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[Ulfarr]

... wait, what? The shovel that gives you more relics over the course of a run is mostly useless? Card removal pipe is also serious mojo if you're going for a slim deck. I'd agree the dreamcatcher is mostly shite, but those other two are pretty golden.

If you can afford to not rest.

Edit: Bold are mine.

I've also seen rampage being a low-damage card a lot lately (although it kind of works in long fights like donu and deca, or if you have headbutt as well). I'll probably completely avoid them for a few runs to see how that works out for me.

I see rampage as an improved strike. It's almost always better to have rampage than a strike but I probably wouldn't base my deck around it. In the same vein, Iron wave is also a nice substitute.

My only problem with limit break is getting my strength above zero. Flex doesn't work, because it's hard to get them at the same time.

0 cost damage boost? Yes please! I like flex. Flex/limit break can work with lots of draw and/or the right bottle relics.

I'd consider adding Giryu to the list of relics that are bad because they require you to use campfire actions. I got it in the recent daily challenge with the ironclad, but never used it. Starting with 3 strength is great, though.

I wouldn't dismiss it if it means I can reliably start the strength engine. A one time use (especially early on) isn't that bad of a trade off, more uses depending on maps/luck.

I can't figure out how I feel about exhume/dark embrace/feel no pain, because I usually only see them early and I don't know that I'll get much use out of them. I'll usually take exhume, but not dark embrace.

Upgraded exhume is a nice card to have but not crucial. Feel no pain can be powerful in a corruption+dead branch deck. Dark embrace seems useless to me.


I like taking Evolve, because so many enemies throw statuses at you. It really shines against "dazed" spammers. Mostly ignoring statuses is also nice when you play with a thinner deck or a lot of power cards.

A nice but very situational relic is charon's ashes. I can't really recommend it but it's nice to see those dazes/slimes used against your enemies.

[Ulfarr]

Version 2.0 hit GOG's deck yesterday and I took it out for a test drive. Right off the bat:

• They didn't have a patch installer so I had to reinstall the whole game (did a new install to avoid losing my progress on the previous version)
• Ballance on the Ironclad and the Silent seems a bit off, I haven't gone up the ascensions yet but on the 0-lvl they feel too OP
• On my silent run I had the luck to use a potion based deck that is rather new to me. It relied on the sacred bark (x2 on potion effects), toy ornithocopter (heal 5hp when using a potion) and alchemize and was complemented with noxious fumes (x2), footwork, smooth stone, shuriken, pen nib for damage and tanking. On the last boss (donu and deca) I used the new ritual potion (+ strength every turn) and I found myself throwing 25/50 dmg shivs 
• I'm not sure how I feel about the watcher yet. I like the concepts behind her mechanics but I haven't gotten the hang of them yet to see what works and what doesn't.

[Iduno]

On my silent run I had the luck to use a potion based deck that is rather new to me. It relied on the sacred bark (x2 on potion effects), toy ornithocopter (heal 5hp when using a potion) and alchemize and was complemented with noxious fumes (x2), footwork, smooth stone, shuriken, pen nib for damage and tanking. On the last boss (donu and deca) I used the new ritual potion (+ strength every turn) and I found myself throwing 25/50 dmg shivs 

Yeah, that's a solid build for the silent, and the new potions are really good. Calling bell is also a pretty good deal now (1 curse that does nothing but can't be removed for 3 relics).

The watcher is great when you can steamroll enemies, and terrible when you're stuck in rage mode taking double damage. It's tougher to make it through a full ascension than other characters, but you're beating enemies in 2 rounds when you're beating them.


Edit: If you can get to an early card removal and upgrade wrath (at least), you can handle quite a few elites. Just make sure you choose paths that you can leave easily when a fight goes bad.
You end up with quite a few 0-cost cards, and extra energy (if you use stances), so you want to avoid the boss relic that gives +1 energy/round in exchange for only playing 6 cards/round. You also want to avoid the timekeeper boss with that build, but there's not much of a way to do that.
A pretty good build is the power that reduces the cost of any card by 1 each time you retain it, and cards that get more attack/defense when you retain them.
I also had fun with blue candle + tungsten bar. Remove curses for 1 damage, and also reduce all damage by 1. I guess I'll just get cursed, then.

