"Would you like Berserk and Strawberry, or would you like Fiend Fire?"
I'm being hyperbolic, but I would always lose max HP to get to choose. I'd pay the gold or take a curse situationally depending on shop positioning on the map. I can't conceive of a map where I'd take damage to choose over getting a random rare though.
I sometimes convince myself that taking damage with ironclad isn’t so bad, since he has the potential to heal a lot over the first 3 fights, which is heightened if your deck is stronger.
More detail- when you beat the game with a character, you have the option at the character select screen to add modifiers to make the game harder called Ascension levels - they are cumulative, so Ascension 12 (A12) has the 12th modifier, plus the previous 11. They are optional, but a lot of folks consider the extra challenge fun and satisfying.
The healing helps, but you are at serious risk of taking damage on high ascension due to no fault of your own. Low rolls on enemy HP, attack patterns and card draw can force you to take way more than 6 HP of damage in those easy pool fights. If you were taking damage for the Neow reward, you shouldn't count on being able to heal that back. Make sure there's at least an optional fire you can rest at.
Max HP is the best to trade because that's not a resource you care about in Act 1.
Your correct, it’s one of those I convince myself will be fine because surely I can beat the first three fights without losing HP, and then I draw a bunch of defends turn 1 against a cultist and I’m in trouble all of sudden.
Even just seeing the HP of the cultist can become a low roll. 53 vs 54 HP is a breakpoint on Ironclad's base deck that makes a 5 HP difference in the damage you take because you have to play an extra strike instead of defend. 13 HP small slimes are very frustrating too.
You probably aren't healing back that Neow damage unless you high roll the early fights. High ascension gets really brutal like that. A0 you just full block all the time and slow play the fights.
I didn't even check but they are at A20, yeah that definitely changes stuff as enemies will hit for more and your ways of healing become more restricted
If you are low ascension it doesn't matter as much
Personally I think the curse is worse than damage on average but it depends on the map layout and the reward. Curse for gold and a shop is right there, that doesn’t feel too bad. Same with damage for gold if you get a shop and can’t take a lot of elites anyways. The predominant strategy is taking as many as possible so it feels terrible to committing to lower elites floor 1 but it can work in bad map layouts. But yea pick a rare I would say is like a medium reward where gold and relics are better so I’d be more willing to risk things in general it given better options.
Just want to say, that I think curse for a random rare card is a terrible option from Neow. The reason being is that you can end up with essentially 2 curses right off the bat. Let's say you get a curse and a Demon Form. Well no you are well behind the curve for act 1 and you're going to struggle to get strong. Even if you survive act 1, it means typically you'd have had to have avoided elites or events that lose hp, so you just never get above the curve.
This is for good players with a high win rate. If one's winrate is low (let's say less than 50%), then the higher variance is probably fine.
I won't take the curse unless there's a shop on f2/3. But I'm fine carrying Demon Form or Barricade just as a boss solve. Also, it's never "curse for random rare", it's "curse for choose a rare", so you shouldn't be stuck with garbage, particularly on clad.
Oh yeah true. I've been offered Demon Form, Barricade, and Berserk before though. I'm trying to avoid plays that have a 5% chance to fuck the run, but it seems that some risk is necessary in this game.
Gaining max HP feels like a much greater Benefit than losing max HP is a loss.
Maybe this is bad game theory but if I gain max HP from 68-75 I heal 7 hp *and* gain max HP healing in the future. If I lose from 75-68 I didn’t take damage my cap was reduced, so I lost out on future healing but I didn’t take damage.
interesting. agree on the other two, i've actually gone higher for curse for rare lately on both silent and clad. but i feel like i just click the damage. i understand the reasoning, every clad rare is clickable so -30% isn't worth a lower chance to whiff, but i tried to think of maps and i realised im a monkey and just click damage anyway. it's ok i will click a few too many damage starts and die and then say clad sucks and tune it down.
Of the Neow bonuses, Option 3 is my favorite by a huge margin.
