Another fortnight has passed, which means it’s time for another Slay the Spire 2 update in the beta branch. Now, you’re probably expecting me to say that the latest beta patch from developer Mega Crit has led to the game getting review-bombed again, and…well, we’ll get to that shortly, but the main takeaways from patch version 0.106.0 are that several cards got nerfed, one specific Elite in Act 2 is now possibly one of the scariest enemies in the game, and the recently introduced Aeonglass boss finally feels like a real threat.
The latest patch is, as usual, pretty chunky, as it includes reworks for some of Neow’s Ancient relics, a mix of nerfs and buffs for cards, some fresh animations, and a couple of reworked Elite fights.
The Elite changes are the real headliners here, though. The Skulking Colony Elite received a relatively sizeable nerf, as it can now take a minimum of 20 damage per turn (up from 15) and it no longer gains block on any of its turns. But Mega Crit giveth and Mega Crit taketh away, because the buffs to the Infested Prism Elite are downright nasty.
Infested Prism now has a new gimmick; whenever you play a skill card against this Elite, you will temporarily become “Tainted.” It starts with you accumulating 3 Tainted per skill, but Infested Prism will increase this in increments of 3 every few turns. Tainted effectively grants Infested Prism a temporary strength buff, which means that if it hits you with a multi-hit attack and you’ve accumulated, for instance, 6 Tainted, every single individual hit will do 6 more damage. Basically, this Elite is a damage race now, and you’re probably going to want to make sure you kill it within four turns as a result.
Now, onto Aeonglass. If you missed the last patch, then huge news: this hourglass-looking dork is a brand new Act 3 boss, which has fully replaced Doormaker. Instead of adding a Wither status card to your deck with every three cards you play, Aeonglass now adds a Wither with every six cards. And these Withers no longer retain, either.
Don’t get too excited, though, as this isn’t a nerf. Aeonglass will now upgrade the Withers it adds to your deck every three turns, which means they’ll do three extra damage. They’re also unplayable now, and as they no longer retain, it means you have to beat this boss faster before you start to draw entire hands’ worth of unplayable Withers that all do 9 damage each. Overall, I think this is a great change, but that’s mostly just because this guy was a chump beforehand.
As far as card changes are concerned, there are a few pretty sizeable ones. Silent’s Follow Through now no longer exists, and has been replaced with Scare: a 0-cost skill that applies 1 weak to all enemies and exhausts. The nerf to Necrobinder’s Debilitate also feels big, as it now only doubles the effects of weakness and vulnerability for two turns instead of three. Fasten also got hit, as it now only gives standard Block cards 4 extra block instead of 5. Oh, and Ironclad’s Howl From Beyond now triggers on the turn it was exhausted, instead of at the start of the next turn, which is way, way better.
Ok, but how does everyone feel about these changes? If you ask the folks in the subreddits or the Discord, most people seem to think it’s a great patch. Unfortunately though, yeah, Steam reviewers seem to be upset.
It’s a bit too early to say for sure if this is a “review-bombing”-level event, but the patch went live about 12 hours ago, and there are already about 549 new negative reviews in comparison to 195 new positive reviews. Why? As per usual, reviewers just aren’t happy that certain enemies have been buffed. Call me a cynic, but I think the number of negative reviews will steadily rise to a four-figure number in the next few hours. On the plus side, at least we’re back to people being mad about balance changes, instead of being mad about Anita Sarkeesian being in the credits. I guess the chuds just have short attention spans.
