2026-05-04-deepseek-v4-pro-regent-run18

Summary

The Regent run reached floor 17 (Act 1 boss Vantom) with a deck built around star economy: Celestial Might+, Falling Star, Crescent Spear, Glow, Hidden Cache, and the key power Child of the Stars. Neow choice was Precise Scissors (remove a Strike), which provided early deck thinning. The run cleared 6 normal combats, 1 elite (Byrdonis), 2 shops, 2 rest sites, 1 treasure room, and 2 events (Whispering Hollow + Aroma of Chaos). Key acquisitions included Gremlin Horn (energy + draw on kill), Comet (0E 33 damage Rare), and Child of the Stars (2 block per star spent). The deck reached the Act 1 boss at 59/75 HP but Vantom's 173 HP pool and Slippery x8 mechanic (negating the first 8 instances of HP loss) proved too much for the deck's damage output in the face of the boss's scaling attacks. The agent died at 5 HP on round 10 after exhausting all potions and running out of block.

Bridge findings

• Reflect card consistently unplayable across multiple combats after being drawn. The card would show isPlayable: false even with sufficient energy. Attempted multiple times; commands returned TryManualPlay returned false errors. May be a card-specific bridge serialization issue or a game-mechanic precondition not reflected in state.json.
• Falling Star isPlayable field unreliable: Sometimes showed isPlayable: false when stars were available, then became playable on a subsequent re-read. Consistent with the known refresh-lag quirks in bridge-protocol-notes.md.
• Potion-Shaped Rock from Petrified Toad appeared in run.potions[] at the start of each combat as expected, and UsePotion on it returned ok, but the damage was not reflected in state.combat.enemies[].currentHp until after the next PlayCard state write (known refresh-lag, consistent with documented behavior).
• STALL warning at StartRun (id=1409): The first StartRun logged a stall (30s no revision change), but the result showed status=ok and screen progressed to Room:Event (Neow). The stall log showed preRev=20 and the returned state had revision=15, which appears to be a revision counter reset on new run — bridge behavior but unexpected monotonicity break.
• Crescent Spear+ isPlayable: false after card upgrades: After upgrading Crescent Spear at Aroma of Chaos, the card showed isPlayable: false in subsequent combat despite sufficient energy. May be related to star-cost tracking across state refreshes.

Decision log highlights

• Neow: Precise Scissors (remove Strike) — safe pick to thin basic Strikes early; the deck benefited from better card draw quality throughout the run.
• Floor 3 Shop: Celestial Might (24g on sale) + Crescent Spear (51g) — the Celestial Might proved to be a workhorse attack (6x4 after upgrade), and Crescent Spear provided star-scaling damage. Left 41g for future shops.
• Floor 7 Shop: Crush Under (26g on sale) — cheap AOE pick that proved useful against multi-enemy fights and provided Strength reduction.
• Elite Byrdonis: Survived at 56 HP, took Comet (Rare) as card reward — 0E 33-damage card with Weak/Vulnerable application, though its high star cost meant it was rarely playable in later fights.
• Event: Aroma of Chaos — chose Upgrade (Maintain Control) and upgraded Crescent Spear, but the upgrade may have been wasted as Crescent Spear+ showed isPlayable: false in subsequent combats.
• Boss Vantom: Failed to clear Slippery fast enough — the deck's multi-hit cards (Celestial Might+ at 4 hits) were helpful but not sufficient; the boss's 173 HP pool required more sustained damage than the deck could output while also blocking 21-26 damage attacks.

Notes for maintainers

• command_count (132) and ipc_error_count (14) are agent best-estimates from counting Send-BridgeCommand calls and CMD_ERROR log lines during the session. The operator should validate against trace.log.
• stall_count of 1 reflects the StartRun stall warning (id=1409). The revision counter appeared to reset from 20 to 15 on new run start, which may be expected behavior but violated the assumed monotonicity.
• duration_minutes (56) is an approximation. The operator should fill start_time_utc, end_time_utc, and recalculate from the session logs.
• model_provider: deepseek is a guess based on the model slug deepseek-v4-pro. The operator should correct to the actual provider.
• The Reflect card bug (consistently unplayable across multiple combats) may warrant a bridge investigation. The card's star cost or other preconditions may not be serialized in state.json.