Slay the Spire All Achievements Unlock Tutorial

Note: all of this is in the context of a run that does the Ascension Climb with Watcher. The routing slightly varies with Ironclad as the Ascension Climb character.

In order to easily obtain certain achievements (more info: Achievements @ Slay the Spire Wiki) and also have nice relics for the entire run, certain unlocks must be achieved. Below describes the desirable unlocks for each character.

Ironclad

Ironclad wants his 1st unlocks (Heavy Blade, Spot Weakness, Limit Break) mainly to have Limit Break for Jaxxed (50+ Strength), but also Spot Weakness is a nice bonus and Heavy Blade is a desperation strength scaling pick.

Silent

The choice of Silent's unlocks have variability to them, depending on your preferences. Firstly, Silent more or less needs her 1st unlocks (Bane, Catalyst, Corpse Explosion) mainly to have Catalyst for Catalyst achievement (99+ poison on enemy), but also Corpse Explosion is good AOE. At some point, Silent also needs to play 10 Shivs in a single turn for the Ninja achievement.

The way the category is routed out is that ideally, for the two mandatory Silent runs (A0 and A0H), one run will use Poison for the Poison related achievements, and another run will use Shivs for the Shiv related achievements. While not strictly necessary, Silent's 3rd unlocks (Cloak and Dagger, Accuracy, Storm of Steel) give Accuracy, which tremendeously speeds up Shiv builds (otherwise relying on unreliable strength scaling or Finisher). You also get Cloak and Dagger which is a desperation Shiv pick (maybe the block helps?), Also, Silent's 2nd unlocks (Du-Vu Doll, Smiling Mask, Tiny Chest) give Smiling Mask, which generally helps runs by allowing for more removals. Du-Vu Doll is an honorable mention for giving +1 Strength at A10+ for the ascension climb, and Tiny Chest might act as a poor man's Juzu Bracelet (although in reality it probably just pollutes the relic pool).

Finally, Silent's 4th unlocks (Pandora's Box, Art of War, The Courier) give The Courier, which slightly helps in Shops. Pandora's Box also can help with the other characters (possibly high-rolling into achievement-required cards like Catalyst, Meteor Strike), but it is debatable whether Pandora's Box would help in the Watcher ascension climb, according to Watcher WR holder cosant101.

Depending on how much risk you want to take, you can choose between unlocking between 0 and 4 of

Defect

Defect wants its unlocks from 1 to 3, all listed below:

• Unlock 1: Rebound, Equilibrium, Echo Form
• Unlock 2: TURBO, Sunder, Meteor Strike
• Unlock 3: Hyperbeam, Recycle, Core Surge

The relevant cards are listed below:

• Echo Form: massively assists in obtaining the "Creative AI" achievements (Focused, Powerful, Impervious, and Barricaded) and is one possible piece to obtaining Neon (Channel 9 Plasma in 1 turn)
• TURBO: Can help with initially playing Meteor Strike for Neon
• Meteor Strike: Basically required for the Neon achievement.
• Recycle: Allows you to thin your deck to make obtaining the Neon achievement a LOT more consistent.

However, Defect does NOT want Unlock 4 (Gold-Plated Cables, Turnip, Runic Capacitor), as this adds Turnip to the Relic Pool, which is more or less completely useless on Watcher.

Watcher

Watcher will obtain all her unlocks regardless during the Ascension Climb. Before the Ascension Climb, you only want Unlock 1 (Prostrate, Blasphemy, Devotion), as this gives Blasphemy, allowing for speedy hallway and boss fights. However, this is unlocked anyway via the mandatory Daily Climb which contributes score to unlocks, and which is done with Watcher as Daily Climbs unlock Ascension Mode, which allows us to do one less run with her.

What's the plan for unlocks

As it turns out, Custom and Seeded runs count towards unlocks (why? who knows). The route will abuse both to efficiently obtain score, obtaining unlocks so fast that it is actually (probably) worthwhile to acquire unlocks before doing runs with each character.

