杀死尖塔2

New Slay the Spire 2 patch notes have just hit the roguelike deckbuilder's beta branch, with key Ancient relics and class cards nerfed.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Slay the Spire 2 makes painful but necessary nerfs, and some scary buffs, in a big new balance overhaul

Another beta patch is here, Slayers! This one brings a host of balance changes, bug fixes, and new Epoch art. We've also begun to translate the game into Traditional Chinese (no timeline just yet on official support for other languages, but we'll let people know when we are looking for additional translators.) Perhaps most notably, two new Neow relics have been introduced, one of which grants a powerful, exclusive potion and the other a brand new quest card (with some cute beta art!)

CONTENT & BALANCE:

Ancients:

• Added new Neow relic, Dowsing Rod - "Upon pickup, add 1 Dowsing to your Deck."

• Dowsing - Quest - 0 cost - "After entering 5 more ? rooms, transform this into Abundance."

• Abundance - Ancient - Skill - Cost 1 - "Choose 1 of 3 (Upgraded) Powers to add into your Hand. It is free to play this turn. Exhaust."

• Added new Neow relic, Neow's Sacrifice - "Upon pickup, procure 1 Ambergris and add 1 Guilty to your Deck."

• Ambergris potion - "Heal for 50% of your max HP. Take an extra turn after this one."

• Reworked Nonupeipe's Diamond Diadem relic: "Whenever you play 2 or fewer cards in a turn, take half damage from enemies." -> "Start combat with 20 Block. Block is not removed at the start of your next turn."

• Moved Orobos' Sand Castle relic moved from Pool 1 -> Pool 2 (second option instead of first option)

• Changed up Darv blessing pools for more variety (will see Energy relics more often)

• Nerfed Tanx's Meat Cleaver relic: HP gain decreased from 9 -> 5

• Buffed Tezcatara's Toybox relic: relics gained increased from 4 -> 5

• Buffed Vakuu's Fiddle relic: card draw increased from 2 -> 3

• Changed Vakuu's Sere Talon and Distinguished Cape relics: swapped downsides

Enemies:

• Nerfed Aeonglass: Ebb move damage decreased from 26(32) -> 22(26) to lower its front-loaded damage

• Buffed Torchhead Amalgam: now starts with a new Strong Tackle move on turn 1 to increase front-loaded damage from 18(22) -> 26(32)

Events:

• Nerfed History Course relic: now only repeats Attacks, does not affect Skills

Ironclad:

• Buffed Demon Form card: Strength gain increased from 2(3) -> 3(4)

• Buffed Expect a Fight card: no longer says "You cannot gain additional this turn."

• Buffed Primal Force card: Giant Rock token damage increased from 16(20) -> 20(24)

• Changed Taunt card:

• Block gain decreased from 7(8) -> 6(7)

• Rarity decreased from Uncommon -> Common

• Changed Bloodletting card: rarity increased from Common -> Uncommon

• Changed Cruelty card: rarity decreased from Rare -> Uncommon

• Changed Dominate card: rarity increased from Uncommon -> Rare

Silent:

• Reworked Mirage card: Uncommon - Skill - 1(0) - "Gain Block equal to Poison on ALL enemies. Exhaust." -> Uncommon - Skill - 0 - "Next turn, gain 1(2) Energy."

• Reworked Well-Laid Plans card:

• Uncommon - Power - Cost 1 - "At the end of your turn, Retain up to 1(2) card(s)." -> Rare - Power - Cost 1(0) - "At the end of your turn, you no longer discard your Hand."

• Now also available in multiplayer, was previously singleplayer-only

• Reworked Expertise card: "Draw cards until you have 6(7) in your hand." -> "Draw 2(3) cards. They gain Retain this turn."

• Buffed: Outbreak card: damage increased from 3(4) -> 4(5)

• Changed Accelerant card: rarity decreased from Rare -> Uncommon

Regent:

• Reworked Pillar of Creation card: "Whenever you create a card, gain 3 Block." -> "The first time you create a card each turn, gain 5(7) Block."

• Nerfed Collision Course card: damage decreased from 11(15) -> 10(14)

Necrobinder:

• Reworked Eidolon card: "Exhaust your Hand. If 9 cards were Exhausted this way, gain 1 Intangible." -> "Play ALL Ethereal cards in your Exhaust Pile. Exhaust."

Defect:

• Buffed Hyperbeam card: damage increased from 28(36) -> 30(38)

• Buffed Sunder card: damage increased from 24(32) -> 26(34)

• Changed Trash to Treasure card: upgrade changed from gains Innate -> lowers cost by 1

Multiplayer:

• Added new Regent card, Tutor: Rare - Skill - 1(0) - "Another player chooses a card in their Draw Pile to add into their Hand."

• Nerfed Midnight card: damage decreased from 99(120) -> 60(72)

• Nerfed The Ball card: scaling decreased from +15(25) -> +10(15)

• Nerfed Blade Symphony card:

• Cost increased from 1 -> 2(1)

• Upgrade no longer increases Shiv count

USER EXPERIENCE & INTERFACE:

General:

• Seeds are now 12 characters long and internal seed is larger

• Removed faint white outline from game cursor

Multiplayer:

• You can now play nearly any potion on another player

• Map ink circles are now the same for all players

ART:

General:

• Added Epoch art for:

• Annihilation

• To Kill

• Futility

Ancients:

• Added assets for Dowsing Rod and Neow's Sacrifice relics

• Added asset for Ambergris potion

• Added beta portrait art for Dowsing and Abundance cards

Enemies:

• Swapped Aeonglass double and heavy attack animations and improved the double attack VFX

Multiplayer:

• Added portrait art for the following cards:

• The Ball

• Plot

• Created "Failed to join" text VFX

WRITING:

Localization:

• Added Traditional Chinese (zht) as a selectable language with English fallback

• Added Traditional Chinese fonts (Source Han Serif TC, Noto Sans Mono CJK TC)

• Updated translations for various languages

• Fixed translation errors for French, Italian, Russian, and Thai

• Removed stale translations for redesigned Well-Laid Plans, Fuel, Outbreak, Sere Talon, Cacophony

BUG FIXES:

General:

• VSync setting in Graphics options now shows the correct On/Off state after restarting

• "Power wears off" notification no longer blocks mouse input

• Placeholder Orb numbers no longer briefly show up at the start of combat

• Correctly snapped scrolling menus at low FPS

Ancients:

• Fixed Tanx's Whistle card preview and tooltip snapping to the top-left corner when hovered

Enemies:

• Fixed awkward delay when Osty and Kaiser Krab would spawn at start of combat

• Fixed Fabricator animations that weren't playing right

• Fixed Fat Gremlin sometimes spawning without a bag of money when it should

Silent:

• Expose card now properly triggers Hand Drill relic

Necrobinder:

• Soulbound card now shuffles souls into Draw Pile instead of putting them on the bottom

Multiplayer:

• One for All card no longer previews damage up on X-cost cards

• Fixed Unmovable card causing other players to receive double Block from Demonic Shield card when it was not the first Block card played

• Imitation Learning card now clones cards before they are played instead of after, allowing enchantments like Swift to apply to the cloning player

• Underworld card no longer causes Doom to be applied to players when enemies deal attack damage

• Fixed an issue where, if a player played The Ball card while another played had History Course relic, History Course could incorrectly end up playing a copy of The Ball next turn

• Fixed divergence that would sometimes occur when ending combat with The Ball card

• Hibernate card no longer gives block to dead players

• Hibernate card now correctly displays stacks in its power icon

• If Huddle Up triggers a choice for another player, the playing player is no longer blocked from playing cards

• The Ball now triggers the playing player's relics, not the receiving player's

• Fixed card effects breaking when a player dies while their own card is still resolving (e.g. to Thorns)

• Fixed divergence that would occur if one player took a long time to enter combat

• Player icons are rendered above the ink circle on the map

• Resolved issue where, if Epochs were deprecated, that player could no longer join multiplayer games

MODDING:

• Merged SavedPropertySerializationCache into ModelIdSerializationCache. SavedProperties are now included in its hash.

• Models from non-gameplay-affecting mods are now properly excluded in the hash

Those of you that have been playing Slay the Spire 2 in its current early access form will have seen that some of the placeholder art looks, well, arguably bad. I am not necessarily making this argument! But it could be made. As it turns out, according to Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano, this is very much the point, and has more purpose behind it than just being easier to do.

