Welcome back to the Chungus Blogs

It's Rather Empty Here...

Where did my blog posts go? Don't worry, they will be back soon. (You say I promised to fix it by tonight? Oops.) I'm just doing a little business with the website. Getting it all ready for the public. Uh, here's a picture of my dinner tonight:

Doggy and Kitty Update

And other things...

8/5/2026

Good evening, everybody.

...

I have been a bad girl. I've neglected to update this website for several days now, and I have no excuses. My behavior has been appalling. I made the mistake of downloading Slay the Spire on this laptop, and now there shall be no more productivity. Or coherence, because my mind is fucked up from the weed. My therapist spent like 10 minutes explaining RuPaul's Drag Race to me, just in order to tell me that someone in the show has a poor memory from weed. I don't understand the show; I think it would upset me.

We need to stick to one point per paragraph... How do paragraphs work? I don't remember. You start them and end them... why? When?

Um, I have a Rusty looking at me, and needing something. He's a big 16 year old boy now! (Dog type boy, not human type.) I don't know what he wants; he's had his supper, but is clearly feeling neglected right now. He's got a leaf in his eye, but I can't get it out because he squirms. The other doggy is doing good as well. Not as old. A good, but big girl... Too big in the tummy department – she doesn't like when I mention it. We also have a cat. It's fucked. Its leg is just fucked up, and it's got worms coming out of its butt. We're working on the worms – it doesn't like the medicine. It's nature's cat, though, so my parents won't take it to the cat doctor.

That concludes the doggy and kitty update, now onto some pressing news: (Oh no, I don't have news...) The weed pen's got me fucked up. Vampire Man gave me a weed pen while we were at the cabin last weekend, and I'm 82 (now 83) puffs into this thing and counting. The high state has become my normal state at this point. My therapist just looked fed up with me after I went in there rambling, probably incoherently, about my life. She wanted to do some sort of computer thing were you make your goals for the next few months and then sign it so that insurance will continue paying for therapy or whatever, and I was just not having it. Too much on the mind. Too many thoughts to think about goals in life.

I don't think I do therapy correctly... (Oh god... Nope, we are not getting into this topic.)

Okay... Uh, do we have anything else to discuss? Probably. I can't remember. Too addicted to Slay the Spire. Oh my gosh, that's a good video game. I didn't really click with it when I first tried it, but after giving it a shot on this laptop that turns into a tablet, I stopped using the laptop as a laptop for several days straight... I'm not very good at this game yet, but I'm starting to get a feel for how to play it. I like the poison one and the orb one. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't beaten the heart yet, and I haven't even made it to the end with The Watcher. Can't figure that one out... (Oh no, I've opened the game again...)

Progress update: I have gotten to a big heart boss with the Watcher. It has 750 health, and killed me on its first attack because I had 10 hp left, couldn't heal anymore, and haven't gotten good yet. That Watcher lady is a tricky one. It seems like she starts off strong, then gets worse as I shove all of the cards into the deck. I guess all of the characters get worse when I grab every card I'm offered. I really want to pray to Jesus to get the divinity so I can get triple damage, but it seems like just becoming absolutely furious and then calm as a cucumber repeatedly is the most effective strategy. But I had too many random cards... Kept running out of attacks and then I would get murdered in my rage.

Oh no... There's a dog scratching on a window again. So distracting. I need to go read more of this book about the Grey man. He's going to do things to this poor woman. I shouldn't be reading these things. It's not appropriate for me...

I see you all later. Bye bye for now!

Slay the Spire update?

8/11/2026

Absolute Degeneracy. That is my life lately. I'm hopelessly addicted to Slay the Spire, and I cannot stop. I've been staying up until the sun rises; mindlessly swiping cards – a hollow husk of a human being. I feel nothing. Every day passes in the blink of an eye. No novel experiences to anchor me to the passage of time. Just gaming. A horrible addiction...

Also, I'm totally addicted to this "Soju Sour" disposable weed vape pen that I've got. This shit is space drugs, man! Like, you don't have to do shit to get high, just put the damned thing in your mouth and inhale. It feels like something you would hit in Cyberpunk 2077. Or like those death sticks from Star Wars. I wonder what that man was selling. I always just imagined that the anti smoking laws were so harsh in the Star Wars universe that they called regular-ass cigarettes "death sticks".

But yeah, I tried to search for this weed pen online, and well, it was a success. I found the website selling it: "Stoner Stix". However, the description tells me absolutely nothing about the contents of the cartridge, and in fact seems to be entirely AI generated nonsense. The crazy part is, if you check out the rest of the website, all of the products there seem to have their own unique AI generated descriptions – full of errors and contradictions. I particularly like the part where the AI emphasizes that this product is easily “pocketable” for taking on flights. On another similar vape, the AI seems to think that the vape is for nicotine, while a different one goes into great detail about the vape's supposed cannabinoid contents.

If I could hit a vape everyday, I would like it, and it would be good.

What... Where am I going with this?

I don't know, time to talk about Slay the Spire. I can hear it calling me as I struggle desperately to coordinate my mind enough to write a few paragraphs about this game that has taken away the previous week of my life. I have to at least make content out of my addiction; find the humor in my dysfunction.

The last few brain cells ooze out of my ear as I take another hit of the fucking boof-ass vape from the folks at Stoner Stix. (Hey, it's a good product. It gets me high, and has RGB gamer lighting when you hit it. Fucking great!) I should stop swearing so much. It's not cool. Swearing was only cool when we were teenagers and it felt rebellious. Now it's just sad. A lack of vocabulary that forces me to rely on cuss words to express myself... Pathetic...

Uh what? I mean, this is it. This is the high experience right here. Written in this document. We need to talk about that damned video game, and I don't really know what to say about it. I've got a run going right now as that Silent fellow. He's done with the first part, and he's done well, but I don't know if he's gonna make it all the way. I picked up some nice attacks to beat the first few elite gentlemen, but I don't think this deck has a plan yet.

Like, in my previous runs as the Silent Killa, I would usually try to make the poison big, or make lots of shivs. I beat the heart once with the poison (And some sort of defensive plan. Did I become a ghost that time? Maybe. Might have had that tungsten rod. That thing is good.) I also had a really good run involving making lots of shivs, buffing the shivs, duplicating the skill that makes the shivs, and poisoning on every hit. I just, kinda forgot to grab the key from the chest to go and visit the heart, so I'll never know if that would have been a winner. (I wasn't feeling confident, but then I absolutely destroyed those donut brothers.)

This current one... I don't know. He's got something going on I think? Absolutely no poison, no shivs, no real way to build power over time - but there's something there... I've got an Eviserate, and a bunch of ways to draw and discard cards. There's a Heel Hook and Sucker Punch, with the Neutralize upgraded. I've got an Adrenaline as one of my rares, and the other is... Alchemize? I'm not sure what the plan was here. I probably passed up some great rares to pick a card to give myself a random potion, but why? I guess there's some sort of potion theme going on here, with a White Beast Statue and Toy Ornithopter. The potions healing me is something.

The thing I'm feeling hopeful about is that I received a Kunai from the most recent of those elite suitors who visit me in the spire. The defense gets bigger the more I attack! And this deck does seem to attack a lot. Mostly because that seems to be the only way to beat the mentioned elite gooners. That one red bastard doesn't like when you play a skill – it dishonors him. The skull crab thing gives you 3 turns to set something up, but if you fight him as your first elite, there's nothing to setup yet, so I figured big attacks that have some discard or draw action would be the best picks. (That bastard and I have history. He ended my last run on like the 6th floor because I had nothing strong enough to defeat him before he could murder me. Very upsetting. Don't like to see that happen to the Silent Son.)

Oh, wait, we are receiving news that the Silent is actually a woman, and I've been misgendering her this whole time. Sorry about that. What do you mean "I could fix it"? This is already written – we're not going back and changing anything.

The Kunai, though, is going to be great. It's gonna make the attacks make the blocks bigger and better, until they are just so big that they don't stop working so much, and it's good. (What???) DO I MAKE THE SHIVS AGAIN? (Jesus...) POISON THE SHIVS!!! Use a burst with a blur and a blade dance; make so many attacks and build the block up forever. Uh, I guess I don't know. We need to see what cards come my way. I have bad habits. I grab one almost every time. All of my decks are like 30-40 cards by the end. I'm gonna get cursed, but the way, if I open a chest. It seemed like a better option than "You cannot see enemy intents.", or whatever the other one was.

I don't know what's wrong with me... every time I see a card that mentions an enemy having intent to attack, I mutter to myself, in like a southern accent, some variant of: "They have intentions for my daughter". I don't know where this came from. Why do these random phrases get stuck in my head like this?

Oh fuck, I just remembered! It's from Ratchet and Clank Up Your Arsenal, when the space president man - who sounds like Bill Clinton - asks Ratchet what his intentions are towards his daughter. Oh God, I'm turning into my dad. He walks around the house repeating random phrases from songs or movies all the time.

Oh yeah, the video game... I'll keep you updated on the run. Will we win? Is it gonna be good? Will it be bad? I don't know. It's midnight. Like right now... Midnight. That's definitely a time. (I'm so high.)

We start off in act 2 with just a nightmare of a map. The only way to fight 3 elite gentlemen is to take a route that only contains 2 question marks at the very beginning, and no more. I love question marks! They can do all kinds of things, like make me a ghost! But I also love to fight the maximum number of elites, and get so many good relics. (And in this run I already skipped one at the end of act 1 because I had like 6 hp after fighting some rough customers.) Well, I've charted a course through those bad boys, so let's see what happens.

First enemy was the cloaked fella who hexes you. He goes down without a fuss. We get a Cloak and Dagger. Looks like those shivs might be starting? Now I'm fighting a "Shelled Parasite" according to the game. I don't like the looks of this guy. He's got a shield that comes back every turn... Never mind, he went down easy too. Got an upgraded Heel Hook from him. Could have chosen an upgraded Dagger Throw, but I think the extra energy is better than worrying about the discard synergy.

Oh no, bad luck. We lost a bet on a man jousting a murder on a horse. (I assume.) I bet on him, because it felt impolite to bet against the man I am talking to, but I knew he didn't stand a chance. That murdered murdered him, and now I've lost 50 dollars. As for the second question mark, well it's an issue. It's just some of those darned birds that get stronger every turn. Actually could be a big issue. There's 3 of them, and only one of me. I don't have any attacks for groups of enemies. Should have thought about that...

Ah, it wasn't a problem. Haven't lost any hp yet. Those bird men were kind enough to give me the "Tools of the Trade".

