You spend hours building the perfect deck, finally reach Act 3, and the boss waiting for you has just been pulled from the game entirely. That's the situation for beta players of Slay the Spire 2 right now, and honestly, Mega Crit is being pretty transparent about why.
The studio's latest beta patch removes Doormaker from Act 3 and replaces it with a brand new boss called Aeonglass. The reasoning, straight from the patch notes: "while [Doormaker] had interesting micro decisions in the fight, he was over the complexity threshold of what we want and had lingering issues. We decided that starting over fresh will let us hit what we actually want for an Act 3 boss."
That's a rare admission from a developer mid-early access. Doormaker was one of the more memorable fights in the game, but complexity for its own sake doesn't always make for a better experience. Mega Crit is calling it.
What the Bestiary actually is right now
The other headline addition is the Bestiary, now accessible through the Compendium. Here's the thing: Mega Crit is already managing expectations, noting in the patch notes that "it's still an outline of what it will end up being." The eventual goal is a full reference showing each enemy's animations and data, but right now it's more of a skeleton than a finished feature. Still, it's been a community request for a while, so even a partial version landing in the beta is worth noting.
Balance changes across the roster
Beyond the boss swap, the patch touches almost every character. The Defect gets the most love, with Hyperbeam damage climbing from 26 to 28 (34 to 36 upgraded), Shatter now evoking all orbs twice, and the Infused Core relic gaining an extra line that adds 1 damage to Lightning Orbs. The Tesla Coil+ card is an interesting case: its damage drops from 6 to 4, but Lightning Triggers double from once to twice, shifting the card's value toward trigger-heavy builds.
The Regent sees a mix of nerfs and buffs. Sword Sage gets reworked so that Sovereign Blade gains Replay 1 instead of an additional hit, which the notes flag as creating new synergy with the Parry card. Crescent Spear gets a damage bump from 6 to 8, while Bulwark and Patter both take small block reductions.
On the Silent side, Blade of Ink gets trimmed: the Inky enchantment damage bonus drops from +2 to +1.
For players who have been grinding the Defect, check out our Slay the Spire 2 Defect best builds guide to see how these orb-focused changes land in practice.
Relic reworks and new Neow options
Tezcatara's Pumpkin Candle relic gets a meaningful rework. The old version simply extinguished at the start of Act 3, which felt like a hard cutoff. The new version extinguishes after 5 combats but can be rekindled at rest sites, giving players more agency over when they burn through that energy bonus.
Three new Neow relics are also being tested: Kaleidoscope (temporary name), which grants 2 card rewards pulling from other characters' pools; Fishing Rod, which upgrades a random deck card every 3 normal combats; and Silken Tress, which enchants all cards in the first card reward with Glam. These are early-stage additions, but Kaleidoscope in particular could shake up multicharacter run variety significantly.
Patch cadence is changing too
Mega Crit also confirmed a shift from weekly patches to a biweekly schedule. The reasoning is straightforward: more time between patches means bigger, more polished changes and more room for beta players to actually absorb feedback before the next wave lands. Given how much ground this single patch covers, that reasoning tracks.
The bug fix list is substantial, covering save file corruption after PC crashes, several controller navigation issues, multiplayer state divergence problems, and a fix for the Ironclad's Hellraiser card softlocking on infinite loops. If you've been running Ironclad builds and hit that wall, our Slay the Spire 2 Ironclad guide has context on how Hellraiser fits into the broader deck architecture now that the softlock is patched out.
For beta players, Aeonglass is now the Act 3 boss to prepare for. The full patch notes are live on Steam, and the biweekly cadence means the next wave of changes is roughly two weeks out.
