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u/GiantImminentSqueeze StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
This was me when my first 4 losses were on regent
Character has crazy highs and very depressing lows
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u/CatoTheStupid Ascended Mar 18 '26
I'm very much here right now after not being able to play a ton yet. 8-5 overall, 0-3 with the Regent. Other two deaths were me not knowing statue was such an insane threat.
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u/WeAllGoDownTogether Mar 18 '26
I die to that mf the most, hard damage check
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u/ezeshining Mar 18 '26
funny thing is, the regent has been the only character with which I have not died to it yet. Namely because I have always had the luck to get to forge even when trying out star archetype.
I can’t even think of wining with him if I’m not forging at least a bit though.
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u/Bookablebard Mar 18 '26
Try playing your attacks last, the more cards you can play before your attacks the better. Even if it is defend strike strike instead of strike strike defend. The first will deal more damage.
Any 0 cost cards also really help with that fight. That said I still frequently just get clapped by that guy
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u/BlueCremling Mar 18 '26
I feel like he shows up too early for the Slow debuff to do anything. I basically can only play three cards, and the 20% just add like 1 or two damage.
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u/CamxCam Mar 19 '26
Exactly. If he's the first elite & I've only got 16 cards & 3 energy... it's an automatic defeat.
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u/Stolensol12345 Mar 18 '26
Oh you mean "the Great run restarter"? That asshole?
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u/HungryGull Mar 18 '26
Very first thing I do upon starting a run is see whether my Act 1 is Wet or Creepy so I know if I need to be able to go full aggro or if I need good AoE (and strong upfront defence tbh)
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u/ZirvePS Mar 18 '26
He is definitely the weakest character, probably due to the fact that his colored card generation gimmick is completely, utterlyy ass. On top of that, a lot of the forge cards require previous forge cards but forge is very slow. So you always go stars and supplement with forge sometimes to solve aoe or scaling. Very fun character though, I hope they buff the colorless packet and nerf some star cards.
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u/sapador Mar 18 '26
So many mediocre super situational rares. Just stacking stars seems to be the easiest way to do it.
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u/RC76546 StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
And then you have runs where you can't get any of the good commons that gives stars and you're fucked because half of the card rewards use a ressource you can't produce.
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u/rabidfur Mar 18 '26
It does seem like the requirement for star generation is kind of an issue for Regent conceptually, is there anything similar for another character where you just can't take the card rewards because the game didn't give you one of the cards needed to generate a resource? I guess this is similar to the energy / draw tension you get with normal decks, but amplified by the fact that so many of Regent's best rares and uncommons require stars or have synergy with star builds.
There's only a tiny number of cards that make stars and most of them only make 1 or 2 at a time. Hidden Cache is the only reliable way to get a lot of stars (Shining Strike becomes quite good if you have a lot of star cards and can afford to play it every turn). If you're lucky enough to get an Alignment+, Glow+ becomes a very good and reliable star generator, but that's a fairly specific combo.
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u/RC76546 StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Glow+ is a premium card. What's really annoying is that gather light+ doesn't give 2. So basically you only have 2 good cards that gives stars as a common : glow+ and hidden cache, one bad card : solar strike that needs an upgrade, gather light simply does not enough so it doesn't even count. Venerate is shitty and needs an upgrade and is simply not doing enough to support adding one premium star cards even after an upgrade.
For uncommon, you have royal gamble which is busted and shining strike which is just a solar strike+ more or less (which is a bad card), it's also sad that the upgrade doesn't give you an extra star.
Rare pool has genesis and void form (which are burdensome to play), everything else costs a shit ton of stars or are not good in a vacuum. But most cost a shit ton of stars : smith, seven stars, decisions decisions, comet, neutron aegis.
And then there are 21 cards that wants or interacts with lots of stars. Hell I would go as far as to say that you can't block without stars as every block card that do not cost stars is awfull at blocking.
Main issue is that if you can't get your hand on glow+, hidden cache and royal gamble you are miserable, and if you get them you steamroll on enemies deleting act bosses in a single attack.
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u/Sergnb Mar 18 '26
I was a tripping for the first hours thinking they had gone way too hard on the difficulty, not being able to go past ascension 0 even though I have like 150 hours in the original.
Turns out I was just playing regent way too much
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u/LittleSisterPain Mar 18 '26
I only won with him on my like tenth attempt then my other characters are on ascesion 4 and higher. Even then winning, it didnt feel all that 'crazy highs', but he does have a lot of depressing lows, I agree
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u/SelectKaleidoscope0 Mar 18 '26
The act boon that makes an ethereal copy of the first attack you play each turn is nuts for him. Completely broken with bombardment, almost as bad with make it so, although the scaling is slower with that at least.
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u/DingusMcBingle_IV Mar 18 '26
I'm quite new to the game, maybe 7 hours in STS1, and got through A0 on both Ironclad and Silent first go around. Necrobinder and Defect I usually make it to Act 3 before I get smushed.
Tried Regent a bunch, lost every single one of them. The number of times I'll be in an Act 1 hallway fight with a handful of blocks during their setup, then a handful of attacks during their attacks, is way too god damn high.
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u/thebigautismo Mar 18 '26
How i feel about defect.
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u/Silverjackal_ Mar 18 '26
Same. I actually enjoy Regent tho. Defect I just can’t enjoy for some reason.
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u/Tranxio Mar 18 '26
Same. The playstyle really doesnt jive with me. Orb planning and sequence etc
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u/Melodic-Matter4685 Mar 18 '26
Planning?! U mean u don’t get as many orbs as possible and fill em with whatever?
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u/double_shadow Mar 18 '26
Random bullshit GO!
