I can't believe you skipped my favorite one! Barricade/20 shield/ double shield and either the card that does 5dmg with every shield or body slam. This is how I got the 999 max shield achievement and if you get barricade in the first hand the round is already over basically.
I just started playing this game tonight and discovered the Barricade bodyslam combo in my third run. Got a fantastic relic that let me permanently have barricade in my opening hand. Upgraded body slam to cost zero. Supported with big shield buffs, draw 3, & something called entrenched I think. It doubles shields.
Massive agree on this deck. Played it rather recently with Barricade, Entrench, Panic Button, and Impervious. Entrench doesnt count as gaining shield to panic button so it will still double anyway, with barricade and that bringing you to 80 shield in just 2 cards youre unlikely to worry about panic button's negative effect. Exhume can also be a good pickup to add back impervious and/or panic button to the hand. Another really good thing to add is self-damage synergy. With high shield you dont need to worry about your health as much and can use cards like combust, brutality, offering and hemokinesis, with rupture of course to build up alot of strength with minimal threat to yourself, I foubd it to really complement the decks style and gives a great boost to cards like shield bash.
Body slam decks are better without barricade. All barricade does for body slam decks is be a awkward way to guarantee you have block for your body slams. But why draft a rare 3 cost ( 2 when upgraded) card to do that when a warcry also does that as well as draw cards and those are naturally good things anyway as well as the impervious you’d want for body slam and then the deck comes together naturally vs barricade entrench none of those picks are very natural and will make your deck worse until you have all the pieces. Body slam decks are also fast enough to justify small amounts of deck trashing since you play your block cards maybe need some draw then you play a bunch of 0 cost 40 or 50 damage attacks so it’s not unrealistic to not go past first cycle outside of bosses and you’d honestly rather have an evolve as far as powers go where as barricade decks can be rather slow to scale up enough block and play barricade without it being bottled when you could of just been doing massive damage and also taking none from the start so there’s a risk that with bad enough draws you are outscaled by the heart. Also often times taking a barricade will kill you since ironclad will learn towards wanting to take the most elites possible floor one and taking a barricade as a reward in the first of 3 or 4 elites especially if one is empowered WILL kill you unless you get fairy in a bottles or lizard tail
@@ultimaterecoil1136 there are turns where I'm able to accumulate 100+ block, and if I have Barricade active, the next few turns I can just focus on dealing damage, and preserving block can make you deal more damage with Body Slam (especially when paired with Entrench). There are a lot of times where the enemies just intend to buff or debuff, and all cards I get are just block cards, and in those cases having Barricade won't make those turns wasted. I don't see why you wouldn't want Barricade in a body slam build. It's just one card, that makes your deck overall better. I took it multiple times in the first floors of Act 1 and still was able to kill empowered elites, I don't understand what you mean by "often times taking a barricade will kill you since ironclad will learn towards wanting to take the most elites possible floor one and taking a barricade as a reward in the first of 3 or 4 elites especially if one is empowered WILL kill you unless you get fairy in a bottles or lizard tail"
@@fraidei2094 because it’s a rather expensive and cumbersome way to guarantee that you have block when you have your body slams. That’s basically all it does and it requires a bottle to be of use. Things like headbutt burning pack and warcry also achieve the same thing and are much cheaper and more common to boot. Body slam decks are fast enough without barricade that the constant 40 block+ depending on energy amount and the 2 to 3 body spams a turn that the only fight that should go beyond the second cycle is the heart so you can justify using power through and the most impactful power would be evolve specifically for the heart. Good body slam decks practically never get body slam and blocks away from each other thanks to all the deck management tools on offer. And by the time the enemy scales up past your natural abilities to block they are dead. Barricade is very awkward to use however even an upgraded one can cause you to take damage to play it and many fights it’s not even worth playing in a body slam deck and if it shows up too late in your deck you definitely need to worry about the here and now if the enemy is scaling but by that point most enemies would be dead anyway. I’d take a war cry another body slam a evolve a power through dual wielding a headbutt over a barricade unless it was offered alongside a bottle and tbh I’d consider bottled evolve over bottled barricade depending on the amount of power though with the ability to put statuses that end up being effectively just an extra draw on top of my hand from deck management tools being a nice bonus to the second cycle consistency evolve provides for the heart.
Ironclad had cost me 3 nights by now, finally managed to beat it with him at last. Close one, 2 HP left and I just timed everything perfect vs time snake. Silent with poison deck is like a tutorial in comparison to the red one.
after a week of playing act 1 and act 2 over and over with all characters i finally beat act 3 with silent today!! i keep losing to the timeeater boss with defect in act 3 so until i can master that, ironclad is next, thanks for this!!
For whatever reason defect is impossible for me. I finally managed to clear act 3 with him yesterday but i think i just got insanely lucky. I won’t be pulling that off ever again lol
With shiv build on timeeater you have to have the shiv power ups to make them hit harder. With no buffs they simply dont do enough in the 11 card limit you have before timeeater stops you. Try getting the relic that makes 0 cost cards hit for 4 extra also. Paired with the shiv power ups ive had shivs throwing for 20+
@@briancooley8777 same! I got incredibly lucky with a lighting god build coupled with a side claw build. The thing that saved my ass just barely right as I was about to die was the static discharge stacked to 4. Lighting builds are one of my most enjoyable builds I’ve done
I like using fire breathing + evolve + status generating cards like power through. Absolutely trivializes status generating fights like the chosen by turning their strength against them
i like that deck, but it's hard to pull off, many thing can go wrong, you need fire breathing for damage, but it's a really bad card without support, so you'll wanna start with evolve which is really good on its own, then power through, but you migth not get fire breathing to seal the combo and even if you do, just 1 won't be enaugh for boss fight and you may find yourself ina position where you have nothing to block since you rely on a few really good block, so you also need a barricade, but when you do pull it off, it's so powerfull.
id say my favorite is exhaust build with dark embrace and corruption. something about it is just funny to me. If anyone is reading this that is newer to the game or unfamiliar with it. corruption reduces the cost of ALL skills to 0 for the entirety of combat however, all skills played are exhausted. dark embrace is a a buff that grants 1 card drawn immediately for every card exhausted. Cards such as shrug it off, dark pact, seeing red will cause you to gain block, card draw and energy, respectively. With those resources you can inflict damage to enemies using whatever you want. Bodyslam is a 0 cost atk that scales with the amount of block you have in a 1:1 ratio, as an example. And if you're wondering, yes, you can badly eff ur fight up by accidentally ending your turn yeeting your block(without barricade) or excessively using skills forgetting youre not getting them back against a boss like time eater/awakened one whom reset during the fight etc.
