Sorry to disturb, but bad player here still trying to work out how to beat the Skull Storm. Any general advice on how to defeat it?
Absolutely, happy to help! This response ran a little long, so I’ll put the rest of it under the cut.
There's really two key components you need to consistently keep track of to win your skull storm runs, those being:
1) making sure you have a surefire way to deal 6 damage on your first turn (especially important for map 3 when the totems get more dangerous and combats can quickly overwhelm you), and
2) having a contingency plan to get past the Bear Rush on phase 2 of each boss battle.
The first point here is fairly easy to succeed with, at least more so than the second, and this is by manipulating an internal game mechanic present throughout the entirety of Inscryption, called fairHand- which essentially makes sure you always have at least one usable card that isn't a pelt you can place down on the first or second turn. fairHand accounts for every kind of card in Inscryption, including energy- and mox-cost cards, as well as rules for bones, but the only important part of this we need to know for skull storm is the rule for the blood cards: essentially, a squirrel and two other cards are drawn, and if either of those does not have a blood cost equal to the number of free cards you have in your hand (ideally only the squirrel, meaning one blood cost), then the last card you draw will always be a card of that cost.
How to use this to your advantage requires you to be pretty careful with your deck management over the course of the run- in order to consistently win combats quickly and effectively, you need to stick to a single 1-blood cost card for the entirety of the run, since you'll always draw it on the first turn, and do everything you can to not have to pick up any other 1-blood cost cards for the rest of the run, or to get rid of them as quickly as possible- via sacrifice stones, campfires if you haven't gotten rid of the survivors yet, or the rare bone lord event. (It's also probably best to avoid picking free cards along the way too, like tadpoles, since they can mess with your fairHand.)
I should also note, that any starting deck can win a skull storm run, including the Curious Egg deck! Some are certainly easier to do so than others, but it is possible to win with any of them through playing carefully and maybe with a little luck.
Here are a few notable good 1-cost cards to consider picking up, plus a few notes on each:
Black Goat - excellent for when you have a lot of high cost cards that you've buffed fairly well, and is even included in the high cost starting deck. Best buffs to consider are Undying (when you have many high cost cards to play) and Searcher (when you have a single powerful card, ideal for winning on the first turn.)
Warren/Beehive - helpful in the same vein as the Black Goat, but only Excellent with the Undying sigil. Generating large amounts of undying rabbits or bees (which you can then use to play the Warren or Beehive again) is the ultimate recursive strategy to play just about any card you have. (Warning: Bees also fly and deal 1 damage and work with Insect totems while rabbits don't- but be VERY careful, as Beehives require them to be HIT first to spawn your bees, and they cannot stop flying enemies. My suggestion to solve this is to either stock well up on items or somehow put the Mighty Leap sigil on your Undying Beehive as well, whether via fusing two different Beehives with each sigil at the Mycologist event, or with an Insect-Mighty Leap totem.)
It should be worth noting that the Skink can also perform the same role as the Beehive as mentioned, with the same shortcomings as it requires being struck first, but has its own benefits and detriments as well- it requires space in combat to move to, and only leaves a single tail behind before it is killed, but this tail also keeps any sigil inscribed on the Skink, as well as retains the Skink's stat improvements from campfires.
Mantis, Mantis God - these cards are good if you want to deal damage directly on turn 1 rather than setup- and can even win right away, if the Mantis is buffed to 3 power or the Mantis God to 2. The Mantis God deck notably already starts with one, although the two ringworms with it can make it hard to use since they're also 1-cost and can trigger fairHand- although they're actually less difficult to get rid of, since they come with the Annoying sigil, which you can put onto another card you don't care about at the sacrifice stones, and the second one gets fed to the campfire folks, obviously.
The Mantis and Mantis God's Bi-strike and Tri-strike sigils make them work well as 1-cost cards, but you could put their sigils onto just about any other 1 cost card instead, as long as it's powerful enough to make use of them, if you really wanted. However, using them in tandem with each other is better- since they'll strike 5 times instead of the usual 2 or 3.
Outside of our Mantis buddies, the purpose of most of these 1-cost cards are to make the rest of your cards easy to play- and what really cinches your win is filling the rest of you deck with cards you can win with. Some easy clues to keep an eye out for:
Grizzly - by itself it isn't that helpful, but it's bulky and strong enough at 4/6 to be something to keep you standing until the next turn, at least- and even better if you buff its power with a campfire. It's a more worthwhile card if you put sigils on it like Bi-Strike, or...
