Slice & Dice is a dice-based dungeon crawler available on itch.io, Google Play, and the Apple Store. It is my 2022 GOTY. You should play it.
@Dark Medusa picked it up recently. This isn't the first time I've considered making this thread, but this is a more convenient format than Discord for an effort post, even if it's not the best effort post to kickstart the thread with.
OH WELL, HERE WE GO
How to kill Hexia
Of the game's three last bosses, Hexia is the one most likely to hard-counter your team. This is because of her two innates: first, she deals damage to melee attackers equal to the damage they deal; second, she deals one damage per mana spent to your bottom hero. This means that many teams have no way to damage her without taking damage. If you come up against Hexia with such a team and with no plan, you are going to have a bad time.
Before we talk about ways to deal with her, let's take a look at Hexia's die. She's got two each of these three faces:
As with anything else in the game, success against Hexia involves killing her faster than she kills you. Hexia has 30 HP, and while your party collectively has more by the end of the game, you're still competing against a potential 16 damage per turn from Hexia alone. So we would prefer not to have to take damage one-for-one on top of that. What are our outs?
Orange
Poison: Venom and Assassin both have access to poison. After you eat the one-time up-front damage, you get recurring damage on Hexia.
Ranged: Assassin and Sharpshot actually get to deal direct damage without taking any! Of course, any items you have that add ranged to dice will be great for this battle.
Yellow
Steel: Brawler, Bash, and Curator have damage faces with the steel keyword. Yellow will still take damage, but the damage he takes with Steel will just be the face's base pips.
Just hit her already: The best yellow can usually do, though, is use his relatively large HP to weather the storm. Special mention to Leader for enabling other heroes to do better, though.
Gray
Valkyrie: Preventing death is a very cool trick. The most common use case is to slap it on blue then go ham with spells for a turn, but you can always find a use for "don't die" in this fight. The resurrection face is also very nice.
Shields, generally: The bigger, the better. You need damage mitigation in this fight. Special mention to Paladin for "shield + heal" and to Paladin and Stalwart for "shield, cleanse."
Red
Healing, generally: Shields are probably a little better, since you're otherwise limited to how much HP you can hold, but this is a fight that puts red through the paces.
Regen in particular: If you stack enough of it, you can get away with ignoring a lot of damage.
Resurrection: It's the last fight. There's no HP penalty to deal with. I think you also get a free cleanse off of dying, too, which neatly deals with a petrified hero.
Salve: Witch's spell deserves a special call-out for being efficient enough to outpace Hexia's mana burn.
Wraith: With cantrip dodge and the Bind spell, Wraith gives you multiple tools to bypass Hexia's gimmick.
Blue
Blaze: A single cast nearly kills Warlock from full health, but it's extremely mana-efficient, dealing more than twice as much in return.
Miasma: Poison is also good when you have to spend blue's HP on it. Blue gets worse bang for his buck, but he gets cleave in exchange.
Dodge: Orange has dodge, too, but Weaver and Chronos deserve special mention because they can hide from mana burn.
Items
Frankly, most items are useful to one degree or another here, but a few of them deserve special mention.
Titanbane Potion: There's not a lot of game-changers at tier 2. Titanbane Potion is a waste of a pick for most of the game, but it's a "get out of Hexia free" card. You still have to roll it, though.
Spell: Sprout: This is the poor man's Salve: from the third cast on, you get the same 2-for-1 mana efficiency.
Determination: This hero can't die for the first two turns. You can kill Hexia in two turns, right?
Ornate Hilt: Self-shield to all damage sides. Almost as good as ranged!
Shining Bow, Triple Shuriken: Ranged to all damage sides. Even better than Ornate Hilt!
Blinding Bolt: After a spell is cast, self-shield 2. This is great on blue, since it cancels out mana burn for Burst.
Ichor Chalice: 1 damage to the top-most enemy for each wasted point of healing you receive. This is a trap! You'll still get damaged by Hexia.
Study: Changes Burst into Burst+, putting you slightly ahead of the curve on mana efficiency.
@Dark Medusa picked it up recently. This isn't the first time I've considered making this thread, but this is a more convenient format than Discord for an effort post, even if it's not the best effort post to kickstart the thread with.
