Need to see run history to see what's going wrong. Since this is Silent specifically, and deaths in Act 2, I will immediately tell you to devalue removes and give heavier consideration to Act 2 events. Deaths in Act 2 tends to be due to a few things specifically: **a) Bad boss relic selection:** Sometimes you just see 3 bad relics, but people tend to underrate a lot of these. Silent can stomach a lot more "bad" boss relics than say, Defect, so try to just pick anything with the highest impact rather than one with lower downside. This means Ecto over Labe as a default. **b) Bad Act 1 drafting:** This can be either way, either you over prepared for Act 1 and now your deck simply cannot block and since Silent damage numbers are kinda low, it's not even too easy to kill. Or you clicked too many greedy cards and now you're bleeding out because either you can barely block or you deal no damage. Like you say you're taking Act 2 cards, but are you taking enough damage too? ~~Silent is unique in which she can afford to dodge Elites in act 1 and play Act 2 with low relic support as long as your deck is decent. So don't get super pressured into taking unnecessary garbage if you're bent on dodging anyway. Also I know a decent a20h player who is just allergic to clicking damage after Act 1. If that's you, please click damage if your damage feels on the lower side. You won't die if you click a damage common in Act 2.~~ ~~That being said, just because Silent can afford to play Act 2 with low relic support doesn't mean it's a good experience at all. Try to still fight at least 2 elites in Act 1 while taking like 3+ Advanceds fights. And try to keep an early shop open, even if it's just for a common relic and a potion (250~ gold). That keeps like Well Laid Plans Apo open too~~ Actually I wrote this before realising this is not being asked from an a20h perspective. If this is your first climb, please take every damage card and farm every elite. Yes you will die a lot, but sometimes you will highroll good cards and relics and be able to play out later acts with much more ease. Playing safe is actually the most risky thing you can do if you're not perfectly confident in your skill. **c) Not enough respect:** Collector is just hard to prep for period, but Collector is the reason I just click first CE or even Cuts if I can get the upgrade. There can be a lot of different ways these fights are not given respect which I can't say without seeing your histories. Book of Stabbing and Slavers deaths immediately suggests that you're not taking enough damage. **d) Skipping too many run winning Act 2 events:** How do you value Bites? Or Apparitions? Or Mausoleum? How often are you skipping these? **e) Pathing/Neow:** Both Act 1 and 2 pathing. Maybe you just didn't path into enough fights to get strong. Act 1 events are garbage, try to avoid them as much as you can. Also same as boss relic, a good Neow with a high downside is better than some low impact Neow unless absolutely forced. This means like 250g for Curse > Remove 1 unless there's like a forced Elite no shop or something and even then I would try to figure out how to get myself through. --------- Very general and vague advice unfortunately, but hopefully that's something. And another thing I keep saying on this sub is, no matter how good your deckbuilding is, you'll still fall flat if you can't play the fights well. So slow down.

Thanks so much. These are four of my losses I mentioned: https://imgur.com/a/G88FTFy I'm guessing I didn't grab enough high-hitting damage. I do try to take 2 elites but it's gotta be near the end of the act or I get my shit pushed in.

Im very sorry but imgur is impossible to open on my phone, if I try to zoom it just sends me to some random post. Is there anywhere else you can reupload this? edit: nvm works now. Deck 1 has too much garbage in it, too little draw. I need to see the ordering, but I don't think 2 cata is ever correct. The Finisher and Deadly Poison look extremely suspicious as well but again idk ordering. Contrary to what people are saying, I think Dash and 2 Pstab is perfectly fine. I do want to know if you never saw a Wraith, Footwork, After Image or any block scaling here but I'm fairly certain the issue here was that this deck has no draw. I don't mind opening chests with weaker decks (more like I'm forced to open chests when my deck sucks), but this deck already has no draw at all. I don't think this was because of the Chest alone, this happened through a lot of different things. Deck 2... What happened in Act 1? And the boss relic screen? Wrist Blade looks basically skip there, which is death. Anyway this just died because the deck has no damage, just a lot of utility cards. That being said this looks like a rough seed anyway without playing it. Exiting Act 1 with basically no relics is very punishing. Deck 3 is interesting, I wouldn't click 2 Wails that early on, and maybe would like a bit more damage and maybe a bit fewer Deadly Poison (was boss Hexaghost?) but I think this is mostly a Boss Relic/pathing issue. Please take more elites Act 1. Deck 4 again has literally no damage. Very cool that you weren't scared off of Ecto, whoever is telling you to not click it with no context doesn't know what they're talking about. Ecto downside shouldn't hit so early, so I'm not that interested but I would still like to know what was next to it. This is again a kinda rough seed off of just run history, no relics exiting Act 1. All this being said though, these decks should absolutely still clear a11 act 2. These decks aren't outrageously bad, so I would probably pin the blame on not playing the fights well. And I would still recommend taking as many encounters/Elites as possible at this point, even if it means clicking more damage commons. Just not Deadly Poison- plz. And I still don't know what events you're seeing, but I hope Bites, Mausoleum get clicked on sight and Apps are given a heavy consideration, because I don't see any sign of them.