Double Strike (and to a lesser extent Dire Wolf Pups) - Dire Wolves naturally have Double Strike, which you can sac onto just about any card with 3 power or higher (some common cards are Moose Bucks, Wolves, Wild Bulls, Great Whites, even Grizzlies) as an easy win card if you draw it turn 1. Alternatively, if you have a Dire Wolf or Dire Wolf Pup on hand and none of these other cards, you can buff them at a campfire and boost their power by 1 (no risk involved) to get a 3 power Dire Wolf and win with that. Double Strike cards are also the most common method of getting past the Bear Rush, since they only need one opposing tile to be free to work. All these cards are fantastic to put Double Strike on, but my personal favorite is to save it for my dear Lammergeier, which I'll speak about in a moment.
It's helpful to have as many of these cards as you can manage, especially if your 1-cost doesn't have the Searcher sigil to find the card you want.
Now, for point 2), the Bear Rush.
Since every phase two boss fight is the same, you can plan around all three of them relatively similarly, depending on what cards you have- although most of the time it will be rng based, since often you will need to pick up items along the way in between boss fights. Here are a few strategies that work:
Scissors/Carving Knife/Wiseclock + 5 damage - The concept behind this is simple- just use an item to remove a bear or otherwise create an empty space on the opponent’s side, then attack that space with 5 damage however you can- whether from a card attack forward, attacking to the side via bi-strike, adding a damage from pliers, whatever works. However, this only works that turn, since the bear behind it will come forward to fill the space on the opponent’s turn. Other means of getting opening up a space such as attacking with a death touch card and then attacking that space for 5 damage or more also works, but isn’t as easy to set up (however, this also means you don’t have to rely on items at all). One other thing about the Wiseclock in particular- the placement of your cards especially matters here, as you could end up accidentally blocking your win card, or even sending your win card to the opposing side. If you’re using a wiseclock and have a win card that attacks the space directly opposing it, put it on the second column from the left, and if your card attacks to the side, put it on the third column from the left instead. This will plop your cards exactly into the places they need to be once you use your wiseclock.
Brute Force (+ optional Hourglass) - This strategy is usually reserved for very late in the run, when you’ve had more chances to buff your deck and pick up powerful cards. Essentially, if you have a card that attacks the same tile twice (whether with Double strike or having both Bi- and Tri-strike sigils) and has a power of 6 or higher, then as long as you play that card and you are able to attack with it on the first turn of Bear Rush, you will win. If you have cards that can only deal 6 damage total to a single space instead, that works too, but only if you have an Hourglass item to stall the turn, or enough cards in your hand to stall TWO turns, to give you a chance to take out the second bear and then attack on the third turn of Bear Rush. Items such as spare Frozen Possums or Boulders can also help to stall, and both last at least two turns of Bear Rush. This strategy can be a bit spooky to pull off, but with strong enough cards you can win.
Magic Bleach + Fan or Flying cards - This strategy is clear enough, especially if you have a Fan to give flight to your non-bird cards: use magic bleach on the first turn of Bear Rush to remove the Mighty Leap sigils (I just had an unrelated thought of how terrifying bears would be if they could leap into the air like that), then play as many flying cards as you can to add up to 5 damage, using a Fan if you have one if necessary, and win. However, bird cards aren’t usually very powerful, with few exceptions, and it’s easier to pull this off if you have a Fan. This isn’t the only strategy Flying cards are essential to, though...
Starvation stall, Flying card - really for your last ditch effort attempts, like running into a boss with no items or you had to use your items to survive phase 1, no cards powerful enough to brute force it, and maybe you have a Fan or you stocked up on some good flying cards but never picked up any Magic Bleach to go with it. This strategy can be pretty tricky to pull off, but it’s really your best bet if you have nothing else. The strategy is essentially this: stall in phase 1 of the boss fight for as long as you can (usually easiest with Trapper or Angler, at least in map 1) so you draw almost all your cards, then defeat the boss’s phase one on exactly the turn you draw your last card- but don’t play your good flying card to win. The idea here is that as soon as the Bear Rush rolls out and it passes to your turn again where you draw a card, a Starvation card will replace ONE of the bears at the front- which critically, does not have the Mighty Leap sigil on it. As soon as the Starvation is played, play your good flying card (or any other win card if you have a Fan at your disposal) in front of it, and deal direct damage.
The absolute BEST card to use this strategy with is my lovely dear Lammergeier, as hopefully by the time phase two rolls around you’ll have plenty of bones to capitalize on (hopefully at least 7, since the last 3 will come from the cost Lammy needs to be played- unless you have a black goat, or something). However, if you have some cards to stall the bears with, such as the aforementioned Boulder or Frozen Possum bottle items, then you can use flying cards with a slightly lower attack power, such as a Turkey Vulture (3/3) if you can stall the rest of the bears for one turn, or even an unaltered Raven (2/3) if you can stall two turns. Risky, and depends on you still having cards in your hand that don’t have the Waterborne sigil, but works.
