Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles – Deckbuilder Tips

Deckbuilder Strategy

Same as with almost all others deckbuilders. This one follows a pretty standard STS formula, and thus strategies are applicable here too.

• You want to skip or remove dice that bring down the value of your deck, and take those that increase it a lot. There’s two types of value you can get from dice: Raw/Inherent value, and Synergistic value. Self explanatory, the former are good by themselves, the latter need to be combo’d with other things to take off. You want scaling but also have inherently good dice. The average value of the average dice you will draw is part of what consistutes the deck’s value.

Thus it’s pretty customary to remove at least a couple starter dies unless you get the blessing that improves them early, and even then. It’s also standard not to add everything you’re offered. Note i’m not saying you have to keep it as thin as possible. This is a common strategy, but some people overrate it, it’s not the only way.

The goal is to draw a dice that will help you, and if the 30 dies in your deck will help you, then that’s fine. If the 30 dies in your deck prevent you from getting to the die you need to draw right now, that’s not good.

Thin decks have some critical weaknesses: Hexed dice can be deadly for them, which is one of the main concerns. What you want to have, is a deck that can cycle through dice. Deck manipulation is important so that you can draw, discard, reroll, recall, etc… Mitigating what would otherwise be a deck that is too big.

• You want a well rounded deck that can handle a lot of different potential situations (each enemy has their strenghts), especially tailored toward those you KNOW you will encouter, if you have a given boss at the end of an area for example. But you also want a deck that specallizes in a synergy, without being too weak in other areas. Specialize, but don’t become a one trick pony relying on a combo that spells life or death. Because death will come inevitably. Don’t overload your deck with high risk dice if you can’t handle them. Look at your dice, the odds of them doing good or bad to you. You want to keep a relatively balanced ammount of cards that will protect you vs cards that will damage you or enemies.
• It’s preferable to pick your dice not based on how good they might become and how good other dice will make them, but how good they are and how good they’ll make other dice. So you want to avoid a die that will bring no immediate value to the deck unless you know what you are doing and can get away with it, if the die is just too good, etc… For example, you should avoid getting a die that will trigger wave if you don’t have any wave in the deck yet. You are supposed to adapt, and trying to force a build, “i want a wave build!” is usually one of the most basic mistakes players make.
• Your health (hearts) is a ressource, and a ressource is meant to be spent. You need to avoid taking unnecessary loss, but you shouldn’t be overly conservative with it either. Especially when it comes to trading it for blessings.
• Prioritize elite fights as much as possible. They are one of the main sources of your increase in power. Ideally you’d never skip one, but at higher difficulties it could be dangerous.
• Don’t underestimate upgrading sentinels, going to epic shops, events, forging, and so on. Sentinels can be a pretty strong part of your build, and don’t forget you can spend your corruption dice on them too. And an important thing to keep in mind is that you will be rewarded sentinels at the end of the two first boss fights. Which means that you may not have to spend any shards on buying sentinels at all.
• As much as it sucks, while you do want to get as many blackhole and star blessings as possible, sometimes you do have to skip one that is too risky.

That’s most of the general roguelike card battler/deckbuilder standard tips.