Read more

A new Slay the Spire 2 patch has just hit the beta branch, and this is a big one. In fact, you might want to pay attention even if you aren't one to toy around with the testing side of the roguelike deckbuilder, because there's a whole heap of additional cards that are designed to enhance co-op play, and some of them sound particularly strong. There are also a bunch of fresh balance changes in the works, a shiny visual overhaul for the latest boss Aeonglass, and some modding fixes that are planned "to come to the main branch soon." Let's take a look at exactly what's in store.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Slay the Spire 2 just got 15 new cards out of nowhere, including some big co-op heavy hitters

For all you beta testers who have been chomping at the bit for a new patch to chew on... here it is! Today's beta patch brings a ton of fixes, balance changes, some UX additions, a BIG batch of new multiplayer cards, and new art additions--including some animations for the latest boss, Aeonglass!

We've also got some big updates in the modding realm to call out...

Modding Updates

Thank you to our incredible community of modders (and mod players) for all of your feedback since we released Steam Workshop support! We've got quite a few changes that will be relevant to modders at the bottom of the notes, but first we wanted to specifically call out some major fixes and changes that affect players.

Previously, when launching the game with mods enabled for the first time, it appeared as though your progress was wiped. That is because unmodded saves are saved separately from your modded ones as a protective measure, and we defaulted to having the modded saves start entirely from scratch. Now, your unmodded saves are automatically copied over to the modded saves and a popup appears to explain the process to new mod users. They are still saved separately, though, which means any progress you make when playing with mods enabled will not be reflected after switching to unmodded and vice versa.

Additionally, players have been frequently encountering version conflict errors when doing modded multiplayer runs. We're introducing some fixes which should reduce those instances and more detailed error popups when they do occur. Note that we still recommend having the same exact mods enabled as your teammates, particularly if they actually affect gameplay and are not merely cosmetic.

We plan for these changes to come to the main branch soon, so non-beta-testers can keep an eye out for that! For more info on modding and playing with mods, check the patch notes from Major Update 2. Now it's time for the rest of today's patch notes...

CONTENT & BALANCE:

General:

• End-of-turn Orb passives now trigger before Doom

• This means that, if a player would die to self-Doom (ex. from Neurosurge card) but also has an Orb with an end-of-turn passive that would kill the last remaining enemy (ex. Lightning Orb while the enemy is at 3 HP), they will now win the combat instead of losing it after ending their turn

Enemies:

• Buffed Torch Head Amalgam: increased damage at Ascension 9

• Weak Tackle damage increased from 14(15) → 14(16)

• Tackle damage increased from 18(19) → 18(22)

Potions & Relics:

• Changed Regen Potion: its healing effect now triggers before Doom, preventing the player from dying to self-Doom in certain situations

Ironclad:

• Nerfed Colossus card: Block gain increased from 5(8) → 4(7)

• Nerfed Crimson Mantle card: Block gain decreased from 8(10) → 7(10)

• Buffed Howl From Beyond card: Damage increased from 16(21) → 18(24)

• Buffed Setup Strike: Strength gain increased from 2(3) → 3(4)

Silent:

• Reworked Outbreak card: "Every 3 times you apply Poison, deal 15 damage to ALL enemies." → "Whenever you apply Poison, deal 3(4) damage to ALL enemies."

• Buffed Anticipate card: Dexterity increased from 2(3) → 2(4)

• Buffed Flick-Flack card: damage increased from 6(8) → 7(9)

• Nerfed Tracking card: "Weak enemies take double damage from Attacks." → "Weak enemies take 50% more damage from Attacks."

Regent:

• Buffed Devastate card: damage increased from 30(40) → 35(45)

• Buffed Divine Destiny relic: Star gain increased from 6 → 7

• Nerfed GUARDS!!! card's Minion Sacrifice token: Block gain decreased from 8(11) → 7(10)

• Buffed Resonance card: Star cost decreased from 3 → 2

Necrobinder:

• Buffed Haunt card: HP loss increased from 6(8) → 7(9)

• Buffed Reave card: damage increased from 9(11) → 10(13)

• Buffed Soulstorm card: additional damage increased from 2(3) → 4(6)

Defect:

• Nerfed Compact card's Fuel token:

• No longer draws cards

• Upgrade changed from increasing card draw → granting 1 additional energy

• Buffed Momentum Strike card: damage from 10(13) → 11(15)

• Changed Scrape card: no longer discards cards whose energy costs are temporarily set to 0 by global temporary effects (ex. Pounce card's "The next Skill you play is costs 0 Energy" effect)

• Changed Shatter card: now Exhausts

Multiplayer:

• Added new multiplayer Ironclad cards:

• Midnight: Rare - Attack - Cost 12 - "Deal 99(120) damage. Costs 1 less for each card Exhausted this combat by ANYONE."

• Blaze: Uncommon Skill - Cost 2 - "Give another player 5(7) Strength."

• Outrage: Uncommon - Attack - Cost 0 - "Deal 9(13) damage. Add a copy of this card into EVERYONE'S Discard Pile."

• Buffed and slightly reworked Tank card: "Take double damage from enemies. Allies take half damage from enemies." → "Take 50% additional damage from enemies. Allies take 50% less damage from enemies."

• Added new multiplayer Silent cards:

• Blade Symphony: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 1 - "Add 2(3) Shivs to ALL players Hands."

• Concoct: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 0 - "Another player's Attacks apply 3(4) Poison this turn."

• Fade: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 0 - "Retain. Another player gains 6(9) Dexterity this turn."

• Changed Flanking card: rarity increased from Uncommon → Rare

• Added new multiplayer Regent card:

• Plot: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 1 - "Next turn, ALL players draw 2(3) cards."

• Constellation: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 0 - "Another player draws 1 card, gains , and gains 9(12) Block."

• Added new multiplayer Necrobinder card:

• Underworld: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 2 - "Whenever other players deal attack damage this turn, apply that much Doom. Exhaust. (Lose Exhaust)"

• Soulbound: Uncommon - Power - Cost 1 - "(Innate.) Choose an ally. Whenever you create a Soul, add a Soul to their Draw Pile."

• Cacophony: Rare - Power - Cost 2 - "Every 33 cards drawn by ALL players, deal 66(99) damage to a random enemy."

• Changed Legion of Bone card: no longer Exhausts

• Added new multiplayer Defect cards:

• Hibernate: Uncommon - Skill - Cost 2 - "Channel 2(3) Frost. This turn, your Frost grants ALL allies Block."

• One For All: Rare - Power - Cost 1 - "EVERYONE'S 0 energy Attacks deal 3(4) additional damage."

• Imitation Learning: Rare - Skill - Cost 1 - "Choose another player. The next 2(3) times they play a Power, you play a copy of it. Exhaust."

• Changed Ignition card: rarity decreased from Rare → Uncommon

• Added new multiplayer Colorless card:

• The Ball: Uncommon - Attack - Cost 1 - "Deal 10 damage. Increase this card's damage by 15(25) this combat and give it to a random ally."

• Nerfed enemy block scaling in 2-player multiplayer

• Nerfed Beacon of Hope card: cost increased from 1 → 2

USER INTERFACE & EXPERIENCE:

General:

• Added a Randomize button to the Custom Run screen which randomly selects 2 good modifiers and 1 bad one, and randomizes the selected character

• The run timer is now paused while the Pause Menu is open during a single player match

• Added a selection reticle for potion holders

• Created a stats section in the Bestiary

• Added event combat encounters to the Bestiary

• Hid moves with duplicate animations for some monsters in the Bestiary

• Slightly adjusted selection arrow in Bestiary monster list

• Players can now see which rooms were affected by Fur Coat relic in the Run History

• Relics skipped in the Merchant?? event are now recorded in the Run History

• Room Full of Cheese event now shows the cards that were skipped in the Run History

• All controller input deadzones have been set to 0.5, meaning joysticks should feel less sensitive and trigger buttons must be pressed in slightly more before the input is received now

Regent:

• Pale Blue Dot power now counts down the number of cards that need to be played before it procs next to its icon

Multiplayer:

• Version mismatch error now contains more information

ART:

• Added portrait art for Wither status card

• Added Aeonglass animations

• Updated Gremlin Merc animations

• If you kill Gremlin Merc before it steals any of your gold, Fat Gremlin now spawns without holding a bag of gold

• Added Epoch art for:

• Ablaze

• Arise

• Darv

• Preon

• Slumber

• Spireborn

• The Architect

• The Pact

• Added Orb passive activation VFX

• Added card removal VFX

• Added new card Exhaust VFX

WRITING:

• Big Game Hunter modifier's hovertip now specifies that it makes elites drop rare card rewards instead of just "better rewards"

• Helix Drill card's wording has been updated to be clearer that it only counts energy spent on other cards

• Clarified that Silken Tress relic applies only to the player who chose it in multiplayer

• Updated translations for various languages

BUG FIXES:

General:

• Details are now included in the Steam initialization error popup

• Saving is now retried when antivirus or cloud sync briefly blocks the save file

• Run timer no longer starts a run hidden if you have "always show run timer" toggled on

• Fixed crash when returning to the main menu while a card-selection prompt is open

• Fixed broken controller navigation to the "mod settings" button in the main menu

• Fixed controller navigation breaking if you opened up the deck view while holding a non-targeted card

• Fixed combat music sometimes continuing on the map and other non-combat screens

• Fixed Epoch paginator arrows becoming unclickable

• Fixed softlock when opening the Bestiary in the treasure room from a fresh save/reload

• Fixed Run History death quote getting cut off if it was too long

• Run History now shows the boss icon for old runs that fought The Doormaker

• Fixed stats screen showing that you have discovered more monsters than there exists in game

• Fixed the Daily Run leaderboard failing to load for some dates

• Fixed many instances of weird RNG behavior (shoutout again to tckmn!)

• Fixed being able to controller navigate to Byrdpip

Ancients:

• Fixed Elite music playing in Neow room if you died to an Elite your previous run

• Tezcatara's Toy Box relic no longer flashes once it is used up

Enemies:

• It is no longer possible to get two encounters in a row that contain Slime monsters

• It is no longer possible to get two encounters in a row that contain Snapping Jaxfruit monster

• If an attack enchanted with Replay kills the last enemy on its first play, the subsequent plays are now skipped

• This fixes an issue where, if a card with Replay is enchanted with Corrupted, the player would lose extra HP even after the first play killed the last enemy

• Fixed a visual issue where, if the player uses Thorns to kill a monster that spawns more monsters on death (i.e. Axebot, Phrog Parasite), the dead monster's attack wouldn't visually occur until after the new monsters had spawned

• Fixed Cubex Construct's intents overlapping with its body if it takes damage while transitioning to its charging animation

• Fixed Inklet's head getting cut off during Doom animation

• Fixed Slithering Strangler playing its hurt animation for its Thwack move

• Fixed Wrigglers spawning offscreen in 4:3 aspect ratios

• Fixed Torch Head Amalgam's laser attack VFX not reaching the player when it was shrunk

• Fixed impact SFX playing for Kin Priest Soul Beam move in the Bestiary

• Kaiser Crab no longer covers the monster title in the Bestiary

• Repeatedly clicking Knowledge Demon's Curse of Knowledge move in the Bestiary no longer causes its animation to stop playing

• Added missing Tunneler animations to the Bestiary

• Tunneler animations can now be played regardless of Burrowed state in the Bestiary

Potions & Relics:

• Fixed an issue where Bone Tea relic could fail to upgrade your hand if you also have Toolbox relic

• Fixed an issue where, if a player auto-plays their entire start-of-turn hand draw (via an effect like Hellraiser), Unceasing Top relic may not trigger despite their hand being empty

• Fixed Planisphere relic proccing twice in the Battleworn Dummy event

• Fixed Pollinous Core relic counting up past 4 if you end combat after your turn but before you draw cards

• Lasting Candy no longer procs if the reward set has no card rewards

• Unsettling Lamp relic no longer get used up if the target's Artifact blocks the debuff

• White Beast Statue relic no longer decreases your normal potion odds when it guarantees getting potion rewards to prevent you never rolling potions again if it gets removed mid-run

• Fixed several ways you could obtain duplicate relics on the first run

• Fixed Flex Potion description appearing twice on the character when applied

• Fixed a softlock that could occur when throwing multiple Foul Potions in quick succession

Events:

• Fixed an issue where Vigor was only applying to the first of Mad Science card's 3 hits when it was created with the Violence option

• Fixed death quotes for dying to Punch Off and Mysterious Knight encounters

Colorless Cards:

• Fixed Entropy card being able to transform curses into Ascender's Bane

Ironclad:

• Hellraiser card no longer infinitely plays Shining Strike card when it's enchanted with Swift

Silent:

• Nightmare card can no longer be generated during combat

Regent:

• Fixed Minion Strike card becoming stuck on screen if played too quickly

• Fixed History Course copy of Shining Strike card going back into your Draw Pile

• Fixed Supermassive card not scaling from cards generated by Mad Science card

Necrobinder:

• Fixed a crash that could happen when an enemy dies to Doom

• Transfigure card can no longer be generated during combat

• Fixed Enfeebling Touch + Misery combo causing enemies with Artifact to gain Strength next turn

• Forbidden Grimoire card's card removal reward will now show up after Battleworn Dummy fight if you are successful

Defect:

• Disabled controller navigation to Orbs while in another card selection screen

• Fixed the Subroutine power hovertip typo if you have more than 4 Subroutines

• Feral card no longer puts History Course copy of Helix Drill card back into your hand

• Fixed Gold Plated Cables relic flashing if the Orb's passive is not firing

• Gold Plated Cables relic now procs if Emotion Chip relic triggers Orbs at the start of your turn

Multiplayer:

• Fixed even more instances of Daily runs diverging based on player net ID

• Fixed divergence caused by discarding a potion while moving to a new map point

• Fixed bug where you could set yourself ready for the next act two acts in advance

• Fixed state divergence caused by taking a reward as you are transitioning to another map point

• Fixed divergence caused by host changing the Ascension as the game is starting

• Fixed divergence when player has Music Box relic and combat ends while making a choice

• Fixed divergence when playing cards very fast while killing yourself

• Fixed Ghost Seed relic adding Ethereal to Strikes and Defends generated by other players during combat

• If you open a screen during a treasure room relic fight, the hands now behave correctly

• Fixed mouse remaining hidden forever if the game ended while in potion targeting

• Event RNG seeds are now consistent across all multiplayer Daily Runs

• Jungle Maze Adventure event no longer appears if a player doesn't have enough HP for the solo option

PERFORMANCE:

• Compressed various combat background assets

MODDING:

• Unmodded saves are now copied to the modded save directory if you are launching modded for the first time

• Added controller support for Modding menu

• Fixed Steam mods causing ReflectionHelper.ModTypes to return nothing

• SavedProperty IDs from mods are now properly sorted for multiplayer

• Content from mods with affectsGameplay set to false are now sorted to end of ID maps

• Mods can now register multiple assemblies

• SerializableSave.NumReloads is now consistent across peers

• Steam mod now takes precedence over local if the version is greater

• Batched the Steam Workshop call for checking branch support, meaning mods should load faster

• Began publishing STS2.dll XML documentation

• Fixed issues in multiplayer where players with the same mods would get "version mismatch" (thanks to OLC of RitsuLib for helping out with this!)

• Build the serialization cache from ModelDb instead of via reflection

• Sort content by ModelId instead of typename

• Use more tiebreakers when sorting

• Sort epoch IDs in ModelIdSerializationCache

• Exclude non-gameplay-affecting models from the ModelIdSerializationCache hash

• The correct mod lists are now logged in the non-gameplay mod mismatch warning

Slay the Spire 2 is full of strange and sinister creatures, and I'm always curious where the ideas for them originated. Mega Crit Co-Founder Casey Yano has provided us with some answers in a new edition of the developer's 'Neowsletter' blog, and he claims its most notoriously balanced threat actually came about after spending too much time with Valve's Deadlock. My personal favorite reveal, however, is the origins of elegant fairy Ancient Nonupeipe, who has a rather less glamorous claim to fame.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Slay the Spire 2's creator reveals the inspiration for its most controversial foe: "I was playing too much Deadlock."

Hey Slayers, it's time for the June Neowsletter! In this issue we're covering a couple of big roadmap items we've checked off our list as of yesterday's main branch patch and answering some of your recent questions. Let's dive in...

Dev Update

The first feature we want to highlight is the Bestiary.

The Bestiary is a new section that organizes info related to enemies you've encountered throughout your journeys in the Spire. For faithful readers of the Neowsletter pre-launch, you could even see it as an evolution of our Spire Spotting segment (though these discoveries are achieved through regular gameplay rather than your artistic hypotheses, of course.)