A deck I really loved personally was an exhaust deck I ran with corruption, dead branch and dark embrace. Along with cards, like burning pact and warcry, skills themselves, the deck had incredible play potential and draw power. With carda like sentinel, a skill that, because of corruption, can be instantly exhausted to activate its energy gain effect and seeing red, which exhausts itself anyway, I was rarely ever lacking for energy to make big spell plays, which was great because the deck also ran alot of high cost powers like barricade, for no more pain and juggernaut synergy, and demon form.
I love this build in theory but getting all the cards necessary to get it online seems like a pain. Played so many games in a row specifically going for this build and couldn’t get it online. Something like 15 games
@@lololol924 Given that I posted this 2 years ago and haven't played in a while I couldn't tell you exactly. But if I had to guess from what I wrote, the idea was to use dead branch to generate tons of cards, among which could be additional copies of offering, sentinel, etc for card draw and energy gain, alongside any damaging cards it generates and the dark embrace power to draw through the whole deck multiple times all while getting to repeatedly use your newly generated damage cards ad nauseum each time you did. Its a bit lacking in refinement and that's obviously a best of all possible worlds situation for the deck but with the available card draw it was inevitable you reach a state in any drawn out fight where you can perform the win con quite consistently. Regardless, I was, and am still, hardly the best at this game and it was more me just sharing the fun I had with it and my amateur analysis of the strategy than anything more concrete.
Super late here (just bought the game today after being hooked on Balatro) but never imagined I'd hear an NFL reference in a Slay The Spire video lmao. Great job and awesome video!
No bro, block build is most OP!! Follow by fire breath. Because regardless of how many strengths you can stack, the heart wrecks you in 3 turns if you dint have a good defense.
One of my favorite builds is using rupture, then stacking cards like bloodletting, hemokinesis, offering and limit break, to stack an insane amount of strength and energy then using whirlwind
Just found out about this game and I was hooked. I spent the first 5 hours on the edge of my seat reading the card effects, the relics, how certain cards can be op asf, etc. I was able to reach the heart in act 3 two times and I think that was due to my past experience with the traumatic darkest dungeon a much scarier and personally I believe to be a much harder game.
On my second run, I won using the self inflicting cards of the ironclad. Cards like combustion, hemokinesis and rupture. It's a risky gameplay by my god was it rewarding and I got the perfect artifacts for it like everytime I lose HP I draw 1 card and and if health is below 50% I gain 3 strength. So much power!
Ah yes, combustion, rupture, evolve, firebreatjing, and lots of reckless/wild strike/power through. Dealing 100 damage just for drawing your hand is nice
OMG, I have been playing this game all wrong. I keep dieing on the act 3 boss so my mechanics are good but this will completely change my gameplay and hopefully push me through to the end! Many thanks to you and this video and the awesome people in the comments.
I know this is an old thread, but I love Fire breathing. Especially if I can through my own status cards with dazing strike, wild strike and that block that adds 2 wounds. Evolve + Firebreathing are the core, and it works well in higher ascensions when you get stuck with extra curses from the start.
The turtle build! I accidentally did this I think, on my very first run after buying the game. Im still proud to this day, that I beat the game om my first go, as I have later realized the luck I must have had. What I can remember that I tried to do, was to pick up both attack and block. I didn't know anything, so I guess I saw one of the "deal dmg and get block" cards early on, and that become my mantra for the rest of the run. "Defense while attacking; that must be good!" It must have worked out obviously, and in retrospect Id label it as a turtle build that I got very lucky with. Or a body slam build, perhaps :)
Honestly I only started playing about a month ago and already one of my favorite builds that I’ve only gotten once is getting apotheosis, demon form, and limit break coupled with a few flexes. The apotheosis makes it so the limit break no longer has exhaust and you can use that to keep cheesing the flex cards to get permanent strength from the flex and over time it can build up to massive amounts of strength, to the point where a good strike card can deal around 100 damage. My favorite build I’ve ever run and it’s what got me my first win with ironclad
Don’t certain bosses have attacks that disable random cards in your draw pile? If any boss or enemy does this and you are building your deck around just one or two cards then doesn’t this completely screw the build?
I recently played the game and was really struggling in after act II. Watched the guide, attempted the Strength build and finally beat the boss of act III. Nice guide. Are there similar build videos to the other classes too? Edit: Nevermind, I just discovered the other guides.
Just had my first victory with Ironclad and damn did it feel good. Lol I have a high from winning that I haven't had from a game in a long time. At the end of the game I had 31 cards. My goal was to keep strength relevant, and to keep my deck moving. I had multiple cards that allowed me to draw more cards, even when I had to sacrifice health to do so. I kept trying to follow guides and ended up following my own. It's amazing the amount of decks you can make that can make or break you.
Tried a Searing Blow build on Ascension 1 just as a test, and it worked first try! Got it to 13 upgrades - with Vulnerable it dealt about 200 damage. Poor Time Eater died on turn 2!
Just having the two powers, fire breathing and evolve can become broken especially with reckless charges and that defence card that adds two wounds to your hand
I've won once each with Silence and Watcher, but I'm like 0 for 4 with the Ironclad. From your guide, it looks like I've been over thinking it, and not working enough to keep the deck size tight. Next run, I will try the strength build with as lean a deck as I can manage. (Oh I've also had the luck of getting Council of Ghosts twice-- but both time they weren't auto upgraded, and so I think their value was lessened by the increase in deck size they represented-- and the loss of HP)
My favorite build is what I call the "suicide" build, basically its power through harming yourself with stuff like The explosion card, any hp loss card/effect and ofc the card that gives strength every turn after using self harm cards, pair these with healing relics/hp up relics and you are in the money(sorry I cant remember the card names), get at least 2 explosion cards and upgrade them, get two of the card that gives strength when using self harm cards/effects and upgrade those and if you find a demon form then grab that too :)
The problem with this advice (having tried it) is that the game is *too* random -- a large fraction of runs do not result in a set of strength cards that will make a coherent hand. Most of the time you are piecing together random trash. IMO, that is part of what is wrong with Slay the Spire -- too many runs aren't fun or interesting, just lots of random jumble. Understanding the game does not fix this problem.
