Slay the Spire 2 is getting badges—not the ones you get on Steam, but not entirely different, either. In the notes for a new beta patch, developer Mega Crit said badges are a bit like achievements, in that they let you know about the cool things you accomplished during your run.

“Badges may appear at the end of a run, noting various things that happened during a run like defeating a boss without losing HP, beating the game quickly, specific easter eggs, or pointing out that you forgot to spend your gold,” the studio explained. “They’re meant as little reminders to let you know what was unique about each adventure.”

For now badges will only appear at the end of a run, but Mega Crit plans to have them also appear in your run history and stats screen at some point in the future. The intent, the studio said, is “to make runs feel distinct and improve scoring,” something it will share more on later—although, notably, the patch notes further down also state that this update has “adjusted and added placeholder assets for score lines in run summary and game over screen.”

The addition of badges is the top-line thing, but there’s quite a bit more going. Map generation via Ascension, the Blade of Ink and Borrowed Time cards, and Doormaker’s Grasp have all been adjusted, and numerous smaller balance changes are also in place.

There’s also “new art additions for various cards and a few enemies, as well as some cool new VFX for afflictions!”

(Image credit: Mega Crit)

So far, the response seems fairly positive—or at least, not hugely negative. The previous beta balance patch sparked a massive backlash from players that resulted in nearly 9,800 negative reviews in one day. Mega Crit co-founder Casey Yano said he wasn’t bothered by the review bombing because he understands that players are simply “trying to interact with the game and be heard” using the tools they have at hand, but even so, that kind of forcefully negative response has to be a little rough.

There’s been a surge in negative reviews in the wake of this balance patch too, but not nearly as ferocious: 801 negative reviews posted so far today, compared to 817 positive. That’s still not a great balance, but it’s a lot better than the last time around.

As the name implies, this is a beta patch, so if you want it you’ll have to be running the game’s beta branch: To access that, right-click Slay the Spire 2 in your Steam library, select “Game version and betas” from the menu, and then the public beta branch. The full patch notes are below.

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 -> 2Damage decreased from 7 -> 3Nerfed 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 freeEnemies: Buffed Skulking Colony: Now attacks on all turnsDeals slightly more damageAncients: Buffed Nonupeipe’s Fur Coat relic: now affects restocked Axebots and other enemies that enter combat during a fightEvents: Nerfed Hungry For Mushrooms event: Fragrant Mushroom option upgraded cards decreased from 3 -> 2Changed Waterlogged Scriptorium event: Prickly Sponge option gold cost lowered from 155 -> 99Tentacle Quill gold cost lowered from 65 -> 55Buffed Whispering Hollow event: Exchange option gold cost decreased from 50 -> 35±9

ART

Added portrait art for the following cards: HotfixModdedSynthesisSweeping GazeAdded new art for Ruby RaidersAdded background art and VFX for Vantom boss fightAdded new visuals for the following afflictions: BoundEntangledGalvanizedHexedRingingSmogUpdated empty chest VFX, smoke puffs

USER INTERFACE & EXPERIENCE

General: Adjusted and added placeholder assets for score lines in run summary and game over screenAdjusted timings and pauses for dialogue for Gremlin MercAdjusted Cultist “Cacaw” dialogue timingsAdjusted speech bubble positions for Damp and Calcified CultistsAll monsters now have distinct speech bubble colorsPlayers can now navigate between cards/potions/relics in the Timeline unlock screen on controllerPlayers can now navigate to the top bar character portrait to see the Ascension hovertip on controllerPressing the top bar shortcut while already focusing on a top bar element now moves your controller focus back into your handMultiplayer: Better handling of intermittent Steam errorsDisabled 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 OstyFixed wording in the Statistics Total Playtime/Fastest win hovertipLocalization: Updated translations for various languagesFixed translation errors in the following languages: GermanJapaneseItalianSpanishThaiPolish

BUG FIXES

General: Fixed broken Steam rich presence translationsFixed a crash that could occur on startup after a Steam Cloud sync conflictFixed a crash that could occur when the game failed to start and tried to show an error dialogFixed an issue where numbers were improperly formatted on the victory screenIf there is an error while spawning a creature into combat, a placeholder is shown instead of softlocking the combatFixed softlock caused by being able to use your controller to confirm a hand card selection while you are peekingFixed being able to press down arrow to controller navigate the card grid while an upgrade/remove/transform preview is upVulkan is now defaulted to on Intel iGPUs with known D3D12 stability issuesIronclad: Fixed softlock when selecting a card to upgrade via Armaments card while Lethality power still appliesSilent: Fixed Bullet Time card getting played by Mayhem power not setting the cost of the cards in your hand to 0Potions & Relics: Fixed Unsettling Lamp relic doubling the Strength you get from Dominate cardIf a potion is discarded just before combat ends, it’s no longer forever unusableWhen 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 numberFixed not being able to navigate from the relic inventory back to the combat in the Mysterious Knight fight on controllerRemoved broken text from Thieving Hopper enemy’s Escape Artist power hovertip when playing in PolishFixed Soul Nexus animation not playing correctlyAncients: Removed the peek button from the card selection via Neow’s Hefty Tablet relicEffects that occur before your turn now interact correctly with Vakuu’s Whispering Earring relicFixed Vakuu’s Whispering Earring relic continuing to play cards after Void Form power ended the turnFixed an issue where Vakuu’s Lord’s Parasol relic would occasionally only obtain some of the items that the Merchant sellsFixed being able to end the Lord’s Parasol purchase animation on controllerEvents: 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 goldMultiplayer: Trash to Treasure power no longer procs from other player’s generated statusesFixed softlock in Thieving Hopper fight if one person is dead when it tries to steal cardsFixed state divergence related to Driftwood and Dream Catcher relicsPlayer name is now correctly displayed when hovering over your characterWhen re-entering the multiplayer host screen, the Ascension is now correctly syncedYou can now reload after saving a game at a rewards screen with non-standard rewards

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