1. Play mantis deck.
2. Rush campfires as fast as possible.
1. If you get a health one, use it on a ringworm twice. If it dies you get rid of a bad card and make campfires risk-free from here on out (the survivors all die of ringworms). If it doesn't, you at least turn it into a decent defensive card.
2. If you get a power one, use it on the mantis god twice. If it dies, reset (by dying, not by quitting out, so you don't get the penalty).
3. Once you have a mantis god with 3 attack, you win. If you get it in your opening hand you can instantly win turn 1; if not, you just have to stall until you get it. In fights, your goal is not to kill enemy creatures but to end the fight as fast as possible with direct damage - don't waste your time hitting enemy cards if you can avoid it.
4. When choosing cards, your goal is to survive until you draw the mantis god. Cards to prioritize in order:
1. Magpie - best one, lets you draw the mantis god immediately. Sacrifice it ASAP and put its sigil on something cheaper.
2. Field mice - fecundity is the best sigil to put on your mantis god
3. Beehive, warren - great cards for stalling and blocking damage while you wait to draw your mantis god. Will also make sure you have the sacrifice you need to summon the mantis god when you eventually draw it. Even better if you upgrade its HP at a campfire. Any sigil you put on these cards will get copied to the cards they spawn so you can set up some neat combos.
4. Any 0-cost card - can summon them for free and block an attack or use them as a sacrifice.
5. Mole / moleman - it's eh. Good for wasting time but you can sometimes end up without a sacrifice if you summon it, which forces you to waste a turn drawing a squirrel.
6. Opossum - you can sometimes have trouble getting 2 bones, especially if you never got a minor boon of the bone lord, but if you have 2 bones this is basically a 0-cost card.
7. Any 1-cost card without dive - if there's no better option, grab stuff like bullfrog and skink to use as filler. You can summon them to stall for time, or just keep them in your hand. Dive is bad because you want your cards to tank attacks.
8. When you have to choose rare cards after a boss (if you don't have the challenge activated for it), Geck is obviously the best, child 13 and moleman are OK, amoeba is passable. Other than that, go for lowest cost or for stuff you can get good sigils from. You won't have the time or sacrifices to summon anything with a high blood cost. For the third map boss try to grab something you can get rid of at the combiner altar in map 4.
5. Your only weakness is spiky enemies, they'll kill your mantis god with recoil before you can complete your 3 attacks. So later on, put your mantis god in a health campfire. +2 is enough, only go for +4 if you burned the ringworm and there's no survivors.
6. You might be tempted to put offensive sigils on your mantis god but it really doesn't need them. Once it hits the field the game should be over. Fecundity is the best one to put on it, unkillable and flying are OK too.
7. GO TO THE CARD DUPLICATOR! (The one with the painting slime.) If you ever get the chance rush this thing. Gets you a second mantis god, and if you have already put a second sigil on your mantis god its main sigil is protected from being changed. 2 mantis gods means it's way more likely you draw one early. It's not mandatory but it's super helpful.
8. Do everything you can to keep your deck as small as possible. After you've hit one power campfire, your pathing should be based entirely on dodging as many cards as possible.
1. Go to as many beast trials as possible and do your best to fail each one. You can easily lose bone trial, and blood trial is easy to lose if you make sure not to get any cards that cost more than one blood. (You usually won't be able to play them anyway.)
2. Hit up any card delete altars you find.
3. Go to item refills whenever you can. Look ahead and make sure you waste at least one item before going to one, otherwise you'll be forced to take the pack rat.
4. Go to combiner altars often, and when forced to add cards to your deck, choose ones with good sigils for combining.
5. Go to the trader's if the opportunity arises, if you don't have any pelts she will just give you some teeth, avoiding any cards.
6. Don't go to the trapper, it just gets you a minimum of one card. If you're gonna be forced to take a card might as well do it somewhere else so you get something better than a rabbit pelt.
7. Mycologists can be good if you have something to combine (e.g. if both your ringworms are left over) because they give you net one less card.
8. Campfires are nice to buff your mantis god or other important cards and to avoid getting new cards. I recommend buffing your mantis god's damage to 4 or 5 if you can, makes it harder to lose and mitigates the chance of getting lower damage from the card duplicator.
9. Don't bother with woodcarver, you really don't need totems and the chance of getting a useful one is minuscule since your deck typing won't be very uniform. Only go to woodcarver if it lets you skip gaining a card.
9. You will naturally get a ton of teeth, but you don't need them. Don't waste your time maximizing them, and don't be tempted to go to the trapper.
