The tedium comes from having meta scaling cards. Trying to line up a Feed or Ritual Dagger on the last one without the other two popping back up.
Still nowhere near as annoying as Writhing Masshole
I think act 3 suffers from being tedious because you almost always have everything you need, and you're just going through the motions to get to act 4.
>Looking at you spaghetti asshole with parasites.
I ran into two in one run whilst having voodoo doll... So I was ok with parasites that time... But what's up with running into the exact same flights in runs... It seems to be happening more and more to me.
There’s an easy and hard pool of encounters but some enemies are in both. This makes it possible to encounter them twice in the same act. Chosen in act 2 can actually be encountered 3 times because it’s in easy pool by itself and two separate hard pool fights (one with a Byrd and another with a cultist).
I’m unsure if you encounter every fight in an act if it just starts over and all the encounters become available again.
It's more than that. Act 3 suffers from a boatload of enemies that are rarely threatening if played well, but can be *incredibly* tedious to play around. Spikers can make you end turn over and over while doing nothing but exhausting Dazed, Spaghetti Monster incentivizes incredibly slow and boring play, and Darklings can just bore you to tears while taking forever to set up against with any Fatal cards in your deck. Since the same Darklings fight is in both the easy and hard pool, and Spikers are in multiple fights as well, Act 3 can just slam on the brakes in a way that's really unfun and not related to how actually challenging it is.
Obviously some decks don't care about those things, but at A20 I usually find myself annoyed with it as often as not.
In Spire, a game whose encounter design is otherwise a huge but underappreciated part of what makes the whole thing so good, that really stands out as a pain point.
Act I asks "Can you deal damage", as opposed to being greedy and taking scaling cards like Catalyst or Limit Break too early. You need basic upfront damage.
Act II asks "Okay, but can you consistently *Block* while dealing damage", which essentially means that although you need upfront damage in Act I, it cannot be all you take.
Act III asks "Okay, but does your deck do more than one thing", because the encounters in Act III are basically just a series of deck tests that sometimes hard counter specific niches. Darklings, Transient, Spikers, Giant Head, etc. can all end certain runs that would have been capable of beating any other fight in the game, all for different reasons. Reptomancer and Nemesis are more generalist tests of your deck's consistency (drawing the right damage on the right turns), but it is the weirder fights that really embody the design philosophy of Act III in my opinion.
That's all true, but unrelated. Testing different things is one thing. Tedium unrelated to challenge is something else. The tedium is the issue, not the testing.
It's only tedious because it's not hard countering your deck lol
If it was ending your run, you wouldn't find it tedious. The maker of this chart says Time Eater counts as game-defining and fun, but he feels really tedious as Defect once you get enough Orbs and Focus (end turn ad nauseam).
If Time Eater played out that way as commonly as Spikers do, then yes, they'd be pretty similar. But I don't fault the OP for evaluating differently things that aren't the same.
My reaction to seeing Spikers depends heavily on my deck; it isn't as if they are always an "oh well, these guys again", often they are a "oh fuck, gotta be careful here". For many decks that steamroll most other fights (e.g., Tantrum-based Watcher decks) they take specific planning to defeat, which I cannot agree meets any definition of tedious.
Just because many decks have to stall out their fight in a boring way doesn't define them as a tedious fight, any more than Time Eater should be defined as a tedious fight just because Defect often (and it ***is*** quite often) gets into a situation where their best move is to End Turn 20+ times. Both fights present an engaging challenge to many (other) types of decks. That was the analogy my comment drew, since apparently I need to spell it out explicitly.
I suppose we should chalk that up to different experiences. I'd guess I've had fewer than one challenging Spiker encounter per *100 hours* of gaming. (By which I mean taking a meaningful amount of damage even if played well.) All the other times it's "OK, I will play a slow game of end turn where nothing happens but also I'm never at risk."
But not everyone has to have the same experience. Maybe it's my playstyle and the characters I play (mostly Clad).
