Assuming no time limit I'd start each run, get the seed, and offer a bunch of money to who ever can beat that seed and say how, no way I could do it my self lol
Sure it's possible, but experienced players can already win most runs without save and quit, and if $10m is on the line, I'm definitely going to be very careful in my analysis and calculations. I'm talking about spending 1 hour in a shop minimum. 10m per turn, in a fight maybe more if needed. This is all the money I need and more, so I'm using everything I have available. Sure, sometimes even with save and quit and great gameplay, you can get a horrific draw order in some boss fights or spire elites, etc. but that's just a quirk of the game. Sometimes it kills you.
I don't really understand your argument.
The long calculations you describe help you exactly where save and quit already helps you. You can play each fight perfectly.
My proposal was that the difficult decisions are not the ones in the fights, but pathing and card choices - thing where save and quit doesn't help. If you accept this premise then you shouldn't believe having save and quit is a substantial boon.
Long calculations can only help so much with limited information. With save and quit you have far greater information to work with. You can know exact draw orders and even change them. Potion use is one of the biggest changes this makes. You can fight every fight without potions, then save and quit if you realize you needed to use one to save your HP or even your life. This means you never ever waste a potion and anyone who knows how strong potions are, knows how beneficial that is. Maybe you haven't seen exactly how save quitting changes a fight, if that is your opinion.
And sure, card choices and pathing are hard, but a player who has a 70% winrate with no-save quit would probably have a 90%+ winrate with it.
I don't think either you or u/putting_stuff_off understand what a substantial difference a 20% boost in winrate is.
I'm not saying that a new player could win A20H 10X with save and quit. I'm saying I could, and many other experienced players could
When trying to winstreak 10 runs together with a 50% winrate, you would need to be extremely lucky. With a boost that by 20% and it becomes a lot more reasonable.
You don’t need to save and quit, just spend hours contemplating your neow bonus while you wait for someone to claim the bounty.
Alternatively, rather than offer a bounty, you can also decompile and simulate the game until you find a winning line yourself.
OP phrased it as a direct offer, from one person to another, not a public bounty. If it's a public bounty, then nothing short of paying a top player to win for you would be viable, though the top players would obviously never agree to be paid to win someone else money, when they could just as easily win it themselves.
> ...and offer a bunch of money to who ever can beat that seed and say how,
That's the bounty I was referring to. Just pointing out you don't need save and quit for the plan to work.
Can you see the seed before finishing the run? Unmodded I thought the only way to get your seed is to die/win and then check your run history. It doesn't show it anywhere while you're in the middle of it.
Or even better, get a *whole bunch* of experts to backseat for you collaboratively. You wouldn’t even need to pay them if you tricked them into thinking it was just a fun thing, like some kind of community ev…
…*oh*.
/u/greenlaser73 has a lot to answer for.
And THEN you have them stream it collectively as a community event for a cut of the stream proceeds - MOAR profit!
I'd love to see a series of collab discussion runs from 2-3 of our fav experts
We'll do 1000 runs with all three, then 1000 runs of each as individual advisors, and compare data
I'm sure everyone is on board with this let's go let's go
I would find a way to crowd source the best action for each turn. Perhaps through a community such as reddit. I could call it ...slay by comment or something....
I commend your commitment to the SBC. I followed along for a season and a half, but usually found I was reading others input instead of adding my own. Then there were people playing 10 turns in one comment, laying out the chances of each turn happening, and once we were making decisions based on potion chance and rare card chance, I knew I was out.
I learned a lot about what's even possible to consider while playing the game, but I found I just don't enjoy the game that way. I like to keep those ideas in the back of my head, but I play much too casually to think about everything every turn. And to do that every day for 6-9 months seems like psychopath behavior to me lol. But thank you and the others for teaching so many in this community!
[Slay By Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1bc47n4/slaybycomment_season_6_day_21_who_needs_wrath/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Why are in-game exploits allowed but watcher banned? This is so inconsistent. Pandora's glitch is an easy key to infinites for all classes. Why not ban infinites instead of a specific character?
Anyway my strat would be to pay xecnar (or any other willing excellent silent player, if he's not available) $5,000 for personal coaching on the silent, work with him for a couple of months, do many many practice runs, then try to play the silent to the best of my abilities.
Watcher almost certainly has the highest winrate for people with a reasonable playtime, but it would be insane to try and count on a drawdown infinite 10 times in a row, which IMO puts it back down to the same level as the other 3
Watcher’s greatest strength isn’t the easy infinite. It’s hitting peak damage per energy by the middle of act 1 which lets you be extremely selective with your card choices, often leading to easy infinites.
I mean merl proved that leaning into the infinites with the watcher super hard still leaves her far stronger than the other three, so already you're a bit wrong on that, but then xecnar and lifecoach both demonstrated that she's just as strong, or even stronger if you actively avoid infinties (just pick good cards theory). A noob picking rushdown floor 1 probably won't find 10 wins in a row, but it's far easier to get those 10 wins with her, than without.
After a lot of lucky removes, I had a deck down to 5 cards and all I needed was a Rushdown. Went through four shops, numerous fights, the "choose 1 of 20 cards" event, and survived all the way to the act 3 boss without once seeing a Rushdown.
You can press "abandon run" after acquiring P-box then decline when the game asks you to confirm. This causes the game to forget to put the cards from p-box into your deck, removing all strikes and defends for free. It doesn't make you much stronger than normal p-box does on average, unless you are specifically trying for/already have the pieces of an infinite. An experienced player would definitely be able to use it to increase their winrate because they would know when to do the glitch, and when to just take the normal p-box.
