Can even be something that’s not particularly powerful or “optimal” but that you just find really fun! No wrong answers…

My Pick: Sadistic Nature

After a spectacularly successful (and damn fun) A20 run with 4x upgraded Sadistic Nature (28 damage per debuff) from Nightmare, paired with Enevenom with multi-hit cards, as well as a Noxious Fumes thrown in for good measure (consistent AOE) I’ve been chasing that high ever since 😂.

Bonus points for a name, design and any flavor text!

Purple robes and a staff like weapon

Not new to the game either! Just finished A20 two days ago and guess which character was my first to get there? Not only that, but guess who I got my first-ever Heart win with a while back? Defect and…yup, Defect.

This isn’t in any way me trying to say he’s “underrated” or anyone’s wrong or anything like that at all, I’m just genuinely fascinated by the idea that different players can have such vastly different experiences and thought it’d make for an interesting discussion!

Despite having some wins under my belt, I also don’t really play “optimally”, and often intentionally ignore the meta to play in ways I find more fun, so it’s also possible that the real answer is just that this sentiment only really applies to high-level, meta play.

Really curious what everyone here thinks about this! Whether you’re a longtime vet or super green player I wanna hear your opinions!

Every Card, Character, Relic, Curse, Event, Enemy and Potion in Alphabetical Order.

Title: Claw
Type: Attack
Rarity: Common
Character: Defect

Cost: 0 Energy
Effect: Deal 3 damage. Increase the damage of ALL Claw cards by 2 this combat.
Cost+: 0 Energy
Effect+: Deal 5 damage. Increase the damage of ALL Claw cards by 2 this combat.

Wiki Link: Claw
Google Document

Yesterdays Discussion: Clash | Tomorrows Discussion: Cleave

So as we all know, each of the energy relics have pretty obvious downsides, which in some cases mean that you'd rather be without them. But even for relics that are normally seen as strictly beneficial, they can sometimes be an active detriment.

Like how Meat on the Bone can force you out of Red Skull range, or how Tungsten Rod can disable Rupture synergies.

So I was wondering how many relics actually have no conceivable situation where they are a detriment.

To be clear about the criteria, the acquisition of the relic isn't taken into account. Opportunity cost, gold cost, all of that isn't relevant, since all relics cost the opportunity of getting another one. Simply, is there any conceivable situation, no matter how niche, where having this relic is worse than not having it?

Another thing worth mentioning is the N'loth event. If you have a certain relic you'd like to get rid of, then having any other relics will lessen the chance of you getting to feed that relic to N'loth. For the sake of making this a bit more interesting, I'll ignore that.

The only relics I couldn't find any possible downsides for are the following:

• Potion Belt (Edit 3)
• Singing Bowl
• White Beast Statue (Edit 1)
• Gambling Chip (Edit 2)
• Golden Eye
• Lizard Tail
• Wing Boots
• Frozen Eye
• Nilry's Codex (Edit 2, Edit 4)
• Cultist Headpiece (Edit 4)
• Spirit Poop (not counting the -1 score)
• Circlet

Perhaps the list is shorter, but I couldn't come up with anything for these 8 relics.

Edit 1: White Beast Statue added, as I had misunderstood how the rare card chance interacts with potion rewards, as u/ch95120 pointed out here. It seems I was overly confident in my game knowledge to assume the list could only be shortened.

There might still be some potion shenanigans that could disqualify it, but I am not very knowledgeable on how the game decides which potions to give you (which could in theory also rule out Potion Belt, if it also applies to Entropic Brew).

Edit 2: Gambling Chip (and possibly also Nilry's Codex) removed. As u/griffheh17 pointed out here, Gambling Chip forces your first turn of each fight to be longer, which can prevent you from disabling the Secret Portal event in Act III (which is disabled if the run timer is below 13 minutes and 20 seconds).

Nilry's Codex might also get disqualified by this, but I am not sure if Nilry's Codex slows you down if you skip the cards on the first frame they appear. Further testing will have to be done.

Edit 3: Potion Belt removed. As u/Lokorso pointed out here, Potion Belt can forcibly activate Red Skull if Alchemize generates a Fairy in a Bottle in an otherwise nonexistent potion slot to override Lizard Tail, in a situation where you don't want the extra strength to e.g. use Feed or Lesson Learned.

