@crazybull You can avoid the cards that add/work with curses. The bread-and-butter way to win (equivalent of Ironclad Strength of Defect orbs) for The Shade is Corruption + Intangible. Try Black Heart!

How does this character work?
I haven't found a way to not drown myself in curses.
Exept that ont time when I could suddenly play them to gain energy which felt rather OP.
How does this work?

Balance Changes (Part 2):
Encroaching Shadows now costs 0.
Execute now exhausts.
Dusk now scales with the number of cards in your draw pile instead of always shuffling in 3 Shadows.
Buffed Deception slightly.
Subversion no longer exhausts.
Forbidden Thoughts now shuffles Shame into your draw pile instead of placing it on top.
Black Lightning and Forbidden Knowledge now scale with the number of curses in draw, hand, AND discard.
Remission gives 4 regen (down from 5).
Spreading Corruption now costs 1 less, description changed to “At the start (and end) of your turn, apply Deteriorate to all enemies.”

Balance changes (Part 1):
Moved vessel of suffering and Encroaching Shadows to Uncommon rarity. This is to be consistent with base game characters, who have no common powers.
Moved Rebuff and Deception to Common rarity.
Moved Distortion to Rare rarity.
Cut Descend and Death Sentence for being too milk-toast.
Deteriorate now deals damage equal to total debuffs on the target, and saps strength each turn.
Renounce Darkness event now gives upgraded Purges.
Nerfed Arcane Tempest to gain raw damage instead of going to X + 1.
Nerfed Shadow Strike to cost 1 (upgrades to cost 0).
Buffed Mutual Annihilation to only require 7 triggers (down from 13), but also cost 3.
Exert always creates an Injury instead of a random curse.
Nerfed Pure Strike's damage a little, and required Corruption lost this turn to enable Pure Strike.

New version has a ton of changes.

New content:
Added new card, Ritual of Binding, to the rare pool.
Added common relic, Tethered Crystal.
Added a couple new potions.

Bug fixes:
Overdrive now doubles the amount shown in the “+X Corruption” popup.
Fixed bug where lightning would not recalculate damage depending on which enemy it hit.
Reworked Wither to do what it says (at least in regards to vanilla debuffs) instead of adding to vanilla debuffs each turn.
Blightbolt glows if an enemy is debuffed.
Cleaned up some descriptions.

Yeah weird stuff happens with giant mod lists

weird doesnt work with me might just be cause of the amount of mods i have lol

@Cinder Works fine for me. Just started the game with Downfall, selected Standard Run -> Standard Run, and I can play as The Shade.

If you play with downfall it seems that this mod is counted as one of the boss monsters and so cannot use the normal route (could be a bug in either mod but just wanted to say)

You keep those bug reports coming, I'll keep fixing em.

Blight Bolt reduces strength as well, not just debuffs.

Yeah my "fix" for lightning just broke it in new ways. Should be re-fixed now.

Also, just added the new Stslib custom targeting, so cards that let you choose ANY target are now a lot less janky to use

Happened against the 3 sentries.

@Sagil Which enemy was it? I don't think that happens with normal enemies. Was it the Darklings by any chance?

When Arcane Tempest kills an opponent with a hit, later hits can still target the dead opponent, essentially wasting the hit.

Wait what, I legit thought it's his starting deck lol

@Sagil Reverted the starter deck back to how it should be. I often forget to switch it back after debugging stuff

Ah shit, give me a minute...

One of the latest fixes seems to have messed with the starting deck. The strikes have all been replaces with black lightning, arcane tempest, shadow barrier, shadow blend and soul bind.

@Marfolog Glad to hear it!

@Sagil Found the Black Lightning bug, it's because you weren't in fast mode and I am a fool (who never playtest outside of fast mode). Just uploaded a quick fix for that bug.

Very unique mod, had a lot of fun playing it!

