Shroom and Gloom Best Cards Guide: Combat and Explore Synergies

I’ve played a lot of roguelike deckbuilders over the years, and I’ll admit that it takes quite a bit to make me stop and think, “Okay, this is actually different.” Shroom and Gloom managed to do exactly that.

Developed by Team Lazerbeam and published by Devolver Digital, Shroom and Gloom launches into Steam Early Access on September 10, 2026. At first glance, it looks like another strange indie roguelike with cards and monsters, but after spending time with it, I think that description undersells what the game is doing.

This is a first-person dungeon crawler, a deckbuilder, an exploration game, and a bizarre cooking simulator all mashed together. You’re walking through hand-drawn fungal tunnels, searching for useful items, opening doors, finding secrets, and then suddenly you’re face-to-face with something that looks like it crawled out of a mushroom nightmare.

The part I enjoy most is the dual-deck system. You don’t have one deck trying to handle everything. You have an Explore Deck for navigating the world and a Combat Deck for dealing with enemies. That sounds simple until you realize how closely the two systems are connected.

After several runs, I’ve come to the conclusion that the “best cards” in Shroom and Gloom aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest numbers. The cards that really shine are the ones that make the rest of your deck better.

How the Two-Deck System Actually Works

Before getting into individual cards, you need to understand the basic rhythm of a run. Your Explore Deck is essentially your toolbox for surviving the dungeon itself. Doors, digging spots, locked containers, hazards and various discoveries can all require specific cards.

Your Combat Deck, meanwhile, comes out when the mushrooms decide that you’ve been walking around for long enough and it’s time to become dinner.

What makes this especially interesting is that exploration isn’t just filler between fights. The things you find while exploring can have a direct impact on your future combat potential. If you waste resources opening every obstacle the brute-force way, you’ll eventually feel the consequences.

And then there is the game’s biggest combat twist: there is no traditional blocking system.

Coming from games like Slay the Spire, that takes some getting used to. Normally, you build up a nice pile of Block and feel safe for a turn. Shroom and Gloom basically looks at that idea and says, “Nope. Kill the thing instead.”

Enemies are damaged, seasoned, roasted and eventually eaten. Healing isn’t something you simply get for free between encounters. You often have to turn your enemies into food to recover the health they took from you.

My Favorite Explore Cards

For me, the strongest exploration cards aren’t necessarily flashy. They are the cards that prevent stupid damage and keep your run moving smoothly.

1. Rusty Shovel

The Rusty Shovel is one of those cards that looks completely ordinary until you realize how much value it can generate over a full run.

Dig sites can hide valuable items, keys and other useful discoveries, so having access to a shovel can dramatically improve your exploration. Personally, I would rather spend a little time digging than constantly losing health by forcing my way through obstacles.

There is also something wonderfully ridiculous about the game’s philosophy that basically says everything can become a card. Yes, even the tools you rely on can eventually become resources themselves. I wouldn’t recommend eating your shovel unless things have gone catastrophically wrong, though.

2. Pick Lock

Pick Lock is probably one of the least exciting cards visually and one of the most useful cards strategically.

Locked doors and chests are exactly the kind of thing that can quietly destroy a run. You can often choose the aggressive option and force your way through, but the health cost can come back to haunt you during the next combat.

That’s why I value Pick Lock so highly. It converts a problem into a simple card play instead of an HP loss. In a game where health is effectively another resource, that matters a lot.

3. Careful Planning

This is the kind of utility card I usually appreciate more after playing several runs. Early on, it’s tempting to grab anything that appears to deal damage. Eventually, you learn that consistency wins runs.

Careful Planning helps you prepare upcoming draws and makes it easier to enter important encounters with an actual plan instead of crossing your fingers and hoping the deck gives you what you need.

4. Practice Dummy

Practice Dummy is a weird little card, but that’s part of the fun. It gives you an opportunity to experiment with your setup and can even turn into a useful source of damage or utility.

I particularly like cards like this because they encourage you to understand your deck instead of simply following a fixed rotation.

The Best Combat Cards and Synergies

This is where Shroom and Gloom gets really entertaining. Combat isn’t just about throwing the biggest attack at an enemy. The real fun comes from building interactions between cards and then watching a seemingly harmless setup suddenly explode into ridiculous damage.

Distant Shadow

If I had to pick one card that I’d be excited to see early in a run, Distant Shadow would be near the top of my list.

It costs three energy, which isn’t cheap, but the Spell Weakness effect can completely change how you approach an enemy. Once the debuff is active, subsequent cards can hit significantly harder, which means cheap attacks suddenly become much more threatening.

This is exactly the kind of card that rewards aggressive deckbuilding. Instead of playing one expensive attack, you can build around setting up the weakness and then dumping a bunch of smaller cards into the enemy.

Even better, cards can grow during a run. That means something that starts as a useful tool can eventually become an absolute monster if you keep using it.