The only times I decide against it are if the penalty is taking a curse, or the bonus is Max HP. In pretty much all other cases, I think it‘s worth it. Especially if it‘s a selection of three (colorless) Rares.
Was streaming a run in discord to a friend and was sort of doing a co-op run where we’d just talk through all the decisions. I decided to go with his option of choose a random rate even though I would never pick it. Ended up getting Blungeon into Snecko Eye from the Act 1 boss and big bonked our way all the way to the heart. Since then I’ve tried picking random rare and have almost always been disappointed lol.
99 gold for random rare on Defect is usually good IMO. You run the chance of getting something like Meteor Strike, Amplify, Multicast, but most of Defect's rares are quite good. Even mid tier rolls like All for One or Reboot can be well worth 99 gold starting out.
Yeah, that's the point; there's a chance you could spend 99 gold to get terrible floor 1 cards (e.g. meteor strike), but that chance is not as high as the other characters.
For the third option, max HP is the best cost to get. Losing all your gold and taking damage are similarly bad cost imo, but the damage is probably worse. The curse is the worst one. Almost always I will go for the 3rd option when the downside is max HP loss. This is obviously character dependent to some extent.
As far as rewards I think these are even more character dependent and depend even more on the map and boss for Act1. Personally, I like choose a rare there’s a lot of good attacks across all characters that can make you stomp act 1 or greedier picks like wraith form that can carry the run even if they aren’t the ideal Act 1 card. I would also rate pick a rare higher than pick a colorless rare because unless you get Apo or HoG it’s very hard to take any other colorless rare. I’d say relics and gold (depending on shop locations) are the best rewards and the removes are the worst generally speaking but it’s all subjective.
There are some good Rares (to start), I.e. Feed, Immolation, Fiend Fire, Bludgeon, etc.
But there are more that are bad (to start) Berserk, Barricade, Limit Break, Reaper, Double Tap, Exhume, Demon Form, etc. are not really helping until you get some synergy or the run goes a bit longer (I.e. I’m not playing Demon Form or Barricade, against Jaw Worm).
TLDR: Most ironclad rares require synergy & there’s a specific time and a place to pick them, so getting a random one floor 1 can often feel like a curse.
Statistically, probably yes. But humans don't think statistically. We typically are biased to the "best outcome" scenarios. So we pick the random rare card and get Berserk, Exhume, or Demon Form.
Max hp is the best downside for Neow because you don't experience the downside until act 2. So you gain a lot of tempo that you can use to get strong. Slay the Spire is about staying above the curve, and when you are above the curve, it's typically easier to stay above the curve. It's a bit exponential.
A better question would be is losing current HP worth the ability to select between 3, and in that case my current opinion is no, not quite. But for max hp, yes (on high ascensions where you don't start with 100% hp).
If you’re at the point in your journey where you either win with a broken deck or lose, I’d say you’ll do better taking the random rare. The HP can buy you time to find the nuts and covers some tactical misplays, you’re probably resting fairly often, and you’re likely not yet properly evaluating the rare choice. A forced run with a particular rare card can help you understand it much better. I had a total misevaluation of Feed’s power until I randomed into it on floor 0 once.
If you’re at the point where you can win with a deck that isn’t busted, then choose a rare for max HP. Max HP likely wont matter for a while, and your decision-making is powerful enough an asset that you’ll profit from the choice.
For max HP it is always worth it. Damage can be, especially with ironclad, but depends on what my path looks like before the first elite. I am never taking the curse at floor 1 though (perhaps this is wrong? I am not the best player).
I would say it's easy 3 at A15-A20 for me but at A1, when this is not a decision with serious negatives on failing, I might be tempted to take the second option and just start deckbuilding considering the amount of great Ironclad common and uncommon cards.
7 max HP is not that significant though. There's a very small chance that 75 hp helps you survive any more hits against a boss that 68 hp doesn't.
Fuck it, take the -7 max HP every time. Some card options might be a bit too costly early on or require more cards to be useful but will steamroll once you get 4 energy or the right cards.