Changelog:
* Fixed description for Spreading Corruption power
* Hopefully resolved most Lightning-related bugs
* Buff: Midnight Horizon now hits the original target as well as all other enemies.
* Buff: Reduced the cost of Shadow Barrier by 1 energy; it now exhausts when not upgraded
* Buff: Reduced the cost of Subversion by 1 energy
* Buff: Spreading Corruption now triggers at the start and end of your turn

@Sagil Were you not in Fast-mode when you encountered the Black Lightning delay?

All great feedback, thanks! I have been trying to fix the lightning for so long, it's driving me crazy.

When you play Black Lightning with lots of curses in your draw pile (12 for me), there is a pretty long delay (~10 seconds) where the UI freezes after the lightning animation ends.

Got a crash during Shadow Blend replay:
java.lang.NullPointerException
at theShadeThatFades.actions.LightningAction.StrikeLightning(LightningAction.java:127)
at theShadeThatFades.actions.LightningAction.update(LightningAction.java:164)

Great character - nice theme, balanced, lots of interesting combos. :)
Found one bug: Spreading Corruption power has no description.

That's like a 0.0035% chance, "unlucky" doesn't even cover it

I actually did this in my second run, I had the Tungston Rod and the event where you sacrifice half your health for 5 Apparitions, Sadly I eventually died at the hearts guardians after not receiving any Shadows or Apparitions which after my first turn I had 13/28 cards.

@DoominaBotle As with all StS characters, some upgrades are better than others. You learn which upgrades are most worthwhile through experience.

Managing deck size and inconsistency in your draws in one of the core challenges of this character. And keep in mind, you can play Shadows early to stack up extra intangible, just like Apparitions.

I can understand if its for balance reasons but many cards don't seem to have any noticeable upgrade.The Shadows for instance, I found the greatest challenge with this deck was the shuffling, the amount of time I lost because all of my shadows were clumped together in a single draw was not a small amount.

SolarNougat has informed me that this update will reset Ascension progress, so be warned

Fixed the color bug and (hopefully) the lightning vs dormant enemies bug.

Definitely something I can fix on my end. Always planned on doing more refactoring, just never thought it was necessary. Thanks for the report.

I'd like to report an issue with the way the game internally classifies this character's cards. Specifically, attempting to load The Shade with The Hermit and/or The Paladin causes the game to classify both cards from The Shade and The Hermit/The Paladin (and all three at once, if they're all loaded into the game) into "Default_gray_color". This also causes the game to crash if I try to click on the proper tab for each of the characters listed above.

Pic of compendium: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/724725673578463232/855415113712533525/unknown.png

You should check what "The beaked" does. I like the idea of the starting relic, and it could be adapted here to provide a different bonus adapted to initial design.
Like "every time you play card, steal one life from a random enemy/ or gain 1 corruption / or apply languid to a random enemy / etc

The Shade used to have 4 Shadows in the default deck. This alone made the character too easy, since it was a lot easier to scale up as much as needed regardless of card choices.

"Unlimited" intangible would go against the design philosophy of the character, which is that your time is limited and you need to make the most of it. Even Fade only works as long as you are losing HP, and Eidolon Form requires you to keep exhausting your cards to feed it.

You're probably right that there are more alternatives to block that I could use. Lifesteal is touched on a bit with Schadenfreude, but the issue with healing in general is that it can't be renewable. Though I guess I could probably figure out a way around that. Languid would fit the character for sure.

As for an equivalent to Limit Break, try Anoint. It basically doubles your Corruption (but only for one enemy). Overdrive can combo with most other Corruption gain cards to skyrocket your corruption pretty fast.

- I like that corruption plays as a double edged sword. You probably need the equivalent of Ironclad's "Limit break" and "Demon form" for corruption to make it worthwhile and build up faster.

- I'd say you need to think of ways to "extend" the intangible, or make it happen under certain conditions. Shade shouldn't rely on block, I would even say that lifesteal or counterattack would be good mechanics with him to avoid relying on block. Or a poison-like mechanic using Corruption (I think I've seen one card doing that, but expanding on this idea would be interesting).

- You mentioned Dusk and Shadow blend, but what are the odds of obtaining those cards? Is upgrading your shadow to remove exhaust too powerful? Or use the mechanic "Exhaustive" (exhausts after a certain amount of uses)?

