act-start

name	act-start
description	Use this at the start of an act, or whenever act-level planning resets after a compaction summary or major state change. Trigger it to re-evaluate deck shape, route goals, elite readiness, and act-specific priorities.

Act Start

Use this when an act begins or when the run needs a fresh act-level plan.

Required Reading

Read these before acting:

• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/act-start/references/planning.md
• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/act-start/references/rewards-and-deck-shape.md
• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/boss-and-elite-fights/references/prep.md
• /home/igorw/Work/STS2/.agents/skills/merchant/references/heuristics.md
• the current character skill for the run
• the current run log under /home/igorw/Work/STS2/vault/runs
• the current act skill's boss or elite notes if the incoming act contains a known hard-fight threat

Core Doctrine

• Start each act by identifying what the deck is good at, what still kills it, and what the act is most likely to test next.
• Route in chunks, not node by node.
• Do not send the run into elites just because a new act begins with full healing or fresh optimism.
• Decide whether the act plan is to exploit current strength, patch a fatal weakness, or buy time for scaling to come online.
• Boss preparation starts immediately. The act boss is not a floor-16 problem.

Act Start Checklist

• Reconstruct the real deck: draw quality, frontload, scaling, AoE, block, exhaust, potion support, and relic spikes.
• Identify the worst realistic fight in the act and whether the deck already has a plan for it.
• Mark which rewards or shops would genuinely change pathing permission.
• Decide how many elites the deck has earned right now, not in theory.
• Decide what must be fixed before the boss.
• Late in an act, do not over-preserve if the deck is already ahead of the act's tests and the route still has recovery or potion outs.
• A route with strong relics, upgraded control, spare potion capacity, and a fire before the boss often has earned one more elite even at imperfect HP.
• If the route is already forcing a hard fight, spend current HP, gold, and potion capacity to improve that fight instead of preserving fake safety into it.

Decision Standard

• Prefer routes that preserve multiple outs.
• Avoid plans that require several future hits in sequence just to become reasonable.
• When two paths are close, choose the one that fits the current deck's tested strengths.
• If the act presents unknowns, favor lines that gather information without forcing high-risk commitments too early.

Maintenance

This skill and its references are living documents. Improve them as new things are found. Do not append drift. Edit and rewrite to keep them sharp and short, and add references when needed.