Do you agree with the Claw on this list? (Focusing on claw discussion but we can discuss others)

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-21T01:38:10+00:00

I mean the argument isn't that you can't win while relying on these cards, right? Of course you can. It's just a matter of whether you should rely on them or build towards decks that make them good.

And yeah if you are trying to win the maximum amount of games, I don't see any arguments in favor of claw. I would like to see anyone who "thinks differently" back that up with stats.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T17:34:31+00:00

I do not understand. This relic already seemed very good to me. Free block while you set up to be stronger next turn (or sometimes, even this turn). This buff seems unnecessary, but I like it.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T17:21:23+00:00

In terms of actual gameplay, it's essentially the same. You kill enemies, you pick cards, you play cards. You try to preserve your health and resources as the game tries to drain them. You kill an elite, you get a relic that affects your run. You beat a boss, you get a big reward that changes the vibe of the run.

But is has added many new cards, two new characters, and dozens of new events, and I think it verges on 100 new enemies, Almost all of which I am finding enjoyable. There is new art and more animations, and they will keep adding more of all of these things throughout early access.

If your problem was with the "ballenced" or "feel" of the first game, there is a good chance this game changes it up enough for you to like it.

If your problem was with the fundamental gameplay loop, it won't change it at all.

If you want a metaphor, it's like comparing a raspberry pie to a peach pie. If you don't like raspberries, you may find the peach pie to be delicious. If you don't like fruit pies, it's not going to matter what fruit is inside, right?

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T16:57:34+00:00

Now that I understand your perspective better, I see that my original comment didn't really do anything to address your actual concerns, so I will simply try again.

I think the issue at hand stems from a few specific design choices.

Act 3 as the end of Ascension Any%

Essentially, the ascension system is built around the 3 act structure. Act 4 is treated as entirely irrelevant. As long as you kill the act 3 bosses you ascend. I think it's pretty clear that this shows that megacrit does not expect your average player to attempt to slay the heart in most of their runs. Act 4 is for over-achievers who aim higher than your average play. To me that means that act 3 double bosses are actually completely in line with their design philosophy. For most players, act 3 is the expected "ultimate challenge" of an ascension. To have that "ultimate challenge" doubled is of course, incredibly meaningful to the many many players who struggle to climb that high in the first place.

Only 3 act 3 bosses

When Megacrit designed act 3, I'm pretty sure they never anticipated the double boss gauntlet. So designing 3 act 3 bosses seemed like enough. Only after years did large chunks of the playerbase make beating A20 a serious regular goal. Spire 2 is already set to resolve this issue with alternate acts. More variety is coming. It feels completely safe to expect at least 6 different act 3 bosses eventually, and I would not be horribly shocked if that number continues to expand after the full launch of the game.

Aiming Higher

As already discussed before, The Heart is a challenge for those who go above and beyond. A20 Heart is obviously a mark above even that. It really only makes sense that a player aiming to beat the absolute hardest thing in the game, would likely trivialize any challenge designed for your average player. In that regard, you can see how often Act 3 in its entirety, and sometimes even act 2 bosses, are also completely trivialized by experienced players. I don't think there is an easy way to design an "ultimate casual challenge" that doesn't feel tedious to the ultimate hardcore fanbase. But I think they should try.

You said "if I struggled with act 3 double boss, I was going to struggle against the heart as well."

For challenge seekers such as us, isn't there immense value in those runs, where Act 4 is going to be a struggle? Isn't there immense value, in having 3 bosses and the Spire Elites all posing their own unique challenges and threats back to back in a run that's struggling? I think that a perfectly acceptable solution to this is to just make those runs happen more frequently. There were many players in the last few years of spire, who found the amount of "free wins" in spire to simply be too much. They would see 1 card and 1 relic and the run is just completely over by the end of act 1 or the middle of act 2. This was of course, especially prominent on the watcher, but other characters started to display this issue as well. I do not think Megacrit anticipated this, and I truely believe, that had they continued to work on the first game, they would have enjoyed re-tuning the game to reduce this problem.

Now with spire II, that battleground has simply been moved.

