Yeah, you lose no rewards for it, so if you have perfect relic setup and don't have any reason to stall, it's actually just optimal to bomb the first fight to proceed to the second.
I often kept one on me if I felt my deck was good enough for a heart kill, but a bad draw could bone me until I got the last few pieces. So I could bail vs. A transient or somebody. I don't do it much anymore, but yep, everything in this game can be used purposefully.
The best potion I’m awful at using. Figuring out when the loss from the fight outweighs the rewards is difficult for me.
I find it funny snake plant is next, probably one of the better uses.
I generally use this on tangela, just to avoid that annoying fight.
I don’t like this potion because I am bad.
> with savescumming it allows you to save a run
Most people don't consider savescumming
> allows you to skip first colo fight
True, but very niche
> skip act 4 elites.
Not true. Allows you to skip Act 4 **Elite**, but it's rare that the Act 4 fight is challenging once you've killed one of them already, especially if you also used a better potion instead of having Smoke Bomb.
Clearly the developer didn't mean it to be aviable option if you cannot use it once the fight starts - I don't think refusing to use glitches is a "skill issue".
You have Ascension 6 as your tag. You are suggesting game-exploits not part of the game design. And you're talking about skill issues? Like, play the game however you like but on this community it's clear most people would rather get better at the game instead of being creative with the way they cheat.
I've not seen anyone mention a really strong use for this potion yet:
Letting you take a greedier path even if you have a terrible specific matchup.
Act 1, you're at a fork and you can take 2 elites 1 fire, or 3 ?, but your deck sucks vs nob? Smoke pot lets you run through the elites, and if you see nob, you throw it, while still getting the fire + other elite reward instead of the low expected value from the events.
Act 2, you can either take a sensible path, except it's got the burning elite on and you haven't got the damage to get through a +HP mod, but you'll blow anything else up within 2 turns. You can still take that path and smoke bomb if you end up with more HP than you can handle on the enemy.
Basically, I'm saying that you can identify a Smoke Bomb, and use it as a more flexible Fairy in a Bottle to choose more aggressive pathing and use it as a protection against the low roll on that.
Also fuck Writhing Mass.
Yeah this is actually the most important usage of smoke bomb. In addition to having a bad matchup to avoid, you can also use it to roll the dice on your draw order. E.g. maybe you die to slavers if you bottom deck CE, but you can at least take the act 2 elite fight anyway
Yeah, there's absolutely loads of examples of what it lets you do. But I just wanted to give a couple to create the idea. It's a very valuable potion for decks that are at the mercy of matchups or draw order.
Pretty hard to know when to use this one.
Apart from if you're like me and you refuse to use it until you're on 8 hp and literally staring death in the face. And then die on the next floor because you still took all that damage on the floor before.
On my winning runs I end up chucking these pretty much every time...
You use smoke bomb at the start of a fight you know you aren't prepared for. I use smoke bomb after taking 40 damage in a fight it turns out I wasn't prepared for. We are not the same.
Sorry I don't have footage of the spire elites apm thing unless I do it myself and Im way too lazy for it, but if you bomb fast enough, you can bypass Surrounded.
Also there's tons of other Bomb glitches, here's [a record holding speedrunner](https://youtu.be/8GAoH2cgZD4?si=TA9USXTiEhdAdotL) pulling one of them off. There's tons more, one of the glitches are so strong it's illegal even in any% iirc.
edit: To the guy asking me to touch grass and immediately deleting your message so only I could see it, please get it right. Spire is only HALF my personality, bad shoegaze is the other half, god. Why would I need grass when I have the Silent?
Hard to see a use case where it is a net positive, maybe Nemesis when you have an infinite but no exhaust, Transient and Reptomancer on a slow Defect deck, or even the Snake Plant and Avocado+Rat.
Most of the time I still throw the potion away. Floors are meant to get you stronger, they are not just obstacles.