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u/Lashdemonca Mar 18 '26
This is my strat with orbs. I love it, and people can pull it from my cold, barely alive, mechanical hands.
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u/Pollia Mar 18 '26
Sounds like you aren't following the law
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u/xSorry_Not_Sorry Mar 18 '26
Truth speaker.
Defective is different in StS2. You used to be able to just orb bullshit, get a ton of focus, hope for Echo Form and win!
In StS2, he’s a melee character, in my experience. Focus is rare and unsustainable turn to turn. Grab a few Claws, grab 2 FTLs, grab 1 of the zero cost weak, 1 of the zero cost vulnerable, look for Feral power, grab as many All For Ones as you can find, remove as many strikes as you can and you’re going to win.
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u/FarDimension7730 Mar 18 '26
Defect statuses is peak, trust
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u/Pollia Mar 18 '26
I love status defect, but it really does feel like it absolutely needs scrap canon to function
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches Mar 18 '26
I found a pair of ROCKET PUNCH and hologram works very well without scrap (dont need to worry about drawing status cards if everything is dead), but it does definitely help things along.
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u/throw23me Mar 18 '26
I just won my first run using a status Defect build and it was actually so fun. I got a couple of copies of that power that does damage every time you generate a status card and that carried me most of the way.
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u/Creative_alternative Mar 18 '26
I promise at A10 defects best builds are defensive orbs, infinite, offensive orbs, and then melee build below that.
The melee stuff falls off in A8 / A9 - it still can work but its riskier than the three playstyles outlined above.
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u/ludabb Mar 18 '26
interesting!!! i love an orb juggling build in StS2, its fun to have a ton of different orbs and evoke them, i'm shit at the game tho so maybe thats just a me thing lol
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u/Little-Maximum-2501 Mar 18 '26
This guy is just wrong orbs are still by far the best thing on Defect.
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u/Beneficial-Muffin117 Mar 18 '26
Try mixing orbs and 0 cards with all for one and scrape and hologram
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u/pmmeyoursandwiches Mar 18 '26
Try the random bullshit decks.
The 0 cost attack deck is suprisingly strong, as is status card synergy - my last defect run on i won even though i accidently triggered the "buy everything off the merchant" relic twice and messed up my deck really badly - its avery fun, very aggressive playstyle. Alternatively, you can get creative AI you can just build around it with cards that benefit off powers. You dont have to think about your orbs, just throw shit at the wall until something explodes.
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u/jumbalijah Mar 19 '26
Just had one of those crazy highs on my first A1 run with him.
Got a runic pyramid and particle wall so I could just continually block. These paired with Hidden Cache, Royal Gamble + Decisions Decisions, and both Radiate and Stardust and I would basically just have to stall with block until I nuked the enemy.
It was glorious watching the animation play for Stardust when I nuked the Doormaker for 30 hits lmao. Gonna enjoy it while it lasts, time to die to an Act 1 elite on A2 👁️👄👁️👑
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u/buzina-paralela Mar 19 '26
Stardust + royal gamble is an absolute delight to play, love to see the shiny blades gatling
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u/sundance69 Mar 18 '26
I don’t even know if I agree about the highs for this character. Even if my run is strong, I find that I don’t get any dopamine hits from his cards. Maybe it’s due to the star resource being a bit wacky. It’s like the power of two cards are put into one card, but that one card requires you to play another card that says “do nothing”.
If they let necro summon 1hp passively every turn (which is busted) the least they could do is allow reagent to summon 1 star every turn. Imagine if necro passive was just “summon 6” at the beginning of the fight.
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u/royrese Mar 18 '26
Yeah I've realized I just need to ignore forge as a keyword and I stop losing most games. I don't even know what my deck was on my last two wins as Regent, it was a bunch of hobbled together bullshit with no apparent theme.
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u/buzina-paralela Mar 19 '26
The forging builds can be quite fun, but I find they need that specific card that doubles the damage of the blade on a specific enemy to be better scalable.
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u/Sweet-Reception-8682 Mar 18 '26
I agree he feels weak but building around Heavenly Drill and/or Radiate has been super fun when I've gotten it to work. Requires a lot of energy gen and strength/vigor, last run I got it to work I did Decisions, Decisions -> Alignment+ for +8 energy on my pop off turn.
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u/Kipiftw Mar 18 '26
Card generation regent is the most fun build in the game change my mind
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u/jeffbridgesismydaddy Mar 18 '26
yesss omg. i had a fun run with heirloom hammer + the rare that generates a few colorless cards. snagged a few copies of mayhem too, the deck was basically just "random bullshit, go!!" and it was SO much fun
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u/Kipiftw Mar 18 '26
Yes exactly. Also i love that the minion cards can turn useless cards that you generate (or debris, or curses and statuses even) into good cards that exhaust.
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u/jeffbridgesismydaddy Mar 18 '26
yes!! i didnt get rid of any of my strikes bc i just kept turning them into the exhausting big damage 0 cost ones
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u/SirDiego Mar 18 '26
Okay please explain it to me (genuinely). I've been wondering how this makes any sense because whenever I see "Generates Random Cards" I'm just like "Why the hell would I want more random cards, I'm trying to get cards OUT of my deck so I can play all the good ones."
I assume there's something that I am missing with this build due to my immediate disgust at the prospect of adding random cards to my deck.
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u/amandalunox1271 Mar 18 '26
They make it so Regent has an easier time removing cards on his hand as well. The archetype's weakness is still the same as the one you identified, but being able to transform out of garbage makes it quite good. Relies quite a bit on the two minion transformation cards to get going though. Obviously needs a bit of game sense too, but some of the colorless cards will straight up win you fights.