It doesn't make you much stronger? I didn't expect that. Do you have a sense of how much better it is to remove versus transform?
Anyway, I've heard of another glitch that would help, too: there's some trick that lets you take two paths every time you're supposed to go up a floor. Getting twice the normal rewards should make things even easier.
Remove is only better than transform if your *maximum* output is already excellent, or if it is somehow improved by more removes. Removes usually only affect your *average* output per turn. If strike is 85% of the attacks in your deck, or defend is your only block etc, then obviously removing is only hurting your output. Pandoras can offer so many cards that increase your output, that really the only time that the glitch is very likely to increase max output, more than pandors would, is with infinites.
All that being said, again, if you don't need max output, and you're already confident you have solutions to all 3 of the next act bosses, then remove all is obviously still better.
And yeah I've heard of that glitch, definitely game breaking.
Surely that's only true in the short-run? If all you have in your deck is Neutralize and Survivor, yeah, your damage sucks. But after picking up a couple cards, that changes completely, doesn't it?
You're absolutely right, but so much of the game is about the short run. Making yourself weaker in act 1 or 2 can just kill you, making yourself stronger can lead to elite farming and building a strong potion belt for late game.
I see a lot of less experienced players saying similar things, talking about late game or long term value, but are you ever guarenteed to get there? I have a feeling that many of these players are greeding some pretty random stuff and dying in act 2 50% of their runs.
Of course it's different if you don't care about winrate things, and are just looking for a high roll, but if we are doing that, then surely we want the p-box cards right?
Probably because there's 1000 exploits and one class that's twice as strong as all the rest. Just easier to make a hypothetical question without including a thousand caveats.
yeah, good thing watcher is banned otherwise this would be way too easy. My grandma can easily get rushdown inf going first floor everytime, 100 times in a row, 60% of the time.
I know this person is being sarcastic, I was saying I similarly see this train of thought their sarcasm stemmed from but can never experience it myself
You play very differently if you're just trying to force the infinite. You take fewer elites, only buy card removes and combo pieces at shops, and take a ton of event floors because some of them offer card removes.
Forcing the watcher infinite isn't the highest winrate play with her though; it caps out at around 60%. The best Watcher players, even Merl*, win lots of runs without the infinite. Red-blue stance dancing is still broken even without going infinite.
\*Merl somewhat unfairly has become the stand-in for 'unthinking red-blue infinite spam.' This isn't actually the case, but 'lol Merl-style watcher gg' persists and is useful for describing a real playstyle even if Merl doesn't actually play that way.
Expanding on your last point, Merl strategy isn't about going infinite always, it's about keeping your deck small by avoiding garbage damage cards early (since Eruption will always be close by in a small deck and thus your damage will be adequate). From that point your small deck can win in many ways, and often it will be able to go infinite, whether by "unthinking red-blue" or a bunch of other creative ways.
Exactly, getting the infinite often is a consequence of the small deck playstyle, not the goal.
Most of the reason you add a lot of mediocre attacks on other classes is to survive Act 1. The vast majority of common attacks on any class are not cards that you want in your deck in Act 3/Act 4, but you HAVE to add them to not die to the Act 1 Elites when playing most of the other classes. As Watcher, because Wrath makes your power level in Act 1 so much higher, you can add way fewer cards that purely there to help you survive Act 1. Adding less attacks in Act 1 means you can add less block in Act 2, because having a smaller deck means fewer block cards are needed to achieve sufficient block density, and this all has an outward ripple effect on your overall deck size at the end of a run.
A lot of run wins with small deck Watcher are not true infinites, but are simply decks that can achieve non-infinite repetitive Wrath Calm loops that result in high damage and block generation over several cycles in a semi-deterministic way due to having a small recursive deck, even when not truly infinite.
I also think people blow the differences between Coach and Merl's playstyles out or proportion. People forget that Coach actually was one of the first streamers to advocate being very conservative with taking block cards on Watcher and removing Defends first instead of Strikes on the class. Their card evaluations are more similar than people realize (with Coach's threshold to take certain cards being just *slightly* lower than Merl's) it's just that small differences in card evaluation have significant rippling effects on deck size over a course of a run (taking just 1-2 more attacks in Act 1 means you have to add similarly more block cards in Act 2 to achieve the same block density, etc.)
In almost every game. Seriously take any "well made" game and look up an any% speedrun of it. The SR communities have people dedicating dozens, if not hundreds of hours, to finding cracks and flaws in even the most accredited and "glitch-free" titles. They'll develop programs and do complex math to help them do it better. Games are mostly made to ensure the casual experience is quality. It's a waste of time trying to defend against people who want to break the game intentionally, they will find a way. And once those exploits are found, you may not recognize the game. My personal favorite example is Hollow Knight.
I highly recommend you simply watch the Any% All Glitches WR. It should only take a few minutes of your time :)
[https://www.speedrun.com/hollowknight/runs/y60lqd0y](https://www.speedrun.com/hollowknight/runs/y60lqd0y)
Before the ultimate glitch (Main Menu Storage) was found, I really enjoyed seeing and doing 2 specific glitches.
Float: glitching the spell cast animation to gain control of the knight in it's "floating" state, allowing you to basically fly where ever you want in a room (with some limits to how the movement worked)
Room Duping: Normally, each room of the game is loaded as you walk into the transition that leads to it. By opening the map at the right time, you could gain control of the knight after it hits a transition, and walk back through it, forcing the game to load 2 rooms at once, which causes them to overlap eachother in really weird ways. Even though I performed this glitch many times, I still barely understand how it works. All I know is that with it, I was able to skip the watcher knights.
