Image: Mega Crit via HGG
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Reviewed by Benjamin Barr
In the roguelike deckbuilder Slay the Spire, one of the best parts of the game (or my favorite part, at least) are the relics. Relics are special items you pick up during a run that give you various passive bonuses. I’m a relic addict, but even if you aren’t as obsessed with them as I am, you’ll have to admit that they can add some serious power to your build. We’ve previously covered which relics are good for certain builds; today, we’re ranking the best Slay the Spire relics overall.
Let’s get started, shall we?
14 Best Slay the Spire Relics, Ranked Good to Best
One quick disclaimer — there are plenty of strong relics in the game, and the “best” choices will depend on each individual run. Some are better for certain builds and characters than others. The basic criteria for our ranking are relics that can be used by every character and are useful regardless of your specific build.
We’ve covered build-specific relics in our other guides, so we’re going for more general appeal here. Without further ado, let’s jump into our ranking!
Membership Card
Membership Card is a shop relic that reduces the cost of everything the merchant sells by 50% for the rest of the run. This is just straight value.
Empty Cage
Empty Cage is a boss relic that lets you remove two cards from your deck. This relic is pretty low down the list compared to Smiling Mask (which we’ll cover later), but that’s only because Smiling Mask offers you more opportunities to remove cards. This is still a strong choice!
Meal Ticket
Meal Ticket is a common relic that heals you for 15 whenever you enter a shop. There’s not much else to say — this relic is just very strong.
Pantograph
Pantograph is an uncommon relic that heals you for 25 whenever you enter a boss fight. Healing before a boss is quite welcome in any game, but especially in Slay the Spire. Since you’re guaranteed a rest site before every boss, you can use the opportunity to upgrade a card or gain a different beneficial effect from relics like Peace Pipe or Girya instead of healing up.
Preserved Insect
Preserved Insect is another common relic that is quite strong in Slay the Spire, especially once you start playing with Ascension levels. Preserved Insect starts each elite you encounter with 25% less health. This makes many elites much more manageable — even the easy ones won’t get as much damage out. Let’s face it, all elites are quite tough, so having them at a quarter less health is great.
Smiling Mask
Smiling Mask is a great relic for streamlining your deck, as it reduces the cost of the Merchant’s card removal service down to 50 gold. If you’ve ever been stuck with a bloated deck due to a lack of funds, you’ll know why this is so valuable.
I’d also like to quickly mention Peace Pipe, which gives you the option to remove cards from your deck at rest sites. I find it a bit weaker than Smiling Mask because it forces you to choose between removing your cards or upgrading/healing, but it’s still helpful.
Neow’s Lament
Neow’s Lament is an event relic that can be offered as one of the rewards when starting a new run. Even though it’s a basic reward, it can also be deceptively strong. Neow’s Lament makes the first three enemies you encounter that run have only one health. Not only does this let you breeze past the first three fights, you can even get lucky and face a 1HP elite. A friend of mine even got lucky enough once to catch two elites with this relic! But even without the elites, this relic is quite strong. Every time I am offered this or the +8 max health, I choose Neow’s Lament, no question.
Wing Boots
Wing Boots is a rare relic, and the next on our list. It’s a limited use relic and can only be used three times, but it lets you swap paths mid-run. This allows you to skip an encounter you don’t want to deal with, or set up crazy value chains where you jump into a rest site, shop, and event in a row, or even three consecutive rest sites.
Singing Bowl
Singing Bowl is an uncommon relic, but still one of the stronger ones in the game. With Singing Bowl, every time you get to add a card to your deck, you can instead choose to gain 2 max health. This is essentially better healing, and is a great option to have when RNG whiffs on your card rewards. It’s nice no matter what build you’re going for!
The Bottles
Next up, we have the Bottled relics. Bottled Flame lets you pick an attack card to always start in your opening hand. Bottled Lightning does the same for a skill, and Bottled Tornado does it for a power. Picking cards that you always start with is amazing, as it can give you very consistent openings. Bottled Tornado can be especially good, as builds often center around certain power cards you want to play as early as possible. However, different builds run different ratios of attacks, skills, and powers, so I think all three are equally good.
The Eggs
Our next spot goes to the three Eggs (Frozen, Molten, and Toxic). Frozen Egg upgrades all future powers you add to your deck, Molten Egg upgrades all future attacks you add to your deck, and Toxic Egg upgrades all future skills you add to your deck. These are just generally good relics that anyone would want. They’re excellent to pick up at the start of a run, but are still good (albeit with diminishing returns) as you continue to refine your deck.
Extra Energy Relics
Coming in at number three on our list of the best Slay the Spire relics, we have another tie. Any extra energy relic you can get fits easily into this spot. Since you need energy to play cards, these are essentially a free ticket to an extra play or a more expensive card. This ability is considered strong enough that each relic that grants it comes with a drawback.
Philosopher’s Stone gives you an additional energy at the cost of giving all your opponents a stack of Strength. This is well worth it for that extra energy, and a solid pick every time it is offered.
Velvet Choker’s restriction is that you can only play six cards in a turn. Now, this will absolutely cripple certain builds, but most won’t involve playing that many cards anyway.
Slaver’s Collar gives you an extra energy, but only during boss and elite fights. This obviously isn’t as good as the other two, but it’s about what you can expect from a common relic.
Bloody Idol
There is one healing relic that stands far above the others — the Bloody Idol. It’s tough to get, as you first need to get the Golden Idol event relic, then swap it out for the Bloody Idol during a different event, but these steps are all worth it. Bloody Idol heals you for 5 every time you earn gold, which is at least at the end of every combat.
It can also heal you during certain event rooms. You can essentially become a discount Ironclad, or stack it with Burning/Black Blood for even better heals!
Lizard Tail
Lizard Tail is my personal pick for the best relic in Slay the Spire. Unlike most other relics, which offer passive buffs, the Lizard’s Tail is a one-time use relic. The first time you die during your run, you instead heal to 50% health. This is huge, as Slay the Spire can be a rather brutal game.
It is also worth noting that the Fairy in a Bottle potion is the only other effect in the game that can resurrect you. There are cards and relics that prevent damage or heal your character, but those are the only two effects that prevent death directly. Since I can think of no situation in the game where you would not want to have this relic, I have to make it my pick for the best Slay the Spire relic.
Join the High Ground
That’s it for our ranking of the best Slay the Spire relics — thanks for reading! Let us know your picks in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for more content like this!
Happy gaming!