Oh, it seems we're at act 3 now. The deck has gone from 20 to 30 cards. I love cards. The boss was that knight man. He's never been much of a problem. He barely hurt me. By the end of the fight my dexterity was up to 10. The damage output of these cards is slow though! I did pick up an Envenom as the reward, as well as the Slaver's Collar for an extra energy. Other notable relics obtained during this act were Paper Krane to make weakened enemies weaker, Vajra for strength, and a potion belt for more of that goodness. I've got two little ghosties in my belt now.

Will the Silent Huntress Lady survive the third act? Probably. I don't think she'll beat that heart in her current state, though. We just need a little something extra... And I'm sleepy. It's now 2 am. How did a single act of Slay the Spire take me two hours? I don't know that either. I've been lying in the same spot in my bed, with my head occasionally bumping the cold, bumpy wall. It's not a comfortable position. I'm scrunched up awkwardly against the wall and a pillow - the neck is going to be stiff. What an issue. Should be asleep. Need to help my dad with things tomorrow so he doesn't hurt his back.

How does sleep work? (I'm taking another big hit of the pen to think about this.) Gosh, I don't know; you just kinda lay there until it happens. But sometimes it doesn't happen, and there's no way to force it. The more you think about trying to sleep the harder it is. And when you've got something exciting the next day, then forget about sleeping – it's not happening. (Which I don't... Have anything exciting planned tomorrow, that is. Well, I do need to go get my blood taken, and if I find 13 quarters I can buy a 3 dollar vape.) What can you do? Take drugs? I love drugs! (I also don't have any drugs. Other than weed. I forget weed's a drug.)

Wow, so that was complete nonsense. I hope you guys like this post. They are words. So many words... Too many words. Why did I write them? I don't really know. Goodnight everybody, I will see you again sometime when I remember to write words. Sleepy sleepy, goodnight...

Slay the Spire Update 2

8/12/2026

We did it, everybody. The heart has died again. Now the Silent (but deadly) lady is on to ascension 4 where apparently “Bosses are deadlier”. That's okay with me. The bosses usually aren't the worst part of the run. Maybe they will be now? Will the hexagon thing do big damage to me with its first big attack? I will find out, but first I need to do a run with all of the other characters to get them up to the 4th ascension as well.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how I beat the heart, not because it's like a secret or something, just because I can't remember. It was 4 am; I was high as shit; should have been sleeping... I do know I had a full belt of 5 potions, including a potion that gave me 5 more potions, in addition to the extra potion from the Alchemize skill. This was big! I got like 6 thorns for the heart's 12 hit combo, had a ritual to keep getting stronger, a buff or two to strength and dexterity, and a bunch of other random stuff. The relics were going crazy as well. I got the Wing Boots and was able to fight 5 elites on the 3rd act, then I had an Ice Cream to store energy and did a Malaise on the boss that took away basically all of its strength for the rest of the fight.

Oh, we are receiving word that I could take a screenshot of the run history thing and post it on the website. Here you go:

Well, now on to fight another enemy as a different character. I find myself dreading playing that Defective boy the most. He just feels so slow to ramp up, and if you don't get the focus and orb slot increasing cards, then he's just so weak. I don't know what other strategies he has other than channeling a bunch of orbs, usually lightning and frost ones (I don't really get the point of the other two), and then finishing with the attacks that deal damage for the amount of orbs channeled the whole fight. He must have other strategies available. Oh god, do I have to? Is it time to try the Defect?

Oh shit! Breaking news alert! While going through my purse, looking desperately for quarters to buy another 3 dollar vape, I found a mystery pill! It's not one I've ever seen before in my life. Must have been one left by whomever donated this purse to the thrift store where I bought it. What a gift! It's a white, oval shaped sorta pill with a score line and an X on either side. What does it mean? Is it a Xanny? Are we gonna get mildly crunked? I'm taking this bad boy tonight. I don't care if it's all dirty from years of sitting in this purse. It's going up my butt!

Nevermind... The dream is dead. After a bit of googling, it seems that the pill is probably just an allergy pill. I'm not extreme enough to start boofing mystery allergy pills, so we'll skip out on this one. If it was a Xan though... Oh gosh the things I would do if I had a Xanny. You guys would be getting so much content; it would be insane...

Shower done. Nearly ready to head out to get that sweet-sweet 3 dollar vape. Gonna fuck up my lungs. They're meant to be disposable after the battery runs out, but I'm a sneaky one. I rip those vapes apart and recharge them by hooking a disassembled Blu battery charger directly to the battery for like an hour. (Gosh, remember Blu vapes? Those shitty little cigarette-looking vapes that came in like menthol and straight tobacco flavor. You would get like 3 cartridges in a package for like so much money, and half of them would be duds – tasting burnt straight out of the package. Good days...) After recharging, the 3 dollar vape would taste terribly burnt, but I would just keep on puffing on that shit until it hurts my lungs so much that I'm coughing up slime for like a day. Gonna do it again. Shouldn't... but gonna.

Oh fuck, I've done it now. I've got the vape. What a disaster. I walked into the smoke shop, Minecraft shirt on, horribly sweaty from the drive in the Lincoln, and was greeted by the usual assortment of candy flavored 3 dollar vapes. This time I tried to get adventurous, which is always a mistake, and I picked the lychee flavor; thinking that sounded sophisticated. It was not... Apparently lychee is just blackberry brandy flavor. Fuck, it's gross. Should have gone with the usual mango or watermelon, but now I'm stuck puffing on the shit my grandpa used to drink.

Blackberry brandy was the first kind of hard alcohol that I really started drinking as a wild, possibly under-aged, college student/high school dropout. The flavor will always remind me of the time when I drank far too much while watching the Yogscast on a random weekday while my parents were at work. The alcohol made the Minecraft content seem so funny and entertaining, and it was all a great time... Until I ended up lying in the bathroom, puke everywhere. So bad. I had to pull myself together and clean that shit up before my parents got home. Then I just like hid in my room for the rest of the evening because I was so hungover and intoxicated. I had many more such experiences on the case of Phillips Blackberry Brandy that we inherited from my grandpa, and now I can't drink that stuff without feeling repulsed. Ughhh, and now I'm vaping it. So yucky...

Oh yeah, Slay the Spire. I started a run as the Defect. (Or more like a “walk”, as I somehow managed to take 5 hours to complete the last playthrough as the Silent. I get very distracted and wander off with the game running, or alt-tab out to google or write stuff, so it takes me a while.) It's not good. This run is totally fucked. We're at the end of act 1, and I got an early Creative AI, which I thought sounded fun, but it really hasn't been panning out like I had hoped. Just too much energy to play that and then play all of the powers it gives, and like most of the powers are not all that useful. Sure, I sometimes get a Capacitor or a Defragment, but it's mostly just nonsense.

Is there anything good happening in this run so far? Not really. The relics are bad, the cards are high cost (Sunder, Glacier, Doom and Gloom) and my first boss relic choice was between and Astrolabe, Tiny House, and Runic Pyramid. No fourth energy. Probably going to pick the pyramid, but the Astrolabe is tempting. Fuck the Tiny House; that sounds useless. Ah, fuck it, let's see what the Astrolabe gives us:

• Overclock+
• Loop+
• Genetic Algorithm+

Well, those are all decent cards, I suppose. Loop seems nice, Overclock's burn cards scare me, and Genetic Algorithm gives you a fun little meta-game to play; trying to use it every fight to make it as big as possible. Would have preferred a fourth energy... Should have gone with the Runic Pyramid. At least holding onto the hand would have solved some of the issue with not having enough energy, but might have caused issues with getting stuck with a bad hand full of curses and status effects. Well, let's see what happens next. Maybe I'll find that Mummified Hand that this deck desperately needs.

Oh no... It's over. The defective boy has died. I made the mistake of going into the fight against the stabby guy with like 20 hp, and I just couldn't do it. He did like 7x5 damage to me on a turn when I had a single hp left, and I just let him take me out. Could I have done something? Maybe, but the run felt kinda doomed already, so I just let it happen. I'm not that good at video games. I'm a real disappointment... It's okay though. We'll get em next time. Just, maybe don't take Creative AI right away without some sort of power card synergy going on already. It's just too slow to get up and running.

I still don't feel like I have a good grasp on what the goal is with the Defect. The others make sense to me. The Ironclad has exhaust, strength, and vulnerable synergies to power up some big attacks; the Silent has poison, weak, and lots of shivs; and the Watcher has crazy strategies with rapidly switching stances to do big bursts of damage. Whereas the Defect has some nebulous plan involving growing a collection of orbs to do – something? It just feels like he relies a lot on getting the right cards to make those orbs worthwhile, and if you don't get some Capacitors and focus boosting cards, you are just screwed. My brain doesn't think good when it comes to utilizing the orbs to their full potential. How do you get the orbs to happen in just the right order to get what you want in life? So confusing. It hurts the brain.

Anyways, that's probably enough words for this post. I'm probably boring you guys talking about the single video game I'm currently playing. We could talk about Elden Ring a bit. I don't think I like Elden Ring. It's too big. Too long. Makes my computer warm. Dark Souls 2 is better. (So are Dark Souls 1 and 3, of course. DS2 is pretty good though. I love all three!) The bosses and dungeons are good, but there's just so much damned wandering around on that stupid horse. I fucking hate horses.

PS: Still playing that Defect. I've lost two more games now. I can't stop grabbing Creative AI... Started a new one now. Off to a good start. Got a Runic Dome for the first time by saying fuck that starting relic shit. One lightning at the beginning of a turn ain't nothing to me, man. Now I can't see what enemies are doing, but that's okay; it's scary seeing the big numbers coming my way.

Slay the Spire Update 5

8/19/2026

Good morning everybody,

I'm starting a fresh new text document to write in, since I think I'm starting to wind down on my overly detailed Slay the Spire posts. I don't know what else to say about the game. It's not the same now that I do not have Gabe Newell's approval to play it. Can't get those achievements on the Steam anymore, so there is no proof of my accomplishments.

Speaking of accomplishments, I have gotten through ascension 5 as the Ironclad, but I had a lot of troubles in the process. I kept dying early on in runs, mostly due to impatience and getting greedy and trying to fight too many elites. That Iron Boy seems like the most straightforward character in a way, just try to make the strength big and hit the enemy with a BIG Heavy Blade; but that strategy takes a while to get going, and it doesn't provide much defense – especially against the Heart at the end.

