r/slaythespire • u/Estebunnie • 22d ago
DISCUSSION Does the game read your deck and give you the worst boss matchup?
I feel like everytime I build a 0 energy deck and get spinning top they give me time eater.
When I have a million frigging powers the give me the Caw Caw Boss.
The duo I don't really mind.
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u/GreatMist 22d ago
Nah seeds are set in stone as soon as you leave Neow, it just feels spiteful cause it's a well built game
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u/KrawhithamNZ 22d ago
But the seed would also be skewed towards certain relics and cards being offered.
How often do you get half way through act 1 and realise you could have built a combo
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u/Hablapata Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
but they’re not saying that right? they’re saying that within a seed there could be a bias towards a combo, which is absolutely true, and in fact more likely than not. not that there is any sort of pattern across seeds - at least i thought
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u/PapaPancake8 Ascension 20 22d ago
What do you mean a bias toward a combo? I thought it was all odds based.
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u/CatoTheStupid Ascended 22d ago
Some coherent pattern will generally emerge in the randomness was my take away.
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u/crowbahr Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
The number of combinations is far too high for coherent patterns to emerge - you're experiencing apophenia.
There is some correlated RNG in unmodded spire's first couple of encounters but after the first few floors the number of combinations has spiraled so far out that you can't predict it. And even the correlated RNG isn't 100%.
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u/yurinagodsdream 22d ago edited 22d ago
As a purely academic matter it seems to me that if we analyzed literally all seeds some patterns would emerge like "an act 1 mummified hand is correlated with a higher/lower than average awakened one act 3 boss" or similar, as an artifact of how the balance of the game and the way the game turns a seed into simulated randomness interact. But it's not something we could establish at all currently I think, even with access to the full code of the game.
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u/KurusuTheBlueCat 22d ago
Not as often as all the time I see the card to pick and skip because "eh, these randoms doesn't fit or help my build currently"
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u/cscott024 Eternal One + Ascended 22d ago
I can’t count how many times, after a tough Reptomancer fight, my reward is fucking Gremlin Horn (which would have completely solved the fight).
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u/13SOCKMONSTER Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
No, the game doesn’t read your deck and try to counter you. It’s generally agreed upon that donu deca are easier than the other 2 because the only challenge they present is killing fast and/or blocking a lot, which any good deck wants to do.
People tend to notice way more when they get unlucky vs lucky. Take note of all the times you’re running a shiv deck or a power deck and don’t see the boss you fear. It’s probably the majority of the time below ascension 20 (your expected value is seeing the one you’re afraid of 1/3 of the time). In general though, think about those bosses if you have a deck like that and see if you can add an alternate win con to your deck. I’ve had several runs with creative ai as my main source of scaling, for example, and I pick up a recycle to go infinite against awakened one. It’s a slow setup and not super viable, but it lets me get by the one fight
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u/larsltr 22d ago
This is exactly it. We are programmed as humans / animals to respond, react, and learn from negative outcomes. So you just don’t remember as much the time you had a power heavy deck that obliterated time eater (and if this deck wasn’t good enough to beat The Awakened One it probably wouldn’t have made it through Act 4.
At A20, with a 2/3 chance of playing any one of them, if you don’t prepare a deck that can take care of all of them, that’s on you.
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u/The-Friendly-Autist Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
I still disagree that Donu and Deca are "easier," they just lack a gimmick. This means they require less thought, but sometimes a good deck still gets killed because Donu and Deca put out consistent scaling damage and scale their block, too.
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u/ThatOne5264 Ascension 20 22d ago
In my experience duno and deka kill the weak runs. I often go for elites and die early, thus they are rarely a problem for me. But a better player may survive a weak start and get killed by donu deka
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u/ZaydSophos 22d ago
I usually think of the awakened one as easiest.
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u/CbfDetectedLoser 22d ago
This was my first boss and I legit threw my phone against the wall whennn be it respawned cuz I got so pissed.
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u/TDenverFan 22d ago
I think one thing that's nice with the Awakened One is you can pivot/prepare a little bit more throughout the rest of the act than you can for the others.
Like unless there's a power that's absolutely crucial, you can just avoid picking up extra powers in act 3. Also, you get a little bit of set up time after the first kill, and if things line up right you can kill it instantly after it revives.
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
If he showed up when I wasn't running a deck heavy on powers I would agree. I have never seen that guy once when I didn't have 4 or 5 powers on my deck. Just like time matter will.always be the act 3 boss with shivs. Instent lose.
