Slay the Spire Guide

Game Rules: Slay the Spire

Slay the Spire is a roguelike deck-building game where you climb a perilous spire, battling enemies, building powerful decks, discovering relics, and ultimately trying to defeat the boss at the top of each Act. Every run is unique due to procedurally generated dungeons and card choices.

Core Gameplay Loop

Choose a character with a unique starter deck and abilities.
Navigate a branching map, encountering various rooms: hallway fights, elites, merchants, rest sites, and events.
Engage in turn-based combat, playing cards to deal damage, block, and apply effects.
After combat, gain rewards: new cards, gold, potions, and relics.
Manage your deck by adding, upgrading, or removing cards.
Defeat the Act Boss to progress to the next Act.
Die, and start over, learning from your mistakes!

Components Overview

Character Sets: Ironclad, Silent, Defect, Watcher (with minis, decks, boards).
Cards: Player cards (~381), small item cards (Relics, Potions, etc. ~112), Encounter, Elite, Boss, Event, Curse, Status, and Reward decks.
Boards: Main, HP, and Merchant boards.
Tokens: Map tokens, cube tokens, boot meeple, die.
Accessories: Dividers, reference cards, card sleeves.

Game Setup Highlights

Character Selection: Each player chooses a character and takes their matching board, starter deck, reward decks, and mini.
Player Board Prep: Place red, blue, and black cubes on max HP, 3 Energy, and 0 Block respectively.
Deck Organization: Shuffle all decks except Summons, Daze, and Status. Place the appropriate decks face-down.
Map Preparation: Use Act I board. Randomly draw a map layout. Shuffle and place map tokens on corresponding spaces. Place the character mini at the bottom start point.
Boss Selection: Roll a die to randomly select a boss for the Act. Place boss face-down on its space on the map.
Initial Encounter: Draw a “1st Encounter” card for each player and place it for the first combat.
Neow's Blessing: Shuffle the Neow’s Blessing deck. Each player gets a red bonus and chooses one of the blue options.

Character Abilities

Ironclad: High HP, gains Strength and synergizes with Exhaust.
Silent: Specializes in Poison and Shivs, focusing on dexterity and card manipulation.
Defect: Manipulates Orbs (Lightning, Frost, Dark) to create powerful effects.
Watcher: Uses divine Stances (Calm, Wrath) and Miracles for versatile effects.

Your Area and Deck

Draw Pile: Your main deck, shuffled, from which you draw cards.
Discard Pile: Cards go here after play or at the end of your turn (unless Retained).
Exhaust Pile: Cards removed from combat for the rest of the current fight.
Item & Power Zones: Where Relics, Potions, and Powers are activated or acquired and provide persistent effects.

The Map and Movement

Players ascend the spire via a branching path. Each room contains different encounters: monsters, elites, bosses, events, campfires, or merchants. After resolving a room, players choose a connected room above and proceed.

Rules Glossary

Combat Mechanics

Card Types & Effects

Rewards & Deck Building

Strategies & Deck Building

Mastering Slay the Spire involves understanding card synergies, managing risk, and adapting your deck to the challenges of the Spire. Here are some fundamental strategies:

Ways to Get Stronger

Improving your deck: Add good cards, cards that synergize with your existing deck, upgrade cards, and remove weak cards to improve your average draw. Context is key!
Acquiring relics: Relics provide persistent bonuses and are generally very powerful. They are often better than a card reward or upgrade.
Acquiring potions: Potions offer one-time benefits that can turn the tide of a tough fight. Don't neglect them; they can enable risky but rewarding elite fights.
Increasing your health: 0 health means game over. View health as a resource; sometimes healing is the best choice at a rest site, or you might convert health into other forms of strength via events.

Deck Composition Categories

Consider these categories when evaluating what your deck needs:

Upfront Damage: Cards that deal immediate damage, crucial for early acts and quickly dispatching weaker enemies.
Scaling Damage: Cards that deal increasing damage over the course of a fight (e.g., Strength gain, Poison application, Orbs). Essential for bosses and longer elite fights.
Upfront Block: Cards that provide immediate block, vital for mitigating incoming damage.
Scaling Block: Cards that generate increasing amounts of block as the fight progresses (e.g., Barricade, Frost Orbs, stacks of Dexterity).
Acceleration: Cards that help you play more cards (draw, energy generation) or play your existing cards more often. These become increasingly valuable as your deck improves.

Choosing a Path & Room Types

The path you choose on the map is critical. General ranking of room types:

Elites: High risk, high reward. Significantly harder fights but offer a relic and more gold. Primary source of relics.
Shops: Good for buying cards, relics, potions, and crucially, removing cards (if you have gold).
Rest Sites: Heal HP or upgrade a card. Aim to heal sparingly, but don't die trying to avoid it.
Hallway Fights: Most common. Offer card rewards, a chance at a potion, and gold.
? Rooms (Events): Random. Mostly events with risk/reward decisions, often worth the risk. Can also be fights, shops, or treasure rooms.
Treasure Rooms: Always provide a relic and sometimes gold. Guaranteed at the halfway point of each act.

Data Visualizations

Battle Simulator

Simulate battle scenarios with different card combinations to test their effectiveness against various enemies. Select cards and an enemy, then run the simulation!

Accessibility Settings

Game Rules: Slay the Spire

Core Gameplay Loop

Components Overview

Game Setup Highlights

Character Abilities

Your Area and Deck

The Map and Movement

Rules Glossary

Combat Setup and Structure

Primary Card Types

Post-Combat Actions

Room Types for Deck Management

Strategies & Deck Building

Ways to Get Stronger

Deck Composition Categories

Choosing a Path & Room Types

Data Visualizations

Battle Simulator

Interactive Tutorials

Strike

Help & FAQ

Card Name

Your Progress