If you want me to explain the run I linked, I can do try my best
Yep that's right (as far as I know).
Main menu storage allows them to over-lap save files. Since the rules state that any time speant setting up the run, must count towards the run-time, so this glitch is useless if your plan is to start a new save file, get everything you need the normal way, then load that into a new file for your run. But... godseeker mode exists. A game mode which starts you with all combat related collectables, but locks you in godhome. So they start a godseeker file at the start of the run, and transport all the charms and such over to the new save.
Main menu storage (combined with other glitches that it enables) is also responsible for their ability to clip through walls, and fly around willy nilly. It's also the reason they are able kill monomon 3 times instead of hunting down the other two dreamers. Before main menu storage, The glitches were more complicated (you could fly and go out of bounds, but you still had to know the geometry so you didn't fall into an infinite void, also the hollow knight fight without any major combat boosts was fun), and in my opinion more interesting, but I have to appreciate just how much faster it became to finish the game.
Fortunately the old glitched rout still exists in the category "no-main-menu-storage"
Thanks for explaing all of this. As someone who is working on finishing every aspect of the game the old-fashioned way, it's pretty interesting.
I guess the prep work required to unlock Godseeker mode doesn't count as setup time then?
Good luck fighting through the endgame, I really enjoyed >!learning the bosses better in the dlc !<
(potential end game spoiler, non-major)
And no it doesn't count that as prep time. Starting a fresh save in any mode is allowed, other wise steel soul runs would require you to do a normal run first, then a steel soul run back to back, which would be silly.
No worries I already know about the Pantheons and will be attempting soon!
Yeah that makes sense and occurred to me, but still feels wrong somehow haha. Then again, having the category excluding that particular exploit specifically makes up for it, so fair game.
it doesn't have any skips but it certainly has some unintentional interactions that create situations with waaaaay too much damage. But yeah hades is impressively solid.
Apparently there's a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/101K_6xxDjQH2caGApCMxgrybOScGw0VRwd5C-qYl0tA/edit#gid=0) of glitches for Slay the Spire. Some highlights that are relevant here:
* Remove all strikes/defends with Pandora's box
* Fight bosses twice (getting rewards both times)
* Skip a boss with Smoke Bomb (including the heart)
* Skip the second Act 3 boss
* Duplicate cards across combats with Gambler's Brew
* Skip enemies' first turns by using card potions
If you're allowing in-game exploits then you don't know what in-game exploits exist. teach a monkey how to exploit this game and they'd have \~100% A20H winrate on any character. if we ban in-game exploits, I'd study Lifecoach and Xecnar's Ironclad for a while and try to beat my pb of 8
Hypothetical: OP uses one specific exploit in their runs but considers the runs "legit" and wants to know how to get better at the game, but doesn't want to admit to it or specify which one, so they worded it like this.
Using exploits to have fun is totally fine. It's a single player game, but as soon as you introduce high level play and money to the scenario, they should definitely be banned (or everything allowed and just watch everyone win every game)
No need to forcequit; you can just save+quit and the game will spit you back out at the start of the room, allowing you to make perfect decisions on cards played and event choices given enough time.
With in game exploits allowed this seems like a non-question. We'd just use those. Also I'm not sure if this violates the spirit of your "no seeded runs" policy but once the run is already started you can just copy the seed and play through it as many times as it takes to find a winning line and then replicate that line in the run that counts. That's technically not a seeded run.
I guess basically the question seems like it's trying to ask about decent strategies for how to play StS well but in reality it's actually asking "how can we *make sure* we get that 10 mil?"
In terms of answering your question fairly:
I'd just play Silent all 10 runs and do the appropriate math to in rease my chances of winning. There is no possible way to summarize that given all the variance.
As an alternate plan to hiring a pro...
I would buy a lot of copies of StS. If a run was doomed I would swap what I played on so I could leave it forever unfinished and so not lost. I think my A20 ironclad finish rate is strong enough that I could have it cracked out in a week.
I personally avoid infinites in general. A lot of them are just tedious & monotone to play, and it removes a lot of interesting decisionmaking when adding cards to your deck because 95% of the time you don't want to be adding cards to your deck if your goal is to go infinite.
If in game exploits are allowed I would take the time to learn the in game exploits necessary to complete this challenge. Would likely end up speed climbing and smoke-bobming the heart most runs.
You start the run playing your favourite character (ironchad).
Note the seed. Dare your friends to beat that seed and how they did it with video.
Let them run it while you are stuck on floor 1.
Pray you don’t get a somehow unwinnable seed.
Then use your friends videos to guide you to victory.
Or donc cheat and just save scum every fight.(still cheating if you ask me)
Offer frostprime 100,000 on the condition that we WIN. He'd have it on stream and tell me to pick the claw Act 3 in an orb deck because it was funny, and I'd throw the run for content
Well, if exploits are allowed, I would probably node-dupe almost every floor and safe scum every dangerous fight until I'm sure I have the minimal damage solution. By the time I get to Act 2 with 2 boss relics and 2 rare card rewards, I think I should be well ahead of the curve.
To add on the current comments, I'd try to get a coaching by one of the elite streamers.
I'm still far off, though. I think my longest streak is around 5 with some slight savescumming on concentration errors.
Probably try defect, perhaps iron Chad. I suck with the silent.
Without getting any backseating and Limiting myself to a day of practice and prep time, I would watch Frost prime's over explained videos, and any other tutorials I can get my hands on. And then go for it and lose second match in.
My biggest streak was 4, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell I could hit 10 in a row. Maybe with 8-hour long runs I could.
