Can’t get past a certain Act in Slay the Spire? Try out these builds.
Slay the Spire mixes the fun of a roguelike with the strategy of a deck-building game. To beat the game’s different Acts, you’ll need to try out different decks. Slay the Spire is easy to lose hundreds of hours in because it has four playable characters, each with their own quirks and ways of playing.
As a new player, it’s also easy to feel stressed. In a game where everything comes down to luck, it’s hard to figure out which decks are the best. We’ll go over eight builds—two for each character—to help you beat each Act. This will help you learn the strengths and flaws of each class. The builds are listed by class, not by power.
Ironclad: Bunker
As his name suggests, Ironclad can become a tank by putting a lot of Block on his health to protect it. With a few special cards, you can turn your Block rating into damage. This lets you take on some of the hardest enemies in Slay The Spire game without risking your life.
With Body Slam, Barricade, and Entrench, you can build up a huge Block value, which you can then use to hurt enemies who stand in your way. Watch out for Block cards and Relics like Callipers and Anchor.
Ironclad: Strength
As far as scaling damage goes, the Ironclad’s Strength cards let him do an absurd amount of damage with every hit. Instead of increasing your Block value to deal damage, you’ll increase a buff called Strength, which gives you extra damage equal to the number of stacks you have of Strength.
With these cards, you can gain a lot of Strength in a short amount of time, making your hits do much more damage. Strength cards should be paired with cards like Sword Boomerang and Whirlwind, which have more than one attack. If you can get Artefact from a Relic or card, keep an eye out for the Flexcard and Mutagenic StrengthRelic. Artefact stops these brief Strength boosts from going away at the end of your turn.
Silent: Shivs
This build is best described as “death by a thousand cuts.” Even though it needs certain cards and Relics to work, a good Shiv deck can kill most enemies and bosses with a barrage of free hits. It will suffer against Time Eater and crowded decks, but if you play your cards right, you can make one of the most fun hooded-assassin-like builds in the game.
Some other great cards are Backflip, Finisher, and Infinite Blades. As for Relics, you can choose from quite a few. Keep an eye out for Wrist Blade, Shuriken, and Kunai. These items help your Shivs get stronger as Slay The Spire game goes on. The goal is to throw as many Shivs as possible at the enemy while keeping your Block number high in case you can’t kill them.
Silent – Discard And Draw
This build is harder to use to its full potential, so it’s better for people who are already good at Slay the Spire. The whole point of this build is to get what you need by drawing and getting rid of cards.
This build makes it easy to get to your best cards quickly, which is made even easier if you keep your deck small and strong. Upgraded cards are the key to both striking and moving cards around.
Silent – Momentum
This is another build that can be hard to use because it depends a lot on the relic “Unceasing Top.” The main idea behind this build is to play as many cards as possible to deal a lot of damage to your enemies.
One hard part is making sure you have enough strong cards to pull off the build and that those strong cards have low costs. If you do things right, you can get through Slay The Spire game quickly and easily, but some boss fights can still be hard.
Silent: Poison
Poison, a debuff that makes enemies take damage equal to the number of stacks of Poison they have, is probably the Silent’s most powerful feature. Silent has a lot of cards that can be used with it and a lot of Poison, so you can do a lot of damage on each of your turns.
There are a lot of poison cards in Silent’s deck, so you should be able to build a poison deck on most of your runs. During your run, if you get The SpecimenRelic, your Poison will be much better at killing enemies. Try to keep your deck small so you can use your strong Poison abilities like Catalystas as often as possible.
Defect: Frost Tank
Defect depends on his Orb mechanic a lot to stay alive. He can use them to strengthen his defences or deal an insane amount of damage. This build leans towards the former, making as many Frost Orbs as possible to get a huge Block rating. Since Frost Orbs automatically give Block, you can use damage and utility cards on your turn even after you’ve set them up.
Once you’ve put out enough Frost Orbs, you can either focus on making your Orbs stronger or use other cards to deal damage. This will come down to the cards you are given on each turn. If you can, try to focus on making your Orbs stronger by using cards like Recursion and Loop. This will help you get as much use as possible out of your Orbs.
Defect – Lightning Spam
This build is for you if you want to get as close as possible to your enemies and spam a lot of lightning. There are a lot of ways to use this build, but the key is to use as few orb slots as possible while shooting lightning over and over.
If you can master this build, you’ll be melting enemy health bars like they’re nothing. Even though this is a very powerful build, don’t forget to include some block-based backup plans in case things don’t go as planned.
Defect: Claw Assault
The main goal of the Defect’s Claw build is to make a single card do as much damage as possible by making it stronger. It’s like the Silent’s Shiv build, but this deck is much more focused on controlling the other cards. When you combine this card with other free cards, you can do a surprising amount of damage each turn.
Many of Defect’s cards cost no Energy or give you power over your deck, which are both great in this game. Also, try not to put too many cards in your deck, since you want to use Claw as much as possible to make it do more damage. Like Silent’s Shiv build, this deck is great with Relics that have more than one hit, like Kunai and Ornamental Fan.
Watcher – Retain
If you want to try out a build that lets you play much more defensively, you could try out the Retain build. This build uses skills to set up the conditions for a one-turn wipe of the enemy field.
This build is pretty complicated and needs a few key cards to even work, so it’s worth looking into the best way to put it together to get the most out of it. If you can do it, you’ll be able to easily beat almost every enemy in the game.
Watcher – Creation
This strong Creation build is for people who like the idea of making things. The goal of this build is to make cards and make them as strong as possible so that you can attack your opponents with a lot of force.
If you do it right, each card you make will be improved right away. This means you can keep making cards that make Drive Mad game easier, especially early on. There are several ways to do the build, so it can be a lot of fun to play around with.
Watcher: Stance Master
The Watcher is one of the most powerful characters in Slay the Spire, as long as you know how to use her kit. This stance build will help you learn how she works and what cards she has. If you play it right, you’ll be able to switch between stances quickly to deal a lot of damage to enemies without putting yourself in danger.
You should use Talk to the Hand on an enemy you’re about to attack, switch to Wrath Stance, use Flurry of Blows and any other attacks you can afford, switch to Calm Stance, and either end your turn or restart the process. Make sure you end your turn in a neutral or calm stance. If you don’t, Wrath Stance will make you take twice as much damage. Talk to the Hands will let you hit over and over again while giving you a huge Block shield. This deck works well with Relics that have more than one attack, like Shuriken and Ornamental Fan.
Watcher: Scry
The Watcher also has a strong ability called Scry, which lets you look at the top card of your deck and throw it away if you don’t like it. This gives you a ridiculous amount of power over your deck and makes it easy to set up combos.
Unlike most decks, you have so much power over how your deck rotates that you can play a pretty big deck and still do well, as long as you have enough cards that let you see the future. This can let you add more cards with high damage, effects that help you out, or even Stances. This deck is a great choice if you want to reduce the RNG of each fight as much as possible. Almost every Relic is useful for this build, including those that let you hit multiple times and those that help you get more Energy.
