Gaming

Most certainly! I've been playing this game for ages so I 'm unsure what advice is beginner friendly and what not, but let's see...

1. Indeed, use any opportunity to throw away one of your starting Strikes (and to a lesser extent, the Defends). Strikes are by far the worst non-curse cards, dealing only 6 damage for 1 cost and taking up a slot in your five card draw each turn. You'll obtain way better cards and want to increase the chance of drawing those, which is why you really want to remove bad cards as frequently as possible. (At shops and events).
2. Do not avoid elites! These are the special looking enemies on the map and they are the only fights who drop Relics. Having good Relics and building your deck around them is essential to winning this game!
3. Don't pick a card at the end of every fight, only pick the cards that you really want. A small but predictable deck is way better than a massive deck full of OK cards. Seriously, this is one of the most important things I learned, the skip button is there to be used.
4. Pick cards and relics that increase card draw. A big issue in Slay the Spire is drawing a bad hand and not having the necessary cards for that turn in hand. Lots of cards, relics and potions will allow you to draw extra cards during your turn, which can often make the difference between life and death in this game. Especially towards the end when you have more energy, it becomes extremely important to be able to spend it on good cards, and increasing the cards you draw per turn gives you more options to play good cards.
5. Finally, keep trying. Different enemy types attack in their own pattern every time. Even when you lose, you start to learn their mechanics and how to best counteract those. There are three elite types per act, and three end boss types per act. For the end bosses, you can actually see on the map which one you will have at the end of the current act! So in total, there are "only" 9 different bosses* and 9 different elites. Once you get to know them, you'll realize their strengths and weaknesses!

There is a tenth secret boss at the true ending, but let's not dwell on that for now :). Suffice it to say that the pro players have win streaks of 20+ on the highest ascension difficulty (ascension 20) while always taking on this extra final boss. So this game is insanely tactical and almost any run can be salvaged to win even on the highest difficulty!

Enjoy your journey :). Oh, and start with Ironclad, he's the most straightforward character!

One of the things that helped me improve a lot was watching streamers play. Baalorlord as previously mentioned is great. I've also watched a lot of videos from Jorbs and Frost Prime.

They all have some videos specifically targeted toward newer players where they explain their thought process but I've also gotten a lot of value out of just watching them do normal runs. I like to figure out what I would do in each situation and if they do something different I try to analyze why they made that decision instead. There are many cards that I didn't think were very good until I saw an expert using them.