"A deadly huntress from the foglands. Eradicates foes with daggers and poisons"
The Silent is one of four playable characters in Slay the Spire. She is a huntress themed on a rogue fantasy build. This cunning character weakens her foes with numerous cuts and poison, while using cheap tricks and agility to avoid their attacks. With many powerful cards that draw and discard, the Silent ensures that she will always be one step ahead of her enemy. She starts with a relatively low 70 hp.
The Silent's starting Relic is Ring of the Snake, which draws 2 additional cards when starting combat.
Unlike the Ironclad, the Silent does not get any healing whenever she finishes combat. Therefore she is often more focused on Block, and gaining explosive advantage so that she can end the encounter faster. Many of her cards give additional Energy and card draw, allowing her to chain momentum together to overcome the lack of built-in healing.
Starting Deck
The Silent's starting deck is the largest of the 4 characters, at 12 cards, compared to the Ironclad's, Defect's and Watcher's starting deck, each of which have 10 cards. This means more Strikes and Defends are encountered in Act 1, and it's slightly more difficult to remove all starting cards from The Silent's Deck.
The Silent's starting deck is also the cheapest, with its 2 non-Strike non-Defend cards costing 1 and 0. This means it's easier to take strong 2-cost card options earlier in the game, such as Dash, Predator, and Leg Sweep.
Starting Relic
The Silent's starting Relic, Ring of the Snake ensures that the first turn of every fight is slightly stronger than all of the other turns. This makes Innate cards slightly better for Silent since they only take up 1 of 7 cards instead of 1 of 5 cards.
General Build Archetypes
These are the standard types of decks that may give you an idea of direction for your deck, or what you want to go for. Keep in mind that none of these builds are mutually exclusive. Many of them are more of a general strategy, which can be adapted or combined into multiple builds in a single deck.
Block builds revolve around playing defensively. This means drafting a smaller deck than usual, and focusing on getting enough Block to block all damage every turn. The combat is then stalled out until a decks win condition is met.
Footwork is possibly the strongest card for this deck. This improves every Block gained card by 2 for the rest of the combat. If you are drafting a defensive deck, you want as many copies of this as you are offered (although more than 4 is perhaps too many).
Dodge and Roll is very good Block-to-Energy ratio, and gets extra value when you know you will be attacked every turn.
Leg Sweep is a single card that provides multiple turns of Weak is always good value, and this is very good against Bosses and single-target Elites as well as some of the stronger single-target enemies like Transient and The Maw
Cloak and Dagger is basically a Defend +Shiv in one card. Decently strong on its own, and gets a lot better as the deck acquires additional Shiv synergies.
After Image is a very good Block card with huge value throughout every combat. For 1 Energy you get usually at least 4-5 block every turn for the rest of combat. Synergizes very well with card-generation cards and 0-Energy cards.
Burst is another strong card, as it basically doubles the Block of your next Block card. Goes very good with all the above Block cards.
It's also good for executing your win condition. A Burst with Catalyst or Phantasmal Killer can win the combat by itself.
Blur is very good at stacking Block. However, it's not as good as Ironclad's Barricade since it only lasts one turn. You need to use it wisely, or have a small enough deck, or have multiple copies of Blur if you want to keep stacking Block.
Poison Builds use Poison stacks as their main source of damage. With the right cards, you can ramp up Poison stacks on an enemy very quickly and kill them in 1-2 turns. However, the usual style of Poison builds slowly ramp up stacks over time and whittle the enemy down over many turns.
Noxious Fumes on its own, will gradually build up more and more poison until the enemy dies. It allows many builds to play much more defensively, and stall out fights with full-defense turns, as they are passively dealing more and more damage. Synergizes amazingly with Block Builds. However, this playstyle struggles with enemies that scale by buffing their own strength. Malaise is a great addition to a Fumes build.
Poisoned Stab is a decent damage source on its own, this becomes better when you have a Poison deck and can reliably stack Poison.
Catalyst, if you're able to play it multiple times, can exponentially increase Poison to ridiculous levels in a single turn. With Nightmare or Burst (or both), you get extra plays out of your Catalyst, which can quickly stack up hundreds of Poison. This build has incredible single-target damage, but very bad at damaging multiple targets (without The Specimen), and requires a decent supply of draw/energy. Very good for all single-target encounters, and becomes worse the more enemies there are.
Average Poison cards are not that great on their own, and only become stronger if you already have a Poison deck built around them.
Envenom adds Poison onto all of your attack cards. Works extremely well if you are able to play many attack cards in a turn. Synergizes well with cheap attacks like Endless Agony, multiple-hit like Riddle with Holes and pretty much all Shiv-generating cards.
Snecko Skull is very strong for poison decks, this simply just gives more poison to your existing poison cards. You get the best value from this using poison sources that give small stacks of poison at a time: namely,Noxious Fumes and Envenom.
The Specimen gives poison decks much-needed multi-target damage. This is a must-have if you encounter this relic and have committed to making a poison deck.
Tactician grants 1 (2) Energy when discarded. If your deck can reliably discard Tactician, then it has a steady supply of Energy, which makes most of your turns much more efficient. With a small enough deck, you can actually guarantee discarding Tactician multiple times, which can become Infinite.
Unceasing Top: Whenever your hand is empty, draw 1 card. Allows you to play discard without fear of "running out of cards". This build also exploits Silent's relatively low cost of her cards, and her synergy with playing a large number of cards.
If Concentrate is your last card, you get free energy by playing it and drawing.
Deflect, Slice, and other 0-cost cards are much better in this build, as they do not lead to "dead hands".
Adrenaline can generate Energy in a pinch, allowing you to continue playing more cards.
As this build revolves around playing a lot of cards, After Image and A Thousand Cuts becomes much more effective.
Unplayable cards, including Statuses & Curses, can completely ruin the build. Be careful.
A primarily damage-focused build that revolves around gaining and using many Shivs during each combat. The Silent also has a few Relics that are specifically for enhancing Shivs.
Envenom applies Poison while you attack with barrages of Shivs. Couple with the Snecko Skull relic for easy clears.Sadistic Nature also combines extremely effectively with it; the Poison from Envenom will trigger the damage from Sadistic Nature. This strategy can serve as a bridge between Poison and Shiv builds in case you end up with a mix of cards and relics suitable for each.
Choke offers strong single-target damage in a Shiv deck. Also since Choke causes the target to lose life instead of taking damage, it bypasses enemy Block.
Grand Finale deck is a niche combo deck, and requires most or all of the deck to be built around it to work. Also there are a few cards needed specifically to make it work.
Well-Laid Plans is essential for the deck to work, as it ensures that you have Grand Finale in your hand when your draw pile is empty.
Having Expertise in your hand as you approach the end of your draw pile ensures that you can draw exactly the right amount of cards to put your draw pile at 0.
Having cards that can draw different amount of cards will also help you get your draw pile to 0:
The Gambler's Brew potion - which allows you to discard any number of cards, then draw that many can also be used on a one-off basis to reduce your draw pile to exactly zero.
Unlocks
The Silent is unlocked by completing a run with The Ironclad.
Ring of the Snake, which draws 2 additional cards when starting combat.
Block, and gaining explosive advantage so that she can end the encounter faster. Many of her cards give additional Energy and card draw, allowing her to chain momentum together to overcome the lack of built-in healing.
Poison Deck
Momentum Deck
Du-Vu Doll, 
Smiling Mask, 
Tiny Chest
Art of War, 
The Courier, 
Pandora's Box
