Slay the Spire II Early Access First Impressions! | Design Club

[music] Good time zone, internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club, the only game design show on the internet that's an hour late to get to play Slay the Spire 2 right as it launches. I am your humble Spire Slaying host, Will, joined as always by my Spire Slaying cohort, Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff.
Hi to the people. Wh There we go. Why did the people jump? Hey everybody, welcome to launch day of Slay the Spire 2. It is March 5th, 2026 and the game dropped for what was it? Early access.
Yes,
roughly an hour and 15 minutes ago.
Correct. Steam the Steam store choked because
correct
as I was complaining to Will if one little indie game can hook Steam's infrastructure down so much that my transaction doesn't go through for 40 minutes and we're hearing from chat that other people's have as well. They've either planned

poorly or this isn't quite the little indie game that it was when it launched what six or seven years ago for Slay the Spire 1.
That's correct.
How long has it been? will
uh Slay Spire 1 is a while. Uh let me pull that up real quick. I have I have an interesting uh factoid uh that has just occurred. So uh Slay the Spire 1 released in January of 2019.
Its alltime peak,
the most people that have ever played Slay the Spire 1 at once was 577,025 on Steam. Slay the Spire is also on Switch and mobile and your fridge and your phone. This it's a really good iPad port.
It's very good. The the table
actually switched from I played a lot on PC and then restarted on my iPad and it is now one of my three I can play anywhere travel or sitting around games.
Yeah. Um so uh it had 57,000 uh players at its alltime peak 3 months ago and as

of right now as we begin our stream uh there are currently um more than twice that many playing. 119,849 people are playing SledPire 2. Now, chat also correctly points out that Marathon also launched today.
Oh, there we go. I knew there had to be something else going on.
Yeah, which is the other the other big one. Um, however, however,
I will say on balance more people are currently playing Slay the Spire 2. Marathon only has 83,767 players. So, I'm not saying that that like accounts for anything. I am saying that there are more people playing Slay the Spire 2 than Marathon right now.
I think also because Slay the Spire is turn-based, more people can sneak a download at work and start playing it
where Marathon is decidedly not
100%. I also think that there is a different

a different hype cycle, right? Like Marathon is a thing that some people have been looking forward to, right? Um, and
I am because, you know, that was the job that was the game I modded that got me my first game design job.
That's really cool
cuz I I modded Marathon levels
and when I got my first job on EverQuest, part of the ad, like the interview process was, "What have you made?" And I brought in the modded levels I'd made in college for Marathon
and the Sony crew played them and I got hired on the EverQuest team. That's really awesome.
Well, and they looked at my mud code, but yeah, like so it has a place in my heart because I played
Yeah,
I played a lot of Marathon
for sure. I also think that um the pitch for Marathon is a little less straightforward than Slay the Spire 2, right? So the pitch for Marathon is, hey, it's an extraction looter shooter by Bungie and it's had, you know, some amount of hype for it and like people are are pretty interested after like the server slam and like great. And the pitch for Slay the Spire 2 is did you

like Slay the Spire 1? Great. That but more. And also we Shadow announced that we're going to do co-op multiplayer. So
yeah,
enjoy that.
Plus Mar Slay the Spire has had people playing in the past six or seven years. I don't think you can still play Marathon
OG. Yeah,
because Yeah. Like that was Bungie's game before Halo.
Yep. So, more than 20 years.
Yeah. All right, we have gotten distracted enough. It is It is time, Jeff. We're We're gonna We're going to get on in here. We're going to do
I want to be small cuz I want to see the large spire.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, this this is Yeah, that's the spire.
Look, I'm inspired. [laughter]
I like I like rollers. Get on with it. And we all scream, "YES, GET ON WITH IT." UM, OKAY. SO, UH,
about to spire.
Yeah, this is slight spire 2. This is