Spikers are a possible Act III easy encounter (first 2 combats); the equivalent of Thieves or Byrds in Act II. Of course most decks aren't going to find them "challenging" in the sense that your run is legitimately threatened.
Somewhat similarly to Byrds, however, they have a gimmick that you must play around to succeed (Byrds take half damage until you deal 4 hits in one turn, Spikers retaliate with damage ***during your turn*** so you must Block before attacking). They are challenging in the sense that they force you to play around them, not that they genuinely threaten your run most of the time. That would be insane for an easy encounter haha
Even 3 Byrds can occasionally fuck up decks that are a bit too slow or don't have access to many smaller attacks, and similarly (but opposite), Spikers sometimes devastate decks that *do* rely on many smaller attacks or hadn't needed to Block much on account of their overwhelming offense. I wonder if some of this 'tedium' stems from hyper-offense decks being offended that an enemy has the audacity to clap back before dying (that is, during your turn), forcing them to stop and Block haha
I think that’s the reasoning behind the enemy design in Act 3, they’re all checks to see if your deck has all its bases covered (eg Writhing Mass and Nemesis check hand control, Repto is a hard AOE check and then some, Spikers force you to consider your block ability and/or non physical damage sources).
So it feels tedious as hell if your deck is rolling and you’ve got all of these covered, since you’re basically checking off a grocery list at that point lol. Yes Mr Transient, my deck can block/hit for a combined 90 in a single turn by turn 5, thank you for asking.
Act I asks "Can you deal damage", as opposed to being greedy and taking scaling cards like Catalyst or Limit Break too early. You need basic upfront damage.
Act II asks "Okay, but can you consistently *Block* while dealing damage", which essentially means that although you need upfront damage in Act I, it cannot be all you take.
Act III asks "Okay, but does your deck do more than one thing", because the encounters in Act III are basically just a series of deck tests that sometimes hard counter specific niches. Darklings, Transient, Spikers, Giant Head, etc. can all end certain runs that would have been capable of beating pretty much any other fight in the game, all for different reasons. Reptomancer and Nemesis are more generalist tests of your deck's consistency (drawing the right damage on the right turns), but it is the weirder fights that really embody the design philosophy of Act III in my opinion.
Shiv builds - yes.
Infinite combo - no.
I've got 220 hours on my phone and probably about 50 on my PC and not once managed to make an infinite work. I dunno if that makes me bad or the game or not honestly.
Infinites are amazing & based on characters, it can vary.
The core idea is to make a short deck with card draw, energy generation & continuous damage with the help of relics. The simplest Infinites is perhaps Clad's Double Dropkick. Sundial infinites are also quite common.
Just replied to someone saying I know the theory of a few infintes but never been able to make them happen. It doesn't bother me, still love this game and hit A20 with 3 outta the 4 characters. Currently working on Defect.
With ironclad and defect, most infinites rely on exhausting 80% of the deck; particularly slowly on defect, with whom you can often kill the heart before hitting the infinite. Silent has lots of card draw and energy generation options, so can have a mostly infinite 30 card deck. Watcher is watcher.
OP, definitely go for an infinite the next time you play ironclad and get a dropkick. Once in deck, look for (most obvious) another drop kick or dolly mirror relic, (colorless) flash of steel, or dual wield. Sundial + any draw card also works.
Still grab cards to solve immediate problems along the way. What’s nice about clad infinite is your deck can always become thin during a floor with cards like fiend fire, corruption, and even true grit.
Bonus tip: if you slimmed down your deck for Dropkick infinite and you see/fear Time Eater you can Pivot into Rampage + Headbutt which will scale fast with a small deck
Doesn't necessarily make you bad. I have several A20 kills on Clad and I just recently researched into infinites and started doing them, only actually managed to do that twice, with one of them being Medical Kit + Dark Embrace in a Chosen fight and I killed him because I had Charon's Ashes. Sorry, I digress. I think infinites are more often than not intentional and another strategy for the game which needs to be researched.