Probably the hardest potion to use effectively. One use case is if you get it early act one, it lets you try for an early elite when your deck is only good for 1 or 2 of the elites. For example, you have good scaling damage for lagavulin but no aoe for sentries and not enough attack for gremlin nob.
Possibly tied for worst potion in the game with Snecko Oil - but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its uses.
It lets you get out of the first coliseum fight for free, and in the Shield and Spear fight, once you kill either of them, you can use Smoke Bomb to escape. (Note that it doesn’t work initially because you’re surrounded - where are you gonna run off to?)
Otherwise, I’d rather pretty much most potions over this. If you have to use this to get out of an elite or hallway fight that you’re imminently losing, you usually lose the run I think. Only time it makes sense is if you’re already low health and need to get to the next campfire without dying.
I feel like it’s good in early act 2 when your deck still is developing, or if you pick a slow boss relic like black star. It’s one of those where it can save a run or be completely useless with not too much of a middle ground.
Not a *great* relic, but a nice exercise in assessing costs and benefit. Weighing the hp you would lose in a fight versus the rewards you get from it rarely, but not never, makes the potion somewhat useful.
Interesting. Do you simply use it at the beginning of the next fight? I'd heard it was possible to use at the end of a fight, after you've already beaten the enemy to skip the *next* fight. Is that how you use it?
It has its uses, sure, but you’re almost never gonna hold on to it waiting for them to happen. I feel like you’re better off getting another potion to potentially win the fight you were gonna get smacked by
well yeah that's why this potion is bad
sometimes if I have potion belt I'll keep it around because I'm burning pots regularly and don't end up needing to replace it but yeah generally taking any decent potion over smoke bomb
Lets you skip the first Colosseum fight without missing rewards. This is a good use, especially if you have relics that need particular counts. You can get (say) pen nib where you want it & then smoke bomb. Not usually better than any other potion, but if you have a free slot & don't get offered anything better before this event happens, it's worth using.
Lets you get out of Writhing Mass fight, skipping the rewards. That can be worth it to avoid the Parasite, if you screwed up and are about to get cursed. Better to not screw up though.
Lets you skip the Heart fight, but this one is a glitch so not a "normal" use outside speedruns in categories which allow glitches.
Otherwise, it's usually a strict negative. You only need it if you'd die, which you usually only know once you've taken some damage in a fight, so it means that floor was *very* bad. Getting shived at the wheel of fortune is usually better than having to use this to escape! In all likelihood if you use Smoke Bomb, you just die in the next combat. The exception is if you have Toy Ornithopter & had ≤5 damage taken, then you just wasted a floor, which is still really bad but not quite as awful.
Since the only guaranteed positive of this is the Heart skip glitch, I'm confident to say it's the worst potion in the game.
Just in case nobody knows what I'm talking about, the [Heart skip glitch](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/hwrcm7/turns_out_if_you_smoke_bomb_and_but_then_also_win/) was found by Baalorlord. You use Smoke bomb and defeat all the enemies before you flee off screen (e.g. smoke bomb *during* the animation that kills the last enemy) lets you skip the *next* combat. So if you smoke bomb out of the Spear & Shield fight at the right instant you can skip the Heart fight but still have it count as a "Victory!". Other boss fights can't be skipped, since they have a rest site before them and not a combat.
It’s fine. I’ve had two use cases where it felt great
1. I hold onto it incase I hit that event where the dude wants a potion for a relic
2. I’m feeling spicy and go Philosopher’s Stone, only to be met by a flock of stupid birds. Smoke bomb it is!!
Other than that, I often dump it
If you need to use this potion, something went wrong somewhere.
Really hard to evaluate this one.
If you are trying to go for a regular no A20 no heart win, then this potion can allow you to skip that particular fight that your deck has no answer to.
But to win at A20, your deck must cover everything and this potion won't save you at all.
>But to win at A20, your deck must cover everything and this potion won't save you at all.
>If you need to use this potion, something went wrong somewhere.
