Slay the Spire 2 Relic Tier List: The Good, The Bad, and The Run Killers
Somewhere past 250 relics currently exist in this Early Access build, and the vast majority of them are forgettable stat sticks not worth a second thought.
This isn't an exhaustive spreadsheet of every item in the game, and it's not trying to be. If something's missing here, it's either genuinely mediocre and not worth the read, or it just hasn't shown up in enough runs yet to say anything useful about it. What's actually worth covering are the handful of items that meaningfully swing a run's odds, in either direction.
Worth a quick note before getting into specifics: evaluating relics in this game isn't as simple as it used to be. Durability means some effects only trigger a handful of times per fight before shutting off entirely, so an item that sounds incredible on paper can go dormant halfway through a long boss fight. Wax Relics from the Toy Box event degrade over time too, which makes building a whole strategy around one of those a genuinely risky bet.
S-Tier: Good in Any Deck, Any Character
Ice Cream — carries unspent energy over between turns, forgiving a bad hand entirely and letting big turns get hoarded for exactly when they're needed. A strong contender for the single best relic in the game right now.
Gambling Chip — a free mulligan at the start of every fight. Given how often a bricked opening hand is the actual cause of death in a tough run, this alone is worth prioritizing highly.
Membership Card — cuts shop prices in half and pays for itself almost instantly, since the savings on card removal and potions compound fast once it's active.
Bag of Preparation — draws two extra cards on turn one, handing over a real tactical edge before the enemy's even had a turn to act.
Anchor — a flat 10 Block at the start of combat. Simple on paper but genuinely potent, since it buys a full turn of pure offense without eating chip damage in the process.
Character-Defining Picks
A flat stat bump is fine, but the real payoff shows up when an item plugs directly into what a character's kit is already trying to do.
The Ironclad — Demon Tongue. Heals back whatever HP is lost the first time damage is taken on his own turn, which effectively removes the downside from self-damage cards like Hemokinesis and turns his biggest liability into a quiet healing engine.
The Silent — Tingsha. Deals damage to a random enemy every time a card gets discarded, turning her from a patient poison specialist into something closer to a constant chip-damage machine gun. Pair it with Tough Bandages for the block side and she becomes genuinely hard to kill.
The Necrobinder — Undying Sigil. Cuts incoming damage in half from any enemy currently afflicted with heavy Doom. Given how thin her margin for error already is at 66 base HP, this is close to mandatory once Act 3 ramps up.
The Defect — Runic Capacitor. Grants three extra orb slots at the start of combat, meaning more passive block ticking from Frost and more passive damage ticking from Lightning without changing anything else about the build.
The Regent — Lunar Pastry. Generates a free Star at the end of every turn for zero energy cost, feeding directly into the economy his entire kit runs on. Combined with Mini Regent for free Strength on top, Elite fights start feeling considerably less threatening.
A-Tier: Strong, But They Need Setup
These aren't universal the way the S-Tier picks are, but they're excellent once the deck around them actually supports what they're doing.
Mummified Hand — makes a random card in hand cost zero every time a Power gets played. Easy S-Tier in any deck genuinely built around Powers, since it creates the kind of high-momentum turn that just snowballs.
Paper Phrog — bumps Vulnerable's damage bonus from the standard 50% up to 75%. A serious multiplier for anything leaning on consistent Vulnerable application, an Uppercut-heavy Ironclad build especially.
Lantern — grants a single free energy on turn one. Lacks the sustained value of Ice Cream, but it's often exactly enough to get an expensive setup card into play a turn earlier than the enemy can punish it.
Ornamental Fan — grants Block every third attack played, turning a Shiv-focused Silent deck into something generating passive armor while it's already doing its main job of dealing damage.
The Traps Worth Actively Avoiding
A few items look genuinely helpful at a glance and quietly sabotage an entire run once the fine print kicks in, especially further up the difficulty ladder.
Velvet Choker — an extra energy per turn in exchange for capping total cards played at six. Fine trade on paper, actively strangling for a combo-heavy Silent or Defect deck that wants to play far more than six cards a turn.
Brimstone — grants 2 Strength per turn, but hands the same bonus to every enemy on the field too. Fine for a deck ending fights by turn three, a disaster for anything slower, since gifting free scaling to a multi-attack Act 3 boss tends to end runs rather than help them.
Calling Bell — three random relics in exchange for a permanent, unremovable curse added to the deck. A bad relic clogging the relic bar is one thing, but a curse clogging the deck itself is a cost that keeps compounding for the rest of the run. Rarely worth the gamble.
Evaluate what a deck actually needs before grabbing something just because it's shiny and free. The difference between a run that snowballs and one that quietly falls apart by Act 2 usually comes down to exactly this kind of restraint.