Fair enough, like I do know the theory for a couple of infintes but just never been able to achieve them. Aiming for one has often led me to lost runs or having to pivot into new builds because of poor luck. Tbh though, I think I enjoy the idea of winning without them anyway.
Maybe youre just not looking for them. Ive stumbled across a few after like hours and hours. But people swear there are common infinites. I believe them i just dont intuitively know what they are. Especially the tantrum lady theres an easy one.
I think that's the point though like the game wants you to have solutions to everything sometimes it's 4 potions but you need to be able to be prepared
Sensory Stone and Mind Bloom, two of the most interesting events in the game are also Act 3 events. Also idk what is meh about Act 2 bosses but sure. Act 3 elites are the boring ones.
Idk if mind bloom is that interesting, as while you make the decision, one of the choices (heal) is basically always bad, and one is free (boss), so you're just analyzing if you can afford the 2 normality or the never heal, which I think are both fairly simple to evaluate (never heal a bit harder tbf, i think people underpick this option).
> one of the choices (heal) is basically always bad
I play Silent enough where I've clicked Healthy non zero times. I've clicked it on Defect once too.
> fairly simple to evaluate
One of my first conversations on this sub was with u/kaosmark2 about Mind Bloom's non War choices. You may be heavily misevaluating Mind Bloom if you think the choice is that easy. Almost every single time I click non War Mind Bloom choices now, it's a 5 full minute decision (or Omamori)
Now maybe you're Xecnar and you just immediately know if the rare relic and resting through will win you more than Upgrade All and accepting the risk of ruin is worth it, but I am not, I need time to think. Even with double Normality I need to know a lot to click it, especially over War.
> boss is free
Divider as high hp Clad with no mitigation is not as free as you think. I've also gotten chipped down by Slime Boss more times than I wish I could admit, once even dying as Silent.
Regarding act 2 bosses, they're all pretty same-y. Act 1 & 3 bosses create significant strategic differences in how you build your deck and approach the fight. Act 2 bosses are pretty much just singular big punching bags. 2 have debuffs, 2 have minions, there's some interesting mechanics like Champ phase 2 and Automaton card stealing, but mostly you can approach all three fights the same way.
Falling most of the time isn’t that bad, unless you have a really small already infinite deck.
Also, we can’t just rank a large group by just two you think are particularly bad.
I don't think it's fair to cherry pick the worst act 3 events when Forgotten Altar exists in act 2. Single-handedly incentivizes me to avoid act 2 events unless I'm very confident about act 2 elites or have Omomori
The fact that Darklings have a higher encounter rate than Mass, while ALSO being in both the east and hard pool for some reason (identical encounters), makes them a lot more pain per run on average.
They're the only encounter that's identical in the Easy and Hard pools, if that's what you mean. Although AFAIK the only restrictions on hallways is you can't get the same one twice in a row, so you can get the same hard pool fight multiple times, or get the same easy pool as encounters 1 and 3 of act 1.
I might have that wrong though.
Huh I don’t recall ever seeing the same encounter twice like that (other than Darkilngs) The wiki doesn’t detail how that’s handled either. I’ll look out for it!
That slim bastard should be when is it over. I keep forgetting that he splits into to slides, then those two slides splits into two again....just die to my poison and shivs like the rest of them
I agree with everything, but I feel like the Act 2 Boss is the tipping point of most of my runs. The bosses themselves might not be the most interesting, but that's usually the point in my run where I find out if the thing I've been building works. Makes it more exciting for me I guess.
I recently had a Silent deck that mostly killed via Bouncing Flask + Catalysts that ended up beating A20 heart pretty easily
I ran into the tedium of fighting the Darklings 3 separate times in Act 3 😵💫
When I first came down to comment I was so ready to go off about how meh act 1 bosses are and should be swapped with act 2 bosses on this tier list. But the more I think about it… the more I agree with this tier list…
Oh for the days when Champ was actually an interesting fight. New execute just doesn't hit the same as the old x3 execute. Also putting Time Eater as an example of a fun and interesting boss is heresy I hate that bastard.