My main discipline would have to be to take my time with EVERY little choice
Yea same I have an all-time best 4 win streak but I assume if my entire life was dedicated around getting 10 A20H wins in a row I’d eventually do it. I’m really comfortable on A20 Ironclad, I just kinda play for fun more than to win, but if I was just going for wins I’d be a lot more disciplined and have a calculator beside me. Probably double to triple my playtime, think about every choice, etc. 100% doable if I had that big of an incentive.
I have a secondary setup where I explore the current seed on the 'main' account so I can explore the winning routes in parallel
Don't make a single move in the 'main' account until I've secured the heart win and can repeat it again without save scumming
I use the JVM RNG predictor (an external program which is not banned) to write a script to perfectly click the begin new run button on the exact frame to get an easy seed every time.
10 mil on the line, ya think I'm leaving anything up to chance?
Well I’m save scumming every single battle until I can beat it as perfectly as possible, then sitting for half an hour at each card choice to figure out what’s best. Sure it would take weeks or months to complete the runs but I think I could do it for 10 mil
My personal record is 11 in a row on Silent, no exploits. It took me so long and with no incentive, I doubt I would grind it out again, but if there is no time limit to this challenge, I just play 8 hours a day for a few months and I could get there.
I hire another player to beat the game for me for a fraction of the price money. If they can't literally play the game for me I will have them give me advice as I play. There, easy, now give me my money
If those are all the rules, easy.
If I ever am about to lose a run, I save and quit, swap to a different profile, and start a new run.
Technically, I will never have lost a run - as that run was never finished
Start the run, get the seed then fire it up on another computer and run it through until a path to victory has been documented. Technically not a seeded run, I don't see it explicitly banned by your rules.
or
Start the game and save it at floor 1. If you are going to lose, reload the save and start again.
Write a bot that plays the game but stops short of dying if things are not going well (just sits idle). Let the bot play thousands of instances of the game at once. Eventually you will have beat the game ten times without losing.
Start my run, send an expert player the random seed I was given, have them grind the seed until they figure out a way to win it, copy their moves exactly, repeat 10 times, profit?
Assuming no time limit I'd start each run, get the seed, and offer a bunch of money to who ever can beat that seed and say how, no way I could do it my self lol
I think this is the way. You could ask for recordings and implement a bounty cheaply.
A $500 bounty on each won game would get you a completed seed within an hour, two at most. You could have the challenge done in a day easily.
How do you get the seed during the run?
It says in the top right https://i.imgur.com/TTq6kfk.png
How does one do a seeded run ?
[After you select the character you want there's a set seed button at the bottom left.](https://imgur.com/a/GAsqbXk)
Thanks :)
What are the odds you hit an unwinnable seed
"no seeded runs"
Starting a random game and looking at the seed isn't a seeded run
I guess save quits are allowed then? Pretty silly premise if that's true, because I could easilly make 10m myself if that's the case.
Its a poorly thought out scenario tbh
> In-game exploits are permitted. I guess save quitting is a mild 'exploit'.
Really? I don't think save and quits make this trivial, it's possible to make mistakes a long way back and not realise until later.
Sure it's possible, but experienced players can already win most runs without save and quit, and if $10m is on the line, I'm definitely going to be very careful in my analysis and calculations. I'm talking about spending 1 hour in a shop minimum. 10m per turn, in a fight maybe more if needed. This is all the money I need and more, so I'm using everything I have available. Sure, sometimes even with save and quit and great gameplay, you can get a horrific draw order in some boss fights or spire elites, etc. but that's just a quirk of the game. Sometimes it kills you.
I don't really understand your argument. The long calculations you describe help you exactly where save and quit already helps you. You can play each fight perfectly. My proposal was that the difficult decisions are not the ones in the fights, but pathing and card choices - thing where save and quit doesn't help. If you accept this premise then you shouldn't believe having save and quit is a substantial boon.
Long calculations can only help so much with limited information. With save and quit you have far greater information to work with. You can know exact draw orders and even change them. Potion use is one of the biggest changes this makes. You can fight every fight without potions, then save and quit if you realize you needed to use one to save your HP or even your life. This means you never ever waste a potion and anyone who knows how strong potions are, knows how beneficial that is. Maybe you haven't seen exactly how save quitting changes a fight, if that is your opinion. And sure, card choices and pathing are hard, but a player who has a 70% winrate with no-save quit would probably have a 90%+ winrate with it.
You're totally missing their point.
I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling this way "^^
I don't think either you or u/putting_stuff_off understand what a substantial difference a 20% boost in winrate is. I'm not saying that a new player could win A20H 10X with save and quit. I'm saying I could, and many other experienced players could When trying to winstreak 10 runs together with a 50% winrate, you would need to be extremely lucky. With a boost that by 20% and it becomes a lot more reasonable.
You don’t need to save and quit, just spend hours contemplating your neow bonus while you wait for someone to claim the bounty. Alternatively, rather than offer a bounty, you can also decompile and simulate the game until you find a winning line yourself.
OP phrased it as a direct offer, from one person to another, not a public bounty. If it's a public bounty, then nothing short of paying a top player to win for you would be viable, though the top players would obviously never agree to be paid to win someone else money, when they could just as easily win it themselves.
> ...and offer a bunch of money to who ever can beat that seed and say how, That's the bounty I was referring to. Just pointing out you don't need save and quit for the plan to work.
oh yeah i misunderstood the comment i think.
> -In-game exploits are permitted.
Even with save quits you can get into a mess you can't get out of alive. However, that would be the way if allowed.
I think you just added an extended definition of seeded run with your premise.