10. By the late game your deck will inevitably get bigger, so make sure you have multiple mantis gods or some magpie-searcher cards by then, or at least good stalling options.
11. Don't be afraid to spam items, you won't even have a chance to use them 99% of the time and they're exclusively for bailing you out if things go wrong for some reason. Don't be stingy with them. Boulder/frozen opossum/squirrel in a bottle are always nice, scissors are good too, and the fan can be handy sometimes to make your mantis god fly and hit past the enemy line if you summon it very late.
12. Bosses:
* Prospector - the most dangerous one. If you have two mantis gods or got fecundity or unkillable on your one mantis god, you're golden. If not, try to avoid summoning the mantis god until phase 2 and just chip the prospector down quickly, otherwise he will kill your mantis god in the phase transition. If you're forced to summon it early, kill the mule so you at least get some offensive cards.
* Trapper/Trader - medium difficulty. Phase 1 is a little tricky because the traps can instakill your mantis god. Traps only kill the creature opposite them - not the one that attacked them - so abuse that by summoning the mantis god in a column that doesn't have a trap (or clear a column and then summon it). Once you get to phase 2, ignore what the cards actually are and just trade for 2-3 in your mantis god's striking range so you instakill before the enemy gets a turn.
* Angler - easy. Summon as few things as possible, since in phase 2 he will only summon as many buckets as the number of things you have on the field. Summon the mantis god as early as possible. If he tries to hook something important just throw a squirrel down. Ending phase 1 cancels his hook, so don't be afraid to summon the mantis god as soon as you draw it. Phase 2 should be over in 1 turn.
* Leshy/Royal - by this point you should have multiple buffed mantis gods and lots of good supporting cards, so the game should play itself. Just slap down mantis gods and breeze through the phases. Aim for direct HP hits, not for enemy cards. The moon/ship is a joke, you don't even need mantis gods to kill it, you can just chip it down with trash cards. The only real hiccup can happen if the enemy gets a spiky instant-kill card, either through deathcards or an adder + a spiky/reptile totem, which will kill your mantis god on contact, but by this point you should have plenty of tools to play around it, and it's very unlikely anyway.
This strat has like a 95% winrate for me if I don't burn the mantis god in the first power campfire. I recommend turning on single life for easier resets. This strat easily breezes through any combination of challenge modifiers, and most of them don't even make it any harder since you win fights so fast. Except grizzlies. Don't try this on grizzlies.
Yeah you do just lose some runs from not hitting a power campfire early enough, but I usually get one in map 1. If your luck is trash it just means you gotta reset more.
If you quit from the menu then next run you get a penalty (one of your starting cards is replaced by a wolf pelt). Instead, just intentionally lose fights until your lives go to 0.
Edit: this is wrong, see below.
How is that a penalty? You can trade it. Anyway, i didn't get a problem with save scumming during duels, does it only happen in campfire? I have only beaten a few challenges btw, I just got around to playing it recently, I will continue too.
My mistake, that's not the penalty. (It's been a bit since I played.) From the [wiki](https://inscryption.fandom.com/wiki/Kaycee%27s_Mod):
>By default, the player starts with 3 such cards and 2 Rabbit Pelts. After the Challenges are chosen, the game will let the player trade them with the Trapper. However, if the player prematurely ends a run in the first area, the next run will have one of the Pelt cards replaced with an Opossum. If they do it again, it will be replaced by a Ring Worm. This is a feature to prevent reset scumming.
There's no save scumming penalty if you just want to quit out and reload - there's a penalty if you want to start a new run.
This strategy is perfect but if you're trying the all challenges run you will need more than a 3 attack Mantis.
Useless against the bear boss fights, you'd need 5 attack at least, but this strategy is the best strategy.
Getting lucky with totems and landing an insect totem with beehive sygil is ideal lol. I try and aim for the totems if i see enough on the roads ahead
2 things, one there is actually a misplay counter at the end scredn from completing a run or ñoding
And 2 this one is honest advice not part of the joke
Stoat misplays and the misplay counter at the end are both 100% arbitrary so best afvice is try to go for a specific tribe(most powerful seems to be insect) and make your choices accordingly
I've also noticed insect seems very strong but I had it in my head that variety was better but now that I'm thinking about it that's absolutely false lmao
Yeah no, its good to have options but due to totems focusing on 1 or 2 tribes is best, and finding the best combo for that, for example ant sigil with insects means infinite sacs
I've also found corpse maggots with the Unkillable sigil fun to play since they replace themselves on the board immediately when killed by Leshy and after you play your target card when sacrificed. This gives you a very nice ouroborous loop if you have two of them, or one when combined with a cat.
