Why You Keep Dying in Act 2 With the Tankiest Character in the Game
You opened with Ironclad because every guide calls him the beginner pick, and by floor 14 you are dead. The run usually looks the same: 80 starting HP let you absorb mistakes all through Act 1, you grabbed every shiny rare in the card rewards, and then the Infested Prism elite (200 HP, Act 2) ate you because your deck had five half-finished plans and no finished one. Burning Blood, his starter relic, heals 6 HP after each combat, and that exact sentence is the trap. Players read it as permission to face-tank everything. It is not. Six HP per victory is a refund on damage you already took, not armor against the next fight. Over a normal act with a dozen or more combats, that passive healing returns somewhere between 70 and 100 HP across the act, which is enormous, but it only pays out if you actually end fights, and it does absolutely nothing for you mid-combat while a boss is winding up a 33-damage Verdict.
So what is Ironclad actually good at? He is a converter. Strength converts every attack card into more damage per energy. Vulnerable converts your whole turn of attacks into 50 percent more damage against one target. Exhaust converts dead cards into resources. Body Slam converts Block, a defensive stat, into damage. Self-damage payoffs let you spend HP as fuel. Every strong Ironclad deck is one of those conversions running at full speed, and every dead Ironclad run is five of them running at 20 percent.
Unlock and roster context: Ironclad is available from the start, no unlock condition, and the rest of the roster chains off him. Start a run as Ironclad to unlock Silent, then Regent, then Necrobinder, then Defect. He is also our recommended first-win target because 80 HP plus post-combat healing gives the most room for error while you learn Strength, Vulnerable, Exhaust and Block as systems rather than keywords.
Version note before anything else: this guide reflects v0.111 beta, the August balance pass on the beta branch. Ironclad also picked up the rare Not Yet in v0.103 specifically for survivability, which is a signal that Mega Crit considers his floor defense a real weakness. Treat any launch-era tier list you find elsewhere with suspicion; values in Early Access move constantly and in-game numbers always win.
Here is the short version of every Ironclad run. Floors 1 to 5, buy front-loaded damage and one good Block card. Floors 6 to 12, pick exactly one engine, Strength or Exhaust Block, plus a damage multiplier in the Vulnerable package, and fight two elites with a rest site before them. Act 2, get the engine fully online before the Infested Prism gate. Act 3, your scaling should outpace everything except the Queen's chains and the C10 marathon, both of which are solvable with the right sequencing. The rest of this guide walks those beats in order, with the exact cards, relics and boss windows that carry them.
Floors 1-5: Front-Loaded Picks That Make Elites Killable
The first five floors exist to answer one question: can you kill an elite by floor 8 without dropping under 30 HP? Since v0.101, floor 6 no longer spawns elites, so your first six floors are normal fights, gold and card rewards, the safest greed window in the run. Spend it on cards that do something the turn you play them.
Know which Act 1 you drew before you pick anything. Overgrowth throws Nibbit (42-46 HP, a fixed 3-turn loop: a 12-damage ram, a 6-damage swipe with Block, then a Hiss for +2 Strength) and Mawler (72 HP, claw flurries into a 14-damage Tear, with one roar for 3 Vulnerable). Underdocks throws Fossil Stalker (51-53 HP, 3 stacks of Suck, so every unblocked hit grants it +3 Strength and one leak starts a snowball) and Haunted Ship (a 10-damage ram that shoves 2 Wounds into your deck, then a no-damage Haunt turn). Both acts reward holding Defend for the specific telegraphed turns.
The card rewards you actually want, in rough order. Anger first: a 0-cost attack and one of the best early commons in the game precisely because it is free, filling out your 5-card hand, turning spare energy into damage, and multiplying with Strength later. Two copies is fine, three is too many. Pommel Strike second: damage plus a draw for 1 energy, and once upgraded it draws twice, which keeps your hand full in elite fights where hands run dry. Shrug It Off third: 8 Block (11 upgraded) plus a card, flatly the best common defensive pick for any Ironclad deck and one of the few cards you never regret duplicating. If Inflame shows up, take it over all three: 1 energy for 2 Strength (3 upgraded) is the cheapest permanent scaling in his pool and the anchor of every Strength deck.
