TL;DR
Doormaker is gone. Major Update 2 (v0.107.1, June 2026) pulled him from the game and put Aeonglass in the Act 3 boss slot. The relic decision did not change with him: the three gatekeepers, Nonupeipe, Tanx, and Vakuu, kept their pools untouched, so every pick below still holds. What did change is what you are drafting toward. Aeonglass punishes high card-play volume and rewards decks that end the fight fast, so prioritize scaling damage and resource conservation over per-turn energy floors that tempt you to spam cards. Fur Coat is still the top Nonupeipe pick. The cross-pool universals, Fur Coat, Lord's Parasol when a merchant is ahead, Throwing Axe, Meat Cleaver, and War Hammer, all stay near the top.
The Act 3 Decision
The Act 3 boss drops one Ancient relic from one of three gatekeepers: Nonupeipe, Tanx, or Vakuu. This is the last open slot before the run-ender, so the relic should either accelerate kill speed against the final boss or close whatever survivability gap your deck has been hiding. The right pick depends on which gatekeeper rolls and the shape your deck is in when you reach them.
The boss on the other side of that decision is now Aeonglass. It sits at 512 HP in Glory and runs a three-move cycle: a heavy hit with self-block, a double laser, then an escalation move that shuffles a Wither into your deck, gains Strength, and upgrades the Withers already there. It also adds Wither cards to your hand as you play more cards each turn. The shape of the fight is clear from that kit. The longer it runs and the more cards you spool out per turn, the worse your position gets. Aeonglass wants the slog. You want the kill. Draft the Ancient that gets you there.
For ranking context across every relic in the game, see the relic tier list.
How the Act 3 Ancient Pick Works
Each Act 3 NPC presents a curated set of roughly ten relics. You see the full set, you weigh it against your deck, and you take one. Nonupeipe runs nine standard blessings plus one conditional offering, item:beautiful-bracelet, gated behind four or more Swift-enchantable cards in deck. Tanx works the same way: nine attack-themed relics plus a conditional item:tri-boomerang gated behind three or more enchantable Attacks. Vakuu is the dangerous one. Its pool splits into a blessing sub-pool of seven and a curse sub-pool of three, and the curses give power in exchange for adding bad cards or losing Max HP.
One pick stands above its pool. item:fur-coat affects restocked enemies that enter combat mid-fight, not just the enemies present when the room loaded. That puts it in the top tier of any Act 3 decision.
Darv can also appear in Act 3 if specific story unlocks resolve in your favor. Darv's Act 3 pool overlaps with the Act 2 pool but adds two encounter-restricted offerings, item:philosophers-stone and item:velvet-choker, both energy-per-turn relics with permanent drawbacks. Most guides treat Darv as the safe Ancient. He is not. The single sharpest Act 3 brick on record is a Darv offer of Velvet Choker, item:astrolabe, and item:snecko-eye dropped on a thin, fast-cycling deck. Random costs and per-turn card caps wreck a deck whose entire game plan is play everything every turn. We treat the three primary gatekeepers as the default decision tree and address Darv at the end. For the earlier-act version of this same decision, see the Act 2 boss relic guide.
Nonupeipe Pool
Nonupeipe is the safest of the three Act 3 gatekeepers. The blessing pool leans toward economy and consistency: card-cost reductions, energy floors, potion fills, deck-thinning bonuses. There are no curses here. The worst pick in the pool is mediocre rather than punishing.
Blessed Antler. Gain energy at the start of each turn. At the start of each combat, shuffle 3 Dazed into your Draw Pile. The energy is real and the Dazed cards are a tax. In a 30-card deck the dilution is survivable. In a 15-card deck the Dazed clogs your opening hand. Take it on bloated decks; pass on lean ones.
Brilliant Scarf. The 5th card you play each turn is free. A heavy-draw payoff that scales with hand size and energy. Defect Echo decks, Necrobinder Bone Flute chains, and any deck running multiple draw powers will hit five plays per turn consistently. Conservative four-card-turn decks get nothing.