How unlocks work:

There are 5 score thresholds for each unlock (5 total):

• 1st unlock: 300
• 2nd unlock: 750
• 3rd: 1000
• 4th: 1500
• 5th: 2000

The game will add your final run score to your total unlock score. If you cross an unlock threshold, you unlock new unlocks, and your remaining score carries over for the next unlock. However, you cannot unlock more than one set of unlocks for each run. The game will cap your score to be 1 point before the next unlock if you were to unlock multiple unlocks in one run, e.g. if you end with a score of 1500 with no unlocks, the game will unlock the 1st unlock, and then you will end up with 999 score, preventing you from getting a 2nd unlock. This means that you have to do a minimum number of runs to achieve a specific number of unlocks.

Score is obtained exclusively via the Collector bonus, which gives you 25 points for each set of 4 or more same cards, and the Encyclopedian bonus, which gives you 50 points for having 50 or more cards in your deck (more info: Score @ Slay the Spire Wiki). Interestingly, both bonuses will count even if you do not complete the run, which is unlike other score bonuses such as Well Fed and Pauper. This allows us to obtain score simply by abandoning at Floor 0, which is much much faster than needing to play through the run.

Custom runs are used as the modifiers allow us to easily obtain a large deck with many cards (more info: Custom Mode @ Slay the Spire Wiki).

The five modifiers that are used are as follows: Insanity, Draft, Hoarder, Specialized, and All Star:

• Hoarder: Whenever you add a card to your deck, add two more. Affects all relevant modifiers except Insanity.
• Insanity: Start with a deck of 50 random cards.
• Draft: Choose 15 cards from a set of 3 (like the card reward screen but without skip) in order. This is one of the two main ways to quickly obtain cards. Note that this modifier is incompatible with All Star, even though it is not enforced on the Custom Mode modifier screen.
• Specialized: Start with 5 (15 with Hoarder) copies of a single card.
• All Star: Start with 5 colorless cards.

However, it's not as simple as just picking a combination of the above modifiers that gives the max score. The first thing is that certain modifier combinations are slower than others, so there's a chance to optimize what "score strategies" to use. The second, probably more important thing, is that you want to avoid over-unlocking, which is mainly relevant for Defect to avoid unlocking Turnip at its 4th unlocks, and possibly Silent, depending on if you want her 4th unlocks (mainly Pandora's Box and The Courier).

After extensive testing, I have devised the following modifier combinations (referred to as "modifier strategies"), each with a maximum score (at least the maximum I was bothered to find, go ask me (luckytyphlosion) if you really care about the theoretical limits) and efficiency. They are listed below (with their names), in order of fastest to slowest:

Insanity:

• Modifiers: Insanity
• Max score: 275
• Description: The fastest modifier strategy. Abandon immediately upon loading floor 0.

Insanity+:

• Modifiers: Draft + Insanity + Specialized
• Max score: 300
• Description: Like Insanity, but with 25 extra points from the Specialized modifier. Draft is chosen as when Draft is combined with Specialized, the Specialized cards are immediately added to the deck upon pressing the "Talk" button, as opposed to needing to press the "Talk" and "Confirm" button with Specialized alone.

Insanity*:

• Modifiers: Hoarder + Insanity + All Star
• Max score: 325
• Description: Instead of obtaining extra Collector bonuses with Specialized, obtain them with All Star and Hoarder, as you can get up to two extra bonuses instead of one. Note that for some reason, Draft is incompatible with All Star, so you need to advance through two buttons ("Talk" and "Confirm") instead of one before abandoning.

Insanity++:

• Modifiers: Hoarder + Insanity + Specialized + All Star
• Max score: 350
• Description: The most score you can achieve without picking Draft cards. Like Insanity*, but you also add in additional cards from Specialized.

