I enjoy this part of strategy, and this is the reason I normally play on a few ascension levels below maximum. I usually do not pick ‘remove affinity’ and ‘reduce reward options’ ascensions.
Yeah, I guess this aspect of strategy is only the quests on full ascensions, and I do feel like I’m missing out on some builds, for example I never managed to pull off an ice build. So I do plan on playing more without these ascensions at some point. But I also like to kind of explore and master one way of playing the game at a time, so for now I mostly stick to max ascensions.
I’d prefer having a monocle over fireproof gloves when going to the lava pit.
On high stages, Fireproof Gloves do help significantly against enemies’ Burn damage.
It’s true that in more specific circumstances, fireproof gloves can be better.
It’s difficult to guess how dangerous burning practically is because it might be easy to unintentionally savescum if you do encounter really bad luck with burning.
I almost auto-pick Abacus with Mage, since increased Ivory Tower block is (usually) enough to offset the spikes of enemy damage. Also, I feel I was punished for having Abacus by Frozen Giant / Ice Dragon far more often than by Eye of Dilemma.
Right, if you don’t have Ivory Tower, those would more often be a problem with using abacus.
It might be a max ascensions thing, one of mage’s starting deck weaknesses is a lack of offense, so Eyes of Dilemma are one of the main threats, because you can’t always avoid the Chaos Realms. And Ivory Tower is already good enough, after all the game doesn’t assume that you’ll find Abacus.
My second-place usage of abacus was with second chance / brainstorm. I guess on a character that could reliably deal with 3 (4?) eyes as well as an Ice Dragon etc., it can be good to pick up abacus. But that’s already a pretty strong character unless the abacus itself makes the difference.
I meant floor(greed * 0.03 * number of effects) effects
Ah, I see. That’s also better in that one regard. But yeah, this seems like it would be convoluted to explain in total.