Slay the Spire 2 is a deck-building, roguelike-like game that tasks you with fighting your way through three large dungeons filled with monsters, unknown secrets, and vicious bosses. Fortunately, you can get some help on your travels. At the beginning of each act, you will be introduced to ancient times.
This powerful creature not only heals you, but also gives you one of three options for different buffs, powers, and items you can get from them. Tezcatara is one of these Ancients that can give you a number of options, but her most curious one is the Golden Compass. Here's what you need to know about this special route and whether it's worth choosing.
What is the Golden Compass?
The Golden Compass is one of the offers you can choose that can appear if you get Tezcatar as an Ancient in Act 2. After selecting this route, you will get a unique route on your map this is one line of encounter series: merchant shops, elite battles, unknown places and rest stops. All other options and possible route options are removed, so there is no way to change the outcome of what comes next.
The order of travel for the Golden Compass is:
- Normal enemy battle
- Unknown encounter
- Normal enemy battle
- A place of rest
- Normal enemy battle
- A place of rest
- Unknown encounter
- Chest
- Unknown encounter
- Chest
- Unknown encounter
- Dealer
- Elite battle
- A place of rest
- Elite battle
- A place of rest
- Boss
This path doesn't seem random, which can be beneficial because you'll always know what's coming. However, there is no “unique” aspect to this journey in terms of any special encounters or battles you will undertake. That being said, the sheer abundance of rest stops and unknown encounters can be very beneficial for tuning your deck.
If you've already focused on a specific direction or archetype of your deck, Golden Path is pretty good not only for getting a decent amount of fights to get new cards, but also for ways to improve or thin your deck. I also like the choice of this path because the rest point between elite battles is a nice and safe way to make sure you're ready for those fights.
That being said, the Golden Compass isn't the best offering Tezcatara can show. I recommends choosing either Toy Box or Yummy Cookie over Golden Compassas they can be extremely useful and give your deck some nice performance. This path can also be a bit risky because if something goes wrong in an Elite Battle or one of the Unknown Encounters, you won't have a way to avoid the Elite Battle at the end.
Also, if you've looted a Relic like the Stone Sword that requires completing 5 elite encounters, you may want to just use the normal map. Even though the Golden Compass offers two elites at the end, you may need more and want the Jade Sword active for the Act 2 boss and going into Act 3.
If you're also missing Relics, I recommend checking the normal map first by selecting its icon in the top right corner. Check if there is a path that takes you to more than two chests to make sure you can collect the relics, as you will most likely have to spend your gold either buying or removing cards from the deck. While the predictability of Golden Compass can be an asset, you always want to make sure it offers enough benefits to bolster your overall deck. Not having a solid build for an Act 2 boss will almost guarantee defeat – especially at higher levels of Ascendants!
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