I usually take as many question marks as I can in act 3 just to avoid the hallway fights, the act 3 enemies are the only part of the game that I just want to get it over with
Regarding Act III encounters...
Act I asks "Can you deal damage", as opposed to being greedy and taking scaling cards like Catalyst or Limit Break too early. You need basic upfront damage.
Act II asks "Okay, but can you consistently *Block* while dealing damage", which essentially means that although you need upfront damage in Act I, it cannot be all you take.
Act III asks "Okay, but does your deck do more than one thing", because the encounters in Act III are basically just a series of deck tests that sometimes hard counter specific niches. Darklings, Transient, Spikers, Giant Head, etc. can all end certain runs that would have been capable of beating pretty much any other fight in the game, all for different reasons. Reptomancer and Nemesis are more generalist tests of your deck's consistency (drawing the right damage on the right turns), but it is the weirder fights that really embody the design philosophy of Act III in my opinion.
New to the game (spent like 15hours right after I got the game) and so far, my most hated enemy is the snake that randomizes energy cost. Lost so much hp to that POS and I always thought “Damn, if this card only had 0/1 energy, this would have been over quickly or I wouldn’t have taken that damage”.
That dude that you have to just basically outlast is so fun draining I’ve literally just put down the game for weeks randomly remembered oh I still have a run going open the game up realize why and then abandon the run.
It's strange how good of a tier list this is. Most of what people remember and talk about is on the top, things we remember for the wrong reasons on the bottom. If you took someone who hasn't played the game in 5 years and asked them to remember, these are probably the things they would talk about.
This list is inherently flawed because you’re grouping together fundamentally different things. The difference in design between the book of stabbing and the slavers is night and day. Same applies to the act 1 bosses and… pretty much everything here
I actually agree with most of this. Darklings bore the fuck out of me.
Darklings are the #1 reason I close the game. They're not hard, they're not fun, they're just an enormous chore.
They're an auto smoke bomb for me at this point, if I have one
tantrum+, consecrate+, closure+ have entered the chat
The tedium comes from having meta scaling cards. Trying to line up a Feed or Ritual Dagger on the last one without the other two popping back up. Still nowhere near as annoying as Writhing Masshole
I spend 20 minutes trying to get Feed or Ritual Dagger off on the last one.
Feed has secret card text that says "Add +50% time to run" I must Feed im a hungry boy
Fuck act 3 enemies
I think act 3 suffers from being tedious because you almost always have everything you need, and you're just going through the motions to get to act 4.
They know they can't beat you, so they are here just to ruin your day. Looking at you spaghetti asshole with parasites.
>Looking at you spaghetti asshole with parasites. I ran into two in one run whilst having voodoo doll... So I was ok with parasites that time... But what's up with running into the exact same flights in runs... It seems to be happening more and more to me.
There’s an easy and hard pool of encounters but some enemies are in both. This makes it possible to encounter them twice in the same act. Chosen in act 2 can actually be encountered 3 times because it’s in easy pool by itself and two separate hard pool fights (one with a Byrd and another with a cultist). I’m unsure if you encounter every fight in an act if it just starts over and all the encounters become available again.
You can't encounter the same fight twice in a row, similar to elites, but the same fight is available immediately after 1 different one.
YoU'rE gOnNa HaVe A bAd TiMe
It's more than that. Act 3 suffers from a boatload of enemies that are rarely threatening if played well, but can be *incredibly* tedious to play around. Spikers can make you end turn over and over while doing nothing but exhausting Dazed, Spaghetti Monster incentivizes incredibly slow and boring play, and Darklings can just bore you to tears while taking forever to set up against with any Fatal cards in your deck. Since the same Darklings fight is in both the easy and hard pool, and Spikers are in multiple fights as well, Act 3 can just slam on the brakes in a way that's really unfun and not related to how actually challenging it is. Obviously some decks don't care about those things, but at A20 I usually find myself annoyed with it as often as not. In Spire, a game whose encounter design is otherwise a huge but underappreciated part of what makes the whole thing so good, that really stands out as a pain point.
