We might be done with the character archetypes for Slay the Spire, but we’ve still got things to talk about.

Today, I want to talk about something different. Slay the Spire has a list of achievements for players to hunt, and I thought I’d go over them and discuss how you might go after collecting them.

Jaxxed

Hit the Strength limit (8).

Difficulty: Trivial.

Just by playing the Ironclad, you can easily get this one. Limit Break is the fastest way, but you can also delay a fight with Demon Form or Spot Weakness until you accumulate enough Strength. Other characters obviously will have a much harder time; the Silent has no way to gain Strength outside of relics, and the Defect does have Reprogram, but it’s a bit too slow – possible, though. The Watcher has Wish, which gives 2 Strength but isn’t really suitable for this, but she also has Wreath of Flames; with enough Miracles, you can scrounge up the energy to pump it up to 8 since they can bypass the energy limit when used to pay for a card right away.

Catalyst

Hit the Poison limit (30).

Difficulty: Trivial.

Again, just by playing the Silent with a Poison build, you’ll eventually get this. Burst+Catalyst is your quickest bet; you could take it slow and keep stacking turn by turn, but most enemies will die before you get to 30 stacks of poison.

Ninja

Play 7 Shivs in one turn.

Difficulty: Trivial.

Same as with Catalyst, playing Shiv build with the Silent will get you there without much effort. Build up a stockpile of 5 shivs, get another 2 in a single turn, and you’re set.

Powerful

Have 7 Powers at once.

Difficulty: Easy.

This requires a tiny bit more investment; but still not very hard, at least with the Defect. It’s still doable with every charcater, but it’s a lot more painful; Ironclad has 10 powers total, and 5 of them are Rare – and the Silent has the exact same, 10 powers with 5 Rare. The Watcher and the Defect both have a couple more, 12 total with 5 still Rare. However, the Watcher’s powers are more diverse and way less synergistic; the Defect has things like Heatsinks, which instantly makes powers a lot less painful to play, as well as Force Field and of course the entirety of Dark Orbs.

Barricaded

Hit the Block limit (20)

Difficulty: Easy.

I was tempted to rate this as trivial, as sooner or later you’ll get it, but it’s not as direct as the Strength one. Of course, the easiest character to get this with is the Ironclad; with, you guessed it, Entrench. You can try and get it in one big burst with something like Impervious, but you can also use Barricade – stack a bit of excess block every turn until you have enough to get to the max.

The Silent has quite a bit of Block potential as well, but it’d need a lot more setup – Footwork for sure, but even with double Dodge and Roll + Survivor you’d still only get to 16, so you’d also need at least one if not 2 sources of block.

Defect can also get there, and with various ways; a big Reinforced Body at max energy gets you 12 Block, while Multi-Cast on a Frost Orb gets you the same. With Consume, it increases to 18, which is almost there – a Recursion or just another couple of Frost Orbs will get you the achievement.

As for the Watcher, I can see two ways to go about it – the easiest is Wish, with 15 Block being quite nice, or ramping up for a big Wallop bonk. The second one requires more setup, but it can also come up organically – get Vulnerable on an enemy, then in Wrath and with Simmering Fury you’re already at 6 damage on your Wallop, doubled to 12. Then, you either supplement it with a bit of strength, or you can even use Blasphemy or Omniscience; or just some extra Block.

You Are Nothing

Defeat a Boss on turn 1.

Difficulty: Medium.

This requires a lot more effort, and a coordinated attempt at building a deck that specializes on this. Bosses have a lot of HP, and some are harder than others for this achievement. You’re also most likely not getting this on an Act 1 Boss – Act 2 is your best bet, but Act 3 can also work; the bosses might be harder, but your deck is also a lot more refined. You also need massive burst damage obviosuly; poison or shivs or orbs require too much setup and while they deal consistent damage, it’s just not enough. Strength Ironclad and Wrath Watcher are the best candidates, and even then you’ll have to get lucky with a good starting hand and perhaps even good dice rolls for your relics.

All for One

Beat Act III with 4 players.

Difficulty: Trivial (Impossible)

As long as you’ve got 4 people to play the game, you’ll get this pretty quick. If you don’t… well, you won’t.

Perfect

Beat a Boss with all players at full HP.

Difficulty: Medium.

