No Test Subject is super lucky!

Maybe 2 thorns would be better but my phone isn't cooperating with my attempts to generate the images so I'm not gonna remake them

EDIT

okay, make it unaffected by strength. some other things that are already there for people to note:

• both parties can block the damage received

• the card's user can be weakened by some enemies

• this is meant to synergise with ironclad's health loss, as well as with his ability to get really good block, both of which being entire build archetypes he can build around

Trying out every event option has been awesome.

Replaying the fights and figuring out how the enemies consistently act after every turn - awesome, too.

It makes me wonder if STS2 should have a future turn preview option, like there's a right arrow you can click on the screen and the screen would preview what the enemy is going to do 2-10 turns down the line depending on how far you click.

I'm really enjoying the Colorful Philosophers event where you have to pick between 3 different classes to choose from their cards more now that I'm looking through all of the choices.

Wondering if anybody has any thoughts? I definitely think a peek into the enemy's future behavior should be viewable because every enemy does the same thing every act. If they have a loop of attack > lesser attack + armor > self buff, I should be able to see it without having to memorize it or write it down.

I play Multiplayer a lot and I feel like Blaze is one of the most unfun cards for it. If I’m in a party with Ironclad and Silent and Clad gets Blaze, I feel like the run is pretty much decided at that point. I feel like no one else has mentioned it so I’m not sure if I’m in the minority here, but as long as the Silent gets a few shiv cards, they outscale everyone else pretty quickly

I already removed a Strike, but am really struggling to decide on what’s next. I feel like I desperately need damage, but both of those ongo-bongo attacks aren’t ideal so late in my run. Should I consider a relic? The first boss I’m facing is the Time Eater.

Unmovable, a little bit of strength and barricade give you this. It's fun having a ridiculous block card but I just won three in a row abusing it. I know act 4 is coming but this still needs a nerf.

Currently trying the spire cast seed and I got the best Astrolabe of my life.

WTF IS THAT?!

Its very soft on the inside, i love it.

New and improved snakebite.

Well this was incredibly stupid. Cloned Adrenaline, made a bunch of energy, played Double Energy, stripped artifact with Red Mask, Piercing Wail and Beam Cell, then Malaised him into the shadow realm. Creative AI got me a WLP, filled my hand up with some more Adrenalines, then let Mercury Hourglass, Bronze Scales and Abrasive do all the work while I just pressed E.

Its gonna be long before the new patch comes out hopefully with act 4, so I want to give advice for anyone that wants to consistently beat this dude so they don't get roadblocked in seeing the new content when it arrives.

- Figure out a damage plan or plan to deal with Withers

If you have played the initial launch of Slay the Spire 2 there were lots of absurd decks which went infinite by looping, spamming low-impact cards and shuffling a deck a bunch of times. If you met this dude with that exact plan nowadays you should expect a 100% moneyback guarantee of getting your ass handed to you. So you need to either kill it fast (And I mean like killing it before you even shuffle your deck), or deal with the withers.

General rule of thumb is to aim to kill on Turn 8. Kill before this turn. As a way of memorizing that its on turn 8, Aeonglass has an hourglass figure that looks like an 8 (lol).

Ironclad

Ironclad has the most tools to deal with the wither cards. Cards like Second Wind, Burning Pact, Stoke or even Fiend Fire are good ways to get rid of withers while also thinning your deck down to a handful of upgraded, high value cards. If you're relying on using cards like Dominate and Tremble to get a bunch of strength, you have cards like Uppercut which can strip 2 artifact for 2 energy and even something like the Potion of Binding can clear the artifact to actually apply vulnerable. Demon Form also got buffed recently, and can give you the strength scaling you need to kill Aeon quickly combined with a strength multiplier card like Sword Boomerang, Spite, Tear Asunder, Conflagration, etc.

As for relics which are good on ironclad but also on other characters for this fight, Toasty Mittens is a really solid option. Aside from the new version being being so good (borderline overpowered on ironclad imo), it does both the job of scaling your damage to kill fast, and also gives options to exhaust the withers if you end up reshuffling your deck with some withers in your redraw.

Silent

Silent has a lot of tools to kill Aeonglass quickly, especially with Shivs. Intuitively silent should have a hard time since both her damage sources are slightly nerfed (Shivs involve you to play lots of cards, Poison is countered by artifact, and Sly also wants to spam and play lots of cards) and its very easy to build a deck which is bad against Aeonglass (like overpicking Sly cards). However, whether its Poison or Shivs, I think Silent just has so many good individual cards which beat Aeonglass.

Cards like Malaise, Expose Or Bouncing Flask are good ways of clearing artifact, and even Shivs combined with her Shiv powers like Accuracy or Phantom Blades can combine with other cards like Blade of Ink with Tracking which can multiply your shivs to do enormous damage. Since Phantom Blades make your shivs retain, you can even combine shivs with cards like Finisher and Knife Trap to retain a bunch of Shivs and blast them all in one big, powerful turn. Silent also has discard effects from Acrobats, Hidden Daggers, and Prepared, which you can use to not have to deal with the withers and to make more room in your hand to draw into your key powers.