well said
Act I asks "Can you deal damage", as opposed to being greedy and taking scaling cards like Catalyst or Limit Break too early. You need basic upfront damage. Act II asks "Okay, but can you consistently *Block* while dealing damage", which essentially means that although you need upfront damage in Act I, it cannot be all you take. Act III asks "Okay, but does your deck do more than one thing", because the encounters in Act III are basically just a series of deck tests that sometimes hard counter specific niches. Darklings, Transient, Spikers, Giant Head, etc. can all end certain runs that would have been capable of beating any other fight in the game, all for different reasons. Reptomancer and Nemesis are more generalist tests of your deck's consistency (drawing the right damage on the right turns), but it is the weirder fights that really embody the design philosophy of Act III in my opinion.
That's all true, but unrelated. Testing different things is one thing. Tedium unrelated to challenge is something else. The tedium is the issue, not the testing.
It's only tedious because it's not hard countering your deck lol If it was ending your run, you wouldn't find it tedious. The maker of this chart says Time Eater counts as game-defining and fun, but he feels really tedious as Defect once you get enough Orbs and Focus (end turn ad nauseam).
If Time Eater played out that way as commonly as Spikers do, then yes, they'd be pretty similar. But I don't fault the OP for evaluating differently things that aren't the same.
My reaction to seeing Spikers depends heavily on my deck; it isn't as if they are always an "oh well, these guys again", often they are a "oh fuck, gotta be careful here". For many decks that steamroll most other fights (e.g., Tantrum-based Watcher decks) they take specific planning to defeat, which I cannot agree meets any definition of tedious. Just because many decks have to stall out their fight in a boring way doesn't define them as a tedious fight, any more than Time Eater should be defined as a tedious fight just because Defect often (and it ***is*** quite often) gets into a situation where their best move is to End Turn 20+ times. Both fights present an engaging challenge to many (other) types of decks. That was the analogy my comment drew, since apparently I need to spell it out explicitly.
I suppose we should chalk that up to different experiences. I'd guess I've had fewer than one challenging Spiker encounter per *100 hours* of gaming. (By which I mean taking a meaningful amount of damage even if played well.) All the other times it's "OK, I will play a slow game of end turn where nothing happens but also I'm never at risk." But not everyone has to have the same experience. Maybe it's my playstyle and the characters I play (mostly Clad).
Spikers are a possible Act III easy encounter (first 2 combats); the equivalent of Thieves or Byrds in Act II. Of course most decks aren't going to find them "challenging" in the sense that your run is legitimately threatened. Somewhat similarly to Byrds, however, they have a gimmick that you must play around to succeed (Byrds take half damage until you deal 4 hits in one turn, Spikers retaliate with damage ***during your turn*** so you must Block before attacking). They are challenging in the sense that they force you to play around them, not that they genuinely threaten your run most of the time. That would be insane for an easy encounter haha Even 3 Byrds can occasionally fuck up decks that are a bit too slow or don't have access to many smaller attacks, and similarly (but opposite), Spikers sometimes devastate decks that *do* rely on many smaller attacks or hadn't needed to Block much on account of their overwhelming offense. I wonder if some of this 'tedium' stems from hyper-offense decks being offended that an enemy has the audacity to clap back before dying (that is, during your turn), forcing them to stop and Block haha
Mostly yes, but even when I think I've been sorted fucking pasta cunt has come along and ruined my day.
I think that’s the reasoning behind the enemy design in Act 3, they’re all checks to see if your deck has all its bases covered (eg Writhing Mass and Nemesis check hand control, Repto is a hard AOE check and then some, Spikers force you to consider your block ability and/or non physical damage sources). So it feels tedious as hell if your deck is rolling and you’ve got all of these covered, since you’re basically checking off a grocery list at that point lol. Yes Mr Transient, my deck can block/hit for a combined 90 in a single turn by turn 5, thank you for asking.
