Slay the Spire 2 Ascensions Guide – Ascension List and Best Strategies

All Slay the Spire 2 Ascension levels, listed

• Ascension 1: Swarming Elites – Elites spawn more often.
• Ascension 2: Weary Traveler – Ancients only heal 80% of your missing HP.
• Ascension 3: Poverty – Enemies and treasure chests drop 25% less gold.
• Ascension 4: Tight Belt – Start each run with one less potion slot.
• Ascension 5: Ascender's Bane – Start each run cursed.
• Ascension 6: Inflation – Card removal at the Merchant is more expensive.
• Ascension 7: Scarcity – Rare and upgraded cards appear less often.
• Ascension 8: Tough Enemies – All enemies are harder to kill.
• Ascension 9: Deadly Enemies – All enemies have deadlier attacks.
• Ascension 10: Double Boss – Fight two bosses at the end of Act 3.

Ascension 1: Swarming Elites

In-game description: “Elites spawn more often.”

How to beat Ascension 1: The funny thing about this Ascension is that it isn’t actually that much of a downside, since you want to actively seek out Elite fights when your health and resources allow you to do so. Picking up the valuable Relics they drop helps you scale the deck properly into the late-game, so it’s mainly a question of not being too greedy in Act 1. Treat your health as a resource at this stage.

Ascension 2: Weary Traveler

In-game description: "Ancients only heal 80% of your missing HP."

How to beat Ascension 2: Unsurprisingly, Rest Sites become more valuable from Ascension 2 onwards since you can’t rely on the Ancients to recoup your full health. This also means that Upgrading cards now comes at a bigger premium – you will need to sacrifice some of those opportunities to ensure you can keep your health up.

The margin for small mistakes also goes down here – those one or two hit points you drop because of sloppy Block usage in Act 1 will come back to haunt you in a way they don’t in a vanilla run. The Ironclad’s passive healing becomes more and more beneficial as you climb the Ascension ranks, and this first makes itself felt here.

Ascension 3: Poverty

In-game description: "Enemies and treasure chests drop 25% less gold."

How to beat Ascension 3: From Ascension 3 onward, gold-generating Relics (think Amethyst Aubergine) become more valuable pickups – and generally makes Relics more important in Shops than individual cards. Card removal also comes at a premium now in the same way Upgrades stop being a no-brainer in Act 2, so any Event-based opportunity to chuck something out of your deck is extra valuable from here onwards. Specifically, the Spoils Map quest card also goes up in importance here.

Ascension 4: Tight Belt

In-game description: "Start each run with one less Potion slot."

How to beat Ascension 4: Stop hoarding Potions. You should have stopped hoarding Potions already anyway, but from now on, you really need to maximize their short-term benefits as tools that can close out a fight a turn faster and save you HP rather than a nuke for a boss fight, simply because you will be wasting too many Potions along the way. Elites become an obvious target for a Fire Potion, for instance.

Ascension 5: Ascender's Bane

In-game description: "Start each run Cursed."

How to beat Ascension 5: Ascender's Bane is permanently stuck in your deck, so you will have to either include extra card draw or maintain a smaller deck to compensate. Your basic Strikes and Defends are really going to be in the way by Act 3.

Ascension 6: Inflation

In-game description: "Card removal at the Merchant is more expensive."

How to beat Ascension 6: This new Ascension effect replaces Gloom, which lowered the Rest Site count in a run and was really unfun. It will still take some time to suss out its overall effects, but the main takeaway is that you’ll want to prioritize Exhaust-like effects more from this point onwards as an alternative way to thin your decks throughout a run. The first card removal is probably still worth buying, but it’s getting into Relic territory real fast from that point onwards – especially considering the fact that their cost has been reduced, making it an even better deal to pick them up in the shop.

Ascension 7: Scarcity

In-game description: "Rare and upgraded cards appear less often."

How to beat Ascension 7: This is the point where you need to stop forcing builds. Leave the directional choices to later Acts and draft strong individual foundational cards instead during the early part of the journey: Retain’s value really starts to show here as a keyword, much like any resource-conversion card.

Ascension 8: Tough Enemies

In-game description: "All enemies are harder to kill."

How to beat Ascension 8: Survivability and Block matters more than before because the fights will inevitably become longer than what you were used to. Glass cannon builds with Strength spikes are severely punished by this Ascension, so plan accordingly.

Ascension 9: Deadly Enemies

In-game description: "All enemies have deadlier attacks."

How to beat Ascension 9: This Ascension supercharges all that you learned from conquering the previous one. At this stage, you will have to carefully consider whether you can engage with an Elite fight, and you probably shouldn’t do so unless you are near full health. You still can’t afford to turtle up, but the “health is a resource” paradigm is definitely shifting back.

Ascension 10: Double Boss

In-game description: "Fight two bosses at the end of Act 3."

How to beat Ascension 10: Say goodbye to your glass cannon decks if you haven’t yet because you will have to win back-to-back boss fights. Scaling effects reset between the two fights, so your deck needs an engine that can re-establish damage quickly rather than rely on one explosive turn. Cards like The Scythe are especially valuable here. By this point, you should have all enemy patterns and action cycles in the back of your mind – you will need it, since you can’t miss a beat in the final fight.

In general, the higher you ascend, the more consistency matters: dream drafts and speculative picks or “just one more Elite” become bigger and bigger mistakes along the way.

FAQs about Slay the Spire 2 Ascensions

How many Ascensions are there in Slay the Spire 2?

There are 10 Ascension levels in Slay the Spire 2 as opposed to the 20 in the original. Effects like increasing damage or enemy HP were amalgamated into one Ascension rather than individual ones across regular enemies, Elites, and bosses. Lower max HP (#14), unfavorable events (#15) and tougher enemy movesets (#17-19) were removed outright.

Can you play Ascensions in co-op?

Yes, Slay the Spire 2’s co-op mode also features Ascensions, but it is an entirely separate track, as indicated by a differently colored fire icon. All players in the party will need to have the particular Ascension level unlocked to be able to play it.

How to unlock Ascensions in Slay the Spire 2?

Beat the Act 3 boss with any character to unlock Ascension 1 for that character. Each subsequent level unlocks by completing a run at your current highest Ascension. This progression is separately tracked across your characters. You can never lose access to an already unlocked Ascension, so experiment away at your heart’s content.