Astultane's variety art dump

Currently Playing: Slay the Spire II

[astultane]

Hello!

- Expect a variety of games to be featured here (but there will be moments of fixation). Original works might also appear here if I ever feel like it. - I won't really be reblogging or doing much outside of just putting my art here since this blog is more of a personal thing if that makes sense. - If you want to ask me about anything, go ahead. You can refer to me how you want.

[astultane]

super quick redraw doodle based on last years art month cause I was bored. 2025 version below cut

[astultane]

Do you feel it, old friend? We were always at the end. Don't worry too much about it We were trying to understand what lies beyond a point of no return. It's a free play, buddy. Clock's all zeroes. You and me will laugh about it for a long, long, long, long time. Perhaps that is why you need to wake up, little visitor. It's after the end of the world. It will be good, I promise you that!

[astultane]

some young girls ride a train

(you can also watch it on yt here if you want i guess)

[astultane]

Beat A10 on Regent a few days ago and thought why not draw fat and sneaky gremlin getting blasted y'know like thats a really normal thought to have right (below the cut is my thoughts on getting regent to A10 and gameplay design wise)

So, I beat Regent on A10 quite a while ago and while I do really like his animations and aesthetic I feel like the regent's cards could have used a bit more work. I think on lower ascension you could run most archetypes, and it would work fine. But on A9+ is where I started to lose quite a lot of runs, which is where enemies deal more damage or have more impactful effects. The whole star archetype is sort of the main archetype that has some consistency in being viable because it's like the only way to access any amount of good block on this character in the form of particle wall/reflect/cloak of stars/child of the stars which is a bit unfortunate. A lot about regent also feels more heavily impacted by RNG draws because you need to first draw star gain and then draw payoffs, so to counteract it you basically need like at minimum 2 glow's for any tolerable consistency that won't completely screw you over. The forge archetype is fun but sadly is just so weak when focused on it especially at the higher ascensions I feel. I think taking like 2-3 good forge cards is all you really need because as long as you can make a solid 2 cost retain damage card that's already good enough. The main issue with it is just if you focus too much on forge then you won't have stars for block so you just get out scaled before you can setup and you lose. It also massively relies on seeking edge and summon forth to mitigate its deadly cons of losing to basically any aoe fight which happens to be a lot of them in slay the spire 2. If I was part of the balancing, I would change furnace to maybe anytime you forge, forge 6 or something. Refine blade should have some block on it so it isn't a 1 mana do nothing on the turn played. Beat into shape could be reworked maybe into like a 2-cost gain block equal to the damage on sovereign blade. Parry could maybe be like instead of when playing sovereign blade give block, it could be if sovereign blade is in your hand, gain 4 block at the end of your turn or something. The colorless archetype I've never ran because it just looks terrible. Like other than manifest authority I don't think I've taken any other colorless archetype card. It sucks because stuff like bundle of joy, spectrum shift, and quasar just need simple changes to make them pickable. Bundle of joy just needs the cards it makes to be free to play this turn, spectrum shift just needs to cost 1 without an upgrade, quasar should reduce the cost of the card it adds by 1 this turn. There's also this thing around redrawing cards repeatedly like kingly punch/kingly kick with cosmic indifference or photon blade but it just again scales way too slowly for any practical use cases outside of like maybe the act 1 bosses but even without the kingly cards you still get value from putting other cards on top of the deck to setup for next turn anyways. What it sort of felt like at high ascension is you basically try and force stars first always and then maybe if you pick up like bulwark or the smith do you add in a couple of the other good forge cards like summon forth and then ignore pretty much everything else unless you need to solve a specific problem that your deck isn't equipped to handle right now. Anyways I have more thoughts but its getting long so if you actually read to this point that's impressive and have a nice rest of your day.