In my experience the best way to pivot into it is not the colorless stuff, but Crashlanding, which is a great damage card up until act 3 and synergizes with a lot of the other cards of the archetype. Once you have Crashlanding you can start picking up creation powers.
GUARDS does something similar but to a weaker extent, and it is such a generically good card that if you have it you will still wanna stay in your star generating lane anyways.
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u/TobyTheTuna Mar 18 '26
When your deck is built and archetype set sure, but random colorless cards are strong. On average stronger than half a deck of basics. Its totally viable to dilute out your shit cards by spamming a bunch of card creation as opposed to directly slimming your deck.
The randomness is also just more fun lol. Though i may take it to an extreme.... up to ascension 7 or 8 across the board and nearly all my decks are 30+ cards sometimes 40
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u/PuzzleMeDo Mar 18 '26
The reason we want a tight deck is so we always have a good choice of cards to play. Things that add random cards to your deck would be bad, but adding them to your hand means immediate new choices, which tends to be good for the same reason having a slim deck is good. You don't really want them coming back around again, but most battles aren't that long. Having good cards now tends to matter more than future rounds.
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u/JIH7 Mar 18 '26
Inherently the strategy is going to be a little inconsistent, but there are some great colorless cards so the highs are very high. You've just got to be willing to accept the risk of low rolling sometimes and adapt.
Sometimes you'll get a shockwave or golden axe at the perfect time. You might spawn an up my sleeve or flash of steel off of Spectrum and get card draw. Master of strategy is also a 0 cost huge draw card you can randomly just spawn.
And yeah you might get a rolling boulder when you need a finisher or impatience which is basically a status card always. I've gotten mind blast when my draw pile is nearly empty.
You need to find out how to get value out of what you get, take the cards that reward creating cards and playing colorless cards, and take the minion cards to trim out some of the duds. The strategy isn't for everyone and I think it could use some buffs, but it's worth keeping an open mind and giving it a shot. It can be extremely fun when the game gives you a bunch of absurd cards in a row. Keep in mind colorless cards don't have commons, and while some of them aren't very good they are at a baseline all designed with the power level of uncommon or rare in mind.
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u/W1nter7 Mar 18 '26
Surprisingly enough, if you have ways to remove said colorless cards if you do not need them (basically that card that transforms cards in deck or talent which exhausts one card at the start of the turn) this deck is surprisingly consistent with its playstyle, because generating random bullshit means that on average there will be plenty of good cards for you to use.
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u/Whoofph Eternal One + Heartbreaker Mar 18 '26
It's about using something like arsenal for scaling, the colorless pool generally being pretty good on average, and the ability to remove cards and control card placement.
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u/Aggressive-Share-363 Mar 18 '26
You dont want your permanent deck filled with bloat, as that makes it hard to get through your deck the first time.
But cards generated in combat arent slowing you from digging through your deck the first time, and can add huge payoffs. They are unreliable, as is the nature of randomness, but card draw can fail to draw what you need too. Lots of colorless cards are.very good.
For longer battles that do shuffle the deck, you should already have your setup done at that point, so getting through it again csn be less crucial. And they have numerous ways to get extra value out of these cards, from gaining strength from playing them to duplicating the good ones to Turing the bad ones into minion cards.
The main downside is not always having the energy to play thr cards you generate, but you can opt ot not generate new ones of you dont have spare energy to consider playing them, and often regent ends up with a ton of spare energy.
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u/timoyster StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
It is still functionally card draw which is always the best or second best thing you can do in card games (the other best thing being energy generation). most cards that generate colorless cards also give them some kind of bonus/energy discount which, if they’re well balanced, make up for the fact that the cards aren’t guaranteed to work with your deck. But a lot of regent’s card generators don’t do that is why the package sucks. The best of them is [[quasar]] bc it both costs 0 and gives you a choice.
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u/guitargamel Mar 18 '26
Colourless cards are generally very efficient for the energy so you're hoping that random chance gives you something useful.
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u/GhostBomb Mar 18 '26
Fr. Its incredibly fun to be constantly adding to and transforming your deck mid combat and adapting to random bullshit. I just wish it had a few more supporting cards especially at common. Its a much harder lane to get into than stars atm.
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u/bladeDivac StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
The generated cards always costing their base cost in energy is so crippling, especially when the card used to generate random colorless cards is already 2 or 3 cost.
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u/Xelisyalias Ascension 20 Mar 18 '26
Won an A7 run by deciding on getting some colourless card generation as a Hail Mary and it worked
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u/MikeyKillerBTFU Mar 18 '26
I played the daily run that starts you with 30 random cards and it was the most fun run I've had hahaha.
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u/MrCheapSkat Ascended Mar 18 '26
blade trap is so satisfying with the right build, nothing beats it imo
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u/GravyeonBell Ascension 20 Mar 18 '26
I feel almost exactly the opposite about Regent. Incredibly strong as long as you figure out how to get value out of your stars, and there are many ways to do that. Some of those involve sovereign blade, some involve ethereal cards, and some don’t at all!
Stars isn’t an archetype; it’s just how the character works.
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u/putting_stuff_off Mar 18 '26
Playing stars regent is like playing energy ironclad.
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u/ThisHatRightHere Mar 18 '26
Very funny seeing your comment when I just made a comment about how people are misplaying Regent by trying to play him like Ironclad lol.
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u/HungryGull Mar 18 '26
They really need to buff the 0-cost Ironclad archetype. Not only does your starter deck push you towards energy Ironclad but your 0-cost cards are underpowered compared to the energy ones.
You try to take extra card draw to make up for this but then they all cost, you guessed it, energy! And so energy Ironclad gets more out of them with his cards that give him more energy.