OH WELL, HERE WE GO
How to kill Hexia
Of the game's three last bosses, Hexia is the one most likely to hard-counter your team. This is because of her two innates: first, she deals damage to melee attackers equal to the damage they deal; second, she deals one damage per mana spent to your bottom hero. This means that many teams have no way to damage her without taking damage. If you come up against Hexia with such a team and with no plan, you are going to have a bad time.
Before we talk about ways to deal with her, let's take a look at Hexia's die. She's got two each of these three faces:
- 8 damage, descend, inflict-pain: This is pretty bad. 16 damage this turn (and likely a bit more next turn) is hard to deal with.
- 4 damage, petrify: Whether this is bad depends entirely on whether you brought cleanse to the fight. If you didn't, and she targets a key hero on turn 1, you've probably lost.
- Summon a demon: This is never great, but whether it's going to ruin your day depends on whether you planned to slow-play this fight. If you can burst down Hexia, the demon won't be much of a threat. If you planned to slowly whittle away at Hexia while soaking the damage, the demons might have something to say about that.
As with anything else in the game, success against Hexia involves killing her faster than she kills you. Hexia has 30 HP, and while your party collectively has more by the end of the game, you're still competing against a potential 16 damage per turn from Hexia alone. So we would prefer not to have to take damage one-for-one on top of that. What are our outs?
Orange
Poison: Venom and Assassin both have access to poison. After you eat the one-time up-front damage, you get recurring damage on Hexia.
Ranged: Assassin and Sharpshot actually get to deal direct damage without taking any! Of course, any items you have that add ranged to dice will be great for this battle.
Yellow
Steel: Brawler, Bash, and Curator have damage faces with the steel keyword. Yellow will still take damage, but the damage he takes with Steel will just be the face's base pips.
Just hit her already: The best yellow can usually do, though, is use his relatively large HP to weather the storm. Special mention to Leader for enabling other heroes to do better, though.
Gray
Valkyrie: Preventing death is a very cool trick. The most common use case is to slap it on blue then go ham with spells for a turn, but you can always find a use for "don't die" in this fight. The resurrection face is also very nice.
Shields, generally: The bigger, the better. You need damage mitigation in this fight. Special mention to Paladin for "shield + heal" and to Paladin and Stalwart for "shield, cleanse."
Red
Healing, generally: Shields are probably a little better, since you're otherwise limited to how much HP you can hold, but this is a fight that puts red through the paces.
Regen in particular: If you stack enough of it, you can get away with ignoring a lot of damage.
Resurrection: It's the last fight. There's no HP penalty to deal with. I think you also get a free cleanse off of dying, too, which neatly deals with a petrified hero.
Salve: Witch's spell deserves a special call-out for being efficient enough to outpace Hexia's mana burn.
Wraith: With cantrip dodge and the Bind spell, Wraith gives you multiple tools to bypass Hexia's gimmick.
Blue
Blaze: A single cast nearly kills Warlock from full health, but it's extremely mana-efficient, dealing more than twice as much in return.
Miasma: Poison is also good when you have to spend blue's HP on it. Blue gets worse bang for his buck, but he gets cleave in exchange.
Dodge: Orange has dodge, too, but Weaver and Chronos deserve special mention because they can hide from mana burn.
Items
Frankly, most items are useful to one degree or another here, but a few of them deserve special mention.
Titanbane Potion: There's not a lot of game-changers at tier 2. Titanbane Potion is a waste of a pick for most of the game, but it's a "get out of Hexia free" card. You still have to roll it, though.
Spell: Sprout: This is the poor man's Salve: from the third cast on, you get the same 2-for-1 mana efficiency.
Determination: This hero can't die for the first two turns. You can kill Hexia in two turns, right?
Ornate Hilt: Self-shield to all damage sides. Almost as good as ranged!
Shining Bow, Triple Shuriken: Ranged to all damage sides. Even better than Ornate Hilt!
Blinding Bolt: After a spell is cast, self-shield 2. This is great on blue, since it cancels out mana burn for Burst.
Ichor Chalice: 1 damage to the top-most enemy for each wasted point of healing you receive. This is a trap! You'll still get damaged by Hexia.
Study: Changes Burst into Burst+, putting you slightly ahead of the curve on mana efficiency.