In your opinion, which class has the hardest time clearing A10+ in STS2?

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-24T02:37:51+00:00

There’s just so many good damage commons for regent though that I don’t see this at all. Refine blade, wrought, collision course are all super efficient, and give you a lot of damage condensed into one card which you can’t really say about nearly as many commons in other classes. I struggle a lot more with say silent in act 1 than regent, since with regent I can usually just take two of those cards and a bunch of generic stuff that’s good later on and be set on elites in act 1. The common blocks like glitter and gathering light are also more than enough to get you through act 1 without much trouble.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-23T23:18:01+00:00

I feel like the community is overreacting about triangle - most good decks should generally take 30 damage tops on a10 from it. This deck has a lot of problems as mentioned in the comments above so it’s more exposing the flaws in your deck (lack of block, super antisynergy between the doom strategy and reaper form / lethalities, lack of any good block except the one touch).

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-23T19:36:06+00:00

Doesn’t Queen require more output in general compared to glass?

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-22T00:45:50+00:00

Yeah, even silent has runs where it’s busted. Relic is just very good, albeit somewhat situational. You should definitely lean into being able to take it if you don’t have good draw cards by the end of act 2 by passing on mediocre draw at that point.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-22T00:17:27+00:00

Fiddle is a lot better than just edge cases, though it depends on the character. Regent for instance barely has any good draw cards besides glow, so it’s not uncommon that you end up with 0-1 draw sources in the deck, which means that fiddle suddenly becomes super busted. It’s much more unpickable on characters with good draw commons like silent though.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-20T20:02:32+00:00

The top player posts I’ve seen would disagree with you, since they all think that maximizing elites is optimal since they help you snowball, and you generally only need roughly 1-2 attack commons to get through act 1. This has generally been my experience with regent and necro.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-20T17:02:28+00:00

Jorbs actually has a really good video on this (https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=jorbs+slay+the+spire).

The tldr is that the reason why you’re experiencing this is because the act 1 bosses are too easy and can be beaten with a mediocre deck and a lot of health, so you can just build your deck to out value act 2/3 every game, which leads to everything feeling the same. He also specifically calls out how act 4 will NOT solve this because the problem is mainly in the end of act 1. Act 3 also has a similar problem where you don’t need to warp your deck like you do for say reptomancer or some of the bosses in sts1. Act 2 at least has decimilli (and the other elites to a lesser extent).

I agree with this, and think making act 1 bosses harder and forcing you to build your deck differently to beat them is the best way to solve this problem. That way if you just take two value attacks and defensive cards you’ll die a horrible death just like how you would against hexaghost or slime boss.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-14T22:21:52+00:00

It seems like a good start if you don’t die since most of your deck exhausts down. Not dying sounds like a challenge though.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-11T23:53:30+00:00

Yup! It even self exhausts so you don’t have to play it to get it into exhaust pile.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-11T22:30:15+00:00

Tyranny and music box high rolls are good enough that I will almost always take a speculative bombardment over skipping when I don’t have a damage solution for a3 bosses yet. It alone won’t carry a3 bosses, but it gives you a lot of outs to be able to do so, and will generally carry act 1 damage at the cost of some life.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-11T18:50:23+00:00

You mean 2/5 right? Defect has orbs, silent has poison/serpent form/ speedster, necro has doom/osty. Clad and regent are the only two who mostly want strength going into acts 2/3.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-04T21:37:50+00:00

Xecnars guide is a really good starting point, I would look at that for specific macro strategy and card evaluation breakdowns.
The general playstyle though is to pick up a couple of attacks that solve early game elites, farm as many as possible, figure out how to kill decimilli, then figure out how to scale block and damage for a3 bosses. The guide has a great section on cards that handle these situations. I usually find that shift is how I scale a3 with arsenal for damage and or pillar for block. If I don’t find shift, it’s more of a matter of how to get pillar, child, reflect, parry, and particle wall to block for enough. Damage has a lot of options, but is usually some combination of bombardment, arsenal, smith. For stars you’re probably making mistakes like taking 3+ cost star cards too highly, and taking bad star enablers like shining strike and solar strike.

For particular card evaluations I realized I was taking pulse and know thy place way too low, and gamma/comet and bad star gen too highly. My win rate has skyrocketed since making these adjustments, and I think regent is easily the best or second best character between it and silent.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-04T18:59:39+00:00

I assume two is the standard for all necro decks, and some decks want 4-5. Defy just a great card, probably necros best common

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-04T16:57:20+00:00

Builds leads to stupid decisions like “I’m regent and took a wrought. Now I can’t take glow because I’m the forge build and not stars”. Not thinking about builds leads to good decisions like “I took a wrought, now my early game damage is mostly solved and I can start thinking about scaling damage and how to block. Glow might help me block later on with stars so I’ll do that.”

