I achieved my first Ascension 20 win both as Ironclad and as Silent

I have been intensively playing Slay the Spire since late 2024. I have always heard that Slay the Spire is a hard game and 1,000 hours is probably just a beginning, especially if you are trying to become good at Ascension 20. I do not know how I managed to persist in Slay the Spire as I would usually only be in for relaxing games where I just messed around. But somehow I did, and I did find its charm.

Starting out I was too scared to play the game myself. I found it hard to evaluate every card added and determined if I should buy a potion or remove a card. At this moment I would usually turn to my skilled friend, who was experienced. Actually, he ended up playing the whole run for me. I watched as he chose from each card reward and bought stuff from the shop. Through watching I got to develop a general idea of what card or potion was powerful and what was mediocre. Besides, I also got to learn what was especially powerful in one fight but not so otherwise. Eventually, I developed a general rationale as to running a Slay the Spire run.

With days, my ascension builds up, albeit with the help of my friend. In the meantime, I also explored online StS guides and community. I joined the official Discord channel and started discussing StS stuff with pros from around the world. Hardly did I know that I would take a significant shift in my knowledge of Slay the Spire. It had changed my evaluation of every card and the general strategy on pathing. Previously, I had played Slay the Spire with Save and Exit, which could reverse an error made. I had thought this was a generally accepted practice in Slay the Spire gameplay until I got familiar with the English community. So actually gameplay that allowed for Save and Exit was actually what the Chinese community extensively did. Slay the Spire was not designed with this in mind. Fortunately, the developers did not consider such gameplay bad, so they did not disable Save and Exit. However, I was quite spellbound about Slay the Spire then. I wanted to dig deeper to get the most of it, to face the challenge, and to become good in Slay the Spire, if not expert. Then I decided to take the challenge and play Ascension 20 with no Save and Exit.

The challenge was obviously so enormous that I had never anticipated, even though I did work up to it mentally. I keep making bad choices and getting killed by the hostile and unforgiving enemies in Slay the Spire. As hard as I try, I did not seem to make it through. I felt quite frustrated and defeated. There were times where I would like to just quit it and never launch Slay the Spire again. Did I? Well luckily I managed to conquer all these bad feelings. I did it not on my own, however, but with the help of the great people in Discord channel. I posted my feelings about how I felt defeated after several tens of tries and how I found it hopeless. They all said that it was totally normal as Slay the Spire was a hard game. I remembered one guy mentioned another in the channel and told me how he failed lots of runs, that the number of his failed runs was greater than other active members in this channel, and that this did not prevent him from being a great player after he learned from his failures. I felt greatly encouraged by his words and kept trying. And from this time on I did not just play randomly as this would not improve my skills. I took extra time to think when I was to choose from several cards which were equally competitive. If I could not figure out which card to get, I would post it and the map ahead on Discord. The people in the channel were really great. They would help me decide on a good card, not just by giving a simple answer, but with explanation of the current situation of my run and of the rationale behind the card choose. Gradually, I became more experienced and I could feel that my gameplay was smoother than before. Finally, when the first successful Ascension 20 run came, I was more than excited. I thought yeah, I made it.

So this is what I have been through and what I have been feeling during the time when I was struggling to win an Ascension 20 run. I will share some statistics of my failed Ascension 20 runs and talk about my takeaway from them in the next post. Stay tuned!