the menu when you first load the game. Uh, I noticed something missing immediately and Jeff and I both have competing theories. So, this is everything we would expect except except there should be a thing here that lets you see all the cards and the relics and there isn't. And so we're putting it out here now before we dive in any further. And we don't want to know, but I think that this is VCR design and that it's not going to show up until you it is populated with the ironclad like cards and relics from our first run.
And Jeff thinks, what did you think, Jeff?
Um, I thought they were going to pop it in like right below multiplayer and buff settings. We were noticing that there was no
Yeah, it might be an icon. It might be It might be something. We'll we'll we'll see how it goes.
In the last one, it was something like that, though. Like it was its own line item.
Yeah, it's a it's probably if you've

never played a rogike card game before, a rogike deck builder, being able to know what all of the cards do and what all of your options are and what all of your outs are is super important. So that button,
everything you found.
Yeah. Yeah. Is is very very big. So, um, let's we're we're going to dive into at least one single player run first and then we're probably going to try some multiplayer because that sounds like a lot of fun. So,
I'm trying to figure out why my social stream stopped streaming.
That is a great question, Jeff. I don't have an answer for that unfortunately. Uh, hold on. Let me let me send you this.
Come here. Why are you misbehaving? I want to see chat. Let me um copy this and I'm just going to send you a direct link and this should work because you know

okay is a screen message burning blood. Go see a cleric about that. True.
Okay, cool. that showed up. I guess the burning blood got it kicked off. Okay, let's take a look here.
Okay,
so actually something I'm really really really really really hoping on this one is I was watching the trailers.
Mhm.
And it looks like they've done a little more 3D animation from a side view perspective
as opposed to the old ones which were kind of flat.
Yep.
And I wasn't liking the new art style as much. So, I'm really hoping as we play it that I like it more because there's absolutely some games that are like, let's make a shift from this to this in our art style and, you know, up it a little bit and they don't capture the same magic they did from the previous one.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think that that's uh definitely a thing. Uh second thing is there are five characters and instead of four,

all we need to do is have played a run with each character to unlock the next it looks like. So, play a single run. Play a single run with whoever the green question marks are. It certainly couldn't be the silent. That's fine. Play a single run with the a different character. I love the use of color here because it doesn't you don't actually need to know this, but it's cool if you know this.
Uh and then it looks like our our friend the defect is is last.
It's interesting the defect is last.
The defect.
I'm curious if we're going to get story elements around that.
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm kind of interested in that as well. So, uh, let's make make a choice that isn't a choice.
Quick quick question,
Will. I can't remember. Have we ever seen anybody not start with 99 gold?
That is a great question. I don't remember
because they put it in the previous one and I don't it was like it felt like a dead piece of information. It's like

um why was that there? So, I'm curious if they're going to mess with that on this one.
Yeah. Well, it it was an ascension modifier. I believe you started with less gold as one of the ascensions.
Really? Because I I guess I don't remember because I always play it on Oh, Will and I should mention that we've played this game a little bit before.
A a little I I've got about 750 hours in the game.
And I possibly have significantly more than that.
Yeah.
Um we've Will and I have run on Ascension 20 for a long time. I sadly I've never quite got it, but I've almost I've got three of the four of my streak of playing each character in succession to win a run back to back to back.
Yeah.
Um I'm still trying for the clean four way through ascension sweep.
Yeah, I am a money sweep.
Yeah, I am thinking of ascension
uh 13, which is simply that bosses drop 25% less gold. So it always starts with

