Slay the Spire 2 has received its first major balance update, bringing with it a suite of substantial changes after roughly a month of continuous tweaking on the game's beta branch. With the Regent recieving massive buffs, a new card in the mix, and a phobia mode, regular 'ol players can experience plenty of new surprises.

This patch, detailed in full in a recent Steam blog post by developer Mega Crit, breaks down the more substantial changes. They include balance adjustments, art updates, UI improvements, writing improvements, and bug fixes.

The list of major changes are as follows:

Balance adjustments

• Ascension 6 has been reworked from Gloom - "Less rest sites." -> Inflation - "Removing cards from your deck at the Merchant is more expensive."
• All shop relics now cost 25 gold less and gold-generating relics can no longer appear in the shop
• Map generation has been improved and made to be more consistent
• If you return to a run after updating with a newly deprecated card in your deck, it is now replaced with a placeholder Status card - "Draw 1 card. Remove this from your Deck. Exhaust."

Character changes

• The Ironclad has a new card: Not Yet. Rare - Skill - Cost 2 | Heal 10(13) HP. Exhaust.
• Dominate, Expect a Fight, Spite, and Stoke--have received reworks.
• Grapple has been deprecated.
• Numerous cards have seen buffs, nerfs, and rarity changes. Many of these changes have come with the aim of giving him better survivability and Exhaust synergies.
• The Silent's Blade of Ink card has been reworked to generate Shivs enchanted with Inky - "This card deals 2 additional damage and applies 1 Weak."
• The Silent's Acrobatics card has been changed from Common to Uncommon
• The Silent has also seen a few other buffs and nerfs.
• The Regent's Arsenal card has been reworked from giving Strength based on Colorless cards played to any cards created.
• The Regant's Regalite relic now grants Block for any card created, not just Colorless cards.
• The Regent's card pool has seen more buffs than any other character with just a couple of nerfs, which should address concerns about him feeling weaker than the other characters.
• The Necrobinder has received a rework for Borrowed Time: "Uncommon - Cost 0 - Skill | Apply 3 Doom to yourself. Gain 1(2) Energy." -> "Uncommon - Cost 1 - Skill | Gain 4(6) energy. Cards cost an additional energy this turn."
• The Defect has seen the least amount of changes of any of the characters, receiving just a couple of buffs and nerfs.

Cards, relics, and enemies

• Some Colorless cards, relics, and potions have seen buffs, nerfs, changes, and pool/rarity shifts, with the Hidden Gem card and Pendulum relic receiving reworks. Various events have had their options or spawn conditions tweaked.
• There have been a few balance changes to some Ancient offerings,
• There are five new relics offered by Neow:
• Hefty Tablet: "Choose 1 of 3 Rare cards to add to your Deck. Add 1 Injury to your Deck."
• Neow's Talisman: "Upgrade 1 of your Strikes and 1 of your Defends."
• Neow's Bones: "Upon pickup, gain 2 random Neow Relics. Add 1 random Curse to your Deck."
• Phial Holster: "Upon pickup, gain 1 potion slot and procure 2 random potions."
• Winged Boots: "You may ignore paths when choosing the next rooms to travel to 3 times."

• While certain enemies have seen some buffs and nerfs, like the Skulking Colony, the Doormaker has seen the most drastic reworks.

Art

Many pieces of placeholder art present in the Early Access launch version of Slay the Spire 2 have been updated with final, better quality pieces. There have also been updates to card VFX, enemy animations, and new character-based energy VFX have been added.

UI and experience

As for UI updates, badges have been added to the game. These show up at the end of a run, indicating notable things that may have happened during said run. They are essentially fun little visual markers to point out interesting things that occur during a session of Slay the Spire 2.

Leaderboards now only show your friend's scores, with global leaderboards set to come in the future. The reason why this has happened is the developers don't want to add "invasive anti-cheat" to the game, and as such they seemingly can't stop naughty players from securing the maximum score. Bummer!

Magic Numbers have also been removed as quantitative scoring system. Instead, points sent to the leaderboard are gained by winning a run, earning badges, and how quickly you finish a run.

There's also a phobia mode, which when enabled removes plenty of the game's gnarlier visuals for those with specific fears. This should make the game more palatable to a wider number of people.

Finally, bug fixes have come en masse, alongside writing improvements which better explain cards, potions, and so on.

So it's a significant patch to the game shortly after its release! The game, already incredibly popular, continues its time on the up-and-up. If you've not played the game yet, you can read Eurogamer's Slay the Spire 2 Early Access review to find out what all the noise is about!