What to refuse on floors 1 to 5: 3-cost Powers. Demon Form does nothing on floor 3, when the fight ends before the second Strength tick lands. Corruption with fewer than four Skills in the deck is a 3-energy card that converts your good cards into one-shot effects. Also refuse a third pure Block card; dead draws lose hallway fights just as surely as no Block does.
Spend early gold on removal, not purchases. Removing a starter Strike or Defend at the first shop is usually the best gold sink in the game, ahead of buying any card, because starter cards are the weakest thing your deck does. Early events are often pure upside: Byrdonis Nest trades an egg for Max HP, and Abyssal Baths lets you soak for +2 Max HP at 3 damage a dip while you are still healthy enough to afford it.
Elite timing: take your first elite around floor 6 to 9 only when you have one or two real answers in the pile and a rest site on your path before the elite node. Overgrowth offers Bygone Effigy (127 HP, cycles asleep and awakened: set up during the sleep phase, hold Block for the wake-up turn) or Byrdonis (91 HP, alternating Dive and Peck: a Weak Potion on the Peck turns plus a race). Underdocks offers Skulking Colony (79 HP, caps damage per hit, which punishes single big hits) or Terror Eel (140 HP, a pure staying-power check).
The Strength Engine: Inflame, Demon Form and the Whirlwind Multiplier
Strength is the simplest engine in StS2 and still the most consistent climb: Demon Form plus Limit Break, which doubles Strength with no cap, tops our build list for Ironclad at S tier with the lower difficulty rating of his two flagships. The engine has three parts: a source that scales, attacks that hit repeatedly, and a multiplier window.
The scaling sources, cheapest first. Inflame: 1 energy for 2 Strength, 3 upgraded. Premium value, take it nearly every time it appears, and upgrade it early, because +50 percent more Strength for one campfire is the best upgrade rate on the roster. Demon Form: 3 energy, gain 2 Strength at the start of each turn, 3 upgraded. Read its own card text as a warning, since taking it commits you to the Strength archetype. If you already have two Exhaust synergies cooking, skip Demon Form; half-committed scaling is exactly how decks die in Act 3. Brimstone, a shop relic, gives you +2 Strength per turn while all enemies get +1: a Strength Ironclad dream that turns the rest of the run into a race you are structurally built to win.
The payoff attacks. Anger multiplies free. Pommel Strike upgraded draws twice, which matters more than its damage once Strength is high, because you are hunting for the next hit. Hellraiser, newer in StS2, auto-plays every Strike you draw for free, effectively turning your remaining starter Strikes into a self-firing volley once you commit to the Strike engine. Limit Break is the ceiling card: doubling Strength with no cap means 8 becomes 16 becomes 32, and Act 3 bosses with 300-plus HP stop being scary somewhere around Strength 20.
Whirlwind is where the math gets fun. X cost, deal 5 damage (8 upgraded) to ALL enemies X times, where X is the energy you spend. Strength applies to every hit. With 4 Strength, 2 energy and the upgrade, that is 2 hits of 12 to every enemy on the field, 24 per enemy in a two-enemy fight, and Whirlwind never sits dead in your hand because any energy investment does something. Against The Kin, a priest at 190 HP plus two acolytes at 58 and 59, Whirlwind is the difference between a three-target slog and a cleanup.
Where Strength stalls, be honest about it. Phantasmal Gardener, the Act 1b elite with four bodies carrying Skittish 6, gains Block from the first hit each turn, punishing multi-hit decks: Whirlwind literally feeds their armor. The fix is single big hits, or so much Strength that you punch through anyway. Knowledge Demon in Act 2 is the other stress test: it gains permanent Strength and self-heals all fight, so your scaling needs to be online before floor 14, not assembled during the boss. If Demon Form first appears in Act 3, it is usually a skip; the card needs four or five turns to out-earn Inflame, and by then fights are decided faster than that.
One planning habit ties the section together: decide by end of Act 1 whether this is an Inflame deck or a Demon Form deck. An Inflame deck wants attack density and Whirlwind; a Demon Form deck wants Block and draw to survive the four slowest turns of each fight. The card rewards look identical on paper and play completely differently.
Vulnerable Is a Full Archetype Now: Bash and the Paper Phrog Math
In the first game, Vulnerable was seasoning. In StS2 it is a full archetype, with relics, potions and a starter card built around it. The mechanic: a Vulnerable target takes +50 percent attack damage. Not damage of any kind, attack damage, which is why Poison decks ignore it entirely and why Ironclad, whose entire output is attacks, is its natural home.
