After beating one of the Act One bosses in Slay the Spire 2, you’ll encounter Tezcatara, one of the Ancients in the game. This is one of the biggest changes from the original; whereas before, you’ll only receive blessings from Neow, the whale-like creature, at the very start of the run. Now you’ll find one at the start of each act.
Tezcatara, entitled “It Which Feeds the Fire”, offers you a Toy Box, containing four Wax Relics. This isn’t as straightforward when compared to the other offerings, but it could just give you the boost needed to push through Slay the Spire 2’s second act.
What are Wax Relics?
Wax Relics are a powerful set of 4 Relics that you can get from the Toy Box offered by Tazcatara, at the start of the second Act. By now, you would have noticed that boss relics, the usual powerful relics received from beating bosses in the first game, are absent in the sequel. This time around, they have been replaced by meeting an Ancient at the start of each act, letting you field blessings from other beings aside from Neow.
These diverse blessings range from simple acts like obtaining cards, relics, and deck manipulation to riskier effects that come with drawbacks, like Neow’s blessing that lets you upgrade the first three card rewards at the cost of emptying the first chest.
Tazcatara, a large witch surrounded by equally massive candles, approaches you at the start of Slay the Spire 2’s second act. The alternative Ancient that can appear during this time is Pael, Melting Dragon, who offers blessings that center around the Exhaust card effects.
The most curious of Tazcatara’s offerings is the Toy Box. This item grants the player four Wax Relics, immediately giving them four temporary relics. In my playthroughs, I was only able to get common and uncommon relics, but maybe luck would shine down on me soon enough.
Four relics in Slay the Spire 2 are a big power spike. The caveat is that after every three combat encounters, the left-most Wax Relic will melt away, disabling the relic. You can’t rearrange relics after picking them up, so make sure to carefully choose the order in which you take them.
The first relic you pick up will be the left-most one, which will be the first relic to disappear. For my choices for the Wax Relics in the picture above, I was playing the Necrobinder with multiple power cards and block cards. I picked up Wax Mummified Hand last, as it synergized most with my power card and high-cost skills.
Should you choose Wax Relics?
While temporary, Wax Relics are a great choice since they can offset a bad deck, giving you a safety blanket or borrowed power while optimizing your deck. Even if you start Act Two with a decent deck, the Wax Relics lets you focus more on pathing toward unknown rooms, instead of searching for cards in combat encounters.
For me, I’m a certified elite hunter, pathing towards routes where I would fight the most elites for more relics. I’m not playing to survive in Act One: either I dominate and walk out rich or die trying. Toy Box’s Wax Relics is something I’ll seriously consider when RNG just isn’t my side for relics, and I need upfront power to tackle Act Two’s boss.
However, Teztacara’s other offerings are great when you’re already coming into the act fairly strong and need to start optimizing the deck. Yummy Cookie upgrades four cards, and that’s perfect when you already have a good combo going. Another strong choice for Ironclad is Toasty Mittens, where it exhausts the top card of your Draw Pile every turn but grants you 1 strength.
