Slay the Spire 2 Map Rooms — Every Room Type and Route Planning

Reading the map is a skill in Slay the Spire 2. Every node is a trade between resources and risk, and the room types you path through decide whether your deck arrives at the boss finished or flimsy. Here is every room type, when to take each, and a three-phase routing plan you can apply to every run.

The room types

• Ancient room — each act opens with an Ancient offering a choice of three boons; Neow always greets you at the start of Act 1. Your run's first real build decision happens here.
• Monster room — standard fights, the bread and butter of gold income and card rewards.
• Elite room — hardened fights that drop a relic on top of normal rewards. Significantly stronger than Act 1 of the original game: never open a run by charging into one.
• Merchant room — the shop: card removals, cards, relics, potions. The only reliable place to plan deck thinning.
• Unknown room (?) — events, and occasionally merchant or combat surprises. Low risk, high variance, home of free value.
• Treasure room — a chest with a relic. Pure gain, no fight.
• Rest room (campfire) — choose between Forge (upgrade a card) or Rest (heal ~30% max HP).
• Boss room — the act finale. Every route ends here; plan backward from it.

New-player priority order

Merchant > Unknown > Rest > Monster > Elite > Treasure may look backwards, but it follows one principle: early on, your deck is the weakest link. Shops fix it (removal above all), events patch it cheaply, and camps convert gold-fought fights into upgrades. Elites wait until your deck can answer them.

Phase 1 — survive and slim (early Act 1)

Path for roughly three monster fights, a merchant and a cluster of unknown rooms; skip elites entirely. Take solid defense and draw, delete redundant basic Strikes and Defends at the shop, and hoard health. The goal is not strength — it is arriving at Act 2 with a deck that has a plan.

Phase 2 — commit and scale (late Act 1 through Act 2)

Once your core cards exist, flip the priorities: take one elite, then two if your deck is landing its pieces. Elite relics are the cheapest way to close a power gap, and camps shift to Forge unless you are below about 30% HP. Shops now buy engine pieces and potions instead of removals.

Phase 3 — sprint to the boss (late Act 3)

Final-phase routing is about entering the boss at full power: elite for one last relic, treasure on the way, and a campfire kept in reserve right before the boss — Forge your key card if healthy, Rest if not. Do not enter the boss fight at half HP just to save thirty seconds of climbing.

Routing rules of thumb

1. Read the whole map at the start of each act and pick a boss path first; the best route is planned backward from the boss, not forward from the start.
2. Healthy (>50% HP)? Camps are Forges. Dangerous (<30%)? Camps are Rests. Almost nothing else is worth dying for.
3. Unknown rooms with HP-for-gold gambles are fine while healthy — gold is a resource that turns into removal and relics.
4. Carry a damage potion into every elite. The relic it protects is worth more than the potion.
5. Adapt. Route plans are defaults, not vows — a dead run follows its plan into the ground.

Keep reading:

• Deck Thinning Guide
• Act 1 Events Guide
• Beginner's First Run Guide