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.
For ranking context across every relic in the game, see the v0.102.0 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. Vakuu's 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.
Patch v0.102.0 reshaped one important pick: item:fur-coat now affects restocked enemies that enter combat mid-fight, not just the enemies present when the room loaded. This pushes Fur Coat from "very strong" into the top tier of any Act 3 pool.
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 item: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.
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 item: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 item: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. Halving damage (not HP loss) means it stacks on top of any block you generate, so Defect orb chip and [[character:necrobinder]] passive-block builds skip the entire defense layer. Pairs cleanly with item:cloak-clasp on Necrobinder. Also the dedicated counter to a Queen run-ender, where you often want to play one or two cards anyway. The one matchup where item:brilliant-scarf actively hurts you is the matchup where Diadem wins the fight.
Fur Coat. Upon pickup, mark 7 random combats. Enemies in those rooms have 1 HP. After v0.102.0, this also covers restocked enemies that enter combat mid-fight. Seven free wins is run-ending value. The run-ender itself can't be marked, so treat item:fur-coat as a stamina relic that conserves HP and resources for the fights that actually matter.
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. Upon 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. Upon 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. Upon 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's a small bonus rather than a finisher.
The Nonupeipe priority for most archetypes: Fur Coat, item:delicate-frond, item:diamond-diadem, item:looming-fruit, item:jewelry-box, item:brilliant-scarf, item:glitter, item:signet-ring, item:blessed-antler, item:beautiful-bracelet. Diamond Diadem jumps higher still on Defect orb decks, Necrobinder passive-block decks, and any run heading into Queen as the run-ender. Brilliant Scarf jumps on heavy-draw decks but drops hard into Queen. Looming Fruit stays high on lean decks under 15 cards; Blessed Antler drops further there.
The [[character: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 at the Star Battery build guide.
Tanx Pool
Tanx is the aggressive gatekeeper. The pool is built around attacks, energy, and elite hunting. Almost every relic accelerates kill speed in some way. 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 item: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 game-mechanics note: the rules engine bars you from holding Iron Club and item: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's four to six removals and 18-27 Max HP into the run-ender. On any deck that wants to thin further, this is top tier.
Sai. At the start of your turn, gain 7 Block. Flat 7 Block per turn defends most basic enemy attacks. Doesn't 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 huge; the Power tax is brutal on power-heavy archetypes. item: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. Upon 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. Utterly broken on any deck with a clear opener. item: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's 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: item:throwing-axe, item:meat-cleaver, item:war-hammer, item:iron-club, item:crossbow, item:sai, item:tri-boomerang (when offered), item:tanxs-whistle, item:spiked-gauntlets (read first), item:claws. Spiked Gauntlets jumps to the top of the list on no-Power decks; it drops to bottom on Power decks. Iron Club jumps higher 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.
Vakuu Pool
Vakuu is the most polarizing pick in the game. Half the community wants Vakuu 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 (item: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 item: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). After the v0.102.0 bug fixes, the relic is most reliable where any reasonable opener works (item:strike-silent-spam, 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's free to play. On Power-heavy decks (Ironclad item:demon-form / item: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. 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 doesn't, 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 item: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.
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 covers three boss attack patterns. 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, item: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: item:lords-parasol (only if a merchant is ahead), item:jeweled-mask (Power decks), item:distinguished-cape (bloated decks, mandatory on Necrobinder with Bing Bong), item:music-box (Attack-led openers), item:choices-paradox, item:whispering-earring (Strike-spam only, never with Guards/Fiendfire/setup Powers), item:fiddle (no-cycle decks only), item:blood-soaked-rose, then the rest of the curses. item:preserved-fog jumps higher on heavy card-pollution decks; item: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.
Meat Cleaver (Tanx). Removal plus Max HP across the remaining Rest Sites. Strongest economy pick in any Act 3 pool.
War Hammer (Tanx). Free upgrades on every Elite kill. Compounds with the structure of Act 3.
A few picks are character-locked in practice. item:spiked-gauntlets is a hard skip for any Power-stacking archetype ([[character:ironclad]] item:demon-form, [[character:defect]] Echo Form, [[character:necrobinder]] item:bone-flute). item:whispering-earring is a hard skip for any setup-dependent archetype. item:blood-soaked-rose is a soft skip for any deck that can't convert self-damage into value. item: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. Lean decks should hard-target item:looming-fruit, item:meat-cleaver, item:throwing-axe, item:lords-parasol, and item:war-hammer; they should hard-skip item:blessed-antler, item:sere-talon, item:preserved-fog, item: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, item:beautiful-bracelet on the wrong cards, Sere Talon, Preserved Fog, Distinguished Cape) all degrade lean-deck consistency.
For the upcoming [[encounter:doormaker]] fight specifically, the v0.102.0 rework matters. Doormaker's reworked power drains 1 energy per card played, which means per-turn energy floors get more valuable than per-combat energy bursts. Whispering Earring, Spiked Gauntlets, Blood-Soaked Rose, and Blessed Antler all hold their energy floor under Doormaker's drain. Picks that depend on burst energy (item:pumpkin-candle and Tezcatara energy relics from earlier acts) lose value. If you've drawn an energy-floor relic in Act 1 or Act 2 and you see Doormaker on the path, prioritize stacking another energy floor here.
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 (item:fur-coat) is one of the strongest in any Ancient pool after the v0.102.0 buff. Tanx has the highest ceiling for aggressive decks: item:throwing-axe, item:meat-cleaver, and item:war-hammer all compete for top pick on the right archetype. Vakuu has both the highest variance and the most build-dependent picks: item:lords-parasol and item:jeweled-mask can be run-defining, but the curse sub-pool can wreck a clean deck. If you're 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. item: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 item:bing-bong doubling the Apparitions, Cape is a near-mandatory pick. item:preserved-fog is the second-strongest, but only on decks that need three removals badly enough to accept Folly in return. item: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 of dedicated curse-exhaust shells.
How did v0.102.0 change Act 3 picks?
The Fur Coat buff is the biggest single change. Fur Coat now affects enemies that get restocked into ongoing combats, which means it covers spawned reinforcements, late-fight summons, and any enemy that didn't exist when the room loaded. This pushes Fur Coat from "very strong" to "near the top of any Act 3 pool." item:whispering-earring and Lord's Parasol both received bug fixes that resolved earlier instances of the relics misfiring; both are now safer to take than the older write-ups suggest, though the underlying drawbacks (AI piloting your turn, conditional merchant requirement) remain.
What about v0.103.0 and beyond?
The v0.103.0 beta shipped no Act 3 Ancient rebalance. The dev has stated plainly that the long-term plan is to shift difficulty out of Act 1 and into Act 3. That means Tanx's pool is rising in value, not falling. As Act 3 fights get harder, the survivability and damage tools Tanx offers (Sai, Iron Club, Meat Cleaver, War Hammer) become more important to draft, not less. Doormaker's nerf in v0.103.0 is real but small in this context. If you see Tanx in Act 3 over the next few patches, lean into it.
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, item:music-box only fires meaningfully on Attack-led openers. The curse sub-pool is uniformly bad for lean decks because every curse adds cards. 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 doesn't drop my preferred NPC?
You don't get to choose which NPC offers you the Ancient. The matchup is determined by which Act 3 boss you fight, which is partially mapped onto your earlier path choices. The right approach is to think about all three pools before reaching Act 3 and pre-commit to which relic in each pool you'd take given your current deck. By the time the offer screen lands, you've 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's how lean decks accept curses they can't 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 item:philosophers-stone (energy per turn, all enemies start with 1 Strength) and item: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.