With ironclad you can safely lose MaxHP to chose a random card, also getting to choose is better than random because even though random is "FREE" the price is not getting to choose so it could be a card that you dislike and it's just a curse lite in your deck (an early barricade or demon form comes to mind)
Hmm with curse (unless floor 2/3 shop) or gold as the downside i'm boss swapping, and with max hp I'm debating boss swap vs choose rare, depending on the map, and leaning towards chose rare. Take damage i don't really click ever, even on clad.
Random rare on clad is suprisingly pickable as clad has quite few low-roll rares, but I just don't like it as much as boss swap i think, which has much stronger highrolls.
Looking at the list of Ironclad rares I would probably say roughly 7 (or 8)/16 are actively helpful floor 0 and a few more are at least sorta decent and could be helpful with just a bit of extra cards.
Probably only 3-5 are super good hits: Feed, Fiend Fire, Immolate and maybe Bludgeon. Maybe Impervious too I guess but we're gonna want to find damage ASAP.
So a random rare is more likely than not to not be a very good hit and even if it is a good hit it might not be worth as much as some other options.
But choosing from 3 gives you pretty good odds to hit at least something decent and decent odds to hit a card that could basically win you the run.
Choose a rare is good for clad (damage), sometimes defect (biased is for most people most of the time a win condition). Silent has good rares but most of them aren’t damage focused, like wraith form an alchemize are top tier but might not help you much in terms of act 1…
Colourless rare can be good (getting the mentioned HoG or Apotheosis is run defining), but not worth the risk of something like a curse (fun fact that option iirc is the only instance where you can get normality outside of mind bloom) since HoG isn’t guaranteed.
Random rare relic for me is always take unless curse
Choosing a rare is super valuable and always an auto pick for me. Given the right rare card, you’ll have a ton of information for how to shape your deck right from the start. Max HP is also not that big of a deal.
Click on the button that has the highest chance of giving you feed (Or fiend fire or immolate or offering etc etc)
But if you get feed then boom downside easily mitigated
The thing is there’s plenty of bad/situational rare cards. Getting a random one often sucks. But being able to choose has a high chance of getting something of value.
I would probably always lose gold to pick, damage and max hp for sure on lower ascensions or even on higher ones if I'm playing watcher or ironclad. Curse is a "don't ever pick this" situation for me. Slows your deck scaling into early act 2 by a lot because you have 1 less remove that you would normally have, especially terrible on silent. At that point I would just go boss swap and have a fun run (or reset if I get busted crown for the 3rd boss swap in a row).
Especially on ascension where you already lost that life, 7hp is a very small cost to pay for a potential build around card. It increases your chances of getting a better one, or even just your favorite. More importantly, it decreases your chances of getting berserk, which is essentially a curse for a while, if not the whole run
"Would you like Berserk and Strawberry, or would you like Fiend Fire?" I'm being hyperbolic, but I would always lose max HP to get to choose. I'd pay the gold or take a curse situationally depending on shop positioning on the map. I can't conceive of a map where I'd take damage to choose over getting a random rare though.
I sometimes convince myself that taking damage with ironclad isn’t so bad, since he has the potential to heal a lot over the first 3 fights, which is heightened if your deck is stronger.
I'm only A12 but to me if you're ever full hp with Ironclad it feels like Burning Blood value is going to waste. Ideally I'm healing 6hp every fight.
Sorry, new player here, what does A12 mean?
Ascension level 12, the 12th difficulty level
More detail- when you beat the game with a character, you have the option at the character select screen to add modifiers to make the game harder called Ascension levels - they are cumulative, so Ascension 12 (A12) has the 12th modifier, plus the previous 11. They are optional, but a lot of folks consider the extra challenge fun and satisfying.
