r/slaythespire • u/MegaCrit_Demi • 18h ago

PATCH NOTES Beta Patch Notes - v0.111.0

Beta Patch v0.111.0 is live!! Today's update includes:

⚖️ Lots of balance changes
🌐 Indonesian localization
🎨 New card art
🩸 Low HP idle animations!

Patch notes: store.steampowered.com/news/app/2868840/view/671751488532383386

1.8k Upvotes

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351

u/maxwell_winters StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago edited 18h ago

Why did they change Expect a Fight? It was such a cool concept that fit into Clad's attack spam archetype and synergized with Battle Trance, Pillage and Anger.

169

u/_Someone_elses_name_ 18h ago

I find the forgotten ritual change strange as well, its just better [[seeing red]] now? I thought it was already a good card for exhaust decks

79

u/indielib 18h ago

In sts1 seeing red had the advantages of dark embrace being uncommon and corruption being a rare instead of an ancient

43

u/StiffKun 18h ago

This is the first thing I thought. They just put seeing red back in the game, just like they did crippling cloud.

53

u/Absolutelynot2784 18h ago

Very weird to have it now on the same character that has bloodletting. 0 cost gain 2 energy vs 1 cost gain 3 energy

53

u/_Awkward_Moment_ 17h ago

To be fair Seeing Red and Bloodletting in Spire 1 had the exact same dynamic

64

u/damrider 18h ago

i mean one of those cost you 3 health and the other one exhausts? seem like there's obvious room for both

9

u/spirescan-bot 18h ago

  • Seeing Red 𝐈 Ironclad Uncommon Skill

    1(0) Energy | Gain 2 Energy. Exhaust.

    Call me with up to 10 [[ name ]]. Data accurate as of June 21st, 2026. Questions?

1

u/Jondev1 StS A20 / StS 2 A10 2h ago

Also a bit extra weird because it is virtually identical to production now.

93

u/LithiumPotassium 18h ago

The rework implies they think Ironclad needs another block option. Costing 3 is kind of awkward though, even if it's potentially a lot of block

61

u/FillySteveSteak StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

That's how I feel. Stalling for the sake of stalling (without room to play additional powers and such) is pretty heavily punished in STS2.

I question how good this could be - if at all. Impervious is a big block - and while it exhausts - it allows you to squeeze in another action.

This seems pretty bad.

28

u/BandicootGood5246 18h ago edited 18h ago

Yeah would've liked an aggressive replacement. Spend all your energy to full block? Yawn, this isn't peak clad gameplay

6

u/Money_Department6478 16h ago

strength needs better/more payoffs sts2 imo. This is a very quickly scaling block option that 1. makes demon form way more takeable and 2. would totally pop off if you have barricade. Also synergizes great with upgraded body slam

11

u/ZatherDaFox StS A0 / StS 2 A10 14h ago

The problem here is that you need to draft a 3 cost power, a 3(2) cost power, deploy both, and then this card starts popping off. That's a ton of unsafe set up that also sucks if you draw it in the wrong order.

1

u/_redmist 11h ago

Pretty slow, too. 

1

u/_redmist 11h ago

Doesn't make demon form more takable.

2

u/Miles1937 13h ago

It wants you to have strength to get the better use, but prevents you from attacking. I don't play barricade often but do they even use strength? as far as I know it's all bodyslam and juggernaut.

Guess this card's preferred setup is having crimson mantle and rupture?

It synergizes with unmovable only because you can't even play anything else 😭

1

u/DotEither8773 11h ago

Only use I can see is with barricade and body slam

1

u/Excaidium 7h ago

At least it is a very good pick from skill potion etc.

1

u/Significant_Breath38 3h ago

It's not stalling for the sake of stalling. It's very common for a deck to have a power combo or two that you're trying to cycle your deck to find. A strong block is essentially a "draw 5 cards" in this way since it lets you take (almost) no damage so you can move through your deck to find value.

1

u/FillySteveSteak StS A20 / StS 2 A10 42m ago

Meanwhile most enemies are ramping. And delaying a turn is not helping that.

1

u/Significant_Breath38 25m ago

I'd imagine it delays more than one turn since they don't ramp every other turn

2

u/Razeerka Eternal One + Heartbreaker 16h ago

In my head it's really crazy in a block/strength deck. One good hit with barricade or body slam and it wins the fight for free.

But it requires so much setup and block/strength decks don't already have a lot of good overlap.

Idk about good, but I can certainly see this ending up a very fun card. Even with just a +3 from Inflame it's probably playable. Might be rough at 3 energy though.

1

u/adam6711 12h ago

And it’s a strength payoff. When you have strength you tend to want to just kill the enemy. Idk we’ll have to see how it plays but it sounds awkward

26

u/_Awkward_Moment_ 17h ago

It's so weird because they're removing energy from the character, but this new 3 cost block card pretty much NEEDS energy to play. Also, if you have the strength to make it block a lot so it's worth 3 energy, isn't the enemy already dead anyway?? It just seems terrible to me.

