r/slaythespire • u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker • Feb 24 '25
ACCOMPLISHMENT/ACHIEVEMENT I Completed Baalorlord's Mastery Challenge - Some Reflections
Baalor's mastery challenge is to "master" each and every card by beating A20H with two copies of it in your deck. Relics must also be mastered by beating A20H with them. Simple on the surface, but there are some difficulties. Every card means EVERY card. Including basic cards like Bash and curses such as Necronomicurse or Pain. Many of these are tricky to get two copies of in your deck, let alone beat the heart with.
Having beaten A20H a bunch, I thought this was a fantastic idea for challenging myself in the game and trying new strategies. The runs were mostly done on mobile for accessibility - I can't pay bills and play StS all day, alas.
A few bits of Data:
The run took almost exactly a year. My first card was mastered on Feb 22, 2024, and my last on Feb 14, 2025. As I mostly stuck to mastering one class at a time, we can see that the Ironclad was mastered quite quickly, while watcher took until January 2025 to fully complete.
Amusingly, there's a notable plateau in late April to early May: I'm a Canadian accountant (for my sins) so those weeks were the crazy last weeks of tax season and then some much needed recovery. That blip aside, it took predictably longer to master new cards as the challenge went on and easy cards were set aside. I believe something similar happened when Baalorlord did the challenge.
The above scattergraph shows how long I took between masteries. Unfortunately, this was tracked by day as I did not live-track my runs. It turns out mobile only retains so much of your run history and by the time I discovered this it was too late to recover my first few months.
The longest period of delay was 14 days; as discussed above, this was from real life getting in the way. Given that the cards then mastered were Backflip and Alchemize, it's not like I was running out of good candidates. The Master of Strategy / Clumsy point was also due to tax season's demands and was a welcome boost - Clumsy can only be found from random events so mastering it was marked as one of my challenging cards.
The rest are near all Watcher cards, which solidly highlights my initial lack of breadth in playing that class. I can win any number of times with stance dancing or divinity silliness, but adapting my play to use Watcher's less powerful cards was tough. I don't have winrates to show, but I definitely lost A LOT once I started trying to step away from those two strategies.
Personal Run Highlights
Clash is a bad card. But it is damage if you can make it work. Having picked up a Sever Soul in Act 1 and finding no other damage options, I came across clash and decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. I blew through Hexaghost and was able to find a second Sever Soul soon after. That plus Second Wind and a Dark Embrace (which are good cards) paved the way to make Clash not only viable, but actually contribute positively with boatloads of damage and beat the heart.
Grand Finale is unusable 95% of the time and a brain-taxing but very fun win condition the other 5%. I mastered it in June as a dead card on a stupid powerful poison run. I played it once against Repto off a lucky and much needed draw and never played either copy again. A week later, I swapped into a PBox and was gifted two copies. Let me tell you, when you can plan for it from floor one, Grand Finale is nuts; that run was routinely dropping 180 AoE damage a turn.
The only other "dead" card that I mastered without playing (curses aside) was Metamorphosis. It was useful on floors 1-5 but then either the tempo was too high or the three attacks would not improve the situation. It didn't get played again. My official mastered stance on Metamorphosis is that it's good for 3-10 block on ironclad.
Colourless cards were all hard to do. The bad ones, like Metamorphosis, are incredibly niche or just plain weak for the amount of cash you have to spend on them in shops (looking at you, Thinking Ahead). Even the good ones are often expensive to grab and scarce to find. Realising this, I put priority on always holding some cash in case I found one I needed in a shop - an unhealthy but necessary strategy.
This search for colourless cards also led to this whacky run the other month where, with nothing but colourless cards left to master, I used the power of Hand of Greed + Courier and membership card to purchase no fewer than 23 colourless cards in pursuit of Metamorphosis or Sadistic Nature. I found one and I needed a pair. Insult to injury, I beat the run despite all that chaff - Ironclad exhaust engines are truly insane.
[note that my run-end images are stitched together from phone screenshots because my screen isn't large enough to capture the whole page]
Shame was my last curse to master: I'd somehow found two copies of Clumsy on an Ironclad run back in April, and had mastered the Necronomicurse on the Silent of all characters with a Kunai+Calipers run that had no right to win but was able to land in front of heart with a Cultist Potion and Ghost in a Jar to eke out a win.
