Slay the Spire 2 Bestiary Guide: What It Tracks and How to Use It

A Reference Tab That Was Missing

Slay the Spire 2 went a long time without a proper way to look up what an enemy does outside of combat. If a Hexaghost variant blindsided you, your only fix was to die, remember, and do better next run. The v0.107.1 Major Update 2, which shipped on June 19, 2026, finally added a Bestiary to close that gap.

It’s a small feature on paper. It’s a big one in practice, because so much of climbing comes down to reading intents correctly. Let me walk you through exactly what it does and how to squeeze value out of it.

Where to Find It

Open the Compendium menu. The Bestiary is the new final screen there, sitting right after the Achievements page. You don’t need to be in a run to browse it. Pull it up between climbs when you want to study a fight that keeps killing you.

What It Actually Records

Here’s the exact scope, straight from the patch notes. The Bestiary lists the monsters you’ve encountered, along with their moves and animations.

Two things matter in that sentence.

First, it’s a personal log, not a full encyclopedia. You only see an enemy after you’ve run into it yourself. Fresh save, empty list. The roster fills in as you fight your way through the acts, so a long-time player has a much fatter Bestiary than someone on their third run.

Second, the current version shows moves and animations, not a complete stat block. You can watch what an attack looks like and read what it does, but you won’t find a tidy HP number or a damage table for every move yet. Mega Crit said they plan to add stats and lore in future updates, so expect this screen to grow over the Early Access period.

How to Use It to Win More Runs

A move list you can study at your own pace is worth more than it sounds. Here’s how to turn it into actual win rate.

Study the Animations, Not Just the Numbers

In a live fight you have seconds to read an intent and commit to a turn. In the Bestiary you have all the time you want. Watch an enemy’s animations a few times and the tells start to stick. When you see that same wind-up mid-combat, your brain flags it before the damage lands. This matters most against the multi-hit attackers, where the difference between blocking for one big hit and blocking for five small ones decides whether you take chip damage or get folded.

Prep for Elites You Keep Losing To

Some elites end runs over and over. The Bestiary lets you sit with their moveset cold, away from the pressure of a real climb. Look at what they open with, what they escalate into, and which turns demand Block versus which turns you can push offense. Walk into the next encounter already knowing the pattern instead of learning it the hard way.

Cross-Check Enemy Reworks

Major Update 2 reworked several enemies. The Infested Prism in the Hive now taints your skill cards so the damage you take climbs with each card you play. Punch Construct applies Frail instead of Weak now. Haunted Ship throws 3 Weak on turn 1. If you’ve been away from the game, the Bestiary is the fastest way to see what changed without dying to it first. For the full list of what shifted, our Major Update 2 patch notes breaks it all down.

Build Around Boss Pools

You face one boss per act from a pool. Knowing every option in that pool before you draft means you can build a deck that beats the hardest one. The Bestiary doesn’t replace map scouting, but it does let you memorize what each boss does so the choice on the map screen actually means something. Our Act 3 boss guide covers the current Glory bosses, and the biome guide lays out which enemies live where.

What the Bestiary Is Not

A couple of honest caveats so you set expectations right.

It won’t hand you exact HP totals or damage ranges for every move yet. If you want precise numbers for a tough fight, you still need a community wiki for now.

It also won’t track enemies you haven’t met. There’s no spoiler-free preview of content you haven’t reached, which is by design. Mega Crit clearly wants first encounters to stay surprising.

And it doesn’t change any gameplay on its own. This is a quality-of-life and reference feature. It makes you better by helping you study, not by buffing your deck.

The Bigger Picture

The Bestiary fits a pattern in how Mega Crit is building this game. The same patch added a Bestiary, official Steam Workshop support, and a real fix to the random number generator. Those are all systems that respect your time and reward knowledge over luck. A reference tab that lets you learn enemy patterns on your own schedule pairs naturally with the keywords guide and the hidden mechanics you’ll want to internalize as you climb.

Use it. Study the fights that beat you. Then go beat them.