Bigdeck:

• Modifiers: Draft + Hoarder + Insanity + Specialized
• Max score: 575
• Description: The main modifier strategy to obtaining score. Like Insanity+, but this time you actually select cards from Draft. Needing to decide which cards to pick is slow, so you just mash on a card row. There are actually two strategies for picking Draft cards. The first, safer strategy, is to just always pick the center cards. The second, faster but riskier strategy, is to put your cursor on either the left or right border of the center card, and mash as fast as possible. This allows you to pick the left or right card before it fully appears, which is faster than only choosing the center card. A demonstration can be found at 0:08 of this video. However, it is risky, in that as seen in the video, if you don't mash fast enough, or you misalign your cursor, you will not obtain the cards, and you will have to choose from the left or right card for the rest of the Draft, which is much slower than choosing the center card. Seeds are provided for both the center and left/right strategies.

So how does this incorporate into the route?

Firstly, a quick note on entering seeds. From basic testing, it seems that you must wait a bit before pasting in a Custom Seed, while there is no delay when typing in a Custom Seed. Therefore, to save like 0.5 seconds or something, you want to prefer typing in a Custom Seed if possible. All of the seeds listed were either chosen based on how easy they were to type, or ease of typing wasn't considered at all (for the more "lucky" seeds). Use your judgement and your skill in typing to determine if you want to type out the seeds listed.

Again, let's review each character (except Watcher, as discussed above why), this time with the knowledge that we can obtain unlocks before playing the character.

Ironclad

Ironclad's strategy is relatively simple. Just do an Insanity+ strategy which gives you 300 points, exactly enough for his 1st unlocks. The seed is as follows: VTZPM6

Silent

For Silent, you would achieve these unlocks before starting the A0 run with her, to maximize usefulness of the unlocks. As discussed earlier, Silent has variability in her unlocks depending on your personal preferences. Therefore, I have devised all of the relevant possible unlock strategies, listed below:

• Unlock 1: Insanity+ (300). This is the bare minimum unlocks that you would want for Silent (just Catalyst for the Catalyst achievements).
• Unlock 2: Bigdeck (575) x2. You get a bit more points than needed for Unlock 2, as the idea of stopping at Unlock 2 is so that you have Catalyst for the A0 run, and after the A0 run you obtain enough points for her 3rd unlocks to obtain Accuracy. Incidentally, this will avoid obtaining Silent's 4th unlocks, which may be preferable to you depending on if you want The Courier and Pandora's Box or not.
• Unlock 3: Bigdeck (575) x3 + Insanity* (325). Stopping at Silent's 3rd unlocks allows you to have the option of doing either Shivs or Poison for the A0 run (or possibly both), and the other strategy for the A0H run. Note that you will (probably) unlock Silent's 4th unlocks after her A0H run, which may be preferable to you depending on if you want The Courier and Pandora's Box or not.
• Unlock 4: Bigdeck (575) x5 + Insanity++ (350) x2. The aim of unlocking Silent's 4th unlocks is similar to the aim of unlocking her 3rd unlocks, except you also get Pandora's Box and The Courier for the following runs: Silent A0, Defect A0H, Silent A0H. This slightly increases your chances of lucking into achievement-required cards (e.g. Catalyst and Meteor Strike), and potentially opens up savescumming shops as well (I'm looking at you, Meteor Strike and Recycle), if you find The Courier. However, the time taken to do the additional three custom runs may not be worth the ever-so-slight increased chance of obtaining achievements.