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u/Zxv975 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
Donu deca aren't weak per se, but they counter the same types of deck that elites like giant head and bosses like champ already counter: slow scaling decks. If have an overly slow scaling deck then you will probably die to one of the many speed checks in the game before you even get to The Shapes. Conversely, if you clear all of the elites just fine, your deck can already pretty much handle Donu & Deca.
So ultimately it's just an example of survivorship bias.
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u/DarkLordArbitur 22d ago
I have been faced with awakened one on defect so many goddamn times, same with time eater on silent. I feel like the only time I see donu deca is on clad.
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u/SpaceSpheres108 22d ago
The solution that works for me is to shove so many powers into your deck that you can stack Echo Forms, Buffers and Biased Cognitions. Some Creative AI magic usually solves any missing cards.
This lets you gain 100+ block per turn from frost or mitigate the damage altogether. Then its strength gain is obviously useless.
So far, it has worked every time I've made it to Awakened One as Defect (up to A15 so far), but I die quite a lot before then so idk if this strategy can be called "optimal" for the entire run :p
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u/TDenverFan 22d ago
I don't mind Time Eater on Silent. The biggest issue for me is zoning out/not paying attention to the cards played counter. But I actually find the ability to spam cards useful, you can control when your turn ends, and you can usually avoid ending turns at like 10 cards played, forcing you to have a dud turn.
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u/matt6400 21d ago
Crazy, i thought for sure that it did. I have dozens of playthroughs and just had Caw caw boss for the 2nd time. It seems I draw time eater almost every time.
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u/HollyleafYT 22d ago
google confirmation bias
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u/ViolinistSalt6192ww 22d ago
I just found out about recency bias from a related article, and it's the best thing ever!
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u/Optimal_Y 22d ago
I bet you'd like gamblers fallacy even better
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u/ViolinistSalt6192ww 22d ago
Everyone I've talked to that's played russian roulette is fine, so it must be ok
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u/SAI_Peregrinus 22d ago
No, the game has no code to do that, it's random. The universe, however, is not so forgiving; Murphy's Law applies, so the random chance will always have the worst outcome for you.
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u/OpticalPirate 22d ago
No. Ppl just remember low lights. At A20 you fight 2 act 3 bosses and only 1 is known. I just assume the worst one for my deck will show up and plan accordingly, you do have a whole act to prepare instead of doubling down on your weaknesses.
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u/Wookie_Nipple 22d ago
If you play on A20 you are 66% to face whichever boss you feel weak to. That's the game telling you that you have to have flexible, well rounded decks that don't just cave to one hoser
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u/Zxv975 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
No, runs are seeded. You can enter the same seed after you lose, build completely differently and you will face the same boss at the end of the run.
This is just an example of human pattern-seeking, where your brain is looking to backfit observations onto some explanation to try and make sense of it. In reality, it's just purely random. Nothing more.
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u/SailorGhidra 21d ago
Seeding removes achievements though right?
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u/Zxv975 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 20d ago
Yeah it does, for pretty much exactly this reason. You could just re-run a seed (or search online for a community suggested seed) and then just cheese it with prior knowledge of the incoming outcomes.
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u/gamerdudeNYC 22d ago
Best is when you’re playing A20 and you see a boss you can beat but don’t know the second one… so you beat Deku and Donu but then get Bird Boss when you’ve got a Power deck or Time Slug with shiv deck
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u/Gitzser 22d ago
As said here, no.
but there are a few "fun" instances that i feel like they always happen to me:
In act one, everytime I'd upgrade an AOE card, Lagavulin will be my next elite.
upgrade bash or something like that? sentries
get more than one skill in the first floors? Nob.
cheap deck after killing act 1 boss? sneko and no energy options
act 2: have immolate+? book of stabbing first elite
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u/dedolent 22d ago
that art is sick. who's the artist?
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u/Estebunnie 22d ago
Steam community artist "Ackerman" he's got an even sicker one vs the stabbing book
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u/praticle 22d ago
ackerman is just cropping and reposting others art, the actual artist is George Eracleous
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u/AndForeverNow 22d ago
I always feel that Time Eater counters Silent, Awaken counters Defect, and Duo counters Ironclad, and due to this there is a biased. May he 99% wrong but it feels like this.
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u/arcus2611 22d ago
"awakened one counters defect"
now there's a joke if I've ever heard one
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u/boowhitie 22d ago
I think a lot of people are afraid to use powers on awakened one, and that maybe be rough if you just have a few powers that make your build. But power spam defect demolishing awakened one is so satisfying.
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u/arcus2611 22d ago
You can just do the math. Every power played increases the multihit damage by 8, so your power just needs to add more block generation than that.
