Slay the Spire 2 Retention Status — Keep Cards Between Turns

The retention effect answers the hand-management player's prayer: "At the end of your turn, you may retain X card(s)" — where X is the number of stacks. Instead of discarding your whole hand, you choose that many cards to carry into the next turn.

How it works

• Trigger timing: end of turn, during the cleanup step — before normal discarding happens.
• You choose: retention is a player pick, not an auto-keep. Select up to X cards; everything else discards as usual.
• Kept cards stay in hand: they carry over and are live on your next turn — not exiled, not delayed.
• Stackable: each additional stack raises how many cards you can carry.
• It arrives as a Power: cast it once and the effect persists for the fight.

What it enables

Retention is the glue for three classic plans:

1. Setup pieces — combo starters and scaling Powers that you drew a turn too early simply wait, instead of costing a second draw.
2. Retain synergies — cards with the Retain keyword (they normally sit in hand forever) and payoffs that reward a fat hand both appreciate the extra carry capacity.
3. Boss insurance — holding a burst card or a defensive answer across the turn boundary means the boss's telegraphed big attack meets your prepared answer, not your hope.

Decks that want it

Slow-scaling decks — Regent star banking, Defect orb setups, Necrobinder summon growth — value retention highest, because their key cards are worth more held than discarded. Aggressive shiv and Claw decks, which refill constantly, barely notice it. For the underlying hand economy, see the four core mechanics.

Keep reading:

• The Four Core Mechanics, Explained
• Class Difficulty Ranking
• All 5 Classes and Unlock Order