[astultane]

Finished the main storyline (so far) of wawagenics mewgenics and I couldn't help correlating slugcats to the collar colors while playing. (My thoughts on mewgenics as a game below. I don't want to double post)

Mewgenics was overall a pretty good time, although there's some interesting decisions that didn't quite sit right with me. For example, events where you have no say over the outcome feels really bad. I got the bird madness "weather" or something while I had a druid and I didn't lose the run but having a 20+hp enemy crow now spawn on my party for the rest of the area due to an event where I couldn't change the outcome just seemed incredibly cheap. The crater lets you pick out of 3 predetermined weathers so why can't the random ones let you choose too? Another one is certain combats where enemies can damage you before any cats even take their turn, which is annoying for the same reason that I can't have done much about it. Those two points were mostly my only major qualms with the game, and I had a better time with this than TBOI which I couldn't really ever get into. Anyways If you're reading this that's cool have a nice day I kept it short.

[astultane]

Mag gi mojama (The shadows call) Haj taw iska. (And I answer.)

(inspo below cut)

So... this idea kind of had the most random beginning of all time. Deadlock started really blowing up recently and to my surprise there's an SOS mod for Calico by user Kurenai_Chi and Calico's ult voiceline went hard in the showcase. Deadlock Sliver of Straw Showcase Originally the text was just going to be normal, but I thought hey why not try translating it into Yongsabi from Opashoo. Yeah it makes no sense because it's SOS saying the line but it's cool and hopefully I didn't screw up the translation.

I suppose this is also loosely based off something I drew like 2 years ago involving Spearmaster and Artificer that I never posted cause it sucked.

[astultane]

Found some secret lost panels from DITF and thought I'd share them.

[astultane]

F-F-F-Face of Puzzle Pieces (inspo below cut)

Been dancing to saint motel recently and this album cover along with the song puzzle pieces in the album reminded me of mae a lot so yeah thats pretty much it

[astultane]

Do you feel it, old friend? The sensation of time folding in on itself? The spiraling offshoot of another's reality wrapping around your own?

[astultane]

A couple quick rough sketches based off art I made almost 2 years ago atp

[astultane]

quick drawing of a less edgy version of my only oc at 1am instead of studying im so cooked

[astultane]

was figuring out how to draw humanoids better and thought it would be neat to redraw one of my earliest works a year later ft. a friend's deepwoken character

[astultane]

average night in the city experience (extra yaps below the line for my thoughts on the game after finishing)

Finished library of ruina a few days ago and verdict is it's a masterpiece in worldbuilding yet still solid everywhere else. My only complaints worth noting would be like maybe a select few fights (crying children please die, red hooded mercenary please don't lowroll), ui getting really messy especially towards the end of the game, and the tutorials being pretty bad. As much as people talk about the difficulty spike being vertical, I honestly found the difficulty curve to be pretty well done. Even stuff like the infamous queen of hatred took me two tries and I was attempting it the moment it was available.

Some other praises I would like to give are that the story is really nice but especially the sequences that surround it are really powerful. None of them made me cry like some other games I hold highly but they were enough to make me have a reaction and going damn. Also a lot of cool small things to pick up that foreshadow future events. Anyways yeah if you actually read any of this thats cool i'll just put some other random poorly drawn sketches i drew here i suppose.

[astultane]

Silksong Club ft. the choral kids

[astultane]

coughing hornet vs hydrogen bilewater (Long opinion on the overall game below from random internet person will get into spoilers including the last last act)

I kind of just made this cause I wanted to briefly throw out my thoughts on silksong after finishing the final act yesterday (and yes I mean the actual final act) after a total playtime of around 40 hrs which i think is pretty standard considering i did not get anywhere near fully 100%. The game is like a 9/10. I considered having it lower but the fact that TC already seems to understand it would be pretty mean to have it below a 9 especially given some parts of the game. Best way I can describe the game is that it has some absolute cinema highs and scattered across are some more minor lows that add up and can get annoying. I wanted to give my imo more balanced and nuanced takes on a lot of the larger discussions thats been surrounding Silksong than what a lot of people have been throwing out there.

#1 The Bait Bench/Shop Discussion

I think the bait benches and that one shop that closes on you make for a memorable moment whether positive or negative and fits into the lore that the areas usually provide. All of these benches and even the shop are fixable and can be made to function properly again fit for regular gameplay use.

However, I think TC greatly overestimated how many players would naturally seek to fix them because the game never really suggests or makes it clear that they're fixable. These don't need to be removed from the game but it should be more obvious through the environment on the fact that these can be fixed and how seeing as there's actual large gameplay ramifications if they aren't fixed.