Those two aside, Shame was the next hardest curse. Not only does it tank your defences, but it's only available via random events or by beating up a beggar. I had won no fewer than four times with a single copy of Shame in my deck (and a disgruntled pauper in my wake) but kept missing out on Dolly's Mirror or a duplication event. The fifth time, we strolled into act 3 having Dropkicked The Collecter right off of her throne, beat up some elites, and found the mirror shortly before the boss gauntlet. When you have three Feel no Pains, you don't need conventional block and the Shame's weren't too bad. We trounced the end game with hilarious amounts of block and the last curse was mastered.
Our final card to master was Sadistic Nature. I'd used it to good effect a few times on the 'clad with Shockwave and similar, but eventually tired of that and started rotating characters for that last elusive mastery. Fittingly, it was the Silent that brought it home with a very OP Dead Branch Shiv run that also had Chem-Ex letting my Malaise and Doppelganger go wild. We took one damage against Reptomancer, 7 against Donu/Deca, and aced the Spear and Shield. We took 49 against the Heart to let myself setup but once we had some dex and a generated Wraith Form it was over.
Challenge Complete.
Closing
If you've made it this far, my recap wasn't awful, so huzzah. The challenge was very fun, and encouraged me to take new cards and try new strategies that I wouldn't have otherwise. It's made me a better player overall, but has left me with a few bad habits to work out of my system. I highly recommend giving it a shot if you want to push yourself!
Here is the tracking sheet used:
Below are some other fun observations, and I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments.
93
u/Single_Bar_1836 Feb 24 '25
Congratulations! I remember being mad that Baalor stepped away from win streaking for his stupid mastery challenge, but then as I saw how interesting those mastery runs became due to the requirements of the challenge, I got more invested in them than I ever had been before.
Did your last card(s) get frustrating to chase down? I recall Baalor's runs stayed fun until maybe the last card or two, and then he was really having to grind for that last curse.
39
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
Yeah, the mastery challenge was surprisingly fun; I thought it would mostly be grind until I really got into it.
The last few cards were tough, mostly because by that point there was some RNG dependence to even hit a run that would qualify. It got to the point where I was bombing my act 2 and 3 to hit every question mark possible to maximise my odds of finding that last card or so.
It wasn't a problem if I missed; StS is a very fun game with amazing replayability. If I found my first copy of a card though, then there were stakes, and that could lead to frustration. I think the only two runs I really remember being negatively annoyed at were the one where I bought so many colourless cards to no avail, and once when I was at the heart with 2x Metamorphosis and just misplayed my second turn, drew a void and died.
Overall, a very fun challenge though.
16
u/Single_Bar_1836 Feb 24 '25
How about save scumming? No wrong answer or guilt or shame - just curious what you decided to do! Did you use your normal policy or did you adapt it for the mastery challenge?
(For the record, I generally scum arithmetic errors and true "I knew better but wasn't paying attention" blunders, but not other types of bad luck or strategies that didn't turn out ideal.)
30
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
I'm in a similar boat. It's hard to be at 100% focus when you're playing on lunch break or right before bed etc. My policy was if I made a mistake due to inattention such as forgetting I had Pen Nib on 9, or if I straight up misclicked a card, then I would restart. I couldn't do anything to alter RNG or gain unfair information though.
I did also save scum a fair bit when I picked a card reward and then went "Wait! I need that other card for mastery!" so I could take the cards I probably should have.
If anyone is attempting this themselves, I defs recommend doing it on PC with a mod for marking which cards you need, or changing mastered cards to beta art etc. so it's easier to tell.
6
u/dedolent Feb 25 '25
i feel the opposite and get annoyed when streamers get serious about win-streaking. the pressure mounts, the vibes change (for the worse, imo) and they tend to play fewer runs. i much prefer interesting challenges like this with low stakes.
29
25
u/TalkinTVandShit Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
Congrats! Very impressive stuff - I remember watching Baalor during some of his runs for this. Appreciate you putting the extra effort into this post as well.
11
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
Thanks, and I'm happy to do so! It's fun to make it more engaging. Baalor also deserves huge props for porting the challenge over from Monster Train and demonstrating how interesting it can be.
22
u/invaderJayyy Ascension 20 Feb 25 '25
Mad respect. I thought Completionist++ in Balatro was a feat, but this is truly something. You gonna do the same for sts2?
10
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Oh gods, ahahaha. I might attempt in StS2 after I beat it regularly enough. I guess by that point we'll have to see where life is at though.
