Mega Crit continues to support Slay the Spire 2 with regular updates following its Early Access launch on April 5, 2026. The latest beta patch, v0.102.0, brings a fresh feature and several meaningful balance adjustments aimed at improving the overall experience.
The standout addition in this patch is the new Badges feature. At the end of a run, players now receive badges that celebrate standout achievements, such as defeating a boss without taking damage, completing the game quickly, or finishing a run without spending any gold. These badges serve as a personal recap, making each run feel more unique and memorable.
For the time being, badges only appear immediately after a run ends. Mega Crit plans to integrate them into the run history and stats screen in a future update. This addition aligns with the studio’s goal of making the roguelike deckbuilder feel more rewarding and personalized.
The patch includes several notable reworks and adjustments:
- Borrowed Time (Necrobinder card) has been redesigned as a 1-cost card. It now raises the cost of all cards for one turn while granting a significant energy boost.
- Blade of Ink (Silent card) has been updated to grant Inky Shivs with a new enchantment that deals 2 bonus damage and applies 1 Weak.
- Doormaker boss received tweaks to its Grasp turn, making the encounter feel more threatening.
- Ascension 6 now starts card removal at the Merchant for 100 gold, with each subsequent removal increasing the cost by 50 gold (previously 25 gold).
- Additional changes include new portrait art for several effects (Hotfix, Modded, Synthesis, and Sweeping Gaze), fresh artwork for Ruby Raids, and balance adjustments across Silent, Skulking Colony, potions, and relics. The patch also delivers various bug fixes, UI improvements, and quality-of-life enhancements.
Players have generally responded positively to the update. Many appreciate the increased card removal cost on Ascension 6, viewing it as a meaningful progression adjustment. The changes to the Doormaker boss have also been well received, with the encounter now feeling more challenging and fair.
However, some concerns have surfaced regarding the buffs to Skulking Colony. A portion of the community feels the changes may have gone too far, potentially making the enemy overly strong. Players are hopeful that Mega Crit will continue monitoring balance and make further tweaks if needed.
Since launching in Early Access, Slay the Spire 2 has maintained strong momentum, peaking at over 282,000 concurrent players on Steam. Mega Crit has kept the game fresh with consistent patches, including a major March update that reverted changes to the Silent’s Prepared card and strengthened certain Necrobinder options.
The full release was originally planned for 2025 but was delayed into 2026. With regular content and balance updates continuing, many fans expect the game to remain in Early Access for several more months before launching across all platforms.
The addition of the Badges system and the steady stream of improvements show that Mega Crit remains committed to refining Slay the Spire 2 based on player feedback. As development progresses, the roguelike deckbuilder continues to build on the foundation that made the original such a standout title in the genre.
Here is the full patch notes for those who would like to read them in detail:
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
And that is all of the patch notes folks!