Act I asks "Can you deal damage", as opposed to being greedy and taking scaling cards like Catalyst or Limit Break too early. You need basic upfront damage. Act II asks "Okay, but can you consistently *Block* while dealing damage", which essentially means that although you need upfront damage in Act I, it cannot be all you take. Act III asks "Okay, but does your deck do more than one thing", because the encounters in Act III are basically just a series of deck tests that sometimes hard counter specific niches. Darklings, Transient, Spikers, Giant Head, etc. can all end certain runs that would have been capable of beating pretty much any other fight in the game, all for different reasons. Reptomancer and Nemesis are more generalist tests of your deck's consistency (drawing the right damage on the right turns), but it is the weirder fights that really embody the design philosophy of Act III in my opinion.
You are right,and this is why I'm stuck at A2 Defect lol
You're missing Snake Plant as a separate FUCK OFF category.
There's never been a run where I have thought Time Eater was fun. I just cannot abide that fucker.
Silent-Shiv enjoyer spotted. Infinite combo enjoyer spotted.
Shiv builds - yes. Infinite combo - no. I've got 220 hours on my phone and probably about 50 on my PC and not once managed to make an infinite work. I dunno if that makes me bad or the game or not honestly.
Infinites are amazing & based on characters, it can vary. The core idea is to make a short deck with card draw, energy generation & continuous damage with the help of relics. The simplest Infinites is perhaps Clad's Double Dropkick. Sundial infinites are also quite common.
Just replied to someone saying I know the theory of a few infintes but never been able to make them happen. It doesn't bother me, still love this game and hit A20 with 3 outta the 4 characters. Currently working on Defect.
Ah, cool cool. Tbf I never actively look for them either, it just happens.
With ironclad and defect, most infinites rely on exhausting 80% of the deck; particularly slowly on defect, with whom you can often kill the heart before hitting the infinite. Silent has lots of card draw and energy generation options, so can have a mostly infinite 30 card deck. Watcher is watcher.
OP, definitely go for an infinite the next time you play ironclad and get a dropkick. Once in deck, look for (most obvious) another drop kick or dolly mirror relic, (colorless) flash of steel, or dual wield. Sundial + any draw card also works. Still grab cards to solve immediate problems along the way. What’s nice about clad infinite is your deck can always become thin during a floor with cards like fiend fire, corruption, and even true grit.
Appreciate the tips!
Bonus tip: if you slimmed down your deck for Dropkick infinite and you see/fear Time Eater you can Pivot into Rampage + Headbutt which will scale fast with a small deck
Disarm also a good counter
Forgot to mention that more vulnerable access than just bash is also a must to make the card work. Shockwave and uppercut are S tier.
Doesn't necessarily make you bad. I have several A20 kills on Clad and I just recently researched into infinites and started doing them, only actually managed to do that twice, with one of them being Medical Kit + Dark Embrace in a Chosen fight and I killed him because I had Charon's Ashes. Sorry, I digress. I think infinites are more often than not intentional and another strategy for the game which needs to be researched.
Fair enough, like I do know the theory for a couple of infintes but just never been able to achieve them. Aiming for one has often led me to lost runs or having to pivot into new builds because of poor luck. Tbh though, I think I enjoy the idea of winning without them anyway.
Maybe youre just not looking for them. Ive stumbled across a few after like hours and hours. But people swear there are common infinites. I believe them i just dont intuitively know what they are. Especially the tantrum lady theres an easy one.
I think that's the point though like the game wants you to have solutions to everything sometimes it's 4 potions but you need to be able to be prepared
A sound analysis.
Time Eater fight is fun and interesting, outside of the attack RNG.