I got this fire breath build that was super fun, had a few curses and draw, those enemies that spam you with curses? I just draw like 3 cards, and they explode, very fun
Just picked this game up on Black Friday. Ironclad was the last char I hadn't won yet. Got a Searing Blow in act 1 and then at +7 i got to duplicate it. 4 card deck absolutely trashed the act 3 boss. Shame I don't have Act 4 open, cause I wanted to see what it could do there.
Great video! 1 build missing, its a quintessential block build; "whenever you block you deal damage to a random enemy" + body slam, get as much of that card as you can and block gain cards also strength. In my opinion; Thats the true ironclad invincible build seemingly intended by the developer. (Because youll get rediculous block= unkillable) It hits alot like the silent but huge burst like the defect but better than both.
I won my first match yesterday with just firebreath and a lot of status cards. Each turn started with drawing a full hand, doing a lot of damage per status card the enemies had no idea what was happening
I’m confused about flex. Does it give 2 strength and then take that 2 strength back off you at the turn’s end? Or does it give you +2 strength for that turn and then -2 strength the next? Meaning the next turn you are weakened?
I got a really cool build with defect that is making me win almost every time it took me a while of losing to figure out a flexible deck that almost always works. However I've put the same amount of time and with ironclad and silent I've never got ironclad pass the boss of the first act. However I've gotten silent a second act a few times. My problem with ironclad is he doesn't seem to have enough block. No matter what I do I either have to pick block or attack and if I pick block it's usually small and I did no damage that round if I decide to attack I can do a decent amount of damage but I also take damage several turns and I can't get through the game that way. Maybe I have not found any of the good cards yet but some reason I cannot figure out how people get his block up high enough to go against some of these crazy enemies that do big damage
Just found this game yesterday and I got to act three once only to get smacked by some guy with 999 health that does 50 damage a pop… I also never threw out cards until now
You probably know by now but he explodes after 4 turns. You either have to stack a ton of shield if you can or do the better route and load up on repetitive damage. Whatever you build around. Silent and poison is the best for him imo
Hopefully this'll help me I'm stuck on Asc 3 with him but beat it with everyone else Tried variations of some of these but feels like I get nuked by some enemies by not having enough defense
Cheers not thought about searing blow build gonna try mixing it with a strength build I my next play though :-) I did a block build with immoliser and flame shield worked OK but took time to kill targets and was reliant on getting barricade :-/
Awesome vid! The by most broken deck across all characters I have had was Ironclad that completely focusses on defense. I don't know the English card names but I used the one that lets you keep your armor after the turn ends, as well as stuff that constantly adds armor, doubles your armor, deals some dmg go enemies whenever getting armor. You deal absolutely ludicrious amounts of dmage, it was mindblowing.
Are there any other cards I should add to any of the builds/keep any of the base cards and how many of each card in the deck should I have? Edit: Could You Also Do This For The Watcher
I acpected an exhaust deck cause I love it. It's motly just cards like second wind, the one that's the same but with attack true gift corroption is a very good one for this deck and than just a bunch of feel no pain and enter the abbys to profit emensy of off the exhaust this works even better if you got a lot of skills especially with corroption second wind or the other card
Unfortunately after clearing ascension 20 with silent and ascension 10 with the rest. Ironclad with strength build is fun but as ascension increases strength is the only build that can consistently win without a little bit of luck
Apotheosis + Searing blow seems good right? Or am I mistaken? It can be upgraded to be more worth it and in a small deck it can be acessed more easily.
Bro idk if this is an official deck but i had the cards feel no pain i gained 3 defense everytime i exhausted a card second wind which exhausted all my non attack cards for 5 defense each i also had juggernaut which did 5 dmg everytime i defended i also had corruptionwhich worked really well with mumified hand and madness(upgraded) and i also had the demon power up all of this combined made basically everu card cost 0 and it shielded me and it attacked it was my first run getting this deck and i won the only real downside is that all of ur cards get exhausted but most of the time there dead before it even happens
Nah, here’s all you need Flame Barrier + Second Wind + Power Through + Fire Breathing + x2 Enjoy the free 36 block per turn and 40+ power damage to all foes per turn with a 5 card setup.
Innate barricade+, various blocks (impervious etc), entrench+, body slam+ = ~200 dmg for 0 energy. Deck control through headbutts and warcry/warcry+ cards. Energy potions and +1 energy relics to make sure to activate innate barricade. Armaments+ or Apotheosis+ if deck grows too big to upgrade through rest sites and events.
15 hours in I only got to the boss in act 3 2 times. Once with a block build the other I totally didn't give a fuck and started spamming massive dmg cards.It worked really well and almost defeated the act 3 boss (donut man and diamond boi) but didn't have big heals like reaper. But I just need to get familiar with good cards for certain builds etc. Since I've just been doing random stuff. I've never really been good at these strategic games x(. EDIT: you say the searing blow formula is exponential but that's not exponential, that's polynomial. Since it's n(n+7) wouldn't that become n^2 + 7n? So Actually quadratic. Not trying to be an asshole here :) just wanted to point it out
noob here, still trying to wrap my head around the deck building aspect of the game, given the RNG and limited gold. guess it's a matter of playthru after playthru until the stars start aligning? I'll probably try out the strength build, although I expect it will be game over if I run into a Transient... anyway, for this build, what is a good number and distribution of cards for a strength deck?
transients die after 6 turns and any attack you dea on them decreases THEIR attack by that much. so play your defense and attacks well and it quickly becomes one of the easiest enemies in the game - ignore the 999 HP. means nothing if you can do some heavy damage that removes his attacks along with blocks here n there.