Bash is the opener. It costs 2 energy, deals damage and applies Vulnerable, and it is in your starting deck, so every run begins with one copy. The sequencing rule most new players miss: Bash before attacks, always. Playing Bash after your damage leaves a multiplier on the table, and the gap compounds over a run. A 20-damage attack under Vulnerable deals 30. Multiply that across a Whirlwind hitting everything three times and you can see why one 2-energy card warps your whole turn order. The upgrade on Bash matters most in the first two acts, when its application is your only multiplier.
The relic that turns the archetype from good into defining is Paper Phrog, an uncommon that appears on the Ironclad pool: enemies with Vulnerable take +75 percent attack damage instead of +50 percent. If you hold Bash plus Phrog plus Whirlwind, your Act 2 elites die several turns earlier than they have any right to. Bag of Marbles, an uncommon relic, applies 1 Vulnerable to all enemies at combat start, which is free team-wide damage in every single fight including bosses. Vulnerable Potion applies 3 stacks, and the timing guide is simple: drink it at the start of boss fights, right before your heavy hitters, not when you are already at half hand.
One important co-op note: Vulnerable and Weak are shared across the whole team in multiplayer. One Ironclad applying Vulnerable multiplies every teammate's attack damage. In the classic Ironclad plus Silent duo, applying Vulnerable is explicitly your job while she stacks Poison; in four-player groups the community treats Ironclad as the main tank and debuff anchor. In that context a 2-energy Bash is the best damage card in the entire party.
Upgrade priorities inside the package: Bash's upgrade matters early when it is your only source; by Act 3 you care more about Inflame, Demon Form and Whirlwind upgrades. Paper Phrog needs nothing, it is a passive that works from the moment you pick it up.
Matchups that specifically reward the package: Vantom opens with 9 Slippery stacks and takes 1 damage per hit until they are stripped, so multiplied damage is worthless early, but on turn 4 it self-buffs and stops dodging, which means you land Vulnerable on turn 3 and dump multiplied attacks into turn 4. Ceremonial Beast gains +2 Strength every turn, a pure race where +50 percent on every attack is a whole extra attacker you did not draw. And Test Subject C10 alternates Intangible in its final phase, so you only strike on the turns it can be hurt, and you want those few strikes multiplied as hard as possible.
Exhaust Block: Corruption, True Grit and the Body Slam Finisher
Exhaust Block is the deck most players consider Ironclad's strongest at high Ascension, rated S tier on our build page with the higher difficulty score of his two flagships. The loop: Corruption makes Skills cost 0 but Exhaust them, Dark Embrace draws a card whenever you Exhaust, Feel No Pain grants Block whenever you Exhaust, Barricade keeps your Block from clearing between turns, and Body Slam turns that piled-up Block into damage. Each piece is fine alone and absurd together.
Start with the starter motor, True Grit: 1 energy for 7 Block (9 upgraded), and it exhausts a random card, your choice once upgraded. Early, a random exhaust in a 25-card deck is nearly free and often good, since the card it eats is usually a Strike. Late, when the deck is thin, the upgraded version lets you feed it your worst card deliberately. Two or three copies is the difference between an Exhaust theme and an Exhaust engine.
Corruption is the point of no return. Three energy, a Power: Skills cost 0 but Exhaust when played. Shrug It Off becomes a free 8 Block plus a card. Every Skill in your hand becomes a free action, your deck burns down toward its best cards, and Dark Embrace pays you a draw for each one. The failure mode is just as real: play Corruption with an empty-ish hand and you have spent a turn and your future cards for a one-time energy refund. The rule is simple. Corruption on turn 2 or 3 of an elite fight, with two or more Skills in hand and a plan for the freed energy. If Act 2 is close and your draw support is thin, wait for Dark Embrace or another payoff first.
Charon's Ashes, a rare relic, turns the whole engine into damage: deal 3 damage to ALL enemies whenever you Exhaust a card. A Corruption turn cycling five cards is 15 free AoE damage before you count the cards themselves. Our relic page rates it the Exhaust deck multiplier, and it is the single highest-synergy relic in the archetype, worth restructuring a shop budget around.