Below are the seeds for all the modifier strategies listed:

• Insanity+ (300): ALHQUA1UNYYT
• Insanity* (325) and Insanity++ (350): NKY8Q0
• Bigdeck (575):
  • Left (left/right strategy, pick on left): FX93RF6XNBQ1
  • Center (center strategy): 21MNGWFLVS84D

Defect

Defect is the most complicated of all characters relating to unlocks. To re-iterate Defect's unlocks from 1 to 3:

• Unlock 1: Rebound, Equilibrium, Echo Form
• Unlock 2: TURBO, Sunder, Meteor Strike
• Unlock 3: Hyperbeam, Recycle, Core Surge

Now, you don't want to have any Defect unlocks during A0, as that is when you do the Common Sense achievement (only common cards), and all of the unlocked common cards are useless for the achievement run strategy and therefore pollutes the common pool, increasing the average run time. This is especially important as the Defect A0 run is not really the first reset point; it is the Ironclad A0 run, as after you do Defect A0, the 2nd Act 3 boss will always be Donu and Deca, which are required for the Ooh Donut! achievement (Feed Donu). Because you do the ascension climb with Watcher, and because the Ironclad A0H run will have a random Act 3 boss, this is the time where you get the Ooh Donut! achievement, resetting if you don't. Therefore, you want to

One possibility is to try to do the Creative AI achievements and Neon during the A0 run. However, trying to juggle said achievements with Common Sense is too much to handle. One point common to both achievements is that they require potion support, which means that you have less potion support for the Act bosses, increasing your risk of dying and the average run time.

For the Creative AI achievements, there are three points against obtaining them now instead of in the A0H run. First, for Creative AI achievements, as that massively speeds up your Focus and Loop gain from Defragment and Loop respectively. This means polluting the common pool with Rebound, increasing the average run time. Secondly, while you still do savescum for Creative AI from a potion, it's harder to get Creative AI off the ground, as you don't have helper powers or cards that you would have in the A0H run (such as Glacier, Echo Form, some initial powers to scale your block enough to be auto-blocking every turn). Third, the luck required to obtain the Creative AI achievements is (probably) less than the luck required to obtain Feed, which means you have stronger reset efficiency by doing Creative AI achievements on the Defect A0H run than the Defect A0 run.

For the Neon achievement, the points against doing so now are even stronger. First, you need Defect's unlocks up to 2 for Meteor Strike and Turbo, so you pollute the common pool even worse than with Creative AI. Second, you can't actually pick up a Meteor Strike (due to the common only requirement), so you have to fish one from an Attack Potion or Nilry's Codex, or remove it before the Act 3 boss. Third, you can't have Recycle in your deck either (again either obtaining it from a Potion or Nilry's Codex), and your deck will contain no powers, so it's unlikely that your deck will be thin enough to be able to play Meteor Strike three times in a turn. Fourth, you won't have helper powers or cards either, such as Echo Form or Skim, which can help in obtaining the achievement. While Neon is the most luck-based achievement by far, doing it in the Defect A0 run is simply not worth it, especially when you still need to find Feed with Ironclad right after.

So, it's established that you don't unlock anything for Defect A0, but you would obtain unlocks for Defect A0H. The unlocks you want are fixed: you just want Unlocks 1 to 3.

However, the complicated part is that you end up with a variable score at the end of your Defect A0 run. This goes back to the two points raised when initially discussing about the rationale for different modifier strategies. To re-iterate, the two points were optimizing which modifier strategies to use, and to avoid over-unlocking Turnip. To solve both of these issues, I created a table, containing what modifier strategies to use depending on what your Defect A0 score ends up as. The table is below:

Score	Modifier strategies	Alternate modifier strategies	Explanation for alternate modifier strategies
675~699	Bigdeck (575) x2 + Insanity (225)
700~724	Bigdeck (575) x2 + Insanity (200)
725~749	Bigdeck (575) x2 + Insanity (175)	Bigdeck (575) x2 + Insanity (200)	Insanity (200)'s seed is 1 less character to type but gives +25 more score
750~774	Bigdeck (550) x2 + Insanity (200)
775~799	Bigdeck (575) + Insanity++ (350) x2
800~824	Bigdeck (550) + Insanity++ (350) x2	Bigdeck (575) + Insanity++ (350) + Insanity* (325)	You save one mouse click with the alternate strategy!!1
825~849	Bigdeck (575) + Insanity* (325) x2
850~874	Bigdeck (550) + Insanity* (325) x2	Bigdeck (575) + Insanity* (325) + Insanity+ (300)	You save one mouse click with the alternate strategy!!1
875~899	Bigdeck (575) + Insanity+ (300) x2
900~924	Bigdeck (575) x2
925~949	Bigdeck (575) x2	Bigdeck (575) + Bigdeck (550)	If you think the 25 extra points will push you to Unlock 4
950~974	Bigdeck (550) x2
975~999	Bigdeck (550) x2	Bigdeck (550) + Bigdeck (525)	If you think the 25 extra points will push you to Unlock 4
1000~1024	Bigdeck (525) x2
1025+	Bigdeck (525) x2	Bigdeck (525) + Bigdeck (500)	If you think the 25 extra points will push you to Unlock 4
---

And all the relevant seeds are below:

• Bigdeck (575):
  • Left: BHN2UW
  • Center: 1CRSB9AGP4J5Q
• Bigdeck (550):
  • Left: BEZU1
  • Center: 1Z6NUA
• Bigdeck (525):
  • Right: RCI6
  • Center: RYCRH or WGXBY (depends on which you find easier to type if you choose to)
• Bigdeck (500):
  • Right: CWFC
  • Center: 4C7G
• Insanity++ (350) and Insanity* (325): 2EX1WPAPHEKZF
• Insanity+ (300): VZ9K6 or 2EX1WPAPHEKZF
• Insanity (225): XW5
• Insanity (200): 3
• Insanity (175): AE

Alternative plaintext table

== 675~699 (total required score 1375) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 x2 + insanity 225

== 700~724 (total required score 1350) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 x2 + insanity 200

== 725~749 (total required score 1325) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 x2 + insanity 200 OR insanity 175
(insanity 200 is 1 less character to type than insanity 175)

== 750~774 (total required score 1300) ==
strategy: bigdeck 550 x2 + insanity 200

== 775~799 (total required score 1275) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 + insanity++ 350 x2

== 800~824 (total required score 1250) ==
strategy:
- bigdeck 575 + insanity++ 350 + insanity* 325 (you save one mouse click here!!1)
- bigdeck 550 + insanity++ 350 x2

== 825~849 (total required score 1225) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 + insanity* 325 x2

== 850~874 (total required score 1200) ==
strategy:
- bigdeck 575 + insanity* 325 + insanity+ 300 (you save one mouse click here!!1)
- bigdeck 550 + insanity* 325 x2

== 875~899 (total required score 1175) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 + insanity+ 300 x2
 
== 900~924 (total required score 1150) ==
strategy: bigdeck 575 x2

== 925~949 (total required score 1125) ==
strategy:
- bigdeck 575 x2
- bigdeck 575 + bigdeck 550 (if you think the 25 extra points will push you to unlock 4)

== 950~974 (total required score 1100) ==
strategy: bigdeck 550 x2

== 975~999 (total required score 1075) ==
strategy:
- bigdeck 550 x2
- bigdeck 550 + bigdeck 525 (if you think the 25 extra points will push you to unlock 4)

== 1000~1024 (total required score 1050) ==
strategy: bigdeck 525 x2

== 1025~1049 (total required score 1025) ==
strategy:
- bigdeck 525 x2
- bigdeck 525 + bigdeck 500 (if you think the 25 extra points will push you to unlock 4)

Extra

One small thing to note is that for Insanity and Draft, the cards that are chosen are not truly random but are chosen according to the Card Rarity algorithm with offset percentage -5% (more info: Card Rewards @ Slay the Spire Wiki). This means that Insanity and Draft will never generate rare cards, which actually (probably) helps in finding these seeds. However, specialized uniformally chooses from all cards, and All Star uses the random colorless card algorithm.