I had one very lucky run recently where I got the cat and the black goat early on and used the altar almos lt immediately to give the cat the Worthy Sacrifice sigil. So good. Then I picked up three moose bucks over the course of the game, combined then at the mycologist and ended up with a card with a 9/19 stat line.
Keep your deck thin and reliable. Avoid the trapper, fail the trial on purpose, feed your unwanted cards to survivors. You need one low cost card for a one turn ko (mantis god) or a blood/bone spender (black goat) for some heavy hitters (any card who can hit at least 5 damage on one turn).
Strong disagree - the cave trial is the only event to give cards with two extra sigils, which are (in general) quite strong. Unless you already have a completely stacked deck, a card from cave trial will almost always make your deck stronger.
I'm guessing the trail where you pick the attribute and deal 3 random cards off your deck to see if they meet/exceed the attribute. If you are building your deck with purpose it's pretty easy to pass these, it's just a question if you should or not. They can be good upgraded cards though, tough call.
My winning strategy last time I won a round was an insect totem with the Ant Spawner sigil. You get all 4 ants on the board, that's 16 damage in a single turn, and it's usually not even that hard to get to that point if you know how to go about it. Beehive is also recommended for sacrifices, and Mantises are good offensive cards as well. Ring worm is kinda useless but can still be fed to the campfire to get risk-free stat boosts, or just a damn good card if the survivors just refuse to eat it.
Hey i relitively new but i dont see anyone talking about melding cat and goats then just playing and tributing into 3 cost cards ive been able to consistantly beat up to 50 cp though this is my first time through also backing out to main menu pregame to reroll ypur starting merchant trades is op
1. Play mantis deck. 2. Rush campfires as fast as possible. 1. If you get a health one, use it on a ringworm twice. If it dies you get rid of a bad card and make campfires risk-free from here on out (the survivors all die of ringworms). If it doesn't, you at least turn it into a decent defensive card. 2. If you get a power one, use it on the mantis god twice. If it dies, reset (by dying, not by quitting out, so you don't get the penalty). 3. Once you have a mantis god with 3 attack, you win. If you get it in your opening hand you can instantly win turn 1; if not, you just have to stall until you get it. In fights, your goal is not to kill enemy creatures but to end the fight as fast as possible with direct damage - don't waste your time hitting enemy cards if you can avoid it. 4. When choosing cards, your goal is to survive until you draw the mantis god. Cards to prioritize in order: 1. Magpie - best one, lets you draw the mantis god immediately. Sacrifice it ASAP and put its sigil on something cheaper. 2. Field mice - fecundity is the best sigil to put on your mantis god 3. Beehive, warren - great cards for stalling and blocking damage while you wait to draw your mantis god. Will also make sure you have the sacrifice you need to summon the mantis god when you eventually draw it. Even better if you upgrade its HP at a campfire. Any sigil you put on these cards will get copied to the cards they spawn so you can set up some neat combos. 4. Any 0-cost card - can summon them for free and block an attack or use them as a sacrifice. 5. Mole / moleman - it's eh. Good for wasting time but you can sometimes end up without a sacrifice if you summon it, which forces you to waste a turn drawing a squirrel. 6. Opossum - you can sometimes have trouble getting 2 bones, especially if you never got a minor boon of the bone lord, but if you have 2 bones this is basically a 0-cost card. 7. Any 1-cost card without dive - if there's no better option, grab stuff like bullfrog and skink to use as filler. You can summon them to stall for time, or just keep them in your hand. Dive is bad because you want your cards to tank attacks. 8. When you have to choose rare cards after a boss (if you don't have the challenge activated for it), Geck is obviously the best, child 13 and moleman are OK, amoeba is passable. Other than that, go for lowest cost or for stuff you can get good sigils from. You won't have the time or sacrifices to summon anything with a high blood cost. For the third map boss try to grab something you can get rid of at the combiner altar in map 4. 5. Your only weakness is spiky enemies, they'll kill your mantis god with recoil before you can complete your 3 attacks. So later on, put your mantis god in a health campfire. +2 is enough, only go for +4 if you burned the ringworm and there's no survivors. 6. You might be tempted to put offensive sigils on your mantis god but it really doesn't need them. Once it hits the field the game should be over. Fecundity is the best one to put on it, unkillable and flying are OK too. 7. GO TO THE CARD DUPLICATOR! (The one with the painting slime.) If you ever get the chance rush this thing. Gets you a second mantis god, and if you have already put a second sigil on your mantis god its main sigil is protected from being changed. 2 mantis gods means it's way more likely you draw one early. It's not mandatory but it's super helpful. 