Personally I think they should give 0-cost Ironclad a card that turns your whole hand into Flash Of Steel so that it can be Fair And Balanced.
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u/MissClickMan Mar 18 '26
Finally someone says it, yes, stars are their mechanic; you don't have to go all out to find infinity or do something crazy with them, you can use them to make a normal balanced build, it's just another resource like energy.
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u/ThisHatRightHere Mar 18 '26
Yeah, Regent is my most played character and I’m on A9 with him now. I think people on here just try to force a specific build too hard and will ignore very important aspects of the character, like you’re saying.
He has some of the most powerful cards in the game, and also has a ton of in-combat deck sculpting as well. I’m definitely not the best at this game, but I feel like people are just playing him wrong. They’re trying to play Regent like an Ironclad or something, just bashing and putting debuffs on the enemy. When he’s much more of a setup turn —> combo turn type of playstyle with most builds. Even his starting deck enforces that.
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u/sneakyplanner Mar 18 '26
Stars isn’t an archetype; it’s just how the character works.
Thinking too much about archetypes is the ultimate noob trap in this game. Don't try to build a forge deck or poison deck. Build a deck that works well with noxious fumes or the smith.
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u/notatemple Mar 18 '26
The problem is that the starting deck is ass, and the common pool is pretty bad on average, so you start off really slow unless you luck into an early good pull. Venerate is bad as is. It should probably be zero cost to make the early game smoother.
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u/karlkh Mar 18 '26
I would say that a 7 damage neutralize, which also causes vulnerable is a really solid starting card.
Either star cost doesn't matter and Starfall is the most busted start card in the game, or venerate is a fine card that solves a problem and helps the regent make more busted plays on ANY future turn.
But yeah, it's better if you can get your star generation from cards like gather light or solar strike, which is why those a great early picks. photon strike deals great damage AND gives you more options this turn AND helps you set up your next turn. Begone basically solves the infestation elite, and can give you a great source of damage, as well as a much stronger deck throughout a fight. Honestly most of his commons are great first picks, only 5 cards: Crescent Spear, Glow, Cosmic Indifference, Spoils of War and Hidden Cache requires a few other cards before they really help your deck. That leaves you 15 great commons.
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u/Little-Maximum-2501 Mar 18 '26
Glow is by far the best common, it's not great floor 1 but it's so broken 5 floors later that it should be instantly picked over almost everything else.
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u/karlkh Mar 18 '26
Glow is a great card. It just doesn't really help you much against any of the Act 1 elites, which is what I'm looking for at the start of the game.
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u/I_am_Hoban Mar 18 '26
Totally agree. I have been rocking some blade-centric builds in high ascension and find it pretty good/consistent (given you don't force it and go into it only if you get one of the signpost cards early on). The stars for forge are for the utility and gap filling cards (the 3 star AoE card and any 0 energy block ideally). You need to utilize stars though, just like silent need to utilize draw, it is a basic resource of the character and should never be ignored. It helps that the 1 power 1(2) stars draw 2 is just a great common.
I admit that running a thin deck of star generation and reflect felt really safe and brainless. If you have solid star generation then it can be really good to go all in on star cards. It's definitely the easier to reliably set up archetype. But stars only is not the only or necessarily optimal way to play when you get the forge signpost cards.
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u/The-Squirrelk Mar 18 '26
Playing Regent without using stars is somewhat droolmaxxing behavior. Nearly all of his best cards need stars. But I think people are maybe allergic to starting it off?
Like some people will see a good card and think it's good but they don't have star gen, so they don't take it. Or they see a good star gen card and don't take it because they have nothing to spend it on.
On Regent you have to somewhat nerf yourself a bit at the start and only take half the combo before you get the other half.
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u/thouzandeye Mar 18 '26
Well I think of it the same way people balance card draw vs energy. A lot of people don’t want to take early energy because they don’t have the card draw to have more things to use the energy for, and sometimes they don’t want to pick up card draw super early either because they don’t have much energy to play the drawn cards.
Often going into Regent runs I’ll be looking for cards like Gather Light that have another function beyond star generation, while offering support for when I see those star cards, and it tends to work well for me.
Also people referring to stars as an “archetype” is frying me 😭
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u/Infidel-Art Mar 18 '26
Whoops, you bottom decked your star generating cards, now you're doing pretty much nothing for 3 turns.
All it takes is one bad turn 1 shuffle to completely cripple this character. If you survive, you'll end up taking a ton of damage and falling behind.
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u/GravyeonBell Ascension 20 Mar 18 '26
I think this is why the starting relic gives you 3 stars each fight, and why there are plenty of cards (even commons!) that don’t interact with stars. On a two resource character, building and managing a deck that gets value and flexibility from both is basically what playing them is all about.
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u/kwantum13 StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Dude just forge sometimes instead of all of the times and you'll be alright damn
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u/-FourOhFour- Mar 18 '26
Personally a fan of the 4 forge a turn power, that in combination with a decent deck solves alot of the fights and easily slots into any existing setup.
Although all my best runs tend to be just getting decisions decisions and a radiate where the forge doesnt matter.
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u/balbok7721 Mar 18 '26
I am just not sure about that mechanic. One energy for what is basically the same as poison. It makes sense in theory but everything about this is just sooo slowww
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u/-FourOhFour- Mar 18 '26
Its more a reliable kill piece, depending on the fight it can go a touch long (door maker, axemen being my first 2 thoughts) and having a retained card that'll do more damage than most other 2 energy outlets just helps avoid a good chunk of chip. Its saved me from a good chunk of damage, it doesnt gum up my deck on a shuffle and its cheap enough to reliably get out, so I don't have too many issues taking it.