My last run, I got to the Heart, but he was too good! His cycle of buffing, then a big single attack and a big multi-attack completely overwhelmed the meager defenses I could put up, before I was able to gain enough strength to finish him. I find that the Ironclad is my worst character when I do eventually get to the Heart, though maybe I had gotten lucky with Apparitions, that relic that reduces incoming damage below 5 to 1, and the Tungsten rod before. You get some of that stuff going, along with maybe a source of thorns or two, and the Heart practically takes itself out doing its big combo attack. Flame Barrier on the Ironclad can achieve some results, but I just couldn't put together the 60 or so block required to be safe. Even with a Fairy in a bottle, his last multi-attack totally destroyed me.

I almost want to play another run of the Ironclad, just to try to Git Gud. This last run was kinda a random mix of archetypes, as far as card picks go. It was just too unfocused. The main thing going on was some good synergy with Strength boosting relics (Red Skull, Mutagenic Strength, and Girya (I lifted 3 times. Got Swole!)), and a Limit Break+ to double that strength as well as Demon Form and Inflame to boost it further. I had an upgraded Sword Boomerang with Bottled Flame as a good opening attack against basic enemies and elites, which was further boosted by the greater first turn strength and an Akabeko to boost my first attack. If I got lucky, I would have a great first turn where I could use a Limit Break (and maybe even an Inflame beforehand) to double that temporary 3 strength, so that my Son's strength would be boosted greatly for the rest of the fight. That opening Sword Boomerang would then do BIG damage, to all of the enemies, and most smaller fights were a breeze because of this.

The rest of my deck ran into some issues with harder hitting bosses with bigger health-bars though. I had something else going on with a couple of Body Slams and Power Throughs, but not much else to generate block, which made the Body Slams feel a bit underutilized. Since Power Through creates wounds, I then got a Fire Breathing and an Evolve later on, along with a couple of Wild Strikes, which may have just caused more trouble than they were worth. Since I already had Wild Strikes and Pommel Strikes, along with a relic that boosted all strikes by 3, I then got a Perfected Strike, which was just not that great, especially considering the downside of filling your deck with a bunch of semi-useless Strike cards. My basic Strike and Defends got upgraded during an event, so I never removed any Strikes, and only removed a couple Defends, and that all just diluted the deck in a bad way, and left me with a bunch of okay attacks but not a lot of defensive consistency. I also had a Dark Embrace in the deck for some reason, but not enough Exhausting stuff to really utilize it, which was kinda the theme of the whole thing – just a mess.

Here's a screenshot of this run's report card thingy:

Oh, you may be wondering why this is Slay the Spire Update 5, and where Updates 3 and 4 are. Well... They contained some objectionable content, and had to be moved over to the newly renovated Chungus After Dark section of the website. You can head over there to read them, but you will have to pass the quiz. (I assume... I haven't actually made the Chungus After Dark section yet, but I've got ideas. It's in the works.) Honestly, many other posts here are a bit iffy on whether they should be available to the public, so I might put a few others over there as well.

As for other developmental news for the website, I have totally gotten distracted by trying to make the Chungus Shop so that I can list the items being sold at The Chungus Emporium on here. Why? I don't know. I should just be putting this stuff on Ebay, but I'm too scared. What if somebody gives me negative feedback and my Ebay account is ruined forever? It's not like I even have the technology to actually sell something on here. I wouldn't have any idea what to do with someone's credit card information, even if they were dumb enough to give it to me. I need a payment processor of some sort? Something like that? That would require me to embed external code into this website, something which I try to avoid as much as possible.

And then, you know, there would be the whole creating an entire shop interface. Like, we would need a page where I can input an item's details into a html form, along with uploading images somehow, which would all then need to go into a database of listed items to be displayed on the shop pages in an organized way. I would need to create one of those picture slideshow things, where you can click a little arrow to see the next picture in a series and click an image to make it bigger. (I may ask Chat GPT how to do this. Seems like something it would be good at.) And then something would actually have to happen if somebody actually bought something. Like I would have to be notified somehow so I can throw the thing in a box and ship it away and just like hope for the best. Then there would be the matter of accepting refund requests, and people angrily contacting me about how the items haven't arrived yet because I forgot to give them tracking details. What a nightmare... Maybe I should just use Ebay. I'm not at a high enough dose of Adderall yet to make an entire shop from scratch.

One option I did consider, was to try to figure out how to use Ebay's API to display my own Ebay listings (of which there are none, because I'm procrastinating...) on the Chungus Shop. This could be easier – if a little pointless. I know, I know, I should just be working on getting the Chungus Forums back up and making the Blog more professionally organized. So much to do...

It's very stressful right now. My parents are moving houses (Did I mention this?), and I am supposed to get to work on selling all of my old stuff before we move. They're in such a hurry to get rid of stuff, and I fear that if I don't sell anything with value online, its all going to get sold at a rummage sale for like nothing. I don't even know if I own anything with enough value to be worth selling online. There's so much junk here. An entire closet full of old board games – most of which I assume are basically worthless, especially with missing pieces. My old game collection, consisting mostly of games which I purchased for like 5 dollars each. A bunch of worthless old computer textbooks. Various childhood toys. The one category of item with some definite value is my old Lego collection. I do need to start listing those somewhere. Or maybe I should just contact Prairie Bricks up in Fargo and see if they'll buy the whole collection in bulk?

I need money fast to pay off my speeding ticket before they lock me up. I've seen it on the court's website; they want $135 dollars from me, and I've got like $25 to my name. Once I get locked up in jail – an inevitability as far as I'm concerned – they will only want more money from me, to cover the cost of my incarceration. Then they'll just put me back in jail for not being able to pay for jail, and I'll basically never be free again. It's very worrying. I should probably call the number on the speeding ticket and ask them what to do if I have no money, but I'm too scared of phone calls to do so, so I'm going straight to jail once I reach the 30 day deadline to pay the ticket. (I assume. Maybe they just add late fees to the ticket cost, and give you more time to pay, but that only delays my inevitable incarceration.)

Fuck, what am I going to do? Well, for now I'm going to play some Slay the Spire until the amphetamines kick in a bit more.

Oh god! I just checked this website's statistics on the website hosting dashboard thingy, and it claims that we have 100s of visitors to Chungus dot Net a month. Welcome everybody! Why are you here? How do you even find this website? If we had comments on these blog posts you could tell me, but for now this is just a hypothetical question. I hope you have a good time here, and get some enjoyment out of reading these ramblings. I'm sorry that the site is not in the best of condition right now. It used to have more going on, but less inane rambling, but then my brain broke.

I swear the Chungus Forums will be back one day. Perhaps that day could be today? Should I do it? I just have to copy the files over, change the name of the database a little in the code, and figure out how to transfer the database backup files over to the new hosting provider's database. Anyone competent could figure that out. Am I competent? No... I created the nightmare that is Fooglie Fighter. The game is too dark; I don't know why. You can't see anything. I can't download Unity again to finish these games – they want me to sign in, and it's a whole ordeal...

Oh no, where has the morning gone? I woke up at like 8:30, and it's already nearly noon. I haven't even done anything yet today, and I am once again sitting in the bathroom, fully nude, contemplating taking a shower. I guess I should get on that...

I regret to imform you that the shower did not occur... The whole evening was a bit of a mess actually... I had to throw away a bunch of my old, half finished projects, which made me really sad; so I went and drank beer with my dad, which made me more sad. Then, because of the sadness, I was really tempted to take a second Adderall, but just went to sleep instead.

Slay the Spire Update 6?

When will these end???

8/20/2026

Good morning my fellow Little Chunguses,

Why did I call you that? That's just weird, but whatever

I am awake. It is 8:30 in the morning, and I should not be awake at this early hour, but I went to bed so early last night that I had to wake up. I was all out of dreams, and my tummy hurts. Well, it feels better now actually. I regret to inform you that I am writing this from the toilet again. It's a bad habit of mine. I think I may have that newfangled weight-loss parasite from the lettuce. I put together one of those Taylor Farms salad kits to go with the Chicken Tortilla Soup I had mentioned I was going to make. I was not able to make the fancy Mexican salad to go with the soup due to not having enough time to cook brown rice for 45 minutes and then cool the salad afterwards for an hour, so I had to settle with a salad-in-a-bag.

Ah fuck, it seems I have no filter anymore, as far as what I write on here is concerned. Luckily, with the Secret Chungus section back online, anything that gets too spicy can be posted there. Honestly, I should probably move a few more of my publicly available posts over there as well. Maybe I could ask Chat GPT if each of my posts are acceptable for public viewing, as a way to get an outside opinion on the respectability of these writings.

Oh god, my hair is falling out again! I haven't had a shower in like 3 days, and the hair becomes very upsetting and upset if I don't do so. My head gets all itchy, and I can't stop running my hand through my hair, which gets caught in the tangly bits, and then a bunch falls out, and it's not good. Ughh, yuck. Gonna be bald one day yet. Some of the hairs that fall out have this quality where they are straight for most of the length, but then have curly bits for the last inch or so on the end. This makes them act like Velcro; they stick together, and then get ripped out when I violently mess with my hair.

I used to have a life, you know? (Okay I didn't, but... you know?) I played video games other than Slay the Spire at one point, but not anymore. Last night I had a fantastic run as The Silent lady. I went all in on the poison, and it went insane! I got lucky and got 3 copies of Catalyst+, along with a few supporting poison cards like a Bouncing Flask, a couple Crippling Clouds, and a Poisoned Stab. No Snecko Skull this time (I think I missed it in a shop), but I did have a Twisted Funnel to start things off right with 4 poison. All I had to do was add a little more poison, then triple it a few times, and the fight would be over. The heart had like 300+ poison on it by the end of the battle, and it couldn't even touch me with its attacks:

Somehow, my defenses were really strong during this fight as well. Relics such as Orichalcum and Thread and Needle meant that I would get 10 block for free, meaning I wouldn't have to worry about most smaller attacks. When I did need to block, an Oddly Smooth Stone made block cards more efficient. For more intensive fights, Wraith Form+ gave me three turns of safety, synergizing well with the free block per turn to provide complete protection from most attacks. The downside of losing Dextrerity every turn was never an issue, since the quickly multiplying poison would finish the enemy well before the three turns were up. A single Piercing Wail+ served as an excellent emergency measure against big multi-attacks. An eventual inclusion of Footwork+ scaled my defenses up to handle later, more deadly fights.

Finding my poison-inducing cards was a breeze with the inclusion of some draw/discard cards. Two copies of Acrobatics and two copies of Backflip let me cycle through cards fast. Calculated Gamble+ let me redo any boring turns. Tactician and Reflex+ made great targets for discards, making something like Acrobatics basically a free draw spell. A couple copies of Escape Plan were always nice to draw, often giving me free block in this skill-heavy deck.