Roast

Roast is one of those cards that really demonstrates what makes the combat system different.

You’ve spent the encounter beating a fungal creature nearly to death. In another game, you’d probably finish it with your strongest attack. Here, you can essentially turn the enemy into dinner and use the result to recover health.

Healing through aggression is one of the central ideas you need to understand. You aren’t protecting yourself with Block. You’re surviving by making every enemy encounter as profitable as possible.

Season + Skewer

This combination is one of my favorite straightforward physical setups.

Season prepares the target, while Skewer provides the heavy single-target punishment. It doesn’t require an elaborate twenty-card combo to work, which is exactly why I like it.

When you see a dangerous enemy and can prepare it properly before using Skewer, you can sometimes remove the threat before it gets the opportunity to do much damage.

The Cooking Pot Is More Important Than It Looks

One of the biggest mistakes I made initially was treating defeated enemies as the end of an encounter.

They’re not.

They’re ingredients.

The cooking system is a major part of your long-term power. Combining defeated fungal creatures into soups can provide powerful buffs that influence the rest of your run. In other words, combat isn’t just about surviving the current room. You’re also building a stronger character for the rooms that come next.

My advice is simple: don’t waste opportunities to cook. If you can safely turn a corpse into something useful, do it. Those bonuses can become incredibly important once the enemies start getting nastier.

Building Around Different Characters

The characters in Shroom and Gloom don’t simply feel like cosmetic alternatives. Their starting decks encourage very different approaches.

• The Paper Boy: Great for players who enjoy fast card cycling, multi-hit turns and combo-heavy builds. I’d prioritize cheap cards and effects that let you keep playing.
• The Lunch Lady: My pick for anyone who wants to lean into cooking, healing and sustainable combat. Her toolkit makes the game’s unusual food mechanics much easier to appreciate.
• The Concerned Parent: Better suited to a careful player who enjoys controlling encounters, reducing threats and making safer decisions rather than gambling on massive damage.

If you’re new to the game, I would personally start with the Lunch Lady. The healing and cooking mechanics give you more room to make mistakes while you’re learning how the two-deck system works.

My Biggest Tips for Winning Runs

After getting comfortable with the mechanics, there are a few principles I would keep in mind during practically every run.

Don’t Ignore Card Growth

If you find a card with strong scaling potential early, don’t treat it as just another addition to your deck. Build around it. The sooner you start using an evolving card, the more time it has to become ridiculous before the tougher encounters.

Think of HP as Currency

This is probably the most important beginner lesson.

Your health isn’t just something that disappears when enemies hit you. You are constantly spending it on exploration decisions, mistakes and combat. Taking unnecessary damage to save a card might feel efficient in the moment, but it can make the next encounter much harder.

Cheap Cards Matter

Don’t fill your Combat Deck with expensive attacks just because they have impressive numbers.

A three-energy monster can be incredible, but if your hand is full of expensive cards, you may not have enough flexibility to take advantage of your setup. I prefer having a few strong finishers surrounded by cheaper cards that enable them.

Build Synergies, Not Collections

This is classic deckbuilder advice, but Shroom and Gloom makes it especially important.

Instead of asking, “Is this card strong?” ask, “Does this card make my other cards stronger?”

A mediocre-looking card that activates your main strategy can be much more valuable than a powerful attack that doesn’t fit anywhere in your deck.

My Shroom and Gloom Card Tier Priorities

Shroom and Gloom Class Guide: All Playable Characters and Best Strategies

Final Thoughts

What I like most about Shroom and Gloom is that it doesn’t feel like another deckbuilder trying to copy whatever was popular five years ago. It takes familiar ideas and twists them into something strange.

The dual-deck system gives exploration an actual purpose, the lack of traditional blocking forces you to think aggressively, and the cooking mechanics turn defeated enemies into another resource to manage.

And honestly, I love that.

There is something incredibly satisfying about finding a card early, investing in it throughout a run, discovering a couple of ridiculous synergies, and eventually watching that card completely outperform what you expected from it at the beginning.

If you’re jumping into the game when Early Access begins, my biggest recommendation is to experiment rather than obsess over a perfect meta deck immediately. Try the characters, test different Explore and Combat combinations, learn which cards work together and pay attention to how much health you’re spending outside combat.

For me, that’s where the appeal of Shroom and Gloom really comes from. It’s weird, creative, slightly disgusting, and surprisingly strategic. If Team Lazerbeam keeps expanding these systems during Early Access, this could become one of those indie roguelikes that sticks around in my Steam library for a very long time.

My starting priorities: grab useful exploration tools, look for scalable combat cards, keep a few cheap combo pieces in the deck, and never underestimate a good soup.

Because apparently, in the fungal underworld, the best way to survive isn’t to defend yourself.

It’s to cook your problems before they cook you.

Shroom and Gloom – Official ‘Sick Cards & Killer Combos’ Gameplay Overview