[Frumple]

For what it's worth, there's some mod or another that actually gives you a chance to influence which act 3 boss you get. Don't remember which one, or if vanilla has something similar, but there's a thing where you can drop cash to, uh. It's either guarantee a specific boss or guarantee you won't fight it, don't quite remember. Nice, in any case.

[Aoi]

On metered internet right now so I can't grab it... but (ignoring the menu screens and whatnot) can you smoothly play with a pure keyboard interface now? I remember it working well 90% of the time, but you'd occasionally have weird targeting problems, like you couldn't switch off of the first card, or target anything other than whatever was targeted by default.

[Mephansteras]

Been enjoying the Watcher, but man is she easy to screw up with. Use Wrath at the wrong time and it is very easy to end up losing a fight that shouldn't be all that hard. Very satisfying to steamroll stuff with her, though.

[MrRoboto75]

you pizza'd when you shoulda french fried.  Gonna have a bad time.

[Iduno]

Been enjoying the Watcher, but man is she easy to screw up with. Use Wrath at the wrong time and it is very easy to end up losing a fight that shouldn't be all that hard. Very satisfying to steamroll stuff with her, though.

Yeah, I like to pick up an empty body and/or a tranquility as early as I can, because it smooths things out. Empty fist ends your fighting when you still want to fight, so it's not as good.

The transient fight is...uh...it's a thing. 3-4 no damage rounds, then you get crushed.

[AlStar]

What are everyone's thoughts on the 'mantra' line of skills? The Watcher's enlightened form is crazy (3x damage, no penalty when taking damage) but most of the cards that give mantra don't actually do anything that affects the board.

I find Pray to be decent - enough mantra that you might actually trigger it during a hallway fight, while the insights it generates guarantee that you'll have plenty of attacks to play when you trigger the form. Worship, on the other hand, just doesn't seem worthwhile - sure, you only need two for the trigger, but it costs an unupgradeable two energy. Prostrate is free and gives (a little) block, but needing 4 or 5 pretty much assures that you'll never get the trigger in hallway fights.

Haven't played around with Blasphemy yet - definitely a card you want to triple-check your damage numbers before you play, and avoid anything that auto-plays your cards.

[Il Palazzo]

I've found that it works for me with high-turnouver decks and just a few prostrate cards. Having the relevant relic and/or stance helps, of course.
But I kinda never built specifically towards it, more towards frequent stance changes, where having it trigger once in a while is a nice boon and synergises well with that build.

[Ulfarr]

I just did a Mantra/Calm deck and at no ascension it was plainly put broken. My main mantra generators were initially a "pray" and a "worship", but I gradually phased worship out when I got a "prostrate" and that power that gives 2 mantra/ turn. For tankiness I relied on two copies of the power that gives block when in calm plus the starter block+calm card. For damage dealing I used two copies of the Battle hymn power (each giving a retaining damage dealing card/turn).

The whole concept was quite simple. Put down those battle hymns, gather mantra, ues scry to manipulate the draws, unload any damage card when in divinity and try to end your turn in calm. To top it off by act 2 I had also become a vampire so keeping my hp high was quite trivial.

[Sindain]

I think mantra is OK. It's mostly just a way for Watcher to scale up her damage for the late game. Most mantra cards are pretty mediocre for first act and a half or so since they're slow and Watcher has plenty of damage from wrath stance.

Pray I think tends to be the weakest of the mantra cards. It doesn't generate enough mantra to be do much by itself and the insights get really awkward sometimes.

Worship is probably the best by itself. It generates a lot of mantra so it can let you enter divinity regularly without any support. The retain upgrade is also very nice, since it lets you control when you enter divinity and also means you don't have to keep drawing it if you don't want to play it.

Prostrate is nice since it actually does something in addition to generating mantra. A 0 energy block card can be pretty nice in a high draw deck or if you can get some dex.

The power is OK but tends to be pretty slow. probably best if your using it to support some of the other mantra cards.