@@lilwavesz you're right, I had completely forgotten the dmg reduction mechanic. I encountered one when I managed a Strength deck and got it to 0 or near-0 dmg on every turn
@@depasadaporahi9385 nice!!! i got suuuper close to finishing with a somewhat decent(not great) strength deck last night but got taken out. still have only beaten it with the silent but hoping to get ironclad or defect soon 🤞 lmk if you have any tips!!
@@lilwavesz good luck! I have reached Act III boss once with Defect on my first try with that character (pure luck, I wasn't even really deck building) and beat it once with the aforementioned Ironclad Strength deck, but only thru cheating (restoring save files a couple of times), which is about the only "tip" I can offer. My tolerance for rogue-like games is limited, even if I love the gameplay. With Silent I've only gotten to a few floors before Act III boss, and haven't figured out the Watcher yet, could not even get to the first boss. lame.
@@depasadaporahi9385 ahhh okay thank you!!! for silent what worked for me was focusing on defense and poison!!! once you start stacking poisons with your blocks built up the enemies pretty much kill themselves 😅
P.S. Demon Form is trash tbh. You can focus more on limit break + spot weakness and gain more strength over time than demon form, and you forgoe an entire turn in act 1 to play a Demon form. It's a noob trap, and looks good on the surface. Just takes too long to get going and there are much better strength cards. He didnt even mention rupture, which is a better strength builder than demon form if you have cards that do damage to yourself like combustion. Which, combustion+rupture is just better demon form.
@@golfer435 Ehh, there are a lot of fights that deal damage very quickly. If you have the deck to survive, then yeah it's fine scaling. But I've seen it in my hand, taking up one of my card draws when nemesis is about to hit me for 50 damage. Don't get to play it unless you want to die. Any card *can* be good, but I think demon form is overrated. Have just seen it ruin runs more than it helps runs. There are other, more consistent ways to get strength for much less energy.
@@medude420024 oh i agree. I only take it early in act 1 when damage is low as it helps with nob and damage scaling or if I already have a large energy economy
I got my first victory in Slay the Spire with Ironclad, using a Clash+ build. I had 3 Clash+s and one regular Clash. I mixed in with 2 Thunderclap+s, a Dual Wield+, Infernal Blade, 2 Flex+s, 1 Blood for Blood, 1 Inflame, 1 Double Tap+, 1 Reaper+, 3 Strikes, 1 Defend, and for defense, 1 Rage+. Would have liked a second Rage+, but I had some great relics which were giving me benefits for playing many cards. As well as one that gave me a random power card at the start of each round.
Don't denigrate yourself by comparing yourself to George Martin. You're still working on your guide. Edit: Searing Blow doesn't fully take off until you reach upgrade 6 or 7, because you need 50 damage to take out certain enemies in one hit. Edit2: something that is slept on though is the fact that armaments can upgrade searing blow during battle and provide you some defense.
Bit of an understatement at the beginning there lol GRRM released the first ASOIAF book 28 years ago, believe or not. Dude is going on three decades at this point
My first 3 runs with all 3 characters I won every game, I feel like they could have made it a bit more difficulty to make it where you really feel like you get better as you learn
There’s no problem with trying to enjoy the game. Ascension is stressful and not fun at times. If you want a challenge cool if not it’s not a big deal. Deck building is the same either way
Armaments is good tbh. Especially if upgraded, since it upgrades all the cards in your hand. All about getting good synergy with it and getting good cards that upgrade to be better. I will point out, armaments only upgrades them for the fight you use it in. It doesnt permanently upgrade cards.
I can't believe you skipped my favorite one! Barricade/20 shield/ double shield and either the card that does 5dmg with every shield or body slam. This is how I got the 999 max shield achievement and if you get barricade in the first hand the round is already over basically.
I just started playing this game tonight and discovered the Barricade bodyslam combo in my third run.
Got a fantastic relic that let me permanently have barricade in my opening hand. Upgraded body slam to cost zero. Supported with big shield buffs, draw 3, & something called entrenched I think. It doubles shields.
Massive agree on this deck. Played it rather recently with Barricade, Entrench, Panic Button, and Impervious. Entrench doesnt count as gaining shield to panic button so it will still double anyway, with barricade and that bringing you to 80 shield in just 2 cards youre unlikely to worry about panic button's negative effect. Exhume can also be a good pickup to add back impervious and/or panic button to the hand. Another really good thing to add is self-damage synergy. With high shield you dont need to worry about your health as much and can use cards like combust, brutality, offering and hemokinesis, with rupture of course to build up alot of strength with minimal threat to yourself, I foubd it to really complement the decks style and gives a great boost to cards like shield bash.