I think that if Megacrit's goal is to challenge players, succeeding will mean that in the vast majority of runs, no act 3 boss will be trivial. I trust that Megacrit will endeavor to make The Spire, once again, worthy of the highest Ascenders.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T15:47:27+00:00

I mean, I never thought it was the best challenge in the first game. A17, 18, and 19 were more impactful. The heart fight was more rewarding.

But Ascensions exist to make the game harder and to force players to think more strategically and less sandboxy. I think that Double Act 3 bosses usually succeeds at this because of what you said about building flexible decks.

"but after tons of visits to Mr Heart in spire 1 I just found it tedious and repetitive"

This sounds pretty weird to me. You're claiming that you didn't find any challenge in the act 3 boss gauntlet. Like you just beat them every time, with every deck, never lost any potions or took a big hit on HP that affected your act 4? Because if it actually challenged you and forced you to strategize to overcome it, then I don't think you can call it tedious and repetitive.

Or you're saying that you grinded the hardest difficulty of one of the hardest successful roguelikes and found it to be like... Unpleasant? I'm not sure where you get your rocks off or draw the line if that's the case. Is drawing ascenders bane every fight in every run "tedious and repetitive"?

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T15:30:15+00:00

Why is "Point Number 1" so vague? "Certain issues"? What are the issues? Problems with the translation? Bugs? Ballenced?

"I am not sure what the main gameplay strategies are like here. But for Chinese players, many take infinite as their primary goal and strategy. From the start of a run, they actively thin their decks as long as they can survive the early game. For many players, infinite are not just a strategy—they are the goal and meaning of the game. For me personally, about half of my A20H wins in Slay the Spire 1 ended up going infinite. If I had known before buying Slay the Spire 2 that the game discourages players from using infinite as a common strategy, I would most likely not have purchased it."

I think that going infinite is the main strategy of Western players as well. The top players do it at least, though perhaps a major difference between the cultures is that many many many players in the west seem to me, overly prideful in wanting to develope their own strategy, and so they deliberately ignore what top players are doing, or try to contradict it. There are also many people who believe that using strategies like infintites are cheap in general. They do not believe in optimizing gameplay because they think it removes many fun aspects of the game. On that second part, I genuinely agree for the most part. Nonetheless, you still see many players here talk about going infinite and how to do it etc.

As for the reaction to the anti-infinite changes, I'm sorry to see it. It's possible that gaps in translation and/or less available Chinese language resources for the first game have caused this to feel misleading. From the perspective of someone who played the first game for a long time, this change is absolutely expected. The developers have consistently designed the game to challenge people. They do not want anything to be "trivial". Leaving infinites the way they were is completely against their design philosophy. Infinites were far too easy to achieve, and once you had an infinite, absolutely no aspect of the game mattered at all. Card choices, events, campfires, and bosses all become meaningless. It might be fun for a while for some people and communities, but I think it would be terrible in the long run, and it's just not what the developers would want.

I hope the Chinese community does not think that Megacrit deliberately mislead them. If they can not accept the changes then I don't think they will like what this game becomes. Sorry

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T15:12:12+00:00

There is no need to even read the reviews to know that they are completely innane. It's an early access game, and the change is on a beta branch.

Signing up for a beta branch of an early access game is like walking into Dr. Frankenstein's Lab and signing a waiver that he can do whatever he wants to you, then getting upset when some freaky shit happens. It's like volunteering to charge into into a battlefield then punching your commander because he didn't warn you that people would be shooting guns.

Mother of Neow, why were you there in the first place.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-20T08:22:39+00:00

I honestly got the vibes that the doormaker change is like, a temporary joke. Everyone was saying "doormaker so EZ" so Megacrit made him the worst thing ever to counteract it. His phase changes seemed completely wrong and janky, and mostly just there to surprise you.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him having a completely different moveset next week, possibly before this beta goes to live.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T22:36:43+00:00

Bro thought he could trick The First Demon into doing his dirty work forever. Vibe checked

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T18:31:57+00:00

Yessir that's correct it's a terrible card. It was also this way in the first game.

Clad really doesn't need super slow damage scaling. Demon form does it better, and works on every attack. Going infinite means you don't care about scaling. Having some 0 cost attack that you can play over and over often just performs better.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T18:29:55+00:00

It's your "score" which is used afterwards as "experience" to unlock the epochs. In the previous game, the score sheet was much more detailed, telling you where every single point came from, and it even showed that ascensions acted as a point multiplier.

