Deck Compass - Card Advisor

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STS2 Card Advisor analyzes your current deck in real time and displays a
recommendation score and tier on every card during reward, shop, starter,
and event card selection screens. It also rates the relics you see in
shops based on how well they fit the deck you've actually built. Combined
with a curated tier list, your floor number, HP, and upcoming boss, the
mod tells you which card — and which relic — is the right pick for this
run.

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What the overlay shows

Each card gets a score badge in the top-left corner containing:

• Score (0–100) — how well this card fits your current run context
• Tier (S / A / B / C) — curated baseline quality, adjusted by deck context
• Top pick highlight — the best card in the reward is marked automatically
• Skip score — tells you how safe it is to skip the entire reward, based on deck size, HP, and build completion
• Tag chips — up to 3 tags on the badge; hover over the badge to see all tags

In shops, every relic also gets a deck-impact badge above it:

• Tier letter (S / A / B / C) — based on how many cards in your current deck benefit from this relic (5+ / 3+ / 2 / 1)
• Match count — exact number of cards in your deck that synergize with the relic
• Hover tooltip — shows the deck-impact percentage and a breakdown of "N of M deck cards are affected by this relic"
• Relics with no card-level synergy (or zero matches in your deck) are left unbadged so you don't get noise on universally-good relics

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Tag reference

Tags explain why a card scored the way it did. They fall into four
groups.

Fit & build direction

• Synergy — card matches your deck's current build direction
• Keystone (magenta) — the first build-defining card in a reward; the deck-defining choice highlighted above all other picks
• Core — anchor card for your active archetype's win condition
• Sub-Core — secondary payoff that supports the build but isn't a win condition on its own
• Relic Synergy — one of the relics you own boosts the axes this card hits, so the synergy score is amplified
• Finisher — the win-condition card for your active build (e.g. Catalyst for Poison, Big Bang for Stars). Boosted when you don't yet own one
• Sustain — fills the block / draw / energy gap your committed build is missing, so it can survive long enough to land its finisher
• Cross-Build — bridges two archetypes you're running at once (e.g. Sly + Poison, Soul + Skeleton). Activates both builds in one card
• Floor Bonus — high-tier S/A/B card whose synergy score is being lifted to its tier baseline, so the displayed score reflects curated quality rather than raw synergy alone
• Off-Synergy — card clashes with your deck's direction. Once your build is committed (~70%+), off-build picks lose points and pick up this chip
• Shore Up — covers a weakness your deck currently lacks
• Build — fits an emerging build you have 1–2 cards toward (e.g. "Poison Build", "Doom Build")

  Situational value

• Tempo — 1-cost card; efficient in early floors
• Utility — low-cost draw or energy card; backbone of deck consistency
• High Value — high-cost card with the right enablers to be played efficiently, or a card whose payoff scales exceptionally well with your current deck state
• Heavy — high-cost card without enough deck support yet
• Burst — high single-turn damage potential (great for Act 1 elites)
• Rare Pick — limited pickup window makes this rare worth serious consideration
• Upgraded — this card has already been upgraded

  Duplicate guidance

• Duplicate — you already have 1 copy; diversity is generally preferred
• Dup. Heavy — 2 copies in deck; adding a 3rd is rarely better than a fresh card
• Dup. Excess — 4+ copies; almost always a skip
• Dup. OK — build core / cheap producer / cantrip; a 2nd copy is fine for this card type
• Stack ++ — 0-cost unconditional draws and exhaust+amplifier cards; multiple copies are encouraged

  Warnings

• Oversat — too many Power cards; adding more will slow deck cycling
• Random — card has significant random or unpredictable effects

  Gameplan alignment

• Attack — offensive card matching a damage-focused gameplan
• Survive — block or healing card; prioritized when HP is low
• Late Value — scaling card that pays off in later acts
• Stable — Retain / Replay / Exhaust card that helps consolidate your hand

  Card type tags

These appear automatically based on what the card does:
Block, Draw, Energy, Scaling, AOE, Poison, Debuff, Vulnerable, Weak, Frail,
Exhaust, Retain, Replay, Discard, Strike, Status, Orb, Forge, Star, Doom,
Shiv, Sly, Soul, Ethereal, Osty, Free Attack, Lord's Blade

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Main features

• Real-time overlay — score and tier appear on every card in reward, shop, starter, and event screens
• Deck-context scoring — evaluates each card against your actual deck composition, not just a static tier list
• Build detection — identifies your active build (21 archetypes tracked, including hybrids), measures how complete it is, and knows which specific cards finish it. Cards that finish or sustain a near-complete build get an explicit boost; off-build picks get an explicit penalty
• Relic-aware scoring — owned relics shift the synergy axes of card recommendations, so cards that pair with your relics score higher
• Shop relic badges — every relic in the shop is rated by how many of your current deck cards it actually affects
• Boss awareness — adjusts scores when the upcoming boss makes certain cards stronger or weaker
• Skip recommendation — tells you when skipping the entire reward is better than taking any of the offered cards. Triggers proactively once your build is committed and already has its finisher in deck
• Hover tooltip — hover any badge to see the full tag list and scoring breakdown
• Customizable tier list — override any card's tier with your own opinion via a simple JSON file; your overrides take priority over the curated baseline and feed straight back into deck-context scoring

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Companion dashboard

A live web dashboard mirrors and extends the in-game overlay:

https://ing-gom.github.io/sts2-card-advisor/

The dashboard runs entirely in your browser — no install, no account.
It has two tabs.