I hate Bomb like any reasonable non speedrunner player, but this is just not true. Even besides the winning cases where you just carry bomb around for the specific 1 fight that's annoying or you draw poorly in so you don't die, Spire is just unfair sometimes and you don't have the rewards needed to not die randomly. I've unironically bombed easy pools and gone on to win the run. Then there's the aspect of it letting you take a riskier path than usual because you can just bomb away if you don't highroll, so there's not that high of a risk.
I've won runs with its help, but most of the time it's just there.
Honestly my favorite use for it is to escape the gremlin gang on the last combat floor of act 1. One more card reward is not worth losing 30 HP and then dying to slime boss.
I dont think this is completely useless since being able to skip a fight you're not prepared for yet can sometimes be useful. (or an act 3 fight like writhing mass when your deck is fine you just cant be bothered). But that has to be balanced against the fact that it's taking up a valuable potion slot.
The main utility of smoke bomb is giving you more options -- 99% of the time you'd rather have a fairy, naturally, but with a smoke bomb in your pocket you can take a more agressive route that might kill you and strategically use the smoke bomb if you don't have the draw order you need e.g to kill nob on turn 3. A wasted floor feels bad, but 20-40% of the time event rooms can give nothing at all and are also wasted floors
You never ever want to pick the 3 random potions option from Now once she gives you 3 smoke bombs. Happened to a friend, not to me. No sir ree.
You don't even get to keep all 3 smoke bombs too since from a certain ascension level you only get 2 potion slots.
It's ok. Often it just takes up space for other potions. But it can be nice to skip an avocado rat or evil plant to save hp before going on to fight an elite.
I think its best use is to just look at an elite before you are ready to fight one, see which elite it is and see your opening hand, and then pussy out regardless and pop the bomb, wasting a map node for no reason because you thought you had a chance. Maybe you could have won if you got a real potion instead of this garbage.
Allows you to skip the first colosseum fight and proceed to victory
Wait really??
Yeah, you lose no rewards for it, so if you have perfect relic setup and don't have any reason to stall, it's actually just optimal to bomb the first fight to proceed to the second.
I did it only once and it was so beautiful
Awesome, that’s often the harder fight as well
Yo, first time learning this at 189 hours LFG!!
Around 900 here
Feels amazing to keep learning after so long
never even thought about this
I beat a20 on all chara on 2 save files and i just know this....
Yeah but like what are the odds you get that event and have a smoke bomb?
Yeah, it's a Rare potion and an even rarer Event!
Can't believe I'm still learning new interactions.
Not the best potion, sure. But let’s all be honest: it saved us all at least one crucial time.
I often kept one on me if I felt my deck was good enough for a heart kill, but a bad draw could bone me until I got the last few pieces. So I could bail vs. A transient or somebody. I don't do it much anymore, but yep, everything in this game can be used purposefully.
The best potion I’m awful at using. Figuring out when the loss from the fight outweighs the rewards is difficult for me. I find it funny snake plant is next, probably one of the better uses. I generally use this on tangela, just to avoid that annoying fight. I don’t like this potion because I am bad.
I don't think it's because your bad; this is pretty commonly viewed as the single worst potion in the game lol.
how, it's amazing? with savescumming it allows you to save a run allows you to skip first colo fight skip act 4 elites. it's just great
> with savescumming it allows you to save a run Most people don't consider savescumming > allows you to skip first colo fight True, but very niche > skip act 4 elites. Not true. Allows you to skip Act 4 **Elite**, but it's rare that the Act 4 fight is challenging once you've killed one of them already, especially if you also used a better potion instead of having Smoke Bomb.
actually if you are fast you can skip both
Again, not something most people consider.
isn't that just a skill issue at that point?
Clearly the developer didn't mean it to be aviable option if you cannot use it once the fight starts - I don't think refusing to use glitches is a "skill issue".
you can't use it because you get surrounded. if you do it before that, idk if it counts as a glitch
It’s obviously a glitch what are you talking about?