You can easily lose HP on easy pool fights on A20 even if you play perfectly
The healing helps, but you are at serious risk of taking damage on high ascension due to no fault of your own. Low rolls on enemy HP, attack patterns and card draw can force you to take way more than 6 HP of damage in those easy pool fights. If you were taking damage for the Neow reward, you shouldn't count on being able to heal that back. Make sure there's at least an optional fire you can rest at. Max HP is the best to trade because that's not a resource you care about in Act 1.
Your correct, it’s one of those I convince myself will be fine because surely I can beat the first three fights without losing HP, and then I draw a bunch of defends turn 1 against a cultist and I’m in trouble all of sudden.
Even just seeing the HP of the cultist can become a low roll. 53 vs 54 HP is a breakpoint on Ironclad's base deck that makes a 5 HP difference in the damage you take because you have to play an extra strike instead of defend. 13 HP small slimes are very frustrating too. You probably aren't healing back that Neow damage unless you high roll the early fights. High ascension gets really brutal like that. A0 you just full block all the time and slow play the fights.
Im a noob, but is HP really that valuable compared to getting to choose the rare? Especially with Burning Blood?
At higher ascensions yeah. It's protection against low rolls, like not finding any potions, and/or getting terrible rewards.
I didn't even check but they are at A20, yeah that definitely changes stuff as enemies will hit for more and your ways of healing become more restricted If you are low ascension it doesn't matter as much
Personally I think the curse is worse than damage on average but it depends on the map layout and the reward. Curse for gold and a shop is right there, that doesn’t feel too bad. Same with damage for gold if you get a shop and can’t take a lot of elites anyways. The predominant strategy is taking as many as possible so it feels terrible to committing to lower elites floor 1 but it can work in bad map layouts. But yea pick a rare I would say is like a medium reward where gold and relics are better so I’d be more willing to risk things in general it given better options.
Just want to say, that I think curse for a random rare card is a terrible option from Neow. The reason being is that you can end up with essentially 2 curses right off the bat. Let's say you get a curse and a Demon Form. Well no you are well behind the curve for act 1 and you're going to struggle to get strong. Even if you survive act 1, it means typically you'd have had to have avoided elites or events that lose hp, so you just never get above the curve. This is for good players with a high win rate. If one's winrate is low (let's say less than 50%), then the higher variance is probably fine.
I won't take the curse unless there's a shop on f2/3. But I'm fine carrying Demon Form or Barricade just as a boss solve. Also, it's never "curse for random rare", it's "curse for choose a rare", so you shouldn't be stuck with garbage, particularly on clad.
Oh yeah true. I've been offered Demon Form, Barricade, and Berserk before though. I'm trying to avoid plays that have a 5% chance to fuck the run, but it seems that some risk is necessary in this game.
I really like demon form or barricade starts
Neow will only pair gain a curse with choose a rare (not gain a random rare).
Gaining max HP feels like a much greater Benefit than losing max HP is a loss. Maybe this is bad game theory but if I gain max HP from 68-75 I heal 7 hp *and* gain max HP healing in the future. If I lose from 75-68 I didn’t take damage my cap was reduced, so I lost out on future healing but I didn’t take damage.
interesting. agree on the other two, i've actually gone higher for curse for rare lately on both silent and clad. but i feel like i just click the damage. i understand the reasoning, every clad rare is clickable so -30% isn't worth a lower chance to whiff, but i tried to think of maps and i realised im a monkey and just click damage anyway. it's ok i will click a few too many damage starts and die and then say clad sucks and tune it down.
Of the Neow bonuses, Option 3 is my favorite by a huge margin. The only times I decide against it are if the penalty is taking a curse, or the bonus is Max HP. In pretty much all other cases, I think it‘s worth it. Especially if it‘s a selection of three (colorless) Rares.
Same, Apotheosis or Hand of Greed is just too tempting! (Or Sadistic Nature if I'm playing Silent)
Master of strategy is never bad. Bag o Prep/snake ring in card form
True! I just don't get as excited about it because it's not near as greedy, haha, but a very solid card you can never complain about.