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
Do any defects powers add block generation at all? Buffer nullifies one or 2 attacks but that wouldn't count for this. Maybe I missed them.
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u/torturousvacuum 22d ago
Do any defects powers add block generation at all?
focus is block with cold orbs. capacitor is more orb slots, so more orbs active. echo form can be doubling block for every block card except auto-shields. and so on and so forth.
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u/radianart 22d ago
No, it just give me worst possible draws every turn to make sure I won't even get to the boss.
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u/Baladucci Eternal One 22d ago
I know for a fact that it doesn't, but OMG I still swear that it does
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u/Foxisdabest 22d ago
Definitely feels like it to me lol feels like every time I play silent I end up getting the timekeeper
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u/ScandiiCandii 22d ago
This is called the "Negativity Bias." People tend to recall bad things better, as well as dwell on them longer.
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u/Cystonectae 22d ago
I'm a filthy casual but I was able to break A10 with each character just by going into every single floor with the thought that I am 100% going to be facing the worst boss for whatever deck I am building. Idk it makes me less likely to reaction-pick too many cards that overly commit to one type of deck.
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
How do you build a deck that can actually do everything without having it so big it can't do anything?
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u/Barrage-Infector 22d ago
Ofc not, it always gives me Awakened One when I have no powers and Time Eater when I have good card manipulation and/or Blade Dance
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u/IamaHyoomin 22d ago
no, it's just confirmation bias. You remember the times you have a great deck that can only be countered by one boss, and then get that boss, you're not going to remember the times that what boss you get didn't really fully matter.
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u/SpecialOfficerHunk Eternal One 22d ago
I feel like if people would think about the worst boss they could match up at Act 3 every time, they would notice how often they got lucky
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u/BackgroundCarpet1796 22d ago
I just ended a run now, and I was killed by the Heart... 😭
I was playing Silent and things were going really well, but act 4 was a disaster. I lacked defensive cards on crucial moments and that was my undoing. It was simply bad luck.
My point is, it doesn't even have to be a bad matchup.
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u/Public-Necessary-761 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
I just had a great shiv deck and guess what? Time eater. However, after getting set up I killed him with 1 blade dance (each shiv did 120). 🥱😎
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
How in the fuck?
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u/Public-Necessary-761 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
Nightmare -> Nightmare. Nightmare -> Accuracy until shivs were doing 40 damage (really only 6 accuracies, nothing crazy). Then phantasmal killer to double the damage and of course terror for vulnerable.
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u/Public-Necessary-761 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 22d ago
I enjoy bullying time eater when I get the chance. Another recent run I had I charged a dark orb to like 12,000 damage (before I got bored) then multi-casted it 37 times.
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u/rokkuranx 22d ago
I believe the game is coded:
Do you have a shiv card in your card -> Yes -> Timekeeper
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u/galmenz 22d ago
its a 1 in 3 of seeing any boss, 2 in 3 in act III. its just very likely for you to see the one guy you dont want to, any run, every run, and you should not make a deck that gets bodied by a single boss
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
Can you explain how I can make a deck that can do everything without making it so big it can no longer do anything?
Silent as an example has shivs, discard, poison builds. How do I have a shiver build without playing multiple cards for time eater? Poison builds have a similar problem.
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u/kleeshade 22d ago
'Negativity bias'. We all have it. Looking for what's wrong keeps us alive. But no. There's just as much chance to draw any of the bosses and any of the elites (with the elites though, you cannot draw the same elite twice in a row, so in that case your second elite is a 50/50 chance between the two that you didn't fight in your last elite fight that act).
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u/Alecks1608 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 21d ago
Ironchad? Time Eater
Silent? Timer Eater
The Defect? Time Eater Awakened One
The Watcher? You guessed, Time Eater
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u/frr_Vegeta Ascension 20 19d ago
I built up a nice shiv deck a while ago and of course it was Time Eater. However, unlike many other times, this deck had both Kunai and Shuriken. I managed to out scale his scaling. It felt damned good.
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u/Mountblancc 22d ago
after playing this alot, you will have gut feeling when game offer you shiv deck or discard draw deck and then rarely offer poison deck. its obvious you will facing time eater when you always offered shiv deck or discard deck from act 1 to act 2.
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u/SquirrelSuspicious 22d ago
I straight up refuse to believe anyone who says no, nearly every time I do a build where I play lots of cards each turn I get Time Eater, nearly every time I do a power build I see Awakened One, as for Donu and Deca I haven't noticed much correlation for them.