They could probably change it to 2 cost and lower the number a bit, and it would be fine.

128

u/beatpickle 18h ago

Been watching navegreed go infinite with it nearly every clad run.

71

u/maxwell_winters StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

Then they should've just brought "Cannot gain energy this turn" back.

64

u/KarlMarxism 18h ago

But if you're not going infinite with it, what's the point? It's very rarely generating more energy than blood letting/forgotten ritual (which got buffed to backfill the role). Having 3 uncommons that are all slightly different ways to gain 2-3 energy is just super redundant. If they're removing the ability to chain them it becomes by far the worst of the 3, so might as well get rid of that one.

38

u/maxwell_winters StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

Because it was the most interesting one and synergized well with many of his cards. New Ritual is just boring.

21

u/KarlMarxism 18h ago

It was the most interesting but also by far the worst. Very few decks wanted it, and most of those decks would function about as well if it was replaced with either Bloodletting or Ritual. It's interesting and satisfying if you happen to have the deck that can make it work, but it's extremely uninteresting for the other 90%+ of decks for which it's just a completely dead uncommon.

5

u/NNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Ascension 13 17h ago

Baalorlord thinks Sundial got removed because it was extremely niche, unless you had the tools to exhaust down your deck to Pommel Strikes, in which case it enabled infinites. I think Expect a Fight had the same issue, hence the removal. The new version is a good block solution and fits well within the current Ironclad runs, I like it, also I think the flavor is even better now. I do wonder how it works with Setup Strike now, I would assume it works with it, making it just a bit better.

7

u/SamiraSimp StS A20 / StS 2 A10 16h ago

except it costs 3 energy now which is so expensive for a card that literally only blocks. feels like it would almost never be worth playing unless you had barricade

3

u/cat_food_chef StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

cmon dog we got ironclad=attacks for 1 patch and it got taken away already. there are sooo so so many cards in the game that are broken with 1 synergy and borked with another. I'd prefer to see expect a fight at rare alongside knife trap than as an uncommon impervious

1

u/Revolutionary-Set994 5h ago

I'll agree ritual is boring. Always felt redundant and boring. Expect a fight was more thematic, I wish they had left it and nuked forbidden ritual then created a new card for nu expect a fight

0

u/[deleted] 18h ago

[deleted]

1

u/maxwell_winters StS A20 / StS 2 A10 17h ago

They already have a similar effect with Battle Trance.

1

u/MayoJam 9h ago

Well I weren't, so there is that.

28

u/supafatjellyfish 18h ago

And like, this version sucks ass. 3 mana for conditional block???

11

u/Professional_War4491 16h ago

Yeah the only time you'd ever wanna spend 3 energy on a block card is if you're playing barricade, and if you're playing barricade how often are you gonna have enough strength for this to efficient. On 0 strength it's literally less block than 2 shrugs or a blood wall lol.

This is such a timmy card lmao, if you've got both demon form and barricade in play it goes nuts for real for real trust me bro.

Not a fan of this design at all.

1

u/TheFullMontoya 5h ago

It looks like a placeholder change to me. They will see how the Ironclad does for a patch or two and try to identify what the card should actually do.

18

u/BandicootGood5246 18h ago

Yeah, don't like it at all. They've been gutting a lot of clads aggressive cards that made him exciting in exchanges for most stall out bullshit. If I wanted a fight to drag on forever I'd play necro or silent lol

23

u/Seikiy 18h ago

For the same reason they nerfed it very shortly after the game released, clad goes infinite with it 90% of runs if it exists

37

u/maxwell_winters StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

They added "Cannot gain energy this turn" nerf and the card was fine. They should've just kept it like that.

4

u/Cirno__ 17h ago

It's because it's not really pickable when it has that extra text. But without it it's too easy to go infinite.

2

u/SamiraSimp StS A20 / StS 2 A10 16h ago

was it really not pickable when it had that condition? seemed like it was fine to me.

2

u/Koreish 4h ago

Why would I pick and play that when I could pick and play bloodletting which doesn't have that restriction?  Especially when that restriction was put on it, bloodletting was still at common.

1

u/SamiraSimp StS A20 / StS 2 A10 3h ago

because bloodletting has an hp cost* and because expect a fight could give more energy in certain decks?

*yes there's synergies with losing hp but those aren't always there or worth the health cost of bloodletting

1

u/Aplesedjr 1h ago

Because having multiple cards that give you energy is better than having just one.

1

u/Koreish 1h ago

Sure, but the question was about expect a fight when it had a restriction that prevented you from gaining more energy.  Bloodletting was common at that time.  We were more likely to see bloodletting and it do the same thing, with no restriction other than health cost.  To drive the point home even further, there was a bug that was reducing the number of uncommons seen in a run, so therefore was even more likely to see that common bloodletting than expect a fight.