There was some extra stuff going on in the run. Some worked, and some didn't. I invested heavily into Shivs with two copies each of Blade Dance and Accuracy which really didn't pay off on their own that well without Envenom or a relic that makes shivs stronger. They weren't completely useless though, as a very early Sling of Courage boosted their damage during Elite encounters; and the Accuracy's – which started off as a liability – became painless to play due to a late-obtained Mummified Hand, boosting the Shiv damage to 14. A single energy for 42 total damage from a Blade Dance was always nice to see, even if the poison was the end goal.

It was a glorious run, and I look forward to my next adventure as the Silent Gooness. I can now confidently say that she is my favorite character out of the four. It just feels so good to get that poison number up, and playing a ton of cards every turn is so fun. Even though it can be a bit of a liability in the final fights against the Time Lord man and the Heart, you can usually manage to play enough cards to end your turn on your terms against the Time Wizard guy, and just playing an Escape Plan or Backflip at the start of your turn can negate most of the Heart's one-damage-per-card ability.

Now, I am in hell. I have to do a run as the Defect, and I just don't get on with that bastard of a robot. I had a somewhat okay run going up until the Donut Fellows kicked my ass with their big two-hit attacks. The run was kinda doomed anyways because I was forced to heal on the last bonfire and wasn't able to get the red key. I don't think we would have stood a chance against the Heart. Looking at the card list from that run, I just ask myself “Why?”. I won't elaborate, but you can see for yourself:

I've started another run as that Defect, and it's not going anywhere fast. Literally. There is no way to deal damage, only block. I got a Thunder Strike from the Cat Whale at the start, but no source of lightning orbs beyond the starting zap, which I haven't been able to upgrade due to needing to rest at every bonfire I've reached so far. Since the zap costs a whole energy to play, I end up needing to use my other cards, which all seem to generate frost orbs, so I just sit there building block every turn for no reason, maybe getting in a single lightning orb every now and then.

After defeating the first boss of the robot thing that curls up into a ball occasionally, I was given just the absolute worst relic choices. An Empty Cage to remove two cards; a Frozen Core, as if I needed more frost orbs, and a Snecko Eye to make my mostly 1 energy cost deck more expensive. The rare cards offered from the boss weren't great either. I made the mistake of choosing Creative AI again, which will be my undoing. I'm going to pick the Frozen Core, and just see where this run takes me, but it is a slog.

Yep, he's dead. It didn't take long, either. Those Slaver Gentlemen were relentless with their attempts to enslave this robot guy, and they took him out before he could finish fucking around with his little frost orb party. It's probably time to stop playing for the morning. It's already 1:00 pm, and I haven't done anything yet today. I still need a shower after failing to do so yesterday. So smelly. What a mess I am.

Shower complete! My hair continues to be a problem. No matter what I do with it, the balding is apparent. My strategy lately has been to shampoo the head, rinse, then put a little conditioner in and flip all the hair (and my head) upside down (So the hair all goes over the front). Then there's like an ordeal of trying to detangle the hair while rinsing conditioner out and sometimes applying more conditioner and rinsing again. (I don't really know how to describe it; or even know what it is I do in there. There has to be a better way to deal with hair...)

Eventually the shower ends, and I dry the body, squeeze out some of the excess moisture in the hair, spray the hair with some leave-in conditioner stuff. While the hair is still flipped over the top of my head, I scrunch it a little with my hands (and sometimes a towel), adding a little intentional messiness and waviness to it. Once the hair squishing has been adequately achieved, I wrap the hair up in a long-sleeve t-shirt, and let it just sit there on my head, so it can think about what it has done. The hair being contained in a t-shirt is very handy for keeping the hair out of the way when applying moisturizer other products to the face after the shower. When the hair has finished its time-out, it is set free, and lands in a random way across my head.

While the hair is wet, the bald spots in the front are very visible, and it is alarming. Usually as the hair dries they become slightly more concealed, but one wrong wind, and people can see my shameful secret. I want the hair to come back, but no matter how much I plead with it, it is not returning. At best it isn't getting any worse, but even that may not be the case. How will I run for office when I'm one bad hair day away from a political scandal involving my hairline? The culture warriors on the right will make so many memes about my hair, and my political career will be over before it can even begin. Not that I have much of a chance of having a successful political career – considering the things that I write on here...

Uh, anyways, what are we supposed to be doing? I have a little time to work on something while my hair dries. Why is Slay the Spire open in the background? Oh god, not again. I've already wasted several hours playing it this morning. I need to work on Chungus dot Net. The people deserve better.

Oh, you may have noticed that there is randomly a shop button in the Navbar. It doesn't go anywhere yet. (And may never go anywhere.) I could get rid of it, but I like the idea that there's just a broken link right at the top of the website. Adds to the mystery.

Okay, so we have two choices of what to work on: Making the blog have some organization, or bringing back the Chungus Forums. I feel like the blog being one giant text scroll isn't too much of an issue yet, so I'm thinking we need to get those forums back up and running – it's what the people are asking for!

How do we do that though? Oh no... My mind hates thinking about this.

I proceeded to wander off into the land of databases for the rest of the evening. It was horrible. So many error messages. Bing's AI was completely useless. Every search was full of AI generated blogs that had nothing to do with my issues. Eventually I would find a Stack Overflow post from years ago that would solve the problem.

It was a big problem. A bunch of quotation marks and apostrophes had become gibberish in the backed up database files. It seemed that the database had become Latin or something. I needed it to be a Unicode? But that didn't help because the backup had been exported wrong from the old Go Daddy database. So eventually I found some sort of SQL code to convert the Latino code to American?

I don't know. I don't claim to understand these things. Now we have to export the files from the database on my laptop and put the fixed files onto the Namecheap man's database. But they might cross the border again. (What the fuck am I talking about?) Then, well, there's probably more, isn't there? I don't know. (Again) My brain has become a THC sludge creature. When am I going to put that pill up my ass? I still need to do that tonight. And the stabbing of the outer thigh with a syringe. It's gotta happen. But I'm so fucking high. Damn...

Well, back to the video game, because I think the development efforts have stalled for the evening. We made progress though! That's Big Ups Liquid Richard! I wonder how the Lolcow Live podcast is going. It used to be a somewhat watchable chill gaming podcast before that Tommy C guy left and Keemstar turned the show into a shitfest of fake internet drama. Now it's just so loud! AI music, constant donation noises, sound boards, everybody yelling, fake arguments, people with shitty microphones – It hurts to watch. I liked when the show was a low energy affair where some lolcows would talk about their lives; humanizing them in the process. It's like they've sold their souls for internet drama.

Oh video game! Yeah, that's what we're doing!

(I think I fell asleep after this. Playing as the Defect is a mind-numbing affair. Make orbs, lose orbs, never get any Capacitors.)

Return of the Chungus Forums

+ Slay the Spire Update 7

8/22/2026

Good evening everybody. We are gathered here once again to discuss my recent achievements in Slay the Spire, which are not very impressive, but whatever.

Oh what? The Chungus Forums? They've returned? I don't know how that happened. It was done in a haze of burnt cotton as I tried to vape the last remnants of a dying 3 dollar vape. I will be coughing for days from that contaminated smoke. But yeah, we did it somehow! The Chungus Forums are back, I think in their original state! It took a lot of fucking around with character encoding in files and databases to get things to display properly. That damned post by CosbyFaN88 was full of fancy quotation marks and apostrophes that were just not cooperating. (Along with some other posts.) I think we have managed to tame those strange symbols for now, but it will probably break again.

I did not want to know that a computer uses different ways of representing characters in files. Why couldn't I remain innocently unaware of the existence of utf-8, utf8mb4_general_ci, utf8mb3, latin1_swedish_ci, Windows-1252, and all of these other ways of encoding a document? The world was a much simpler place before I gained this knowledge. Now there's another factor in my mind that complicates the simple act of inputting and outputting text to and from a website. What a nightmare!

The database tries its best now to use the utf8mb4_general_ci to store its text data. I had to even tell the php file that connects to the database to use that character set. (Or collation? I don't know the difference. I think the collation has to do with sorting stuff in the database using the character set maybe?) The server just really wanted to send me some more restrictive character set even though I thought I told it otherwise, and the fancy quotation marks were turning into question marks.

At least the question marks were an improvement from what was happening when I first tried to restore the backup of the database on my own computer. Those symbols were turning into some nonsense like ’ and “. This was actually what they looked like in the backup files themselves, and it took me hours to find some random post on Stack Overflow telling how to use the SQL to convert the data from latin1 to utf8mb4, which seemed to fix it. I then was able to export the data from the local database and import it into the Namecheap man's database.

After that there was a whole issue where apparently the names of the tables in the Namecheap database were case-sensitive, while the ones on my own computer were not, so some database using files had issues with that, which was easily fixed at least. Damn my own inconsistency with capitalizing things in my code. I can never decide whether to use PascalCase, camelCase, or snake_case when working across different programming languages (or even within the same small program...) which all have different style guidelines for how to name functions, variables, and classes. Even my file names and folders on this website all use different conventions, depending on what my mood was at the time.

At least it's working now. The Chungus Forums are here once again, and I don't really know what to do next. I guess the Chungus Shop? Look here! Look, listen!! I know we need to make some improvements to the Chungus Forums. An indicator of the date of the most recent post on a topic, and a preview of that most recent post have been long requested. There is currently no way to see whether a topic has new posts if you aren't like memorizing the number of comments each thread has in your head like a psychopath. The topics themselves are just displayed in chronological order with the newest post first, and the posts in a topic the opposite, with the oldest post first. Which is okay, but eventually the Namecheap man is going to get angry at me if I'm loading a massive list of like 100s of conversations every time someone accidentally clicks on the Chungus Forums. (Actually, I don't think the Namecheap man cares that much, but the server will probably get all slow and sad...)

So, those would be good areas of improvement to start with. Fairly simple things that don't require actually creating any new systems, just accessing the existing database in a slightly different way. It's gonna be a little awkward though, because right now to find all of the topics, the php code just gets all the topics from the “topics” table of the database, puts them like in an array, and plops them on the website. (I assume. I don't remember exactly what I did, and I can't read old code I made.) To actually find the last post of each topic, it will then have to go and do a further query in the “posts” table of the database for the latest post of each individual topic. Which sounds like a lot of querying, or maybe one additional really fancy query. (Again, I don't know. I don't know SQL code. I just go to the W3Schools website every time I need to do anything and look up the parts that sound relevant.)