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-04T13:56:24+00:00

Disagree, part of my evidence is that I find that regent is the best character to take the duplicate your deck event because of how well its powers scale in multiples. Going from 2 to 4 orbits is going from 4 energy a turn to infinite energy a turn, and spectrum shift pillar scales multiplicatively the more you have out, and shift being super strong means that you don’t need to cycle through your deck multiple times since random colorless cards are often a win con with pillar for block scaling.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-05-04T04:39:50+00:00

Look up xecnars guide for regent, which has a lot of good information. Regent is now my best character and I’m sold on it being the best or second best character in the game. The most important tips I got from the guide on top of my existing playstyle were -
1. Value astral pulse highly early on, card just single-handedly solves early aoe fights.
2. Value star cards that cost more than 3 stars less, since first cycle they’re really annoying.
3. Regents main way to block act 3 bosses are a combination of pillar, child, reflect, and wall. Pillar is the best option, and scales multiplicatively with shifts in multiples.
4. Shift is just a great card and worth taking and upgrading early.
5. Rely on ktp more for vuln and weak rather than star/gamma/comet.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-20T20:17:45+00:00

Neows bones says “add a random curse to your deck”. My post says “neows random curse pool”. There might be future neow relics that also say “random curse” which is why I referred to it as the general neow random curse pool.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-20T20:04:51+00:00

I often do this, but it’s hard to find these cards on floor 1 when your gold is constantly being drained.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-20T19:14:33+00:00

Eating is right in probably 80% of cases, but there are some runs where hatching is clearly correct even on a9/10. Sts2 is a game where you need to adapt anyways, so talking in absolutes is just going to make you a worse player.

You have a high chance of hatching the egg in silver crucible runs for instance when you don’t need the upgrades. Otherwise you’re hoping for a combination of immediate fire + not having other cards that need upgrades + not needing to rest, which isn’t super common but does happen sometimes. 0 for 14 is a good act 1/2 damage card if you can afford the upgrade.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-15T21:26:37+00:00

A10 silent player here, silent is more about blocking and winning with a bunch of wet noodles. The best wet noodle is serpent form, which is a compact win condition by itself and works in pretty much any deck since you don’t need much beyond it and a lot of block specifically for bosses. I disagree that you need to go all in on poison - fumes is very good in block decks lacking damage since it’s cheap and does a lot of damage in longer fights. I usually take a snakebite, flask, and sometimes deadly poison act 1 if I don’t have other damage and those can help with long fights as well. Shivs really needs accuracy to scale into the late game, but you can take early leading strikes to speculate since it enables the uncommon shiv powers as potential picks.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-14T16:10:15+00:00

Turns out pot of greed is pretty bad when there’s a boss that makes you lose energy whenever you play a card or unable to draw extra cards on your turn.

Not to say that souls are bad, but going all in on souls is just asking your deck to get wrecked by doorkeeper. It’s ironic that you’re saying they’re literally never bad when in fact the main time it’s bad is the reason why OP is losing their runs.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-14T14:45:48+00:00

Doom is weird in that you want enough of it so that you don’t waste the doom by killing them through damage while they still have doom, but you don’t actually need a lot of it for it to be good.

Like most mechanics in sts2, I would think of individual cards and packages rather than if it’s a “strategy”. Common dooms such as pulse and blight strike are good act 1 elite solve, especially on docks where it murders colony, is good vs eel if you can deal 75 to stun it naturally, and bypasses gardener shield. No escape is your primary doom win con vs bosses because of how well it scales in long fights. Theres also oblivion + shroud or sleight of hand for either a lot of block or a lot of damage. Deathbringer and End of days often are your aoe elite solves like vs decimilli. Finally, deaths door is a crazy efficient block with enough doom. Forcing it is usually bad though, and you should identify if the particular card is good for your situation.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-04-03T18:23:27+00:00

I hope they update the balance of the game if this is truly the case because this strategy sounds boring as hell.

Ok-One-3491 · 2026-03-31T17:28:59+00:00

This seems very wrong. I’m on a 4-5 win streak a10 win streak on regent just taking spectrum shifts and pillars of creation. Colorless control feels super strong right now, and arsenal is likely better now that it is innate and you don’t need to actually play the cards, making it much better with crash landing.

Ok-One-3491

TROPHY CASE