24:50 "All these cards are, for the most part pretty good, like it isn't that bad to put most of them in your deck" 8th masterful stab confirmed as still pretty good.

This is probably the most important video on Stay the Spire out there. This is also the region where I've been struggling the most and exactly what I needed to hear to get better at this game.

Getting away from the mindset of trying to build specific decks helped me immensely in this game. I know I'm over a year late watching and commenting , but thanks for making this. It's definitely much more effective and enjoyable to go for the dynamic approach.

I want to thank you for your videos. Just now I was playing an A4 run with Defect who was lucky to get the Unceasing Top in the early game. For the most of my game I was basically living the dream with claw, recycle to dispose of non-zero cost cards, and a small bunch of powers. I couldn't resist the temptation of picking more and more 0-cost cards and cards like double energy to increase consistency and by the start of act 3 I was OTK-ing all the encounters. In fact, even in act 2 I only needed 2 turns to destroy the Champ which was super satisfying. However, then I saw His Majesty, Time Eater. And it struck me that I can't possibly defeat him with this deck. And, if it were before I listened to your points, I'd rather go and try killing him with my dream deck, which would very likely result in my own death. Now I thought about it and realised that it's better to win with something imperfect than lose with something perfect. And then I picked Thunderstrike my next card, something so contrary to the idea of a 0-cost deck that I'd never ever have the bravery to do it before. For those readers who aren't JoINrbs, Thunderstrike is a 3 cost card that does damage for each lightning orb channeled this game. And then it carried me to victory. It dealt like 150 damage when I cast it for the third time. So, thank you so much for making me realise the flaw of the approach I was used to. And yeah, it felt good to actually defeat a Time Eater with a deck built around Unceasing Top.

this explains heuristics in a way no other video I found ever did and subsequently explains objective play flawlessly.

Yeah my win rate skyrocketed once I abandoned the idea of deck building and instead focused on problem solving. Meaning a thin deck should only be obtained if it solves your immediate serious problems.

After playing a lot of custom character mods it has been Hard returning to vanilla StS due to this. So many custom characters are so archetype dependent so if you do NOT think about archetypes and synergy you will have a Hard time winning. This is the video I needed to watch to get back in track :)

this one feels like a summary for someone who has watched most of your vids. anyway I want you to know that your vids have helped me a lot in beating A15 regularly. I'm currently on a fake 6 streak (one loss in between) alternating between characters. so far the most important lessons to me have been: pick lots of cards get as much relics as possible when making a desicion always think about the next few big fights and how you can beat them

I'm glad I saw this video when I was new to the game. I have now beaten asc 20 two times with defect :)

I'm so glad you made this video. It covers a lot of my own experience from the time I started playing until now (granted it hasn't been that much time, I'm not as hardcore as I think a lot of players are). I started off trying to "style" my decks. I read random posts on Reddit about peoples' runs and how they won. I started thinking, "Ok I wanna try doing a Darkness Defect deck" ... Pretty narrow-minded right? Not a lot of Darkness to deal with, just very powerful. Got wasted. Didn't get the cards I would have needed for it to work. Stuff like that happened for a while until I finally just gave up and started picking cards that fit the need at the time, which I believe is what's at this video's core. You have to have an adaptive mindset because it's impossible to plan your deck from the beginning of the game. If you're going into Act 2 and don't have any AOE your might want to consider taking the next Cleave or Dagger Spray you come across to make life a little easier for yourself.

Watching grandmasters play chess is interesting indeed, but watching learning algorithms play chess is crazy. They will make moves that look like bad moves even to experienced masters of the game, then 15 moves down the line you see why the computer made the bad move earlier, just to set a certain thing into motion. It kinda takes that whole "grandmasters tend to break heuristics" thing to the extreme, where really skilled chess algorithms make moves that directly look bad, but thats just because tiny changes can be so important that bad moves can be good moves when in the right position. Just like slay the spire These videos are really great. Lots of interesting and thought provoking things said in general, and then you effectively bring it back to lessons that apply to slay the spire, quality teaching

"400 to 600 feet trees" confirmed for secretly being an elf from an alternate reality.

Wow! You explained Anchoring much more effectively than my college professor did. Thank you!

Very interesting,I'm on A17 and can't stop drafting the "best cards", trying to think about the game differently

This is an old video and I’m sure you won’t see this comment. I just want to say thanks for going through a logical approach to the game. You made it worth playing!

Why am I not surprised in the slightest JolNrbs and FilthyRobot hang out?