But, perhaps we could store the most recent post for each topic in the topics table itself? Or like at least the post's id or something so it can then directly find it without having to figure out which post is the most recent and also part of that topic from all of the posts in the posts table? (Did that make any sense?) This would require us to go and change things in the database, which is terrifying! And we would have to make the most recent post update on the topic whenever somebody posts something. (This thinking feels familiar? Did I already start working on this? There's a whole bunch of unfinished upgrades to the Chungus Forums that never got finished from a while back.) But if the problem gets solved when future posts are made, how do we trigger the old topics without new posts being created to go and find their last post? There will have to be a bunch of extra one-time use code which will update the old topics and check if the topic has been updated, and stuff like that.

It's gonna be a whole thing. A thing which I might have already solved somewhere, but it's like in a whole mess of half-finished code. I don't know what all I was doing, but I was like trying to make more account features, more forum features, and a better blog system, like all at the same time. There was some good stuff in there. Good ideas that didn't get finished. I'm just not sure how to sift through the code to see what is working. I did once figure out how to compare the working live code to the broken developmental code using some sort of file comparison tool. Gotta get that going again.

Ahh, sorry. That was all probably really boring. I'm getting fucking bored just writing about it. Fuck the code! Code is for people who sit in a dark room all day, take too many drugs, and have no social life. (Oh wait, that's me...) We need to talk about video games.

Ugh, this topic bores me too! We've spent the last 6 posts on here talking about Slay the Spire, and it's getting old, fast! I can't help it though. I've been playing the game. Doing my time in the chair. (Actually I play in bed in my underwear most of the time.) I've finished Ascension 5 with all four characters now. The Defect was a real bastard with his damned orbs, but the Watcher got through on the first try. Both were able to beat the Heart, leaving only the Ironclad without a Heart kill this ascension.

Okay, honestly, what the fuck is even happening here? We said, “Fuck the starting relic, I'm never smithing again!” (Yet, I guess we upgraded Zap somehow?) Then I guess my plan was just get a bunch of random powers in play and hope for the best? I remember getting a Storm+ pretty early in the run, and just making it my absolute mission to channel a few lightning orbs by playing every mediocre power I could.

Surprisingly, this worked somehow. I remember towards the end of Act 3, I was picking every single White Noise I could, just for the chance that it would give me a Creative AI to beat the Heart with, since I knew this deck stood no chance against that longer fight without it. Shorter fights went really well towards the end with all of these powers. Playing each one and getting a lightning orb let me get out damage fairly fast, and three copies of Seek let me get the powers most applicable to each battle. For example, seeking an Electrodynamics and Biased Cognition would make short work of many multi-enemy fights. In a pinch I could Seek out a Glacier for some defense, or just use Seek to grab a White Noise for the mystery surprise power.

The final fight against the Heart, though, was a struggle. We did not receive any Creative AIs despite having four White Noises. This meant I had to make do with the powers I had. Luckily, I did get a second Capacitor, and had a couple nice potions for the fight, but I barely made it through. My biggest mistake was popping the Biased Cognition way too early. I probably did need it at the time to generate enough block for some of the Heart's attacks, but it put me on a timer for the rest of the fight, since my orbs were getting weaker every turn. At the end of the fight, my frost orbs were doing like 1 passive defense, and my lightning orbs did like 2 damage each, but I managed to just squeak out enough damage to finish the Heart on the turn that it would have killed my robot son.

He did it; he blasted the heart with his laser (In the ending slides), and we went on to do a run as the Watcher. This time I had a little extracurricular experience under my belt, as I have started watching the Jorbs man's “Overexplained” runs on the Youtube. I haven't seen any as the Watcher yet, but the general knowledge he imparted on how to consider what the run is giving you as well as what enemies you will face when you pick cards, and how to plan your path and make decisions through each act based on your available resources, really did enhance how I started thinking about my choices. (Or maybe I just got lucky. We'll see.)

The Watcher run went a little unusually for me. I did get bold and take the gamble of replacing my starting relic, since the single miracle per combat doesn't feel that strong; and, well, it's just fun to see what you get. What I got, though, was terrifying. A Velvet Choker. Something I would never willingly pick, because usually I just try to play SO MANY CARDS! Now I couldn't, and I considered abandoning the run right there, before it had even started. I'm glad I didn't, however, as this became a really fun adventure!

I knew I couldn't go crazy during each turn, switching stances like a manic-depressive and drawing a bunch of cards to do big attacking combos, so instead I tried to focus on making the most out of each card I did play, hopefully finding a win condition along the way. I avoided picking too many 0 cost cards, since despite have 0 energy cost, they would have the cost of taking one of my six valuable cards per turn for only a minor effect. I also avoided getting too much card draw, as spending a card to draw more cards meant that I would then have less cards to play. I even skipped getting a Sozu as a boss relic. The additional energy from leaving Calm was enough to usually play what was necessary, and losing the ability to acquire potions was too big of a downside. I believe I got a Tiny House instead, something which I would never normally get, but at least has no downside.

Early on, I did come across a win condition. Something I would never have tried in a normal run where I blindly fixated on wrath, calm, and mantra. Well, first there was the lucky early rare pickup of Blasphemy, which made many of the early fights end extremely fast. I just had to be a little careful to count my damage before using it so I didn't die horribly. It made a good finisher, but it wouldn't be enough to beat the large health bars of later elites and bosses.

Then I found it: Pressure Points. I knew this had to be it. A single card that would grow stronger the more I used it. All I had to do was add as many copies of it as possible to my deck, strip out all of the basic strikes, and focus the rest of my card usage on blocking while I built up Mark on the opponent. It would be perfect for the Heart! Of course, building up a lot of block wasn't easy with the limitation on card usage, and I may not have won if I didn't get super lucky and find the Apparition event. This, along with the relic that upgrades skills, meant that I received 5 upgraded Apparitions, which I could discard safely and use only when needed.

Since this became my strategy, I ended up getting rid of all of my strikes, and barely picked up any attacks. Group fights were actually more scary than bosses, since mark doesn't work well against multiple small enemies who need to be killed fast. The Blasphemy was good here though, and there were a few attacks and stance cards mixed in to handle these situations. The 5 Apparitions in a fairly small deck would last long enough to get through most easy fights without any trouble. As a backup way to beat the Heart (which did come in handy), I picked up a Windmill Strike, with the plan being that I would just keep it around in my hand until I got within range of killing the Heart by becoming divine.

It was a good run. Maybe there was some luck on my side this time. I don't think I can attribute all of my success to my decisions alone. There was certainly room for improvement. I got Wave of the Hand thinking I would need to apply weak more consistently, but never utilized it much. Picking up a Purity+ to deal with the Heart's status cards seemed like a good idea, but didn't really end up working out that well in practice. Battle Hymn became more of a liability than anything, causing my hand to become so cluttered with Smites that I couldn't draw a full five cards some turns. Two Scrawl+s and a Vault+ were very lucky finds that I relied on heavily, but without them I probably wouldn't have survived. Meditate+ and Pressure Points or Apparitions turned out to be a really good synergy that I'm glad I considered.

Now, we're on to Ascension 6 as the Ironclad. It's time to truly see if I have learned anything from that Youtube man's videos. I may pass out soon. It's like 2 am, and I don't know why I'm still awake. (I guess it's because I'm writing stuff here.) Hopefully next time we can talk about politics for a change of pace. I don't have much to say about politics. I haven't been keeping up with the happenings of the American Government. It's probably bad. It would make me sad. Is Obama running for a third term yet? He should do that if Trump tries to run again. I don't think Trump will be a coherent individual by that point.

Well, goodnight everybody. I'm off to sleep, where I will dream of something, perhaps. Maybe cards; maybe my inevitable incarceration. We will see.

Slay the Spire Update 8

8/23/2026

I've got a damned Dolly Parton song stuck in my head. The one that goes, "Why'd you come in here looking like that?" over and over. It's so annoying. Just so repetitive. Like, normally country songs do have a chorus that repeats, but the majority of this song is just repeating the same chorus over and over. (With some variation, but still the same hook of repeating the song's title.)

Now I like a repetitive song sometimes, but this is just too much. It won't leave my head. I wake up with it in the background. For some reason my mind has replaced the second line of the chorus, “In your high heeled boots and your painted-on jeans”, with, “In your cut off jean shorts and baseball cap”. It does these things sometimes. At least it's not offensive to minorities this time. Sometimes my mind will do the worst things to songs that get stuck in it.

Oh, hi... I guess this is a document now. I was just going to post those first couple paragraphs on the forums, but it seemed like a really unhinged thing to post there. Just like, “Hey, welcome back to the Chungus Forums!”, then suddenly, “I've got a country song stuck in my head.”. It would be a really random second post after the forum's return. So I write it here, where I write the most random shit ever.

I actually have more to say about country music. Some of it is good. The same day that I acquired Dolly Parton's curse, a great song by Reba McEntire (That last name should be a McDonalds product) came on: “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia”. A real country song that tells a story. That's what I like in a country song. Yeah, it has a repetitive chorus, but it actually has verses that tell a story along the way. Sadly, that is not the one that got stuck in the head.

Another great country song is “Pancho and Lefty” by Merle Haggard ft. Willie Nelson. I just love the way he says: “All the Federales say, they could've had him any day. They only let him slip away; out of kindness, I suppose.” It's such a fun chorus that gets stuck in your head but is good, because there's a great song supporting it. My point is that I like repetitive country songs only if they are good, I guess? I don't know. I'm not very with it mentally today.

You see, I was up until 4 in the am playing that damned Slay the Spire again. I was doing so well at getting to bed early after putting the pill in my ass (I should really stop mentioning this), but yesterday was a bit of a relapse in that regard. I failed to boof the pill, and just took it orally instead, because I wasn't feeling like my butt was clean enough for boofing. (Fuck, what is wrong with me? Redactions needed here...) Uh, then I just stayed up really late? I don't know if the events are connected. It isn't a sleeping pill, necessarily. And I was up late gumming those nicotine pouches. (Ah, what is this paragraph?)

Okay, back on track. That last paragraph was bad. We can't talk about these things if we want this post to stay on the main blog page. But yeah, the Ironclad man with the flowing hair (he definitely frequents r/fFierceFlow) has ascended to Ascension 7. He got through Ascension 6 on his first attempt, though he did fail to defeat the Heart once again. I kinda think the Ironclad is my worst character when it comes to actually beating that Heart. I have trouble getting his damage to scale high enough while generating enough block and also playing the strength scaling cards. I mean, all characters have to balance attacking, defending, and scaling their power, but I just haven't found a way to make the ironclad's damage output match the Silent's poison, Defect's orbs, or Watcher's crazy double (or triple) damage turns with extra energy.