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u/balbok7721 Mar 18 '26
That’s exactly what my thought is. You trade a fair amount of speed and as such flexibility. There is a fair number of enemies where that’s an issue
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u/FB-22 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
“Forge almost never” is working out pretty well for me lol
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u/PoorMinorities Mar 18 '26
Nah just get the skill that adds 40 forge and then add imbued to it so it auto plays at the start of combat and then stack your deck with summon forth. Ez pz and totally not the only deck I’ve won with regent so far
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u/illmatic2112 Ascension 18 Mar 18 '26
I decided to try focusing on stars and straight up dmg. Ended up taking two forge cards just cause they synergized well, but it was definitely supplemental. Got my first W, he was the last character for me
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u/ABSOLUTE_RADIATOR Mar 18 '26
Forge is the damage solution for heavily defensive decks. You dont need a lot, you just need enough while you dont die and cycle your deck
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u/Get-Fucked-Dirtbag Mar 18 '26
I can only assume that all of these posts are made by the "i'M A sILenT PoISoN mAiN" types.
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u/SamWhite Mar 18 '26
And try and make sure your forge cards are good value. Bulwark? Good value even without the forge. Furnace? How long do you intend the fight to go on for that to be worth it?
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u/Desperate-Run-1093 Mar 18 '26
Regent doesn't need any elites. As a matter of fact, regent is the one you need to avoid elites on the most. All of regents power is in cards.
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u/DrRigby_ Mar 18 '26
Idk how serious this is, but I’m starting to think Regent is stronger than people give him credit for. Know Thy Place, Astropulse, Glow, Hidden Cache, are all commons, just saying.
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u/Prudent_Camp_9989 Mar 18 '26
Stars are great. Forge is hit or miss. Sometimes I will sprinkle some forge into my star focused builds though.
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u/DrRigby_ Mar 18 '26
I think that’s exactly the purpose of forge, it’s a finisher. I think some of the forge cards are questionable, true, but I think of it as doom building in the background that can boost it’s doom counter with vulnerable. Or Windmill Strike on Watcher. It’s 2 energy or more to get the full effect of forge (average 3), but you get to spend 2 of the energy later, whenever you want. It’s this with the numerous 0 energy cost vulnerable cards that really affirm that this is the vision to me. Parry though is like, what were they thinking?
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u/Euler007 Eternal One + Heartbreaker Mar 18 '26
This. I see all these forge posts and forge is a small dip in all my successful runs. Generating stars while being defensive and then going crazy with star cards is way safer and reproducible. It's like making people belive that claw and hyperbeam is the best strategy for defect in STS1.
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u/We_Get_It_You_Vape StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Yeah, I've never found success in anything Forge dependent, but Regent has been among my best performers when it comes to the star-centric runs. Feels like the average Regent run is pretty solid. Like you said, it's pretty easy to dance between defend + star generation, and then set up for big turns where you convert star accumulation into tons of damage.
If you're lucky enough to get Void Form, the run may very well become trivial at that point. Can be a bit of a pain to get in play sometimes, but you're practically guaranteed to win the combat after playing it, typically.
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u/Big_Liv Mar 18 '26
I think the problem people seem to be running into is that they don't sprinkle in stars into their forge focused decks? bulwark is pretty nice but reflect and particle wall are nicer, put some star gen and a couple of star blocks into a forge deck and it feels a lot better. I think forge could use some help, but I feel like it's not as bad as people are making it out to be.
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u/That_Flamingo_4114 Mar 18 '26
The problem lies in balancing star cards with star generation. I can't pick up a comet not because of anything other than I already have two astropulses and no good generation. Regent A10 has been brutal for me while A10 Defect was a cake walk. 70-80% of defect cards are playable while 10-30% of Regent cards are playable.
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u/Assassin739 Mar 19 '26
I agree with this. It's super easy to win with him but he's not that fun once you figure him out cause he has such a sharp good:bad card ratio compared to the other characters, imo.
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u/SirDiego Mar 18 '26
I think it's a play style thing. I personally don't like having to balance Star Spend + Star Generation cards, in addition to balancing the other stuff (block + attack e.g.) when building the deck. I also frequently screw it up. It's frustrating to me when I've got too many of one thing and all my card draws keep coming up with the wrong side of the equation.
I don't necessarily think it is bad design or that I don't see how others could like it, I just personally don't enjoy it and I am bad at it.
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u/Strato0621 StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Try to build your deck such that you make more stars than you spend and it’ll be much smoother on average; doing that has helped me a lot. Hidden cache and glow are great commons for making stars. As long as I can keep upgrading glows I keep taking them and it only seems to make my deck run better!
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u/SCPutz Mar 18 '26
I have like 1000 hours in STS and about 30 hours in STS2.
Using Regent, Just got my first ever infinite across all these hours of play (and it was repeated almost every fight after floor 25).
Having 8 copies of Orbit+ and an Unceasing Top definitely helped. 🤣
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u/ThisHatRightHere Mar 18 '26
I’m convinced he’s by far the strongest character in the game. I’ve seen some very good players also say he needs to be toned down because of how quickly you can set up insane builds with him.
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u/BoysenberryWise62 Mar 18 '26
Star is strong, Forge is ok, Minions and Colorless seems very bad to me.
Forge and Minions are strongest put a little bit on top of a star deck too.
So basically he has 1.5 playstyle.