Great video, I probably would've spent a little more time talking about packages (mitigation/damage/scaling/etc), but you did a good job of explaining the problem with archetypes. I have a couple of suggestions of videos that could be interesting. First, well-laid plans. There are obvious uses for this card, but I think there is a lot of opportunity to talk about less-obvious uses of well-laid plans. Similar to what you said about blur, it serves to smooth your draws so that you can play cards at the most opportune times, and even with just a starter deck it can be incredibly useful on a fight like triple sentries or lagavulin just so you can use the cards when you need them. Maybe save that one for a bit later though since I feel it'd be a similar application to blur, or maybe you have your own unique things to add on well-laid plans. The other, more ambitious video idea that I would really like to see would be to talk about how to evaluate your deck vs certain elite fights. Say you have a path with 2 elites and no camp fires vs a path with 1 camp fire and you are on 35 HP, it can be very useful to know if you can take those elite fights, and this is probably the part of the game I struggle with the most at this point, I find my runs taking too dangerous paths or paths with not enough rewards. Personally, and I think most would agree, evaluating act 1 elites is a lot easier because most of the time you have a similar deck each time with maybe ~5-7 additional cards. So specifically evaluating act 2 and 3 elites would be very valuable knowledge for me. Act 2 is particularly interesting because sometimes the elite fights can be easier, or at least not as dangerous as the hallway fights, so even though you may evaluate you taking 20 damage on a fight, you might've just taken 15 in a hallway fight. There is a much bigger difference in hallway fights vs elite fights in act 3 in my experience, which makes evaluating them much different too, plus at this point your deck has the most variance between runs. Also, I don't see your VODs for the last few days on twitch, is there a reason for that? I was actually really curious about mercury hourglass, another somewhat interesting topic for a video. It's a very simple relic on the surface, but it's often underestimated and just comparing it to the damage output of other relics could help put it in perspective for a lot of people. I was actually going to go through one of your runs where you had mercury hourglass and count the damage it did, because it was probably a lot, but the video isn't on twitch. Keep up the great work, love the content, especially when you delve into more complex subjects like you did on this video. Relating non-STS-specific ideas to STS helps conceptualize a lot of the problems and their solutions a lot better.

Search for Slay the Spire Found a profound life lesson Great content, JolNrbs. ~a shitty haiku.

Thanks for your videos. You have a talent for conveying thoughts on a high level of abstraction in a very accessible way. Listening to you describe your decision making framework helps me structure my thoughts and streamline decision making processes even outside of StS.

I learned after failing several times trying to force a specific vision of my deck doesnt work. however I really enjoy when the chance comes up to have a "refined" deck without sacrificing a lot. Also, I like to have a "package" of a set of cards with strong synergies and still having other things in the deck to deal with problems. I still enjoy my all in decks, even if they arent as good as winning

Fascinating! I often find myself thinking about the game in terms of archetypes, but I, like you, actually find the problemsolving aspect of the game the most fun. The reason for achetypes for a player like me is that I haven't played the game nearly as much as you, and with that I lack knowlegde of the problems I'm facing, and archetypes are the only way to guarantee a win. Could you perhaps make video about all the different bosses and elites and where you face them? Where have you heard about the "theory of uncertainty"? Really interesting I must say, so don't be afraid to dwell further into psychology :) Thanks for another great video!

Excellent analysis. My applause, good sir.

Thx so much about the idea in this vid, Im so obsessed about creative AI deck and end up really got killed by Awaken one.

Perhaps part of the problem is that a deck-builder, as an archetype, is characterized by having all your options available to you and deciding what the best strategy is. MtG, Dominion, Netrunner, all these games allow you to put whatever cards into your deck you think will give you the best chance to win. You know from the game's outset all the options available to you. StS is unfortunate in that sense. It's like drafting your deck from Pokemon booster packs and you don't know what the next booster will contain.

This is the good stuff. Great video, deep and logical analysis, the truth!

I was actually listening to this while I was playing, and I got a Silent victory (on ascension 0) with 45 cards.

Oh dang, I love these videos. Keep em up.

Hi Jorbs, great video, thank you for sharing your thoughts around learning this game, found it really insightful. I`ve just picked this game up, only had maybe 10 runs, 2 I`ve won using the more conventional methods of looking up a few guides for new players/trying to build conventionally good decks, the 2 wins I`ve got were with Ironclad utilising a block build. My question would be, what would you suggest would be the best to improve overall understanding of the game for a new players without resorting to trying to mimic builds and failing if they don`t come together? Thank you in advance, I`m very late to the party but will be sure to go through a lot more of your previous videos.

I wonder how his opinion might have changed with ASC20 and the final boss that really feel like they limit what decks can win.

nice video, reminds me of autochess

so basically you're saying that we shouldn't just aim for one archetype and should instead keep our options open while at the same time look for cards that help at the current moment even if it doesn't have any synergies later like that catalyst without any poison play.... cool loved the video, keep up the good work

Great video so far! I think you could benefit from shortening the video to around 12-15 minutes as you tended to repeat yourself quite a bit. The knowledge is too valuable to be hidden in little nuggets spread thinely across the entire video! Great vid though, definitely subbing for more amazing tips :-)

Today's topic remind me of that video where instead of an energy relic, you got Runic Pyramid instead and were like : "Yeah, whatever, it's not great but I'll try to make do with this and make it through the end." XD

Good video. Am a little disappointed this didn't turn out to be a slap down of Jordan Peterson.

What’s the best way to learn chess, anyway? Simply playing with people better than you? Book/internet reading? Some combination?

Very interesting

Why not buy a ruler and measure the height of the tree?

can you upload more game play pls?

Not building archetyoes is better, but not as fun

Are you a teacher? Sounds like you should be lecturing.

I don’t think a discussion about heuristics really fits in this video. I think if anything make its own video, even if it’s 3 minutes long.

Quick recap of the video: if you are deckbuilding enthusiast you are missing a lot of fun and should actually start playing to win, this will be more enjoyable for you. I know you didn't want to sound offensive, but you actually did. You are not wrong about the game, but jesus dude, i'm actually angry at your choice of words.