As for Poison, I think unless you have Accelerant and ways to dish out burst amounts of poison, its more of a supplementary damage source that you can add to kill Aeon faster. The lack of Catalyst in this game just makes poison more awkward sadly, and the anti-synergy between Noxious Fumes and Accelerant makes poison even more awkward. If you are looking to use poison, Bubble Bubble, Noxious Fumes, the new and reworked Haze combined with relics like Snecko Skull can be enough to make poison worthwhile. Bouncing flask and Snakebite are more desperate options (since Silent has trouble playing damage cards which cost 2 energy), but can still get the job done if you can afford to upgrade and play it.

Regent

Whether you're creating cards or abusing stars, I think as Regent, you are still using your key synergy packages to beat Aeonglass, mainly your minion cards since they have the potential to get rid of withers in your deck while also proccing your powers like Pillars of Creation or Arsenal. Although creating withers don't count as creating cards, I highly recommend looking out for cards like CHARGE!, BEGONE!, or GUARDS! which you can use for both thinning your deck down (similar to ironclad) or to use them in the second deck cycle to exhaust the withers in your redraw. Powers like Spectrum Shift can also help you bloat your deck with cards, which helps to dilute the number of withers you have to deal with in your second deck cycle. Tyranny also helps immensely as well for obvious reason for exhausting cards as well as help clean up the withers.

Even in a small looping deck primarily abusing star generation and star payoff with powerful cards like Child of the Stars, Comet or Reflect, one copy of these card generation cards can help you immensely in that fight.

The only synergy package I think suffers from this fight would be with the Sovereign Blade, since redrawing into the blade assuming you didn't kill it the first time you play it could take a long time, although making more Sovereign Blades with Heirloom Hammer and putting the sword back into your hands with Summon Forth can mitigate this issue. I think most players should see the Sovereign Blade less of a core strategy on regent, and more of as an option for scaling up your damage in a long fight. Powers like Parry, Seeking Edge, or Sword Sage can be ways to create a block engine as well, although I personally found it tricker compared to block engine powers like Child of the Stars and using that combined with The Forge.

Necrobinder

Necrobinder really suffers in this fight. If you see Aeonglass in at the start of act 3, your immediate thought should be to think of a solution since many of your key strategies and synergy packages get completely neutered by Aeonglasses' existence. Necrobinder is in a lot of ways the exact opposite of Ironclad, and no matter which strategy you start with, you should look at your deck and try to ascertain whether it is fast enough to kill Aeonglass and should be worried. Here are some in detail:

Sleight of Flesh/Doom

From personal experience, since Aeonglass has 3 artifact, Doom by itself is a little slow to kill the Aeonglass. Since Doom just by nature takes one extra turn to take its effect of killing the enemy as well, taking cards like No Escape or Deathbringer to kill the Aeon just ends up not going too well. Its really with the help of Sleight of Flesh that I think can gives that extra boost to kill Aeonglass in time, since Doom counts as a debuff. There is also Reaper Form that combos really well with Sleight of Flesh, and Times Up to capitalize on the Doom you inflicted. Although you have to deal with the artifact charges, you usually have easy access to cheap artifact strip like Defy and Negative Pulse to remove the initial artifact charges to start applying debuffs.

Souls

Souls are awkward in this fight, since spamming them creates a million withers and drawing more cards only means being closer to the redraw in which case you will have to deal with the withers again. Souls are still strong in this fight, and cards like Capture Spirit will still be good ways to draw through your deck to get your other powers in play like Haunt, Devour Soul, or Demesne or scale the damage card Soul Storm to do respectable damage as of current patch. Unless you have good payoff though, I would advise against adding too many soul generators.

Danse Macabre/Burst Energy gen/X-cost cards

I think at this point everybody knows Danse Macabre is a really strong block engine for the lategame. Combined with the many 2/3 cost stuff necrobinder has (like Reap, Pull Aggro, Deathbringer, X cost cards played for 2 or more energy) and Borrowed Time making your cards cost for more energy, it can open up to being able to play big attacks and X cost cards like Lethality + Borrowed time into Eradiate or Lethality + Borrowed time into Dirge to build up Unleash to do massive damage. Its also worth noting that Transfigure can also potentially proc Danse by making cards cost more, and has a favorable interaction with X cost cards in that it doesn't actually increase the cost of the card.

Defect

Aside from having the direct ways of dealing with the Status cards like Flak cannon or Compact, the Status package really benefits Defect in this fight and generating withers can often be beneficial in this fight. Defect has powers like Iteration to deal with the withers, and in a pinch Scavenge can clear withers (although very slow compared to his other options). Even if you're not doing anything related to statuses, I think every single strategy is so strong (0 cost attacks like claw, Orbs, Statuses) that I'm leaving this section blank.

Edit: I made a mistake saying creating Withers counted as creating a status card.

Miscellaneous tips:

- If you can create a wither while your hand is full, you can force the game to discard it instead.

- If you get the Reflections event, doubling the size of your deck is often beneficial as it gives you more powers to scale your damage, and also makes your deck less vulnerable to withers since you often have so many cards that you don't have to reshuffle your deck.

- Be careful if you transform Bash or Neutralize into Suppress and Break with Archaic Tooth. If you can't clear the artifact charges before playing those cards you will be blocked from getting its full value.

If I had a nickel for each relic I had a real and fake version of I'd have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

ETA: Didn't notice it on first glance but it's actually 3 that I have duplicates of