Purposely didn't take just about anything that came my way in terms of stat upgrades and left some up so that you can see it doesn't need to be "perfect" to be a great build that easily clears Mare without issues.

Beginner friendly, no reliance on legendary perks and enough CC to get through the game without having to buy heals even if you are fairly new to the game.

Also tweeted about it here, linking to the tiktok explanation.

I originally submitted a run that fails on Mare only qualifying for the Formageddon reward which I now deleted in favor of this one.

Went back to it, a mix of frustration because of how close my first ever Mare attempt was and the heat taking it's toll made it look like this run was going nowhere with an awful Eema. Turns out that was exactly what I needed. No confidence led to defeating Mare.

No commentary as it might have distracted and slowed the time down. Didn't buy from the shop or did the dice challenge, but as you can see when the map is showcased all rooms are cleared.

Bit of a sloppy attempt as I went for the facetank strat on anything basically and popped revives instead of dodging since the time lost overall is lower than trying to do it "clean" by dodging and timing attacks well.

I would have loved to include the hashtag as well and gone into more detail but hit the character limit.

Unlike most roguelikes you don't have to complete a run to be immersed in the world building. Be it small bits of backstory like Alexandra talking about her fears and the memories related to it becoming a permanent object in the HUB when discovering it or the easy access to memories which unfolds the overarching plot and Alexandra monologuing whenever she returns showing she as a character evolves and gains more depth as well.

As the title and intro imply I went with a very barebones upgrade approach for bosses specifically. No extra damage on bosses, no card that would be incredibly useful because that's RNG and no attacks that rely on a good dice toss. Mace and Spear combo as that's typically a bit harder to beat for people just starting out. I also took some hits intentionally to showcase that it's okay to face tank and that you don't need to perfectly dodge everything.

I didn't see an option to link steam as well to verify that it's my account, but if needed I have all hours streamed and you can see every achievement including the 10 matchmaking one pop up during the stream sections.

I wanted to touch on this in a bit more detail, but the character limit is a thing when avoiding premium.

I've seen the discussion about gold values and how naturally picking 75g beats the 30% heal, but no one touched on max health.

Especially early on healing 20 health while also increasing your max health pool for free equals spending the 60g. The longer you hold off on having to buy a 30% heal while accumulating max health from different resources, the more cost efficient the heal becomes down the road.

Full fight from entry to finish including the steam achievement while explaining the build.

While there are some funny or spicy lines in the game, I feel this one resonates well despite being one of the early-ish ones. You are never too old to accept advice from friends.