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u/arcus2611 22d ago
well then why aren't you reading the game and tuning your deck to counter the act 3 bosses smh
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
How do you take the deck and all the relics you have and change it entirely in one act? As far as I know there is a max of 4 card removals so if I have a deck that uses say shivs how do I change that to a poison build in one act?
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u/arcus2611 22d ago edited 22d ago
You just click on catalyst and 1-2 starters (and there are various poison cards that you can sneak into a shiv build easily), bwam poison pivot.
Removes don't factor into it at all.
(Though poison is one of the easier pivots)
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
Catalyst is a hard card to get. There are a few poison cards to mix in easy too but you need naxous fumes of the poison goes down to fast to use on time eater. That boss is the worst when not playing ironclad or watcher.
What do you do about the 20 card s you have to help you actually get shivs that now cannot be used and just float through your deck?
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u/arcus2611 22d ago edited 22d ago
If you have 20 cards that are dead weight in act 4 and they are significantly slowing you down then you've built a bad deck. You don't need 20 cards that are only good for dominating hallways. But also this is what draw is for, to sift through your deck for the cards you need.
Learn how to avoid overcommitting/overspecializing. i.e. If your deck has 3 blade dances and a terror and shuriken and 2 accuracies, you already have enough damage scaling. That means recognizing malaise is probably a better addition than phantasmal killer because it shores up an area currently your deck has no answer to.
It also means you probably shouldn't be drafting even more blade dances no matter how tempting or synergistic it seems because they don't aid your worst matchups.
As for catalyst, it isn't any harder to pick up than any other card. Obviously you can't do it every time but it's something you can actually pivot to just by adding 2-4 cards if the opportunity presents itself. That's very possible to do inside a single act.
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
I don't think a shiver deck will ever be an act 4 deck. Unless you can make shivs do 120 damage like someone else said. The heart kills me so much faster than I deal damage. I need roughly a 20 per card ratio to win if I remember right. That's not even counting the attacks. Still have no idea how to get my normal damage output high enough tbh.
The cards weren't dead weight until I literally couldn't play them due to time eater. Playing time eater is like playing champion with a poison build. Actively doing now and will 100% get stomped because I don't have enough ways to deal with it once he cures his poison.
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u/arcus2611 22d ago
I don't care that the shivs were good in 55 out of 57 floors, if they're going to be dead weight in 2 of the most important encounters, you can predict that before you even step into act 3 and start planning for it.
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u/Troysmith1 22d ago
So never play shivs?
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u/arcus2611 22d ago edited 22d ago
No?
If I build a "shiv" deck (3 blade dances and two accuracy+, cloak and dagger), that doesn't mean I can't also click on footwork, acrobatics, malaise, piercing wail, and all the other draw and defensive tools I need for later.
You're drafting 20 cards that only play in hallway fights, and wondering why you die to the boss when you didn't draft anything for the boss. So draft more tools for the boss, and stop drafting for hallways once you can deal with those adequately.
Obviously this is a bit reductive and a lot of it comes down to "get more experience with the game", but you need to at least understand the philosophy. You should be thinking about which fights will kill you.
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u/SquirrelSuspicious 22d ago
??? Can you show me where I said I didn't? Like what kinda response even is this?
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u/arcus2611 22d ago
Instead of going "why did the game give me the one encounter that perfectly counters my build", you should be asking yourself "why did I put together a deck that gets completely owned by this specific matchup? How do I not do this in the future?"
Of course there's high enemy variety and it's impossible to perfectly prepare and allocate resources against every possible encounter, but you can at least do some advance planning for the act 3 bosses.
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u/SquirrelSuspicious 22d ago
You and everyone downvoting me is arguing with someone who ain't here. I never said a single complaint about that happening nor did I ever give any indication that I didn't start changing my play style and how I build my decks after I started noticing the pattern
Reddit hive mind at its finest.
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u/TDenverFan 22d ago
People are downvoting because it's not true/it's not how the game code works. You can replay a seed and you will get the same boss every time.
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u/SquirrelSuspicious 22d ago
What's your explanation for my second comment getting downvoted? I was accused of not adapting or trying to counter the act 3 bosses and pointed out how I never said I didn't or gave any indication of how I played nor did I complain, and that got downvoted too
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u/SquirrelSuspicious 22d ago
You and everyone downvoting me is arguing with someone who ain't here. I never said a single complaint about that happening nor did I ever give any indication that I didn't start changing my play style and how I build my decks after I started noticing the pattern
Reddit hive mind at its finest.
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u/dr_fancypants_esq Ascension 20 22d ago
If theres an Act 3 boss that counters your build, then on A20 there’s a two-thirds chance you will have to fight that boss. So it’s good practice to plan around that.