Delicate Frond. At the start of each combat, fill all empty potion slots with random Potions. Roughly fifteen extra potions across Act 3 and the run-ender. Most are junk; one or two save the run. Value scales with how often you actually pop potions.
Diamond Diadem. Whenever you play 2 or fewer cards in a turn, take half damage on the enemy's next turn. The sleeper carry of the Nonupeipe pool, and it gained a second job against Aeonglass. A low-card-play turn dodges the Wither and Strength triggers that punish high volume, so the relic that halves damage also keeps you off the boss's escalation track. Halving damage rather than HP loss means it stacks on top of any block you generate, so Defect orb chip and Necrobinder passive-block builds skip the entire defense layer. Pairs cleanly with Cloak Clasp on Necrobinder. The one matchup where Brilliant Scarf actively hurts you is the matchup where Diadem wins the fight.
Fur Coat. On pickup, mark 7 random combats. Enemies in those rooms have 1 HP, including restocked enemies that enter combat mid-fight. Seven free wins is run-ending value. The run-ender itself cannot be marked, so treat Fur Coat as a stamina relic that conserves HP and resources for the fights that actually matter, Aeonglass included.
Glitter. Enchant all card rewards with Glam. Glam adds an upgrade option to subsequent card picks. Value compounds across the three to five reward screens left after Act 3 starts. Decent on decks still hunting for specific cards; weak on tuned decks.
Jewelry Box. On pickup, add 1 Apotheosis to your Deck. Apotheosis upgrades every card in your deck on play, then exhausts. Enormous on bloated decks where manual upgrades have lagged. Still worth taking on a 14-card tuned deck.
Looming Fruit. On pickup, raise your Max HP by 31. Pure HP, more than any other Ancient HP gain. If your run is hovering and you need a survival cushion for the run-ender, this is the safest pick in the pool.
Signet Ring. On pickup, gain 999 Gold. Gold at the end of Act 3 has limited applications: one merchant left, three or four buys at most. Fine as a tiebreaker if you have a clear shopping list. Otherwise the gold mostly sits unused.
Beautiful Bracelet (conditional). Choose 3 cards in your Deck. Enchant them with Swift 3. Only offered with four or more Swift-eligible cards. Swift 3 grants three free draws across the run. On infinite-cycle decks this is incidental; on a normal deck it is a small bonus rather than a finisher.
The Nonupeipe priority for most archetypes: Fur Coat, Delicate Frond, Diamond Diadem, Looming Fruit, Jewelry Box, Brilliant Scarf, Glitter, Signet Ring, Blessed Antler, Beautiful Bracelet. Diamond Diadem climbs higher on Defect orb decks, Necrobinder passive-block decks, and any deck planning a low-card-play race against Aeonglass. Brilliant Scarf jumps on heavy-draw decks but loses value against a boss that taxes high card counts. Looming Fruit stays high on lean decks under 15 cards; Blessed Antler drops further there.
The Regent slot leans Nonupeipe more than any other character. The Regent's Stars and Forge mechanics convert energy and card-plays into raw scaling, so the energy floor from Blessed Antler and the free card from Brilliant Scarf both compound directly into damage output. Regent runs that draw Nonupeipe over Tanx or Vakuu generally benefit from the trade, even when the headline relic looks weaker. The full Regent walkthrough is in the Star Battery build guide.
Build: 37383cf4f84cTanx Pool
Tanx is the aggressive gatekeeper, and Aeonglass rewards it. The pool is built around attacks, energy, and elite hunting, and almost every relic accelerates kill speed in some way. Against a boss that scales the longer you stall, the gatekeeper that ends fights faster is the one you want when your deck supports it. The catch is that several offerings only function on specific archetypes; a deck without enough Attacks or without enough card-play volume gets less out of Tanx than out of Nonupeipe.
Claws. Transform up to 6 cards into Maul. Maul scales with hits taken. Six free transformations is real deck reshaping, but the conversion locks every slot to a single card. Take it only on a deck whose six worst cards are clear and whose damage profile fits Maul's hit-scaling.