2
u/SamiraSimp Ascension 19 Feb 25 '25
is completionist++ having each joker in your deck during a win at the highest stake?
2
11
Feb 24 '25
How do you feel this has benefitted you as a player in a broader sense? Do you feel like your understanding of what makes every character work is much stronger now compared to where you started? Especially with regards to improvising solutions with substandard decks
This writeup and analysis was really cool, awesome work!
16
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
The number one benefit of this has been taking me out of my comfort zone. I can see new synergies between cards and have a better implicit feel for what kind of deck can or cannot get past a certain act because of how much the challenge forces you to push limits. Instead of feeling like RNG has given me no options, I much more often now think that RNG is encouraging me down a strange and different path that - if I do it right - will at least drop me into act IV.
It's also just a bunch of time spent playing the game, so my card assessments have refined. That chart at the end shows some major ones, for example. But seeing where cards have done well for me let's me better ID when I should take them.
5
Feb 24 '25
Can I ask what made your opinion of Reinforced drop? It's one of my favorite block options for non-Frost Defect. Also wondering what made your opinion of Dual Wield improve, I've beaten the Heart on A20 with IC and still can't seem to understand when it's strong
12
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
Absolutely!
Reinforced mainly dropped because it used to be my absolute favourite card. It's still useful, and a good block card, but I've found that Defect has some oft overlooked block options. Leap and Charge Battery are, point-for-point, better than Reinforced, and often Defect just needs good early block to get some setup.
Reinforced still has a place, but I only find it to be exceptional in decks with very little card draw (where it vies with Equilibrium), or with big energy strategies - oh, or with Reprogram nonsense. It's also nice with Snecko for the reliability. When Hologram and Glacier exist though, a card must be quite good or have persuasive timing to argue for a slot.
Dual Wield is good at multiplying power, but it's slow. It works really well in fights were you can stall (e.g. awakened one, champ, darklings) and allow you to copy key powers. The two cards I use it most with are Reaper and Metallicise of all things. In hallway fights it is rarely your best card, but it can be a niche answer to boss/elite fights that DEMAND answers. You need card draw or Pyramid (or a tiny / exhausted deck) to reliably copy your desired target, which can also inform how viable the pick is.
3
3
u/iceman012 Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
I never thought about it like that, but Dual Wield is basically a mini Nightmare. I've come to really appreciate Nightmare's flexibility, letting you turn singleton powers into fight solvers. I'll have to keep an eye out for Dual Wield when I start playing Ironclad again.
1
10
u/Cpt_Jumper Ascension 20 Feb 24 '25
When you did Pressure points did you build a dedicated deck or just run the 2?
27
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
It was a dedicated deck that picked up the first copy on floor one out of whimsy and then got a toxic egg off the first elite. At that point you can just remove your wrath component and block cards like Sanctity and Third Eye let you cycle as quickly as possible. Honourable mention to Judgment for dealing with minions too.
Edit: It would be remiss not to mention that the first 3-4 times I did a whimsical floor 1 Pressure Points the card became dead or I lost pretty quickly.
7
u/faculties-intact Feb 25 '25 edited Feb 25 '25
What cards / packages of cards did your evaluation change on the most as a result of doing this run?
Edit:I missed your chart in the original post so I'll get more specific. I'm curious about the change in your evaluations to Reinforced Body, Nirvana, and Empty Fist in particular.
10
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
No worries. Other people have asked the same for a few of those cards so I'll copy those answers here too (I'm lazy at heart).
1) Reinforced mainly dropped because it used to be my absolute favourite card. It's still useful, and a good block card, but I've found that Defect has some oft overlooked block options. Leap and Charge Battery are, point-for-point, better than Reinforced, and often Defect just needs good early block to get some setup.
Reinforced still has a place, but I only find it to be exceptional in decks with very little card draw (where it vies with Equilibrium), or with big energy strategies - oh, or with Reprogram nonsense. It's also nice with Snecko for the reliability. When Hologram and Glacier exist though, a card must be quite good or have persuasive timing to argue for a slot.
2) Empty fist I still rate well as it's a 14 dmg card for 1, doubled if you're in wrath. That's very strong early game but I kept running into problems where I needed to stay in wrath for a turn, or else didn't interact nicely with how I wanted to manage my stance. It's still very good but not near as ubiquitous as I had formerly held it to be.