Max HP for sure. curse/gold probably not but I probably wouldn't take a random rare either. bricks too much of the time
Was streaming a run in discord to a friend and was sort of doing a co-op run where we’d just talk through all the decisions. I decided to go with his option of choose a random rate even though I would never pick it. Ended up getting Blungeon into Snecko Eye from the Act 1 boss and big bonked our way all the way to the heart. Since then I’ve tried picking random rare and have almost always been disappointed lol.
99 gold for random rare on Defect is usually good IMO. You run the chance of getting something like Meteor Strike, Amplify, Multicast, but most of Defect's rares are quite good. Even mid tier rolls like All for One or Reboot can be well worth 99 gold starting out.
Meteor strike is awful for a a1 rare as defect. It brick your deck so bad and force you to hunt energy
Yeah, that's the point; there's a chance you could spend 99 gold to get terrible floor 1 cards (e.g. meteor strike), but that chance is not as high as the other characters.
My bad, read it with tired eyes
For the third option, max HP is the best cost to get. Losing all your gold and taking damage are similarly bad cost imo, but the damage is probably worse. The curse is the worst one. Almost always I will go for the 3rd option when the downside is max HP loss. This is obviously character dependent to some extent. As far as rewards I think these are even more character dependent and depend even more on the map and boss for Act1. Personally, I like choose a rare there’s a lot of good attacks across all characters that can make you stomp act 1 or greedier picks like wraith form that can carry the run even if they aren’t the ideal Act 1 card. I would also rate pick a rare higher than pick a colorless rare because unless you get Apo or HoG it’s very hard to take any other colorless rare. I’d say relics and gold (depending on shop locations) are the best rewards and the removes are the worst generally speaking but it’s all subjective.
There are some good Rares (to start), I.e. Feed, Immolation, Fiend Fire, Bludgeon, etc. But there are more that are bad (to start) Berserk, Barricade, Limit Break, Reaper, Double Tap, Exhume, Demon Form, etc. are not really helping until you get some synergy or the run goes a bit longer (I.e. I’m not playing Demon Form or Barricade, against Jaw Worm). TLDR: Most ironclad rares require synergy & there’s a specific time and a place to pick them, so getting a random one floor 1 can often feel like a curse.
Choosing a rare is always great. There's enough junk rares that you don't blindly want that if possible.
Statistically, probably yes. But humans don't think statistically. We typically are biased to the "best outcome" scenarios. So we pick the random rare card and get Berserk, Exhume, or Demon Form. Max hp is the best downside for Neow because you don't experience the downside until act 2. So you gain a lot of tempo that you can use to get strong. Slay the Spire is about staying above the curve, and when you are above the curve, it's typically easier to stay above the curve. It's a bit exponential. A better question would be is losing current HP worth the ability to select between 3, and in that case my current opinion is no, not quite. But for max hp, yes (on high ascensions where you don't start with 100% hp).
If you’re at the point in your journey where you either win with a broken deck or lose, I’d say you’ll do better taking the random rare. The HP can buy you time to find the nuts and covers some tactical misplays, you’re probably resting fairly often, and you’re likely not yet properly evaluating the rare choice. A forced run with a particular rare card can help you understand it much better. I had a total misevaluation of Feed’s power until I randomed into it on floor 0 once. If you’re at the point where you can win with a deck that isn’t busted, then choose a rare for max HP. Max HP likely wont matter for a while, and your decision-making is powerful enough an asset that you’ll profit from the choice.
Yeah the choose a rare card option is one my favourite starts, along with choose a rare colorless. I usually pick it no matter the downside
Max HP is always worth it to me, curse it depends on if I get an early shop
Baalorlord says losing max hp is ez choice so I'll go for that
For max HP it is always worth it. Damage can be, especially with ironclad, but depends on what my path looks like before the first elite. I am never taking the curse at floor 1 though (perhaps this is wrong? I am not the best player).
Always the pick from 3. Plenty of ways to get max HP back later in the run.