Crossbow. At the start of your turn, add a random Attack into your Hand. It costs 0 this turn. One free Attack per turn works on any deck with attack volume. Quality varies, but reliability outweighs variance. One of the safest aggressive picks in the pool.
Iron Club. Every 4 cards you play, draw 1 card. On a deck playing eight cards per turn this is two extra draws per turn on top of normal turn draw. Undisputed best for Shiv-spam Silent and any high-volume Defect or Necrobinder build. On four-to-five-cards-a-turn decks it fires once and behaves like a soft bonus. For the canonical Shiv-spam shell, see the Silent Sly Discard build guide. One mechanics note: the rules engine bars you from holding Iron Club and Brilliant Scarf at the same time. They share the same per-turn draw trigger, so a Tanx pick of Iron Club is also a forfeit on Brilliant Scarf in any later pool, and vice versa. Pick one path and commit.
Meat Cleaver. You may remove 2 cards from your Deck and gain 9 Max HP at Rest Sites. With two or three Rest Sites left, that is four to six removals and 18 to 27 Max HP into the run-ender. On any deck that wants to thin further, this is top tier, and a leaner deck reaches the kill faster against Aeonglass.
Sai. At the start of your turn, gain 7 Block. Flat 7 Block per turn defends most basic enemy attacks. Does not scale with Dexterity. On Necrobinder, Defect, and Silent decks running tight defensive economies, Sai cuts roughly one block card's worth of work per turn.
Spiked Gauntlets. Gain 1 Energy at the start of each turn. Powers cost 1 more. The energy gain is large; the Power tax is brutal on power-heavy archetypes. Demon Form Ironclad spends an extra round of energy on the engine card, which can mean losing the fight. Strong on low-Power decks; trap on Power-stacking decks. Read your deck.
Tanx's Whistle. On pickup, add 1 Whistle to your Deck. Whistle plays as a relic-summoning effect. One free relic for one card slot is positive expected value, but the card slot is real and the draw timing is unpredictable. Better on decks with reliable draw.
Throwing Axe. The first card you play each combat is played an extra time. Broken on any deck with a clear opener. Bash into Bash. Demon Form into Demon Form. Echo Form on turn one. Bottom of the pool only on decks with no reliable lead card.
War Hammer. Whenever you kill an Elite, Upgrade 4 random cards. With one or two Elites left plus the run-ender, that is eight upgraded cards across the rest of the run. Always strong, slightly stronger on lean decks where upgrades concentrate on cards you actually play.
Tri-Boomerang (conditional). Choose 3 Attacks in your Deck. Enchant them with Instinct. Instinct draws a card when the Attack plays. Three guaranteed Instinct enchantments is major draw acceleration on attack-heavy decks. On Ironclad and Silent decks with the Attack count for it, a contender for top pick.
The Tanx priority for most archetypes: Throwing Axe, Meat Cleaver, War Hammer, Iron Club, Crossbow, Sai, Tri-Boomerang when offered, Tanx's Whistle, Spiked Gauntlets (read first), Claws. Spiked Gauntlets jumps to the top on no-Power decks; it drops to bottom on Power decks. Iron Club climbs on high-volume archetypes. Throwing Axe stays near the top across almost every deck shape, because every deck has something it wants to play first, and front-loading damage is exactly what beats the Aeonglass race.
Build: a8c8e15e42c2Vakuu Pool
Vakuu is the most polarizing pick in the game. Half the community wants it buffed; the other half thinks Vakuu is the only fairly tuned Ancient and the rest are overpushed. Both reads are correct depending on your deck. Pick Vakuu when your deck is bloated, has a Power engine, has a clear Attack-led opener, or has a merchant on the path ahead. Skip when your run is built on tight cycle and minimal junk. The curse sub-pool can poison a clean deck with a single mistake, and the blessing pool's strongest picks are conditional. On lean runs, all three options often read worse than what Nonupeipe or Tanx would have offered.