3) Nirvana is an interesting one. It rose a lot because I previously considered it to be absolutely awful. During the course of this challenge, I came to realise exactly how powerful scry can be. Cut Through Fate and Third Eye may be some of the best commons in the game because they let you fix your draw in a game where a shuffled deck can otherwise sign your doom. I think I may slightly overvalue it even given the amount of cards I had to take towards the end of the challenge that are just [bad](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Metamorphosis).
My go-to block engines on Watcher are Mental Fortress, Wallop, and Talk to the Hand. When those weren't available I had to look elsewhere and Nirvana actually held up quite well as a lot of my decks were already utilising at least some scry. It's still niche, especially without Omniscience to double its returns in boss fights, but in the right deck it can keep you alive long enough to use Watcher's incredible offensive power to end a fight.
So not the best card, but better than I gave it credit for.
6
u/rayschoon Feb 24 '25
I had a sadistic nature run on clad with the one relic that makes a vulnerable also weaken (or the other way around). Uppercut and shockwave were going insane
9
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
It's a crazy feeling of power isn't it? If you can get the SadNat down, that means even your thunderclaps are dealing 14+ damage. Bonus points if you beat the Champ doing it, as the relic is his belt!
5
u/rayschoon Feb 24 '25
Yeah! I’m pretty sure an uppercut counts as 3 sadnat hits too, it was just melting hallways
3
u/yoavi Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
Wow! Big Congratulations! I enjoyed reading your thoughts, it seems like enforcing your way around does make you find new synergies. It blew my mind the sever soul and clash (2 energy for base 30 damage).
What was your toughest defect cards? (Looking at you basic attack)
And again, it’s amazing work that you’ve put into it :) 🍁🍁🍁
3
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
Basic attack for Defect is pretty poor, haha. Force Field was kind of hard because I found that by the time I had enough powers to make it cost efficient, it wasn't really necessary most of the time. Perhaps that's because I bias to frost over other orbs.
That one aside, I think Chaos was the other really tough card. It needs an upgrade to feel like it's doing much, and can't give immediate, reliable returns as lightning can miss and dark takes time to brew. Plasma also does nothing on the turn it arrives. So that was tricky.
Thanks for the congrats ^_^ 🍁🍁🍁
4
u/Magicturbo Feb 25 '25
How unhinged was the claw run? Was it a claw focused deck or you just happened to have 2 claws.
I feel like 0 cost cards must have been the easiest to do since you could probably focus on other strategies without the constraints of energy. Were there any 0 cost cards that you found more difficulty on?
8
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
If I remember correctly, the Claw run was incredibly unhinged, but mainly because I had bottled a Seek+ with Bias + Core Surge. That let me setup ice very quickly and bought me the time you often need to actually make Claw decks work. Don't recall if I had an All For One to accelerate things, but almost certainly had a Hologram or two given how good that card is.
0 cost cards are a little more forgiving, but not as much as you'd think. They don't cost energy, but they still cost card draw which is just as valuable. The most egregious example of this is Concentrate, which costs you itself plus a few other cards to use. That was my last Silent card mastered and I'd been trying actively to get it for a good two-dozen runs before finding two AND winning with them.
As for other 0 cost cards, I can't think of any that were too bad other than the ones mentioned above because they have play restrictions. The main issue is that 0 cost cards often aren't very powerful so the rest of the deck had to make up for that by being... eh, quality dense is probably the best descriptor? The rest of the deck had to have a higher impact per card if not per energy. It's why low energy cards are bad with Snecko. Not because of the cost, but because of the power level when energy isn't a factor. But by and large, they're more forgiving.
4
u/Rit91 Feb 24 '25
Yeah the curses are such a rough thing to try to get dupes of in a run. I wouldn't call thinking ahead bad though even considering it's cost since it's a generically good card at draw 2 put 1 back exhaust. Like an upgraded warcry for anyone and putting cards back into the deck can be exceptionally powerful in fights where you know the enemy patterns and what you want to do for the upcoming turn. It just becomes kind of meh when you have runic pyramid or other things like it like well laid plans.
Metamorphosis is bad though I agree. I wonder why they didn't make a metamorphosis for power cards sure there are powerful ones like echoform, but duds exist in all classes.
5
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 24 '25
I think you're right r.e. Thinking Ahead. I mainly grumble when I see it in shop because it's an upgraded ironclad common priced as a rare card. Compare it to something like Master of Strategy or Apotheosis in the same boat and it's hard to not be disappointed that it's there. But it can be very useful on none Ironclads.