As for obvious combos, I find that fast Corruption stacking is the most consistent strategy. An Imbue or Black Heart can make it so that you don't need more than the 3 turns of Shadows to win. On that note, Shadow Strike is pretty insane in most runs.

If you can't scale up that fast, Dusk and Shadow Blend are the most effective ways to get more than 3 Shadows. A self-damage build can also use Fade as renewable intangible.

Feint actually makes the enemy attack immediately, during your turn. You can use this to trigger self-damage effects, or to heal if you cast Subversion on yourself first.

I'm not nearly good enough at the game to give a real analysis on how good the Shade is, or which strategies will make the best use of the cards on offer.

Honestly I'm in agreement with you. I find the Shade very challenging to win with in its current state. A lot of people complained that it was too easy to win with in early alpha testing, so I nerfed some cards (especially the base deck). A lot of the block gain cards have been buffed a lot since then, but you do need something more than that to be able to rely on block. Siphon Strength was a new edition that I designed specifically to support this, since Corruption naturally makes multi-hit enemies disproportionately harder, just like Strength Down makes them disproportionately easier. It's also a way to scale attack without relying on Corruption. You can also upgrade Purge to Retain, if you just need an extra turn of not getting hit for 150+. I've never found much success trying to use Block outside of a Pure build (no corruption).

Some comments after a few runs:
- "constrict" doesn't have a tooltip (like in "Dark Tendrils").
- Some cards are very powerful and cheap while others are almost the opposite. There's no obvious to combo and defeat bosses quickly that have MUCH larger HP pools than you. How are you supposed to survive once you've exhausted your shadows? Long fights end inevitably in losing a lot of health. This character needs more ways to mitigate damage while remaining faitful to your initial design.
- Why a card like "Siphon strenght" when the character revolves around corruption and has no synergy with strenght?
- I don't understand the description of the card "Feint". If the enemy is already planning to attack what's the point in forcing it to attack?

Nice

Oh pardon, I meant to reply ... yes, this works with Beaked the Cultist ... no crashes.

@AvangionQ Probably not. It's hard-coded to work with specific debuffs. This is because there is no consistent way to tell how a debuff decays. Stuff like "isturnBased" is not always set, and is sometimes set for debuffs that only last a turn.

Wither ... will this crash if Beaked the Cultist is installed? Let's find out

I think someone told me about this with Darklings a while ago, I just couldn't reproduce it. Awakened one should be more consistent since there's only one enemy

I encountered this when using AT against fairy enemies in Gensokyo, but a similar "revival" state can occur with Awakened One phase 1 in the base game.

Another bug (which was cross-mod when I encountered it, but I suspect can work under a specific condition in vanilla): When playing Arcane Tempest, if a hit from the card kills the only remaining enemy and that enemy can still "revive", the game crashes.

09:05:03.030 ERROR core.CardCrawlGame> Exception caught
java.lang.NullPointerException: null
at theShadeThatFades.actions.LightningAction.StrikeLightning(LightningAction.java:90) ~[theShadeThatFades.jar:?]
at theShadeThatFades.actions.LightningAction.update(LightningAction.java:126) ~[theShadeThatFades.jar:?]
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.actions.GameActionManager.update(GameActionManager.java:179) ~[?:?]
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.rooms.AbstractRoom.update(AbstractRoom.java:325) ~[?:?]
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.dungeons.AbstractDungeon.update(AbstractDungeon.java:2532) ~[?:?]
at com.megacrit.cardcrawl.core.CardCrawlGame.update(CardCrawlGame.java:871) ~[?:?]

Small update:
[*] Deteriorate now prevents targets from getting the damage buff from their own Corruption.
[*] Added new card Siphon Strength
[*] Fixed bug with Soul Bind crashing the game when played on certain boss minions
[*] Fixed Burning description being incomplete sometimes

I shamelessly copied most of my Sleep implementation from The Disciple. I'll check it out the interaction with Ruina though.