@DJMcMayhem you up to play again?

@NathanMerrill I'd like to, but I don't know when I'll be free tonight

ok. I'm available for the same hours as yesterday

Ok, I think I'll be free around 9, but I'll let you know

What a modifier :)

@NathanMerrill Sorry it didn't work out tonight. Wanna try again tomorrow?

I played one run of StS with a friend last night to show him the game. Silent Shiv deck with... Envenom+, 2 Adrenaline, 2 Adrenaline+, Burst+; Black Star, Shuriken, the relic that gives an extra poison whenever you apply poison, the relic that transfers poison when an enemy dies.

It was the first time I've seen Act 4 and we got the heart down to 7 HP. Everything before that was a walk in the park.

@DJMcMayhem I'll try. Saturdays are harder for me

@MartinEnder yeah, this seems like a really good deck, but I don't see any incredibly strong cards that give you defense

That's what is so tough about the heart. You need incredible defense and incredible attack

@DJMcMayhem today is looking pretty free. Ping me whenever

@NathanMerrill Ok, I'll probably be free in the evening

@NathanMerrill We had the relic that gives you 3 block on discard, and then Prepare+ and Calculated Gamble (I think that's what they are called)? Also Survivor and two Cloak and Dagger.

Yeah, that's decent defense, but it's not incredible defense.

I always think that 3 block on discard is going to be incredible, but it's not reliable enough.

it doesn't matter if you are blocking for 50 if they are only attacking for 18

yeah the defense definitely wasn't amazing. it was just sufficient for everything before the heart, because we basically killed everything before it could really harm us.

the other issue is with a deck that relies this heavily on Adrenaline, you're basically burned out after a couple of turns. if by then you haven't racked up amazing Strength and Poison from Envenom, it's hard to keep going strongly.

Right. The heart is so good because A: there's no way to cheese it, and B: It hurts

but I like that the heart is a tough challenge for Shivs without being a complete NOPE like the time eater.

I feel like the Time Eater is a cool boss but it's too obviously meant to kill shiv decks.

I've actually won a shiv deck against time eater.

I had shivs doing 13 damage, and the event that gives you the invulnerable cards

oh yeah I'm sure it's possible, especially if you've got some backup cards, but it's just a bit too on-the-nose for my taste

I forget their name

not sure what event that is

or what those cards are

I was trying to set up a terraria server to play with my friend, but I failed. I think I also spammed everyone with a terraria invite, because apparently "invite friends" doesn't ask you which friends

it just messages everyone. fantastic

That's odd. That's not how mine worked

@MartinEnder Council of Ghosts: slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/Council_of_Ghosts

I mean, we did have issues at first

I'm trying it with the tmodloader batch file, and I can't get it to work. my friend is on my LAN at the moment, so my address for the server is localhost, and presumably my friend should be using my LAN IP, but can't see the server

For some reason, DJ couldn't connect to my server.

oh, are you not doing it through steam?

but he setup a server, and I was able to connect to his.

I tried a few different ways, but nothing has worked so far

Ok, so the way we did it: One person does Multiplayer -> Host & Play.

The other player then chooses Multiplayer -> Steam and they choose the other

That's what we're trying, but "multiplayer -> steam" does nothing at all for either of us

it doesn't bring up the overlay?

oh, I have my overlay disabled. let me change that

Ah, that's probably why.

@NathanMerrill ah, I don't think I've ever accepted that

It's one of the few events I rarely refuse

It's incredible

Need more defense? Council of ghosts. Need more time to setup your deck? Council of ghosts. Really the only time I say no is when my Max HP is already so low, I'd be killed with a single bad draw against regular enemies

hm

maybe I'll try it out next time

Have any of you played KeyForge?

Doesn't look familiar.

It's Richard Garfield's latest (physical) card game.

In which there is no actual deck building, instead each deck is procedurally generated and unique.

@MartinEnder I have!

I played one round that was a lot of fun, and then another round that was super frustrating because my deck was really bad against my opponent

And that's it

Haha fair enough. Yeah there are a few decks that are a little frustrating because of anti-synergies or even some cards you simply can't use due to lack of other cards, but most of the decks I've played so far were quite fun.

Overall I really like the concept though of putting the focus on making the best of suboptimal decks.

I might try to find a tournament near me some time soon.

Oh shiiiit, next free game on Epic is Celeste. Highly recommended for anyone with a passing interest in platformers.

(Also Fez right now, which is great too.)

Oh sweet! I've played Celeste once before, but I'm really excited to try again

fez is one of my favorite games

if you decide to try it out, i recommend avoiding spoilers even more than you would with a normal puzzle game; just keep notes

Agreed... until you get to the very last set of post-game puzzles.

right. I looked online for the last 3 or 4 things

and I didn't really regret that; but I think I would have regretted looking up anything earlier

yeah that seems about right

Now that I think about it, Fez is really unusual in that there's a good mix of difficult puzzles along the way, mixed in with the slow difficulty ramp. It's nice that in a lot of cases, you can deduce things well before you're "meant to". I can't think of any other puzzle games with that feature off the top of my head

Maybe the stars in Talos Principle serve a similar purpose, but a lot of the time I just felt like I was scouring every inch of the level trying to figure out where they were

@EricTressler not a puzzle game, but Gloomhaven's expansion has a mysterious script you're supposed to decipher gradually after obtaining several cypher/plaintext pairs throughout the campaign, but Sp3000 and I managed to crack it from a single (two-character) pair. took three hours though. that was really fun and rewarding.

(unfortunately, it didn't really help us, because the message we needed to translate contains a few important numbers, and digits were the only thing that was impossible to figure out without an explicit key)

I got partway through Fez, but got really stuck at one point

I'm not sure if I missed a mechanic, or I got my character in a weird position

And I never returned

@MartinEnder this is a rather interesting mechanic. I've been investigating the game, and I have two problems I definitely see: (1) cards are far too complicated IMO, and (2) I struggle to see how you balance this game.

(1) by what bar? Seems on par with MtG, Artifact, Dominion and even StS. (2) You don't. At least not perfectly. There are definitely some very OP decks, but overall it seems to balance out quite well. There are also several cards that are clearly catch-up mechanics. Also, if decks win too many times in a row they get a handicap in organised play.

There's also a fun tournament format where you're supposed to bring a really weak deck and then everyone has to play with their opponent's deck. :D

Oh, now that sounds fun haha

@MartinEnder StS has far less text than these on its cards IMO

Same with Dominion

I can't speak to MtG or Artifact, but generally speaking, I like mechanics that can be broken down into parts

not sure which cards you're looking at, but Dominion has some fairly complicated card texts, and the majority of KeyForge cards also just have a line or two of keywords

I mean, I can't actually speak authoritatively, as I haven't seen the decks, but the brief cards I've seen all have text on them

and StS hides a lot more mechanics behind keywords that are often only used once or twice

I'm ok with occasional big text cards.

@MartinEnder I think this is the correct route. Decompose as much as possible.

But it sounds like my initial impression of cards was wrong, and that they do have keywords

sure, but if you're using the keyword only once or twice (as is the case with many enemy mechanics) it's not really any different from a big text card

yeah they do

my source were the cards shown here: keyforgegame.com

only one of those has a lot of text and that's because (at least in the base set) the cards normally explain the keywords if there's still room on the card.

Oh, more than just the three :) I was looking at the decks as well.

I've never seen a card game that explains mechanics if there is room. Interesting

MtG does this too when it introduces new keywords (at least it used to back when I played)

reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/cunex8/…

I'm on the market for a new monitor. Got recommendations? (either brands or features to look for)

Context: I have $1k in discretionary technology funding.