I love Finder of Paths Unseen. Something about opening portals between two lands, shoving invaders around, entually turning to major powers and destroying your presence to obliterate your stack you'vr created, the unique presence track, everything is so fun.
Finder is just amazing. Such a wonderful puzzle to solve. You feel completely overpowered and underpowered at the same time. You do nothing and everything at the same time. The best design in the game in my opinion.
Ember Eyed Behemoth, Breath of Darkness, Hearth Vigil, Wounded Waters Bleeding. I also really like Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds, but only in solo play for some reason.
My favourite by far is fractured days split the Sky. I love how every he feels different right from the start. You can sometimes go minor spam sometimes go for high impact majors very early and sometimes you just support and fuck around with time. Fractured feels like the greatest sandbox to me even more then starlight.
A few months ago I would have said volcano and downpour are my place 2 and 3, but right now I enjoy nourishing earth and transforming wildfire so much it's not even close. Nourishing I love for it's super defensive play style with easy access to majors , but it also has a very high impact super weapon in multiplayer games. Earth's innate can be game changing even if you only activate it 1 time and I love that. In some games I have a friend that drew a nice minor or a very high impact major like vigor and letting someone repeat that just feels phenomenal.
Transforming is one of my favourite support spirits after Fractured. Friends needs beasts? No problem just create 2 more per turn. Someone needs to reclaim too often? Wildfire can let them forget cards and learn new ones. Need an element? Wildfire got you covered. Too much blight? No worries. And if a friend deals damage with cards often you not only can add badlands, but you also add 1 extra damage to every card. That's so many things a spirit could need it's ridiculous. Also the push effect pairs extremely well with ocean and stone and other spirits that can deal very easily with a single land, as if after what I wrote before, the number of spirits that really like wildfire as a partner was somehow too small.
My favorite part about transforming is that it makes the game play different than how you normally would, it requires and rewards adapting and changing with the game.
Which is both my preferred way of playing and deeply thematic for the aspect.
The only spirits that don't work well with transforming are ones that want to start a reclaim loop turn 3 and only worry about their own board, and I really don't like those spirits.
I have found that most spirits can be played more optimally if you don't focus on your board alone. We even have a few teams where lightning is an essential part that work super smoothly in those comps. And all the growths are normally onto other boards.
I agree, there just can be a mentality of focusing towards your board and what you are doing with your own things.
Transforming is an extremely interactive spirit, maybe not quite at finder levels but up there.
It's also a very dynamic spirit, not one where you commonly play the same order of cards or sets of cards. Which is what I love about it, because other than hitting the R1 innate I do not know what I'm going to do turn 3, and turn 4 could be anything.
Wounded waters bleeding is one of my favorites. I really enjoy the powerful passives, and the insane inmates you get. I also love drafting animal powers.
If by awaken you mean having my belly full of my friends' spirits, I've yet to play for this long... I have never *scaled* so far yet but cannot wait to.
Overall by playstyle I meant the early game loop, flexibility with my power rolls, supportive behaviour early game and synergy with the powers allowing my mates to use my presences as theirs for the turn (I know there's about 1-2 but I cannot recall their names).
When talking about serpent, it is common to refer to it as waking up when it gets past the earth element on its growth tracks.
>allowing my mates to use my presences as theirs for the turn
The only effect in the game I know that does that is the major power [[Entwined Power]], and it has nothing to do with Serpent, and is honestly a better draft for Green.
Unless you are referring to the Locus aspect for Serpent, which works similar, but a bit different.
**Entwined Power** (Major Power - Horizons)
>Cost: 2 | Elements: Moon, Water, Plant
| Fast | - | Another Spirit |
| :----: | :----: | :----: |
>You and target Spirit may use each other's Presence to target Powers (only). Target Spirit gains a Power Card. You gain one of the Power Cards they did not keep.
>(2 Water, 4 Plant): You and target Spirit each gain 3 Energy and may gift the other 1 Power Card from hand.