You can find the Bestiary right here in the Compendium, featuring enemies' moves and animations, for now. Other things like stats, flavor text, and various QOL changes will be added in the future.

Those of you who have been playing on the beta branch have already seen the Bestiary, but this next change is new for all players...

Ed here, one of the engineers at Mega Crit, here to talk a bit about StS2's Steam Workshop support.

As we mentioned in the most recent patch notes, we built STS2 with modding in mind, and the game has had an integrated mod loader from day 1. However, Steam Workshop support--which makes it much easier to share, discover, and download mods--has been sitting in our roadmap for a few months now. We know you've been waiting a while for it, but it's been awesome seeing the outpouring of creativity from the community in the meantime all the same!

We purposefully haven't been advertising mod support, as we knew it still needed some work. The only way to install mods up until now was to download them from somewhere and place them in your mods directory.

However, as of the last patch, we've deemed mod support mature enough to enable the Workshop! This is now the official way to browse and install mods, right in the Steam client. We can't wait to see what else you all create going forward!

If you're already a modder, upload your mods using the tool here.

If you're interested in getting started with modding, see the community documentation.

And if you're interested in playing some mods, check out the Steam Workshop!

If you have feedback on the modding framework, post in the #sts2-modding channel in the Discord, or submit it via F2/the settings in-game.

Q&A with C&A

Coop asks: Hello! I know Casey and/or Anthony are fans of the Worm web serial, and have several references to it across both games (love Doormaker as a reference) and I was thinking about how I'm surprised that there are no references in the bug-themed area (act 2 Hive), then realized that there is one boss Kaiser Crab. Is this an intentional reference or just a coincidence?
Casey: Doormaker isn't a Worm reference, I was playing too much Deadlock. Kaiser Crab is named this way because I'm tired of things being emperor X and king Y. We have all these wacky words for kings, sultans, etc and it's always the bland western one. The world feels small when we use the most accessible titles.

Jar of Gibbons asks: Heyo, so I think the Ancients are a fantastic addition and tons of fun. Shout-out to community manager Demi Montes who nobody has realized is credited as the one who voices one of my favorite Ancients aesthetically and mechanically, Nonupeipe! Main question: How do you guys pronounce it? And if you each have your own opinions, how does Demi? I say "no-nu-PEY-uh-pee" /noʊ.nuˈpɛɪ.ə.pi/, like Calliope from Greek mythology, because she emanates divine splendor and mythology… but what about you guys?
Casey: I tend to say it as four syllables: no nu pay peh or sometimes in the original: no no peh peh. As her name is an easter egg reference to the NOPE placeholder icon we use for content. When two of these icons line up next to each other (for instance, the relics in the top bar), it reads NONOPEPE.
Demi: *Nonupeipe noises*

Combak asks: In multiplayer lobbies with the same character, it can be a bit difficult to remember who drew what, so will there ever be an option for players to choose their own colors for map drawing, regardless of character, or have copies of the same character use darker/lighter shades from each other?
Casey: Not sure for drawing, but we are messing with a bit of color change stuff for multiplayer.

Josie Jams asks: Is the ceremonial beast a valheim reference?
Casey: Nope, the original was based on the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke. The initial concept drawing was a bit solemn and grotesque. Marlowe updated the creature to be more regal and spirity! But I can see a resemblance, I'm a big fan of Valheim actually! I believe it was the first boss design for Slay the Spire 2 (designed in 2021).

Merch Madness

The first Slay the Spire 2 drop from Artovision is here! Showcase your love for StS2 right on your wall with this gorgeous shadowbox of the game's key art (which lends itself really well to the 3D effect!) Order yours now here!

Map Masterpieces

And now it's time to check out what new creations players have been making while waiting for their teammates to hurry up and pick a route already...

This illustration of the Regent and the Merchant by ちゃと!

This illustration of the Defect by Zaply!

And another drawing of the Defect with a slightly different vibe by Shmangos!

Connections Section

If the heat out there is getting to you, cool off with some good old fashioned Slay the Spire 2 Connections!

Community Corner

Thank you to moon raccoon for this month's lovely cover art! Next month's theme is: Slay the Summer 2! Whether it's Neow enjoying a day at the beach (unlike most whales), the Spire's climbers taking a dip, or whatever beach episode activities you can think of, we'd love to see your submissions! If you'd like to submit your art for consideration, reminder that it must be submitted to us via fanmail@megacrit.com or in our Discord's fanart channel, have dimensions of 800x450px, feature no text, and leave room for a title! Please make your submission by Friday, July 10th!

Now for some monthly highlights:

This very cool art of the Test Subject from an 11 y/o fan, Elias!

This incredibly accurate Regent cosplay by Radio!

This lovely art of all of the Spire's (current) climbers by Timo!

Thus concludes the June Neowsletter; see you all again next month!

Slay the Spire 2 has received a major update that adds Steam Workshop support for mods alongside a proper monster bestiary for the Compendium. It also introduces a new boss, Aeonglass, in place of the much-berated Doormaker. These are pretty juicy changes, and yet, the most intriguing part of the patch is a deceptively dry question of disobedient mathematics.
Read more

The time has come. A new Slay the Spire 2 update is now live on the main branch, meaning months of changes that have been in public testing over on the beta build are now here for everyone. Among them are the introduction of the Aeonglass boss fight, the Bestiary, and a whole heap of balance changes, but that's just the start. Mega Crit has also managed to resolve its most pressing problem since launch with a fix for the 'correlated RNG' that was discovered this week, and opened up mod potential dramatically with full Steam Workshop support. Let's get into it.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: A huge Slay the Spire 2 update makes life harder but fairer, and adds Steam mod support

Hey Slayers, our second major main branch update is here with 4 patches in 1 (not including hotfixes)! While we'll be covering a lot of things that beta players will already be used to, there are also a few big changes that will be totally new for everyone. One of those has been highly requested by the community in the past few days and another has been very highly requested by the community in the past few months, so let's get into it!

RNG Rework

Ed here, one of the Mega Crit engineers. It turns out that everyone complaining about receiving Debt too often from Neow's Bones was right! We did, in fact, have some unusual RNG problems.

Huge shoutout to tckmn for doing the research - their eight-hour descent into madness was an entertaining watch, and we wouldn't have caught the issue without it. If you're interested in the nitty-gritty, read tckmn's full writeup. Here is a short version.

Most games, including STS2, use pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs). A PRNG is fed a seed value, and given the same seed value, a PRNG will always generate the same sequence of random numbers.

Each run has one primary “run seed”, a sequence of twelve numbers and letters. However, a run actually contains multiple PRNGs that individually influence your deck draw, your combat rewards, your event choices, and the rest of the random elements in the run. Each one uses a seed derived from the run seed.

Since we fed different seeds to each PRNG, we expected their results to be completely unrelated. But we were wrong, and it turns out that our strategy allowed players to predict outcomes given knowledge of unrelated parts of the game.

Let’s visualize one example: the correlation between your first act and the curse you receive from Neow’s Bones. In both cases, we generate a decimal between 0 and 1, but from different PRNGs.

- For your first act, if the decimal generated is less than 0.5, you get Overgrowth; otherwise, you get Underdocks.
- For Neow's Bones’ curse, we use the decimal to pick from a list of ten curses. Between 0 and 0.1 you get Clumsy, between 0.1 and 0.2 you get Debt, and so on.