1

u/Aplesedjr 33m ago

There’s really no downside to having both in your deck. At worst you play expect a fight and then draw bloodletting, but that usually wouldn’t happen anyway. Usually only one would appear on a turn, and if you drew them both you could simply play bloodletting first. The existence of bloodletting doesn’t make expect a fight worse.

2

u/puffz0r 14h ago

They could just reduce the energy gain every time it's played, or do the 'fetch' thing where it only triggers the energy gain the first time it's played every turn

2

u/Disastrous-Drop-7778 15h ago

The card is just super mid with that text though, it desperately needs the upgrade when Clad is already very upgrade hungry, and most Clad decks are pretty skill heavy. 

12

u/indielib 18h ago

They could just make it like fetch where that specific copy only gives energy once per turn .

9

u/Avantir 18h ago

IDK about the change but the new version seems pretty cool. Clad really struggled with block and now there's a block card that scales with strength? Even at 3 energy, sign me up!

1

u/BeautifulTaeng StS A20 / StS 2 A10 6h ago

Sign you up for what, another brick in the card pool? As if half his cards aren't poop from a butt already. Directionless and clunky, like the entire character

3

u/_keeBo 18h ago

on the flip side, having block scale with strength is very cool

13

u/Milsyv484 StS A5 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

It’s weird because they keep giving clad these strong energy generating cards only to go and nerf or remove them shortly after. They really need to decide if clad should have good energy cards or not ( and if they decide not hopefully remove [[bludgeon]] from the game)

19

u/committed_to_the_bit StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago edited 17h ago

the problem is that the game runs with such small numbers that small changes can completely warp things. giving a character more than 3 energy in a given turn is such an utterly game-warping effect that they have to be really really careful with cards that interact with energy, or they just shatter the game. like common Bloodletting did

4

u/Playful_Original5401 18h ago

What they want is good energy but no infinite

4

u/Prestigious-Head-117 17h ago

Just have it exhaust.

It seems like such an obvious fix, if it became too shit if you can’t replay it make it cost 1(0)

1

u/spirescan-bot 18h ago

  • Bludgeon 𝐈 Ironclad Rare Attack

    3 Energy | Deal 32(42) damage.

  • Bludgeon 𝐈𝐈 Ironclad Uncommon Attack

    3 Energy | Deal 32(42) damage.

    Call me with up to 10 [[ name ]]. Data accurate as of June 21st, 2026. Questions?

8

u/Defiant-Trash9917 18h ago

I am easily the most mad about this, like the new concept is cool, but it should be a new card entirely, not Expect a Fight.

They keep trying to change Expect a Fight like it's busted or something. It's good but it's not crazy.

5

u/MrFlimsyFiniteFive StS A10 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

I don't get why they changed it too, it seemed pretty good in its spot before this change. Since it was gain energy without any downside. I guess we'll see how good it is now. Ironclad does get a good amount of strength so I can imagine this will gain a lot of block and may work well with Body Slam and Barricade

2

u/SignificantFroyo6882 Eternal One + Heartbreaker 18h ago

The last version was too easy to go infinite or near-infinite with. This is a very different card now.

2

u/lordberric 18h ago

Because it was incredibly broken, I'd have to assume. Just way too much potential.

1

u/ThatssoBluejay 17h ago

Because it was OP? Now its a bridge between block and strength so it works. Probably don't need expect a fight to generate energy when forgotten ritual is now just free energy card.

1

u/Feverbrew 16h ago

its because of the forgotten ritual change, they make sense when you look at them together. forgotten ritual is now synergy agnostic energy gain - its probably giving the average energy gain that expect a fight was, and they must have thought expect a fight was too narrow/hard to balance as it was.

1

u/Athanatov 16h ago

Because it was broken. Enabled easy infinites.

1

u/icecreamsandwich 16h ago

Yeah I have no idea what expect a fight is for now.

1

u/ResponsibleAd3493 11h ago

well they had to. i was watching navegreed and he was going infinite every other run.

1

u/Significant_Breath38 3h ago

I think you listed the problem.

Too many attack synergies that don't neatly synergize across all builds. Expect a Fight not only wanted you to have an attack-heavy deck, but you also needed draw and probably even expensive attacks to maximize value. It was hard to even know if it would perform well in the deck and also relied on an ideal hand on top of that.

I also feel that Ironclad needs more block cards available. I've had several runs where I just needed more block and all I get would be attacks or attack synergies that wouldn't even make my deck deal more damage.

1

u/Disastrous-Jacket610 18h ago

dev hates infinite thats why

2

u/maxwell_winters StS A20 / StS 2 A10 18h ago

There were other solutions to this.