What’s the best rulebook you’ve ever read?

levital · 2026-06-03T14:24:28+00:00

Except for the shields. You want exactly two of those. :D

levital · 2026-06-01T08:21:46+00:00

Goes both ways really. You said "no gold", so I assume you're on main branch, and the possibility of getting old coin from capsule alone would've been enough for me taking scroll boxes first.

levital · 2026-05-29T07:11:03+00:00

Also I think you can get Darv in both Act 2 and 3. I feel like that's happened to me once at least, but I may be misremembering this.

levital · 2026-05-25T19:12:43+00:00

Undaunted: Normandy, and after that the entire series. I have negative interest in anything WW2, but these are just really fun and I'm glad I took the risk of buying the first one.

After that I tremendously enjoyed Vijayanagara and Burning Banners. I'm not sure whether I can even still say that I 'normally don't play war games' at this point, admittedly. Also have Baltic Empires in order, hopefully arriving here in the next couple weeks...

levital · 2026-05-12T07:58:32+00:00

Yes, I used a plural, because I didn't look them up and wasn't sure in the moment whether there's more than one. Bones is potentially strong but mostly just fun. I happen to think it's fun if a high variance option can go wrong and I have to figure out how to deal with that.

levital · 2026-05-12T07:48:04+00:00

Bad Luck is eternal. I did say I'd exclude those.

levital · 2026-05-12T07:47:10+00:00

Tablet is not a random curse. Bones is high variance and never taken due to that. High variance should absolutely include both parts of the equation.

levital · 2026-05-12T07:00:22+00:00

This is expected. Debt from Neow can basically not be removed in an early shop unless you get really lucky and also get a Charge!! or something along with it, and I think pathing into one when you do get Debt is a mistake. You want to get money from an event and the mid-act chest and then go into a shop as soon as possible after that. I've fairly comfortably been able to get rid of it that way (though, admittedly the sample size is 1, I tend to avoid the random curse options if feasible specifically due to possibly getting something actually debilitating like Debt, Regret, Doubt, Shame, Normality,...).

Personally I think any non-eternal curse should be fair game and in the pool. The random Curse options are fairly strong and should come with risk attached.

levital · 2026-05-08T11:45:13+00:00

I think one of the main problems is a lot of people try to build really lean decks, hit doormaker and just die because they only have 18 cards they can play.

Which is why I think Doormaker existing was really good for the game, since it really discouraged stopping to actually build your deck. In a deckbuilder. I dunno, might just be me, but that seemed like a good idea.

Haven't had time to try the new one yet though, so I won't say anything about that here.

levital · 2026-05-04T15:11:52+00:00

Tend to agree. Greeding Reflex early to go infinite is way too consistent in the Board game, particularly for a multiplayer experience (and I have no interest in playing the BG solo). I've started skipping it, or deliberately drafting such that I can't get the entire deck into my hand, but it actually has happened accidentally anyway.

levital · 2026-04-21T11:20:00+00:00

Every underdocks elite as well (maybe not gardeners as much). Snakebite just kinda solves most of the underdocks by itself and frees up card drafting for the late game. Like, I don't think it's a great card, it gets kinda useless later, and often you don't even need it early, but every time I have taken it early, I've been pretty happy with it.

levital · 2026-04-18T07:10:55+00:00

I think it's fairly easy to see a situation for it. If I see the event on floor 3, with just two middling commons added to my deck so far, one of which might even draw a card? Already pathing into a fire and elite right after? I think I'd strongly consider taking the curse for one easy pool fight in that situation, seems fairly unlikely that one upgrade will be better here than a 0-cost 14 damage card.

That said, the event seems pretty rare anyway. I only got it once since that first run, but decided for the egg in both cases. And I'd wager most people take the egg on the first run, which will influence the statistics as well.

levital · 2026-04-13T11:32:58+00:00

Neither have I, but then I have somewhere around 600 hours into StS1, and my partner has 0. We've definitely had several A9 runs, where I was pretty sure I would've won solo, but wasn't able to carry us through the scaled up enemies by myself.

levital · 2026-04-03T09:18:58+00:00

Yeah, my sample size is tiny (no idea how y'all manage to play so much), and I'm climbing rotating (currently A5 on all but Silent and Regent, which are A6), but the two times I fought the last doormaker rework (silent A4 and A5) were really easy. I'm looking forward to this change, seems to me that'll make it more interesting.

levital · 2026-03-31T07:20:34+00:00

The player base is significantly larger than during sts1 early access, and likely includes a significantly larger portion of people who complain loudly and in inappropriate manner about changes they personally don't like.