We almost beat the Heart though. I was like one good attack short. If I had one more energy at the end I could have finished it, but I didn't, and he murdered my ass with an 8x15 Blood Shots. There was no way I was blocking 120 damage that turn. My final two cards in my deck were Clothesline and Spot Weakness, and I needed Clothesline to finish him out with 3 energy remaining, but drew Spot Weakness upon using a Shrug it Out. I then had to use another energy to play another draw spell, and could no longer play my finishing attack.

It was a fine deck, though a little bloated. I didn't do any relic replacing nonsense from Neow at the beginning, since the Ironclad's starting relic is probably the best of the four characters' relics. (Or at least the most essential for the character.) I got a Mark of Pain as my first boss relic, which put me down the path of utilizing self-inflicted status cards a bit for the first time. Evolve+ and Firebreathing+ did a lot of work with a single Power Through providing a few extra Wounds to trigger those. I had some strength and dexterity boosting going on with both Shuriken and Kunai coming midway through the run. They didn't work as effectively as they could have though, because I would often only be able to manage two attacks a turn while still blocking enough, and a Velvet Choker from the second boss put a limit on how much I could do per turn.

The deck just had too many things going on. Trying to block big with Impervious, two Entrench+s, a Ghostly Armor (which I almost felt forced to use; just so it didn't exhaust), and a couple Shrug it Offs. Then, aside from the mentioned relics, there was strength gains with Spot Weakness and Inflame. Reaper was present for some health gains, though timing it for maximum damage (and hp gain) was a struggle sometimes. Bloodletting and Combust+ became pretty useless towards the end. I didn't often have enough cards to make use of the extra two energy from Bloodletting (Since it would take up one of the 5 drawn cards itself), and Combust+s 7 damage per turn was too little to have much effect against the Heart (though it was useful earlier in the run). There was a Burning Pact+, but no real exhaust synergy, and actually getting rid of the status cards was a detriment, so it would often just lose me an energy and make playing 3 attacks per turn to trigger the relics impossible. Worst of all, I still had 4 basic Defends and 3 Strikes cluttering up this deck at the end. (I don't know if that's the “worst of all”, but it was not great.) I think the answer next time is to just be a little more picky with my card picks. I have a bad habit of getting a new card every chance I get, because I have a hoarder's mindset.

Yeah, so we are on to the Silent again. Yay! I love playing as the Silent! She is so fun. Gonna start out with a little less hp from Ascension 6 this time. It wasn't an issue at all with the Ironclad since he heals himself anyways, but the Silent already starts with the lowest HP. I hope we do good work. I want so many shivs and so much poison, and maybe a Kunai or Shuriken, but we'll see what the run gives us. I'm going to try to go in with an open mind.

Yuck, this is a bad first act map. Only two Elites possible no matter what route I chose. Neow is offering to upgrade a card, give 100 gold, take 7 hp to remove 2 cards, or switch relics. I don't think we can lose any more max hp, just to have a greater chance to draw what, Neutralize or Survivor? I'm not willing to take the relic gamble this time, so we're left with gold or a card upgrade. This is where we have to think about the Silent's life. Will she go to a shop and use that gold for good things? Maybe. I'm guessing with only two elites we'll have an extra chance to smith anyways. I think we'll go for the gold, then hit up an early shop, before running through 3 bonfires, two Elites, and another shop.

Oh yeah! Good start. Got Well Laid Plans as my first card, and from the shop I got a removal, a Dodge and Roll, and a Calculated Gamble. Now we just need some good attacks to take care of the first Elite. An attack potion from the first fight will make up for the lack of good attacks temporarily, though. Outmaneuver, Quick Slash, or Accuracy as my second card pick. Not a fan of any of these right now. I guess I'll just get a Quick Slash as a better Strike card. Love an Accuracy, but I don't have any Shivs. Not sure about Outmaneuver. Two more energy next turn is cool, I guess, but that that doesn't help me that turn.

Ooh, a Wraith Form from the first Elite, and some Tough Bandages to make block from discarding. It seems we should lean into the discarding a bit. I don't know what good Wraith Form will be since it will take all of my energy, but at least I can retain it with Well Laid Plans (Which I am upgrading now.) Hell yeah, Dodge and Roll and Survivor got upgraded too, from a War Paint at the first chest floor. Got to a shop and had 450 gold or so from an event that cursed me with regret. They had a membership card for sale, which I got, and then was able to basically buy out the shop's relic collection (Lantern and Akebeko – not great, but I'll take them), get a card (Piercing Wail), and do a removal of a basic Defend. Maybe I should have picked up the Catalyst they had on offer, but I have no poison yet. (Then I saw Poisoned Stabs and a Deadly poison after my next two encounters, but got something else, so I regret my decisions.) Think we got a Finisher, Leg Sweep, and Infinite Blades from the next few fights. Also got a Gambling Chip from the second Elite son!

The boss this act was the slime boss. I like him. He's nice and easy. I don't think he hit me at all as I was able to time the splitting of the slimes for when they would be weakest, while defending with my good selection of defensive cards. Got a Fusion hammer as my boss relic. No more upgrading, but I think enough has been done already. Chose A Thousand Cuts as my rare. I could have got a Corpse Explosion since it's fun, but again, I have no poison. It's too late for poison now. We're going all in on like lots of little attacks, A Thousand Cuts, Finisher, and maybe discarding stuff? I regret not picking up one of those Accuracy cards I saw earlier on now, but that's the way of the road.

I think I'm going to quit for now. It's like 11:30 in the AM, and I am just sitting in my bed in my pajamas. I need to like do laundry, and change clothes, and not be smelly, and all of that nonsense that has to be done in a day. Oh no...

Development on the Chungus Shop is underway... I still don't know why, but it is what my brain wants to do right now.

That was a failure. The coding did not happen. At most I made an html form for the page where I would add a listing to the shop. Actually, I think a database was created as well. That's about it though. The code was looking like an alien language to me. Even nicotine and low dose Adderall wasn't enough to understand my old code. How do other humans remember things. I don't make memories anymore, and my mind has purged most of the old ones. They weren't needed – I think from First Principles. (That sounds like something one of those fellas from the Intellectual Dark Web would say.)

Oh gosh, I used to love those intellectual types who would show up on The Joe Rogan Experience. We had my boy, Jordan Peterson. (Get well soon, king! I think he's under spiritual attack. Maybe he's fought off those entities by now?) Then there was like this Eric Weinstein guy. He claimed that he had solved physics, but nobody would acknowledge his achievements. The institution of “Academia” wouldn't let him publish his paper because he was blacklisted for being too much a rebel. (Or so he claimed.)

The man had a podcast called “The Portal” where he would take you through a portal to his secret knowledge of the universe. I was totally convinced that this man was on to something, because he used big words that I didn't understand. Apparently he's a fraud? Another man on Youtube told me so. How can anybody know? Maybe Neil deGrasse Tyson could tell me? He shows up on the show sometimes and blows Joe Rogan's mind with his physics fun facts. Mr. Tyson is a very condescending asshole sometimes. He's just so smug about his science trivia.

Oh, my code? Uh, yeah, I don't think the shop is happening. It would probably be simpler to improve the blog first to utilize the database. Like, a whole shop is completely unrealistic for me to make with my deep fried gray matter. Storing a blog on a database and just retrieving it sounds so much easier. We don't have to worry about building the Chungus Word Processor (Name needs workshopping...) just yet. I do have visions in my mind of like a Fallout 3 computer terminal that you can write blog posts in directly on the website. We could have guest blogs and stuff one day! Chat GPT was really excited about my Chungus dot Net multi-media experience when I described my ideas to it months ago.

Maybe ChatGPT should just write my code? Or that Claude bastard? (He probably demands a high price for his services...) It feels wrong, though. I want to know how to code, even if my skillset is completely irrelevant in the modern world of AI overlords. I can't compromise on my principles and give into the temptation of AI. No, no, no... Wouldn't be kosher...

Changing topics randomly, the Slay the Spire run as the Silent is going well. We're actually up to the final boss of Act 3. I ended up building towards the strategy that I outlined earlier. The deck is mainly focused on Thousand Cuts, After Image, and Bullet Time, with a couple Infinite Blades and a Finisher for damage. Not a lot of damage still, but I've got a ton of block with all of the draw/discard cards I put in triggering the Tough Bandages, a Blur (Should have gotten a second copy when I had a chance. I could've blocked forever...), Dodge and Roll, Leg Sweep, and a Footwork. I kept the deck fairly small and focused so I could cycle through my cards easily. Though, I missed out on a removal with the Peace Pipe by going to an event that just lost me max hp instead. It was my biggest mistake.

Act two was pretty dicey, though. While I had enough block, the fights dragged on forever because I just hadn't built up a good way to deal damage. Finisher was usually pretty weak with only a single Shiv per turn, and I still haven't found a single copy of Blade Dance or Cloak and Dagger. I even have the Assassin's Creed stabby thing from the second boss to make my Shivs better, but only two Shivs per turn now. I'm surprised I even beat the second boss. I was so scared midway through Act 2. Once I got to the Automaton though, he was a total pushover. The fight took ages, and he did several Hyperbeams on me, but my block was so powerful that he barely scratched me.

Finally, during Act 3, I managed to increase the damage output of the deck. I gave in and picked up a Deadly Poison+, just in case its needed for the longer fights. By itself it doesn't do much, but on the final Elite I managed to get the coveted Envenom. I think that Bullet Time might have been obtained this act as well, and it is a great way to use 10+ cards every turn. Once I've gotten all of my powers in play, I can almost cycle through my entire deck each turn, maybe once every 1.5 turns at this point. Just got a Prepared+, along with a second Reflex+, so we're closing in on being able to Bullet Time and Blur on back-to-back turns.

My prediction is that we'll beat the awakened – albeit really slowly. We'll probably also do well against the Pokemon Sword and Shield couple. I think my two Piercing Wails will be clutch for that fight. Them, along with Wraith Form, have been sitting retained in my hand doing almost nothing for the last few fights. I don't think I've used Wraith Form once this run. My damage is just so low that the reduction in Dexterity would inevitably defeat me if I use it too early, and using it later is pointless since I'm already generating plenty of block by that point.

The Heart, on the other hand... I regret to inform you that it will end the Defect's foolish ambitions. Even with Envenom, the lack of Shivs means that I won't be doing enough attacks to build up poison fast enough to beat the Heart before it can buff itself to do 100+ damage each Blood Shots. Piercing Wails will save me for two rounds of attacks, and Wraith Form will buy me another round, but then that Heart will go full cardiac arrest mode and murder me. Unless we can get very lucky from the last card pick or final relic. Why doesn't the Act 3 boss give a reward if you are going on to Act 4? It's kinda sad not being rewarded for exterminating a big rat. Well, here we go. Gonna fight this rodent of unusual size.