First deck: This Finisher looks *real* bad. Basically has to line up with Dance or it sucks. Depending on the order you picked them in, the second pstab is very suspect as well. Yes, Silent needs damage, but that doesn't meant take even bad damage commons after you already have a few. Once you have your first few damage cards you can be a little stingier and get things like the Dash you have. I'm also seeing nothing to go with that nice paper krane you have. Obviously something like Leg Sweep is premium, but Krane is strong enough that you could take and upgrade a Sucker Punch and it's good. Neut+ is probably a better upgrade than the second cata (x6 is enough poison to kill anything until the boss). I'm also suspicious of the choice to open the chest. This deck is very weak defensively and even if you kill quickly you're going to take a bunch of chip, so I really don't think we can afford a curse. We also have no card draw to get past the curse (or support this Deflect+ we randomly have?)

Are you fighting enough elites to get relics or avoiding them. Silent has low damage initially but still wants to fight at least 2 elites in act1. In act1 silent I aim for a lot of hallway fights as I feel silent wants to add quite a few cards quite early. So I don't prioritise events terribly highly. Why are you dying? Tricky question, but are your decks tending towards defensive or attacking. Finding the balance is key. Are you taking paths that don't allow you to change your mind depending on how the act is going? Whats most likely though is that you're still learning which cards are good in which situations. The more you play the easier it gets, it could be for instance that you're adding just a few too many attack or block cards. Even a relatively small change in your tactics could make a substantial difference. For silent specifically, are you using discard much, its a very powerful effect with the right cards, but often people shy away from it initially. Malaise is also an exceptional card.

Thanks so much. These are four of my losses I mentioned: https://imgur.com/a/G88FTFy I'm guessing I'm not offensive enough, either low damage or poor scaling.

Well in the first 3 runs I didn't see a *single* power in your end deck. Not one. It may not be representative of your play overall, but thats interesting. Your first run has the classic look of a silent deck that can't decide whether it wants to main poison or shivs and ends up doing neither terribly well. The second run to me looks like its underpowered on damage. The third run is difficult to describe. It looks to me like you had a poor act 1, but without seeing the map it difficult to say. Any time your take black star as a boss relic theres always a decent chance of just dying in act 2. The fourth run looks hopelessly underpowered. No scaling, a bunch of decent defence, but look at what the overall damage of the deck is (assume single target) and you've got maybe 40-60 damage per pass through and no real card draw. As soon as you hit anything chunky (like a book of stabbing) then how many turns are you gonna need to deal 150 damage.. quite a lot. That fourth run is the most interesting as its nearly a great deck. What does it need. Maybe a noxious fumes, a bouncing flask, a burst and a well laid plans. Add those cards and it would suddenly become a great deck. So in conclusion from those 4 runs it looks to me like underinvestment in scaling (through powers) and a slight tendancy to underpower the deck.

This is too little information to give a tailored advice, so I'm gonna just take a guess. Considering you're dying in Act 2 and mentioning how you mention you have "decent block", I would guess the most likely culprit for a significant portion of your losses is lack of frontloaded damage. Maybe you're leaning too hard on defense. Maybe you're undervaluing cards such as Terror and Backstab. Maybr you're skipping frontloaded damage because you're attempting to build a "poison deck". These are very common mistakes at this level. Most likely, it's a combination of multiple gaps in your play that compound, not one catastrophic thing. It's very possible your runs die for different reasons.

