Slay the Spire Guide – Deck Building Tips, Best Cards, Relics, Best Builds (How to Play)

A Slay the Spire Guide that has tips all the important things in the game.

In this Slay the Spire Guide, we have some tips and tricks for you for playing Slay the Spire. Slay the Spire is a unique card-based combat game which is a combination of in which you must build your card decks with unique and powerful cards and then fight strange creatures who drop relics.

These relics are powerful items that give you different bonuses and they will help you finally slay the Spire. Here you will find some good tips and tricks that will get you started on your journey without any hiccups.

We have curated this Slay the Spire Guide for you in which we have listed some tips and tricks including the best card builds, how you should plan your movements and what should be your priorities while playing the game. You will also find some general strategies and tips regarding different elements of the game below.

Tips and Strategies – Slay the Spire Guide

These tips and strategies will help you understand the game mechanics and own all the enemies that you will come across your runs.

After reading this guide, you will be able to build the best card deck, understand how relics work, how you can manage your inventory of cards while picking up loot and how the merchants can help you when it comes to relics. In short, our Slay the Spire Guide details everything that you need to know about playing Slay the Spire.

Card Deck Building Tips

Since this is a card deck building and combat game, you will spend a lot of time building decks and managing different cards in your deck. While building your deck, the most important aspect to keep in mind is the Deck Synergy.

Deck Synergy means that all cards in your deck must be in synergy with each other. This will greatly increase their combat effectiveness.

It is normally mistaken by players that building large decks with many powerful cards will result in success but in fact, having more and more cards in your deck will reduce the synergy between cards. We highly doubt that all cards in your deck are in synergy with each other.

We recommend that you stick to building short decks that are in synergy with each other. A small deck of cards that are in synergy will perform better than a deck with many cards but no synergy.

All cards in your deck can be upgraded to increase their stats. However, you must keep this in mind that cards can only be upgraded once. Therefore, once you have upgraded your cards once, you cannot upgrade them again. There may be special cards that allow being upgraded more than once but it will be specified on the card.

If not, the card will be a one-time upgrade card. Sometime you will also get some Curse Cards on your deck. You can easily remove them from your deck by using the ‘Remove from Deck option’.

Best Card Decks

We have two different card deck options for you here, which are best for two different scenarios. The first build focuses on the attack so this is best suited for when you want to go on full attack.

The second card deck option we have here is far more strategic approach and focuses on defense and slow attacks. You can pick any one of them more suitable according to your playstyle.

Attack Build

This build is attack oriented and all cards used here are good attack cards. The deck consists of Demon Form, Whirlwind, Rampage, Shrug it Off and War Cry.

Demon Form is a very rare card and it has every reason to be rare. After playing the card, it allows you to stall the game and one-shot the enemy. Whirlwind is a good crowd control card and it damages every enemy on the screen when used.

Shrug it Off gives 8 blocking and also draws 1 card. This is your defense card in the attacking lineup. Rampage deals 8 damage when it is played and every time you use the card after this, its damage is increased by 4. Warcry lets you draw 2 cards and also enables you to place a card on top of the draw pile. This is great for planning ahead.

Strategic Build

This build is focused on strategic and slow-paced attacks. Cards in this build will have slow attacks and will be focused on defense. This deck includes Body Slam, Shrug it Off, Barricade, Entrench and Metallicize. Body Slam is free of energy costs so it is a free attack.

Its efficiency is dependent on your block so stronger your block, more damage this card will deal. Shrug it Of gives you 8 block and allows you to draw 1 card. Upgrade it and the defense will go up until 11.

Barricade retains your block after every move and it is not lost at the start of every turn. As you keep on saving block, your body slam will become more and more powerful. Entrench doubles your block.

Therefore, if you have a lot of blocks stored, this will double it up and your body slam will result in insane damage. Metallicize gives you three block at the end of every turn. This concludes the Strategic build.

Relics

Relics are special items that give you different bonuses. You must focus on getting as many good relics as possible. You get these relics from different sources. You get relics from loot after killing enemies and you can buy relics from merchants.

Also, note the when you defeat elite enemies, you get confirmed relics. Some of the relics are very powerful and hence they will be relatively hard to acquire. Defeating bosses will also give you rare relics.

Some of the best relics in the game include Juzu Bracelet, Ice Cream, and Shuriken. Juzu Bracelet will remove all monster encounters from rooms so you can easily roam around rooms. With Ice Cream equipped, your energy is conserved between turns. This is very useful in most of the cases. Shuriken grants you +1 strength when you play 3 attack cards in a row.

Planning your Runs

Each run consists of a different task that you must perform in order to succeed. They must be done in a sequence, which is totally up to you to decide what you want to do first.

You can perform these actions in any way but for your ease, you can follow them according to the plan, which we use most of the time. Start at Campfire, upgrades any cards that you want to and then head to the Merchant.

Here you can adjust your card deck by adding and removing cards, buy relics and potions. Once done, you can either move to elites or treasure depending on your mood. Once done, completely unknown and then to the enemy. This sequence helps to clear a run easily.

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Ali is a passionate RPG gamer. He believes that western RPGs still have a lot to learn from JRPGs. He is editor-in-chief at SegmentNext.com but that doesn't stop him from writing about his favorite video ...