Monster Train Cheats and Tips
Train Stewards Aren’t a One Trick Unit
Train Stewards are incredibly effective for the first two or so layers of hell. Enemy health and damage output is so low that you can effectively roll through anything. Depending on which faction you’re using, Train Stewards fall into one of three roles: meat shield, supplementary DPS, or stopgap.
The Stygian Guard and Hellhorned faction leaders are very easy to kill at the beginning of a run and, as such, need some bodyguards before they can get up to full speed. When it comes to the Awoken you can use Stewards to do direct damage while the Sentient tanks hit and counter using their spikes or explosive healing. The Umbra and Melting Remnant treat Train Stewards like a stopgap; they damage enemy units and hold them back while buffing themselves and creating legions of Waxen. If you want to upgrade your Train Shepherds that’s fine! Just don’t expect them to last long or have much utility beyond what any other unit could do.
But You Should Ditch Train Stewards After Ring Three
By the time you’ve defeated Daedalus, the game’s first major boss, you should have at least two faction specific units that will more than outperform your standard Train Stewards. As the run continues you’ll find yourself discarding Steward after Steward, not needing them for anything beyond an occasional meat shield. I promise you that more efficient card draw for your most powerful spells will be far more useful than the 5/8 Train Stewards filling up your valuable deck space. Throw them into portals! I’m sure they’ll be fine and that there are no consequences for this, as we all know Hell is very pleasant for its myriad denizens.
Pour Upgrades Into One Or Two Units or Spells, Then Duplicate Them
Investing heavily in upgrading a single monster may feel like a big gamble, but I promise it’s way safer than you think. Hellvents let you duplicate any card other than your champion, so duplicating a card you’ve buffed to the point of absurdity is a really good deal. One of my favorite examples of this is a run where I managed to acquire a 0-Cost Hellical Crystallis (a Stygian spell that deals 25 damage to the front-most enemy unit twice) with Holdover, which is to say that I had a guaranteed 50 damage every single turn. When I duplicated that card, I was basically set for the entire rest of the run.
You Don’t Always Need To Take A Trial
I have a bad habit of looking at additional difficulty modifiers in video games and saying to myself “Well, I might as well turn that on because if I’m just good at the game it’ll be fine.”
There’s a reason you can enable and disable trials at will, because sometimes the smarter tactical decision is to just let it go. If you don’t have a very strong floor clear on turn one, then don’t let enemies spawn on every floor. Even if you have a phenomenal deck there are some trial and enemy combos that will leave you burned, badly. Learning to pick your battles is an important part of making sure your Pyre can reach its destination intact.
Artifacts Are Your Friends
The buffs provided by artifacts can be completely game changing. If I have to choose between anything and a Trinket Merchant, if I have the money, I will always pick the merchant. The chance to make everything about your deck better is way too good to pass up. In a recent Umbra run I found an artifact that granted three mana every time I summoned two monsters in a single turn, given that this was an Umbra deck which should be summoning at least two or three monsters per turn, I was basically never going to run out of mana again. This allowed me to load up on incredibly powerful spells that carried me well through the end of the run. That’s just the tip of the iceberg for what good artifacts can do, if you can find them use them.