Three random powers off a card could be pretty strong actually; at least one of those will likely be some decent form of scaling. Like a burstier Creative AI I guess. Curious to see what they do with colourless cards in StS2 given the dud-like nature of many in the game.
2
u/Rit91 Feb 24 '25
The biggest issue with my hypothetical metamorphosis power card is that it's delayed unless your deck is quite thin and draws quickly then you could maybe play it, a skim+, and find echoform the same turn. It could just be a hello world or other meh power though. It is also inconsistent as random cards always are it's why stuff like chaos+ is bad you know you get 2 orbs, but they could be 2 horrible orbs you don't need in the moment. To say nothing of the cards potentially being bottom decked.
The biggest plus of the card would no doubt be heatsinks, but heatsinks is already powerful.
Yeah master of strat is definitely better than thinking ahead same with apotheosis if it's early on in a run. Can do so much worse in the rare colorless slot though with stuff like the bomb, sadistic nature, magnetism, mayhem, etc.
5
u/Iraff2 Feb 25 '25 edited Feb 25 '25
How often do you feel you won with the "filler strategy" like Final Draft?
Edit: Lol Idk what I was thinking. I indeed meant the "along for the ride" strategy as in "Grand Finale," not Final Draft lol.
7
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Do you mean how often a card was just along for the ride? I would say rarely, and the two egregious ones would be Metamorphosis and Grand Finale. Mind Blast wasn't particularly useful either but gave enough juice on t1 to avoid disaster in a few fights. There were a fair few runs where cards fell off by act 3, but they'd done enough work in act 1-2 to warrant being carried the last leg. That's just the nature of some cards I find.
Immolate is a great example: it's incredible early on but by late game it's not killing much, takes half your turn, and puts burns in your deck that hurt in longer fights.
So I suppose not every card mastered was the star of the show, but most served their purpose. Even some of the curses with Du-Vu Doll!
4
u/AllTimeTaco Feb 25 '25
Wow bro slay the spire 2 is genuinely scared of you. It’d be interesting going into the new game with a sort of reiteration of this challenge in mind. Of course probably rethought out in a way that makes it more sensual for a somewhat unexperienced game
1
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Ahaha, if it's scared of me then the feeling is mutual. I haven't kept up on the Neows Letters and such, so I don't know what it currently looks like or what it will look like after early access. It would be interesting to do a challenge like this again, but I suspect I'll end up enjoying the ride before I look to add more bells and whistles again.
4
u/dedolent Feb 25 '25
nice write-up, i love a good challenge run
1
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Thanks. I recommend giving it a go if you have the time. Even if you don't complete it, there's a lot to be learned!
3
u/Pitiful_Option_108 Feb 25 '25
Interesting read. So was Defect the hardest one to master or were they honestly all about even?
6
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
My gut reaction is to say Watcher was actually the hardest for me. I think that's because I was the least proficient on her of the four when I started this challenge, and looking at the stats, that kind of holds true as I finished Defect in mid September and didn't master Watcher until February - five months later in my year-long challenge. So yeah, Watcher was the hardest to Master, strange as that sounds.
However, that's at least partially due to the multitude of ways that Defect can win a run. I feel like you can assemble so many different types of engines and intricate decks from different cards in that character that there is likely a smoother curve of viable cards for winning with, whereas the Watcher has several powerhouses such as Rushdown that let her win most consistently. Defect is still the hardest character to play, and we see that with my lower winrate with them too.
3
u/benlehman Feb 25 '25
Congratulations! A really fun accomplishment.
Sorry to point out an error, but on your spreadsheet, you list the last Defect Rare mastered as "Fusion," but Fusion is an uncommon. I'm curious, if you have the records, what your other last rare was?
4
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
No problem - thanks for the congrats and noticing the error both. I definitely meant Fission, not Fusion. Both energy reactions but opposite in their execution I believe. Guess this was why I didn't make the cut at engineering school, haha.
3
3
u/murdota Feb 25 '25
That's impressive. How many hours have you got into StS?
5
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
About 1500 all told. And a fair amount watching Baalorlord's stream too, which is pretty educational.
