Game:

Slay The Spire (2017)

Duration: 5:09

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4

This is a demonstration of a portion of the All Achievements Glitchless route relating to Silent's unlocks.

In the speedrun, you want Silent's 1st-4th unlocks, primarily for the following:
- Catalyst, Corpse Explosion: Poison achievements (Plague, Catalyst)
- Smiling Mask, The Courier: Helps a lot with Watcher removes in Asc. Climb
- Accuracy: Makes shivs insanely powerful, shiv build being used for Ninja achievement
- **Pandora's Box**: Insanely good boss relic, helps lucking into cards and thinning deck

Honorable mentions:
- Du-Vu Doll: A10+ Vajra is nice
- Cloak and Dagger: Desperation pick for shiv build
- Tiny Chest: Possibly less monsters in ? rooms

It turns out that seeded, custom and daily runs will contribute to these unlocks, even though they disable achievements and leaderboards. Because custom runs give you many choices between modifiers and has instant access to A20 (which boosts score), it is the best option to grind out score for unlocks.

How unlocks work:

There are 5 score thresholds for each unlock (5 total):
- 1st unlock: 300
- 2nd unlock: 750
- 3rd: 1000
- 4th: 1500
- 5th: 2000

The game will add your final run score to your total unlock score. If you cross an unlock threshold, you unlock new unlocks, and your remaining score carries over for the next unlock. However, you cannot unlock more than one set of unlocks for each run. The game will cap your score to be 1 point before the next unlock if you were to unlock multiple unlocks in one run, e.g. if you end with a score of 1500 with no unlocks, the game will unlock the 1st unlock, and then you will end up with 999 score, preventing you from getting a 2nd unlock. This means that you have to do a minimum number of runs to achieve a specific number of unlocks.

What this means for the speedrun is that for the early unlocks, you don't want to do a full run obtaining score, because most of it will be wasted. So you want to obtain just enough score and then abandon the run. This is where Custom Mode enters. For the first 2 unlocks, the 4 relevant modifiers are Draft, Hoarder, Insanity, and Specialized. Insanity gives you a 50 card deck of commons and uncommons, Hoarder multiples the amount of cards added by 3 (except for Insanity and other modifiers), Specialized gives you 5 (15 with Hoarder) of a purely random card, and Draft lets you pick 15 (* 3 = 45 with Hoarder) cards. Already, you achieve the Encyclopedian bonus (50 card deck), netting 50 score. The Collector bonus gives you 25 score for each set of cards with 4+ copies. These bonuses will apply even if you immediately abandon run. To achieve the 1st and 2nd unlocks in 2 runs, the ideal score is 525 per run (300+750 = 1050 = 525*2). With 19 Collector bonuses and the Encyclopedian bonus, you end up with 19 * 25 + 50 = 525 score. However, the probability of such a final deck obtained via clicking one card column (based on simulations with the actual game logic) is ❮0.0000001%, requiring botting to find, which I haven't learned how to do yet. Instead, I use a seed that gives 375 score, netting me the 1st and 2nd unlocks in 3 runs.

Based on initial timings (17 seconds per run), doing this full seeded run is actually slower than relying on Collector + Encyclopedian, even with only 375 score per run. The main motivation behind the full run is related to how the game decides Act bosses. From a fresh file, the game will choose the Act boss starting from a predefined order, shown below for each act:
- Act 1: The Guardian, Hexaghost, Slime Boss
- Act 2: The Champ, Bronze Automaton, The Collector
- Act 3: Awakened One, Donu and Deca, Time Eater

Once you encounter the boss in a fight, the game will cycle to the next boss (even on loss), until all bosses have been cycled through, which then the game will randomly choose the boss (Note: this does not apply to Daily Runs). By doing this full run, we can guarantee our next bosses will be Hexaghost, Bronze Automaton, and Donu and Deca. Guaranteed Donu and Deca is extremely useful, as we must Feed off of Donu for the Ooh Donut! achievement. You do the Asc. Climb with Watcher, meaning you only ever do two runs with Ironclad (for Ruby and Ruby+ achievements). By the time you unlock the Heart, the Act 3 boss will be random, so it is best to reset if you don't get Ooh Donut! in the 1st Ironclad run. By doing this custom run, we can simultaneously get Silent unlocks AND advance the Act 3 boss to Donu and Deca, which improves reset efficiency compared to doing a non-custom run with another character (which would be Defect).

The seed itself is good for it being found manually instead of using a program to search it, given that it gets Juzu Bracelet early and Coffee Dripper for instantaneous Campfires. The amount of encounters in the run is not ideal (the ideal should be 3), and I had to take an extra encounter from a ? room to get more favourable ? luck in the subsequent rooms AND to avoid getting a Writhe from the Boss (from the Cursed Run modifier).

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