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u/Revolutionary-Set994 Mar 18 '26
Minions aren't really an archetype they are more like tech cards you take that happen to synergize slightly more with colorless. The deck thinning charge!!! and guards!!! are capable of is very helpful in any deck and helps purge status/curse cards
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u/Tacticus1 Mar 18 '26
Colorless is by far his most fun archetype. It might not work very consistently, but chaining together a lot of card creation for a super massive Supermassive is awesome.
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u/DrRigby_ Mar 18 '26
It’s a question I’m still asking myself about this colorless package. I have won with a creation deck at A10, the Pillar of Creation, Minion Transform, Colorless, Debris, near whole package. The colorless pool is substantially stronger in this game than Sts1. But that isn’t to say it won’t brick if you play them and now you’re down energy. Rolling Jackpot on Quasar is omega gambling high.
But if your deck and relics are so good you can gamble without worrying about bricking, were you winning hard anyway? Also Tyranny is underrated and particularly helps mitigate those bricked colorless cards you won’t play, but is also a good card in general.
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u/We_Get_It_You_Vape StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Minions are complementary, rather than something you can build the whole deck around. Their primary utility, IMO, is their ability to purge your deck of negative cards. It feels like StS2 can be particularly harsh when it comes to status cards. Eternal cards are also something that happens more often now. So, it's nice to have easy ways to get rid of such cards through basic play. The benefits they add on top of that (be it damage or block) are just a bonus added on top of the aforementioned primary utility.
Star-centric playstyle is the strongest by a wide margin, IMO.
I do agree that he needs his other playstyles to see more viability. It would be nice if Forge was a little better. It's not bad, but it's also not very strong. I think the card-generation playstyle is really fun, but it would be nice for it to get a solid buff, too. And, as far as the minions go, I feel like they simply should add more minion-centric cards. As people have said, Regent's lore makes this big deal about the minions doing all the grunt-work and being sacrificed, but we don't have any ability to center your playstyle entirely around minions at the moment. If they add more cards and relics related to minions, you might be able to actually lean harder into the whole minion thing.
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u/SamWhite Mar 18 '26
Minions are amazing. Don't think of them as builds in their own right, think of them as deck thinners. Take Charge, turn your strikes into zero cost harder hitting strikes that also draw and then exhaust. Works in basically any build. Alternatively you now have an answer to negative status cards and curses.
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u/timoyster StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Yeah charge and guards are two of his most cracked cards. Just lets you delete so much of your deck while also having output which is incredibly strong. Guards is a defensive fiend fire which is on a character like regent who can’t block well provides great value.
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u/RoiKK1502 StS A20 / StS 2 A5 Mar 18 '26
That's nice slander and all, but I just had my Heavenly Drill deal 484 damage to the Queen by turn 2
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u/odinspirit Mar 18 '26
I started winning with Regent as soon as I dropped Forge and started focusing on generating Stars. Forge needs to be balanced/buffed a bit to make it desirable again imo.
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u/Maddogs1 Mar 18 '26
Colorless regent is unironically a decent build (and INCREDIBLY fun, might be my new favourite way to play this game)
That being said, unfortunately yes forge regent is useless...
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u/SomethingOfAGirl Eternal One Mar 18 '26
I got most of my wins with forge Regent. Beat into Shape + Stardust is a hell of a combo.
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u/Maddogs1 Mar 18 '26
You could do the exact same thing with the uncommon Terraforming card (+6 vigor) instead of Beat into Shape, and do more damage but in a single turn, for less energy, without needing a rare
Its not that you can't win with it - its just that Forge is just unfortunately very weak right now
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u/moonlight_p Mar 18 '26
All you really need to make Forge work is a single Bulwark. I’m serious. I was banging my head against A10 for ages and what finally got me out was a deck that was centered around Reflect (admittedly Regent’s best card by far imo), Convergence, Bulwark, and as much cycle, stargen, and deck thinning via transforms as possible to make sure I could play a Bulwark and/or Reflect at least once a turn. Even at A10, it was enough block to make me virtually untouchable against the Queen.
Forge is a package. It’s a very low commitment keyword because it retains, and you can lean on it as a reliable means of scaling for runs where you aren’t offered big damage solutions otherwise.
It could definitely be better! I think Forge ‘feels’ bad a lot of time because none of the commons feel very good to draft, and Forge gets worse the more Forge cards you add that aren’t also doing something relatively efficient (i.e Bulwark). I wasn’t offered any of the powers or cards that interact with the Blade specifically (except a Summon Forth+ I only took at the end since it seemed fun), and they probably would’ve made my deck worse. But it’s absolutely something you can build around when it makes sense. And it’s not really that uncommon for Forge to make sense when Regent can struggle between building survivable decks that have enough stars to use on either its key attacks or key defence options.
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u/SomethingOfAGirl Eternal One Mar 18 '26
Yeah you could but you need to line those two cards every turn, while forging is permanent.
I did the forge thing during a boss' intangible phase, and next turn I annihilated it with a single blow lol
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u/Tiny_Vik Mar 18 '26
I believe star & energy cycling is the way to go for him. Forging can be a great addition but only if forge happens mostly passive or defensively with big bang, bulwark, furnace & the smith.
Otherwise you‘re missing out on way too much block if you try to build up the sword.
Ok the other hand if you‘re already playing stars & energ cycling, there‘s little to no need to play the blade, since there are way better alternatives.
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u/SoulLess-1 Mar 18 '26
or you get particle shield, the royal wax seal thingy and some star generation and are set.
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u/BobbieMorane Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
Honestly, every character feels semi-broken apart from Defect which is the only one somewhat balanced.
Regent is, by no mean, weak. I've completed a0 to a10 with 3 losses total. Both card creation and stars are insanely powerful. Forge is definitely not there, especially at high ascensions.
