Give the deck a job
Build around a repeatable line: reliable damage, a Vulnerable payoff, food generation, card growth, or a Fatal finisher. A card that does not improve setup, payoff, survival, or consistency competes with the cards that do.
Combat priorities
- Set up damage multipliers before the decisive hit. - Plan lethal deliberately when a Fatal trigger needs the killing blow. - Watch enemy effects that increase incoming damage or punish repeated attacks, then change target order or sequencing. - Keep food and health in the combat calculation; a fight reward is not worth a route that the next Explore hand cannot afford.
Growing a small reliable core is usually easier to pilot than collecting unrelated attacks. Reassess the plan whenever a patch changes card text or an unlock changes the reward pool.
Source and version note
The deck principles are shared by current combat guides on shroomandgloom.wiki and shroomandgloom.site, with shroomgloom.org used to separate stable advice from version-specific card claims.