99 regardless of what character you are and regardless of your ascension. So, um, okay, let's, uh, with that out of the way,
let's get metal.
It looks like your first time playing Slay the Spire. Oh, honey,
do you want a brief tutorial and some messages to help you out? You know what? For the sake of looking at this, Sure. Sure. We We would love to look at your tutorials.
Okay. So, the act one is called the Overgrowth.
Okay.
Right. All right. So, we pick a room to travel to.
Once you complete the room, pick an adjacent room above it to keep climbing.
All right. I like that the map is a little more um vibrant than the previous map. Like that. Also, what's this? At the end of the act, you will fight Vant. This is a boss indicator cuz we could scroll all the way up here and see that we're going to fight Vant if we knew what Phantom does and we don't. But I love I love just right off as an

experienced fire player that the boss is right here.
That's such a good quality of life upgrade.
So, let's take a couple of other quick looks. Still three potions, still the gold counter there. It still tells you what floor you're on and your hit points.
We have a timer. Based on that, we can look at our deck, the settings. So, this is roughly all the same. Oh, it is the same starting cards. is the same starting cards and the same upgrades.
Same values. Yep.
Same values. It is
slightly different art, but
not Yeah. It's not exactly the same art. It's slightly upgraded to be higher texture or a higher I would say like fidelity.
Actually, what they've done is it's a tiny bit more of an isometric perspective where all of them are specifically tilted to show there's depth to the shield and the sword.
Yeah. Um it looks like all of the icons are the same for um what's on the screen. The unknowns, the merchants, treasure, rest, enemy, and elite.
Correct. And as before, you can um not

lots of people don't know this. You can go over the legend to see stuff.
Um I also
That is so useful.
So incredibly useful. I also do like uh just as a note that they are different colors. You don't need that because the shape is different enough that it's very difficult to confuse one with another. But it is nice that they're different colors that it adds some it's not just a black and white scroll, right? [clears throat]
Yeah, actually I like that a lot as well. Um Sean was just asking while we're looking at things real quick.
But do they have dev art versions of the cards? Okay, so this this requires a little explaining. One of the rewards that you get for defeating the heart as each character in the previous side the Spire game is you get the ability to use the beta art for each card which is usually a terrible MS Paint drawing of something
that basically they sketched in as placeholders until they could hire an artist or sp actually spend the time to do the actual art.
Correct. Except in the case of the

Watcher, who was released after the game had already been out and after they had a bunch of money to hire artists. So, they let the community make the beta art for the Watcher, which meant that the Watcher art was all memes because how could it not be? Because the community got to make the beta art for it was great. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. Okay. So, this basically if you played Spire before, this would look exactly like how you Oh.
Oh. [laughter]
You put paint in.
Yeah. So, so this is this is um behind me. Uh and this is more relevant for multiplayer, I would say. Um this is going to be more relevant when there are many of us playing. Um, but we can we we just have like a little we we have a little thing here where we can just draw on the map and then we can erase stuff or we can clear all of our drawings. Not other

people's drawings, just our drawings. That's great. I'm already excited. Okay, we've spent three minutes.
I wonder if the TTP on actually is it is there random multiplayer I wonder or is it always with friends? It is uh hosted. It is friend-based co-op. There is no hacking to the best of my knowledge.
So that means you don't have to worry about people sketching loot images on there for random other people to see and not be able to erase.
Correct. Correct. Uh okay. We've spent four minutes on the map screen. Time to do our first fight.
It will be a recognizable no.
Defeat enemies by playing cards from your hand. Cards require energy to play. Once you're out, end your turn. At the start of your turn, new cards are drawn and your energy is replenished. Play defensive cards to gain block when enemies are about to attack you. Block reduces incoming damage but wears off at the start of your next turn. During your turn, you can observe an enemy's intent above them. If an enemy is intent on attacking you, be sure to block.