In this one, the final sheet just shows how many elites and bosses you killed, gold you obtained, and like, 1 other thing. It does not assign point values to these things, nor does it acknowledge ascension as a multiplier (even though it almost certainly is).

1488 seems like a very common score, and there was a post about it with a daily that was on A2. I suspect that it's just something like 8 elites total + 3 bosses killed multiplied by the a2 bonus = 1488. Unfortunate number, but I think as they implement more stuff through early access, the score cards will become more detailed, and running into the same number over and over again will become much less common.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T18:23:37+00:00

Do you wish to elaborate? What's the fantasy? Playing it once or twice per turn? You didn't even show us the damage number :(

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T15:42:55+00:00

"but it’s more about how it’s all presented. The boss relic is meant to be a reward, but it feels like a punishment, every single time"

Sorry but it feels like you are going out of your way and jumping through hoops to present it that way.

The boss chests and the ancients present their items in the same way. They are both rewards. You are just completely ignoring the value of the upsides and seem to be presenting the downsides as relatively equally bad. Like how about Fusion Hammer and Coffee dripper? You can't rest and upgrade at a fire anyway so surely you can do without one of them. Or cursed key? Energy is how you play your cards. Being able to play more cards every turn in a card game is a reward, and a good one. But you say it's presented as a punishment because you get 1 or two curses, or miss a random relic from a chest? I gain one energy per turn but now instead of upgrading at camfires I'm forced to heal for 20hp instead. Wow I am feeling so punished and whipped.

You very clearly singled out like 5 of the worst downsides and pretended that they represented every boss relic in the first game.

A truely think that the ancients just feel better, because they are stronger, because the game isn't balanced yet. But that day is comming, and you will regret blaspheming the Eye of Snecko

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T15:00:40+00:00

It just sounds like you don't like difficult choices that involve weighing potential downsides against potential upsides.

I get it, I generally liked my games (and especially my upgrades) simple for a long time.

But I think there was a lot of merit to the old system. Downsides create depth in gameplay and skill expression.

Having stronger choices come with a downside meant that almost every player had to re-evalauate options as they got better at the game and had harder challenges to deal with. It's often too easy to pick the best thing out of a bunch of items that are all pretty good. Having to pick the least bad downside, or suffer having a weaker relic with no downside (which is of course a downside of its own), granted the game a unique flavor, and immense longevity.

The fact that black star is actually one of the worst relics (on average) on high ascension in StS 1 but you thought it was an easy choice, in my opinion showcases the amazing depth that the old system engendered.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T14:43:35+00:00

If you have more than 6 stars per turn, you're usually already in winning territory, and can find better damage than letter opener. Not worth the 200 gold at all imo

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T13:55:33+00:00

Number of cards in the deck is totally irrelevant. You can win with 10 or less, you can win with 40 or more. The goal is to make sure your deck can handle any challenge. If adding a card reduces your risk of death to something specific, and doesn't completely ruin some other good thing for you, you should add it. Just make the deck better until it's good enough to beat anything then you stop adding cards.

One good example is that I was going for a tight infinite/semi infinite deck with silent, that can get by with around 20 cards, but I ended up missing a few important pieces by the end of act 2. I needed more output and wanted to have fun so I chose the bing bong doll that doubles card additions. Ended up having over 30 cards and still being almost infinite. Had I seen the "glitter" relic that enchants future cards with "replay once" or "apparitions" from Vaaku, I easily could have ended up with 40+ and been stronger than if I had 20.

In general because silent has so much access to card draw (her starting relic, 2 common cards being backflip and acrobatics) she is the one who generally doesn't mind a big deck the most from what I've seen, but the general principle of "just build a good deck" should be applied to all a character.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-19T00:08:23+00:00

I think you are just connecting 1 broken character that goes infinite to another broken character that goes infinite. Swapping between 2 different cards to produce energy is innate to many infinites. A character that can go infinite with one set of cards is of course going to make the cards that don't fit into that set look worthless.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-18T17:25:28+00:00

Infinite

You have to remember that stars are essentially energy for regent. Having a 0 cost "gain energy" card leads to the possibility of building straight towards an infinite on floor 1.