Edit 4: Cultist Headpiece and Nilry's Codex removed. Cultist Headpiece removed for same reason as Gambling Chip (see Edit 2). Nilry's Codex removed because it advances the in-combat card generation RNG, as u/Flintloq pointed out here.

Sort of noob here. I stood absolutely no chance with her and her minions with their high damage. In a couple dozen runs it is the first time I have encountered her. I didn’t have the best run going, but was feeling pretty confident, and then she happened…

Her first attack with two minions dropped me from 82 health to 3, then she spawned a 3rd. Is this just a troll boss that shows up randomly to ruin your run?

Also I’ve completed all 3 Acts with Ironclad and Silent, but The Defect has been a struggle, is that typical?

There is rarely, if ever, a run where I could win this fight early game (ascension 6). But he is not only hard, the fight also isn’t fun to me. Getting punished for playing skills is so not cool

Warning: This post is kinda long and no one asked for it so you can totally skip the words to the equations at the end if that's all you care about. There's a world where this is tagged Spirit Poop, or Creative? The math isn't wrong; it's just niche and specific and less of a deep serious analysis and more of a cheerful algebraic jaunt. There's also some fabulous comments with even more nuance.

Ultimately, it's just one of my ways of having fun with this game.

Edit: Quick tl;dr; as folks have been asking.

• These are some formulas looking at passive damage calculation from playing Consume.
• Consume is pretty bad in the early game when you have low focus/slots/evoke capability. You can pretty much play it once per fight to get any value.
• I used lightning orbs to show how the calcs work but since this is passive orb effects, frost is actually where these formulas are most relevant, since you generally want as much passive block as possible from frost orbs.
• This is not comprehensive. It's just a peek at how you would start figuring out how consume (and other cards like it work, and that insight might help your strategy. Or you might just want to quickly know if you should stop casting consumes)
• If you were the type of person who would consume until you had one slot left... don't do that? Unless you can evoke LOTS of orbs per turn.

Introduction

(why am I writing this on public library wifi at 4 PM on a Friday?)

Recently, I was avoiding my problems and started pondering the thing that I'm sure absolutely everyone on Earth has thought of at one point or another:

'How many more times can I play consume before I regret it?'

Okay, maybe not all humans think about this, but anyone with a passing familiarity with our beloved broken bot, Charles 'Defect' Lightning has probably stopped to consider, "should I play consume again?"

For those unfamiliar with the card, let's review the card text so we're all on the same page:

Gain 2 Focus. Lose 1 orb slot

Simple. Majestic. Peak Design.

Powerful scaling with a tease of danger, because of course, there is a looming threat of Consume; if your orb slots drop too low relative to your damage, you will begin to do less and less damage, with the sort of trivial conclusion of zero orb slots, at which point orbs cannot be evoked and damage/frost block/energy will not be dealt at all.

This is what pro gamers would call, 'a big bad doo doo'.

So frequently the goal is to play Consume enough times to get a benefit but not so many times that you drop back into the bad place. Do not Icarus yourself. As close to the sun as you can without melting and no further.

And to be clear, you don't need an equation to sus this out. Most of the time, you can eyeball when you've hit that goldilocks zone. The complexity only creeps in once slots and focus start spiking towards the ends of a run.

But no one on this sub is here because we need to do anything. We're here because we're really really really keen on a game loop so powerful, our brains can not resist "one more run".

So since I am someone who will do low level algebra to avoid my real responsiblities, I tried my best to sit down and think it through. And then I was pleased with the result. And then I figured I'd share some of this energy, so here we are.

If you're still with me, strap in for a bit of maths silliness; but nothing terribly absurd. Mainly some arithmetic and association.

Considerations:

Let's establish some baseline stuff so we're all on the same page for the nonsense that I'm about to spew.

All these equations assume the following: - We're using lightning orbs for these maths, sorta. Technically the equations just care about focus, which we're using as a proxy for damage. You can use this to calculate block, you just have to make sure you're doing the math for each orb by itself.

I can't think of why it wouldn't work with dark orbs, but I didn't consider them. And energy orb math is just counting?

• We're assuming when we cast Consume, our orb slots are Full. If our orb slots aren't full, the Consume conundrum become really easy.