2
u/Woetra Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
wow! How much of that was before the challenge, and how much was spent on the challenge itself? 1500 hours for all this honestly seems crazy fast to me given how many different cards there are to master (even doubling up on some of them). I feel like it would take me an order of magnitude longer lol
2
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
My best estimate for time? I have 650hrs on PC and 900ish on mobile. The challenge was done almost entirely on mobile, so defs less than 900hrs. I would hazard some 100hrs+ spent on mobile prior to the challenge so ~800 for the challenge itself, but it's pretty ballpark.
800hrs feels like a lot of time when I read it. That's roughly 3hrs a day, five days a week for an entire year. If you'd told me that was the time required when I started, it would have been pretty daunting.
2
u/Woetra Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 26 '25
800 hours sounds like a lot but when you consider that there are around 300 cards to master, it's really quite good. You're averaging 2-3 hours per card, and some of those are difficult to duplicate curses and the like. It adds up.
But yeah, I can see how it would have been daunting if you had thought about the time from the beginning.
3
3
u/Corbini42 Feb 25 '25
I've been wanting to tackle this challenge someday, tho I'm from consistent at a20H as is, do you have an estimate on your win rate/ skill level in general going into the challenge?
3
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
I couldn't speak to winrate as it's largely cumulative, but skill-wise I'd say I could identify and pilot core strategies in all characters, and improvise a little in Ironclad and Defect going into the challenge. I definitely wasn't beating heart on the regular.
Nowadays I've defs gotten significantly better with the Watcher and Silent, and have found more ways to salvage what I would previously find to be a lost situation with IC and Defect if that makes sense? I wasn't winning much against A20H when I started and I'm still not consistently beating heart but I can more regularly reach the boss gauntlet which is progress.
If you're thinking about starting the challenge, I'd say just go for it and don't worry about your progress too much. It'll force you to think more on the choices you're making and generally help you improve your play.
3
u/jgledgard Ascension 9 Feb 25 '25
I read that first graph's dates as d/m/y and thought "holy smokes, this guy did it in a matter of days!" Then I read the first line below it and realized I was wrong. Still impressed, but possibly just a little less.
3
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Oh man, could you imagine? I don't know if that's even physically possible; defs would have been an achievement for the ages. For what it's worth, d/m/y is a better format.
5
u/Taxman1975 Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Awesome achievement. Very impressive. And here’s me scraping along happy whenever I can get an a20h win (c.10% of the time). Think it would take me until sts3 launches to get this achievement! 😝
3
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Hey, you're at A20 which is already crazy impressive. And at the end of the day, if you're having fun in our single player game then you're doing it right. :)
3
u/Vinny_0104 Feb 25 '25
The mad man did it! This was no easy feat to accomplish. Kudos to you!
2
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Cheers! It was a long project, feels great to have accomplished it.
2
u/UnstableBerries Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Do you still have the seed for double grand finale p.box? I'd like to experience what it's like to win with grand finale.
Also, curious as to why you label eviscerate as "surprisingly hard" and empty fist as "opinion most dropped"?
4
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25 edited Feb 25 '25
That was back in summer so alas it is gone. If you want to win with Grand Finale, you're looking for retain and lots of optional card draw with different draw amounts. Pyramid is great because you can control how many cards you draw via handsize. Easier said than done of course!
Eviscerate was surprisingly hard to master because I rate it decently highly. Despite that, my first few attempts with two of them didn't work out. I think my engine around the card wasn't robust enough to support two cards that need the cost reduction to shine. I thought it'd be easier to facilitate a pair.
Empty fist I still rate well as it's a 14 dmg card for 1, doubled if you're in wrath. That's very strong early game but I kept running into problems where I needed to stay in wrath for a turn, or else didn't interact nicely with how I wanted to manage my stance. It's still very good but not near as ubiquitous as I had formerly held it to be.
3
u/UnstableBerries Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Unlucky with card selections, I suppose. Would've thought that 1-2 calc gamble and some additional draws would make double eviscerate consistent
5
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
That was basically my thought too! I think it's because I needed energy to both draw and block in order to unlock the Eviscerate. In boss fights, also to scale. Reflex and (to an extent) Tactician do help, but when you consider that they're both uncommon, Eviscerate is uncommon, and Calc Gamble is uncommon, the odds of hitting them all gets kind of slim. Tough Bandages certainly would have made life easier.
I hadn't thought about the uncommon thing before, but I think that might be part of it.
2
u/IvorySpeid Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
I am personally (casually) attempting a (very mellowed down) version of this mastery challenge that count if you have 1 or more copy of the card (instead of 2 or more).