Body slam decks are better without barricade. All barricade does for body slam decks is be a awkward way to guarantee you have block for your body slams. But why draft a rare 3 cost ( 2 when upgraded) card to do that when a warcry also does that as well as draw cards and those are naturally good things anyway as well as the impervious you’d want for body slam and then the deck comes together naturally vs barricade entrench none of those picks are very natural and will make your deck worse until you have all the pieces. Body slam decks are also fast enough to justify small amounts of deck trashing since you play your block cards maybe need some draw then you play a bunch of 0 cost 40 or 50 damage attacks so it’s not unrealistic to not go past first cycle outside of bosses and you’d honestly rather have an evolve as far as powers go where as barricade decks can be rather slow to scale up enough block and play barricade without it being bottled when you could of just been doing massive damage and also taking none from the start so there’s a risk that with bad enough draws you are outscaled by the heart. Also often times taking a barricade will kill you since ironclad will learn towards wanting to take the most elites possible floor one and taking a barricade as a reward in the first of 3 or 4 elites especially if one is empowered WILL kill you unless you get fairy in a bottles or lizard tail
@@ultimaterecoil1136 there are turns where I'm able to accumulate 100+ block, and if I have Barricade active, the next few turns I can just focus on dealing damage, and preserving block can make you deal more damage with Body Slam (especially when paired with Entrench). There are a lot of times where the enemies just intend to buff or debuff, and all cards I get are just block cards, and in those cases having Barricade won't make those turns wasted. I don't see why you wouldn't want Barricade in a body slam build. It's just one card, that makes your deck overall better. I took it multiple times in the first floors of Act 1 and still was able to kill empowered elites, I don't understand what you mean by "often times taking a barricade will kill you since ironclad will learn towards wanting to take the most elites possible floor one and taking a barricade as a reward in the first of 3 or 4 elites especially if one is empowered WILL kill you unless you get fairy in a bottles or lizard tail"
@@fraidei2094 because it’s a rather expensive and cumbersome way to guarantee that you have block when you have your body slams. That’s basically all it does and it requires a bottle to be of use. Things like headbutt burning pack and warcry also achieve the same thing and are much cheaper and more common to boot. Body slam decks are fast enough without barricade that the constant 40 block+ depending on energy amount and the 2 to 3 body spams a turn that the only fight that should go beyond the second cycle is the heart so you can justify using power through and the most impactful power would be evolve specifically for the heart. Good body slam decks practically never get body slam and blocks away from each other thanks to all the deck management tools on offer. And by the time the enemy scales up past your natural abilities to block they are dead. Barricade is very awkward to use however even an upgraded one can cause you to take damage to play it and many fights it’s not even worth playing in a body slam deck and if it shows up too late in your deck you definitely need to worry about the here and now if the enemy is scaling but by that point most enemies would be dead anyway. I’d take a war cry another body slam a evolve a power through dual wielding a headbutt over a barricade unless it was offered alongside a bottle and tbh I’d consider bottled evolve over bottled barricade depending on the amount of power though with the ability to put statuses that end up being effectively just an extra draw on top of my hand from deck management tools being a nice bonus to the second cycle consistency evolve provides for the heart.
Ironclad had cost me 3 nights by now, finally managed to beat it with him at last. Close one, 2 HP left and I just timed everything perfect vs time snake. Silent with poison deck is like a tutorial in comparison to the red one.
I beated the game with silent eternal draw&discard deck on my second try (total third run) but struggling now a bit with ironclad
after a week of playing act 1 and act 2 over and over with all characters i finally beat act 3 with silent today!! i keep losing to the timeeater boss with defect in act 3 so until i can master that, ironclad is next, thanks for this!!
For whatever reason defect is impossible for me. I finally managed to clear act 3 with him yesterday but i think i just got insanely lucky. I won’t be pulling that off ever again lol
Hope you managed to finally beat the game with them by now! Congrats on your victory(s)! :)
With shiv build on timeeater you have to have the shiv power ups to make them hit harder. With no buffs they simply dont do enough in the 11 card limit you have before timeeater stops you. Try getting the relic that makes 0 cost cards hit for 4 extra also. Paired with the shiv power ups ive had shivs throwing for 20+
@@briancooley8777 same! I got incredibly lucky with a lighting god build coupled with a side claw build. The thing that saved my ass just barely right as I was about to die was the static discharge stacked to 4. Lighting builds are one of my most enjoyable builds I’ve done
I like using fire breathing + evolve + status generating cards like power through. Absolutely trivializes status generating fights like the chosen by turning their strength against them
i like that deck, but it's hard to pull off, many thing can go wrong, you need fire breathing for damage, but it's a really bad card without support, so you'll wanna start with evolve which is really good on its own, then power through, but you migth not get fire breathing to seal the combo and even if you do, just 1 won't be enaugh for boss fight and you may find yourself ina position where you have nothing to block since you rely on a few really good block, so you also need a barricade, but when you do pull it off, it's so powerfull.
I almost had a deck like that working, but you're kinda up shits creek when you inevitably run into a really tough elite/boss who doesn't apply status
id say my favorite is exhaust build with dark embrace and corruption. something about it is just funny to me. If anyone is reading this that is newer to the game or unfamiliar with it.
corruption reduces the cost of ALL skills to 0 for the entirety of combat however, all skills played are exhausted. dark embrace is a a buff that grants 1 card drawn immediately for every card exhausted. Cards such as shrug it off, dark pact, seeing red will cause you to gain block, card draw and energy, respectively. With those resources you can inflict damage to enemies using whatever you want. Bodyslam is a 0 cost atk that scales with the amount of block you have in a 1:1 ratio, as an example. And if you're wondering, yes, you can badly eff ur fight up by accidentally ending your turn yeeting your block(without barricade) or excessively using skills forgetting youre not getting them back against a boss like time eater/awakened one whom reset during the fight etc.
A deck I really loved personally was an exhaust deck I ran with corruption, dead branch and dark embrace. Along with cards, like burning pact and warcry, skills themselves, the deck had incredible play potential and draw power. With carda like sentinel, a skill that, because of corruption, can be instantly exhausted to activate its energy gain effect and seeing red, which exhausts itself anyway, I was rarely ever lacking for energy to make big spell plays, which was great because the deck also ran alot of high cost powers like barricade, for no more pain and juggernaut synergy, and demon form.
I love this build, its honestly insane how much cards you can play in one turn
I love this build in theory but getting all the cards necessary to get it online seems like a pain. Played so many games in a row specifically going for this build and couldn’t get it online. Something like 15 games
Exhaust is a great engine for a deck in order to pull massive draw power.
What cards do you combo with it to get the damage though?
@@lololol924 Given that I posted this 2 years ago and haven't played in a while I couldn't tell you exactly. But if I had to guess from what I wrote, the idea was to use dead branch to generate tons of cards, among which could be additional copies of offering, sentinel, etc for card draw and energy gain, alongside any damaging cards it generates and the dark embrace power to draw through the whole deck multiple times all while getting to repeatedly use your newly generated damage cards ad nauseum each time you did. Its a bit lacking in refinement and that's obviously a best of all possible worlds situation for the deck but with the available card draw it was inevitable you reach a state in any drawn out fight where you can perform the win con quite consistently.
Regardless, I was, and am still, hardly the best at this game and it was more me just sharing the fun I had with it and my amateur analysis of the strategy than anything more concrete.
Corruption and Dead Branch together are utterly broken.
Awesome, yet broken.
Super late here (just bought the game today after being hooked on Balatro) but never imagined I'd hear an NFL reference in a Slay The Spire video lmao.
Great job and awesome video!