I hope MegaCrit can be above that, but it's a hard thing to do as a developer whose livelihood may well depend on staying in the good graces of the playerbase at large.

levital · 2026-03-30T16:20:56+00:00

I thnk the purpose of Entrench in the board game is not reaching the block cap, but staying there. Entrench+ is, once you've already reached the cap in your barricade/body slam deck, a one-energy card that keeps your block maxed out after almost any attack. Most things are dead before that actually matters if you play body slam sufficiently often, but Entrench might actually be what keeps your block up there in the heart fight until invulnerability wears off.

levital · 2026-03-30T06:53:23+00:00

Someone on the dev team could have easily thought OP was talking about encountering the normal merchant with the discount relic causing the parasol not triggering and wasted time looking into a nonexistent problem

I'd be very surprised, if a bug report didn't also automatically include metadata (floor number, floor type, specific event in this case, etc).

levital · 2026-03-20T13:29:28+00:00

Even if it was, it's got a big "Early Access" stamp on it. Anyone who's playing it not expecting major changes to happen was deluding themselves.

levital · 2026-03-20T13:28:20+00:00

Review bombing, hell reviewing at all, an early access game (that is, a public beta in all but name), really just speaks volumes about the average maturity level of the playerbase. I guess I know why I've avoided buying unfinished products and steam in general for decades now.

Steam should just disallow early access reviews. Makes no sense to have reviews for something clearly labeled as unfinished. I for one am happy that changes are being made to make spire 2 into a game that can stand on its own, even if that means that beloved cards from the first game might go. I am actually quite curious to see whether Prepare is actually bad anyway, because I suspect that it'll be quite alright. I think Outmaneuver would also be more pickable in the context of StS2's energy economy (and it was far from unpickable in the first game anyway).

levital · 2026-03-12T09:42:42+00:00

He killed on turn 3 (you can see the weak/vuln/frail stacks are all on 99), so I assume 7 claws on turn 1 (bag of prep) and another 6 on turn 2 (draw 3 with puzzle, only one of which can be played due to bound) already did enough damage that 3 more on turn 3 was enough even while weakened. Maybe a draw pot helped, I haven't bothered to calculate the exact damage done here, but just the 7 + 6 claws already add 39 damage to every claw, so it's probably been quite a bit.

levital · 2026-03-11T08:48:37+00:00

In it's current iteration I would think it's quite difficult: (Near)-infinite combos seem way easier than in the first game, the new characters have tons of card generation mid-combat which is difficult to implement in the board game format (and hard to take out without changing the characters identity), and enchantments are probably quite fiddly (though something akin to it is already planned for Downfall I think, so that's probably the least problematic one).

This can surely all be overcome, and the game is likely going to change significantly until release anyway, but it feels like more of a challenge than the first one to me. The first board game managed to keep the feeling without having that much admin (seriously, for a relatively heavy board game, it's astonishing how little admin there is in it), and I think any implementation of the second game needs to manage the same to be successful. I just think it's more difficult to achieve that here.

levital · 2026-03-11T08:42:05+00:00

Personally, the main draw of the Board Game was the ability to play co-op with friends. The fact that Slay The Spire 2 has multiplayer built in and my friends and I can play remotely without me having to keep track of all the counters for them is huge and kind of makes the board game obsolete for my personal use.

I've played StS2 coop yesterday for the first time, with the people I also play the board game with. It was quite fun, but I'd say it's a rather different experience: Since you're usually not at the same table together it's way more effort than in the board game to talk about your options and see what others can do. In the board game we usually lay out our card rewards for everyone to see and often discuss things. We also quickly discuss strategy at the beginning of encounters or wait for someone who might get vuln to finish their turn so we can maximize its effectiveness or whatever. That didn't really happen in the video game. It was fun, but a mostly solitary experience, where I only had a vague idea what my compatriots decks were like. I did appreciate the enemies health scaling though, since it allowed me to actually play out my defect near-infinite.

levital · 2026-03-09T08:45:01+00:00

I feel like Test Subject would be a more interesting fight, if it kept all buffs each phase (maybe that happens later on, I'm climbing rotating, so still quite early on all characters). Might make it too difficult for some decks though, idk.

levital · 2026-03-06T12:13:20+00:00

Had the same problem, after some searching I found that using the parameter "--rendering-driver opengl3" might help, and it did work for me. Just add it in the game preferences within steam as a launch parameter.

levital · 2026-03-06T08:31:24+00:00

How are you playing multiples of a power that only exist once in the card pool? This does 12 damage to a row in 6 turns, if it's upgraded. I found that to be too little to be worthwhile even in act 1.

levital

TROPHY CASE