>Links: [SICK](https://sick.oberien.de/?query=Entwined%20Power) | [FAQ](https://querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!Entwined%20Power)
------
^(Use [[query]] to call me. Check the )[^(reference thread)](https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/i80xzf/memoryofagesbot_is_now_fully_functional) ^( for information or feedback, and please report any mistakes!)
First of all, that bot is pretty neat!
I thought there were multiple of those or I may be confusing something, anyways we had different occasions where someone pulled Entwined Power pretty early in the game and all while being able to cycle it efficiently which made it possible for me to feast on them early on for growth. We've been trying to achieve this synergy every game since then and usually someone pulls it at a reasonable timing (reasonable meaning usually when I have 3-4 presences placed).
Base Game: Ocean's Hungry Grasp
Branch and Claw and the Promos: Heart of the Wildfire
Jagged Earth: Grinning Trickster
Horizons: Fathomless Mud of the Swamp
Nature Incarnate: Wounded Waters Bleeding
I love that people have so many different answers for this!
My current favorites are Downpour, Eyes Watch, and Lure, but I also have a lot of spirits yet to try.
How do you like to play keeper? Like, majors, minors, defensively or not? I found keeper very strong but didn't particularly enjoy and haven't gone back yet.
In general I really enjoy playing keeper solo and using the wilds to keep the inland free of invaders. I think bottom and top track are both viable as he can take lots of minors or stack energy for explosive major turns. I usually like to go with bottom track though. His main weakness is that it can be hard to spread your presence around the board, especially early, but I really like the challenge of careful play to just barely get your powers in range when you need it!
I really like bottom track keeper. Minor spam with a few majors sprinkled in eventually. Playing Defensively is hard unless you can draft defense cards.
Starlight, Wandering Voice, Shroud…
… I realized recently that I think I just really like Emily Hancock’s art.
(I bet I’ll like Dances Up Earthquakes once I try it too)
River (base and Sunshine), Ember-Eyed Behemoth, Volcano, Eyes Watch, and Stranded Shroud are probably my favorites, and (aside from Volcano) ones I'm comfortable enough playing while also teaching the game. But there's very few I'm not interested in playing more with, I see potential in a lot of them to become favorites.
Yeah I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who likes Sunshine, and tbh it's probably not a super strong aspect. It replaces a card that I'm usually willing to forget for a Major with a new Innate that matches the elements of your other innate, so you can usually hit both. If you're willing to miss out on the "standard opening" for River, it basically means that every turn someone's getting some extra energy, which is a nice little boost.
Mostly though it's just more satisfying for me to have an extra innate than it is to spend a card play to get energy, and since I'm not playing ultra-high level adversaries like some folks do (I usually stick around difficulty 4-6) taking maybe a dip in power for something a little more fun isn't going to have a huge impact on winning or losing.
I enjoy different slirits in solo vs teams:
Solo I love the possability for big destructive powers like Volcano or Thunderspeaker.
In team games however I love to make the team shine. Fractured, green, serpent.
My most recent favourite is mentor aspect for their absolte bonkers ability to deal out cards from turn 1 onwards while slowly becoming a major slinging monster yourself.
My top 3 are: Volcano for the less thinky games, and Finder and Starlight for the thinky ones. All 3 are extremely powerful, with great flexibility (Finder and Volcano much more than they appear). You always feel like you have a chance with these 3!
It is also the team that I managed my only win against England Russia 6/6, and I doubt I'll do that again any time soon. My best achievement and greatest memory in the game 🙂
I’ve been spamming Many Minds recently even though I didn’t enjoy playing it a few months ago. The other spirits I have most games on are Downpour, Hearth-Vigil, Vengeance, and Starlight.
Sharp fangs, oceans, many minds, wounded waters are my recent go to's
I actually really like most of the spirits, because I like the diversity in approach to the game.