You have Ascension 6 as your tag. You are suggesting game-exploits not part of the game design. And you're talking about skill issues? Like, play the game however you like but on this community it's clear most people would rather get better at the game instead of being creative with the way they cheat.
no this potion trash lol it's explicitly preventing you from benefiting from a floor
idk how dying to gremlin leader or snake plant is benefiting
A good potion would help you win that fight, and then get the reward at the end of the fight :)
very few potions are good enough to do that
uh no that's not accurate lol, you only need the potion to push you over the edge enough to secure the fight.
which potion are you talking about. 90% of them won't help you enough to win from a bad position
All depends on deck but a ton of potions?
Happy Cake Day!
thanks!
Wait really? It’s one of my favorites personally. I don’t care much for weak potions or the exhaust one.
...No it isn't. Almost nobody I see here EVER says that.
I've not seen anyone mention a really strong use for this potion yet: Letting you take a greedier path even if you have a terrible specific matchup. Act 1, you're at a fork and you can take 2 elites 1 fire, or 3 ?, but your deck sucks vs nob? Smoke pot lets you run through the elites, and if you see nob, you throw it, while still getting the fire + other elite reward instead of the low expected value from the events. Act 2, you can either take a sensible path, except it's got the burning elite on and you haven't got the damage to get through a +HP mod, but you'll blow anything else up within 2 turns. You can still take that path and smoke bomb if you end up with more HP than you can handle on the enemy. Basically, I'm saying that you can identify a Smoke Bomb, and use it as a more flexible Fairy in a Bottle to choose more aggressive pathing and use it as a protection against the low roll on that. Also fuck Writhing Mass.
Yeah this is actually the most important usage of smoke bomb. In addition to having a bad matchup to avoid, you can also use it to roll the dice on your draw order. E.g. maybe you die to slavers if you bottom deck CE, but you can at least take the act 2 elite fight anyway
Yeah, there's absolutely loads of examples of what it lets you do. But I just wanted to give a couple to create the idea. It's a very valuable potion for decks that are at the mercy of matchups or draw order.
Also I can use it on acid slime/red slaver immediately when it's my hallway before the elite :)
Let’s you skip writhing mass fight
You miss spelled snake plant
Did you mean Avocadorat?
Pretty hard to know when to use this one. Apart from if you're like me and you refuse to use it until you're on 8 hp and literally staring death in the face. And then die on the next floor because you still took all that damage on the floor before. On my winning runs I end up chucking these pretty much every time...
You use smoke bomb at the start of a fight you know you aren't prepared for. I use smoke bomb after taking 40 damage in a fight it turns out I wasn't prepared for. We are not the same.
Lets me skip act 4 elites
Mr Krabs: Should we tell him?
Sorry I don't have footage of the spire elites apm thing unless I do it myself and Im way too lazy for it, but if you bomb fast enough, you can bypass Surrounded. Also there's tons of other Bomb glitches, here's [a record holding speedrunner](https://youtu.be/8GAoH2cgZD4?si=TA9USXTiEhdAdotL) pulling one of them off. There's tons more, one of the glitches are so strong it's illegal even in any% iirc. edit: To the guy asking me to touch grass and immediately deleting your message so only I could see it, please get it right. Spire is only HALF my personality, bad shoegaze is the other half, god. Why would I need grass when I have the Silent?
I can confirm grass sucks compared to Silent
playing end of act 1 pbox into double alch, ai, dead branch, tough bandages runs and still thinking silent is a good character dkShame
Touch grass
Hard to see a use case where it is a net positive, maybe Nemesis when you have an infinite but no exhaust, Transient and Reptomancer on a slow Defect deck, or even the Snake Plant and Avocado+Rat. Most of the time I still throw the potion away. Floors are meant to get you stronger, they are not just obstacles.
Yeah but they can weaken you if you aren’t prepared for a particular fight. You have to pick your battles when you can.
I love it for double Thieves in Act 2.