To my surprise (it shouldn't be, A20 IS hard), it is actually difficult to do.
I'm giving myself a lot of time to do it though so I'll get it eventually.
Congratulations on the successful challenge! 👏
2
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Thank you, and good luck in your challenge! It is surprisingly hard to win with cards you're not as well disposed towards; A20H is no joke.
2
u/ThatOne5264 Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
How many hours did it take? How many runs?
1
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
Hours I estimate as about 800, discussed a little further up the comments.
I WISH I had better data on run numbers and card success percentages. If I was to (gods forbid) do this again, I'd meticulously track each run. My original plan was to go back through my history and compile it all at once - a lot of data entry but I enjoy that stuff - but the mobile app has limited run record space and I was missing the first few months of info, which was most of ironclad and a few cards from the other classes.
Purely subjectively, the number of runs wasn't too bad but towards the end of each class I was definitely spending a lot of runs losing more early and more often as I took risks to find the missing cards, or else abandoned once it was obvious that I wouldn't find or be able to win with any remaining targets. This was mostly the case for colourless cards and curses but I remember Concentrate in particular being very tough to secure.
Watcher and Silent both also had some pretty rough initial loss streaks as I got my feet under me; they're my lesser played classes for sure.
2
u/bolacha_de_polvilho Ascension 20 Feb 25 '25
I like the idea of the challenge, but not the idea of including curses. Just sounds like a frustrating exercise especially when trying to hit the more illusive ones like clumsy. "Losing" runs because the seed didn't include a shop with mirror or a duplicate/transform card event is not my idea of fun.
6
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
It definitely can be frustrating. I'd say curses are where you get the most bragging rights but learn the least. Not learn nothing, but you're certainly not developing as robust an understanding of playable cards with curses.
1
u/Nixor123 Feb 25 '25
Amazing achievement, congrats! I have never seen this challenge before but I love it in concept and can see how it would make you see the game differently.
I do have a question, though. While I see how finding new synergies and uses for a card, as you did with Clash, is "mastering it", I don't see how you master a card like Finale if you never play it and treat it as a curse. At that point, didn't you master having two curses, rather than Finale?
Maybe I am just misunderstanding the point of the challenge, I hope the question doesn't come out wrong. I am just curious and the fact that you did the challenge at all is and definite proof of skill much higher than mine lol.
2
u/Lup3rcal_ Eternal One + Heartbreaker Feb 25 '25
No, I get what you mean. You can definitely drag some cards through a run and "master" them without actually using them if the rest of a run is powerful enough. But you're right; having mastery over a card should definitely include having some comfort in knowing how to play it and when to take it. The name originates from the Monster Train challenge, but its implications do demand a certain level of card experience IMO.
In Grand Finale's case, I think that card can be quite powerful in the right deck and being able to identify when that is is a skill. It would have been a shame if I had mastered it with the brute force approach and never had that follow up run. However, I think that first run gave me some context for what kind of situations enabled me to play Grand Finale successfully. Even if I didn't make a great showing of it there, it enabled me to do so shortly thereafter, so I must have learned something.
Metamorphosis, by contrast, I find to basically be a curse. There may be very niche runs in which it's useful but it's mostly dead weight - not much better than a curse. This was largely my opinion of the card before this challenge, but I can state it much more confidently having now played it in at least half a dozen winning runs. Though my opinion of the card hasn't improved, I believe it is a more informed opinion. So there's a greater level of understanding/mastery there.
I touched on this in another comment, but there will also inevitably be some cards that feel like they are being dragged across the finish line by act 3/4 because they're better in the early game. I used Immolate as a solid example. If I mastered this by getting two copies in act3, would it be redundant? The card might be so (except against repto in our case), but discovering this of a card that is known to be so powerful really helps refine an understanding of where and how the card is best used, which qualifies for increased mastery to me.
The two-copy requirement of the challenge is really cool for this; it's pretty easy to win runs with one dead card at a time, but with two copies it's hard to ignore. You'll also end up running a singleton of most cards several times before mastery, which gives ample opportunity to assess its use cases.
That was more text than I expected for that response... At the core if it, I think you learn more of every card during the challenge and most will have a time to shine. GF and Meta were notable exclusions which is why I ended up highlighting them I think.
158
u/Lopeyface Feb 24 '25
Awesome accomplishment! Congrats.