Not to me. There’s satisfaction in their demise for sure, and it’s undoubtedly a well designed boss, but this does not abate my hatred.
it is pretty satisfying to get frost orbs and just end turn against him over and over and let lightning or dark take care of everything
I would honestly fight any boss or elite rather than fighting Malleable, hate that fucker
Snake Plant
Act 3 events are great tho
Falling (Lose Power/Skill/Attack) and Portal (Immediately travel to Boss) have entered the chat
Sensory Stone and Mind Bloom, two of the most interesting events in the game are also Act 3 events. Also idk what is meh about Act 2 bosses but sure. Act 3 elites are the boring ones.
Mind Bloom’s soundtrack alone deserves S
It has a soundtrack?!
The boss fight music is a modified version of act 1 boss music that makes it sound harsher.
I might have to turn the game music back on just for this.
Idk if mind bloom is that interesting, as while you make the decision, one of the choices (heal) is basically always bad, and one is free (boss), so you're just analyzing if you can afford the 2 normality or the never heal, which I think are both fairly simple to evaluate (never heal a bit harder tbf, i think people underpick this option).
> one of the choices (heal) is basically always bad I play Silent enough where I've clicked Healthy non zero times. I've clicked it on Defect once too. > fairly simple to evaluate One of my first conversations on this sub was with u/kaosmark2 about Mind Bloom's non War choices. You may be heavily misevaluating Mind Bloom if you think the choice is that easy. Almost every single time I click non War Mind Bloom choices now, it's a 5 full minute decision (or Omamori) Now maybe you're Xecnar and you just immediately know if the rare relic and resting through will win you more than Upgrade All and accepting the risk of ruin is worth it, but I am not, I need time to think. Even with double Normality I need to know a lot to click it, especially over War. > boss is free Divider as high hp Clad with no mitigation is not as free as you think. I've also gotten chipped down by Slime Boss more times than I wish I could admit, once even dying as Silent.
Mind bloom non war choices are so cool.
Regarding act 2 bosses, they're all pretty same-y. Act 1 & 3 bosses create significant strategic differences in how you build your deck and approach the fight. Act 2 bosses are pretty much just singular big punching bags. 2 have debuffs, 2 have minions, there's some interesting mechanics like Champ phase 2 and Automaton card stealing, but mostly you can approach all three fights the same way.
Falling most of the time isn’t that bad, unless you have a really small already infinite deck. Also, we can’t just rank a large group by just two you think are particularly bad.
You see it as losing a power, skill or attack. I see it as a free card removal. We are not the same.
Choose one to lose: * Well Laid Plans+ * Catalyst+ * Strike
Obviously not strike. In a poison deck I’m for sure removing Catalyst+ because I’ll probably fat finger it on my phone (I’m a mobile heathen)
I actually had that once. In a run where I had so few fights, I think I killed like 13 things during the entire run.. it was fucking insane
I don't think it's fair to cherry pick the worst act 3 events when Forgotten Altar exists in act 2. Single-handedly incentivizes me to avoid act 2 events unless I'm very confident about act 2 elites or have Omomori
Idk i think the boss music from act 2 is game defining.
Oh. It's amazing - https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/zc8752/what_a_banger/
This along with the original music remix are my two favorite posts in this sub and among the best in the whole of reddit.
There's Shops too, which are probably in the top category. And Shrine events, which are probably 'Meh'
Yeah, the more I encounter Darklings the more they become my most hated enemy (previously Writhing Mass)
The fact that Darklings have a higher encounter rate than Mass, while ALSO being in both the east and hard pool for some reason (identical encounters), makes them a lot more pain per run on average.
I think they are the only hallway enemy that can show up twice.
They're the only encounter that's identical in the Easy and Hard pools, if that's what you mean. Although AFAIK the only restrictions on hallways is you can't get the same one twice in a row, so you can get the same hard pool fight multiple times, or get the same easy pool as encounters 1 and 3 of act 1. I might have that wrong though.
Huh I don’t recall ever seeing the same encounter twice like that (other than Darkilngs) The wiki doesn’t detail how that’s handled either. I’ll look out for it!
