The first card removal costs 75 Gold, and each additional removal adds 25 Gold (100, 125, 150, and so on). Despite the rising cost, removal is almost always the highest-impact gold you can spend.
A 20-card deck with 5 Strikes draws its key cards about 75% of the time. Remove just 2 Strikes and that 18-card deck draws key cards roughly 83% of the time. That consistency gain is worth more than most cards you could buy.
Remove Strikes before Defends in most cases.
Remove Affliction-affected cards when possible.
Stop removing only when your deck has fewer than 3 basic cards left.
Buy a card when it directly solves your biggest weakness and nothing else in the shop or upcoming rewards will fix the problem. Missing AoE, missing scaling, or missing block generation are all valid reasons to buy instead of remove.
Build-defining rares like (Ironclad), (Ironclad), (Silent), or (Necrobinder) are almost always worth buying when they appear. These cards warp your entire run in the right direction.
discounts all future shop purchases and is the best long-term shop relic. Cheap repeatable card removal becomes absurd when combined with Membership Card. adds more choices to every shop, making your gold more efficient.
Orange Pellets removes all debuffs when you play an Attack, Skill, and Power in the same turn. On characters that naturally play all three card types, this effect solves Afflictions, Weak, Frail, and most other negative effects in a single turn.
Path toward shops when you have 150 or more Gold. Skip shops when you have less than 75 Gold because you cannot afford even a single removal. Save gold for specific relics or cards when your deck needs one particular piece to function.
Gold is a resource, not a score. Ending a run with unspent gold is worse than spending it on the right removal or upgrade at the right time.
Upgrade when you are above 60% HP and you have a card that dramatically improves when upgraded. Rest when you are below 40% HP or you have no meaningful upgrade targets. Before a boss fight, upgrade if one upgraded card changes the matchup; rest if survival is uncertain.
The best upgrades in the game change how a card functions, not just its numbers. gains an extra turn of Intangible, adds more Shivs, and pushes Forge scaling harder than a raw damage bump alone.