Here is a scatterplot of the raw numbers generated given 10000 random run seeds on v0.103.3:

There is clear correlation in this result. For example, if our act roll is >0.5 (we’re in the Underdocks), then it’s highly likely that our Neow’s Bones curse roll will be 4(6)

Ironclad:

• Reworked Conflagration card: now deals 2 damage to ALL enemies 4(5) times (was: 8(9) AOE damage plus 2(3) per other Attack played this turn)

• Reworked Drum of Battle card: now a 1-cost Uncommon Skill that draws 2 cards and grants 2(3) Energy when Exhausted (the Energy gain respects Replay and card-duplication effects like Duplicator potion)

• Buffed Howl From Beyond card: trigger moved from start of turn -> end of turn

• Buffed Entrench card: can now gain extra Block from enchantments like Nimble

• Buffed Unrelenting card: damage increased from 12(18) -> 14(20)

Silent:

• Reworked and renamed Follow Through card -> Scare (rarity increased from Common -> Uncommon)

• Changed Nightmare card: if you select a card with an Affliction on it, that Affliction is now removed from the copies added to your hand the following turn

• Changed Predator card: rarity decreased from Uncommon -> Common

• Buffed Untouchable card: upgraded Block gain increased from +2 -> +3

• Buffed Pounce card: damage increased from 12(18) -> 14(20)

• Nerfed Blade of Ink card: Inky enchantment damage decreased from +2 -> +1

Regent:

• Reworked Parry card: instead of granting Block when you play Sovereign Blade, Sovereign Blade now gains 10(14) Block directly, so the Block shows on the Blade and is affected by powers like Dexterity and Frail

• Slightly reworked Sword Sage card: Sovereign Blade now gains Replay 1 (was: hits an additional time), which gives it synergy with Parry

• Changed Astral Pulse card: changed damage from 14(18) -> 6(8)x2

• Changed Tyranny card: now triggers before Bombardment card (so if Tyranny Exhausts Bombardment, Bombardment is played immediately after)

• Changed Sealed Throne card: upgrade changed from Innate -> lowering Energy cost by 1

• Buffed Crescent Spear card: base damage increased from 6 -> 8

• Buffed Royalties card: Gold gain increased from 30(35) -> 30(40)

• Buffed Furnace card: Forge increased from 4(6) -> 5(7)

• Buffed Monarch's Gaze card: Energy cost decreased from 3(2) -> 2(1)

• Nerfed Reflect card: Block gain decreased from 17(21) -> 15(20)

• Nerfed Bulwark card: Block decreased from 13(16) -> 12(15)

• Nerfed Patter card: Block gain decreased from 9(11) -> 8(10)

• Nerfed Minion Sacrifice card: Block decreased from 9(12) -> 8(11)

Necrobinder:

• Buffed Death March card: additional damage increased from 3(4) -> 4(6)

• Buffed Sic 'Em card: Summon increased from 2(3) -> 3(4)

• Buffed The Scythe card: damage increased from 3(4) -> 4(5)

• Nerfed Debilitate card: debuff decreased from 3(4) turns -> 2(3) turns

Defect:

• Changed Fusion card: Energy cost decreased from 2(1) -> 1; now Exhausts, and loses Exhaust on upgrade

• Changed Shatter card: now Evokes all of your Orbs twice; damage decreased from 11(15) -> 7(11)

• Changed Tesla Coil+ card: damage decreased from 6 -> 4, but Lightning triggers increased from once -> twice

• Buffed Hyperbeam card: damage increased from 26(34) -> 28(36)

• Buffed Synthesis card: damage increased from 12(18) -> 14(20)

• Buffed Uproar card: damage increased from 5(7) -> 6(8)

• Buffed Infused Core relic: now also grants "Lightning Orbs deal 1 additional damage"

Multiplayer:

• Nerfed multiplayer scaling for enemy Artifact, Slippery, and Skittish powers

• Stratagem card is no longer banned from the colorless card pool in multiplayer (the original ban was due to a now-fixed bug)

• Buffed Tag Team card: Replay effect now triggers on "deal damage to ALL enemies" attacks too

• Changed Fossil Stalker: in multiplayer, now gains a set amount of Strength if it hits any player instead of gaining Strength for each player hit

QUALITY OF LIFE:

• During the Gremlin Merc fight, if Gremlin Merc didn't steal any gold but Fat Gremlin escaped, you now receive 50% of the normal gold reward instead of 0%

USER INTERFACE & EXPERIENCE:

General:

• Added an Ascension first-time tutorial popup for single player and multiplayer

• If errors occur on run start, a popup is now displayed instead of a black screen

• An error is now displayed when Steam crashes

• The feedback tool now displays an error if your feedback was not received, and added a translation-issue option to the in-game feedback form

• Implemented preferred Ascension for the random character option

• Loading a current_run.save with a modded character back into an unmodded game now shows an error instead of a black screen

• The player's hand now animates out of the way during the enemy turn

• Limited the number of cards rendered during the rest site Clone animation to 15

• Updated Ancient card text backgrounds to fit more text and be slightly darker and embossed

Leaderboards:

• Added a global rank paginator and adjusted arrow positions

• You can now see other players' scores near your own

• Moved the game over screen leaderboards higher to make room for the toggle

Controller:

• Added controller navigation for Badges in the game over and run history screens, the player info icons in run history, and the modifier icons on the top bar

• Improved controller navigation in the Fake Merchant shop

• Pause menu button navigation now wraps

Ancients:

• Pael's Flesh relic now visually increases the max energy shown in your Energy counter

• When Vakuu tells you how many times you've visited, the number is now accurate

• Hovering over a stale dialogue at Ancients now makes all dialogues opaque

Enemies:

• Skulking Colony's health bar now changes color to indicate it cannot take more damage this turn

• Improved Byrdonis's hovertips (Territorial now names Byrdonis, and hovering Byrdonis shows the Strength hovertip)

Necrobinder:

• Sacrifice card now previews how much Block it will gain

Multiplayer:

• Added a more informative error popup for the Steam BadCert multiplayer error

ART:

General:

• Added Epoch art for:

• Friendship

• Booting Up

• Soup

• Poisoner

• Scribbles

• The Calm

• Devastation

• The 12

• The Giant

• Updated Epoch art for:

• Hello Hello!

• Friendship

Characters:

• Added portrait art for the following cards:

• Feral

• Not Yet

• Spite

• Fight Through

• Hailstorm

• Synchronize

• Iteration

• Voltaic

• Apparition

• Abrasive

• Added new character animations:

• Ironclad heavy attack

• Necrobinder cast

• Regent Sovereign Blade

• Defect power up

Ancients:

• Added Vakuu background art and VFX

• Revised Neow's Fury artwork (now centered)

Enemies:

• Added new power art for Smoggy

• Updated enemy art for:

• Tunneler

• Entomancer

• Mawler

• Added a multi-hit animation for Corpse Slug

• Added an unstun animation for Rock Bowlbug

• Added Skulking Colony animations

• Added new Soul Nexus VFX

• Tweaked the Vantom explosion to look right on a shrunken Vantom

• Repositioned Sludge Spinner's death landing spot

• Updated enemy animations for:

• Vantom

• Ceremonial Beast

• Entomancer

• Added phobia mode alternate art for:

• Fossil Stalker

• Haunted Ship

• Skulking Colony

• The Obscura

• Twig Slime M

Events:

• Added phobia mode alternate art for Zen Weaver event

AUDIO:

• Added background music for Soul Fysh and Kaiser Crab

• Added SFX for:

• Kaiser Crab enemy

• Skulking Colony enemy

• Hyperbeam move

• Cards traveling to a pile

WRITING:

• Brilliant Scarf relic description now specifies it only counts cards played "from your hand" (so it's clear it doesn't count auto-played cards)

• Reaper Form card wording now makes clear the Doom is applied by Reaper Form's power rather than the played card

• Fixed inconsistencies in Jeweled Mask relic's wording

• Exterminate card wording is now consistent with Conflagration card

• The word "Power" is no longer keyworded in Lost Wisp relic's description

• Reworded the Axebot death message to reflect that there is only one of them now

• Added more translated text and fixed translation errors across many languages

BUG FIXES:

General:

• Fixed save files being lost or corrupted after a PC crash, blue screen, or power outage

• Made save operations fault-tolerant to prevent softlocks, and improved reliability of settings saves on startup

• Stopped cloud-syncing settings.save and fixed Steam Cloud sync errors and duplicate run history files when syncing many files

• Fixed black screen softlock when Steam disconnected during room transitions

• Fixed several crashes: applying powers to dying creatures, closing the game during startup, upgrading a card at a rest site, entering rooms, and opening the card pile screen while targeting an enemy with a controller

• Fixed a Linux crash during combat when UI elements are removed mid-frame, a Linux crash when ICU libraries are unavailable, and audio staying muted after pressing volume keys or alt-tabbing on Linux

• Restored the default rendering backend to D3D12 for Intel 620 GPUs

• Effects that make the next card free (Unrelenting, Void Form, etc.) now correctly take precedence over effects that increase all card costs (Entangled, Spiked Gauntlets, Borrowed Time, etc.)