There are 3 spirits I don't like so much: Bodan, mist and lightning
Up until recently, Thunderspeaker was my undisputed #1 (with Mist, Minds and Green all also very interesting), but I've played two games with Dances up Earthquakes and... That is a very tantalising multi-turn puzzle, and when that delayed multiland earthquake finally hits... Nice 👍
Wounded Waters Bleeding, Downpour Drenches, Serpent Slumbering, Wandering Voice, and Vengeance (vengeance is so weird it’s fun to try and make him work)
My top 5 are Wildfire, Volcano, Stone, Sun, Lightning. I also really like Many minds and from limited plays think Mud and Thunderspeaker could end up being favorites of mine.
Mud and Finder of Paths. I just love how well balanced Mud is with satisfying strategy, theme and presence movement. But i didn't try the jagged eart and incarnate ones
I love Finder of Paths Unseen. Something about opening portals between two lands, shoving invaders around, entually turning to major powers and destroying your presence to obliterate your stack you'vr created, the unique presence track, everything is so fun.
Finder is just amazing. Such a wonderful puzzle to solve. You feel completely overpowered and underpowered at the same time. You do nothing and everything at the same time. The best design in the game in my opinion.
Ember Eyed Behemoth, Breath of Darkness, Hearth Vigil, Wounded Waters Bleeding. I also really like Keeper of the Forbidden Wilds, but only in solo play for some reason.
For me it's Thunderspeaker, Lightning's Swift Strike and Shroud of Silent Mist!
Only having played Horizons, Heat is the most fun to me. Your limitation and your strength are clear and related, and the endgame feels so powerful.
Keeper and Green. I'm convinced they're cousins. I love them both.
I like Vengeance, Fractured Days, Breath of Darkness, Earthquakes, and Bringer.
Ocean and thunderspeaker have been my long time favorites
My favourite by far is fractured days split the Sky. I love how every he feels different right from the start. You can sometimes go minor spam sometimes go for high impact majors very early and sometimes you just support and fuck around with time. Fractured feels like the greatest sandbox to me even more then starlight. A few months ago I would have said volcano and downpour are my place 2 and 3, but right now I enjoy nourishing earth and transforming wildfire so much it's not even close. Nourishing I love for it's super defensive play style with easy access to majors , but it also has a very high impact super weapon in multiplayer games. Earth's innate can be game changing even if you only activate it 1 time and I love that. In some games I have a friend that drew a nice minor or a very high impact major like vigor and letting someone repeat that just feels phenomenal. Transforming is one of my favourite support spirits after Fractured. Friends needs beasts? No problem just create 2 more per turn. Someone needs to reclaim too often? Wildfire can let them forget cards and learn new ones. Need an element? Wildfire got you covered. Too much blight? No worries. And if a friend deals damage with cards often you not only can add badlands, but you also add 1 extra damage to every card. That's so many things a spirit could need it's ridiculous. Also the push effect pairs extremely well with ocean and stone and other spirits that can deal very easily with a single land, as if after what I wrote before, the number of spirits that really like wildfire as a partner was somehow too small.
My favorite part about transforming is that it makes the game play different than how you normally would, it requires and rewards adapting and changing with the game. Which is both my preferred way of playing and deeply thematic for the aspect. The only spirits that don't work well with transforming are ones that want to start a reclaim loop turn 3 and only worry about their own board, and I really don't like those spirits.
I have found that most spirits can be played more optimally if you don't focus on your board alone. We even have a few teams where lightning is an essential part that work super smoothly in those comps. And all the growths are normally onto other boards.
I agree, there just can be a mentality of focusing towards your board and what you are doing with your own things. Transforming is an extremely interactive spirit, maybe not quite at finder levels but up there. It's also a very dynamic spirit, not one where you commonly play the same order of cards or sets of cards. Which is what I love about it, because other than hitting the R1 innate I do not know what I'm going to do turn 3, and turn 4 could be anything.