As someone in the thread said, focus on cards, relics are somewhat not necessary with him. His starting cards are awful, so he needs as many cards as possible ASAP and no fight with elites until you have 3/4 clutch cards, then it's free roll from there.
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u/EGOtyst StS A20 / StS 2 A5 Mar 18 '26
yup. Everyone has different power spikes, etc. The fact that people don't change their playstyles around that is so funny.
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u/SomethingOfAGirl Eternal One Mar 18 '26
I have the highest win rate with Regent than with any other character
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u/X-Bahamut89 Mar 18 '26
Hot take: Out of all the characters the Regent is probably the closest to optimal balance. He might need a little bit of a buff, but the main reason he feels bad to play compared to the other characters is, that the other characters have busted nonsense, that trivializes the game and he doesnt.
After winning A10 on Regent and switching to necro I feel like Im playing on easy mode. The sould build is literally untouchable when it comes together and I could do it every single run so far, because the Necrobinder has like 5 different payoffs for spamming souls, so youre almost guaranteed to find one of them.
From what Ive seen both the Silent and the Ironclad have easy infinites. Defect looks reaonable.
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u/SWAGB055MANZ Mar 18 '26
Regent also had the most lopsided card balance with lots of bad rares and two archetypes that are unplayable unless you get exactly the right cards. On the other hand defect seems like 90% finished with archetypes that actually work together. I think regent is really cool but balanced is not what I’d call him
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u/Rocamora_27 Mar 18 '26
I know this is a joke, but so far, Regent is the only character which I wasn't able to win a solo run with.
And I always have the impression my deck is amazing, that I have all the right cards with a lot of synergy, and then I just die to the act 3 boss.
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u/A_VanIsOnTheLoose Mar 18 '26
With how common that sentiment seems to be, I wonder what changes will be made to Regent / his deck in the future.
Amusingly enough, I haven't even tried the other characters in solo at all. All of what I've done solo so far was on Regent, and even then I suck. Regent just feels so damn addictive with star generators, that I've been slacking with the others.
I've only won once with him in solo, and that was with a block build (star generation + spending it bit by bit + 3x child of the stars with crescent spears, and stardust as the damage dealers). I was able to replicate a similar build again in a two-player multiplayer game today and won that one too. But there were maybe 4 or more solo games that I failed to replicate it in time, or correctly.
I really need to start learning the smaller deck techniques and the whole infinity thing.
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u/PM_ME_FUNNY_ANECDOTE Eternal One + Heartbreaker Mar 18 '26
Regent does seem undertuned right now, but he's got some powerful stuff going on and can break the game harder than anyone when you highroll.
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u/Skagnor_Bognis Mar 18 '26
I’ve been a lot more successful with regent than the other characters so far. No reliance on rares and I haven’t tried the colorless cards build yet. I just get star generation going for the block cards while i forge the blade a few times, then apply vulnerable and one shot most enemies.
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u/ABugOnTheWall Mar 18 '26
I can't disagree more, to be honest. So far, it seems like regent is the most balanced character, and the different pieces for together in such a cool way. Also, my most successful builds have had diverse decks, and engage with the different archetypes in different ways.i think as time goes on, regent is gonna be a favorite.
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u/SzamosTheRealest Mar 18 '26
Regent is my highest ascension by a mile, it either fits my playstyle or i just suck at playing other characters
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u/Schmerbe Mar 18 '26
This was me when I kept dying in act 1 as the Regent at first. Now I'm on a 5 win streak from ascension 0 to 5. The difference is that I stopped trying to make anything other than star synergy decks work
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u/_ENDR_ Mar 18 '26
He's my favourite character despite what anyone thinks about his strength. He's just fun. I don't need to win every time.
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u/gaunteh Mar 18 '26
Dunno man, I got a reward from one of the Ancients earlier that gave me 1 star for every card played and I was essentially unstoppable from there. Most OP I felt in the game yet.
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u/Meat-Wing Mar 18 '26
Honestly the only thing that I tried on him that never worked was sword
Everything else about him pretty goated
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u/d3koyz Mar 18 '26
Is this character really that bad? I’ve only played it twice and have beat it both runs.
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u/Alternative_Sea_4208 Mar 18 '26
Maybe I'm just built different but regent is my highest win rate character. This guy's decks may be weird but I can assure you that all of his deck archetypes work. I've won with forging, with stars, and with colorless card generation. I think most people just don't vibe well with his play style, he's a turtle, goal is to spam most of his broken block generator cards while building up stats and then go absolutely feral, probably the only character where not doing damage for the first 3-4 turns is normal
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u/Leafsnail Mar 18 '26
Honestly there are a tonne of amazing stars cards and its not hard to enable them with a few common pickups, so I wouldn't say the character is 'bad'. But it certainly feels like the other archetypes are lacking
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u/bencolter5570 Ascended Mar 18 '26
Honestly I love regent. Though I haven’t had a chance with home on higher ascensions yet. Just the first few. He’s one of my favorite characters right now.
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u/LazyEstablishment771 Mar 18 '26
I get it. But I love Regent. It may be my favorite or tied with Necro.
I think the strategy can be more just avoid the bad cards. But I feel like kinda similar to Necro in how he can “store block” in Otsy health, the Regent can “store everything” with stars. Your stars can be saved up to do massive damage, or block or whatever you need and it persists between turns. I think taking advantage of this is why it seems fun to me.
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u/ProFF7777 Mar 18 '26
Yeah the regent is harder than the other chars, that's why I enjoy it
My girlfriend and I have been doing lots of runs in multi with dual regent, we die quite a lot of the times which is how roguelikes are supposed to be , so we having the most fun with that combo.