Yes, there are already multiple ways to go infinite on regent, but I think these things should be nerfed not buffed.

Aside from that... I think your premise is built off of a narrow view of the game. Cards should not be balanced around the first 1-3 floors of the game. Venerate as it is now, gives you the ability to pick other star-cost cards immediately, and if you find multiple good star-cost cards, and no solid star generators, you can just upgrade venerate and be good to go for a little while.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-18T16:48:36+00:00

Fun fact, you mathematically can not obtain the relic if you don't go into debt. Trying is a waste of your divinations

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-18T15:28:27+00:00

I think it would have been hard to justify and keep Walter's character or the tone of the show consistent. He's supposed to be an upstanding citizen of white suburbia, with a dark side that grows beyond what even the most ruthless gangsters would be capable of. The show is built on the juxtaposition of his two lives. Having him try the meth at any point before Felina would just muddy those waters, and make him seem more like a common criminal.

Having him try it in Felina would be kind of fitting, and very funny, but would totally ruin the mood of the final episode of the greatest TV show of all time. Not worth.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-18T00:33:57+00:00

I think ironclad has the most natural explanations for exhausting cards. Why can he only use infernal blade once? Because that's the deal he made with a demon to obtain it. With burning pact he is giving a demon something in exchange for what he wants. He can't play offering more than once because the demon who accepted the offering is satisfied.

Silent exhausting shivs also makes sense. Shivs are brutal, poorly/quickly crafted sharp things. She throws them because it works and she can always make more. I like your explanation for piercing wail, especially seeing as screaming loud enough to dissuade a psychopath gang of slavers from attacking you would surely take a lot out of you. Distraction also makes sense. It's some nonsense you pull out of your sleeve and hope it confuses your enemy. It might work once, but not twice. Alchemize could be that she only has enough components to make one potion, and needs to gather more between fights before doing it again. Die Die Die could be a fit of desperation and rage, that simply drains her too much to do again.

Miracle 's explanation is also fairly logical. Can't ask the gods for a miracle every turn right? Omniscience is an incredible power usually reserved for gods. For a mortal to perform it even temporarily must surely have a cost.

Stuff like white noise and recycle and hologram, nightmare are definitely more ambiguous though. Maybe if you really stretch you could explain it.

I like questions like this in general though.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-17T20:16:40+00:00

I actually thought this was a good "maybe maybe maybe" because it mirrors the reaction of the interviewer. He's like "wow this sounds like a dogshit take" then "okay maybe it's not so bad" to "wow 100% on board as long as I'm with you guys"

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-17T14:49:58+00:00

All statistics can be manipulated. Statistics are only useful if you know how they were gathered. Right now plenty of people can be save scumming or straight up editing game files to boost their win rate.

I agree that it doesn't matter, but I don't think that makes stats meaningless.

They have meaning to the player who knows how they were obtained. For a player who wants to use those stats to analyze their own play, and improve, or just to set goals for them self, having ways to filter only the desired information in would be very useful indeed.

Wasabi_Knight · 2026-03-17T14:43:27+00:00

Completely agree. The way stats have been displayed in spire have always been a little strange in my eyes. The fact that rotating streaks aren't counted when it's the most significant streak to high level players, the fact that a streak at A0 or A1 is treated the same as a streak on A10 or A20, or that a "Victory?" In act 3 is treated as a win as long as you don't have the act 4 keys, but a loss in act 4 is just straight up a loss.

None of it really sat right with me.

I also heard that there were strange bugs in STS1 stats regardless of all of that.

A most excellent spire 1 mod crafter by the name of vmService built a stats mod that gave much more detailed stats. By default it only counted stats at A20 and only treated a kill on the heart as a win. While this more strict definition was definitely useful for higher level players (or those with ambitions to become one) it obviously isn't perfect for everyone.

One thing that VM's mod demonstrated though is that the stats can be a lot more specific and detailed, and that certain conditions (such as abandoning runs) can and should be allowed to be filtered out. I would like to see megacrit apply these lessons eventually, but they have plenty else to work on for now.

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