Vakuu Blessings
Blood-Soaked Rose. Add 1 Enthralled to your Deck. Gain Energy at the start of each turn. Enthralled has a self-damage component on play. Strong on decks that can convert HP to value (Bloodletting Ironclad, self-damage Necrobinder); bad on conservative decks. Drawing Enthralled on turn one breaks your setup.
Fiddle. At the start of each turn, draw 2 additional cards. You may not draw cards during your turn. The highest raw draw bonus in any Ancient pool. The drawback bricks every cycle deck: no Inner Peace draw, no Dropkick draw, no Bone Flute draw, no Necronomicon trigger. Top-tier on no-cycle decks; a run-ender on cycle decks. Read your deck.
Whispering Earring. Gain Energy at the start of each turn. Vakuu plays your first turn for you. The energy floor is good; an AI piloting your opening turn is brutal on setup-dependent decks (block-then-attack, Demon-Form-on-curve, Bone-Flute-priority). It is most reliable where any reasonable opener works (Strike-spam Silent, basic Defect zap chains). Hard do-not-pick list: any deck running Guards, Fiendfire, or a one-shot setup Power. The AI plays left to right and burns energy greedily, which means it will turn your boss-killing Power into a pile of 0-cost block, dump your Fiendfire on a single creature, or fire Guards into your most important card. If any of those three live in your deck, the energy is not worth the lost turn.
Choices Paradox. At the start of each combat, add 1 of 5 random cards into your Hand with Retain. One free card per combat, kept across turns until played. Quality is random. Hand clutter is real on tight-synergy decks. Better on flexible decks than on tuned engines.
Jeweled Mask. At the start of combat put a random Power from your Draw Pile into your Hand. It is free to play. On Power-heavy decks (Ironclad Demon Form or Inflame, Silent Powers, Defect Echo Form, Necrobinder Bone Flute) this is the strongest tempo gain in any Act 3 pool: the engine card lands turn one for free, which is exactly how you out-race Aeonglass before its Strength stacks bite. On Power-light decks the relic does nothing.
Lord's Parasol. When you encounter the Merchant, immediately obtain everything he sells. The merchant after Act 3 typically stocks five to seven items. Free everything is run-ending value. The relic only fires on the next merchant encounter, and not every Act 3 path has one. If your map shows a merchant ahead, this is the easiest top pick in any pool. If it does not, the relic is dead on arrival.
Music Box. Create an Ethereal copy of the first Attack you play each turn. Ethereal copies trigger all on-play effects, then exhaust at end of turn. On decks where the first Attack you play is Bash, Sword Boomerang, Headbutt, or any high-impact Attack, this is a free duplicate every turn for the rest of the run.
Vakuu Curses
The curse sub-pool offers three relics. Each one provides a meaningful effect in exchange for adding bad cards or losing Max HP. Take a curse only when the upside is overwhelming relative to the deck damage, and weigh the added cards twice against Aeonglass, since every extra card you play feeds its Wither generation.
Distinguished Cape. Lose 9 Max HP. Add 3 Apparitions to your Deck. Apparition grants Intangible (all damage reduced to 1) for one turn. The community read is that the 9 Max HP cost is mistuned low. The same effect cost half your max HP as a Spire 1 event, so 9 here reads as an instant win on most bloated decks. Three Apparitions cover three boss attack patterns, which lines up cleanly with the heavy Ebb hits in Aeonglass's cycle. On lean decks the card pollution still outweighs the defense, but on bloated decks where three more cards barely matter, Distinguished Cape is one of the strongest survivability picks in any Ancient pool. On Necrobinder, Bing Bong doubles every Apparition you draw, turning a three-Intangible payoff into six and making Cape near-mandatory in that pairing.
Preserved Fog. Remove 3 cards from your Deck. Add Folly to your Deck. Folly punishes on draw. Worth it on bloated decks that need three slots removed and have draw-side answers (exhaust on draw, scry, retain control). Bad on decks that already cycle clean.
Sere Talon. Add 2 random Curses and 3 Wishes to your Deck. Wishes pull specific upgrades or transformations from a wish pool. Three Wishes is a real toolkit; the two random Curses are pure pollution. Floor is low, variance is high. Skip on most archetypes; consider only on decks that can permanently exhaust curses.
