How to Beat Doormaker in Slay The Spire 2

You’ve made the perilous climb up through 3 brutal acts in Slay The Spire 2, but what awaits you at the very top? A brutal foe, no doubt.

Slay The Spire 2 is full of dangerous enemies that test your deckbuilding skills to the very limit. The Doormaker is one of these.

This dangerous JPEG is ready to slam the door back in your face and send you to the bottom of the Spire once more. Unless you have the tools required to take him down, of course.

Big Energy Costs! Big Damage! What’s not to love?

Let’s take a look at some of these tricky boss mechanics and how to cut this guy down to size.

Encounter Mechanics

At first glance, when you enter the boss encounter, this looks like a pretty easy fight. A floating ring of rocks with 155 HP? No problem.

If it were only that easy, right? As soon as you crush those rocks, the Doormaker appears, the true boss of this fight. He has far more health, with a total of 489 at Ascension 0, making the total amount of HP you need to get through over 600. But that’s not too bad with the right selection of cards.

Bow down before your Queen!

Unfortunately, as soon as the Doormaker appears, you only have 3 turns to put him to rest before he flees back behind the door once again. While 489 health isn’t a massive amount, doing it in 3 turns is no easy feat, especially if your deck takes a while to get going.

While it helps to have a lot of burst damage for these 3 turns, you also need to prioritise your defences. He will smack you with a 40 on the turn that he leaves, which isn’t particularly easy to block.

Once the Doormaker disappears, he will be replaced by a new stone door, now with 175 health, 20 more than the previous door.

Every single time you allow the Doormaker to escape, you’ll have to break down a new, more powerful door. If you don’t have a lot of burst damage, this fight can go on for a long time indeed, blasting through your resources and grinding you down over time.

Luckily, the Doormaker doesn’t get rid of your debuffs when he escapes, so if you’re using Poison or Doom, you won’t need to start from scratch. The new door, however, well, that’s a different story.

Boss Strategies

Burst Decks

The last thing you want is for this fight to go on for longer than necessary. Every time you encounter the Doormaker, he’s going to whittle away your health with his hard-hitting attacks, so you certainly don’t want to see him more than twice, maximum. Unless, of course, you have some crazy-strong Barricade-style deck that allows you to infinitely stack defence. This, however, isn’t exactly easy to achieve on every run.

Instead, you should really try to focus on decks that allow you to deal a lot of single-target damage quickly.

Any builds that focus on using Vulnerable and a strong attack to deal damage will work wonders here. Whether that’s with a Strength-focused Ironclad, an Uproar High-energy-cost Defect or even a Scythe-oriented Necrobinder. Cards that inflict Vulnerable and Weak will give you enough time to deal damage and stay alive.

Defensive Focus

However, if you have a slower, more defence-focused deck, you might want to leave the initial door alive for a bit longer than normal while you set up your strategy. Slower builds like Frost-Defect, Sly-Silent or Ethereal-Necrobinders need as much time as possible to sort out their Powers and hands, so leave the actual Doormaker for later on, when you’re ready.

Any cards that you can play for close to 0 energy, that give you more energy and card draw, are really important for fights like these.

Extending your turn and drawing more cards are essential for getting as much done in a single turn as physically possible. Look out for the following cards, regardless of deck:

Offering – Ironclad
Brand – Ironclad
Adrenaline – Silent
Big Bang – Regent
Neurosurge – Necrobinder
Modded – Defect
Supercritical – Defect

Luckily, unlike The Queen and Test Subject, The Doormaker doesn’t really have any other complicated mechanics that affect your ability to play cards or deal damage. Honestly, this battle is more of a DPS check, testing your ability to stay alive and deal a good amount of damage in a limited time.