• Replayed cards now show the appropriate damage if powers wore off between replays

• Fixed cards in hand getting stuck if you try to play them while they are being transformed

• The Night Terrors modifier can no longer kill you, and the Sealed Deck modifier is now affected by the multi-character card modifiers

• The Perfect badge is no longer awarded if you abandon a run at a boss

• Fixed several softlocks: returning to the main menu and resuming a run, playing Compact with status cards in hand, the tutorial shuffle popup, and run histories from older versions

• Fixed score being wrong at Ascension 10, wrong floor count when submitting a Daily score, and score separator lines showing while fetching or after a failure

• Fixed the potion hovertip not appearing when pressing "b" in the potion popup, and num keys for card selection not working when the mouse is too low on screen

• Fixed input settings errors for new keybindings added after saving

• Fixed a rare problem where the feedback screen was stuck open on launch

• Controller input is now ignored while the game window is unfocused

• The game no longer rapidly switches between "Controller Detected" and "Mouse Detected" with a controller connected

• Fixed broken controller navigation: off the top bar in the shop, through rest site options with two rows of relics, in the shop after buying out relics and colorless cards, and from relics to the reward screen after clearing the top reward

• Fixed being able to start a single player run via controller while the Ascension tutorial was open

• A loaded save with a deprecated boss can no longer roll the same double boss

• Fixed an issue with the Game Over screen after discovering multiple enemies while playing in Polish

• Fixed hovertips in the top bar sometimes displaying in the wrong language after switching languages and continuing a run

• Fixed being able to target dead enemies with a controller

• Fixed the odds of a follow-up potion reward sometimes going up instead of down after an Elite potion reward

• Fixed being able to open card inspection and toggle View Upgrades with the same button press

• Taking a card removal reward as your last reward no longer keeps the background faded out

Ancients:

• Fixed a crash when selecting Ancient relic options

• Players can no longer roll Tezcatara's Nutritious Soup blessing with no Strikes in their deck

• Fixed Vakuu's Whispering Earring relic not correctly playing Stardust card, auto-playing cards into the next turn after Void Form, and not letting Unceasing Top relic trigger when it plays your last card

• Fixed Neow's Kaleidoscope relic using up all of Silver Crucible's charges

• Fixed Neow's Silken Tress relic in multiplayer only affecting card rewards for the host

• Fixed Nonupeipe's Diamond Diadem relic resetting its count after Hellraiser plays cards at the start of the turn

• Leafy Poultice relic no longer transforms the upgraded Strikes/Defends from Neow's Talisman when both come from Neow's Bones

• Fixed visual and navigation issues at Ancients: the next dialogue bubble peeking in early, navigating back to Neow's blessings from the Card Library, the card inspection button blocking the accept hotkey on Pandora's Box, and Wish card immediately selecting a grid card on the same controller press

Enemies:

• Fixed cards that should be Ethereal sometimes becoming non-Ethereal after killing Spectral Knight

• Fixed creature and boss VFX occasionally failing to appear

• Fixed Flyconid spore effect lingering when its attack is interrupted

• Fixed Kaiser Crab appearing if you load into an already completed boss room, and its Rocket Claw charge-up SFX looping forever

• Fixed a softlock when setting up an infinite against Skulking Colony, and Skulking Colony's per-turn damage cap now resets at the start of both turns (so Poison no longer counts toward it on your next turn)

• Fixed a softlock after defeating Infested Prism

• Fixed Thieving Hopper softlock when you have no cards for him to steal

• Recentered Axebot so it reads as a single enemy

• Fixed Ceremonial Beast background music transition not lining up with its stun

• Fixed Living Fog missing its smoke, and corrected its encounter name in the death quote

• Fixed Test Subject starting phase 2 with extra Strength when killed by Sleight of Flesh via Enfeebling Touch

• Fixed VFX glitch when Snapping Jaxfruit dies to the Reflect power

• Inklet and Vantom's Slippery power no longer loses a stack when fully blocking a hit

• Zapbot's High Voltage hovertip now correctly says it gains Strength at the end of its turn

• Fixed Parafright illusion keeping its negative Strength from Dark Shackles when killed for the turn

• Fixed Waterfall Giant not respawning and its steam spouts misbehaving after its death animation

• Hid Lagavulin Matriarch's sleep particles when awake

• Fixed several Test Subject issues

Events:

• Fixed being unable to give the Foul Potion to the Fake Merchant

• Fixed cards from other classes appearing in the Infested Automaton event

• Fixed being unable to discard potions in the Punch Off event

• Fixed a softlock if you somehow die in the Battleworn Dummy event fight, and no longer get its rewards after saving and quitting

• All Spoils Map cards are now removed if you complete the quest with multiple copies, and you get 600 gold per copy of the quest card

• Fixed Crystal Sphere event giving potion rewards of the wrong rarity

• Fixed Perfect Fit enchantment not working if you play Reboot while the enchanted card is in your hand or draw pile

• Gnarled Hammer relic can no longer be traded at the Relic Trader event

• War Historian Repy event now removes all duplicate Lantern Key cards if you have more than two

Potions & Relics:

• Fixed Mummified Hand relic sometimes selecting cards that already cost 0

• Fixed The Boot relic amplifying Bad Luck curse's damage from 1 to 5 while you have Intangible, and dealing the correct 5 damage when you deal Skulking Colony 1-4 damage

• Self-Forming Clay relic is no longer triggered by the Terminal modifier's max HP loss

• Bookmark relic now applies its cost reduction to a card retained by a "Retain your Hand" effect like Equilibrium

• Snecko Skull relic now always triggers before Unsettling Lamp relic

• Fixed Beetle Juice potion making Vantom's tail appear cut off

• Players can no longer throw the Foul Potion while the Merchant inventory is open, and using it on the Merchant no longer freezes the game on controller

• Fixed visual errors with the outline of some potion assets

• Fixed broken controller navigation from relics to card rewards after rerolling via Driftwood, and completing Orrery's card selection in the shop no longer also clicks a shop item on controller

• Fixed Pantograph relic letting Red Skull's Strength increase persist after healing you above 50% health, until an attack was played

Colorless:

• Fixed VFX sometimes failing to appear during the Rolling Boulder power effect

• Fixed a softlock when playing Anointed card with a Draw Pile larger than your hand can hold

• Fixed being able to highlight creatures while the Purity card selection screen is open

Ironclad:

• Howl From Beyond card now plays from the Exhaust pile after you've drawn your hand instead of before

• Fixed Anger card played by Havoc also Exhausting on play

• Fixed being able to select an upgraded card with Armaments card if it was added to your hand by Largesse+ card

• Not Yet card can no longer be generated via a Skill Potion

• To avoid infinite-loop softlocks, Hellraiser power now plays only 9 cards per turn when all enemies have infinite HP, and properly plays "Strike" cards against infinite-HP enemies

Silent:

• Fixed being able to skip the Survivor card discard selection via the peek button

• Fixed Fan of Knives card VFX not playing

• You can no longer play cards before Tools of the Trade power triggers

Regent:

• Bombardment card now plays from the Exhaust pile after you've drawn your hand instead of before

• I Am Invincible card now triggers before you've discarded your hand instead of after

• Regalite relic no longer gains Block from enemies applying statuses

• Summon Forth card now puts existing Sovereign Blades into your hand before Forging instead of after

• Fixed not being able to select cards with a controller when you choose your whole hand via GUARDS!!!

Necrobinder:

• Fixed a crash when Osty dies during a scene transition

• Fixed Reave card always bottom-decking the Soul card it creates

• Fixed Fetch card not glowing gold when drawn by Gambling Chip relic

• Fixed Enfeebling Touch power causing Ceremonial Beast to gain Strength after you stun it

• Funerary Mask relic now shuffles Souls into the Draw Pile before your hand is drawn

Defect:

• Fixed Beckon still damaging the player if combat is ended by Lightning orbs

• Fixed a spacing issue in the Consuming Shadow power hovertip

• Scrape no longer discards cards that cost zero Energy but have a Star cost

Multiplayer:

• Fixed a crash when using potions in multiplayer due to state divergence

• Fixed state divergences related to event combats, the Crystal Sphere event, long event option resolution, Mad Science/Juggling cards with mixed combat speeds, and Stampede + Headbutt cards

• Fixed player names with brackets (e.g. clan tags) causing errors

• Fixed Pael's Legion and Vambrace relics not proccing when the owner applies Block to other players

• Fixed occasional black screen when loading into a saved multiplayer combat

• Fixed incorrect cards being shown when obtaining cards at certain events, and Orrery relic reporting the wrong cards to other players

• Potions are now canceled if targeted on a creature killed by another player

• Corrected Test Subject HP scaling in multiplayer

• Dense Vegetation can no longer appear if any player has less than 8 HP

• Fixed a softlock using Driftwood relic on your first run, and a rare softlock loading into a treasure room when a teammate uses a controller

• Strangle power no longer procs off other players' card plays

• Relics with turn-specific triggers like Candelabra no longer skip their trigger when another player takes an extra turn with Pael's Eye

• Nightmare card VFX no longer plays for all players

• Other players' HP bars no longer go offscreen when resizing the window in settings

• Pillar of Creation, Supermassive, and Arsenal cards now proc for the player who played Largesse rather than the recipient

• You can no longer buy items at the shop while transitioning rooms, and exiting the Merchant no longer skips history recording for remaining players

• The correct error message is now shown for a Steam multiplayer connection timeout (error 5008), and improved reporting for a rare connection error

• The "Show Multiplayer Drawings" tickbox is now correctly localized

• You can no longer start a loaded multiplayer game with only one person

PERFORMANCE:

• Reduced stuttering when combat effects appear for the first time in a run

MODDING:

• The base game no longer deletes progress from mods that are removed or errored

LATEST BETA FIXES:

General:

• Fixed many instances of inconsistent RNG behavior (thanks tckmn!)

