Slay the Spire 2 Gets New Update for April 2026

Slay the Spire 2 has just received yet another update, introducing a new in-game system along with balance adjustments, various changes, and hot fixes. Developed by Mega Crit, Slay the Spire 2 launched in Early Access on March 5, 2026, as the latest installment in the roguelike deckbuilder series, featuring new cards, enemies, bosses, and a 4-player co-op mode. Since its debut, the title has been making waves in the gaming industry, even managing to peak at an impressive 282,323 concurrent players on Steam.

Mega Crit has kept the game’s momentum alive through a steady stream of updates, delivering patches and fixes on a regular basis. In March 2026, the studio released a major update for Slay the Spire 2 that reverted changes to the Silent’s Prepared card, brought back stronger versions of the Necrobinder cards Capture Spirit and Borrowed Time, and implemented a wide range of gameplay changes to improve the overall experience. Now, the developers are back with a big patch set to shake up the game.

Slay the Spire 2 Beta Patch v0.102.0 is Here

Mega Crit has officially released beta patch v0.102.0 for Slay the Spire 2. The headline addition is a brand-new feature called Badges. These can appear at the very end of a run to highlight the notable moments from that playthrough, including the likes of defeating a boss without taking damage, completing the game quickly, or finishing a run without spending gold. They’re sort of a personal recap of what made each run stand out. For now, Badges will show up after a run, but they will eventually be integrated into the run history and stats screen as well. This is part of Mega Crit’s broader efforts to make one of the best deckbuilding games feel unique and memorable.

Beyond Badges, the patch brings a number of reworks. One of the Necrobinder cards in Slay the Spire 2, Borrowed Time, has been redesigned as a 1-cost card that raises the cost of all cards for a turn while providing a significant energy boost. Silent’s Blade of Ink has been updated, now granting players Inky Shivs with an enchantment that deals 2 bonus damage and applies 1 Weak. The Doormaker boss has received changes to its Grasp turn as well. Ascension 6 will now start card removal at the Merchant at 100 gold, rising by 50 gold per removal rather than the previous 25. The patch also adds portrait art for Hotfix, Modded, Synthesis, and Sweeping Gaze, along with fresh artwork for Ruby Raids. Rounding things out are balance adjustments for Silent, Skulking Colony, Potions, and Relics, alongside bug fixes, UI improvements, and other quality-of-life changes.

Image via Mega Crit

Players over on Reddit and Twitter have welcomed the patch, praising the increased card removal cost as a meaningful change and acknowledging that Doormaker now feels more threatening. However, just like the previous Slay the Spire 2 update, there are still some concerns among fans. This time, it’s around the buffs given to Skulking Colony, which many feel has been overdone. Players hope that Mega Crit continues to monitor the situation before things become unbalanced again.

With patches rolling out, there’s also growing speculation around the game’s full release date, as Slay the Spire 2 was supposed to release in 2025 but got delayed. Many fans expect the title to remain in Early Access for a few more months before a full launch across all platforms. Despite the ongoing tweaks, the future looks very promising for this roguelike deckbuilder.

Slay the Spire 2 Version v0.102.0 Patch Notes

CONTENT:

General:

• Reworked Ascension 6 from Gloom – “Less rest sites.” -> Inflation – “Removing cards from your deck at the Merchant is more expensive.”

As mentioned last week, affecting map generation through Ascension has increasingly seemed to be a miss. It’s often too hard to tell what change if any is a result of Ascension, or if it was just an unlucky map generation. Instead Ascension 6 will now make card removal at the Merchant start at 100 Gold, and will increase in price by 50 gold per removal instead of 25. I expect this to be felt significantly more than the old Gloom modifier.

Silent:

• Reworked Blade of Ink card: “Rare – Cost 1 – Skill | This turn, whenever you play an Attack, gain 2(3) Strength this turn.” -> “Rare – Cost 1 – Skill – Add 2(3) Inky Shivs into your Hand.”
  • Added new Inky enchantment: “This card deals 2 additional damage and applies 1 Weak.”

The Blade of Ink rework is an experiment with generating Enchanted cards mid combat. Definitely let us know how this feels or if Enchantments are best left to things like Events and Relics. I suspect this card will be high impact, and gives Silent another strong Weak applier.

Necrobinder:

• Reworked Borrowed Time card: “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.”

This new Borrowed Time should go particularly well with high cost cards like Reap and Bury and help to flesh out other ways to play Necrobinder.

Enemies:

• Reworked Doormaker Grasp turn and power: now attacks for 20(23) and the power is reworked to “Whenever you play a card, lose 1 energy.”

Doormaker’s Grasp turn was too underwhelming, and overall lowered the difficulty of the fight too much. This new version should make the entire fight high stakes and actually give the player a difficult problem to puzzle over turn to turn instead of making the fight about just living until turn 4.

