I can definitely see how apotheosis isn't that great. It didn't do much for me on my last run. Mind, I was running armaments+ at that stole some of the thunder.

Well, it turns out that taking Snecko Eye was a good decision in this run. But I had to work very hard to get this one done.



I ended up buying Snecko Skull and Mercury Hourglass from a shop on Floor 3. That Snecko Skull almost single-handedly won the run, but Tough Bandages pulled a lot of weight too. And now that I think about it I couldn't have won without Mercury Hourglass either. That's how close the final fight was. So all in all a couple of very smart buys for 400+ gold.

Beat the final boss (Time Eater) with 2 hp left. Because he had done a triple attack that just did that much damage through the Lizard Tail. He died with about 5 extra poison on him over his hp total. Just looking at all my relics, the number of things that did small incremental damage over the fight in a fight where if I was missing any one of them I would have lost...... run was magic lol. The only relic that didn't do **** is Omamori, but that's okay because I know without it I would have run into the madness event.

Edit:
I mean seriously. If I was missing any of the relics other than Omamori I would have lost the boss fight. That is how close it was. And I went in with 65/65 hp.

Not a single one of the 3 bosses wasn't a nail-biter. I beat Hexaghost and the Hyper Beam dude 1 turn before I was dead too.

This is why Elite Hunting is a good idea in Act I.

Today I learned that a bottled fairy will revive you in the middle of an enemy's attack so you can't rely on it to dodge out on a whole turn's worth of hurt.

Lizard Tail works the same way.

I don't like how they made Bottled Fairy. It's basically a significantly weaker Ghost in a Jar that you can't control. All of the final bosses do big multi-hits so it isn't even guaranteed to be better than a blood potion in the harder fights.

Does not live up to its Zelda heritage.

It does about as much as a fairy in Breath of the Wild's late game.

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Is there anyone here who wants to make a real argument that Distraction is worth taking? I take the Ironclad equivalent a lot and expect to take the Defect equivalent religiously. But a random skill just seems..... bad. But I've not done the math on it so this is probably the card on the list most likely for someone to change my mind.

Nope. I've rarely used it myself, and I haven't heard anything good about it. A15 players pick it 7% of the time it's offered

In an hour or less I'll be able to play the Defect for 3 hours. Can't wait!

Nearly time to switch back to the main branch and unlock the defect's cards and relics all over again

Two Things

1) It's very easy to copy save data between branches. They even tell you how to do it in the patch notes for the patch where the Defect came out onto the beta branch.

2) The character is coming out on May 31st/June 1st depending on where you live. When they said later in May they really meant later...


I'm assuming they originally meant to release the character earlier in the month but it got delayed due to balancing issues, card art, bugs, etc.; and we are going to get it on the last possible day just because they feel obligated to still technically release it in the promised time-frame.

I've taken a couple breaks to let my playstation cool down. This happened on my second attempt.







This puts me at 7 W 16 L for doing Ascensions 5-12. Got one more to go before I'm caught up to where I want to be.

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Something I'm consistently noticing is that my winning Silent decks end up much thicker than my winning Ironclad decks. I have to go back to Ascension 3.... a long time ago to find an Ironclad deck bigger than 22.

Meanwhile my recent winning Silent decks:
32
25
30
28
23
19
36
25

That's a big difference that isn't explained by the Silent starting with 2 extra cards.

So...... anyone got good tips on how to play the Defect? What common cards are the "Cloak and Dagger" of the class? What uncommon cards should I keep an eye out for? What cards should I completely avoid?

I want to know things I can't figure out by myself ahead of time, because the wikis are hilariously out of date. I don't know anything about card rarity and I don't have the full set of cards to look at, so these are legitimate questions I don't have the answer to at the moment.

Defect has some similarities to the Silent but isn't the same. Particularly in act 1 it's worth noting that the Defect has pretty good sustained damage thanks to Zap but not a lot of defence. So if you were the Silent, you'd probably want to be picking cards like Ball Lightning, Streamline, and Sweeping Beam to give you some damage in fights. These cards are still usable by the Defect, but it actually wants to take some defensive cards - Leap, Stack, Steam Barrier, and Go for the Eyes are all good.

Card and energy management are more extreme for the Defect than other classes. Let me explain why Turbo can be a pretty good card. Your energy requirements are highest the first time through your deck when you haven't played your powers (some good ones are expensive) and if you have Streamline it's still full price and if you have Plasma orbs you don't have them out yet. By your second time through the deck you don't care if you draw the Void.

However, more of a focus should be getting some card draw. Coolheaded is one of the best common cards (upgraded it draws 2). Compile Driver is getting some play as long as you have at least 2 types of orbs regularly. Hologram is an all around good card.

The main card that stands out as bad to me is Barrage.

All the cards I've mentioned above are common. Some generically good uncommon cards are Reinforced Body, Self Repair, and Skim. The rare that stands out the most to me is Echo Form. It works in any deck and sometimes can even give your deck enough power that you can win without focusing on an archetype.

Well I reached my goal of getting both characters to A14.



Now I need to find something else to do until Thursday .

Write the wiki. You complained it was out of date before, right?

I can't do that. I don't have access to the Defect.

I got to play one run yesterday. Beat A14 as Ironclad with a 25 card deck.

I think I am starting to see the matrix. Or maybe I'm just getting lucky. I don't know. But I'm noticing that my runs have been going a lot better since I've stopped going for card removal at every shop. I'm even buying cards sometimes. ..... Don't know what this world is coming to.

I ate a doughnut. The big one. It was a daily challenge though, so no achievement.

That's unfortunate but

The reason for this is that you could have written down everything you did, step by step, and posted a "How to get 'Ooh Donut!'" achievement guide you would then post on steam or reddit.

^ This is something people were actually doing, and the achievements basically got removed within a week of someone doing this for both Minimalist and Speed Climber. The dailies are even more easy to abuse than seeded runs.

I'm not all that saddened by the lack of achievement.


I am a little perplexed as to why that matters. It seems that people are trying to maintain the integrity of the achievements by making sure other people can't get them as easily as they did. It's a weird stance to take when the achievements are already inherently meaningless and the basic strategies to attain them already pretty obvious. Maybe things are better off this way, but I can't see it as an "abuse" of the system.