Blasphemy is very strong but pretty much the opposite of the others in terms of application. Rather than scaling its used to get extra burst to finish fights off. It can do a helluva alot of damage so its great  in the mid-game, but it drops off late game. Watcher already has really good burst so late game she tends to need consistent damage (to kill burst resistant enemies like the heart) or block, and blasphemy helps with neither.

[Ulfarr]

I've been playing a bit more with the watcher lately (reached ascension 7) and the more I play the duller I find the mantra line compared to the high risk/ high reward style of a wrath based deck. So far the only fun mantra decks that I've managed to build were the one I posted before and another that was based on the "Brilliance" attack ( extra dmg for each mantra genn'ed). Likewise the Α-Β-Ω line can be powerfull but it can be a pain in the ass to set up without screwing yourself in the long run.

What are your thoughts on those "synergy" ( does x if last card was Y) cards? I've made limited use of those, mostly the "crush joint" (apply vulnerable), but I'm not sure if it's worth it to try to set them up.

Overall, I'm still undecided about the watcher, her playstyle offers a lot of options but ultimately a lot of them are just boring

[Sindain]

What are your thoughts on those "synergy" ( does x if last card was Y) cards? I've made limited use of those, mostly the "crush joint" (apply vulnerable), but I'm not sure if it's worth it to try to set them up.

I think those kind of cards are OK. The conditions are pretty simple so I rarely find I have difficulty activating them.

Crush joints is quite nice since it's pretty much the only source of vulnerable for Watcher, and vulnerable is really valuable since shes does so much damage through attacks. Though it (and sash whip) really need an upgrade to be good.

Sash whip is pretty similar to crush joints, but it suffers since Wave of the Hand is is often a much better source of weak.

Sanctity is solid card. Basically just a slightly better, conditional backflip.

[Iduno]

What are everyone's thoughts on the 'mantra' line of skills? The Watcher's enlightened form is crazy (3x damage, no penalty when taking damage) but most of the cards that give mantra don't actually do anything that affects the board.

I find Pray to be decent - enough mantra that you might actually trigger it during a hallway fight, while the insights it generates guarantee that you'll have plenty of attacks to play when you trigger the form. Worship, on the other hand, just doesn't seem worthwhile - sure, you only need two for the trigger, but it costs an unupgradeable two energy. Prostrate is free and gives (a little) block, but needing 4 or 5 pretty much assures that you'll never get the trigger in hallway fights.

Haven't played around with Blasphemy yet - definitely a card you want to triple-check your damage numbers before you play, and avoid anything that auto-plays your cards.

A devotion (the 1 energy power that gives 2/turn, 3/turn upgraded) and one or more prostrates (0 cost, 4 block and 2 mantra, 3 upgraded) makes it worth using. Adding in the relic is nice as well. Especially with brilliance. All of my successful decks have been devotion decks or establishment decks with a lot of luck.

I only ever had one of the Worship cards, because of a Neow transform. I even used it once because the enemy wasn't attacking, and I only had that and blocks. It's not a good card unless you're planning on having bad draws or a lot of extra energy (which, being the watcher, isn't entirely unreasonable).

What are your thoughts on those "synergy" ( does x if last card was Y) cards? I've made limited use of those, mostly the "crush joint" (apply vulnerable), but I'm not sure if it's worth it to try to set them up.

Crush joints is the easiest to set up, because you start with a miracle. Wrath, miracle, crush joints, then 2 attacks is a nice opener. Also, agree with Sindain that any debuff needs to be upgraded to a second round to be good.


As I ascend, the issue I've had with Watcher is 2nd or 3rd act enemies that scale (and, depending on card draws, Nob). If you don't have a source of calm or an Empty Body coming next draw, popping Wrath to take them down quickly is a huge gamble. Not doing that means you don't take them out before they outstrip your ability to attack/defend. Watcher really doesn't have much that scales.

Also, I'd like a Neow option to add one basic character-specific card to your deck (or trade out a strike/block for one). Empty Body would be a great additional starter for Watcher, maybe ball lighting or cold snap for Defect, backflip for silent, and probably iron wave for ironclad (I'd say bodyslam, but that's not as build-agnostic as I'd like). Not something that would define your build, but something that's useful for most builds that interface at all with the thing your character does (watcher has stances, defect has orbs, etc.).