By the way, intent was probably one of the biggest innovations in Slay the Spire.
Yes, the intent thing is huge.
Mhm.
Uh,
okay. So, this is notably not Jawworm or
like one of the three basics.
So, everybody meet Nibbit. Unsure if it's the Nibbit, a Nibbit, or a thing named Nibbit, but it's Nibbit.
Um, okay. So, we're going to
Actually, it's funny. He's attacking just like Jaworm 12 on turn one,
right?
And as usual with Ironclad, you only draw one shield.
Okay. We're going to
take your seven. Yeah, we're we're gonna Yeah, we're going to take our seven, which is fine because we heal back six at the end of combat.
Um, okay, great. Intends to attack for six block.
So, I think we defend once and then bash.
Bash. Yep.
To apply vulnerable. Vulnerable is still 50% more damage. I do want to call attention to a thing that's very easy to ignore on turnbased games, which is the

character animations. It's very easy, particularly for those of us who have played, and I will say entirely too much Spire, to ignore that bit because it's so routine. But the animations are quite upgraded from the Slay the Spire one versions. Yep, no more cards. If there are no cards to draw, your discard pile on the right is shuffled into your draw pile on the left. Great.
It's funny, that is something I wouldn't have even thought of because I've played so many of this game, but yeah, for a new player, they might be like, "Wait, I'm out of cards."
Yep. Uh, so this is uh exactly that feels scriptedly lethal if I'm being honest.
How is it exact? Let's see.
Cuz 9 * 3 is 27 and he's got exactly 27.
Well, is he still vulnerable?
Oh, there you go. It's interesting when you hovered over the heart faded out enough. I wasn't seeing it for a minute.
It's cuz there's a shadow when you target it.

Yeah,
that's kind of interesting. I both do and don't like that. That's kind of an interesting little thing. I do want to draw attention to the little corners on it. I like those a lot as well.
You mean the corners of the Oh, the targeting reticle.
The targeting box, right?
Mhm.
Um Okay. So, this feels calculated, right? To have to have players recognize that if you do the thing, you have exact lethal. Anytime your first fight of a new game is exact lethal, it does feel ever so slightly cooked,
though. Maybe because we also opted to take the extra one point of damage where we could have blocked twice last turn.
That's true.
Or the turn before.
Yep. All right.
Okay. So, we got gold the normal and
excellent. All right. We have three. We have all new cards. Excellent. All right. Let's take a look at this.
Okay. It's time for me to make my watch screen bigger so I can read this. All right. So, we have uh setup strike for one. We can deal seven damage and gain

two temporary strength. Two strength this turn.
Oh, I like that a little better than flex.
I do as well because it also does something with it. Now, I will also be interested to see if this does seven damage or nine damage because that will tell us something about the way that the operations work because in my brain, this should do seven and then everything subsequent should get the strength. I'm hoping that's the case that they list them in the order of application.
Yeah. Also, uh great great call out um from teamworm here uh that Nibbit is in the setup strike strike art. Very
Oh, yeah.
Okay. We have a tremble for one energy. We can apply two vulnerable.
Seems [clears throat] fine. Not great, but fine. And blood wall for two energy. We can lose two HP but gain 16 block. So this is
the rate is one energy for five block.

So we're gaining six additional block for two health. So we're netting four more. And this is also one card instead of two. So that's nice.
Right. Usual theory for this stage if we were playing Slay Spyro one is that we'd grab an attack card super early on.
Yep. I agree. So, we're going to take a setup strike and proceed. I I'm I'm trying to like not
breeze through this, right? Because I think that there are like I just want to take a second here. The backgrounds and everything else is like lovingly done, right? It is it's so easy to reduce some of these games to um abstract, right? It's it's not the ironclad. He's not in a place. It's just, oh, this fight, I have this abstraction, this mathematical abstraction of what the fight looks like, but there's been a lot of care put into the backgrounds and the foreground and the ground underneath them and the

animation and all of the stuff, right? And I just want to call attention to that because I think
I also think I don't think we're in the spire yet. I you know it's really it's really interesting. Uh when we when we leave this this is the overgrowth I believe is the name of it. Um so that's kind of interesting. Is this the base of the spire? Is this a different spire?
Uh okay.
I kind of think we're taking this path because we don't have enough gold to make a shop worthwhile. I don't want to take four more hallway fights in a row. I don't want to take an elite and just die immediately without getting an upgrade.
Actually, I'm curious, Will.
Mhm.
In Old Spire, I I can't even remember. Do you always start on one spot or do you pick one of a couple of different
pick one of several lanes? This may be a tutorial thing.
I'm Yeah, I'll be curious to see if that's So, or if you always start basically outside the Spire and the next level will be
Yeah, the first level.