No bro, block build is most OP!! Follow by fire breath. Because regardless of how many strengths you can stack, the heart wrecks you in 3 turns if you dint have a good defense.
One of my favorite builds is using rupture, then stacking cards like bloodletting, hemokinesis, offering and limit break, to stack an insane amount of strength and energy then using whirlwind
Bro add combust and rupture and you have demon form + 7 damage to all enemies/turn. 😩
The strat is to do this, and then use the Reaper card when you have a bunch of strength in order to heal
Just want to say thanks for the guide. It helped me slay the spire for the first time and get insight into game mechanics and such. Excellent guide.
Dude watching your videos has completely changed this game for me! Couldn't tell you the formula but you've multiplied my fun!
I’m new to the game and really have been struggling with the Ironclad more then the other three. So this has been super helpful! Thanks man!
Just found out about this game and I was hooked. I spent the first 5 hours on the edge of my seat reading the card effects, the relics, how certain cards can be op asf, etc. I was able to reach the heart in act 3 two times and I think that was due to my past experience with the traumatic darkest dungeon a much scarier and personally I believe to be a much harder game.
On my second run, I won using the self inflicting cards of the ironclad. Cards like combustion, hemokinesis and rupture. It's a risky gameplay by my god was it rewarding and I got the perfect artifacts for it like everytime I lose HP I draw 1 card and and if health is below 50% I gain 3 strength. So much power!
Ah yes, combustion, rupture, evolve, firebreatjing, and lots of reckless/wild strike/power through.
Dealing 100 damage just for drawing your hand is nice
OMG, I have been playing this game all wrong. I keep dieing on the act 3 boss so my mechanics are good but this will completely change my gameplay and hopefully push me through to the end! Many thanks to you and this video and the awesome people in the comments.
Love that you highlight Searing Blow: that was my first ever Ironclad win. Fun build.
Glad to find short concise videos! Thanks
I know this is an old thread, but I love Fire breathing. Especially if I can through my own status cards with dazing strike, wild strike and that block that adds 2 wounds. Evolve + Firebreathing are the core, and it works well in higher ascensions when you get stuck with extra curses from the start.
The turtle build!
I accidentally did this I think, on my very first run after buying the game. Im still proud to this day, that I beat the game om my first go, as I have later realized the luck I must have had. What I can remember that I tried to do, was to pick up both attack and block. I didn't know anything, so I guess I saw one of the "deal dmg and get block" cards early on, and that become my mantra for the rest of the run. "Defense while attacking; that must be good!" It must have worked out obviously, and in retrospect Id label it as a turtle build that I got very lucky with. Or a body slam build, perhaps :)
DUDE! Thank you so much for the video. I actually held back to make the matches last longer and play my Reaper cards (had 2 in my deck)
I listened to this and immediately got my first heart kill after struggling with this class lol thank you
still stuck at ascension 14 with ironclad, i was sleeping on 2 of these builds, cheers for the tips
What's the source image for 0:37?
i like the ”defence is the best offence” deck using various block cards together with juggernaut
Honestly I only started playing about a month ago and already one of my favorite builds that I’ve only gotten once is getting apotheosis, demon form, and limit break coupled with a few flexes. The apotheosis makes it so the limit break no longer has exhaust and you can use that to keep cheesing the flex cards to get permanent strength from the flex and over time it can build up to massive amounts of strength, to the point where a good strike card can deal around 100 damage. My favorite build I’ve ever run and it’s what got me my first win with ironclad
Don’t certain bosses have attacks that disable random cards in your draw pile? If any boss or enemy does this and you are building your deck around just one or two cards then doesn’t this completely screw the build?
I recently played the game and was really struggling in after act II. Watched the guide, attempted the Strength build and finally beat the boss of act III. Nice guide.
Are there similar build videos to the other classes too? Edit: Nevermind, I just discovered the other guides.
Just had my first victory with Ironclad and damn did it feel good. Lol I have a high from winning that I haven't had from a game in a long time. At the end of the game I had 31 cards. My goal was to keep strength relevant, and to keep my deck moving. I had multiple cards that allowed me to draw more cards, even when I had to sacrifice health to do so. I kept trying to follow guides and ended up following my own. It's amazing the amount of decks you can make that can make or break you.
Tried a Searing Blow build on Ascension 1 just as a test, and it worked first try! Got it to 13 upgrades - with Vulnerable it dealt about 200 damage. Poor Time Eater died on turn 2!
Just having the two powers, fire breathing and evolve can become broken especially with reckless charges and that defence card that adds two wounds to your hand
I've won once each with Silence and Watcher, but I'm like 0 for 4 with the Ironclad.
From your guide, it looks like I've been over thinking it, and not working enough to keep the deck size tight.
Next run, I will try the strength build with as lean a deck as I can manage.
(Oh I've also had the luck of getting Council of Ghosts twice-- but both time they weren't auto upgraded, and so I think their value was lessened by the increase in deck size they represented-- and the loss of HP)
Searing blow is off its head, thanks for the tip 🙏
My favorite build is what I call the "suicide" build, basically its power through harming yourself with stuff like The explosion card, any hp loss card/effect and ofc the card that gives strength every turn after using self harm cards, pair these with healing relics/hp up relics and you are in the money(sorry I cant remember the card names), get at least 2 explosion cards and upgrade them, get two of the card that gives strength when using self harm cards/effects and upgrade those and if you find a demon form then grab that too :)
Thank you for the video. I will try the strength built if possible
The problem with this advice (having tried it) is that the game is *too* random -- a large fraction of runs do not result in a set of strength cards that will make a coherent hand. Most of the time you are piecing together random trash.
IMO, that is part of what is wrong with Slay the Spire -- too many runs aren't fun or interesting, just lots of random jumble. Understanding the game does not fix this problem.
I got this fire breath build that was super fun, had a few curses and draw, those enemies that spam you with curses? I just draw like 3 cards, and they explode, very fun
Just picked this game up on Black Friday. Ironclad was the last char I hadn't won yet. Got a Searing Blow in act 1 and then at +7 i got to duplicate it. 4 card deck absolutely trashed the act 3 boss. Shame I don't have Act 4 open, cause I wanted to see what it could do there.