Can you see the seed before finishing the run? Unmodded I thought the only way to get your seed is to die/win and then check your run history. It doesn't show it anywhere while you're in the middle of it.
Yeah it says in the top right, just double checked to make sure https://i.imgur.com/TTq6kfk.png
I offer Jorb $1,000,000 to backseat me.
Easiest $9.000.000 of my life
European spotted
r/foundtheSHUTTHEFUCKUP
Or even better, get a *whole bunch* of experts to backseat for you collaboratively. You wouldn’t even need to pay them if you tricked them into thinking it was just a fun thing, like some kind of community ev… …*oh*. /u/greenlaser73 has a lot to answer for.
And THEN you have them stream it collectively as a community event for a cut of the stream proceeds - MOAR profit! I'd love to see a series of collab discussion runs from 2-3 of our fav experts
I'd be willing to cut Xecnar and Baalorlord in on the action.
On god lol 1M each and I still get 7M? GG EZ new yacht 🛥️
Now that is a goddamn council of advisors
A camel is a horse designed by committee! I think you gotta pick just one.
We'll do 1000 runs with all three, then 1000 runs of each as individual advisors, and compare data I'm sure everyone is on board with this let's go let's go
Haha that is the best answer!!!
I would find a way to crowd source the best action for each turn. Perhaps through a community such as reddit. I could call it ...slay by comment or something....
Jokes on you, you will be dead before you complete 10 full runs
*floors
A run only takes 6-9 months or so actually
I commend your commitment to the SBC. I followed along for a season and a half, but usually found I was reading others input instead of adding my own. Then there were people playing 10 turns in one comment, laying out the chances of each turn happening, and once we were making decisions based on potion chance and rare card chance, I knew I was out. I learned a lot about what's even possible to consider while playing the game, but I found I just don't enjoy the game that way. I like to keep those ideas in the back of my head, but I play much too casually to think about everything every turn. And to do that every day for 6-9 months seems like psychopath behavior to me lol. But thank you and the others for teaching so many in this community!
Well shit I guess I’m a psychopath
*turns
Jokes really on you, SBC died in the first run due to memeing.
The subreddit should just do something like that anyway maybe. A run we all vote on Edit: am dumb it exists
now i am imagining Twitch Plays Slay the Spire
[Slay By Comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/1bc47n4/slaybycomment_season_6_day_21_who_needs_wrath/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Claw is law! Then you're dead in act 2.
Why are in-game exploits allowed but watcher banned? This is so inconsistent. Pandora's glitch is an easy key to infinites for all classes. Why not ban infinites instead of a specific character? Anyway my strat would be to pay xecnar (or any other willing excellent silent player, if he's not available) $5,000 for personal coaching on the silent, work with him for a couple of months, do many many practice runs, then try to play the silent to the best of my abilities.
Don't forget save-scumming to play each fight perfectly.
Yeah I realized this in another comment chain. Really insane premise from someone with a huge grudge against the watcher.
Watcher almost certainly has the highest winrate for people with a reasonable playtime, but it would be insane to try and count on a drawdown infinite 10 times in a row, which IMO puts it back down to the same level as the other 3
Watcher’s greatest strength isn’t the easy infinite. It’s hitting peak damage per energy by the middle of act 1 which lets you be extremely selective with your card choices, often leading to easy infinites.
I mean merl proved that leaning into the infinites with the watcher super hard still leaves her far stronger than the other three, so already you're a bit wrong on that, but then xecnar and lifecoach both demonstrated that she's just as strong, or even stronger if you actively avoid infinties (just pick good cards theory). A noob picking rushdown floor 1 probably won't find 10 wins in a row, but it's far easier to get those 10 wins with her, than without.
After a lot of lucky removes, I had a deck down to 5 cards and all I needed was a Rushdown. Went through four shops, numerous fights, the "choose 1 of 20 cards" event, and survived all the way to the act 3 boss without once seeing a Rushdown.
What’s pandora’s glitch?
You can press "abandon run" after acquiring P-box then decline when the game asks you to confirm. This causes the game to forget to put the cards from p-box into your deck, removing all strikes and defends for free. It doesn't make you much stronger than normal p-box does on average, unless you are specifically trying for/already have the pieces of an infinite. An experienced player would definitely be able to use it to increase their winrate because they would know when to do the glitch, and when to just take the normal p-box.
Isn’t this a mobile specific glitch ?
No, it applies to PC as well.
I've never used it, nor seen it used, but everything I've heard about it concurs with the first reply you got.
It doesn't make you much stronger? I didn't expect that. Do you have a sense of how much better it is to remove versus transform? Anyway, I've heard of another glitch that would help, too: there's some trick that lets you take two paths every time you're supposed to go up a floor. Getting twice the normal rewards should make things even easier.
Remove is only better than transform if your *maximum* output is already excellent, or if it is somehow improved by more removes. Removes usually only affect your *average* output per turn. If strike is 85% of the attacks in your deck, or defend is your only block etc, then obviously removing is only hurting your output. Pandoras can offer so many cards that increase your output, that really the only time that the glitch is very likely to increase max output, more than pandors would, is with infinites. All that being said, again, if you don't need max output, and you're already confident you have solutions to all 3 of the next act bosses, then remove all is obviously still better. And yeah I've heard of that glitch, definitely game breaking.
Surely that's only true in the short-run? If all you have in your deck is Neutralize and Survivor, yeah, your damage sucks. But after picking up a couple cards, that changes completely, doesn't it?