Advisor tab — full card catalog

• Every card in the game, grouped by character (Ironclad / Silent / Defect / Necrobinder / Regent / Colorless), with tier, cost, star cost, type, rarity, and axis tags
• Search and axis filter — find every card that hits a given axis (e.g. "Poison Producer", "Block Amplifier"), or filter by build family
• Upgrade preview — hover any card to see base text, upgraded text, and which axes are added or removed on upgrade
• Build core guide — auto-classified anchor cards for each build (★ keystone / · sub-core), so you can see at a glance which cards actually carry a deck
• Axis guide — explains the Producer / Consumer / Amplifier / Payoff roles the mod uses internally to score synergy
• My Picks — virtual deck builder. Star any cards to simulate a deck and instantly see its synergy score, 6-axis radar, and the cards the advisor would recommend next. Save / load presets as JSON
• Multilingual — Korean / English / Chinese

Deck Analysis tab — your actual run history

Reads the real .run files Slay the Spire 2 writes after every run
(not the mod's snapshots), so it works for any run you've ever played:

• Auto-sync — if the game and mod are running, runs appear automatically and get cached in your browser, so they stay visible even when the game is closed later
• Drag & drop — drop any .run file onto the page for one-off analysis without launching the game
• Pick timeline — for every reward in the run, shows the full choice pool and what you took, color-coded as best / 2nd best / isolated pick / worst-in-pool / skip-was-better / curse
• Final deck breakdown — end-of-run deck, 6-axis radar, axis distribution, and relic synergies, so you can see what the deck actually became
• Filters — by character and by outcome (victory / defeat)

The catalog and My Picks features work standalone — the mod isn't
required. Deck Analysis needs either the mod running (live sync) or a
.run file (manual drag & drop).

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Customizing the tier list

The mod ships with a curated tier list, but you can override any card's
tier with your own opinion. On first launch, the mod creates an empty
template here:

%APPDATA%\Sts2CardAdvisor\card_tier_overrides.json

Edit it as a flat JSON map — the override applies to both the basic and
upgraded versions of the card:

{
"Abrasive": "S",
"CARD.HARDEN": "B"
}

• Keys can be the card ID (CARD.XXX), the English name, or the localized in-game name — case, dots, and the + upgrade suffix are all ignored
• Values must be S / A / B / C / D
• Restart the game (or start a new run) to apply changes

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Optional: ModConfig integration

If you have the ModConfig mod installed, Card Advisor adds a
small in-game settings panel under the Card Advisor section. The mod
works perfectly without ModConfig — this is purely optional.

Currently exposed setting:

• Advisor language — overrides the language used for the advisor's chip labels and tooltips. Choices: auto / ko / en / zh / de / es / fr / it / ja / pl / pt / ru / th / tr — all 14 STS2 supported languages. auto follows the in-game language; the explicit codes let you read the advisor in a different language than the game itself (e.g. play the game in Korean, read the advisor in English). Changes apply on the next overlay refresh — no restart needed.

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Customizing translations

All 14 STS2 languages ship built into the mod. If a translation feels
off, or if you want to add a language the game doesn't support yet,
you can override individual entries — your edits survive future mod
updates automatically.

Where the files live:

%APPDATA%\Sts2CardAdvisor\tag_localization.default.json
— read-only reference. Auto-regenerated on every launch with
the current mod version's built-in translations. Use it to see exactly
what keys exist and what the defaults are. Don't edit this file — your
changes will be wiped on the next launch.

%APPDATA%\Sts2CardAdvisor\tag_localization.json
— your override. Create this file (or copy the default and
trim it down) to customize translations. Anything you put here patches
the built-in translations key-by-key and language-by-language.

How merging works:

• Built-in translations always load first as the base.
• Your override patches on top, one language at a time. If your override has only "공격": {"ru": "Удар"}, then ru uses your custom value while en/ja/zh/... keep the built-in defaults.
• New tags added in future mod versions automatically inherit the built-in translation — you won't see Korean keys leaking through after an update.
• A broken override (invalid JSON, missing fields) is logged and the mod falls back to the built-in defaults; nothing crashes.

Minimal override example — only customize Russian for two tags,
let everything else stay default:

{
"format": "{ko}",
"primary_key_locale": "ko",
"tags": {
"공격": { "ru": "Атака (моё)" },
"방어": { "ru": "Блок (моё)" }
}
}

Full override example — replace one language with a community
translation pack (e.g. paste a friend's full Russian sheet directly).
Same schema as tag_localization.default.json.

After editing, restart the game (or trigger an overlay refresh) for
changes to apply.

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Installation

1. Download the mod from this page
2. Copy the Sts2CardAdvisor folder into the mods/ directory inside your Slay the Spire 2 installation
3. Launch the game
4. Start a new run — the recommendation overlay will appear automatically on any card selection screen

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Requirements

• Slay the Spire 2 with mod support enabled