The Silent: Speedster Guide

The guide is for a build that I managed to put together that I quite enjoyed. The playstyle is incredibly simple. Our whole goal is to play Speedster and then loop together as many draw spells as humanly possible. This is my first guide and this build was my first successful run in Slay The Spire 2. So, don't take my word as gospel. I'll try to explain the build and why I choose certain abilities as well as I can. Let's get started.

Speeder is our main damage dealing ability in this build. As such we'll be drawing and cycling through our deck multiple times per turn. It's worth upgrading because it goes from 2-3 damage when upgraded and as you can see Speedster doesn't do a lot of damage by itself. You could probably cycle through the deck indefinitely with the abilities that I've chosen but you won't be doing as much damage without Speedster.



Acrobatics becomes a great damage dealing ability with speedster and it was my card draw engine of choice. It also discards a card which enables cards that have the Sly keyword (more about the Sly keyword with our next ability). Get as many copies as you can carry.



Tactician, along with the relic Very Hot Cocoa, is what allows us to spam Acrobatics to our heart's content. The Sly keyword allows us to discard Tactician to Acrobatics' trigger but still get the benefit. This in turn lets us loop card draw and deal nearly infinite damage.



Grand Finale can only be played when your draw deck is empty which seems like a pretty big down side. Well, guess what? Our draw deck is almost always empty. I will admit that it doesn't always line up exactly but in this setup, Grand Finale is pretty consistent. However, we don't need Grand Finale for this deck to work. It's just a nice damage boost.



Tools of the Trade is a wonderful little ability for this build. It costs zero. It draws and discards a card on the start of our turn. So, we'll always have at least one Speedster trigger and we automatically get to discard any card with Sly in our hands. It's perfect. However, this will only trigger if we break our loop which shouldn't happen but if it does Tools of the Trade is a nice boost for the build.



Reflex is a card that we will never hard cast. It's there to be discarded for its Sly cost to draw us more cards but hey, free card draw is free card draw.



Prepared is another great source of card draw. It costs zero so it won't break our cycling loop and when upgraded it draws two cards and discards two cards. Highly recommended for this build.



Apotheosis is an ability from Nonupeipe, the Ancient in the third floor of the Spire. The Innate keyword means it starts in our hand, so it's always available to cast on turn one. It's a massive buff to all of our abilities and it's definitely worth taking.

Four free energy at the start of the turn? Don't mind if I do. This relic enables us to cast Acrobatics a number of times to dig for Speedster if it isn't in our opening hand. Otherwise, we can cast speeder and any card drawing effects to look for Tactician and keep looping our card draw/discard engine.



Initially, I believed the cards drawn from this relic would do damage on our opponents turn which would have made this worth using. However, after double checking, Speedster only triggers during our turn which decreases the value of this relic. It's definitely not necessary for the build but it does offer a little extra card selection which is okay.



This relic isn't super impactful in the long run and it's a very minor piece of the overall build. Still, getting free cards for casting Speedster or Tools of the Trade is pretty good.

This this my first guide for any game ever. I hope that it was easy to follow and understand. If there are any suggestions for how to improve this guide, I'd love to hear them!