The Vakuu priority for most archetypes: Lord's Parasol (only if a merchant is ahead), Jeweled Mask (Power decks), Distinguished Cape (bloated decks, mandatory on Necrobinder with Bing Bong), Music Box (Attack-led openers), Choices Paradox, Whispering Earring (Strike-spam only, never with Guards, Fiendfire, or setup Powers), Fiddle (no-cycle decks only), Blood-Soaked Rose, then the curses. Preserved Fog climbs on heavy card-pollution decks; Sere Talon stays near the bottom across the board.
If your deck is small and consistent (under 15 cards, tight cycle, every card has a role), the Vakuu pool punishes you. The curses pollute, Fiddle blocks your draw engine, Whispering Earring breaks your setup turn, and the strongest blessings (Lord's Parasol, Jeweled Mask) only deliver value under specific conditions. On lean runs, the right move is often to take the least-bad blessing and accept that the Act 3 Ancient was a wash.
Cross-NPC Strategy
A few picks are universal: if offered, they outperform almost everything else in their pool regardless of deck shape.
Fur Coat (Nonupeipe). Seven free combat wins is unmatched value across any Act 3 pool. Always near the top.
Lord's Parasol (Vakuu). Free merchant inventory is the highest single-fight value any Ancient can provide, when the merchant is on your path.
Throwing Axe (Tanx). Doubles your opener every combat. The strongest universal scaling effect in the Tanx pool, and the cleanest way to front-load damage against Aeonglass.
Meat Cleaver (Tanx). Removal plus Max HP across the remaining Rest Sites. Strongest economy pick in any Act 3 pool, and a thinner deck wins the Aeonglass race.
War Hammer (Tanx). Free upgrades on every Elite kill. Compounds with the structure of Act 3.
A few picks are character-locked in practice. Spiked Gauntlets is a hard skip for any Power-stacking archetype (Ironclad Demon Form, Defect Echo Form, Necrobinder Bone Flute). Whispering Earring is a hard skip for any setup-dependent archetype. Blood-Soaked Rose is a soft skip for any deck that cannot convert self-damage into value. Brilliant Scarf is a soft skip for any deck under five cards per turn.
Lean decks (under 15 cards, tight cycle) need different priorities than bloated decks, and Aeonglass tilts the math toward them. A tuned deck that scales hard ends the fight before the Wither pile and Strength stacks compound, so the same picks that keep a deck lean also keep it ahead of the boss. Lean decks should hard-target Looming Fruit, Meat Cleaver, Throwing Axe, Lord's Parasol, and War Hammer; they should hard-skip Blessed Antler, Sere Talon, Preserved Fog, Distinguished Cape, and any relic that adds cards to the deck. The Apotheosis-via-Jewelry-Box and the deck-thinning-via-Meat-Cleaver picks both stay strong on lean decks. The card-pollution picks (Blessed Antler, Beautiful Bracelet on the wrong cards, Sere Talon, Preserved Fog, Distinguished Cape) all degrade lean-deck consistency, and against Aeonglass those extra cards also accelerate the Wither stream.
Against Aeonglass specifically, the draft target is scaling damage you can spend efficiently rather than per-turn energy floors that push you to play more cards. Exhaust effects (Ironclad, Defect) and discard (Silent) clear accumulated Wither cards before they tick. X-cost burst turns and passive damage like Poison or Doom spend energy without spooling out a long card chain, which keeps you off the boss's card-volume triggers while the damage still lands. Build toward the deck that wins by turn ten, and let the relic that gets you there outrank the one that merely keeps you alive longer.
FAQ
Which Act 3 NPC is best?
Nonupeipe has the highest floor. The pool contains no curses, the worst pick is mediocre rather than punishing, and the headline relic (Fur Coat) is one of the strongest in any Ancient pool. Tanx has the highest ceiling for aggressive decks: Throwing Axe, Meat Cleaver, and War Hammer all compete for top pick on the right archetype, and Tanx's kill-speed tools line up with what Aeonglass demands. Vakuu has both the highest variance and the most build-dependent picks: Lord's Parasol and Jeweled Mask can be run-defining, but the curse sub-pool can wreck a clean deck. Choosing between gatekeepers in the abstract, Nonupeipe is safest, Tanx scales hardest on attack decks, and Vakuu rewards readers who know exactly what their deck needs.