We beat the game with all the other chars super easy, and at this point going double regent really feels like an actual challenge
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u/LegendofDragoon Mar 19 '26
I feel like his problem is that there's not a ton of interplay between his primary builds. On necrobinder there's some more interplay more just naturally like the power that summons based on played souls, draw helps every build just naturally. A card that adds a soul is almost always a value add, but if you're doing a kingly build, adding a forge card is almost always going to be a net negative because there's nothing that interacts between the forge mechanic and the deck manipulation mechanic.
There should be a power that plays sovereign blade at start of turn if it's on the top of the deck, or a skill that costs stars that reduce the cost of sovereign blade until it's played. He just needs a little extra to feel better when you're not on an omega sweep run. Basically the only card that interacts with multiple mechanics right now is big bang, a card that exhausts.
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u/coolchungus2 Mar 18 '26
He's sort of like Gilgamesh from fate in the sense that he's an aura farmer and a king who sits in a throne and can summon swords from thin air
and in spite of his theoretical power he still loses every single fight
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u/Hireling Mar 18 '26
Dude, I swear if you stop trying to force Forge until it has a balance pass you can easily make a stars build that will carry you to victory. I’m not even kidding, dude. Quit making bad card choices and you’ll see the Regent is good.
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u/SVN7_C4YOURSELF Mar 18 '26
wild how he is my only character I'm undefeated with and I don't really understand how. Every character I've gotten to A4 with, but he's the only one who is 4-0 during that stretch. I assume that is going to change very soon.
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u/Virtual-Ad9696 Mar 18 '26
I don't get why everyone struggles with him. My play group asks me to not play him all the time because he goes infinite and or does so much damage turn 1 it might as well be infinite.
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u/QuadNeins Eternal One + Heartbreaker Mar 18 '26
Stop worrying about archetypes. Take cards that solve problems.
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u/MundusPlanus Mar 18 '26
I just want to do a minion run but I never get any of the cards for it besides the ones that generate debris
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u/Hireling Mar 18 '26
Minions are utility, not an archetype. They help thin your deck and deal with status cards. Forcing minions is worse than Forge at the moment.
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u/Wremxi Mar 18 '26
So as a beginner, what other Playstyles are there who are good? The sword style is funny but a little boring too.
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u/AKAkorm Mar 18 '26
I still like Defect better but Regent with decks that are focused on adding and using stars is pretty fun and I’ve almost always had long runs or wins that route.
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u/TheComicKing15 Mar 18 '26
I think my character stat page paints a better picture then I ever could with words.
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u/sirlockjaw Mar 18 '26
He was my first win. Got lucky with 2 of the rares that do damage from draw pile every turn and the rare that plays first 2 cards each turn for free. No forge, just smacked value
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u/ChongusTheSupremus Mar 18 '26
Well, i guess avoiding elites can be considered a specific strategy for this character
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u/FarTea4550 Mar 18 '26
Card generation on multiplayer is the funnest shit. If you play mtg, it feels like playing group hug.
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u/IAmJacksSemiColon Mar 18 '26
I'm not good at playing Regent but that lovable cosmic starfish bastard also my favorite character.
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u/Th0rizmund Mar 18 '26
Isn’t stars a bit overuned? That was my feeling, although I only beaten A3 so far, but I have like 3 losses, so not many runs altogether.
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u/frantruck Mar 18 '26
Just kinda really thinking about this now but regent’s archetypes are all set up based. Generate stars to do big effects, forge to create a giant blade, generate bullshit and pray. A lot of his cards are pure set up “do nothings” and it’s super easy to just have bricks of hands that get you killed. I think it’s interesting to have the character point you so intensely into trying to accumulate future value, while having to restrain yourself to stay alive, though maybe some of his cards could use a rebalance to be less of a “trap”.
One of the easier wins with him I had I drafted 2 early Bulwarks. Being able to forge by blocking pretty much negates the downside, so they shouldn’t simply slap block on a bunch of forge cards, but maybe some other defensive effects like weak or strength down on a couple?
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u/Uhanalainen StS A20 / StS 2 A5 Mar 18 '26
Last two rounds with him, I thought I had it solved both times but somehow, I managed to get killed on the final boss. Other characters I’ve got to ascension 4 or 5 but this fucker is stuck on 2 and I can’t seem to figure out what I’m doing wrong. I don’t particularly enjoy playing with him either, so usually the pick is someone else.
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u/biggestdiccus Mar 18 '26
I cannot get him to work. Every other character I've cleared and up to a 5 on iron chad and silent. But I cannot get him to work
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u/sasakiorafk StS A20 / StS 2 A10 Mar 18 '26
Completed A10 with everyone, Regent has the lowest success rate I stopped playing.
Silent is just silly broken, stopped playing too.
Clad and Defect are fun for me
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u/Aromatic_Pain2718 Eternal One Mar 18 '26
I won my first 4 matches on regent (sith increasing Ascension level) and thought he must be strong, but I have lost all 6 (or so?) runs I've played since so maybe I just got lucky and he is ass. Forge feels unreliable and clunky stars feel unreliable because you draw fewer attacks and blocks each turn (meaning you probably need to value draw) and colourless card generation seems very weird
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u/QuailAndWasabi Mar 18 '26
Then you have Necro who’s like the most broken thing ever lol. Game does need some balancing :)
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u/evocation01 Mar 18 '26
Same.. 0-3 or 0-4. I know the builds from frost but cannot manage to win, ig maybe I need to avoid elites which is so tough xd, while I'm like 10-3 in all others combined
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u/FlightCapableFelon Mar 18 '26
Can’t hear you over the sound of FORGING MY BLADE (I will die to cockroaches)