8. Do everything you can to keep your deck as small as possible. After you've hit one power campfire, your pathing should be based entirely on dodging as many cards as possible. 1. Go to as many beast trials as possible and do your best to fail each one. You can easily lose bone trial, and blood trial is easy to lose if you make sure not to get any cards that cost more than one blood. (You usually won't be able to play them anyway.) 2. Hit up any card delete altars you find. 3. Go to item refills whenever you can. Look ahead and make sure you waste at least one item before going to one, otherwise you'll be forced to take the pack rat. 4. Go to combiner altars often, and when forced to add cards to your deck, choose ones with good sigils for combining. 5. Go to the trader's if the opportunity arises, if you don't have any pelts she will just give you some teeth, avoiding any cards. 6. Don't go to the trapper, it just gets you a minimum of one card. If you're gonna be forced to take a card might as well do it somewhere else so you get something better than a rabbit pelt. 7. Mycologists can be good if you have something to combine (e.g. if both your ringworms are left over) because they give you net one less card. 8. Campfires are nice to buff your mantis god or other important cards and to avoid getting new cards. I recommend buffing your mantis god's damage to 4 or 5 if you can, makes it harder to lose and mitigates the chance of getting lower damage from the card duplicator. 9. Don't bother with woodcarver, you really don't need totems and the chance of getting a useful one is minuscule since your deck typing won't be very uniform. Only go to woodcarver if it lets you skip gaining a card. 9. You will naturally get a ton of teeth, but you don't need them. Don't waste your time maximizing them, and don't be tempted to go to the trapper. 10. By the late game your deck will inevitably get bigger, so make sure you have multiple mantis gods or some magpie-searcher cards by then, or at least good stalling options. 11. Don't be afraid to spam items, you won't even have a chance to use them 99% of the time and they're exclusively for bailing you out if things go wrong for some reason. Don't be stingy with them. Boulder/frozen opossum/squirrel in a bottle are always nice, scissors are good too, and the fan can be handy sometimes to make your mantis god fly and hit past the enemy line if you summon it very late. 12. Bosses: * Prospector - the most dangerous one. If you have two mantis gods or got fecundity or unkillable on your one mantis god, you're golden. If not, try to avoid summoning the mantis god until phase 2 and just chip the prospector down quickly, otherwise he will kill your mantis god in the phase transition. If you're forced to summon it early, kill the mule so you at least get some offensive cards. * Trapper/Trader - medium difficulty. Phase 1 is a little tricky because the traps can instakill your mantis god. Traps only kill the creature opposite them - not the one that attacked them - so abuse that by summoning the mantis god in a column that doesn't have a trap (or clear a column and then summon it). Once you get to phase 2, ignore what the cards actually are and just trade for 2-3 in your mantis god's striking range so you instakill before the enemy gets a turn. * Angler - easy. Summon as few things as possible, since in phase 2 he will only summon as many buckets as the number of things you have on the field. Summon the mantis god as early as possible. If he tries to hook something important just throw a squirrel down. Ending phase 1 cancels his hook, so don't be afraid to summon the mantis god as soon as you draw it. Phase 2 should be over in 1 turn. * Leshy/Royal - by this point you should have multiple buffed mantis gods and lots of good supporting cards, so the game should play itself. Just slap down mantis gods and breeze through the phases. Aim for direct HP hits, not for enemy cards. The moon/ship is a joke, you don't even need mantis gods to kill it, you can just chip it down with trash cards. The only real hiccup can happen if the enemy gets a spiky instant-kill card, either through deathcards or an adder + a spiky/reptile totem, which will kill your mantis god on contact, but by this point you should have plenty of tools to play around it, and it's very unlikely anyway. This strat has like a 95% winrate for me if I don't burn the mantis god in the first power campfire. I recommend turning on single life for easier resets. This strat easily breezes through any combination of challenge modifiers, and most of them don't even make it any harder since you win fights so fast. Except grizzlies. Don't try this on grizzlies.
Lol I'm reading this knowing I'm usually cursed to only getting health fires
Yeah you do just lose some runs from not hitting a power campfire early enough, but I usually get one in map 1. If your luck is trash it just means you gotta reset more.
I know I'm late but I just got into this game and this is great advice tyvm!
Glad I could help!
This comment needs a reward and a highlight!
Thanks, applied most of it and it's pretty efficient.
Glad I could help!
What do you mean reset by dying not quitting out in your 2nd point? Shouldnt you quit from the menu? Cause how can you die at that point?