Holy Lord Jesus, this is a very powerful deck. The mouse was disposed of without taking a single hit point of damage. He died, not being very woke after all. The bonfire and store afterwards let me remove another Strike and Defend from the deck, bringing me very close to the magical realm of Bullet Time and Blur every turn. The store had a nice little gift for me as well, with a Bronze Scales and Thread and Needle. The scales are making me feel much better about the Heart. So fun to watch him hit himself for 45 every Blood Shots. Also replaced a middling single turn dexterity potion with the Forged in Fire potion (That's not what its called...), so I have that along with two gambling potions. The Sword and Shield duders were defeated without a scratch as well, and they finally gave me a Blade Dance.

Now I feel pretty good going into the Heart fight. It'll take some bad luck for him to defeat me like this. Getting set up the first few turns is going to be the tough part. If I can get a good first turn to play most of my powers, and then get the rest out by using a Piercing Wail on the Blood Shots turn, I should be fine. We'll see. It's time to fight this bad coronary.

Wow, it's over. What a time! I feel nothing... It was the biggest score I've gotten thus far; with a score of 1916. I guess you get extra points for beating bosses and elites without taking damage. There was a little damage from the Heart's big single attacks. He got me down from 74 to 60, but that was it. Turns out the Wraith Form and Piercing Wails were totally unnecessary for this fight. I was able to get by comfortably just blocking and discarding to block with a gambling potion or Calculated Gamble if needed.

It is now the time of napping. I must sleep so that I don't become sleepy tomorrow. That is how sleeping works. You all are probably totally bored hearing me talk about Slay the Spire constantly. This is bad content. We can't have that here. We need fresh, new content, about the important issues plaguing the nation. (And the issues plaguing this website. I just noticed that it is nowhere to be found in Bing's search results for “chungus”. How is this possible? Is it because I start swearing immediately on the front page, and just have a page title that says, “This is the New Chungus”? We need to clean things up around here!)

Goodnight, my fellow Gooning Chunguses. I will see you next time, probably in a post titled Slay the Spire Update 9...

PS: I must apologize for the excessive length of this post. Things are getting a little out of hand lately with the amount of mental dumping I'm doing on here. Writing for me really is like mental gooning. It is kinda addictive once I get going. I will try to be more concise in my future posts for the sake of your sanity, dear reader. Maybe we will even discuss something of substance next time? We will see.

Slay the Spire Update 9

It never ends...

8/24/2026

I'm writing again. It felt like what I should do. Sorry that I haven't actually uploaded the last couple posts to the website yet. I've been writing a lot, since that's the easy part. The words just come out endlessly if I don't try to stop them. Just so many words describing absolutely nothing at all. It's a blessing and a curse, really. It's content – I guess – but not the kind that is very interesting to anybody.

I've got an update on Slay the Spire, but I won't bore you with the finer details this time. The Defect has passed through Ascension 6, beating the Heart with ease. Well, not too much ease. He did have 2 hp left at the end, but once the orb slots were maxed out and a Biased Cognition put into play with an artifact negating its downside, he was able to take that thing out. Just took a few big hits getting all of his frost orbs up and running.

It was a pretty typical run as the defect. (I said I wouldn't bore you with the details, but I guess the details are coming out of me. This is why I can never commit a crime, because I would crack immediately under interrogation.) The run was... ah, fuck it. I don't need to tell you about it. There was like an Echo Form, and a bunch of cards getting played twice, and it was good. The final fight even had a second Echo Form from a power potion that doubled my other Echo Form, giving me me 3 whole duplicated cards per turn.

Okay, no more details. This is not supposed to be exclusively a Slay the Spire blog. What should we talk about? My body? No, that makes me feel embarrassed. I will say, I saw myself in the mirror after getting out of the shower today, and I just went, “What the fuck?”. The body is doing some crazy things lately! The Adderall quickly let me lose the last five or so pounds I needed to get down to my goal of 150 lb even, and the body is looking good. The boobs are growing big! They're actually starting to look, you know, like boobs, rather than just slight man-boobs. I wish I could wear – or even afford to own clothes – that show off my body a bit more. I'm kinda just stuck wearing a dude's t-shirt and women's jeans most days. I've got one good fitting woman's v-neck t-shirt that referrences “Ferris Bueller's Day Off”, and I save it for my occasional trips to Walmart. You may see me there, looking nervous, looking scared.

Uh, okay, talking about the body is a no go. We can't be putting that filth on here. I mean, I could. I could just straight up post nudes on this website if I wanted to. Nobody could stop me. It's just... I need to make the website more family friendly for the search algorithms so that Chungus dot Net can be on the front page for the searches for “chungus”. Why is this Big Chungus fellow the top result? He was a bit racist in our forums one time. Had to remove his likeness from the website for a while. He's back now, because people complained, and I am too weak to stick to my morals. (I don't actually know if he was racist, but he did say something problematic from what I remember. What do you mean Big Chungus is a cartoon character and can't actually comment on the forums?)

Oh, I'm making a dinner tonight. Going to start cooking in an hour or so, once my hair has dried a bit more from the shower. I'm finally cooking the Chicken Artichoke Bake. It's so yummy. I love an artichoke. They have layers, like an ogre. I did make that Chicken Tortilla Soup a bit ago. It was a big hit! My parents said it tasted like the one at Applebees, which I guess is a compliment. Then I made a tomato sauce based hotdish sorta thing. Like a single pan affair involving ground beef (we use buffalo meat because we're bougie), green pepper, onion, elbow macaroni, tomato sauce, canned diced tomatoes, beef stock for cooking the pasta in, and a little shredded mozzarella cheese broiled on top at the end. Sometimes I call it a goulash to be fancy. I make it too often though, because it's so easy to cook. Basically just a fancy version of Hamburger Helper in a way. That's what a lot of my meals become.

The shower I took was very necessary. Today, my dad and I went down to the basement of the barn and cleaned out “The Pit of Misery”. It was full of moldy, mouse infested insulation, boards, and other various scraps. I kinda snuck out there while my dad was resting a bit and got most of it done myself, because I didn't want him to have to do too much and hurt his back. He's got a bad back lately. He randomly yells out in pain when he gets up from chairs or bends over to grab something nowadays. It's not good. He won't see a real doctor, just a chiropractor. He needs some sort of back surgery. Gotta replace the whole spine. It's all worn out.

What else could we talk about? Oh, the website, nah, I don't have anything to say there. There will be no new features for a while. I'm too scatterbrained to think about code. Maybe I should make a video game? I used to do that. Also requires brain power though. I did have an idea one night to try making that Gabe Simulator game I once thought about, but make the combat system a deck building affair. I originally was thinking more of a Paper Mario inspired system, but it seemed out of place to just go around a small town beating people up in the streets. At least if cards were involved there would be some justification to the battles. Also I like the idea of just acquiring a gun as a card, and then you straight up whip out a glock and shoot someone. (That kinda goes against the whole making the card game a whimsical way to settle differences, but maybe there's a way to integrate the two ideas.)

What nonsense am I talking about? I haven't even explained this game idea to you guys. You're probably wondering what a “Gabe” even is. Well, I am too, but that's the working title of the game. I guess the idea is that you start off the game living in your parent's basement, but then your parents leave for a week, and you have to survive. There's only a couple microwave burritos left in the house, and you will starve if you don't leave your domain and go out into the greater world. It wouldn't exactly be like a survival simulator, more of like a story-based look into a week in the life of a man who spends too much time in his parent's basement.

There would be a system of managing time-based events that would take place in the small town the game is set in; kinda something like Dead Rising, but maybe where time would only pass when you take actions. People would give you quests. There would be a range of colorful characters. All of the food items would be stuff like frozen burritos, Hot Pockets, and Pizza Rolls. You would visit your local card shop for some reason. (I guess to buy cards for the combat maybe?) Maybe get a job and have to do some sort of mind-numbing minigame. There would be a mean sheriff Big Jeffrey and his deputy Little Jimmy trying to harass you at every turn.

It's been a while since I thought about this project, so I don't really remember all the ideas I used to have. I did start making... something. There was like the house you start in, maybe a street with some placeholder buildings, and then I just got incredibly bogged down making a ton of menus and systems for a turn-based combat system that never got anywhere close to working. The menus were kinda cool at least. I think I styled them similarly to Paper Mario, and they even maybe slightly did something. There was also a button to pee, which would cause a cylinder to stick out of the placeholder capsule character and pee-like particles would come out the end. Really high tech stuff. I would post this prototype on the website, but it's probably not in a working state right now, and I fucking do not want to download Unity again. The new versions of Unity do not work well with my old game projects, because they keep changing the damned thing with half-finished features. I have to go around fixing all the errors that pop up, and then the thing has the nerve to tell me that I'm using “deprecated” features...

Later that evening...

Good evening everybody. I am back to writing on the computer. Slay the Spire and writing this garbage have been inextricably linked in my mind. I just finished making the Chicken Artichoke Bake (Why am I capitalizing this?), and now I am on to video games, while I wait for the sleepies to arrive. The supper turned out passable at best. I totally fucked up the sauce! You make a sort of gravy out of the chicken drippings after you brown them a bit, and I could not get the sauce to thicken up. It calls for making a roux with 1/3 cup of flour, but it was not working. I think it's because my mom doubles the amount of chicken broth used for some reason in the recipe. Or maybe I added too much extra butter? I also didn't use a whisk because they're hard to clean... The sauce became a runny, oily mess, and I had the terrible idea of trying to add more flour to thicken it up.

Good evening everybody. I am back to writing on the computer. Slay the Spire and writing this garbage have been inextricably linked in my mind. I just finished making the Chicken Artichoke Bake (Why am I capitalizing this?), and now I am on to video games, while I wait for the sleepies to arrive. The supper turned out passable at best. I totally fucked up the sauce! You make a sort of gravy out of the chicken drippings after you brown them a bit, and I could not get the sauce to thicken up. It calls for making a roux with 1/3 cup of flour, but it was not working. I think it's because my mom doubles the amount of chicken broth used for some reason in the recipe. Or maybe I added too much extra butter? I also didn't use a whisk because they're hard to clean... The sauce became a runny, oily mess, and I had the terrible idea of trying to add more flour to thicken it up.

This did not work. You cannot add flour once the watery component is added. It just turned into gross little flour balls in the gravy that looked disgusting. I thought I had ruined everything. Luckily, once the entire thing was baked in the oven, the gritty little flour balls were soft enough to be unnoticeable, so that wasn't too bad. The problem was that the sauce never thickened up at all. It was like soup in a baking pan. You're supposed to be able to scoop this stuff out onto egg noodles, but it just ran all over the plate and made a huge mess. I was drinking sauce at the end of the meal. Just defeated...