Body Slam is the finisher: deal damage equal to your Block, 1 energy, 0 once upgraded. Under Barricade, Block persists between turns, so a 40 Block turn becomes a 40 damage attack the next turn for free, and with Feel No Pain and free Skills stacking 20-plus Block a turn, the number only climbs. Zero-cost Body Slam plus a 60 Block pile is the cleanest Act 3 kill in his kit, and it dodges Strength-checking enemies entirely because it scales off your own defense.
Two honest warnings. The Insatiable, an Act 2 boss, starts a Sandpit death timer at 4, and each Frantic Escape card added to your deck buys one more turn: exhausting cards carelessly is exactly how you run out of clock, so this is the one boss where Corruption can actively kill you. And Test Subject C10 is a 600-HP marathon across three phases; a deck that burns itself down needs its damage immediately, so have Body Slam or another finisher ready before the Skills run out. Exhaust Block is the best engine in the game right up until the fight asks your deck to still exist in ten turns.
Staying Alive: The Defense Budget, Campfire Policy and Potion Discipline
Ironclad's quiet secret is that his Block cards are individually mediocre and his HP pool is doing a lot of unglamorous work. 80 HP plus Burning Blood is a defense budget, and you manage it like currency: Block exactly what is coming, let small hits through when the math says resting later is cheaper, and never spend 30 HP on a fight that offered a 12 HP line.
The backbone card is Shrug It Off: 8 Block (11 upgraded) plus a draw for 1 energy. It replaces itself, so it never bricks your hand, and our database flatly calls it the best common defensive pick for any Ironclad deck. True Grit covers the Exhaust builds. Body Slam gives Block a second job, which psychologically changes how you defend: holding 30 Block is holding 30 future damage.
Block to the intent, never to the average. Enemy behavior in StS2 is fully telegraphed and bosses run fixed loops, so the number you need is printed above their heads. Nibbit cycles a 12 ram, a 6 swipe and a buff on a 3-turn loop: you need 12 on turn one, and 6 later is optional. Owl Magistrate in Act 3 loops Scrutiny 16, a 4x6 peck, a defensive Ascend, then Verdict for 33 damage plus 4 Vulnerable: block 33-plus on Verdict turns, dump damage during Ascend. Frog Knight, 191 HP with 15 Plating, one-times a 35-damage beetle charge below half HP, so the turn you push it under half, you hold 35-plus Block. Learning those three patterns alone saves more HP than any card pick.
Campfire policy. HP is a resource and anything above 1 is spare, which sounds reckless until you pair it with Burning Blood: chip damage heals itself after the fight, so resting to top off after hallway fights is usually a wasted campfire. Upgrade instead: Inflame to 3, Demon Form to 3 per turn, Body Slam to 0 cost, Whirlwind to 8 per hit. Rest when you are under roughly 30 before an elite or a boss, or when the next two fights are known dangers. Relics bend the math further: Eternal Feather heals 3 HP per 5 cards in your deck at rest sites, which a 25-card deck turns into 15 HP per campfire, and Pantograph heals 25 HP at the start of every boss combat, a massive margin for error exactly where mistakes end runs.
Potions follow the same philosophy, and hoarding them is a documented top mistake since you only have 3 slots. Block Potion, 12 Block, right before a telegraphed heavy hit. Weak Potion, 3 Weak, at boss openers before their big attacks. Strength Potion on turn one in multi-hit decks, so every hit benefits. Blessing of the Forge on turn one for all-combat value. Fairy in a Bottle is never drunk at all: hold it as insurance against elites and bosses, and if you die with it still corked, that was a planning error, not bad luck.
The last defensive layer is respect for the roster: Fossil Stalker's Suck grants it +3 Strength per unblocked hit, which turns one leaked block into a scaling enemy. On Ironclad specifically, a leak is rarely just this turn's damage, it is next turn's bigger intent.