Mhm.
Okay. Yeah, we're definitely taking one of the two right ones. Middle.
Yeah, I think it's this one. And then we can choose whether we want a second event or a second fight. And then that also lets us take the left right choice here between taking an elite and potentially a second elite or taking the elite later.
We're taking
It's funny when I'm playing on my iPad, I just I hold down both the elite and the fire button. I scroll up path so I can kind of see. I I kind of think there's like a an interesting potential like three elite path here
kind of like we we'll see how we're doing, but we also don't know the elites yet, which is a great way to die. So,
yeah.
Okay, so we have
slimes.
A leaf slime intends to attack for three damage.
The twig slime intends to give us a status card.
Slimer,
very nice, by the way. give you a status card didn't have a I

don't think had a specific distinct
it had a little generic um
it had like
I think it was combined with the status effect.
Yeah, it was like in intends to debuff you and sometimes that would be a card and sometimes that would be a curse and sometimes that would be whatever but it was the green swirls was the same thing that Logulan always did. Um, okay. And
so it looks like with the math here, we can find out on the strike setup. Like we could do strike setup, strike on one, and because we have two more strength.
Yeah.
For left guy, we can then do one strike on the Okay. So, how much damage will this do? Let's find out. Seven or nine.
So, that does seven. And then we get the two strength.
So, we can kill the twig slime
with second strike
and then the leaf slime.
And we're taking no damage.
I like strike setup. Strike setup is
a worthwhile. Also, the the slime had a death animation. The slime had like a evaporate into um
I need to pay more attention. I was like,
"No, it's it's very easy to miss." Also, there's like parallax motion with like

the lights floating up.
They're using layers.
Yeah.
I'm curious to know if they actually did this in 3D and then turned it flat.
Yes. Great.
Which is what I'm thinking, but I'm not positive.
All right. I will do this responsibly. We'll defend. defense strike.
Oo, there was also a hit motion. You getting hit wasn't the generic old hit anymore. There was a little slime explosion when you got hit.
Mhm.
So, there's a lot more detail put into um this. Okay.
[snorts]
think we guaranteed to kill next turn.
It would be very difficult for us to not kill this turn.
Yeah.
Uh no, any combination of cards would have killed this turn.
Yep. Okay. It goes a little flat
and then it it see it like it it

flattens and then
away which I think is cool. I just like all the little touches. Power cards. Power cards apply a buff to you when used. buffs remain for the duration of a single combat. So, we have breakthrough, lose one HP, deal nine to all enemies, or gain two strength as a power or deal six damage and add a copy of this card to your discard pile.
So, those the middle and the right are both exactly the same from
uh Aspire one.
One on the left is a new one. I'm sensing more of a theme with some of the new ones. At least so far, we've seen a lot more of the lose hit point um coming in. I don't remember a lucid point on a common from the last
um I believe there are a couple.
You know, I'm not going to spend the time looking it up. I I don't remember uh precisely enough to tell you whether the one that I'm thinking of is

hemocinesis is an uncommon.
It's an uncommon.
Yeah, I don't think there's another one. Anyway, I kind of want an inflame just for funsies.
Um, okay. So, we get an event. Our first
Let's see. Okay. And we're still Oh. Oh, this is in a new perspective.
Interesting. You spot an enormous shambling beast. Chase off an injured green bird in the al cove. The bird fled from a single unguarded egg lies abandoned. Your stomach gurgles. You can eat the egg to gain seven maximum HP or take the egg and add Berdonus or a Berdonis egg to your deck. And a Berdonis egg is an unplayable quest card which can be hatched at a rest site.
Wow.
I don't think there's a choice. I think we're taking the egg. We take egg, right? Just to see what this does. Cuz what the heck is a quest?
Awesome. Love it. And chat is chat is very much in the egg train. You gently scoop up the egg and stow it, thinking it may hatch into something useful