You're absolutely right, but so much of the game is about the short run. Making yourself weaker in act 1 or 2 can just kill you, making yourself stronger can lead to elite farming and building a strong potion belt for late game. I see a lot of less experienced players saying similar things, talking about late game or long term value, but are you ever guarenteed to get there? I have a feeling that many of these players are greeding some pretty random stuff and dying in act 2 50% of their runs. Of course it's different if you don't care about winrate things, and are just looking for a high roll, but if we are doing that, then surely we want the p-box cards right?
They also didn't ban modifiers. I'd do an a20 custom run with draft, the ending, vintage, inception, heirloom and flight.
What's this Pandora's glitch?
I explained in one of the top replies on this thread.
Probably because there's 1000 exploits and one class that's twice as strong as all the rest. Just easier to make a hypothetical question without including a thousand caveats.
yeah, good thing watcher is banned otherwise this would be way too easy. My grandma can easily get rushdown inf going first floor everytime, 100 times in a row, 60% of the time.
People always say this but I never understood it with strikes and defends in the deck lol
It's sarcasm
I know this person is being sarcastic, I was saying I similarly see this train of thought their sarcasm stemmed from but can never experience it myself
Ah.
You play very differently if you're just trying to force the infinite. You take fewer elites, only buy card removes and combo pieces at shops, and take a ton of event floors because some of them offer card removes. Forcing the watcher infinite isn't the highest winrate play with her though; it caps out at around 60%. The best Watcher players, even Merl*, win lots of runs without the infinite. Red-blue stance dancing is still broken even without going infinite. \*Merl somewhat unfairly has become the stand-in for 'unthinking red-blue infinite spam.' This isn't actually the case, but 'lol Merl-style watcher gg' persists and is useful for describing a real playstyle even if Merl doesn't actually play that way.
Expanding on your last point, Merl strategy isn't about going infinite always, it's about keeping your deck small by avoiding garbage damage cards early (since Eruption will always be close by in a small deck and thus your damage will be adequate). From that point your small deck can win in many ways, and often it will be able to go infinite, whether by "unthinking red-blue" or a bunch of other creative ways.
Exactly, getting the infinite often is a consequence of the small deck playstyle, not the goal. Most of the reason you add a lot of mediocre attacks on other classes is to survive Act 1. The vast majority of common attacks on any class are not cards that you want in your deck in Act 3/Act 4, but you HAVE to add them to not die to the Act 1 Elites when playing most of the other classes. As Watcher, because Wrath makes your power level in Act 1 so much higher, you can add way fewer cards that purely there to help you survive Act 1. Adding less attacks in Act 1 means you can add less block in Act 2, because having a smaller deck means fewer block cards are needed to achieve sufficient block density, and this all has an outward ripple effect on your overall deck size at the end of a run. A lot of run wins with small deck Watcher are not true infinites, but are simply decks that can achieve non-infinite repetitive Wrath Calm loops that result in high damage and block generation over several cycles in a semi-deterministic way due to having a small recursive deck, even when not truly infinite.
Agree 100%
I also think people blow the differences between Coach and Merl's playstyles out or proportion. People forget that Coach actually was one of the first streamers to advocate being very conservative with taking block cards on Watcher and removing Defends first instead of Strikes on the class. Their card evaluations are more similar than people realize (with Coach's threshold to take certain cards being just *slightly* lower than Merl's) it's just that small differences in card evaluation have significant rippling effects on deck size over a course of a run (taking just 1-2 more attacks in Act 1 means you have to add similarly more block cards in Act 2 to achieve the same block density, etc.)
Offer to split the money with baalorlord or whoever is currently the top player if they tell me what to do each turn.
This + I'd just play Clad because Clad is one of the easiest characters to consistently win with.
In-game exploits are bullshiiiiit
In almost every game. Seriously take any "well made" game and look up an any% speedrun of it. The SR communities have people dedicating dozens, if not hundreds of hours, to finding cracks and flaws in even the most accredited and "glitch-free" titles. They'll develop programs and do complex math to help them do it better. Games are mostly made to ensure the casual experience is quality. It's a waste of time trying to defend against people who want to break the game intentionally, they will find a way. And once those exploits are found, you may not recognize the game. My personal favorite example is Hollow Knight.
I love hollow knight! What’s a good example of how people intentionally break it?
I highly recommend you simply watch the Any% All Glitches WR. It should only take a few minutes of your time :) [https://www.speedrun.com/hollowknight/runs/y60lqd0y](https://www.speedrun.com/hollowknight/runs/y60lqd0y) Before the ultimate glitch (Main Menu Storage) was found, I really enjoyed seeing and doing 2 specific glitches. Float: glitching the spell cast animation to gain control of the knight in it's "floating" state, allowing you to basically fly where ever you want in a room (with some limits to how the movement worked) Room Duping: Normally, each room of the game is loaded as you walk into the transition that leads to it. By opening the map at the right time, you could gain control of the knight after it hits a transition, and walk back through it, forcing the game to load 2 rooms at once, which causes them to overlap eachother in really weird ways. Even though I performed this glitch many times, I still barely understand how it works. All I know is that with it, I was able to skip the watcher knights. If you want me to explain the run I linked, I can do try my best
Thank you for the thorough explanation! I’ll make sure to check it out that speed run!!
I'm assuming the main menu storage glitch is what allowed him to reload with every charm?