I think this is somewhere between Easy and Medium in terms of difficulty, though I lean more towards medium. A support Silent build makes this a lot easier, but you can reasonably get through a boss with some luck without getting hit even solo if you get a solid build. Poison is good for this, the Defect has both good offense and defense with orbs, and a block Ironclad can also rpetty much just tank through it all. The Watcher will have the most problems sustaining herself. The big reason I haven’t marked it as Easy though, is that the achievement isn’t “Beat a Boss without taking damage” – it’s “Beat a boss at full HP”, which means you already need to be full. Sure, you can rest at the campfire before, but oftentimes you don’t want to – imagine missing just 1 HP, would you really rest, or would you upgrade instead?

Minimalist

Beat Act III with a 5-card deck or smaller.

Difficulty: Very Hard.

Not only do you need to aggressively remove cards, you also need to avoid adding them. This can be brutal early on – in Act 1 you need to add a card almost every time you can to keep up, and then by then it might be too late to remove enough. I still haven’t managed this one; your best bet, I think, is to get a very good Neow’s Blessing and go from there. You could have one player trim down their deck and essentially just focus on staying alive while the others carry them, but… I’m not sure if that counts? I’d like to manage this solo at least once.

The Transient

Kill the Transient before it kills itself.

Difficulty: Medium.

Easier than You Are Nothing, since you get several turns to get this done, and damaging the Transient also gives you block so you can focus fully on attacking. Might be closer to Easy, but it’s not as “reliable” to attempt since the Transient is a bit more of a random encounter. Still, I think we got this the first time we fought the Transient.

Common Sense

Beat Act III with a deck containing no uncommons or rares.

Difficulty: Hard.

It’s hard to build a solid deck with just commons. It can get you pretty far, but it’ll just lack all the more impactful cards, including all the Powers. I can see certain ways for each character to do it, but it’ll need some luck.

For the Ironclad, you have some pretty good cards like Heavy Blade and Pommel Strike, but your only source of Strength is Flex, which gives just 1 temporarily. You can supplement that with relics like Akabeko, Vajra, or Red Skull, but perhaps a good bet is to hope for a Du-Vu Doll and stack curses for reliable strength every turn.

For the Silent, I think it’s much harder. You can’t really go Poison – you only have Deadly Poison and Poisoned Stab. For Shivs, you have Blade Dance, Cloak and Dagger, and Slice, but no way to boost their damage. For discard, you have Dagger Throw and Prepared, but the only way to actually utilize it is Sneaky Strike. So you just don’t have the tools, even with Relics.

The Defect is in a bit of the same situation. No Powers at all really hit it hard – you can do some orb stuff with Ball Lightning, Chaos, Cold Snap, Coolheaded, and Recursion, but you’re not really going to get through the bosses I don’t think. You can, however, go for a 0-cost build; You don’t have All for One or Go for the Eyes, but you have some decent other options: Claw, of course, Scrape, Steam Barrier, and you can mix some orb stuff with Zap, Recursion, and Chaos. I don’t know how far that will get you, but it’s something.

Finally, the Watcher; like the Silent, she just lacks all the support for any build. Most of your commons won’t even do anything, they switch between stances but that doesn’t really help you get ahead.

Of course, like with Minimalist, you could have one player go for this while the others carry, but we talked about this.

Collector

Beat Act 3 with 12 Relics and Boss Relics combined per player.

Difficulty: Medium.

Beating the boss itself will likely be easy, the hard part will be fighting a ton of Elites every step of the way. You get 2 Boss relics, so you need 10 more (assuming you don’t get relics like Whetstone or Enchiridion which get discarded). Let’s say you fight 2 Elites per act, plus 1 more if you manage to line up 3 in one path – that’s 7 more relics. This leaves you 3 more to buy or get through events. Certainly not impossible; but as I said, the hard part will be surviving all the Elites.

Ruby/Emerald/Sapphire/Amethyst

Beat Act III with the Ironclad/Silent/Defect/Watcher.

Difficulty: Trivial.

Just play the game with each character.

My Lucky Day

Beat Act III with a Daily Climb.

Difficulty: Trivial.

We’ll get into the Daily Climbs later, but essentially you get a (pretty strong) positive modifier and a (pretty dangerous) negative modifier for your run, randomly. There are 6 of each, and while I wouldn’t say they cancel out, it’s more accurate to say the balance out each other. Depending on what you roll, it might also be a quite easy run.

