss that lets you play 12 cards (over as many turns as you'd like), forcibly ends your turn after the 12th card, then resets the counter. If you have too many powers or set up cards to play, he could one-shot you before you even get to block, even if you had energy remaining, due to the hard 12-card rule. For that boss, it's important to keep in mind how many cards you have left, and force-end on your own terms (plan ahead, block early, don't just spam 0-cost shivs that do little damage). Maybe save some powers for later instead of the first 12-card cycle. The game is very difficult, especially on higher ascensions (the max is 20, ie 20 modifiers are added to increase the difficulty over the base game) so every synergy is needed and I would never say there are points where you have "too much." If you have too much setup, you die before you can set it all up, and if you're still fine, runs don't tend to last long enough that you would be able to employ all possible synergies at once, you would simply win the game and the run would be over and thus your deck would be reset. Never at any point do you feel overwhelmed by the very synergies you set up, instead it is exciting and rewarding due to the rarity of such an occurrence.

@@tyranitarzone I meant generally not this game specifically.

One of the biggest weakness of synergy is putting up together. In card games, setting up synergy takes time. That's why there're Aggro archetypes to outpace combo/control archetypes. This would also gives the impression that going for the synergy isn't always the best, and they won't always win you the game. But one thing for sure, synergy is fun. ---- That's why going with that second squad in Into the Breach is challenging, but pulling off combos with them is very satisfying.

As a player, rather than an expert, 'non rogue like' is almost too broad to start to form an opinion, I'm curious what you have in mind.

@@Silverfirefly1 Good question, I realized I wasn't super specific. I believe at this time, I was interested in designing a turn based RPG where you could combine special attacks. Without the randomness, it's hard to disrupt the players strategies and make them think on the fly, so I was wondering how it would be possible to do this without that, how else you might be able to disrupt a perfect strategy

@@itsdabenji9518 I completely missed the age of the post so sorry for that!

@@Silverfirefly1 Don't worry about it! I had forgotten that I had commented on this video, so it surprised me when the notification came up lol

I opened Steam just to check how many hours I got on it (almost 100 hrs) after he said that.

I'm 450, and there's still much I'm yet to learn.

I have around 400 hours too, did everything possible in the game (every achivements, ascension 20 + act 4 on every characters), still playing.

I wouldn't really say so. Slay the Spire has lots of relics and encounters that make the game more complex than it seems. And also there are harder modes that require more game knowledge from the player. Maybe you thought about deck construction genre rather than deck-building?

Not really. StS is brutally hard and complex, specially when playing on ascencion levels (the game has 21 difficulty settings) and even the lowest one is a struggle to win on at first.

@@AzureTheSky Ah, I didn't know that. Thanks for the information!

@@lamossus9030 Thanks to you and @Arthur Vincio Bubans, I now know more about the game and its difficulty levels. Thanks for correcting me!

(he only played this one)

At least he did mention archetypes.

That's true with CCG (collectible card games). Want to make the deck truly how you want it? Pay up. With deck buildings games, all the cards are available, but random or given based on risk/reward. StS does have some unlocking in it, but it's not magic/hearthstone.

>exploitative. >one time payment with literally no microtransactions. ???!??!!?!?!?!?!?

Agreed, that's a danger. I'm always wary of such games. Although there are exceptions - the only card game I _actually_ play is Faeria, where the development team has managed to release multiple expansions that enrich the (already complicated) mechanics and offer alternative strategies that "shake the meta" _without_ introducing significant power-creep. Many of the cards in your (very large) starting deck are _still_ some of the strongest of the game, partly due to interactions with newer cards. The fact that it's also played on a "living board", where you _have_ to control both space and tempo, makes the interactions even more interesting. So, what entices the player to get the DLC is not power-creep, but simply unlocking new approaches to the game. Even though I haven't purchased the last two seasons, my carefully-crafted old decks are still competitive. Also it's very easy to unlock the entire deck after you purchase each expansion, only a couple of hours of gameplay. No "gacha" bullshit involved, you get them all. I like this very honest approach - but it might also be the reason the game has a small player base, sadly.

@@FlameHricane without synergistic choices, making the best out of what's given to you is a no-brainer. I imagine this is what smackerlacker meant about brute force and luck making the game boring

I wouldnt say its ugly, just a bit bland. And graphics arent everything anyways.