The taste was kinda off too, I thought. My parents claimed that it tasted like it always does, but I felt something was awry. They compliment my food too much. It's getting annoying. I wish they would provide some actual criticism. It felt as if the jarred marinated artichokes totally dominated the flavor, and there wasn't enough else going on to balance it out. Too acidic tasting. Needed more savory notes. Maybe a little spice?

Now that I think about it, this might actually be my first time tasting the dish. Normally I drown out the flavor of all my food with excessive amounts of spice. Unfortunately, lately I've been caught lacking in the spice department. I haven't been able to find a plug for spicy products. I used to grow my own, but I neglected to start the garden this year. I would make my delicious Big Scary Pepper Flakes by drying out a combination of habeneros, ghost peppers, bird's eye chilies, and whatever other peppers I used to have. Ooh maybe a Chocolate Scorpion or a 7 Pot Pepper. Those are my favorites from the glory days of the garden. I have hot sauce around, but it's just not the same as a fresh or dried pepper. You can't use hot sauce on everything. It has too strong of a flavor. I just want the natural pepper taste and spice. That'll get you sweating real good. Damn, I could go for something spicy right now...

Time to get down to business. Slay the Spire business, that is. I'm kinda scared. I have a run upcoming as the Watcher, and there is a lot of pressure on me to get a win. You see, I am three for three on passing the Ascension on my first try so far, and the Watcher is all who remains. The Ironclad was sadly not able to muster the strength to destroy the Heart at the end of his Journey, so this is not an opportunity for a perfect victory across all characters. I don't think I'm good enough at video games for that yet. I'm not even sure that I'll be good enough to get through this next run. I guess we will find out!

(Probably in way too much detail, as that is my way.)

Popping a nicotine pouch; off we go! Why is the Watcher blue? Is she okay? I think she needs more iron in her diet. The cat whale thing gave me a Master Reality. I like this card, but it is useless for now.

Act one complete! Sorry I didn't keep you updated along the way. Was deep into the gaming. I'm building the deck around the Master Reality, and so far it's been working great. Got a Foreign Influence as my first card, then picked up Battle Hymn and Deceive Reality as the act went on. I was a bit of coward and skipped an elite, opting for a safer path that would guarantee a couple more upgrades. I did find a Potion Belt, Maw Bank, Letter Opener, and Vajra as I went.

Unfortunately the Slime Boss was less than generous with his rewards. Given a choice between Devotion, Absolute Garbage (Judgement), and Alpha I begrudgingly chose Devotion. It's slow un-upgraded and unsupported, but at least entering divinity occasionally somewhat supports my plan to attack with a bunch of created cards. The boss relic is making me sad though. Ectoplasm, Fusion Hammer, or Black Star. The two energy relics both take some of the fun out of the game. I want to gain gold so I can get rich with the Maw Bank, and limiting myself to only a couple more card removals is going to suck. Removing the ability to smith just takes the fun out of visiting a bonfire, and I have a few cards (like the Devotion) that could really use an upgrade. I'm actually tempted to just skip the energy relic and get the Black Star. Maybe Divinity and switching out of Calm would be enough to make it through the second act?

I'm going to sleep on the issue, and end the post here. This has been a long one once again, but I hope it was at least a little more interesting than the last update. I try my best to have thoughts for you guys. All I want is to please you. Is anybody reading this?

I have a Migraine

+ Slay the Spire Update 10 (The final update?)

8/26/2026

Breaking News Alert: I have a migraine. It's happened again. I don't know what I did to deserve this one. I think I might have stayed up too late last night watching a Youtube man do an entire run of Slay the Spire. My mind was so tired, and I couldn't stop watching. Sleeping at midnight would have been nice, but that did not happen. Sleep didn't come until 2:00 am, and then I didn't get up until like 11:00 am today. That's probably what triggered the migraine.

I don't know that it's really a migraine. It's so far just a little headache that is threatening to become worse. Yet the mind is totally clouded, and I feel just... off... in the way that having a migraine causes. I had big hopes for working on the website today, but my mind is just not cooperating. So, instead I took a migraine pill, and I'm just relaxing for a bit while I wait for it to force me to rest for a bit. Maybe I caused the migraine by stressing myself out trying to decide what to work on.

Or, maybe it was earlier when I had to make the heart-wrenching choice of boss artifacts in Slay the Spire. I ended up going with the Black Star, and was able to comfortably defeat 4 elites in Act 2. But then the Automaton just told me “fuck you” by giving me a Velvet Choker as my only energy relic, and by this point, I don't think that's a workable option, so I'm never getting a fourth energy. Now I have another decision between the Astrolabe and the Sacred Bark. I did kinda cheat on this decision, because I've already seen what cards Astrolabe would give before quitting out of the game. I think it was going to give me a Wave of the Hand, Inner Peace, and uh, something else? I don't remember the last one, but none were that useful.

In hindsight, which I hear is always 20-20, I should have definitely gone with either of the two energy relics. I didn't visit a single shop this act, so I have tons of gold from Maw Bank (Which is good, but I need to hit up a shop or two in act 3 for those removals.), and I only got one bonfire visit at the very end, upgrading Devotion. I even skipped an elite relic, because I was offered a Bottled Lightning but had no skill that stood out enough to want at the start of every combat. The rest of the relics were not super impactful. Happy Flower is really good, Horn Cleat is nice to have, Meat on the Bone is great, Toy Ornithopter is a good little bonus, Golden Eye would be useful if my deck did any scrying, Stone Calendar and Akabeko increase my damage output a little, and a Red Mask never hurts for dealing with enemy artifacts.

Actually, the most useful relic I received was probably a Thread and Needle. You see, I picked up Apparitions early this act during an event, so that 4 plated armor is all I really need for at least 5 turns. They've basically made this entire act a complete cakewalk. I don't think they'll stay as useful for the longer fights of Act 3, especially without an upgrade from the egg. It's gonna be really rough, and I'm going to struggle with only 3 energy. Nemesis and Reptomancer should be fine, but I'm a little scared for what that head will do to me after depleting all of my Apparitions.

Oh! I just remembered the third card that Astrolabe was going to get me while thinking about fighting Reptomancer, and it's made my mind up. It was Foreign Influence, not Like Water! (I just saw that earlier as a random card reward.) A second copy of Foreign Influence with upgrade would be amazing! (Well maybe not game changingly amazing, but better than a Strike at least.) This card is great with Master Reality. It's really useful being able to tailor the attack it gives to best deal with the enemy you are facing (Such as AOE attacks for Reptomancer); it activates Letter Opener for free while also being an attack; and it counts as a skill for Sanctity – plus the upgraded version is a free attack when I am lacking in energy.

Okay, on we go. Act 3. Let's take a look at the map. It's looking better than my Act 2 map. (I had to choose between 4 elites and no shops or bonfires (except the last), and like a safer path with only an Elite or two (which I didn't want, because I needed to make the most out of the Black Star).) We can choose between 3 elites, a shop, and two bonfires; or the crazy good path of two immediate shops and a bonfire, then two elites with bonfires after each. (Sorry if that description was confusing. I'm not counting the final bonfire when describing these paths.) Do I want two extra relics, or an extra shop and upgrade? Since I have 930 gold, that extra shop would also likely give more relic options. Well, I'll start down a path that lets me hit the first shop, then decide if I want the second shop or whether to divert to the 3 Elite path. We are disabling the Maw Bank earlier this way, but it gives me the freedom to delay the choice.

Okay, okay, Act 3 is over. The deck is going crazy right now. I defeated the Donut and his D8 buddy boss without them being able to take a single turn. I've got a second Rushdown, 3 wrath and 3 calm cards, a Deus Ex Machina, enough sources of mantra to enter divinity, and a Vault. The whole deck was used. My last elite this act gave me Teardrop Locket and Mummified hand, which were crucial for playing even more cards. I still wish that last boss wasn't so stingy with its rewards. (Of which there are none... Except a heal, which I didn't even need because I didn't take a single point of damage this act.)

Now we're at the last shop. I've already got 5 potions, and already removed all of my Strike and Defends. I'm tempted to replace my Speed Potion with a Bottled Miracle or Weak potion for the Heart. (The Sword and Shield guys are going to be a joke, as long as I can pull of what I did with Donut and his edgy brother.) There's a Foresight on sale, but I'm not sure I need it. A Carve Reality is also available, which does fit my Master Reality theme, but I'm not sure I need more attacks. White Beast Statue, Pantograph, and Toolbox are available as relics. I think we'll go with the Toolbox, Miracle potion, and Foresight. Hopefully Foresight doesn't just end up being a curse.

Yay, it is done! A new high score of 2126! Finally I was able to see what happens when the relics exceed the limits of the screen. They don't wrap around as I had expected, but instead an arrow appears to flip over to the next page of them. I had a couple of dicey moments during the Heart fight, where I had a big attack coming, not a lot of block, and didn't have an Apparition in play. Luckily, the Ink Bottle came in clutch for these moments, letting me burn a Miracle just to draw another card and continue my assault. And it was quite an assault. The Heart didn't even make it through its first buffing phase.

Well, we did it. Each character has made it through their 6th Ascension without fail. Except for a bit of failure in the Ironclad's case, due to his performance anxiety against the Heart. He's only beaten the Heart for me once so far in all of my time playing. Kinda a noob, that guy. Every other character has four or five (in the Watcher's case) Heart kills under their belts.

Now what? That last set of runs was exhausting (no pun intended), especially towards the end as the self-imposed pressure to finish the Ascension without fail with all four characters grew. I spend ages agonizing over some of my decisions, and now I feel worn out. I think for Ascension 7 we're going to take it a bit easy. Try to play a little faster, maybe make some reckless decisions and see if we can find some new strategies. But, I'm also seeing this other game: Slay the Spire 2, and it's calling to me. I think I'm going to give it a little try. I'm a little afraid playing the second game will totally mess up the knowledge of the first game I've built up in my head though.

PS: The post just ended there, as I had succumbed to the migraine. (I feel like this is migraine “stolen valor” of some sort. It wasn't that intense of a headache.) I have a little addendum to my final Slay the Spire update. I have just beaten the Heart as the Ironclad for his Ascension 7 run, also on the first try, so now I have successfully beaten the Heart with all four characters consecutively. I'm going to continue playing through the ascensions, but I'm going to stop writing my updates in here. This kind of content is getting dull, and we need to find a way to shake things up a little for the next post. Perhaps we will discuss events in the news. Get a little political with it. Ooh, I may even consider writing a book review.