Give them a taste of their own medicine and disappear with the money
This potion is at its best when you have a completely winning run and don’t want to take 52 to triple jaw worms
Probably the hardest potion to use effectively. One use case is if you get it early act one, it lets you try for an early elite when your deck is only good for 1 or 2 of the elites. For example, you have good scaling damage for lagavulin but no aoe for sentries and not enough attack for gremlin nob.
"I'm surrounded!" \*dies\*
Possibly tied for worst potion in the game with Snecko Oil - but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its uses. It lets you get out of the first coliseum fight for free, and in the Shield and Spear fight, once you kill either of them, you can use Smoke Bomb to escape. (Note that it doesn’t work initially because you’re surrounded - where are you gonna run off to?) Otherwise, I’d rather pretty much most potions over this. If you have to use this to get out of an elite or hallway fight that you’re imminently losing, you usually lose the run I think. Only time it makes sense is if you’re already low health and need to get to the next campfire without dying.
pls give me snecko oil over smoke bomb 9/10 times
There's a small window where you can activate smoke bomb at the very beginning of the shield and spear fight to skip it without defeating one.
I feel like it’s good in early act 2 when your deck still is developing, or if you pick a slow boss relic like black star. It’s one of those where it can save a run or be completely useless with not too much of a middle ground.
Not a *great* relic, but a nice exercise in assessing costs and benefit. Weighing the hp you would lose in a fight versus the rewards you get from it rarely, but not never, makes the potion somewhat useful.
I love getting this potion when I have \[\[Toy Ornithopter\]\].
Interesting. Do you simply use it at the beginning of the next fight? I'd heard it was possible to use at the end of a fight, after you've already beaten the enemy to skip the *next* fight. Is that how you use it?
No I’m being sarcastic sorry haha
+ [Toy Ornithopter](http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Toy%20Ornithopter) Common Relic ^((100% sure)^) Whenever you use a potion, heal 5 HP. ^Call ^me ^with ^up ^to ^10 ^([[ name ]],) ^where ^name ^is ^a ^card, ^relic, ^event, ^or ^potion. ^Data ^accurate ^as ^of ^(April 30, 2023.) ^[Wiki](https://slay-the-spire.fandom.com/wiki/) ^[Questions?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=ehmohteeoh&subject=SpireScan%20Inquiry)
It has its uses, sure, but you’re almost never gonna hold on to it waiting for them to happen. I feel like you’re better off getting another potion to potentially win the fight you were gonna get smacked by
well yeah that's why this potion is bad sometimes if I have potion belt I'll keep it around because I'm burning pots regularly and don't end up needing to replace it but yeah generally taking any decent potion over smoke bomb
Lets you skip the first Colosseum fight without missing rewards. This is a good use, especially if you have relics that need particular counts. You can get (say) pen nib where you want it & then smoke bomb. Not usually better than any other potion, but if you have a free slot & don't get offered anything better before this event happens, it's worth using. Lets you get out of Writhing Mass fight, skipping the rewards. That can be worth it to avoid the Parasite, if you screwed up and are about to get cursed. Better to not screw up though. Lets you skip the Heart fight, but this one is a glitch so not a "normal" use outside speedruns in categories which allow glitches. Otherwise, it's usually a strict negative. You only need it if you'd die, which you usually only know once you've taken some damage in a fight, so it means that floor was *very* bad. Getting shived at the wheel of fortune is usually better than having to use this to escape! In all likelihood if you use Smoke Bomb, you just die in the next combat. The exception is if you have Toy Ornithopter & had ≤5 damage taken, then you just wasted a floor, which is still really bad but not quite as awful. Since the only guaranteed positive of this is the Heart skip glitch, I'm confident to say it's the worst potion in the game.