Relic Priority: Brimstone, Charon's Ashes and the Ancient Picks
Rank Ironclad relics by which engine you have committed to, not by the tier list alone. That said, the generic floor is high: Lantern, 1 extra energy on the first turn, an S tier pick; Festive Popper, 9 damage to all enemies at combat start, a community S that deletes a third of early hallway enemies' HP before you play a card; Strawberry and Pear for 7 and 10 Max HP; Anchor, 10 Block at combat start, plain but always online; Gremlin Horn, 1 energy and a card whenever an enemy dies, the engine of multi-enemy fights; Mercury Hourglass, 3 damage to all at turn start; Red Mask, 1 Weak to all at combat start; and Pantograph. All of these are good in literally every Ironclad deck.
For the Strength build, Brimstone is the dream: +2 Strength per turn with all enemies gaining +1, a race you are structurally built to win once Whirlwind and Demon Form are in. Akabeko, 8 Vigor at combat start, makes opening turns hit harder, since Vigor adds its value to your next Attack. Pen Nib, every 10th Attack deals double damage, loves Whirlwind and Anger chains; counting your attacks so the doubled hit lands on a boss's big turn is a real skill on this character. Rainbow Ring, 1 Strength and 1 Dexterity per turn when you play an Attack, a Skill and a Power, is nearly free for Ironclad since every deck he builds naturally plays all three types.
For the Exhaust build, Charon's Ashes is untouchable: 3 damage to all per Exhaust, which Corruption turns into a second damage engine. For the Vulnerable package, Paper Phrog is build-defining and Bag of Marbles is a free multiplier.
Shop policy: removal first. Removing a starter Strike or Defend beats buying a card almost every time, and if Membership Card shows up early, everything at shops costs 50 percent less and your economy run starts there. Ascension 6 players should note that Inflation makes removals start at 100 gold and climb by 50 each time, which makes early removal and disciplined picks worth double.
Ancient picks, since Ancients replaced boss relics and meet you at act start with Blessings. Arcane Scroll, a random rare card, is the runaway number one on the community Ancient Elo ladder, take on sight. Ectoplasm, +1 energy per turn but no more gold gained, is excellent for Ironclad specifically because his engines are energy-hungry: Corruption wants 3 up front, Demon Form 3, Whirlwind everything you have; just finish your removal shopping before you commit to it. Black Star, elites drop an additional relic, snowballs hardest when taken early, and Ironclad is the character who can afford elite paths. Astrolabe, transform and upgrade 3 cards on pickup, is the rescue button for a messy Act 1 deck. Beating Remnant, you can lose at most 20 HP per turn, is anti-one-shot insurance at high Ascension where a single misread intent deals 35-plus. Lizard Tail revives you once at half Max HP and is never bad. Yummy Cookie upgrades 4 cards on pickup. The one to think twice about is Fiddle: draw 2 extra at turn start but no more draws that turn, which can starve a Dark Embrace engine mid-combat, since that engine's fuel is exactly the mid-turn draws Fiddle deletes.
Boss Playbook: Vantom's Slippery Stacks Through the Queen's Chains
Every boss in StS2 runs a fixed, telegraphed loop, and the fight is won in the two turns before the loop's damage spike. Here is the Ironclad-specific read, act by act.
Act 1 Overgrowth. Vantom, 173 HP, opens with 9 Slippery stacks: every hit deals only 1 until they are stripped, so strip with cheap attacks, hold full Block for the turn-3 swing of 25-plus, and dump multiplied damage into turn 4 when it self-buffs. That is the window. The Kin, 190 HP plus acolytes at 58 and 59, wants Whirlwind or any AoE: the acolytes hit hard and scale Strength while the priest debuffs from the back, so kill the acolytes first and let one card hit all three. Ceremonial Beast, 252 HP, gains +2 Strength every single turn, a pure DPS race and the Demon Form fight: get it down on turn one or two. Below 150 HP it staggers and applies Ringing, limiting you to 1 card per turn, so pre-plan which card that is, usually your biggest Body Slam or the Block that keeps you alive.
Act 1 Underdocks. Waterfall Giant, 240 HP, adds Steam Eruption stacks with nearly every action and self-destructs at 0 HP for damage equal to its stacks: race it, save Block and potions for the explosion turn, and remember Weak does NOT reduce the blast. Soul Fysh, 211 HP, stuffs Beckon statuses into your deck, 1-cost cards dealing 6 unblockable damage if unplayed: Ironclad lacks native discard, so play or Exhaust them, and defend its Intangible turns 4 and 5. Lagavulin Matriarch, 222 HP, starts asleep and gets worse the longer the fight drags: set up Powers during the sleep, then commit before its scaling outpaces yours.
