As you can imagine, this can get out of hand fast. At the end of your turn, each poisoned enemy takes as much damage as they have poison stacks, and then the number of stacks goes down by 1 on each enemy. Slay the Spire took an interesting stance on how poison works. The damage on this build is generally low, and you’ll only find consistent success here with a relic like Bronze Scales. Some explode in your face, others will endlessly ramp up in damage. This build can be hard to pull off, especially since there are many enemies that are on timers. There are plenty of powers and attacks that greatly aid in your attempts to be tougher than a literal tank, like Metallicize, Juggernaut, Body Slam, Iron Wave, and Barricade, which makes block not expire for the rest of combat. While Shrug it Off is arguably the best blocking card in the game, one can’t dismiss the sheer power behind Impervious, Entrench, Flame Barrier, and Ghostly Armor. He likes big weapons, but he also likes big shields.
This deck is very reliant on the listed relics, but they are not necessary to make this build work. Feel No Pain and Corruption let you exhaust to your heart’s content, and Apparition adds a whole new layer of safety on top of being able to spam Defend and Shrug it Off’s for free. Charon’s Ashes and Dead Branch combo powerfully into an Ironclad deck that leans hard into exhausting. Getting rid of your cards for the rest of a fight can seem counter-intuitive when you’ve spent time and resources curating them, but with one or two of the right relics, it really works. While this build is very offensive, holding onto a few (not too many) Defends and Shrug it Offs means that you can play 2 Defends and 3 Clashes in one turn for 10 block and 42 damage. You’ll only want to focus on taking Clash, Thunderclap, and maybe a few Iron Waves in this build, making sure you avoid anything that gives you Curses or Status cards (these will make it so you cannot use Clash).
Slay the spire ironclad guide full#
Ironclad has a whole host of powerful attacks, but nothing makes a Goblin Nob more scared than an Ironclad staring him down with a hand full of Clashes. This is more than double the standard Strike. Clash, a card that costs 0 to play but can only be played if you only have attacks in your hand, deals 14 damage without being upgraded. This build, available from the beginning, is the most simple and best way to kill the enemy. Each Strike and Defend has the same power across all three characters, but to me, it’s felt especially necessary on the Defect. Personally, I’ve found that getting rid of Strikes and Defends is most important on the Defect. Personally, if I’m picking up lots of defensive cards, I get rid of my Defends, and if picking up lots of Attacks, I focus on throwing out my Strikes. Another important thing to consider is that the player should try and get rid of their base Strikes and Defends while climbing. For the Defect, consider Auto Shields, Ball Lightning, Beam Cell, Boot Sequence, Cold Snap, Core Surge, Double Energy, Echo Form, FTL, Fusion, Genetic Algorithm (if you can pick it up on the first or second act), Go for the Eyes, Hyperbeam (if you don’t want to focus on orbs), Leap, Melter, Reboot, Seek, Stack, and Turbo. For the Silent, these cards are Adrenaline, After Image, A Thousand Cuts, Backstab, Cloak and Dagger, Dagger Spray, Die Die Die, Escape Plan, Glass Knife, Malaise, Noxious Fumes, and Slice. For the Ironclad, Clothesline, Flex, Cleave, Shrug it Off, Pommel Strike, Thunderclap, Battle Trance, Infernal Blade, Seeing Red, Uppercut, Demon Form, and Offering are all generally good cards to pick up, especially when not going for a very specific build. There are also cards that are good in just about any deck.
This is because you’ll never be able to get the “perfect” deck, or at least not reliably enough to warrant listing how many you should aim for.
One thing to keep in mind that there are no recommendations on how many of each card you should have in each deck. Each character has their own card libraries and a few relics unique to them, and some of these builds are more or less reliant on relics. In order to find success, you’re going to have to have some level of consistency and synergy in your decks.