Slay the Spire 2 Necrobinder character guide - strategy, builds, and tier list

How do you play The Necrobinder in Slay the Spire 2? In an effort to stop the monsters from emerging from the Spire and spilling into The Capital, 12 explorers set out on an expedition to save their town. Though they never made it home, two of them gave birth to a child inside the Spire. After encountering a forbidden grimoire that changed her life forever, that child became known as The Necrobinder.

Fighting alongside her trusty companion, Osty, The Necrobinder is one of the new Slay the Spire 2 characters to climb the cursed structure. She may have the lowest health among the cast in the card game, but don't let that deter you from learning how to play this supernatural being. The best Necrobinder builds offer a range of playstyles, utilizing Souls to transform Osty into a killing machine and inflicting Doom upon everyone in sight.

There are three primary deck archetypes to build towards with The Necrobinder: Souls, Osty, and Doom. She also has access to some cards with Ethereal synergies, but these largely work best when used with a Soul deck.

In The Necrobinder's default deck, you're given cards that buff Osty, but if your chosen build doesn't utilize Osty to its full potential, you can simply use this as another form of block. Osty will take any damage that you incur if you run out of block, reducing its health instead before draining yours.

The Necrobinder starts off with a solid block foundation, though she struggles to deal enough damage in fights against elite enemies. The first thing you'll want to do, especially in the later Slay the Spire 2 Ascension levels, is to grab attack cards right away. To add a layer of consistency to your deck, you should consider adding cards like Seance to remove any unwanted cards and Dredge to replay your most important cards.

The Necrobinder Souls build

Souls are a unique mechanic to The Necrobinder, giving her access to a zero-Mana skill that draws two cards and exhausts after you play it. The Necrobinder has several cards that produce Souls, with most of them cycling these cards into your deck.

Cycling through your deck is always a good thing in STS2, as it lets you use your deck's most important cards without having to wait multiple turns for them to show up. The cards with the Soul keyword are generally on the stronger side, making them useful in practically every Necrobinder deck.

Here are some Souls cards you should aim to acquire right away:

• Grave Warden
• Reave
• Graveblast

We know Graveblast isn't a Souls card per se, but it does allow you to replay your main cards, which makes it incredibly powerful at every stage of the game. Grave Warden and Reave also aren't fantastic cards, but they'll give you the Souls you need to power your draw engine. Once you're able to consistently draw into your Souls, you need to start searching for stronger Souls cards to take the build to another level.

Add these Souls cards to your deck once your draw engine is active:

• Capture Spirit
• Dirge
• Haunt
• Severance

These cards will fill your deck up with Souls while helping you clear most floors in Act 1 and Act 2. Capture Spirit is a cheap way to add Souls to your deck, Dirge pairs extremely well with Borrowed Time, and Severance keeps your damage output nice and high. It's important that you start to look for your finisher cards by the end of Act 2; without them, it'll be difficult to make it through Act 3.

Important Souls cards to add to your deck by the time you reach Act 3:

• Death March
• Soul Storm
• Spirit of Ash
• Devour Life

By Act 3, you should be able to cycle through your entire deck after four turns. With power cards like Haunt and Devour Life, you'll be able to defend yourself from any attacks while dishing out damage just by playing Soul cards. Soul Storm is the perfect finisher card, giving you a way to close out fights after playing tens of Souls, and Death March can be useful when you find yourself with an abundance of Souls and Mana to play.

The Necrobinder Osty build

The Necrobinder Osty build is the easiest to get to grips with as the Summon mechanic is fairly simple to understand. Osty isn't affected by most debuffs; likewise, it doesn't receive any buffs that you earn. You can use this to your advantage with cards like Friendship and Shared Fate to reduce your damage output without sacrificing Osty's.

Your main objective is to play Summon cards to bolster Osty, turning it from a minion with 1 HP to a boss-level companion that can dish out one-shot kills with just a single card. Your primary way of dealing damage with Osty in Act 1 will be with Unleash which features in the starting deck. This can be upgraded as part of future act rewards to turn it into Protector, the strongest card you can get for an Osty deck.

