Slay the Spire 2 New Neow Relics: Silken Tress, Kaleidoscope, and Fishing Rod

Three New Blessings at the Start of Your Run

The v0.107.1 Major Update 2 added three new Neow relics to Slay the Spire 2. These are the blessings you choose from on the very first screen, before Act 1 even starts, so they shape your entire run. Picking the right one matters more than almost any single relic later on.

Here’s exactly what each one does and how I’d rank them.

Silken Tress

Effect: Enchant all cards in your first card reward with Glam. Upon pickup, lose all gold.

Glam is the key word here. In Slay the Spire 2, Glam gives a card Replay once per combat, meaning that card plays a second time, for free, the first time you use it each fight. Now imagine that stamped onto every option in your opening card reward. You take one card, and it comes pre-loaded with a permanent free replay.

That’s a big, lasting payoff. A Glam’d attack hits twice. A Glam’d Power triggers twice. Over a whole run, on the right card, that compounds into serious value.

The cost is real, though, and that’s deliberate. Mega Crit reworked this relic during the beta so that losing all your gold is a genuine downside. You start the run with no money, which guts your Act 1 shop. No early relic from the merchant, no card removal, no potion stock when you need it. You’re trading short-term economy for a permanent card upgrade.

Tier read: high, but situational. Silken Tress is excellent when your first card reward contains something you’d be thrilled to Glam, like a strong scaling attack or a key Power. It’s much weaker if the reward is three cards you don’t really want, because you’ve paid your whole gold reserve for a mediocre card. Look at the reward before you commit, when you can.

Kaleidoscope

Effect: Upon pickup, gain 2 card rewards with cards from other characters.

This one is pure deck building. You immediately get two card rewards, and they’re stocked with cards from the other characters, not your own. That lets you splash powerful off-class tools into your starting deck right away.

The appeal is obvious. Some of the strongest cards in the game belong to characters you’re not playing, and Kaleidoscope hands you a shot at them up front. Two rewards means two picks, so you can grab a couple of cross-class staples and steer your run in a direction your base kit can’t reach on its own.

There’s no harsh downside here, which makes it friendly. The risk is more subtle: off-class cards don’t always synergize with your character’s relics and mechanics, so it’s possible to dilute your deck if you grab cards that look strong in a vacuum but don’t fit your plan.

Tier read: strong and flexible. This is a safe, high-upside pick, especially if you already know which off-class cards you want. New players get a free look at the wider card pool.

Fishing Rod

Effect: Every 3 normal combats, upgrade a random card in your deck.

The quiet workhorse of the three. Every third normal fight, a random card in your deck gets upgraded for free. No cost, no decision, no downside. It just keeps ticking value into your run in the background.

Over a full game, that adds up to a handful of free upgrades you’d otherwise have to pay for at rest sites or campfires. The “random” part is the weakness. You don’t get to choose what gets upgraded, so an upgrade can land on a card you don’t care about. But free is free, and most of your deck wants to be upgraded anyway.

Tier read: solid, low-ceiling. Fishing Rod won’t win you a run by itself, but it never sets you back either. It’s a fine default when nothing else on the Neow screen excites you, and it’s especially nice in slower decks that get value out of more campfire upgrades.

Which One Should You Take?

There’s no universal answer, because Neow blessings depend on what the rest of your screen offers and what your character wants. But as a rough guide:

• Take Silken Tress when the first card reward has a card you’d love to Glam and you can afford a poor Act 1 shop.
• Take Kaleidoscope when you have a clear off-class card in mind, or you want flexibility.
• Take Fishing Rod when you want safe, hands-off value and the flashier options don’t fit.

One more thing worth knowing: the same patch reworked the game’s random number generator, swapping in xoshiro256** to fix a long-standing complaint where certain Neow options (like Debt from Neow’s Bones) showed up too often. So the Neow screen itself is now genuinely fairer than it was before Major Update 2.

For where these relics sit against the rest of the pool, see our relic tier list and relic synergy guide. New players should start with the beginner’s guide, and for the full rundown of what changed in this patch, read our Major Update 2 patch notes.