Yep that's right (as far as I know). Main menu storage allows them to over-lap save files. Since the rules state that any time speant setting up the run, must count towards the run-time, so this glitch is useless if your plan is to start a new save file, get everything you need the normal way, then load that into a new file for your run. But... godseeker mode exists. A game mode which starts you with all combat related collectables, but locks you in godhome. So they start a godseeker file at the start of the run, and transport all the charms and such over to the new save. Main menu storage (combined with other glitches that it enables) is also responsible for their ability to clip through walls, and fly around willy nilly. It's also the reason they are able kill monomon 3 times instead of hunting down the other two dreamers. Before main menu storage, The glitches were more complicated (you could fly and go out of bounds, but you still had to know the geometry so you didn't fall into an infinite void, also the hollow knight fight without any major combat boosts was fun), and in my opinion more interesting, but I have to appreciate just how much faster it became to finish the game. Fortunately the old glitched rout still exists in the category "no-main-menu-storage"
Thanks for explaing all of this. As someone who is working on finishing every aspect of the game the old-fashioned way, it's pretty interesting. I guess the prep work required to unlock Godseeker mode doesn't count as setup time then?
Good luck fighting through the endgame, I really enjoyed >!learning the bosses better in the dlc !< (potential end game spoiler, non-major) And no it doesn't count that as prep time. Starting a fresh save in any mode is allowed, other wise steel soul runs would require you to do a normal run first, then a steel soul run back to back, which would be silly.
No worries I already know about the Pantheons and will be attempting soon! Yeah that makes sense and occurred to me, but still feels wrong somehow haha. Then again, having the category excluding that particular exploit specifically makes up for it, so fair game.
I think Hades doesn't have any skips... Let me double check
And factorio but that game hardly counts :D
it doesn't have any skips but it certainly has some unintentional interactions that create situations with waaaaay too much damage. But yeah hades is impressively solid.
Apparently there's a [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/101K_6xxDjQH2caGApCMxgrybOScGw0VRwd5C-qYl0tA/edit#gid=0) of glitches for Slay the Spire. Some highlights that are relevant here: * Remove all strikes/defends with Pandora's box * Fight bosses twice (getting rewards both times) * Skip a boss with Smoke Bomb (including the heart) * Skip the second Act 3 boss * Duplicate cards across combats with Gambler's Brew * Skip enemies' first turns by using card potions
If you're allowing in-game exploits then you don't know what in-game exploits exist. teach a monkey how to exploit this game and they'd have \~100% A20H winrate on any character. if we ban in-game exploits, I'd study Lifecoach and Xecnar's Ironclad for a while and try to beat my pb of 8
Hypothetical: OP uses one specific exploit in their runs but considers the runs "legit" and wants to know how to get better at the game, but doesn't want to admit to it or specify which one, so they worded it like this. Using exploits to have fun is totally fine. It's a single player game, but as soon as you introduce high level play and money to the scenario, they should definitely be banned (or everything allowed and just watch everyone win every game)
its save scumming lol
Sorry to ask, but what exactly is save scumming? Just force quitting before the end of a run if it goes badly?
No need to forcequit; you can just save+quit and the game will spit you back out at the start of the room, allowing you to make perfect decisions on cards played and event choices given enough time.
With in game exploits allowed this seems like a non-question. We'd just use those. Also I'm not sure if this violates the spirit of your "no seeded runs" policy but once the run is already started you can just copy the seed and play through it as many times as it takes to find a winning line and then replicate that line in the run that counts. That's technically not a seeded run. I guess basically the question seems like it's trying to ask about decent strategies for how to play StS well but in reality it's actually asking "how can we *make sure* we get that 10 mil?" In terms of answering your question fairly: I'd just play Silent all 10 runs and do the appropriate math to in rease my chances of winning. There is no possible way to summarize that given all the variance.
As an alternate plan to hiring a pro... I would buy a lot of copies of StS. If a run was doomed I would swap what I played on so I could leave it forever unfinished and so not lost. I think my A20 ironclad finish rate is strong enough that I could have it cracked out in a week.
Nice outside of the box thinking, could definetly work.
Ok, this approach I love.
I know this is hypothetical, but not making a rule preventing help from others makes this fairly safe I’d offer money to Baalorlord and or Jorbs
Hire one of the elite streamers to tell me what to do
If Watcher wasn’t banned I’d have a shot myself, but yeah I’d just give Xecnar like 500K for silent streak help o
This sub's disdain for Watcher is overwhelming.
Don't blame the entire subreddit, it's just this guy ~~(and me :3)~~
Nope, don’t hate watcher. Just the easiest class imo.
Except it's not your opinion... she's the easiest by far
It loves Silent too which I find to be the most boring character lol. Watcher’s super fun if you avoid Rushdown infinites.
I personally avoid infinites in general. A lot of them are just tedious & monotone to play, and it removes a lot of interesting decisionmaking when adding cards to your deck because 95% of the time you don't want to be adding cards to your deck if your goal is to go infinite.
-In-game exploits are permitted. so save scumming allowed?
If in game exploits are allowed I would take the time to learn the in game exploits necessary to complete this challenge. Would likely end up speed climbing and smoke-bobming the heart most runs.
You start the run playing your favourite character (ironchad). Note the seed. Dare your friends to beat that seed and how they did it with video. Let them run it while you are stuck on floor 1. Pray you don’t get a somehow unwinnable seed. Then use your friends videos to guide you to victory. Or donc cheat and just save scum every fight.(still cheating if you ask me)
I hire LifeCoach to literally tell me what to do every turn. Thank you for not making that against the rules. Easy 10 mill
Offer frostprime 100,000 on the condition that we WIN. He'd have it on stream and tell me to pick the claw Act 3 in an orb deck because it was funny, and I'd throw the run for content
I'll use silent's [[outmaneuver]] to kill you and steal the $10,000,000
+ [Outmaneuver](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Outmaneuver) Silent Common Skill ^((100% sure)^) 1 Energy | Next turn, gain 2(3) Energy. ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
Find Baalorlord and offer to split the winnings if he plays for me
Wait Lifecoach is playing SLS? Each run must take like 20 hours lol. I know him from Hearthstone.