Act 2 Hive. Knowledge Demon, 321-plus HP, is widely the hardest boss in the game: each round forces a permanent debuff, 6 damage per turn or 1 fewer card drawn, later card and energy caps, while it self-heals and gains Strength. Race aggressively. The Insatiable, 321 HP, runs a Sandpit timer starting at 4, and only Frantic Escape cards buy turns: always play them, never Exhaust carelessly, spend everything. Kaiser Crab, 209 plus 199, has you Surrounded, with the claw behind you dealing +50 percent: focus the Rocket claw and its 31-damage Laser first, kill both claws within a turn or two, and note Whirlwind hits both at once.
Act 3 Glory. Doormaker cycles door and creature phases on a three-phase rotation since v0.101, with the door respawning at full HP and its Strength carrying over: the 1-turn stun at phase 2 is your best window, so bank damage for it. Test Subject C10, 100/200/300, is a 600-HP marathon: it punishes Skills in phase 1 with +2 Strength, so lead with attacks; it shoves Wounds in phase 2, so play perfect Block; it alternates Intangible in phase 3, so strike only when it can be hurt, and have permanent scaling online because DoTs reset between phases. The Queen, roughly 400 HP behind a 199 guard, Chains the first cards you draw each turn so only one Bound card is playable, though mid-turn draw is unrestricted; kill the Torch Head Amalgam first or she Enrages, and bring Artifact answers for her 99-stack debuff turn. Aeonglass, nerfed in v0.109, rounds out the pool.
The Six Ways Ironclad Runs Die, and the Fix for Each
Almost every dead Ironclad run ends in one of six recognizable ways. Here they are with the fix that actually changes the outcome.
One: taking every card. A small, focused deck is always stronger, and skipping card rewards is often correct. The Ironclad-specific version of this mistake is grabbing Strength payoffs and Exhaust payoffs in the same Act 1 because both look good: Whirlwind wants Inflame, Corruption wants Dark Embrace, and a deck holding two of each does neither. Fix: choose your engine by floor 12 and evaluate every later reward against it.
Two: never removing cards. The best gold sink in the game is removing a starter Strike or Defend, ahead of buying anything. Ten Strikes is a deck that deals 6 damage for 1 energy ten times; cutting to five raises the density of every card you actually picked.
Three: only resting at campfires. HP above 1 is spare and Burning Blood refunds chip damage automatically, so resting every campfire is paying full price for something you get for free. Fix: upgrade Inflame, Demon Form, Body Slam and Whirlwind instead, and rest only before known danger.
Four: hoarding potions. Three slots, and a Block Potion that saves 12 HP in this elite is better than a Block Potion that expires unused in Act 3. Fix: drink potions to save real HP at elites, not to top off after fights. Fairy in a Bottle is the one exception, held as death insurance.
Five: dodging every elite. Elites drop relics and relics define runs: Brimstone, Charon's Ashes and Paper Phrog all come from elite rewards or from the gold those rewards fund. Greedy elite deaths are among the most common losses in Early Access, so the discipline is fighting elites with one or two answers in deck and a rest site before the node, not avoiding them entirely.
Six: playing like it is StS1. No boss relics, since Ancients replaced them; no permanent Focus; no Dead Branch; and Curses are now Afflictions attached to your existing cards that cannot be shop-removed, so the old calculate-the-curse-tax instincts mislead. Fix: treat the Ancients at act start as build decisions, not free pickups, and read our status effects page before trusting any year-old reflex.
Beyond the big six, three character-specific killers. Demon Form taken in Act 3 is a trap: it needs four or five turns to out-earn Inflame and the fight ends first. Corruption without draw support empties your hand and your deck simultaneously; Dark Embrace or bust. Whirlwind with no Strength behind it is 5 damage AoE per energy, which stops clearing Act 2 boards around floor 15, so check whether Inflame or Demon Form exists before you take the third copy.
The final habit is the cheapest one: read intents every turn. Everything is telegraphed and bosses run fixed loops, which turns every fight into a puzzle with a printed answer key. Then take that discipline up the Ascension ladder, where A6's Inflation taxes removals and A20 is the full challenge, and Ironclad's forgiving kit becomes the best classroom in the game for learning it.