#2 The 2 Damage / General Difficulty Discussion (the big one)

Ok so this is the biggest discussion on the game currently and I think it has its merits to an extent. Theres a lot of split discussions within this one so ill split it up further.

Contact Damage & Iframes - Yeah they should stay the same. Yes its annoying at times but its a necessary evil since clearly the reason it was implemented is because TC wanted to disincentivize the damage tanking strategies from HK since it goes against the spirit of a boss fight. They should disable contact damage on staggers though i think that's fair. 2 Damage Norm/Pogo - 2 damage being the norm makes sense especially in the midgame and lategame because of the heal being much more powerful and abusable. BUT... the game could have done a better job at easing players who perhaps did not expect this level of difficulty or are new to silksong into the game. I dont think any boss or enemy before moorwing should deal 2 masks of damage. And enemies/bosses should should gradually have more 2 damage attacks. Everything in Act 2 damage wise can stay the way it is considering its really only the very early game thats the problem. Widow is one of the best designed bosses imo and part of the reason is because about half of their moves deal 1 and the other half deals 2 which fits for being the main story boss between act 1 and 2. - The pogo complaint does kind of make no sense once you get like a few hours into the game and you get the reaper or wanderer but the diagonal pogo could use a few adjustments to make it feel better to use. Namely when you hear the pogo sound but you somehow still take damage from the environment so maybe some frames of environmental damage immunity after a pogo could help mitigate it im not sure.

#3 The Economy - im not gonna comment on this because its already being addressed

#4 The Runback Discussion - I dont think anyone is against nearly complete elimination of most runbacks from the game. Part of what makes First Sinner, imo the best fight and design in all of silksong, such a great boss is that there is NO runback. There totally could have been, but TC made the decision to not have you spawn back at the bench every time for this fight even though the runback would have been shorter than some others in the game. And its awesome in part because of it. - Im also going to throw in runbacks including the enemy gauntlets that some bosses have you do before fighting them. I think making it so that once you reach the boss at the end of the gauntlet, on restarting it should make you only do the last wave before the boss as a bit of a warmup instead of all waves. Bilewater sucks because of this. Skarrsinger Karmelita, which is otherwise a phenomenal fight, also suffers a bit because of this. The high halls conductor gauntlet also sucks for this reason. #5 Bilewater - this one isnt really a discussion because its basically universally agreed that this is the most miserable part in the game and I have not seen a single positive statement regarding this region and any of its content outside of its general themes. Bilewater can literally just be completely deleted from the game and the game would benefit dramatically from it. #6 Misc Personal Nicher Thoughts/Observations - It's hard coming up with many creative boss designs and ideas. But does every large enemy really need a move thats just attempt to ram into player. Maybe its a psychological thing but I feel like anytime i'm hit by a weapon it just naturally feels more fair and like an actual duel compared to by a giant body where it feels more cheap and lazy. - Maybe I missed it, but it kind of urks me that after the regular grandmother silk ending that theres no indication that the game is not really finished. I feel like if the existence of an act 3 wasnt spoiled to literally every single person the moment it was uncovered then a lot of people would have never known what is the most fun part of the game. - This isn't in the larger discussion since the general public hasn't reached act 3 yet, but making you refight some area gauntlets but voided is just annoying, and making enemy spawns in boss fights is also just incredibly annoying and unnecessary. I went to go do the double moss mother fight in act 3 and they were BOTH voided which never happens outside of act 3. - This is a hot take but tools could use a small rework/redesign as a whole. Some tool combinations just completely break the game and how its intended to be played and tying it to a resource makes some peoples hoarder/"what if i need it later" mindset kick in. You can basically skip the last phase of any fight by just spamming poison cogfly + some other tool fit for the enemy type like tacks or boomerang which I don't think was the intended way to play considering it seemed like you were supposed to mix them in with your normal nail attacks. TLDR; game good, some stuff not so good, go read the thing if you wanted to im probably missing some stuff and could have made it shorter but oh well.

[astultane]

Still remember this quote to this day.