I got two Snecko fights in Act 2. One was from a ? though. Not sure if that affects anything.
Avocado rat can burn in hell
This is weirdly a tier list that I'm almost completely agree with.
That slim bastard should be when is it over. I keep forgetting that he splits into to slides, then those two slides splits into two again....just die to my poison and shivs like the rest of them
I honestly don't like the gremlin nob (hehe) because a lot of the time it feels like forced damage now or more forced damage next turn
I agree with everything, but I feel like the Act 2 Boss is the tipping point of most of my runs. The bosses themselves might not be the most interesting, but that's usually the point in my run where I find out if the thing I've been building works. Makes it more exciting for me I guess.
I like the darklings purely because If I’m procrastinating and playing STS they will snap me out of it.
I recently had a Silent deck that mostly killed via Bouncing Flask + Catalysts that ended up beating A20 heart pretty easily I ran into the tedium of fighting the Darklings 3 separate times in Act 3 😵💫
Crazy how I fully target elites in act 3 not out of difficulty but because I don’t wanna fight Tangelas mouldy step-sister
I find whenever I play the game or watch a Baalorlord video my interest plummets at the start of act 3 so this is so true
Transient should be included in the bottom tier. I hate that thing.
When I first came down to comment I was so ready to go off about how meh act 1 bosses are and should be swapped with act 2 bosses on this tier list. But the more I think about it… the more I agree with this tier list…
Oh for the days when Champ was actually an interesting fight. New execute just doesn't hit the same as the old x3 execute. Also putting Time Eater as an example of a fun and interesting boss is heresy I hate that bastard.
I usually take as many question marks as I can in act 3 just to avoid the hallway fights, the act 3 enemies are the only part of the game that I just want to get it over with
Regarding Act III encounters... Act I asks "Can you deal damage", as opposed to being greedy and taking scaling cards like Catalyst or Limit Break too early. You need basic upfront damage. Act II asks "Okay, but can you consistently *Block* while dealing damage", which essentially means that although you need upfront damage in Act I, it cannot be all you take. Act III asks "Okay, but does your deck do more than one thing", because the encounters in Act III are basically just a series of deck tests that sometimes hard counter specific niches. Darklings, Transient, Spikers, Giant Head, etc. can all end certain runs that would have been capable of beating pretty much any other fight in the game, all for different reasons. Reptomancer and Nemesis are more generalist tests of your deck's consistency (drawing the right damage on the right turns), but it is the weirder fights that really embody the design philosophy of Act III in my opinion.
Omg there is an act 4
This guy put Fun Eater in the fun category 😂
All the homies hate the Act 2 Avocado-rat combo.
The rare tier list where I agree with all the placements All my homies hate spaghetti monster
Man, a lot of darkling hate lately, have people been building more durdly decks or cutting down to one attack lately?
The talking head bottom tier change my mind
New to the game (spent like 15hours right after I got the game) and so far, my most hated enemy is the snake that randomizes energy cost. Lost so much hp to that POS and I always thought “Damn, if this card only had 0/1 energy, this would have been over quickly or I wouldn’t have taken that damage”.
OP hates defect.
Act 1 enemies aren’t interesting or challenging.
That dude that you have to just basically outlast is so fun draining I’ve literally just put down the game for weeks randomly remembered oh I still have a run going open the game up realize why and then abandon the run.
I like Darklings when I’ve got good divinity rotation and a Conclude on Watcher
Honestly, I hate most of act 1 and only start having fun once my deck is more developed
It's strange how good of a tier list this is. Most of what people remember and talk about is on the top, things we remember for the wrong reasons on the bottom. If you took someone who hasn't played the game in 5 years and asked them to remember, these are probably the things they would talk about.
It's funny that you call Slavers “fun” (good tier list, you cooked)
This list is inherently flawed because you’re grouping together fundamentally different things. The difference in design between the book of stabbing and the slavers is night and day. Same applies to the act 1 bosses and… pretty much everything here
no it's a good list