BALANCE:

Silent:

• Buffed Leading Strike:
  • Shivs increased from 1 -> 2
  • Damage decreased from 7 -> 3
• Nerfed Speedster: damage decreased from 2(3) -> 1(2)
• Nerfed Untouchable: Block decreased from 7(9) -> 6(8)

Potions & Relics:

• Changed History Course relic: when it plays a copy of an X-cost card, it now uses your current energy for its X-value instead of the energy spent the last time the card was played. Note: It still plays the copy for free

Enemies:

• Buffed Skulking Colony:
  • Now attacks on all turns
  • Deals slightly more damage

Ancients:

• Buffed Nonupeipe’s Fur Coat relic: now affects restocked Axebots and other enemies that enter combat during a fight

Events:

• Nerfed Hungry For Mushrooms event: Fragrant Mushroom option upgraded cards decreased from 3 -> 2
• Changed Waterlogged Scriptorium event:
  • Prickly Sponge option gold cost lowered from 155 -> 99
  • Tentacle Quill gold cost lowered from 65 -> 55
• Buffed Whispering Hollow event: Exchange option gold cost decreased from 50 -> 35+-9

ART:

• Added portrait art for the following cards:
  • Hotfix
  • Modded
  • Synthesis
  • Sweeping Gaze
• Added new art for Ruby Raiders
• Added background art and VFX for Vantom boss fight
• Added new visuals for the following afflictions:
  • Bound
  • Entangled
  • Galvanized
  • Hexed
  • Ringing
  • Smog
• Updated empty chest VFX, smoke puffs

USER INTERFACE & EXPERIENCE:

General:

• Adjusted and added placeholder assets for score lines in run summary and game over screen
• Adjusted timings and pauses for dialogue for Gremlin Merc
• Adjusted Cultist “Cacaw” dialogue timings
• Adjusted speech bubble positions for Damp and Calcified Cultists
• All monsters now have distinct speech bubble colors
• Players can now navigate between cards/potions/relics in the Timeline unlock screen on controller
• Players can now navigate to the top bar character portrait to see the Ascension hovertip on controller
• Pressing the top bar shortcut while already focusing on a top bar element now moves your controller focus back into your hand

Multiplayer:

• Better handling of intermittent Steam errors
• Disabled skipping chests in multiplayer. Too many people thought it was the Proceed button.

WRITING:

General:

• Foul Potion description now specifies that it deals damage to “ALL players and enemies” instead of “EVERYONE”, making it clearer that it does not hit Osty
• Fixed wording in the Statistics Total Playtime/Fastest win hovertip

Localization:

• Updated translations for various languages
• Fixed translation errors in the following languages:
  • German
  • Japanese
  • Italian
  • Spanish
  • Thai
  • Polish

BUG FIXES:

General:

• Fixed broken Steam rich presence translations
• Fixed a crash that could occur on startup after a Steam Cloud sync conflict
• Fixed a crash that could occur when the game failed to start and tried to show an error dialog
• Fixed an issue where numbers were improperly formatted on the victory screen
• If there is an error while spawning a creature into combat, a placeholder is shown instead of softlocking the combat
• Fixed softlock caused by being able to use your controller to confirm a hand card selection while you are peeking
• Fixed being able to press down arrow to controller navigate the card grid while an upgrade/remove/transform preview is up
• Vulkan is now defaulted to on Intel iGPUs with known D3D12 stability issues

Ironclad:

• Fixed softlock when selecting a card to upgrade via Armaments card while Lethality power still applies

Silent:

• Fixed Bullet Time card getting played by Mayhem power not setting the cost of the cards in your hand to 0

Potions & Relics:

• Fixed Unsettling Lamp relic doubling the Strength you get from Dominate card
• If a potion is discarded just before combat ends, it’s no longer forever unusable
• When clicking a potion that can be thrown at all enemies simultaneously, the potion popup now properly says “Throw” instead of “Drink”

Enemies:

• Fixed an issue where a few enemies’ damage intents were occasionally showing the wrong number
• Fixed not being able to navigate from the relic inventory back to the combat in the Mysterious Knight fight on controller
• Removed broken text from Thieving Hopper enemy’s Escape Artist power hovertip when playing in Polish
• Fixed Soul Nexus animation not playing correctly

Ancients:

• Removed the peek button from the card selection via Neow’s Hefty Tablet relic
• Effects that occur before your turn now interact correctly with Vakuu’s Whispering Earring relic
• Fixed Vakuu’s Whispering Earring relic continuing to play cards after Void Form power ended the turn
• Fixed an issue where Vakuu’s Lord’s Parasol relic would occasionally only obtain some of the items that the Merchant sells
• Fixed being able to end the Lord’s Parasol purchase animation on controller

Events:

• Fixed an issue where, if the player visited a combat-style event without actually starting a combat (i.e. choosing “Return the Key” at The Lantern Key event) and then visited the Merchant immediately after, throwing a Foul Potion at the Merchant would not grant the player any gold

Multiplayer:

• Trash to Treasure power no longer procs from other player’s generated statuses
• Fixed softlock in Thieving Hopper fight if one person is dead when it tries to steal cards
• Fixed state divergence related to Driftwood and Dream Catcher relics
• Player name is now correctly displayed when hovering over your character
• When re-entering the multiplayer host screen, the Ascension is now correctly synced
• You can now reload after saving a game at a rewards screen with non-standard rewards

Systems

Released

March 5, 2026

Developer(s)

Mega Crit

Publisher(s)

Mega Crit

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

• 

•