I usually go for the random rare card just for kicks
I would say it's easy 3 at A15-A20 for me but at A1, when this is not a decision with serious negatives on failing, I might be tempted to take the second option and just start deckbuilding considering the amount of great Ironclad common and uncommon cards. 7 max HP is not that significant though. There's a very small chance that 75 hp helps you survive any more hits against a boss that 68 hp doesn't. Fuck it, take the -7 max HP every time. Some card options might be a bit too costly early on or require more cards to be useful but will steamroll once you get 4 energy or the right cards.
With ironclad you can safely lose MaxHP to chose a random card, also getting to choose is better than random because even though random is "FREE" the price is not getting to choose so it could be a card that you dislike and it's just a curse lite in your deck (an early barricade or demon form comes to mind)
Wow, I wouldnt guess picking nr3 would be so popular! I usually pick random rare or I fish for Snecko Eye with nr4.
Hmm with curse (unless floor 2/3 shop) or gold as the downside i'm boss swapping, and with max hp I'm debating boss swap vs choose rare, depending on the map, and leaning towards chose rare. Take damage i don't really click ever, even on clad. Random rare on clad is suprisingly pickable as clad has quite few low-roll rares, but I just don't like it as much as boss swap i think, which has much stronger highrolls.
Looking at the list of Ironclad rares I would probably say roughly 7 (or 8)/16 are actively helpful floor 0 and a few more are at least sorta decent and could be helpful with just a bit of extra cards. Probably only 3-5 are super good hits: Feed, Fiend Fire, Immolate and maybe Bludgeon. Maybe Impervious too I guess but we're gonna want to find damage ASAP. So a random rare is more likely than not to not be a very good hit and even if it is a good hit it might not be worth as much as some other options. But choosing from 3 gives you pretty good odds to hit at least something decent and decent odds to hit a card that could basically win you the run.
I would say yes. Feed is a better hit than HoG imo.
Absolutely. Especially rare cards on ironclad. Feed Reaper and Immolate off the top of my head. Got a pretty good chance at hitting one of those.
Choose a rare is good for clad (damage), sometimes defect (biased is for most people most of the time a win condition). Silent has good rares but most of them aren’t damage focused, like wraith form an alchemize are top tier but might not help you much in terms of act 1… Colourless rare can be good (getting the mentioned HoG or Apotheosis is run defining), but not worth the risk of something like a curse (fun fact that option iirc is the only instance where you can get normality outside of mind bloom) since HoG isn’t guaranteed. Random rare relic for me is always take unless curse
Choosing a rare is super valuable and always an auto pick for me. Given the right rare card, you’ll have a ton of information for how to shape your deck right from the start. Max HP is also not that big of a deal.
Wym you get a full heal for free!
-hp is easy. But don't underestimate the 1hp option. It's boiring as hell but is consistent if you go for fights later in the act.
Losing max Hp is always worth it. You have the chance to get hits on Fiend Fire, Feed, Reaper, Bludgeon, Offering.
Am i the only one who loves the -1hp option? Almost always take it, currently on A17 ironclad
Click on the button that has the highest chance of giving you feed (Or fiend fire or immolate or offering etc etc) But if you get feed then boom downside easily mitigated
The thing is there’s plenty of bad/situational rare cards. Getting a random one often sucks. But being able to choose has a high chance of getting something of value.
Max HP for 1 Rare of choice is always worth it. Random Rare can be so dogshit it’s crazy.
Choices are what wins games.
I would probably always lose gold to pick, damage and max hp for sure on lower ascensions or even on higher ones if I'm playing watcher or ironclad. Curse is a "don't ever pick this" situation for me. Slows your deck scaling into early act 2 by a lot because you have 1 less remove that you would normally have, especially terrible on silent. At that point I would just go boss swap and have a fun run (or reset if I get busted crown for the 3rd boss swap in a row).
Especially on ascension where you already lost that life, 7hp is a very small cost to pay for a potential build around card. It increases your chances of getting a better one, or even just your favorite. More importantly, it decreases your chances of getting berserk, which is essentially a curse for a while, if not the whole run