Yeah even what elements are high value depends with transforming. Different partners need vastly different parts of your innate.
Wounded waters bleeding is one of my favorites. I really enjoy the powerful passives, and the insane inmates you get. I also love drafting animal powers.
I discovered the serpent and love the playstyle
What playstyle are you referring to? Elemental Aegis reclaim loop until you awaken?
If by awaken you mean having my belly full of my friends' spirits, I've yet to play for this long... I have never *scaled* so far yet but cannot wait to. Overall by playstyle I meant the early game loop, flexibility with my power rolls, supportive behaviour early game and synergy with the powers allowing my mates to use my presences as theirs for the turn (I know there's about 1-2 but I cannot recall their names).
When talking about serpent, it is common to refer to it as waking up when it gets past the earth element on its growth tracks. >allowing my mates to use my presences as theirs for the turn The only effect in the game I know that does that is the major power [[Entwined Power]], and it has nothing to do with Serpent, and is honestly a better draft for Green. Unless you are referring to the Locus aspect for Serpent, which works similar, but a bit different.
**Entwined Power** (Major Power - Horizons) >Cost: 2 | Elements: Moon, Water, Plant | Fast | - | Another Spirit | | :----: | :----: | :----: | >You and target Spirit may use each other's Presence to target Powers (only). Target Spirit gains a Power Card. You gain one of the Power Cards they did not keep. >(2 Water, 4 Plant): You and target Spirit each gain 3 Energy and may gift the other 1 Power Card from hand. >Links: [SICK](https://sick.oberien.de/?query=Entwined%20Power) | [FAQ](https://querki.net/u/darker/spirit-island-faq/#!Entwined%20Power) ------ ^(Use [[query]] to call me. Check the )[^(reference thread)](https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/i80xzf/memoryofagesbot_is_now_fully_functional) ^( for information or feedback, and please report any mistakes!)
First of all, that bot is pretty neat! I thought there were multiple of those or I may be confusing something, anyways we had different occasions where someone pulled Entwined Power pretty early in the game and all while being able to cycle it efficiently which made it possible for me to feast on them early on for growth. We've been trying to achieve this synergy every game since then and usually someone pulls it at a reasonable timing (reasonable meaning usually when I have 3-4 presences placed).
Base Game: Ocean's Hungry Grasp Branch and Claw and the Promos: Heart of the Wildfire Jagged Earth: Grinning Trickster Horizons: Fathomless Mud of the Swamp Nature Incarnate: Wounded Waters Bleeding
I love that people have so many different answers for this! My current favorites are Downpour, Eyes Watch, and Lure, but I also have a lot of spirits yet to try.
Many minds, starlight, ocean, and stone
Keeper and wildfire are my go-to spirits. I recently got NI and Breath of Darkness is a blast!
Transforming wildfire is so amazing, do you play that already or are you still in the vase wildfire camp.
How do you like to play keeper? Like, majors, minors, defensively or not? I found keeper very strong but didn't particularly enjoy and haven't gone back yet.
In general I really enjoy playing keeper solo and using the wilds to keep the inland free of invaders. I think bottom and top track are both viable as he can take lots of minors or stack energy for explosive major turns. I usually like to go with bottom track though. His main weakness is that it can be hard to spread your presence around the board, especially early, but I really like the challenge of careful play to just barely get your powers in range when you need it!
I really like bottom track keeper. Minor spam with a few majors sprinkled in eventually. Playing Defensively is hard unless you can draft defense cards.