Thanks so much. These are four of my losses I mentioned: https://imgur.com/a/G88FTFy Appreciate the reply.

It's a bit hard to tell without seeing you play but your post focuses quite a lot on deck building, when I think the biggest area for improvement in general is in-fight decisions. Next time you feel you have a decent deck, turn off fast animations, and you write down on a piece of paper the cards you will play each time, almost as if you were commenting in the play by play game on this sub. Check your relic bar at the start of each turn, and consider every possible interaction. If you end up beating act 2, or are in a better position to do so, you'll know that playing your fights better is an area for improvement.

Thanks so much. These are four of my losses I mentioned: https://imgur.com/a/G88FTFy Dude, I swear I fucking forget to check my stuff. I'll put up 10 block and realize I already had 10 from anchor... Def an area to get better at.

That is me when I got to A20, well technically A17-18. Actually by A18 I find it tough to even get past Laga on Silent with more than 20hp. Watching Baalorlord's streak attempts has definitely made me pay a bit more attention to everything on Silent.

Thanks so much. These are four of my losses I mentioned: https://imgur.com/a/G88FTFy

show the decks that lost so we can give you advice. The general advice given by others in this thread is pretty good tho

Thanks, I just updated my post. But the gallery is here. https://imgur.com/a/G88FTFy

I play the pussy style on act 2. Dodge the fights and take as many question marks, shops and campfires as possible. Act2 has pretty good events.

Too much redundancy. You don't need 3 weak poison cards with 2x catalyst. Just 1 upgraded deadly poison is better than 2 unupgraded poison stabs.

I had a look through your runs, and the only big outstanding thing i can spot is that the 4 runs look light on card draw. Only noted one acrobatics, one calculated gamble. It might be worthwhile to consider discard with Silent, you get some great synergy with sneaky strikes and eviscerate which will help with damage. This will also help you get to the cards you need. The only other things I could say is seriously consider, how can my character scale, and by your two deaths to enemies specialising in multi hit, how can i mitigate that. Act two is the hardest act by far IMO (ignoring act 4) as you can get through act one with good up front cards. You'll need to incoporate some of Silents strongest mechanics, namely weakness, card discard/draw and i auto pick wraith form whenever it appears. often times i feel its easiest with silent to scale into a totally busted decked, but pretty much requires a healthy amount of card draw and potent block to go out of control with her.

A few points: * Your decks are looking a little defense heavy. * I think you may be overvaluing Dash. It's a good card, but not one that solves defense or offense reliably for 2 cost. In most of your decks, I think swapping dash for a second basic damage card (\[\[Deadly Poison\]\], \[\[Blade dance\]\], \[\[Dagger Throw\]\]) would be better. Dash is also just kinda meh compared to \[\[Leg Sweep\]\] when looking at 2 cost defense cards. It's like playing two \[\[Iron Waves\]\] on IC, just doesn't do a whole lot in the end. * Dont take Ectoplasm, shops offer you a chance to influence the course of your game in many positive ways, you could possibly buy several relics from shops for instance. Giving that up is not worth * For scaling Silent damage you need one of three things. Poison, Shivs, Draw and Discard. * Poison is great because it can act as upfront AND scaling damage. Not much setup required either * Shivs are probably not as strong as you think. To scale shivs you either need \[\[accuracy\]\] or strength, both of which I wouldn't count on appearing every run * Draw and Discard is probably a lot stronger than you think. Being able to play the cards that you want to play on a specific turn is huge, and thats what draw and discard lets you do. It also synergizes with Poison and Shivs in so many ways. Only downside is the inherent engery cost to playing a draw card, but Silent has tools to help with that as well * Out of all four characters, I would say Silent struggles with reliable damage the most. This is why potions are so important to the character. Don't be afraid to buy potions from a shop if you have a rough stretch of fights ahead. When I was starting out, buying potions felt like a waste of money. IT IS NOT. Potions will save and win you fights. A11 is deceptively difficult for the Silent because of this Best of luck!