The Balatro of dungeon-crawling roguelikes: Slay the Spire

I'm putting in worrying hours into STS2 and it's very good, even if I've totally forgotten how to play it. Lots of people are complaining about how hard it is compared to 1, and I'm certainly in that camp.

Multiplayer has been relatively easier, though, even in spite of the higher enemy scaling, I think because having more players means a wider build distribution that can cover more fight types.

Also I'm totally down for MP with any posters!

Beat my first Ascension w/ Ironclad!

Congrats! I find the listener to be very strong - poison + block. But the game is tough and unforgiving. Haven’t tried MP.

MP was actually how I won for the first time. Even though enemies scale up to account for more players, I find that having multiple players means that you have more decks that cover a sufficiently wide enough range of enemies, which can paper over the weaknesses in your (read: my) deck.

I've been replaying the original while holding off on buying the new one - is 2 notably different from 1? Aside from having multiplayer, anyway.

Two extra characters that have pretty unique playstyles, plus some tweaks to returning cards. I last played STS1 years ago so I don't remember all the details, tbh, and I've probably already put more hours into 2 than 1.

Xp It's slay the spire 1.5

the basic gameplay is largely the same but most of the content is completely new and there's already a lot more than the first game. it's slay the spire except more.

the three returning characters are about 50% new cards each, so despite having the same basic ideas they still feel fresh if you were familiar with their sts1 incarnations, there's two entirely new characters and all the enemies and events etc. are new

it's very good! i got up to ascension 5 on all characters before burning out a bit. i'll come back to it eventually, at least when they add in the next character if not sooner

Some of the builds for slay the spire have been nerfed or are no longer possible. For instance Heavy Blade isn't available so strength build isn't as powerful as it would be in version 1.0. Also, going for a shield build for ironclad means unlocking a bunch of cards that aren't available at the start.

i really like it tho haven’t done multiplayer yet. absolute sts1 behaviour - i have only slain the spire with poison and shiv builds with the silent…. i am terrible at this game.

it’s slay the spire except more is about right tbh.

i don’t mind the necrobinder but struggle with the regent. but then i never really played the watcher in sts1.

I've been most successful with my beloved Defect, and going ham on orbs still is viable.

Just finished Silent A2, I managed an unwieldy (34 cards!) shiv spam engine w/ powers that gave block AND damage and every card *played*. Didn't sweat the Act 3 boss, and I probably could've taken on more Elites, but I've flown too close to the sun before.

The act 3 boss that scares me the most has been the Queen, I'm not sure if I've ever managed to beat her. Test Subject is relatively easy, even despite the multiple phases.

I've beaten the queen twice solo and once multiplayer. The key (other than having attacks that hit multiple monsters) is to focus on the queen. You're not going to last long if you take out her minion first without doing significant damage (ie, taking out half of her hit points) to her.

Finally got her with Necro (who's also one of my weakest characters) with an incidentally AOE Osty build: rolled a rare that deals back damage to all enemies whenever Osty *takes* damage. After that, I just focused on beefing our best bone pal, and added some Shared Fates (-2 strength for me, -3 strength for enemies -- Osty doesn't care about debuffs to Necro) to help with survivability.

I feel like I need to take a break, not just because of the difficulty but because the current build keeps crashing on Steam Deck.

This game also has that feeling of helpless impotence when the consequences of your bad decision-making are about to materialize (i.e. kill you) and there's nothing you can do about it, and which I don't think is quite so painfully acute compared to other similar games I've played.