SLAY the SPIRE: Back to the Grind! // TutsTutsss
Greetings, travelers of the Spire!
I can confidently say that, in midst of so many difficulties I faced during the year of 2023, that getting to know about and learning how to play Slay the Spire were a big positive part of it. I started playing more seriously when I got the mobile version of the game, that is a perfect port of the original game. I eventually got Ascension 20 wins, which are the highest possible difficulty of the game, with two of the four playable characters. During last year, the devs also announced that they were officially developing Slay the Spire II, and planned on launching it on 2025, so I knew that I still needed to finish my quest, that I had put on pause. But now I'm back to the grind!!
In this post from nearly 9 months ago, I not only shared about my excitement with the announcement of StS II, but I also shared my first A20 win with the first character, The Ironclad.
It was wonderful to be able to enter the post and find the information about my run. To brief you just a bit, Ironclad usually is a simple character: smash enemies with powerful attacks, lose some HP in the process, heal it back and more with some useful skills and powers, and also exhaust cards in exchange for armor, until you can bop the enemies in the head with multiple hundred amounts of damage via Body Slam.
I am really proud to be able to exemplify the strategy from the last paragraph in the image above, as I slayed the Spire.
On the run's stats above, I noticed that it was concluded on the 7th of April of 2024, and the run took almost 2 hours to conclude! For the cards, I'd say Apotheosis, Feed and Offering really did help a lot, along with the Body Slam and exhaust/armor combo.
After finishing off my journey through the ascensions with the red character, I started grinding with the second one, the complex green and amazing one, The Silent. It is the most difficult character to play with, in my humble opinion. While the blue one that'll talk next is probably the hardest to start with, it is actually one of the most powerful ones after you master it a bit and start using more of your brain while playing.
I was able to find the screenshots from the day that I eventually got my A20 win with Silent, and had the pleasure to even Slay the Spire as well. But it was a lot more difficult than with Ironclad, which I was able to beat most higher ascensions first try, including the twentieth one.
During my Silent grind, I unfortunately lost a lot in ascensions 18, 19 and specially in 20. But I finally won on the 23rd of May of 2024, and it was what finally got me done with grinding this game so much. It had been more than six straight months using most of my thinking mind, and I couldn't keep playing at the same rate anymore. It was good to stop and breath, to be able to appreciate the game again recently.
The gameplay with the Silent basically consists of playing Shiv Build (shoutout to my boy Amaz that is a one-trick-pony) which was buffed during one of the patches in the time I played, but also using Discard mechanichs and managing your defense using different skills, powers and your potions. However, my favorite build has always been using Poison, that was the tool I successfully used to destroy the heart during my A20 win, as featured in the other image above. But I have to admit, even nearly 8 months later, that I remember beating the two final bosses and being unsure that I could defeat the Final Boss; but thanks to my venomous gameplay I was able to nearly get it!
So then, we finally get to nerdiest and most unique character of the four, and that does not seem to be in Slay the Spire II, at least not in the same way... they're called The Defect.
One important thing I'm not sure I've stated is that the Ascension system is a progressive one: you only unlock Ascension 1 after beating the game on the normal difficulty once, and progressively with each other, up to A20, and with each character independently.
Hence, that's why I affirmed on the title that I'm back on the grind, since on the last few days I booted up the game again on my phone and, as you can see in the above screenshot and the ones bellow, I won my first run back in Ascension 11, unlocking the twelfth one.
This singular blue automaton has the ability to conjur up elemental orbs and evoke them, which makes its gameplay really special and strategic. There are Lightning and Dark orbs that have attacking abilities, there is the Frost orb that aids in defense, and also the rarer Plasma orb, that gives you additional Energy, the game's "Mana" system.
Unfortunately I was not able to Slay the Spire during this run, which is this enormous heart featured in the image above, which is the Final Boss of every run, only accessable if you collect three special key pieces. This is only optional, since you unlock the next Ascension level if you beat only the first three acts; however, I challenged myself to go for the Evil Heart every single run, so I guess there's this additional to every run I made also both with the Ironclad and the Silent as well.
Hopefully I'll beat A20 on the Defect soon enoguh before Slay the Spire II is launched, and maybe I'll also try to grind out with the fourth character, even though I find it not that interesting as the other three; and I mean, in the end it is about having fun, isn't it?
I hope you've been having fun as well, internet traveler! Cheers ✨🇧🇷