How to Play The Necrobinder in Slay the Spire 2

At last, Slay the Spire II is here, and with it comes a whole host of new exciting goodies. From brand-new classes to fresh cards, relics and, of course, combat encounters, Slay The Spire fans and Roguelikerenegades are going to be eating well for a long time!

One of these new classes is the Necrobinder: a skeletal summoner capable of calling forth a bony companion to deal some damage and take those brutal hits. And, I have to say, Mega Crit has been cooking with this one, as the Necrobinder can be extremely powerful when it all comes together!

So let’s take a look at this new class and how to make the most of their terrifying talents.

Class Identity

The Necrobinder’s starting class relic is called Bound Phylactery. When you start combat, you will summon Osty, a trusty Bone-hand companion.

Starting off, Osty only has 1HP and can tank damage before it gets to you. If Osty dies, it will re-summon at the start of your next turn. If it doesn’t die in that turn, it will gain another 1HP.

Of course, there are ways to buff Osty, with the new Summon Keyword, which adds health to its total HP pool. In addition, Osty can also attack enemies for you with certain cards. For example, 2 of the starting cards are called Bodyguard and Unleash. Bodyguard will add 5 HP to Osty, while Unleash will force Osty to attack, gaining extra damage depending on how much health Osty has.

However, this isn’t the only tool in the Necrobinder’s arsenal. Many of the builds rely on the arcane and the spiritual, with a focus on sacrificing yourself to deal damage and inflicting lots of debuffs on your opponents. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you can climb the Spire with the Necrobinder.

Build Variants

Summoner’s Servant

Firstly, let’s build a little more on the Osty build, as that might be the most obvious for newer players. There are plenty of ways to build up your companion, so not only do you not take any damage, but you don’t even have to attack your opponents yourself.

First off, you’re going to want a good few cards that have the new Summon Keyword. For example, like Reanimate, a rare card that gives Osty a massive 20 Health. Combining this with Unleash can give you some massive damage output.

Tip: Look out for the Bone Flute Relic, giving you a way to block while Osty does the work for you!

However, you can also choose, instead of getting big numbers, to go for death by a thousand cuts… no, not the Silent card. What I mean is attacking many times, dealing little bits of damage with cards like Snap and Flatten. Once you’ve built up a nice number of attacks, you can use something like Rattle, which stacks up those individual attacks, dealing a truly ridiculous amount of damage, with a little prep.

The Spire’s Doom

Another interesting mechanic that you’ll see a lot of when climbing the spire is Doom. It took me a while to figure this one out, but it’s very powerful when the pieces come together, a little bit like Poison for the Silent.

When you inflict Doom onto a target, they will die as soon as their HP equals the Doom stacks. Luckily, there are so many ways to inflict this Debuff.

You can use basic cards like Negative Pulse to defend yourself while applying Doom to all enemies, and then No Escape to compound that Doom, and grow it even further. If you want, you can use Power cards like Friendship to reduce your own strength for more energy, as this deck doesn’t use as many attacks. Add on Sleight of Flesh for even more Debuffing shenanigans.

However, if you still want to inflict a lot of damage, consider something like Reaper Form, which inflicts Doom based on the damage of your attacks. Like the other Form cards, this is very expensive, but with the right support, it can be a game-changer. If you find yourself low on health, the Book Repair Knife Relic can sort out that problem.

Souls for the Lich

The Necrobinder comes with a new Skill card, which is added to your deck through the use of other cards. This card is called Soul and costs 0 energy to play, giving 2 cards.

This isn’t really its own deck, but can be used as a superfast draw engine to benefit other builds. There are plenty of ways to add tons of Souls into your deck, meaning you can cycle through cards really quickly.

In addition, if you find yourself picking up a lot of Soul cards like Seance, Dirge, Severance and Soul Storm, you should definitely pick up the Power card Haunt. Haunt will deal 6 damage to a random enemy every time you play a Soul, turning those souls into a sort of rapid-fire machine gun. This might not win the fight on its own, but you really can’t sniff at free extra damage for 1 energy!

Big Damage and Debuffs

Ironclad fans rejoice! Oddly enough, the Necrobinder comes with some ridiculously powerful cards that put Bludgeon to shame!

This is a really simple build that relies on finding cards that deal a stupid amount of damage. Necrobinder has a few, like Bury and Reap. These may be high-cost cards, but we also have loads of ways to gain bonus energy, like with Neurosurge, Friendship and Wisp, so that isn’t an issue.

The real damage, however, comes from exploiting the Vulnerable Debuff. Firstly, you’ll want to inflict Vulnerable with Fear or Putrefy, and then use Debilitate to make an enemy even more susceptible to this debuff. Doing this can often make your single attacks deal over 100 damage in a single hit. Getting bonus strength is, naturally, very useful here.

Fear the Reaper

Finally, I wanted to talk a little bit about the Scythe card, as it can carry you on its own under the right conditions.

The Scythe is a Rare card that initially deals 13 damage for 2 energy. However, every time you use this card, it permanently increases the damage by 3 or 4 for the upgraded version.

While this does have Exhaust, meaning you can only use it once per fight, if you can find a way to bring it back from the exhaust pile, you can keep upgrading it over the course of a run, allowing it to get ridiculously powerful, as long as you use it at least once every fight.

This deck is only really worth it if you can find Scythe in Act 1, but in a small deck that stacks a lot of debuffs, it can be a brutally strong tool.