Those are the key points to keep in mind when playing a Skull Storm run- but as much rng manipulation is often involved, developing your own skill as an Inscryption player is a major part of this too! You can’t pick up an absolutely perfect deck every time, of course, and learning to think on your feet to handle those unexpected situations that come your way is important, too, like running into an unwanted inescapable 1-cost card, or encountering a combat with the Thorns totem when your best cards only have 1 health. All I have to say is, practice! Experiment with different strategies and starting decks, discover what way to play feels right to you. Here are some extra tips of things I’ve picked up playing for as long as I have, that I’ll let you know now:
Pack Rats - If you have trouble with your item luck, picking up a Pack rat or two can go a long way- ESPECIALLY if you put the Undying sigil on it! If you draw your Undying Pack Rat during a combat, that means you’ll get multiple chances to roll for new items, which is especially helpful if you’re in the third combat in a map and you still haven’t found any Scissors or Wiseclocks.
Soft Resetting is your Friend - This might be a bit cheating, but if you’re quick with the escape key, you can quit out and reload the game to back before you load the coming event, and choose differently. This can be done to check different cards on cost-choosing or tribe-choosing Add Card events, Cave Trial events if you fail the trial (before you’re sent back to the map), Item Backpack events, Prospector mining events (although the card placement is still randomized), and notably also the Campfire events- but ONLY if the card was not eaten, since the game autosaves the instant a card gets eaten (a good way to manip this is to put a card you want to get rid of first, and if it isn’t eaten, quit out and buff a card you want instead), and of course, Combat encounters. Just about all of these choices can be redone without penalty, since each event and outcome is rolled at the very start of when a new map is generated. You can even reroll the whole map if you’re looking for a specifc pathing at either the very start or when you move onto the next map, since it saves after you beat a boss and doesn’t save again until you complete an event on the new map. If you run into trouble and feel the need, a quick escape key and quit out can save your whole run, no joke.
(Interestingly, soft resetting also does not work for Goobert's Card Painting event, as it autosaves once your copied card is revealed- I suppose to keep you from fishing for better copies. It usually doesn't matter though, as fusing the og card and its copy at the Mycologist event is one of the quickest ways to buff the attack power of your best cards, since the attack and health are usually doubled.)
Woodcarver Totems - Not usually necessary for Skull Storm runs, and going out of your way to pick some up can mess with your pathing and collection of Necessary things you need to win- but if you stumble upon a Really good sigil for a totem, then complete it as fast as you can and lean into it. HARD. Pick up as many cards as you can of that creature type, or switch to a better totem head if you find one- essentially feel free to base your whole strategy for the rest of the run around that totem. Some particularly good sigils and combos that I recommend are Undying, Searcher, Item Hoarder, Bi-Strike, Double Strike, Blood Lust, Death Touch, and Morsel on just about any creature type- although in my experience the Elk creature type seems to benefit the most from most of these sigils (Elk-Morsel is my personal favorite, especially when use in tandem with Undying Black Goat- if you ever stumble upon that totem, give filling out your deck with elk type creatures and let me know how it goes!) Another sigil you do not want to sleep on is the Dam Builder totem, as the Dams created by each card who has it gains every sigil on the card with Dam Builder- especially neat for cards like Black Goats with the Worthy Sacrifice sigil on it, since that sigil makes those cards with that sigil on it able to be sacrificed! Also useful if your dams get Fledgeling- it’s a really good sigil, god dam. Another totem combo I should mention again is Insect-Mighty Leap, which absolutely erases the risk of using an Undying Beehive as your 1-cost card if you have one, but that’s really the only use I can think of for it, other than maybe Undying Corpse Maggots being used as a stall card...
Do not pick up Ring Worm it’s not good :( - Ringworms can really mess with your run, bud. They’ve absolutely killed more than a few runs because I hadn’t managed to burn them in time and they showed up instead of a card I needed in fairHand... If your strategy involves killing the Campfire survivors and you aren’t already starting with Ringworm (whether from the Mantis God starting deck or if you’re running without pelts), do not under any circumstances pick up a Ringworm- kill the Campfire people with an Adder instead, or any other card that has the Death Touch sigil on it (having it via totem doesn’t count).
And that’s all from me- have fun with your Skull Storm runs in the future, give Royal a kissy on the forehead for me when you see him!
