Slay the Pillar

[serprex]

I play a lot of Slay the Spire. I got thinking on what it'd look like to have a deck builder for oetg

One issue with quests is that there's one deck. With your cardpool it's too easy to counterbuild

Modron Cube was cool in Planescape: Torment

So what if we instead had players start with a basic card pool. Each floor they could pick between event / fight. Fight would pull from a set of prebuilt decks (maybe mix in some random generation, but over time I've learnt sampling prebuilt content is usually better than procedurally generated), which the player would have to counter with their cardpool. Taking inspiration from https://etg.dek.im/forum/index.php?topic=1037

So decks would scale up in stats etc. Relics could have effects like:
- start with creature in slot
- start match with dagger in weapon slot
- gain double draw, start battles with less cards
- first mulligan is free
- always start first
- gain an extra deck slot

Maybe have some equipment / enchantments that can be enabled/disabled

Initially I took cg's advice that StS format wouldn't work for EtG, but tonight for some reason it seems clear that it can be made to work

Player's would have a limited set of deck slots they could adjust between floors, but when they enter fight they have to pick deck. So if you only have 2 deck slots you have less flexibility. Opponent deck could sometimes be 'either X or Y' (ie, with enough options, hints would tell it's pulling from a dozen possibilities, but you know that at least it'll pull from the decks in pool)

& ofc upgrades would come through some mechanism, events like 'discard a card from cardpool, gain an upgrade'

Thinking hp heals between floors, otherwise balancing healing cards gets too weird

[Turlututu]

I haven't played Slay the Spire, but your ideas remind me of the RPG map thing from the final (original) etg update.

Anyway, for an oetg-style "Adventure mode".
- No map or anything fancy of the sort, everything is done through text prompts and buttons.
- You start by picking a starter deck, much like when starting a new account.
- You only have one deck slot until you unlock more.
- You get to fight increasingly difficult community-submitted AI opponents.
- AI decks have variable stats, similar to arena decks but with more variables (e.g. upgrade count, deck count, various bonuses… ).
- The difficulty level of a deck is automatically calculated based on these stats (the more points you spend when making the deck, the higher the difficulty).
- The difficulty of AI decks will be further adjusted based on their win/loss ratio.
- Before a fight, an automatically generated message hints at the upcoming opponent's deck. For example:
- - "A weak (= low base HP) fire (= fire mark) elemental approaches. It looks creative (= high draw). Watch out for immolation and spark (= it has a lot of these two cards).
- - "A tough (= high base HP) chroma elemental approaches. It looks knowledgeable (= high deck count). Watch out for georesonator and nymph's tears.
- You would then have the option to fight now, or to first edit your deck.
- After winning a fight:
- - You gain a card.
- - You get to pick between fight or event.
- Every 3~6 wins (to be adjusted), you encounter a boss elemental — actually an opponent from a higher difficulty level.
- After beating the boss:
- - You gain a card, as always.
- - You get to pick one out of 2~3 random powerups (extra stats, "relic", etc.).
- - You move up to the next difficulty level (floor).
- If you lose the boss fight, you move back down to a lower difficulty level.
- Once you reach the highest difficulty level and win enough matches there, you get crowned conqueror of the pillar or whatever else works.
- Highest difficulty opponent would have maxed out stats and bonuses, making just beating one an event in itself.

[Manuel]

what if rather than decks randomly generated  the decks will be the one actually submitted in the arena with nerf/buffs based on draw, mark and hp? if the leaderboards is correct, there is a database of 60 decks ready since the 30 posted for arena 1 can be automatically upped to arena 2 level and viceversa, or create many variants. This would be also another challenge when building the decks, since now the decks posted should work both upped and unupped.

If an arena deck i posted gets wins in slay the pillar i get bonus when fighting in the same game mode.
 
If not enough, it will be cool create demigods that u can only encounter in Slay The Pillar and also a shop/currency for buying exclusive things (i always dreamed a skin like the old one from etg)