// PC GAMER — GAMING
I've beat Ascension 10 with every character in Slay the Spire 2, and these are the Silent cards I recommend
How to climb the Ascensions as Slay the Spire's silent rogue.
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Now, you might be wondering why this isn't titled "the best builds for Ascension 10", and that's because while builds are still important at higher difficulties in Slay the Spire 2, they're also actually a lie—Ascension 10 isn't about getting the perfect synergy, it's about plugging leaks. Your starter deck is a problem, and you need to fix those problems as quickly and as soon as possible.
I'll get into what Silent's builds are at the end of this article, but really, you'll be better served at Ascension 10 by understanding which cards cover up which weaknesses. Or, as the title might suggest, the best Ascension 10 cards for Silent. Not the best cards overall, but rather, the ones that'll get your hiney out of the fire the fastest. Let's go.
I've beaten Ascension 10 in Slay the Spire 2 on every character at least once, which means I find myself in the enviable/unenviable position of being PC Gamer's resident 'how not to suck at the roguelike deckbuilder' expert, and I'm here to pass on that knowledge to you—firstly with the Silent, STS2's poison-toting rogue.
By far, the most powerful mechanic the Silent has at her disposal is the Sly modifier—wherein if you discard a card with Sly, it'll play anyway. However, this comes with a huge asterisk: You generally don't want to pick most Sly cards before you have a reliable set of discard options, since they usually aren't worth their energy cost alone.
If you get too many Sly cards too early on without ways to get rid of them, you'll have essentially created curses for yourself—and you'll lose in Act 1 to terrible hands that see you eating huge damage.
Other than that, the general priority for Ascension 10 stays true: Get early damage and 1-2 AoE cards, get good defensive/block options, then go for card draw and discard so you can both improve your hands on a turn-by-turn basis and set yourself up for Sly synergies.
These cards aren't necessarily run-winners in their own right—some of them might stay put in your deck for the whole run, while others might be less useful as time goes on. But again, this is A10—you need to cover for your weaknesses as soon as possible, regardless of whether or not these cards fit into your imagined build.
It's all about early value. In the first few floors of any run, your job is to grab cards that are just better than a strike—because strikes don't give you nearly enough damage to get past A10's scarier, tankier fights.