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All aboard the Vore Express! Talking about Monster Train!
- Thread starter JBear
- Start date
The Dante challenge is silly. At my first upgrade shop, I gave him +ATK and a Largestone, and then just kept duplicating him at every opportunity and descending them all to the same floor. Add in two of the cards that cast Quick and you're laughing. I finally got one of the achievements for killing a boss before it's active, which I didn't expect to get on Covenant 25. Special shout out to my best bro Seraph for stuffing my deck with Blight cards and causing all of my Dantes to Multistrike 9 times.
I'm really coming around on Unnamed Tome. I used to think that the card wasn't very good, but Silence just completely shuts down some bosses, and the Permafrost means that most decks will be able to sit on the card until the boss is active. I posted up-thread about how it partially neuters the new version of Seraph, shutting down his Rally and Incant triggers, but I found out this run that Living Armor's ATK gain on Revenge is also a triggered ability. It makes that boss a complete joke. He goes from one of the most dangerous bosses in the game to being essentially a Train Steward with 1300 HP.
ETA: Also, I just took down my 10th Expert Challenge, bringing me to the halfway mark. Corrosive Cash (-2 HP to all units every turn, lose money on taking damage, everything gets multistrike) went down to the Hellhorned Exile's Rally path, stacking her ATK into the sky with multistrike and hiding behind beef walls until I could get enough Stealth stacked on her to live through the boss. Also, the Melting Remnant tycoon that gains money on unit death turned out to be a great unit for this challenge; I had two of them with extra health and largestones.
ETA: Also, I just took down my 10th Expert Challenge, bringing me to the halfway mark. Corrosive Cash (-2 HP to all units every turn, lose money on taking damage, everything gets multistrike) went down to the Hellhorned Exile's Rally path, stacking her ATK into the sky with multistrike and hiding behind beef walls until I could get enough Stealth stacked on her to live through the boss. Also, the Melting Remnant tycoon that gains money on unit death turned out to be a great unit for this challenge; I had two of them with extra health and largestones.
I first tried it with the Awoken Exile, since their faction card (+2 ATK +1 card draw) seemed best positioned to take advantage of multistrke, and that carried me to Seraph pretty readily, but had trouble doing enough damage fast enough to close the deal, so I shifted gears and instead asked "Which Champions do I most wish had Multistrike?", the answer to which was "Penumbra and both Hellhorned Champions". Umbra is a tough sell since morsels die immediately under these rules (unless you luck into either the +health or morsel damage shield artifacts), and I decided to go with the Queen over the Prince since the Imps dying the turn that they come out is actually great for her, since it lets her keep jamming more in there.
Still plugging away at the Expert Challenges, although we took a bit of a break from the game. Got Round and Round (all spells target randomly, all unit positions shuffled) pretty quickly tonight after a few false starts, which was a lot faster than I thought it would take me.
My strat:
My strat:
With unit shuffling, the usual "hide behind the big guy" doesn't work anymore, so I decided to aim for having one giant jerk on each floor and building a morsel-heavy deck to feed them. I think this was my first time winning with a deck that had only 4 creatures in it (including the Champion). Monstrous Penumbra proved to be great for this, and my deck had enough morsel generation (6 copies of the consume card that makes 3 morsels, thanks to the super hellvent event, and two copies each of the card that make 3 copies of a morsel and the x-card that triggers feeding 2x times) that I was able to stack 20 lifelink on him by the time that Seraph became active. For secondary faction, I went with Stygian, since a lot of their cards already randomly target anyway, and the ones that don't are arguably better with random targets. Frozen Lance is a pretty good card when it has a chance to snipe something in the back!
I also got my first chance to play that artifact that does 150 damage to the whole train after playing your 20th morsel. I never planned for the activations, because I am bad at remembering things, but it turns out that a sudden 150 damage to the whole train is pretty good even when you don't remember that it's coming!
I also got my first chance to play that artifact that does 150 damage to the whole train after playing your 20th morsel. I never planned for the activations, because I am bad at remembering things, but it turns out that a sudden 150 damage to the whole train is pretty good even when you don't remember that it's coming!
I vaporized a really good run by using Tiresome Climb on Fel! I forgot you *could* move bosses, just not descend them. At least it was funny.
For a while it felt like covenant 12 was kind of a huge wall, but I got a win for it earlier. I probably could've gotten 13 too if I hadn't...done that.
For a while it felt like covenant 12 was kind of a huge wall, but I got a win for it earlier. I probably could've gotten 13 too if I hadn't...done that.
I've never experienced such a disparity between how hard I expected it to be and how hard it actually was as I did when playing Stealthiest Bosses (all minor bosses have Stealth 5, double all status stacks).
Like many of the expert challenges, I suspect there are many ways to get this one to work, and you feel clever no matter which method you pick. Love it.
First of all, that means all statuses, including armor and Multistrike. That's bad news for the Seraph fight if you're unprepared.