Just like with The Regent which primarily focuses on Stars, The Necrobinder's main deck archetype is Souls, so you'll want to add Osty-related cards to a deck that also has Souls cards in it. As we've already pointed out, Souls are a great way to cycle through your deck to get the cards you need, pairing perfectly with an Otsy build.

Here are some Summon cards you should aim to acquire right away:

• Bodyguard
• Afterlife
• Spur
• Necro Mastery

Now that your Osty can survive most encounters without worrying about being reduced to 1 HP, you can focus on dealing damage. Osty has several attacks that synergize with each other, giving you access to considerable damage that doesn't require you to spend a lot of Mana on.

In addition to Unleash, you'll want to add these Osty attack cards to your deck:

• Fetch
• Flatten
• Right Hand Hand
• Rattle

Fetch may only deal a small amount of damage, but by attacking first, you enable Flatten's effect which reduces the Mana cost to zero. This combo alone deals 15 damage, and then you can finish it off with Rattle to bring that up to 29 damage, all for just one Mana. If you're able to cycle through your deck with Souls, you can do this multiple times in one turn.

There will be fights where you can't keep Osty alive long enough to get a strong attack from Unleash. If you can, you should try to acquire a copy of Squeeze to add to your deck. Not only does this tie into the Osty combo by dealing a bare minimum of 25 damage, but most importantly, it gives you an alternate win condition. Chances are, you will have played a few damage cards by the time you get to Squeeze, and we've seen this card dish out hundreds of damage by the end of a long fight.

The Necrobinder Doom build

Of all The Necrobinder deck archetypes, Doom feels like the one that needs the most work. More so than the other archetypes, Doom requires the full suite of unlocks to truly shine, so you may want to avoid this build if you haven't had a chance to unlock all of The Necrobinders cards.

Unlike The Silent's poison mechanic, Doom only kills minions at the end of the turn. While this doesn't sound terrible on paper, this means there will be times when enemies have enough Doom to die, and yet they still have a turn to dish out one final attack. You can definitely make Doom work, even at higher Ascension levels, but it requires significant effort to do so.

Here are some Doom cards you should aim to acquire right away:

• Negative Pulse
• Defy
• Enfeebling Touch

Defy and Enfeebling Touch don't apply Doom, but they'll increase your chances of survival by weakening enemies during turns when you're trying to build up the effect. On a similar note, some of the more powerful Doom cards require a lot of Mana to play, so you'll want to pick up cards like Invoke, Borrowed Time, and Delay that allow you to stall for time.

At the start of your run, you'll most likely apply Doom as a side effect of picking up better cards, letting you pick off enemies when they reach under 20 HP. Doom shines in Act 1 thanks to most of the enemies sporting low health pools, creating excellent targets to pull into the underworld. With that said, we know just how tempting it is to make a deck focused entirely around Doom right away, but this is difficult to pull off without a solid structure first.

Add these Doom cards to your deck at some point during Act 2:

• Deathbringer
• End of Days
• Shroud
• Reaper Form

These expensive Doom cards are difficult to play, so you're going to need a powerful Osty to tank damage or the ability to chain debuffs to reduce any incoming damage during this window. Once you're able to start generating more Mana and you have sufficient card draw, Doom finally becomes a viable option as you approach Act 3. If you're lucky enough to play Reaper Form without dying, you should have everything you need to win most fights from this point onwards.

The Necrobinder card tier list

When you're stuck on the card reward screen or in a shop unsure what to pick, our Necrobinder card tier list should help remove any decision paralysis you're having. The tier list does involve a bit of self-analysis to determine exactly what suits your deck, but most of the time, the option should be obvious once you know what to avoid.

Here's our Necrobinder card tier list, ranking cards from best to worst:

And now you know how to play the Necrobinder in Slay the Spire 2. Once you've got some games under your belt, it won't be long before you end up clearing Ascension 10 and having to wait for the Slay the Spire 2 roadmap to add more content to the roguelike game.