Should I ever take a Vakuu Curse?
Yes. Distinguished Cape is straight broken on bloated decks; the 9 Max HP cost reads as miscosted compared to the Spire 1 equivalent, and three Apparitions cover three boss attack patterns outright. On Necrobinder with Bing Bong doubling the Apparitions, Cape is a near-mandatory pick. Preserved Fog is the second-strongest, but only on decks that need three removals badly enough to accept Folly in return. Sere Talon is the weakest; the random curses outweigh the Wish payoff on most archetypes. The decision rule: take Cape on bloat, take Fog on card pollution that outpaces Folly's damage, skip Sere Talon outside dedicated curse-exhaust shells. One Aeonglass caveat: every curse adds cards, and added cards feed the boss's Wither generation, so the bar for taking one is higher than it was against the old Act 3 boss.
What changed in Major Update 2?
The Act 3 boss is now Aeonglass, not Doormaker, who was removed from the game outright. The three gatekeeper pools, Nonupeipe, Tanx, and Vakuu, were not rebalanced, so every relic priority on this page holds. The change to your drafting is in what you target: Aeonglass punishes stall and high card-play and scales the longer the fight runs, so favor relics that add scaling damage and conserve resources for the run-ender over relics whose only job is a per-turn energy floor that tempts you to play more cards. The dev's stated plan to push difficulty into Act 3 reinforces the same conclusion: lean into Tanx's damage and survivability tools when it rolls.
Can lean decks (under 15 cards) draft Vakuu safely?
Lean decks face the worst odds against Vakuu. The blessing pool's strongest picks are conditional: Lord's Parasol only fires if a merchant is ahead, Jeweled Mask only fires if your deck has Powers, Music Box only fires meaningfully on Attack-led openers. The curse sub-pool is uniformly bad for lean decks because every curse adds cards, which is doubly costly now that those cards feed Aeonglass. The safe approach on lean Vakuu draws is to treat the Ancient as a least-bad pick rather than a best-pick decision. Take Lord's Parasol if a merchant is ahead, take Jeweled Mask if you have a Power, take Music Box if your opener is an Attack, and take whichever blessing is left over otherwise. Refuse all three curses on a lean deck unless the alternative is genuinely worse than 9 Max HP loss or three card slots.
What if the Act 3 boss does not drop my preferred NPC?
You do not get to choose which NPC offers you the Ancient. The right approach is to think about all three pools before reaching Act 3 and pre-commit to which relic in each pool you would take given your current deck. By the time the offer screen lands, you have already done the work. The wrong approach is to read three full Ancient pools cold under combat-victory pressure and try to decide on the spot, because that is how lean decks accept curses they cannot afford.
Does Darv's Act 3 pool change the calculus?
Darv only appears in Act 3 if specific story conditions resolve, and the pool overlaps heavily with Darv's Act 2 offerings. The Act 3 specific additions are Philosopher's Stone (energy per turn, all enemies start with 1 Strength) and Velvet Choker (energy per turn, hard cap of 6 cards played per turn). Both are energy-floor relics with permanent drawbacks. Philosopher's Stone is brutal against multi-enemy fights where 1 Strength on every enemy adds up fast. Velvet Choker is a soft drawback on conservative decks and a hard ceiling on cycle decks. Treat Darv as an alternative to Vakuu rather than an alternative to Nonupeipe or Tanx. Do not draft Velvet Choker, Astrolabe, or Snecko Eye into a thin or cycle-heavy deck. That trio into a fast deck is the canonical Act 3 brick. If your deck plays seven or more cards per turn and Darv shows that combination, you are looking at the worst Ancient roll in the game, and the cleanest pick is the least-bad blessing or the safety pick.