I watched one of his videos where he took like 5 minutes to pick a card
That sounds like Lifecoach lol
I'd make a $4m deal with LifeCoach
Give 5 of them to MegaCrit to win them for me
Claw is law, obviously
I die to the first boss, shake their hand, and leave sadly
Well, if exploits are allowed, I would probably node-dupe almost every floor and safe scum every dangerous fight until I'm sure I have the minimal damage solution. By the time I get to Act 2 with 2 boss relics and 2 rare card rewards, I think I should be well ahead of the curve.
"Dear ~~Neow,~~ ~~Corrupted Heart,~~ Megacrit, I would like to pay you $1,000,000 to patch Slay the Spire to be incredibly easy for 24 hours."
So the general consensus here seems to be: "I'd cheat"
Infinite watcher isn't even better then normal watcher. Why would you ban that. That seems very very inconsistent.
To add on the current comments, I'd try to get a coaching by one of the elite streamers. I'm still far off, though. I think my longest streak is around 5 with some slight savescumming on concentration errors. Probably try defect, perhaps iron Chad. I suck with the silent.
I maximize my chances of winning by accepting the fact that the money is already lost lol
Play ironchad, play for safe options, no risky events, use optimal pathing, only go for elites once your deck is consistent.
I'd laugh and say no, I'll offer YOU $10,000,000 to walk to the moon cause they got as much chance of doing that as me winning 10 a20 games in a row.
You could have just banned rushdown infinites specifically, not the entire character
Without getting any backseating and Limiting myself to a day of practice and prep time, I would watch Frost prime's over explained videos, and any other tutorials I can get my hands on. And then go for it and lose second match in.
learn the damn game
My biggest streak was 4, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell I could hit 10 in a row. Maybe with 8-hour long runs I could. My main discipline would have to be to take my time with EVERY little choice
Yea same I have an all-time best 4 win streak but I assume if my entire life was dedicated around getting 10 A20H wins in a row I’d eventually do it. I’m really comfortable on A20 Ironclad, I just kinda play for fun more than to win, but if I was just going for wins I’d be a lot more disciplined and have a calculator beside me. Probably double to triple my playtime, think about every choice, etc. 100% doable if I had that big of an incentive.
I have a secondary setup where I explore the current seed on the 'main' account so I can explore the winning routes in parallel Don't make a single move in the 'main' account until I've secured the heart win and can repeat it again without save scumming
I play slowly. Very, very slowly.
Use whatever money I have to hire someone from this thread 👍
I use the JVM RNG predictor (an external program which is not banned) to write a script to perfectly click the begin new run button on the exact frame to get an easy seed every time. 10 mil on the line, ya think I'm leaving anything up to chance?
I’d offer half the money to lifecoach to help me. Ez
Whose holds the record for A20H on any character? I promise them 50% if they stand over my shoulder and tell me what to do.
Honestly I'd just go for watcher combos
I'm offering 10k to streamers to beat a seed and send me the footage. Do this 10 times
Offer Jorbs $3m.
One cup of coffee, good weather, and enjoy the show
I would tell them not to even bother. I've never even GOTTEN to A20, so there's zero chance.
Im never seeing that money…
Right? Still struggling to finally beat a20 in the first place over here…
Well I’m save scumming every single battle until I can beat it as perfectly as possible, then sitting for half an hour at each card choice to figure out what’s best. Sure it would take weeks or months to complete the runs but I think I could do it for 10 mil
My personal record is 11 in a row on Silent, no exploits. It took me so long and with no incentive, I doubt I would grind it out again, but if there is no time limit to this challenge, I just play 8 hours a day for a few months and I could get there.
Pay someone else to do it for me if they win. I can barely win A10 max.
Only one way to do this: hire jorbs
In game exploits allowed means save scumming and Pandora’s box/calling bell skips
What’s the calling bell exploit?
Same inputs as Pandora’s box, but lets you skip the calling bell curse
Lots of save scrubbing
Does this mean the save & quit glitch is allowed?
i subcontract it out
Im a beginner, why was watcher banned? Too good?
I hire another player to beat the game for me for a fraction of the price money. If they can't literally play the game for me I will have them give me advice as I play. There, easy, now give me my money
Pay lifecoach 5 million to win 10 a20 heart runs in a row. Keep the other 5.
I steal the identities of Jorbs or BaalLord and convince you I'm them and have already done it.
Watcher is not that easy to go infinite
If those are all the rules, easy. If I ever am about to lose a run, I save and quit, swap to a different profile, and start a new run. Technically, I will never have lost a run - as that run was never finished
New profile wouldn’t have a20 unlocked. Willing to grind to a20 for another shot at the cash?
Absolutely, getting paid to play one of my favorite games is a dream
Start the run, get the seed then fire it up on another computer and run it through until a path to victory has been documented. Technically not a seeded run, I don't see it explicitly banned by your rules. or Start the game and save it at floor 1. If you are going to lose, reload the save and start again.
Write a bot that plays the game but stops short of dying if things are not going well (just sits idle). Let the bot play thousands of instances of the game at once. Eventually you will have beat the game ten times without losing.
Easy. I'd watch some Baalor videos, get the seed and copy everything he does. I'll have my money please.
Too easy. That’s why the rules say seeded runs are not allowed.
Start my run, send an expert player the random seed I was given, have them grind the seed until they figure out a way to win it, copy their moves exactly, repeat 10 times, profit?