Slay the Spire 2 Beta v0.104.0 Reworks Core Cards and Softens Lower Ascension Runs

April 24 beta patch keeps the difficulty argument moving

Slay the Spire 2 pushed beta patch v0.104.0 on April 24. Mega Crit says the base difficulty is still too hard for a wide slice of players, so the team is continuing to tune the lower end while preserving the idea that top Ascension clears should stay rare. That philosophy shows up all across the notes. Lower Ascensions are being eased piece by piece, but the studio is not backing away from a punishing high-end climb.

Card reworks, new badges, and a Doormaker hold

The patch reworks several cards rather than just nudging numbers. Conflagration now deals area damage in multiple hits, Drum of Battle becomes a skill that pays out energy when exhausted, and Parry shifts its block effect directly onto Sovereign Blade. Mega Crit also added three new badges, changed Axebots into a single tougher encounter, and made sure the Terminal modifier can no longer drop a player below 1 HP. The most watched call, though, is what did not change much. Mega Crit says the much-debated Doormaker is still being monitored and that data from millions of runs puts it slightly below the other Act 3 bosses in kill rate and damage dealt.

The patch pushes lower Ascensions down and top-end runs up

Version 0.104.0 continues the split approach that has defined the recent beta branch. Several enemies were weakened at lower Ascensions, while some late-game health and difficulty curves were tightened higher up. Neow’s Fury now lets players choose the cards it pulls back, multiplayer scaling got another nerf, and the UI now shows clearer errors when feedback is not received. The result is a patch that tries to make early and mid-level learning cleaner without walking away from a harder mastery ceiling.

Reddit reaction stayed locked on annoyance, not just difficulty

The r/Games thread sat at 267 points and 127 comments at crawl time. The top replies immediately swung back to the game’s review-bomb story and to whether Mega Crit should keep defending its own direction. A repeated theme was that players can tolerate hard encounters more easily than irritating ones, with Doormaker used as the main example. That distinction matters for this patch. The studio is clearly tuning around data, while a chunk of the community is still arguing from feel.

Source: Steam patch notes · Reddit discussion