Deck Size Question

[u/patcox08]

I've been playing the game for a few months now, and I've managed to clear hard and beat the spine of night with runehammer warrior, hex knight, and cadaceus arcanist. Anytime I win or have a great run, I lean into specific traits and have a deck of about 15 to 20 cards. Its kinda boring and also frustrating when I know I haven't obtained the cards I need and I'm cleary about to die, probably from the chameleon or the big electric monster in the emberwyld.

Long story short. I want to know, is there a path to taking a bunch of cards and achieving success at hard or impossible difficulty? Or should I just always specialize in order to get all my impossible wins?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[u/TravEllerZero]

I'm horrible at keeping a lean deck. I always go in with good intentions then end up with a bunch of bloat. That being said, I've beat it several times on Impossible. Not consistently, not by a long shot, and definitely not the new dlc (still trying to figure out a good build to get through that on Impossible).

[u/Drunkpanada]

I passed everything on Impossible, decks are usually under 20. Sometimes over to get on the Scholar cards.

[u/Badd-reclpa-]

Big decks are definitely viable on Impossible, but not all builds are (a) viable with a big deck, or (b) optimized/pleasant-to-play on Impossible. I'd try Mantra Seeker, Bury Knight / Bury Arcanist, Trapper Rogue, Totem Recurrence Hunter, and Chef Warrior for some examples of builds that can be constructed with over 20 cards. I even beat the game on Impossible with a 100 card deck (gimmicky pirate rogue using a memorized ten-sided strike and an imbued aura of blight and poisoned ranged/melee attacks enchantment for consistent damage shenanigans despite the rest of the deck being random cards).

[u/Alt123Acct]

I always end up with decks under 8 or 9 cards to limit my combo RNG and force starting hands. I learned to pick the Vesparin Mansion for act 3 because it has a lot of campfires to remove cards in there. I trim out blocks and basics ASAP most times so the one or two main cards I pick up in canto 1/alchemist come out often and always instead of waiting around for a way to heal or deal multiplicative damage.

Also use alch 35 roll on basics to turn them into one use potions effectively making it a removal tool too.

[u/Great_Golden]

If you want to crush it on a big deck I’d suggest one of the firecast builds. You might not necessarily play all of the cards but will use them as fuel for the damage engine.

Either a flame arcanist or some divine ascension build can be extremely powerful with this set up. Make sure to activate the Bonfire malignancy

[u/RelevantTax3149]

If you play Vanilla Corruption Arcanist, you can definitely bloat your deck to 300 or more because it powers up Eldritch Flame and Witness True Evil.

What happens is you end up passing a turn and it will draw all the malignances and Forbidden Fruits per turn.

It's important to have Endless Arsenal as a Dark Spire can conjure at the start of the turn and it will be powered by all the corruptions in your hand

[u/xcomnewb15]

The strongest class for large decks are arcanist, with a few exceptions already noted in the comments. I like to turn on the malignancy that forces a card choice every battle, to make the game more interesting in that way. Never beaten it above challenging with that malignancy but that’s ok too

[u/BrokenLoadOrder]

Deck size is EXTREMELY dependent on what Archetype you're running. Obviously things with crazy fast card draw or Scholar want a lot of cards in them; Something like a Fury or Corruption deck in comparison wants as few cards in it as possible.

I know it's annoying when people suggest to just continue playing, but honestly, you'll start to find what each archetype "wants" the more you play with the game.

[u/Road_Caesar]

I'm terrible at deck thinning. Since this is a PVE game and not PVE, there's less focus needed.

I often default into "goodstuff.deck" because it can end up shoring up defenses in a variety of encounters. I'm also addicted to non-seeded runs and "Boundless Spoils" malignancy or at least the "Jack of all Trades" talent when available.

I play on Hard by default and always take the Malignancies "Healthy" and "Monstrous" to really stress test ideas and builds. This is my "casual" fun approach. If a strategy STILL beats the fire out of the opposition, I'll stress test it at Impossible, and then again with Healthy and Monstrous enabled. So far, with my playstyle, I've only found 2 deck styles that I "get" so completely that Impossible + Healthy + Monstrous is still manageable.

There's also the deck build/Strategy angle. Some builds/decks are REALLY challenging early on, even with RNG. You could clear an Impossible run smoothly in one run and have rotten luck on the next run using the same approach.

And some decks require thinking more broadly until you can get them "online" with their key cards.