Great video!
1 build missing, its a quintessential block build; "whenever you block you deal damage to a random enemy" + body slam, get as much of that card as you can and block gain cards also strength.
In my opinion; Thats the true ironclad invincible build seemingly intended by the developer. (Because youll get rediculous block= unkillable)
It hits alot like the silent but huge burst like the defect but better than both.
Double Tap Rampage doesn't upgrade the card twice right? It just creates a temporary second one that exhausts right after?
That’s my understanding too man, that it upgrades the once and the second one just gets used and exhausted - but I’m not 100%
No, I just used it it upgrades rampage twice suuuuper good
I won my first match yesterday with just firebreath and a lot of status cards. Each turn started with drawing a full hand, doing a lot of damage per status card the enemies had no idea what was happening
I got really lucky and got a +7 searing blow, i've loved it ever since i first got it
Armaments and Searing Blow together is insane
I’m confused about flex. Does it give 2 strength and then take that 2 strength back off you at the turn’s end? Or does it give you +2 strength for that turn and then -2 strength the next?
Meaning the next turn you are weakened?
It removes the strength at the end of your turn. So you just go back to normal.
3:08 You see it right?
Yep he had lethal but took the hit anyway lmao
I got a really cool build with defect that is making me win almost every time it took me a while of losing to figure out a flexible deck that almost always works. However I've put the same amount of time and with ironclad and silent I've never got ironclad pass the boss of the first act. However I've gotten silent a second act a few times. My problem with ironclad is he doesn't seem to have enough block. No matter what I do I either have to pick block or attack and if I pick block it's usually small and I did no damage that round if I decide to attack I can do a decent amount of damage but I also take damage several turns and I can't get through the game that way. Maybe I have not found any of the good cards yet but some reason I cannot figure out how people get his block up high enough to go against some of these crazy enemies that do big damage
Any chance you are doing a Watcher video like this in the near future?
Just found this game yesterday and I got to act three once only to get smacked by some guy with 999 health that does 50 damage a pop… I also never threw out cards until now
You probably know by now but he explodes after 4 turns. You either have to stack a ton of shield if you can or do the better route and load up on repetitive damage. Whatever you build around. Silent and poison is the best for him imo
Hopefully this'll help me
I'm stuck on Asc 3 with him but beat it with everyone else
Tried variations of some of these but feels like I get nuked by some enemies by not having enough defense
Cheers not thought about searing blow build gonna try mixing it with a strength build I my next play though :-) I did a block build with immoliser and flame shield worked OK but took time to kill targets and was reliant on getting barricade :-/
Haven’t tried it, but I really want to make a janky firebreathing think work
Awesome vid! The by most broken deck across all characters I have had was Ironclad that completely focusses on defense. I don't know the English card names but I used the one that lets you keep your armor after the turn ends, as well as stuff that constantly adds armor, doubles your armor, deals some dmg go enemies whenever getting armor. You deal absolutely ludicrious amounts of dmage, it was mindblowing.
Anger, headbutt, pommel strike, dual wield, anger some more, unceasing top
Are there any other cards I should add to any of the builds/keep any of the base cards and how many of each card in the deck should I have?
Edit: Could You Also Do This For The Watcher
I acpected an exhaust deck cause I love it.
It's motly just cards like second wind, the one that's the same but with attack true gift corroption is a very good one for this deck and than just a bunch of feel no pain and enter the abbys to profit emensy of off the exhaust this works even better if you got a lot of skills especially with corroption second wind or the other card
great job dude, very helpful
Thanks I'm doing the best with the poison girl but it gets boring I'll try to use these tips
Awesome good luck! I have guides on the silent and the defect too if that could help :)
@@MedievalMarty I will check them out for sure
Unfortunately after clearing ascension 20 with silent and ascension 10 with the rest. Ironclad with strength build is fun but as ascension increases strength is the only build that can consistently win without a little bit of luck
just watched this and I got rampage and searing blow within the first 2 battles... which one do I pick? lol
So helpful. You never did a watcher video did you?
I once saw a modded searing blow run which made them only get whetstone's and searing blows that shit is extreemly op
Apotheosis + Searing blow seems good right? Or am I mistaken? It can be upgraded to be more worth it and in a small deck it can be acessed more easily.
Apotheosis exhausts so you can only upgrade searing blow once per fight with it. Not so good tbh. Searing blow is fun, but not very good.
How do you not get annihilated by 3 enemies at once that does tons of damage on 1 turn
Yeah there's a few battles with 3 enemies all with a starting attack of 10+ each. This build would kill me!
I killed the heart with fire breath, having small deck, and adding wounds to my hand. 10dmg per wound/haze
Sorry for being the nerd correcting this but the formula you showed is not of exponential growth, its quadratic growth. great video
My favorit ironclad is Body Slam + Barricade
A couple of hundreds of damage each turn and inf block
Searing blow is quadratic growth, not exponential growth.
modCheck Strike build?
I can't win with any of the characters lol, just started not long ago and I'm very bad
I got 2 mind blasts, and then built around Perfect Strike and drawing cards. However I'm shit at this game lol.
Bro idk if this is an official deck but i had the cards feel no pain i gained 3 defense everytime i exhausted a card second wind which exhausted all my non attack cards for 5 defense each i also had juggernaut which did 5 dmg everytime i defended i also had corruptionwhich worked really well with mumified hand and madness(upgraded) and i also had the demon power up all of this combined made basically everu card cost 0 and it shielded me and it attacked it was my first run getting this deck and i won the only real downside is that all of ur cards get exhausted but most of the time there dead before it even happens
Metallicize + Juggernaut + Barricade + Inflame = OP
Nah, here’s all you need
Flame Barrier +
Second Wind +
Power Through +
Fire Breathing + x2
Enjoy the free 36 block per turn and 40+ power damage to all foes per turn with a 5 card setup.
Bruh, how did you make an iron clad video without mentioning corruption/feel no pain? Easily the most consistently winning build.
Innate barricade+, various blocks (impervious etc), entrench+, body slam+ = ~200 dmg for 0 energy.
Deck control through headbutts and warcry/warcry+ cards.