Infinity

Create an infinite card combo.

Difficulty: Very Hard.

This is a very special achievement that will get it’s own section right after. But I will say that it requires a lot of setup, and is much, much harder to do than in the video game.

Who Needs Relics?

Beat Act III with no relics or Boss relics (you can skip items).

Difficulty: Medium

Medium to Hard difficulty, but certainly not as hard as you’re imagining it to be. Relics can certainly be a big benefit, but the vast majority of your power comes from your cards. Give it a try and you might fail a couple of times, but you’ll get it faster than you think.

Infinite Combos

Now let’s talk about how you can actually get an infinite combo going. As I mentioned, it is very hard, because you need a very, very specific combination of cards, along with a relatively small deck. Compared to the videogame, there are way less things that can be repeated; Sundial was a source of infinite energy and so was the Silent’s Tactician because it doesn’t exhaust, same as the Defect’s Turbo, Unceasing Top was infinite draw and so was the Watcher’s Rushdown, etc etc etc. On the other hand, the board game has no maximum hand size, which can help a lot when assembling your combo.

Now let’s talk more practically. For any kind of infinite combo, you need a way to generate energy, a way to draw cards, and a way to deal damage. Let’s start with the energy first; there are only 2 repeatable ways to generate energy: The Defect’s Turbo, and the Watcher’s Calm stance. So you need to work with either 2 or 3 energy, taking into account the Daze from Turbo as well as the need to exit/reenter Calm respectively. Alternatively, you can use cards for draw and damage that cost 0, but they’re quite more restrictive.

Combo #1 – Colorless

This is a pretty basic combo. You need just 2 colorless cards: Finesse and Flash of Steel.

• Step 1: Draw your entire deck into your hand.
• Step 2: Play Finesse.
• Step 3: Play Flash of Steel. This draws Finesse back to your hand.
• Step 4: Play Finesse. This draws Flash of Steel back to your hand.
• Repeat.

The easiest way to assemble this is just to visit lots of shops to see colorless cards, and a colorless option from Neow’s Blessing can also help obviously. Both Finesse and Flash of Steel (especially the altter, since it deals damage as well) are fantastic in every other combo as well, because they are repeatable 0-cost draw.

Finesse can also be replaced with Impatience, but that requires you to have no other attacks in hand. Impatience can also replace Flash of Steel, but you will need another 0-cost attack and Finesse:

• Step 1: Play the 0-cost attack.
• Step 2: Play Impatience to draw the attack
• Step 3: Play Finesse to draw the Impatience
• Step 4: Play the attack again.
• Step 5: Play the Impatience to draw both the attack and Finesse
• You’re now back to Step 3, repeat from there.

Combo #2 – Silent

The Silent can do some interesting things. Specifically, she has a 0-cost draw in Escape Plan, and damage in the form of Thousand Cuts. So it’s the same logic as combo #1 pretty much – you just need a second 0-cost draw, which can be either one of the 3 colorless cards, or Doppelganger played for 0 to copy Escape Plan (or the colorless).

• Step 1: Draw your entire deck into your hand.
• Step 2: Play Thousand Cuts.
• Step 3: Play Escape Plan.
• Step 4: Copy Escape plan with Doppelganger, which will draw back the original Escape Plan. Since this shuffles your deck, it triggers Thousand Cuts for damage.
• Step 5: Replay Escape Plan, which draws Doppelganger and triggers Thousand Cuts again.
• Repeat.

There is another combo that skips the need for colorless cards, but is quite a bit more involved:

You need Prepared, Reflex, another 0-cost draw, and Thousand Cuts. Let’s say the 0-cost draw is Escape Plan.

• Step 1: Draw your entire deck into your hand and play Thousand Cuts.
• Step 2: Play Escape Plan so that it goes in your discard.
• Step 3: Play Prepared (unupgraded is fine).
  • Step 3.1: Prepared draws Escape Plan. This triggers Thousand Cuts.
  • Step 3.2: You discard Reflex.
  • Step 3.3: Prepared goes in your discard pile.
  • Step 3.4: Reflex draws cards from being discarded. This draws only Prepared, not itself as well.
  • Step 3.5: Reflex goes in your discard pile.
• Step 4: Play Escape Plan to draw Reflex back into your hand.
• Step 5: Repeat.