If your orb slots aren't full, Cast Consume.

We're also therefore assuming that the last orb is an orb that's relevant to you. If you're calcing damage on lightning orbs, but lighting isn't in your last orb slot, you're assessing a much different question (whether the damage bonus is worth the change/gain/loss in whatever gets lost due to consume). A good question to be sure, but not why we're here.

So again, we're assuming *casting Consume will lose you an already existing orb in your last slot.

• We're not considering the impact of other Focus damage generators like Defragement, Bias Cognition, Loop, etc. The make the equations a little more complex, to varying degrees, so we'll stick to Consume for now. Although literally as I type this I imagine a Grand Unified Theory of Focus and wouldn't that be neat.

Quik Maffs

Firstly, We're going to call amount of Focus (F) and amount of slots (S).

(F) for now is literally the passive damage/block done by the orb.

So at base state, Defect, with full lightning orbs in slots, would do F = (3) * S = (3) => 9 Damage.

We could map F to the game's displayed focus directly but it makes all the equations messier, with no real benefit?

Note, F and S are always the amount of focus and slots you have RIGHT NOW, at the time you're doing the maths. How you got to here is irrelevant for our purposes.

So the base math for how much damage you're doing from your orbs is just F * S ( (*) means multiplication ).

If you cast Consume, focus goes up by two and you lose a slot so that Damage equation becomes (F + 2) * (S - 1).

We can abstract that for any amount of Consumes by adding variables. If we let x represent 'the amount of times we cast consume' then we get (F + 2*x) * (S - x) or F*S + 2*S*x -F*x - 2*(x^2). x^2 means the square of x

So this is, "how much damage (or block) would I do, based on the focus and slots I have now, if I cast consume x times."

For the mathemetically inclined, you can see that this is an example of a polynomial, and the nice part about polynomials is that you can learn a lot about them without actually evaluating them. Especially that last term, (-2) * (x^2).

It let's us know that as x gets larger, eventually, values start going negative, no matter what. 2Sx and FSare positive, so adding slots helps, but that negative squared value will always dominate eventually.

All this all really means is that scaling from consume will always hit a peak and then drop off (with no other intervention). We can see this if we look at the Defect base state as an example. With F = 3 and S = 3, the equation becomes (3)*(3) + 2*(3)*x -(3)*x - 2*(x^2).

If you like visual examples, you can see the shape here.

Note how by x = 2 we see diminishing returns. x = 1 (one case of Consume) is the most amount of damage we'll ever get from Consume if we just have base focus and 3 slots.

And these are great general calcs that I use sometimes while playing, but none of these technically answer what I really wanna know which is "how many more times can I cast Consume?"

Technically, I don't even care what the damage is, as long as it's More Than Last Time. And I don't wanna have to graph out multiple values to see where it pops off each time. I mean, I want to, because I use arithmetic like other people use fidget spinners, but it's not practical.

As the base numbers get bigger, you don't know how far away the tipping point is, and calculating damage as x goes from 0 -> 7 feels... bad? Wasteful. That could take me like, 12 whole minutes!

So let's make an equation for what we really want.

Final Calculations

Expressed in a more mathemetically succint way, "what is the first value of x after which, any increment in x would do less damage?"

And the answer it turns out, isn't that far off from where we are. (For you, the reader. Since I like maths, but I'm not that good at it, I faffed about with differentiation and a bunch of other silliness before I got to where I wanted. Don't be like me.)

Anyway,

What we need to ask is, what's the highest value x can be where the difference between x and (x - 1) is positive? If the change is positiive, it means the damage got higher. if not, the damage dropped.

As an equation, (Damage at a given x) - (Damage at x right before) > 0

And hey, we already have the equation for damage for a given x! How do we make the equation for the x before? Well we just swap out every instance of x for x - 1.

So as a more equationy equation using our prior equations we get [FS + 2Sx - Fx -2x^2] - [FS + 2S(x - 1) - F(x - 1) -2(x - 1)^2] > 0

So many letters! All to say in math what we said in words. Hopefully you can how the first bit was our original equation for x and the second bit is the same equation, but we minus 1 from x.