Energy potions and +1 energy relics to make sure to activate innate barricade.
Armaments+ or Apotheosis+ if deck grows too big to upgrade through rest sites and events.
15 hours in I only got to the boss in act 3 2 times. Once with a block build the other I totally didn't give a fuck and started spamming massive dmg cards.It worked really well and almost defeated the act 3 boss (donut man and diamond boi) but didn't have big heals like reaper. But I just need to get familiar with good cards for certain builds etc. Since I've just been doing random stuff. I've never really been good at these strategic games x(.
EDIT: you say the searing blow formula is exponential but that's not exponential, that's polynomial. Since it's n(n+7) wouldn't that become n^2 + 7n? So Actually quadratic. Not trying to be an asshole here :) just wanted to point it out
noob here, still trying to wrap my head around the deck building aspect of the game, given the RNG and limited gold. guess it's a matter of playthru after playthru until the stars start aligning? I'll probably try out the strength build, although I expect it will be game over if I run into a Transient... anyway, for this build, what is a good number and distribution of cards for a strength deck?
transients die after 6 turns and any attack you dea on them decreases THEIR attack by that much. so play your defense and attacks well and it quickly becomes one of the easiest enemies in the game - ignore the 999 HP. means nothing if you can do some heavy damage that removes his attacks along with blocks here n there.
@@lilwavesz you're right, I had completely forgotten the dmg reduction mechanic. I encountered one when I managed a Strength deck and got it to 0 or near-0 dmg on every turn
@@depasadaporahi9385 nice!!! i got suuuper close to finishing with a somewhat decent(not great) strength deck last night but got taken out. still have only beaten it with the silent but hoping to get ironclad or defect soon 🤞 lmk if you have any tips!!
@@lilwavesz good luck! I have reached Act III boss once with Defect on my first try with that character (pure luck, I wasn't even really deck building) and beat it once with the aforementioned Ironclad Strength deck, but only thru cheating (restoring save files a couple of times), which is about the only "tip" I can offer. My tolerance for rogue-like games is limited, even if I love the gameplay. With Silent I've only gotten to a few floors before Act III boss, and haven't figured out the Watcher yet, could not even get to the first boss. lame.
@@depasadaporahi9385 ahhh okay thank you!!! for silent what worked for me was focusing on defense and poison!!! once you start stacking poisons with your blocks built up the enemies pretty much kill themselves 😅
P.S. Demon Form is trash tbh. You can focus more on limit break + spot weakness and gain more strength over time than demon form, and you forgoe an entire turn in act 1 to play a Demon form. It's a noob trap, and looks good on the surface. Just takes too long to get going and there are much better strength cards. He didnt even mention rupture, which is a better strength builder than demon form if you have cards that do damage to yourself like combustion. Which, combustion+rupture is just better demon form.
I personally like spot weakness, headbutt, and pommel strike
No, its really not. It's good scaling if you have the energy.
Though you shouldn't take a demon form in act 1 unless you swap for energy relic
@@golfer435 Ehh, there are a lot of fights that deal damage very quickly. If you have the deck to survive, then yeah it's fine scaling. But I've seen it in my hand, taking up one of my card draws when nemesis is about to hit me for 50 damage. Don't get to play it unless you want to die. Any card *can* be good, but I think demon form is overrated. Have just seen it ruin runs more than it helps runs. There are other, more consistent ways to get strength for much less energy.
@@medude420024 oh i agree. I only take it early in act 1 when damage is low as it helps with nob and damage scaling or if I already have a large energy economy
This is a good beginner guide.
Searing blow is not worthy imo you wasted 5 rest sites when bludgeon+ gets you the 42 dmg you're looking for anyway
“Shiruken” British people say a foreign word correctly challenge (impossible)
I got my first victory in Slay the Spire with Ironclad, using a Clash+ build. I had 3 Clash+s and one regular Clash. I mixed in with 2 Thunderclap+s, a Dual Wield+, Infernal Blade, 2 Flex+s, 1 Blood for Blood, 1 Inflame, 1 Double Tap+, 1 Reaper+, 3 Strikes, 1 Defend, and for defense, 1 Rage+. Would have liked a second Rage+, but I had some great relics which were giving me benefits for playing many cards. As well as one that gave me a random power card at the start of each round.
Searing blow isn’t good imo lol might as well get Bludgeon+. It’ll take Searing blow 5 upgrades to get the same damage as Bludgeon+
Yeah but you can keep upgrading Searing Blow past the damage a Bludgeon+ could do
Don't denigrate yourself by comparing yourself to George Martin.
You're still working on your guide.
Edit: Searing Blow doesn't fully take off until you reach upgrade 6 or 7, because you need 50 damage to take out certain enemies in one hit.
Edit2: something that is slept on though is the fact that armaments can upgrade searing blow during battle and provide you some defense.
Bit of an understatement at the beginning there lol GRRM released the first ASOIAF book 28 years ago, believe or not. Dude is going on three decades at this point
I have a very small deck...
I just got this yesterday. I am terrible! Haha, but I have made it to Act 3! Get destroyed there though.
This is not exponential man, this is just quadratic.
Demon form redskull str killa
The heavy block build is basically cheating, you block all damage and deal damage to your block
Lol what kinda troll is this. Rampage and searing blow suck like alot
This dude has no idea what he is talking about. If you are trying to do a10 and up do not listen to his advice u will lose a lot of
Not very good guide.
Git gud
My first 3 runs with all 3 characters I won every game, I feel like they could have made it a bit more difficulty to make it where you really feel like you get better as you learn
Bro playing at zero ascension lol
There’s no problem with trying to enjoy the game. Ascension is stressful and not fun at times. If you want a challenge cool if not it’s not a big deal. Deck building is the same either way
I can hear the saliva in your mouth as you talk o_o please.. your audio or mic or whatever it is.. oh god
How do you feel about Armaments to upgrade cards in your deck instead of upgrading them at rest sites?
Armaments is good tbh. Especially if upgraded, since it upgrades all the cards in your hand. All about getting good synergy with it and getting good cards that upgrade to be better.
I will point out, armaments only upgrades them for the fight you use it in. It doesnt permanently upgrade cards.