So my first thought was spikes and Regen stacking. I went Solgard (who gets double stacks on his incants) with Awoken secondary. Grab some sharks to tank -- both types are good -- along with the spike hollow and spike channeler. I didn't even notice the stealth for the most part, because this deck shreds even without attacking. I wanted frostbite Solgard but ended up with shard damage Solgard, which worked out just fine because double shards.
Long story short, Seraph didn't make it off the ground floor.
So my first thought was spikes and Regen stacking. I went Solgard (who gets double stacks on his incants) with Awoken secondary. Grab some sharks to tank -- both types are good -- along with the spike hollow and spike channeler. I didn't even notice the stealth for the most part, because this deck shreds even without attacking. I wanted frostbite Solgard but ended up with shard damage Solgard, which worked out just fine because double shards.
Long story short, Seraph didn't make it off the ground floor.
Like many of the expert challenges, I suspect there are many ways to get this one to work, and you feel clever no matter which method you pick. Love it.
So Hubris has Piercing?
IIRC, I just went with shield dogs, since they're a good counter to stealth and benefit from the double stacks. Blew past it first try.
Well! Once again, I have only one challenge left. Homework wasn't that bad, although I insisted on doing it with Primordium + exile Awoken, which is not nearly as good as I'd hoped. My winning run got carried by Dante, who is exactly as good with Primordium as you might hope.
The final challenge is Blighted Existence, which fills your deck with junk and doesn't let you discard any of it. I have to think that Dante is extremely helpful here as well.
The final challenge is Blighted Existence, which fills your deck with junk and doesn't let you discard any of it. I have to think that Dante is extremely helpful here as well.
Blighted Existence is done! That's my 20/20. With the right factions, this isn't the hardest of the challenges, but that's not the same as calling it easy; it's still among the hardest.
Where do I go from here? Maybe I'll dig into the workshop.
Where do I go from here? Maybe I'll dig into the workshop.
Just did Extreme Pain Train, and literally got it first try! I gave it a lot of thought before starting, how I could turn any of it into an advantage, and besides the obvious (extra value for anything that cares about stuffing your deck with Blight cards), I realized that I wanted to leverage the spikes. I quickly narrowed that down to either the Hornbreaker Prince or the Stygian Exile, and I'd been looking for an opportunity to go down his Revenge frostbite tree, since it seems entirely useless under normal circumstances. (Also, his faction card seemed good for pitching Deadweights.) I made sure to pick Awoken Exile as my secondary cards, since the Stygian Exile needs to have some attack so that he'll swing and take the spike damage and get his revenge triggers from the back row. Anyway, as it turns out, it works quite well! Honestly, that was about it. I didn't get any great artifacts to speak of (best was the 2-cost unit reduction that I didn't really leverage, and I only had 3 non-progress artifacts), or any great events-- just solid units (revenge frost shark works well here, and I had the shield shark with two more armor incant buffs slotted in) and solid spells that played well to the challenge (Ex: Sting). I was really hoping to get the frostbite or double incant artifacts, but no such luck. Even without, though, Seraph died on the first floor of the train with a 1000 stack of frostbite. Felt pretty good!
Only two expert challenges left now: Blighted Existence and Homework.
Only two expert challenges left now: Blighted Existence and Homework.
My SO unlocked the Hell Rush card back for me (because fuck Hell Rush), and I am legit upset that it is by far the prettiest card back. Makes the Expert Challenge card back look like shit. Anyway:
Now all that's left is the Homework victory lap, which I'll hopefully get around to before the DLC is finished. I'd also like to get 100% Steam achievements, but I haven't even looked at them yet.
Got it! Only took 3 tries, and all 3 tries made it to Seraph. I feel like one of the faction choices is pretty much locked in: the Stygian Guard just has so many cards that discard that it makes it the obvious choice for cleaning out the undiscardable blight cards. My secondary consideration was energy, since I wanted to be able to purge the 3-cost cards ASAP, so I decided I wanted my primary and secondary faction cards to both be free. So that only left me to choose if I'd rather have Rector Flicker or Solgard in the lead. I typically prefer Solgard, but with so many cards glutting up my hand I worried about getting enough incant triggers, and so settled on Rector Flicker as my Champion. On the winning run, my very first artifact was Flicker's Liquor, which is *great* for this challenge, as it can reduce the Calcified Embers to 0. Star cards include Frenzied Swarm, Deep Offering, and my MVP, Sacrificial Resurrection, which takes a hand full of Deadweights and turns them into straight gas.I'm looking forward to hearing your Blighted Existence strategy.
Now all that's left is the Homework victory lap, which I'll hopefully get around to before the DLC is finished. I'd also like to get 100% Steam achievements, but I haven't even looked at them yet.
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Well that was predictably easy. Honestly, I barely even noticed that the combat previews were missing? I thought I'd miss it more than I did, but the combat previews often don't tell the whole story anyway, so I guess I've gotten used to doing most of the math myself.