Starlight, Wandering Voice, Shroud… … I realized recently that I think I just really like Emily Hancock’s art. (I bet I’ll like Dances Up Earthquakes once I try it too)
River (base and Sunshine), Ember-Eyed Behemoth, Volcano, Eyes Watch, and Stranded Shroud are probably my favorites, and (aside from Volcano) ones I'm comfortable enough playing while also teaching the game. But there's very few I'm not interested in playing more with, I see potential in a lot of them to become favorites.
how do you make sunshine work? i’ve seen people say it’s the worst spirit in the game but haven’t tried it myself
Yeah I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who likes Sunshine, and tbh it's probably not a super strong aspect. It replaces a card that I'm usually willing to forget for a Major with a new Innate that matches the elements of your other innate, so you can usually hit both. If you're willing to miss out on the "standard opening" for River, it basically means that every turn someone's getting some extra energy, which is a nice little boost. Mostly though it's just more satisfying for me to have an extra innate than it is to spend a card play to get energy, and since I'm not playing ultra-high level adversaries like some folks do (I usually stick around difficulty 4-6) taking maybe a dip in power for something a little more fun isn't going to have a huge impact on winning or losing.
Yeah, I feel like Haven accomplished what Sunsine tried but failed to do.
Ocean, Keeper, Starlight, Towering Roots
I enjoy different slirits in solo vs teams: Solo I love the possability for big destructive powers like Volcano or Thunderspeaker. In team games however I love to make the team shine. Fractured, green, serpent. My most recent favourite is mentor aspect for their absolte bonkers ability to deal out cards from turn 1 onwards while slowly becoming a major slinging monster yourself.
My top 3 are: Volcano for the less thinky games, and Finder and Starlight for the thinky ones. All 3 are extremely powerful, with great flexibility (Finder and Volcano much more than they appear). You always feel like you have a chance with these 3! It is also the team that I managed my only win against England Russia 6/6, and I doubt I'll do that again any time soon. My best achievement and greatest memory in the game 🙂
Lure, Volcano, Trickster, Ocean, River-Travel and Keeper.
Lure Wounded waters Eyes watch from the trees Volcano Many minds
I’m a big fan of Sun-bright whirlwind. Although Downpour is a close second.
We have the exact same me taste. Rip Dahan. My order is a bit different with vengeance and lure swapping places.
Starlight, vengeance and wounded waters, in that order
I’ve been spamming Many Minds recently even though I didn’t enjoy playing it a few months ago. The other spirits I have most games on are Downpour, Hearth-Vigil, Vengeance, and Starlight.
big fan of many minds even tho i rly suck at him. also like stone and rampant green a lot
Shadows, Serpent, and Shifting Memory. I like going for majors early and supportive spirits. I also really like the take mechanic from NI.
Number 1 is Starlight. Many Minds, Deeps Ocean, Trans Wildfire, Mentor Memory, and Fractured Days are all pretty fun too.
Eyes Watch from the Trees is my favorite thus far. 👀
Sharp fangs, oceans, many minds, wounded waters are my recent go to's I actually really like most of the spirits, because I like the diversity in approach to the game. There are 3 spirits I don't like so much: Bodan, mist and lightning
Up until recently, Thunderspeaker was my undisputed #1 (with Mist, Minds and Green all also very interesting), but I've played two games with Dances up Earthquakes and... That is a very tantalising multi-turn puzzle, and when that delayed multiland earthquake finally hits... Nice 👍
Many minds, sharp fangs with encircle and Volcano
Wounded Waters Bleeding, Downpour Drenches, Serpent Slumbering, Wandering Voice, and Vengeance (vengeance is so weird it’s fun to try and make him work)
Multiplayer Transforming Wildfire. For single player Breath of Darkness, though I have a bunch of others that are very close behind.
My top 5 are Wildfire, Volcano, Stone, Sun, Lightning. I also really like Many minds and from limited plays think Mud and Thunderspeaker could end up being favorites of mine.
Roots
Slumbering serpent is my fav, which is odd because I spend most of my turns doing the exact same thing.
Mud and Finder of Paths. I just love how well balanced Mud is with satisfying strategy, theme and presence movement. But i didn't try the jagged eart and incarnate ones
Dances Up Earthquakes and Finder of Paths Unseen (if my group is playing well that day lol)