I'm going to spare you the refinement of this (also, I've been typing for a long time) so you'll just have to trust me that I've done the math right (or yell at me that I've done it wrong!) When you work it all out and reduce a bunch of redundant stuff we're left with

-Fx -4x + 2s - 2 > 0

That's... surprisingly reasonable. Now all that's left is that most dreaded phase, bane of highschool sophomores everywhere, SOLVE FOR X.

Note: I'm going to do something tricky and move x to the other side of the greater than sign because it lets us remove some pesky negatives and fits our intuition pretty well. So finally, we're left with

Our Final Equation

x < (-F + 2S + 2)/4

In other words, the best damage you're gonna get is the highest whole number x that's less than the right side of that equation. That's the amount of times you want to cast consume.

Using this equation on the base Defect produces the correct, if slightly underwhelming answer.

x < (-3 - 2.3 + 2)/4 or x must be less than 5/4. Which checks out.

A Defect with full orb slots and no changes does 9 damage from lighting orbs. Cast Consume once and you'll do 2 * 5 -> 10 damage. But cast it a second time and you'll only do 1 * 7 -> 7 damage. You know, the bad place.

If you had a starting 3 dmg from lightning orbs and 7 slots you would have to cast consume < (-3 + 2*7 + 2)/4 times. Or < 13/4 times, aka 3. Which is true!. Three casts of consume nets you 36 damage, but 4 casts drop you back to 33.

Conclusions

I dunno, this game is hard, there's lots of maths, most of the time I can't be arsed to do it. I've never kept track of ink bottle and I never will.

But puzzling on this consume stuff was kinda fun, and maybe someone else will be entertained by this as well.

These formulas can be useful, but actually gameplay Does involve more complexity.

Powers, relics, potions, etc can all adjust these things I would get overly concerned with forcing the usage of this; it's just kinda good to understand how this generally works. And know how to check if it's worth consuming again.

Continual Consume playing degrades with no way to offset it. The time of degradation is probably sooner than you think? Linear growth like defrag helps but you’re always dancing with how fast you play Consume and how much you play everything else. If you’re not sure playing consume it’ll help, stop.

Wait, is consume a metaphor for the dangers of greed?! A thought for another time.

Formula Recap

Damage/Block formula at any given time -> F . S where F is the literal value output of the orb and S is the slots dedicated to that orb.

Damage/Block formula if you cast Consume -> (F . S) + (2 . S) - F - 2

Damage/Block from casting consume x times -> (F.S) + (2.S.x) - (F.x) - (2.x^2)

How many consumes should I cast to maximize damage -> x < (-F + 2S + 2)/4

That's all I got. Let me know if any of this made sense; it's hard to judge how clear the language is as I type it. See y'all in the tower.

Left one is the original one and is looks so much cooler

To players that only play in A20 now, when you play on A0 or A1 (which I hear is easier than A0) will you win 100% of the time? Or is it still a risk of losing?

Well-Laid Plans is good

Hi folks, I go by zakk or zakkles on other platforms. For the past month and a half I've been working on a 50-game A20H Silent sample (basically, playing seriously and trying to win as much as possible). I have about 1600 hours in Spire (the vast majority of which are on Silent) and probably an equal number of accumulated hours watching various streams. This is my second sample on the character; the first one at the beginning of this year went 23-27.

The results

I won 30 games and lost 20. I was aiming for >50% games won so I'm very happy with this result.

>> All runs can be viewed on this spreadsheet - I tracked Neow bonuses/various stats and wrote notes for each run.<<

What did I do well?

I had a number of runs where I took "bad" energy relics (for example, in run #20: eoa1 Sozu with Potion Belt; #22: Ecto with membership card; #49: eoa2 Crown with a sketchy deck) rather than take something like Astrolabe or Black Star and pray the situation improved later on. Picking these energy relics felt bad but was definitely correct (and winning felt so, so good). I also thought my micro, particularly in act 4 (when to wail, when to cash in Fairy, when to potion vs. spend HP in spire elites, etc) was generally very solid and a massive step up from my previous sample.

Where do I have to improve?

An enormous number of my deaths (9 out of 20) were in act 2. Some of these were the fault of overaggressive pathing and bad play in individual fights; not getting enough value in act 1 is probably also a factor here. When I improve my act 2 gameplay more, some of these deaths will not happen at all, and some will instead shift to acts 3 and 4. (I think one last factor in the death distribution is small sample size - my act 4 isn't THAT good, and my act 2 isn't THAT bad. But maybe not.)