• Fixed more cases of daily runs diverging based on player network ID

Multiplayer:

• Fixed a state divergence caused by the host changing Ascension as the game is starting

Modding:

• Began publishing STS2.dll XML documentation

• Fixed Steam mods causing ReflectionHelper.ModTypes to return nothing

Slay the Spire 2 has a big problem right now, and you might not even want to spend too long looking into it if you're having a lot of fun with the year's landmark roguelike deckbuilder. That's because this issue, which developer Mega Crit is reportedly looking into as a top priority, relates to the way StS 2 handles many of its random outcomes. Given the inherently randomized nature of the game, that can have incredibly far-reaching implications. It also means that if you've been feeling oddly superstitious that a given roll goes badly more often than it should, you might actually be correct.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Slay the Spire 2's 'randomness' is broken, you're not just being superstitious

Another bi-weekly beta patch is here! This one is a bit smaller as it is intended to lay the groundwork for moving the beta branch to the main branch. Therefore, these updates are mostly focused on stability: a lot of bug fixes, UI/UX/QOL additions, and performance improvements along with just a few balance changes and art additions....

...Like this new Defect animation!

Without further ado, let's dive in...

CONTENT & BALANCE:

Enemies:

• Buffed Skulking Colony: now gets +1 Strength on its Strength gain turn on high Ascension

• Changed Aeonglass:

• No longer applies the Ebb debuff

• Now gains Block on its Ebb move (single hit) instead of its Increasing Intensity move

Potions & Relics:

• Buffed The Boot relic: damage increase now also applies to Osty's attacks

Ironclad:

• Buffed Juggernaut card: damage increased from 5(7) -> 6(8)

Regent:

• Buffed Monarch's Gaze card: Energy cost decreased from 3(2) -> 2(1)

• Nerfed Reflect card: Block gain decreased from 16(20) -> 15(20)

Necrobinder:

• Buffed Sic 'Em card: Summon increased from 2(3) -> 3(4)

• Buffed The Scythe card: damage increased from 3(4) -> 4(5)

QUALITY OF LIFE:

• During the Gremlin Merc fight, if Gremlin Merc didn't steal any gold but Fat Gremlin escaped, the player now receives 50% of the normal gold reward instead of 0%

USER INTERFACE & EXPERIENCE:

General:

• If errors occur on run start, a popup is now displayed instead of a black screen

• Implemented preferred Ascension for random character option

Ancients:

• When Vakuu tells you how many times you've visited him, the number he says is now accurate

• Pael's Flesh relic now visually increases the maximum energy amount shown in your Energy counter

• For example, if you have 3 max energy before Pael's Flesh triggers, your energy counter will show 4/4 instead of 4/3 after Pael's Flesh triggers

Enemies:

• The Wither status card preview upgrade level now matches the upgrade level that Aeonglass is actually on

Necrobinder:

• Sacrifice card now previews how much Block it will gain, so that it's easier to plan with effects like Dexterity and Frail

ART:

• Added Epoch art for:

• Devastation

• The 12

• The Giant

• Added Defect power up animation

• Added new Soul Nexus VFX

WRITING:

• Updated translations for various languages

BUG FIXES:

General:

• If you have Steam Cloud turned off, cloud files no longer overwrite local ones

• First floor of Act 2 can no longer be a ? room instead of a fight when carrying Spoils Map quest card

• Fixed card Energy cost sometimes showing the wrong value when its cost is randomized

• Fixed cards returning to the wrong spot in your hand after deselecting them during a card selection

• Card draw is now stopped after combat ends during the draw phase

• Overgrowth act now plays both of its music tracks instead of always the same one

• Music no longer restarts twice at the start of a run

Ancient:

• Fixed an issue where, if the player has Vakuu's Whispering Earring relic and it auto-plays Void Form card, it could sometimes continue auto-playing cards on the player's next turn

• Fixed Nonupeipe's Diamond Diadem relic resetting its count after Hellraiser power plays cards at the start of the turn

Enemies:

• Aeonglass's Wither status card no longer briefly returns to your hand before you discard your hand at the end of your turn

• Can no longer upgrade Wither status card with Armaments or Drain Life cards

• Fixed an issue where, after killing Spectral Knight, cards that would normally be Ethereal could sometimes become non-Ethereal

• Fixed creature and boss VFX occasionally failing to appear

• Fixed Flyconid spore effect lingering when its attack is interrupted

• Fixed Fossil Stalker VFX continuously playing in the Bestiary

• Fixed the Living Fog encounter name in the death quote

• If you kill Gremlin Merc before he steals any gold from you, the rewards screen no longer says "Mugged..." even if Fat Gremlin escapes

Potions & Relics:

• Fixed an issue where, if the player hatched Byrdonis Egg at a rest site while the rest of their deck was upgraded and they had Miniature Tent relic, they were unable to upgrade the newly-added Byrd Swoop card until the next rest site

• Fixed an issue where, if Pantograph relic healed the player above 50% health, Red Skull relic's Strength increase would still apply until an attack was played

• Snecko Skull relic now always triggers before Unsettling Lamp relic

• Fixed visual errors with the outline of some potion assets

Events:

• Gnarled Hammer relic can no longer be traded at the Relic Trader event

• Fixed Perfect Fit enchantment not working correctly if you play Reboot card while the enchanted card is in your hand or draw pile

• Fixed War Historian Repy event not removing all duplicates of Lantern Key card if you have more than 2

Silent:

• Fixed an issue where, if the player had Unceasing Top relic, played Hidden Daggers card, and discarded a Sly card, Unceasing Top could cause the player to incorrectly draw a card before the Shivs were added to their hand

Necrobinder:

• Fixed an issue where, if the player played Lethality card and the first attack of the turn had Replay, the replayed attack would incorrectly display Lethality's buffed damage amount before correctly dealing its base damage amount

Multiplayer:

• Fixed crash when using potions in multiplayer due to state divergence

• Fixed rare issue which caused incorrect cards to be shown when obtaining cards at certain events

• Nightmare card VFX no longer plays for all players

PERFORMANCE:

• Reduced stuttering when combat effects appear for the first time in a run

MODDING:

• Base game no longer deletes progress from mods that are removed or errored

Hey Slayers! Today we are pushing out a bugfix patch that brings tons of bugfixes from the beta branch over to main.

