Slay the Spire 2’s First New Character Is The Fool

The Fool, a musician who fights with a bow, is the first new character Mega Crit has added to Slay the Spire 2 since the game entered Early Access in March. The character is part of v0.113.0, which the studio is calling its biggest beta patch yet, and for now it’s only available on the game’s beta branch. Mega Crit expects to make substantial content and balance changes before the Fool is ready for the main branch.

Blitz is one of two new game modes in the patch, and Mega Crit describes it as a condensed and chaotic mode focused on deckbuilding where the map is gone and Gold no longer matters. It has five levels of Ascension shared across all characters, and it unlocks after completing an Ascension run at any difficulty. Dread is the other mode, and it’s reserved for players who have reached Ascension 10 on every character, the Fool included. All Ascension modifiers are enabled in Dread, bosses are stronger and buff every enemy in their Act, Curses pile up during the climb, and Mega Crit says death is expected.

Beyond the new character and modes, rest sites can now appear one floor earlier in every act, and there are five new events spread across the Underdocks, Act 2, and Act 3. Several cards have been reworked, including the Ironclad’s Expect a Fight and the Silent’s Expertise and Memento Mori, while Salvo, Phantom Blades, and the Regent’s CHARGE!! are among the cards that were nerfed. The bug fixes include more consistent seeded runs and fixes for a number of multiplayer softlocks, with several of them tied to the Tutor card.

In my first impressions of Slay the Spire 2, I said the Watcher’s absence would be a disappointment for anyone who mained the character in the original, and this patch doesn’t change that since the Fool is new to the series. Anyone who wants to try the patch can right-click the game in their Steam library, go to Properties, open Game Versions & Betas, and select public-beta from the dropdown. Mega Crit also plans to update the main branch to match the previous beta version, v0.111.0, but the Fool and the two new modes won’t be included in that update.