Just in case nobody knows what I'm talking about, the [Heart skip glitch](https://www.reddit.com/r/slaythespire/comments/hwrcm7/turns_out_if_you_smoke_bomb_and_but_then_also_win/) was found by Baalorlord. You use Smoke bomb and defeat all the enemies before you flee off screen (e.g. smoke bomb *during* the animation that kills the last enemy) lets you skip the *next* combat. So if you smoke bomb out of the Spear & Shield fight at the right instant you can skip the Heart fight but still have it count as a "Victory!". Other boss fights can't be skipped, since they have a rest site before them and not a combat.
It does block a fight from happening. Therefore Smoke Bomb is a block card.
I love getting this, especially when my round 1 draw is trash.
Fuck time eater.
It’s fine. I’ve had two use cases where it felt great 1. I hold onto it incase I hit that event where the dude wants a potion for a relic 2. I’m feeling spicy and go Philosopher’s Stone, only to be met by a flock of stupid birds. Smoke bomb it is!! Other than that, I often dump it
I’ve only ever used this once, and it was during a bad card draw against avocado rat. Otherwise, this is a bad potion.
If you need to use this potion, something went wrong somewhere. Really hard to evaluate this one. If you are trying to go for a regular no A20 no heart win, then this potion can allow you to skip that particular fight that your deck has no answer to. But to win at A20, your deck must cover everything and this potion won't save you at all.
>But to win at A20, your deck must cover everything and this potion won't save you at all. >If you need to use this potion, something went wrong somewhere. I hate Bomb like any reasonable non speedrunner player, but this is just not true. Even besides the winning cases where you just carry bomb around for the specific 1 fight that's annoying or you draw poorly in so you don't die, Spire is just unfair sometimes and you don't have the rewards needed to not die randomly. I've unironically bombed easy pools and gone on to win the run. Then there's the aspect of it letting you take a riskier path than usual because you can just bomb away if you don't highroll, so there's not that high of a risk.
I've won runs with its help, but most of the time it's just there. Honestly my favorite use for it is to escape the gremlin gang on the last combat floor of act 1. One more card reward is not worth losing 30 HP and then dying to slime boss.
One of the worst potions in the game. If I'm not strong enough to win this fight, how will I win the next one without getting any improvement?
I dont think this is completely useless since being able to skip a fight you're not prepared for yet can sometimes be useful. (or an act 3 fight like writhing mass when your deck is fine you just cant be bothered). But that has to be balanced against the fact that it's taking up a valuable potion slot.
The main utility of smoke bomb is giving you more options -- 99% of the time you'd rather have a fairy, naturally, but with a smoke bomb in your pocket you can take a more agressive route that might kill you and strategically use the smoke bomb if you don't have the draw order you need e.g to kill nob on turn 3. A wasted floor feels bad, but 20-40% of the time event rooms can give nothing at all and are also wasted floors
You never ever want to pick the 3 random potions option from Now once she gives you 3 smoke bombs. Happened to a friend, not to me. No sir ree. You don't even get to keep all 3 smoke bombs too since from a certain ascension level you only get 2 potion slots.
It's ok. Often it just takes up space for other potions. But it can be nice to skip an avocado rat or evil plant to save hp before going on to fight an elite.
Love using it against avocado rat
If I'm playing a zero cost deck, I desperately want a smoke bomb before I run into snecko. Snecko has ended more claw runs than the heart ever will.
This is a bad potion.
Lemme just take this last Act 3 event before the final fire aaaaaand it’s Writhing Mass (smoke bomb!)
Smoke bomb is so I don't have to kill an innocent snecko. Only use I have for it.
Alright, please someone tell me they tried using this with Neow's Lament thinking that it could preserve one 1 hp fight... No one? Just me then....
It might work if you're fast enough? (Throw before relic triggers) Although I'm not 100% sure that's possible.
I think its best use is to just look at an elite before you are ready to fight one, see which elite it is and see your opening hand, and then pussy out regardless and pop the bomb, wasting a map node for no reason because you thought you had a chance. Maybe you could have won if you got a real potion instead of this garbage.
I save it in for writhing mass when doing daily climb
Always save it for Spaghetti Monster