Also of note: I swapped 5 times in this sample and lost all 5 of those runs. At least 2 of those had a very clear path to victory that I pissed away; another (#4, the Bell swap) was probably winnable with more aggressive pathing and slightly smarter card picks. So clearly my boss swaps have significant room to improve.

Last thing: as ever, it's better to play slower, and this is something I struggle with -- in part due to IRL factors, in part because I find it hard to sustain attention if I'm not actively talking about the run with somebody. I think even if I just spend 5-10 extra minutes on critical turns and nodes in act 2, like I do in act 4, I can get better results.

Of my 20 losses, at least 13 had run-losing mistakes (pathing, potion usage, micro, etc) that I reasonably could have avoided by using my brain a little more. I did my best to track this type of mistake in the spreadsheet.

What did I learn?

Here are some things that surprised me over the course of the sample.

• Kite is straight up, bottom of the barrel, gutter trash if you are not OVERFLOWING on discard. A number of runs that were fine in acts 1 or 2 took a Kite when I thought I had "enough" discard to make it work. Then I was bleeding out in every hallway because I bottom decked Tools, or overestimated how good the Kite would actually be with my Acros, or didn't continue to find discard as I added other cards to the deck. "Kite bad" should not come as a shock to anyone who has played A20H seriously but I was surprised that my valuation could drop even lower.

• My previous theory was that a large majority of well-played runs end up with poison as a significant damage component, just because it's that good in the endgame. (For example, you might be physical for all of acts 1 and 2, but you take a bflask and then find cata and fumes, and suddenly poison is dealing 300 damage in the heart fight.) While I still think this is generally true, I was able to convert a number of runs that were purely physical for the entire run. Poison-free runs are generally harder to macro (you need to think be thinking about defense for Time Eater and the Heart at least as early as eoa2) and micro (you generally are not flush with damage for the endgame and may need to line up Finisher/Skewer/Ritual Dagger/PK/Pen Nib/whatever smartly) but they can definitely be won, and they happen more than I was expecting. Maybe ~25% of the time.

• The card whose evaluation climbed the most was probably Finisher - very early Finisher picks carried act 1 elites and didn't fall off until act 3, if they fell off at all. Act 1 Bouncing Flask also went up, and After Image dropped a bit, from top ~3 card on the character to top ~5.

• This isn't really reflected in the stats, but when act 3 is hard it's really damn hard. When you fall behind the curve (say, by bricking the second boss relic, or not preparing for repto correctly, or just not having enough output for Giant Head), you are suddenly throwing potions left and right and praying to get bailed out by your shop. If you don't have strong relic support, even just one bad fight can throw off the rest of your act and put you in a bad spot for the endgame.

Am I any good at other characters?

No.

Miscellaneous

Some other stats (and graphs) from across the sample:

• Act 3 boss damage:

• Average winning deck size: 40.9 cards

• Runs won without WLP or pyramid: 1

• Hand drill win rate: 100% (n=1)

Again, the spreadsheet with all this info and more can be found here.

If you have any questions, either about the sample or about the character in general, please ask! I'm also considering recording some runs with commentary and throwing them up on YouTube (my gameplay is finally something to be proud of, lol), so if you have any interest in this let me know.

SERIOUSLY i Played 4 runs equalling to 4 HOURS EACH only for that WORM looking chicken to kill me 3 TIMES and then when i FINALLY KILL HIM it says he's doing some UNKNOWN SHIT ONLY FOR THAT MOTHERFUCKER TO REVIVE TO FULL HEALTH. I DIDN'T CAST 400 LIGHTNING ORBS ONLY FOR YOU TO REVIVE YOU SORRY EXCUSE OF A BOSS

For me, having just now reached about 300 hours across multiple platforms, I’m just now realizing just how great of a card spot weakness is for clad.

I used to skip it or not even give it a chance because “well if the enemy is attacking I want to be blocking, duh. What idiot would take this??” But it’s carried me from A4 all the way to A15 with about a 3 or 4 game win streak somewhere in there. For some bosses if feels superior to demon form. Throw a headbutt into the mix and you can scale quite quickly against aggressive enemies like hexaghost.