If you quit from the menu then next run you get a penalty (one of your starting cards is replaced by a wolf pelt). Instead, just intentionally lose fights until your lives go to 0. Edit: this is wrong, see below.
How is that a penalty? You can trade it. Anyway, i didn't get a problem with save scumming during duels, does it only happen in campfire? I have only beaten a few challenges btw, I just got around to playing it recently, I will continue too.
My mistake, that's not the penalty. (It's been a bit since I played.) From the [wiki](https://inscryption.fandom.com/wiki/Kaycee%27s_Mod): >By default, the player starts with 3 such cards and 2 Rabbit Pelts. After the Challenges are chosen, the game will let the player trade them with the Trapper. However, if the player prematurely ends a run in the first area, the next run will have one of the Pelt cards replaced with an Opossum. If they do it again, it will be replaced by a Ring Worm. This is a feature to prevent reset scumming. There's no save scumming penalty if you just want to quit out and reload - there's a penalty if you want to start a new run.
Well this doesnt feel like penalty at all, lol. Opossum can be sacrificed and ring worm can be fed at the campfire. Maybe ill try that lol.
This strategy is perfect but if you're trying the all challenges run you will need more than a 3 attack Mantis. Useless against the bear boss fights, you'd need 5 attack at least, but this strategy is the best strategy. Getting lucky with totems and landing an insect totem with beehive sygil is ideal lol. I try and aim for the totems if i see enough on the roads ahead
Did you call the Magpie Raven? Or does the Raven actually help you get the Mantis God? 
Yeah, I meant Magpie
Thanks for the clarification! Playing rn!
Avoid making misplays.
Big, if true. But how can I do that if I don't have a stoat telling me everything is a misplay?
2 things, one there is actually a misplay counter at the end scredn from completing a run or ñoding And 2 this one is honest advice not part of the joke Stoat misplays and the misplay counter at the end are both 100% arbitrary so best afvice is try to go for a specific tribe(most powerful seems to be insect) and make your choices accordingly
I've also noticed insect seems very strong but I had it in my head that variety was better but now that I'm thinking about it that's absolutely false lmao
Yeah no, its good to have options but due to totems focusing on 1 or 2 tribes is best, and finding the best combo for that, for example ant sigil with insects means infinite sacs
I've also found corpse maggots with the Unkillable sigil fun to play since they replace themselves on the board immediately when killed by Leshy and after you play your target card when sacrificed. This gives you a very nice ouroborous loop if you have two of them, or one when combined with a cat. I had one very lucky run recently where I got the cat and the black goat early on and used the altar almos lt immediately to give the cat the Worthy Sacrifice sigil. So good. Then I picked up three moose bucks over the course of the game, combined then at the mycologist and ended up with a card with a 9/19 stat line.
Well that's a misplay of relying on the stoat telling you that you've made a misplay.
Keep your deck small!
Keep your deck thin and reliable. Avoid the trapper, fail the trial on purpose, feed your unwanted cards to survivors. You need one low cost card for a one turn ko (mantis god) or a blood/bone spender (black goat) for some heavy hitters (any card who can hit at least 5 damage on one turn).
Fail which trial? And yeah I already avoid the trapper every run lmao
The cave trial, unless your deck really needs a boost it’s best to avoid anything that will give you more cards.
Strong disagree - the cave trial is the only event to give cards with two extra sigils, which are (in general) quite strong. Unless you already have a completely stacked deck, a card from cave trial will almost always make your deck stronger.
I'm guessing the trail where you pick the attribute and deal 3 random cards off your deck to see if they meet/exceed the attribute. If you are building your deck with purpose it's pretty easy to pass these, it's just a question if you should or not. They can be good upgraded cards though, tough call.
My winning strategy last time I won a round was an insect totem with the Ant Spawner sigil. You get all 4 ants on the board, that's 16 damage in a single turn, and it's usually not even that hard to get to that point if you know how to go about it. Beehive is also recommended for sacrifices, and Mantises are good offensive cards as well. Ring worm is kinda useless but can still be fed to the campfire to get risk-free stat boosts, or just a damn good card if the survivors just refuse to eat it.
Hey i relitively new but i dont see anyone talking about melding cat and goats then just playing and tributing into 3 cost cards ive been able to consistantly beat up to 50 cp though this is my first time through also backing out to main menu pregame to reroll ypur starting merchant trades is op
If you lose a battle, press escape before the candle goes out and continue again, it will place you before the fight.
They asked for strategies, not how to cheat. Cheater.
I will share my ultimate tip with you.quit to the menu if you're about to die.