I don't know if I wanted to focus next on unlocking gold cards (I have 11 total left, 4 of which are neutral, 3 of which are all from that one event that gives awesome cards that seem to jinx me), unlocking champion anvil entries in my log book (just a few left for some of the Exile paths, most of which are Little Fade), or achievement hunting. And for any/all of those, I don't know if I want to lower the covenant level or stubbornly remain at 25.
First paid Monster Train DLC (new faction, new cards, new artifacts, new events, etc) has a date!
As for me, I've kind of fallen off it, but I'm sure the DLC will be a shot in the arm. I've almost 100%ed it, but I'm missing 3 gold card frames (all 3 of the cards from the event that gives choice of the shield, sword, and kill spell) and 6 Steam achievements: Create a custom challenge (can't be arsed until it's my last one), defeat Talus/Archus before they become active, win with < 10 & 0 cards, and one hidden achievement. I'd like to 100%, since I feel like it'd be an appropriate tribute to how much time I've spent with it, but I doubt I will. There's just not the same carrot as the expert challenges (hopefully this DLC will add more of those?) to keep me coming back.
As for me, I've kind of fallen off it, but I'm sure the DLC will be a shot in the arm. I've almost 100%ed it, but I'm missing 3 gold card frames (all 3 of the cards from the event that gives choice of the shield, sword, and kill spell) and 6 Steam achievements: Create a custom challenge (can't be arsed until it's my last one), defeat Talus/Archus before they become active, win with < 10 & 0 cards, and one hidden achievement. I'd like to 100%, since I feel like it'd be an appropriate tribute to how much time I've spent with it, but I doubt I will. There's just not the same carrot as the expert challenges (hopefully this DLC will add more of those?) to keep me coming back.
I did not realize that I could earn achievements while using mutators. This changes everything!
Well, that accelerated quickly. I guess that was the breakthrough/push I needed! Now I need only a single achievement: the hidden one. I looked it up, and it's something I had the opportunity to do once and didn't, and now I'm kicking myself for it because I may never see it again, and it's the last thing I need, and I don't want to grind out a bunch of games hoping for it. It's the one where you unlock both chests at once with Petty Theft, requiring you to get two specific events in order.
As for the ones I unlocked today, the Talus/Archus ones were trivial once custom challenges entered the mix. I literally killed Talus on the first turn of the battle, 5 turns before she became active, by dumping down a cloned largestone Dante (using the modifier that clones the first friendly unit summoned) on her floor with a bunch of blight cards in my deck.
As for the < 10/0 card deck achievements, those took a solid afternoon of iterative experimentation:
Anyway, that was a fun challenge!
As for the ones I unlocked today, the Talus/Archus ones were trivial once custom challenges entered the mix. I literally killed Talus on the first turn of the battle, 5 turns before she became active, by dumping down a cloned largestone Dante (using the modifier that clones the first friendly unit summoned) on her floor with a bunch of blight cards in my deck.
As for the < 10/0 card deck achievements, those took a solid afternoon of iterative experimentation:
My first thought was "well, if I can't win with cards, I'll need to win with a pyre on autopilot". So I took the no champion modifier and then two pyre buffing modifiers (I played around with which pair out of the 4 possibles, eventually settling on the one that gave a bit of armour, health, & attack, as well as the one that gave multistrike), hoping to find the others during the run, such as the pyre dazing, or the pyre getting extra attack from money. My faction cards were Torch and Forgone power, which I'd slowly purge during the run. This would consistently carry me past the Fel/Archus battle, but then run out of steam near the end. After watching Seraph destroy my pyre a few times, I went back to the drawing board to re-think things entirely.
What I ultimately settled on instead was taking no champion + units purge on death + the pyre armour/health/attack buff, with the same faction cards as above. Early on, I'd use the faction cards and the pyre to win without units, slowly building up a solid core of units, and then from the mid-point until the end, I'd start carefully leveraging those units, making sure not to let any die that I didn't have a clone of, purging the faction cards as I went, and then ultimately go into the Seraph fight with a deck consisting of only creatures that were good enough to weaken Serpah to be killed by my pyre, but not *so* good that they'd kill Seraph before reaching the pyre. It was a delicate balancing act, but I got there on my 3rd attempt.
What I ultimately settled on instead was taking no champion + units purge on death + the pyre armour/health/attack buff, with the same faction cards as above. Early on, I'd use the faction cards and the pyre to win without units, slowly building up a solid core of units, and then from the mid-point until the end, I'd start carefully leveraging those units, making sure not to let any die that I didn't have a clone of, purging the faction cards as I went, and then ultimately go into the Seraph fight with a deck consisting of only creatures that were good enough to weaken Serpah to be killed by my pyre, but not *so* good that they'd kill Seraph before reaching the pyre. It was a delicate balancing act, but I got there on my 3rd attempt.
Anyway, that was a fun challenge!