BUG FIXES:

General:

• Improved the reliability of saving your settings on startup

• Fixed a crash when applying powers to dying creatures

• Fixed a crash when opening the card pile screen while targeting an enemy on controller

• Fixed a crash on Linux during combat when UI elements were removed mid-frame

• Fixed a crash on Linux when ICU libraries are unavailable

• Fixed audio staying muted after pressing the volume keys or alt-tabbing on Linux

• Restored the default rendering backend to D3D12 for Intel 620 GPUs

• Fixed number keys not selecting cards when your mouse cursor was too low on the screen

• Fixed being able to open the card inspection screen and toggle View Upgrades with the same button press

• Fixed being unable to use the View Upgrades hotkey in the card inspection screen

• Fixed the card inspection button blocking the "accept" hotkey on the Pandora's Box card view screen

• Fixed playing the Wish card on controller immediately selecting a card in the grid on the same button press

• Fixed broken controller navigation from your relics to the reward screen after clearing the top reward option

• Fixed the game rapidly switching between "Controller Detected" and "Mouse Detected" while playing on a controller

• Fixed being able to target dead enemies on controller

• Fixed being unable to navigate off of the top bar in the shop

• Fixed controller navigation in the shop after buying out all relics and colorless cards

• Fixed being unable to navigate rest site options on controller when you have two rows of relics

• Fixed being able to start a single-player run on controller while the Ascension tutorial was open

• Fixed errors in the input settings for new keybindings added after your settings were saved

• Fixed an error when unfocusing a potion slot during potion removal

• Fixed an error caused by an offscreen epoch indicator on the Timeline screen

• Fixed separator lines appearing on the Daily Leaderboard screen when no scores had been submitted, or while scores were still loading or had failed to load

• Fixed replayed cards not displaying the correct damage when powers wore off between replays

• Fixed the Night Terrors modifier being able to kill you

• Fixed loading a save file with a deprecated boss being able to roll the same boss twice in a double-boss fight

• Fixed not removing all Spoils Map cards when you complete the quest and somehow have more than one

• Fixed a rare softlock related to writing debug files

• Fixed an issue where your odds of receiving another potion reward could sometimes increase instead of decrease after winning an elite combat and receiving a potion

Ironclad:

• Fixed being able to select an already-upgraded card with Armaments when it was added to your hand by Largesse+

Silent:

• Fixed being able to skip the Survivor card's discard selection using the peek button

Defect:

• Fixed the Scrape card discarding cards that cost zero Energy but have a Star cost

• Fixed a spacing issue in the Consuming Shadow power's hovertip

Regent:

• Fixed the Summon Forth card so it now puts your existing Sovereign Blades into your hand before Forging instead of after

Potions & Relics:

• Fixed The Boot dealing 5 damage instead of 1 to you from the Bad Luck curse while you have Intangible

• Fixed the Self-Forming Clay relic being triggered by the Terminal modifier's max HP loss

• Fixed the Whispering Earring relic replaying Stardust for 0 Stars instead of the correct amount

Enemies:

• Fixed Lagavulin Matriarch's "zzz" sleep particles not going away in the bestiary when she is no longer sleeping

• Fixed a VFX glitch when Snapping Jaxfruit dies to the Reflect power

• Fixed the Zapbot's High Voltage power hovertip to correctly state it gains Strength at the end of its turn instead of the start

• Fixed Living Fog missing its smoke

• Fixed the Ceremonial Beast's music transition not lining up with when it gets stunned

• Fixed the Enfeebling Touch power causing the Ceremonial Beast to gain Strength after you stun it

• Fixed a softlock with the Thieving Hopper when you have no cards for it to steal

• Fixed the Parafright illusion keeping its negative Strength from Dark Shackles when you kill it for the turn

Events:

• Fixed cards from other characters appearing in the Infested Automaton event

• Fixed being unable to discard potions in the Punch Off event

• Fixed being unable to give the foul potion to the Merchant

Ancients:

• Fixed a crash when selecting Ancient relic options

• Fixed being able to navigate back to Neow's options while viewing the card library

• Fixed being able to slightly see the top of the next dialogue bubble before it animates in at the Ancients

• Fixed the Leafy Poultice relic transforming the upgraded Strikes and Defends granted by Neow's Talisman when you get both from Neow's Bones

• Fixed the Nutritious Soup option appearing in the Tezcatara screen when you have no Strikes

Multiplayer:

• Fixed the Pael's Legion and Vambrace relics not triggering when their owner applies Block to other players

• Fixed the Dense Vegetation event being able to appear when any player has 8 HP or less

• Fixed being able to start a loaded multiplayer game with only one player

• Fixed other players' HP bars going offscreen when resizing the window while in settings

• Fixed errors when players had square brackets in their name

• Fixed the "Show Multiplayer Drawings" checkbox not using its localized text

• Now showing the correct error message for a Steam multiplayer connection timeout (error 5008)

• Improved error reporting for a specific rare connection error

• Fixed a softlock related to using the Driftwood relic on your first run

Hey, Slayers! Demi the CM here with this month's Neowsletter!

Dev Update

We wanted to start off with an update from last month's roadmap, especially for those who only play StS2's main branch. The first big update is that we have moved from a weekly to a bi-weekly cadence for the beta patches. Though we stuck with the weekly cadence during StS1's Early Access period, it was a hard pace to keep up and--this time around--hasn't been giving enough time as we'd like for our now much bigger base of beta branch testers to absorb the changes. This also means that main branch updates will be a bit more infrequent by extension, but hopefully this gives players on both branches more time to provide feedback on the updates.

In terms of our progress on the list of promised features, we've now added the Bestiary to the Compendium on the beta branch! It currently acts as a full list of enemies in the game along with their move animations, though it will eventually include more detailed information about them as well.

Otherwise our recent beta patches have mostly been focused on stability and performance along with some balance changes, the most notable of which was the removal of The Doormaker. The long and short of the reasoning behind this is that, while this boss provided some interesting micro-decision-making situations in his fight, he was a bit more complex than what we want. He's now been replaced on the beta branch with a new boss, Aeonglass, so if you're a Doormaker lover: appreciate him on the main branch while you still can! In honor of his legacy, we wanted to share a little peek at what his earliest iteration looked like...

Lovely early dev art courtesy of one of our programmers, Jose.

For those still waiting for Steam Workshop support and Twitch integrations, rest assured that they are still coming in the near future--apologies that they've taken a bit longer to implement than we initially estimated! The multi-fronted mission to make StS2 as good as it can be continues.

Spire Stats

And now it's time for a look behind the curtain at some Slay the Spire 2 metrics! At the time of writing this, the community has reached a whopping 240,000,000 runs, 60.5 million of which have been wins vs 179.5 million losses. That's a win-rate of 25% overall, which is much better than it sounds. Broken down by Ascension, the average win-rate on A0 is 16%, compared to 9% in StS1. At the highest, A10, the win-rate is about 17%, compared to a very small 3% at A20 in StS1.

In the last issue we broke down the different choices players made in a few select events. This time we wanted to quickly show off the popularity of each character, i.e. what percentage of the total runs each character accounts for...

As you can see right away, the community has been playing the characters almost the same amount, with the stats leaning just a bit in favor of the first couple of characters that are available to players: Ironclad and Silent. We're glad to see all our children getting roughly equal amounts of love!

On the topic of stats...

We also wanted to take the opportunity to highlight a couple of community projects that collect their own stats and provide data, tools, guides, etc. for players: Spiracle and Spire Codex. Be sure to check them out!!

Devour the Tower

The first big community-led StS2 tournament, Devour the Tower, is coming in just a few days on May 25! Featuring 34 streamers, this 4-player co-op competition will be co-casted by FrostPrime and Otzdarva so it's sure to be a good time. The winners of the tournament may even get a special gift, courtesy of Mega Crit. ;) Check out FrostPrime's Twitch for more details!

Merch Madness

Make a Dramatic Entrance with our first ever piece of Makeship x Slay the Spire apparel! Now you too can don the iconic garb of The Silent--in hoodie form! Available to pre-order until May 29 at 5AM PST, so Pounce on this opportunity soon!

Connections Section

Another Neowsletter, another Slay the Spire Connections Puzzle!

Map Masterpieces

As usual, let's check out some of the incredible in-game map creations from our community!

This incredibly adorable drawing of the Regent by AplphaE!

This stunningly detailed illustration of the Necrobinder and Osty by 白板红中碰發财!

These adorably pathetic doodles from salty final boss!

Lastly, this funny drawing involving the Doormaker (RIP) by SnakeFangz!

Community Corner

Thank you to doshiBAP for this month’s gorgeous cover image featuring everyone's favorite Mother of Resurrection! (It was actually a late submission from April but we thought it fit this month's theme too!)

Next month's theme is: Slay the Summer! If you'd like to submit your art for consideration, reminder that it must be submitted to us via fanmail@megacrit.com or in our Discord's fanart channel, have dimensions of 800x450px, feature no text, and leave room for a title!

Now on with some more community highlights:

This series of beautiful illustrations by dk000484!

This super clever graduation cap from lizard--congradulations!!

Last but not least, if you are craving more ways to test your StS2 knowledge than just our monthly Connections puzzle, check out Spiredle!

That's it for this month's issue of the Neowsletter, see you again in June!

Quick hotfix with a couple of Aeonglass-related fixes and some localization updates!

WRITING:

• Updated translations for various languages

BUG FIXES:

Enemies:

• The player can no longer upgrade Wither status cards

• Wither status cards will no longer stick around in hand if they have Retain from something like the Runic Pyramid relic