Combo #3 – Defect

The Defect can do the same thing as Combo #1 with Impatience, just by using its own 0-cost cards: Zap, Recursion, Claw, etc. So you’d need Finesse, Impatience, and the Defect card; let’s use Zap for our examples since it’s also in the starter deck. You can also replace Finesse (but not Impatience) with Overclock, which is another 0-cost draw; but you need the extra draw from Impatience to clear the Daze from your deck.

• Step 1: Draw your entire deck into your hand.
• Step 2: Play Zap.
• Step 3: Play Overclock. This draws Zap, but puts a Daze in your discard pile.
• Step 4: Play Impatience. This draws both Overclock and the Daze.
• Repeat.

Keep in mind the limitations of Impatience – you’ll have to have removed or exhausted all your attacks for this to work.

Combo #4 – Watcher

As with the Defect, you can use her own 0-cost attacks like Flurry of Blows, Consecrate, or Just Lucky in the colorless combo with Finesse and Impatience, but there’s also potential for using the energy you get from exiting Calm to sustain a combo. You still need colorless cards though.

One combo uses Flash of Steel, Empty Mind, and Inner Peace – Fear No Evil can be used sometimes, but you need to wait for your enemy (or rather all enemies at once) to be attacking you to replace Inner Peace so it’s much more limited.

• Step 1: Draw your entire deck into your hand.
• Step 2: Play Flash of Steel.
• Step 3: Play Inner Peace. You are now Calm and have used 1 Energy,
• Step 4: Play Empty Mind. You have used 2 Energy.
  • Step 4.1: You draw Flash of Steel and Inner Peace.
  • Step 4.2: You exit Calm and get 2 Energy. You are neutral on Energy spent.
• Step 5: Play Flash of Steel. This draws Empty Mind.
• Repeat from Step 3.

Since upgraded Empty Mind actually draws 3 cards, you can even replace Flash of Steel with Finesse and one of the Watcher’s 0-cost attacks. Alternatively, you can also replace Empty Mind with Impatience, though you’ll need another way to leave Calm; Tantrum, Eruption, Indignation, or Empty Fist. So it would be something like Impatience, Indignation, Inner Peace, Flash of Steel.

Unfortunately, the Ironclad can’t do any unique combos besides using Impatience+Finesse+0-cost attack, but that can still work if you get it; you have both Body Slam and Anger you can use.

As an additional point of discussion, you can see that Step 1 is always drawing your entire deck into your hand. This isn’t as easy as it might appear with how casually I dropped that in, but it’s quite manageable. Maybe you won’t get it in yourfirst turn every time, but you have ways to make it more reliable. For example, the easiest way (which is a good option regardless) is to aggressively prune your deck with card removal in the shops, as well as Empty Cage or Peace Pipe if you get them. Sources of card exhaust also help: Blue Candle and Charon’s Ashes, and depending on your character you have other cards as well.

Of course, the question is whether adding these extra cards is worth it to remove other cards, but there are some standout options. Purity, for example, though you already want several other colorless cards so I’m not sure if you’ll be able to fit this one as well. The Wather has Blasphemy, though it will require you to have all your combo pieces in hand or discarded to avoid exhausting them, though with access to Retain that can be mitigated. Scrawl is also obviously fantastic for drawing purposes. The Defect has Recycle to exhaust, which isn’t very effective but it’s something, and lots of good draw with Skim, Overclock, and Fission; Scrape can also be somewhat useful since all your combo pieces cost 0. The Silent may not have targeted exhaust but she does have a ton of draw, including the starting relic, so she’s mostly covered; as for the Ironclad, he has the most exhaust with things like Sever Soul, Second Wind, True Grit, and of course Burning Pact which draws as well; with Offering being another source of big draw. After that, Dead Branch can convert exhausted cards into even more draw, and Runic Pyramid can help you gather all the cards in hand.

Final Thoughts

I really like the inclusion of achievements (and Ascension, for that matter) into the game. It gives it an extra bit of motivation to play it again, and even though I don’t think it was necessary (I find the game quite replayable on its own) it’s just more fun to try and complete some of the harder achievements, even if it might take a couple of tries to get them.