later.
Okay, so now
I'm curious if that turns into the equivalent of a artifact.
Maybe it might turn into a upgraded card. It might turn into a potion.
It probably turns into an artifact, but I do want to interject the idea that it could turn into anything.
Yeah. Okay. So, left is monster question mark. Right is monster monster
or monster monster elite fire. Let's see. If we go to the left or right, how many elites can we get after that?
Uh, if we So, if we go left, we can get one, two elites.
Two. Okay.
And if we take this one, we can get two more. So, the right path means that we would take three elites and the left path means that we would only take two,
right? And let's see. How many? If we go right, we can get how many upgrades? One,
two.
We could get up to two.
Three. at the last.
I'm sorry, I never count the last one.
Yeah, if we're not um if we are not

hatching the Berdon's egg, right? Because the egg is uh can be hatched at a rest site. So, we're probably going to have to spend the rest site to do that.
Let's go. Let's find out. Let's go. I'd say left one in a question mark and then we'll head for elites after that.
Yeah, I agree. Okay, we have a bug.
A shrinker beetle intends to apply a debuff to you.
Interesting. There's our egg.
So, let's bash. Yep. To set up for future turns.
Okay, great.
Oh, no.
We've been shrunk. While Okay, fascinating. While Shrinker Beetle is alive, your attacks deal 30% less damage.
And we're shining,
right? Okay. I also want to interject the notion that this is teaching us that these enemies will be part of larger group encounters later on.
Why is it teach Why do you think it's teaching us that?

Because it's while it's alive.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
So, we could it becomes a priority target in group encounters to kill it, right? Um I'm going to say we take two and then try and make the most out of
not full health, but yeah, we can probably take two and
we could actually probably take seven. Um, we're doing minimum 10
zero, but on good play theory, I still think we
Yeah. Okay. Uh, actually, yeah, the third strike would have meant we killed for sure this turn. Uh, but this is fine cuz we kill anyway. We go back to full health.
But if we couldn't have killed, that would have meant we had so many defends. Yeah.
That Okay, fire pot. Oh, it actually looks like a Molotov.
Yeah, they they did they changed one of the latest patches for one they changed a bunch of the potions to be more visually distinct and I like this one better.
Okay, Drake or throw potions during combat. Potions stay with you throughout

the run and a card.
Oh, our first uncommon.
So, iron wave is back.
Mhm. Okay,
we have dismantle. If the enemy is vulnerable, this hits twice. Or cinder for two energy. We could deal 17 and exhaust the top card of our draw pile.
If ironclad still has a couple things that put things on the top of the deck.
Yeah, that could be good. But we don't have any of them yet. And dismantle synergizes with the thing that we do have, our bash,
which is bash.
Especially because if we've got additional strength,
right, either from our worst comes to worse, it's an eight damage strike.
Yeah. Uh, okay. We have another event. You narrowly avoid stepping on a bright, sharp seed. Its unmistakable color gives away that it's a sapphire seed. Weren't these incredible seeds supposed to be extinct? Legends say that consuming one can greatly amplify your endurance. But

what if you plant and nourish it instead? We could heal for 9 HP and upgrade a card in our deck, or we can enhant a card with s. SW is an enchant marker.
H that says the first time you play this card each combat gain one energy.
I'm assuming that's energy you get back every turn.
I think it's if you So the way it's phrased is we play it, we get one energy back from that card specifically the first time we play it and that's it.
Could be. But if so, it's a card for an energy, which isn't great.
I believe this is in addition to its other effects. So, we would like put this on like bash.
Oh, whoops. Did I miss the trade? It did say attach
enchant a card.
Okay.
So, this goes on like

this is a little They're actually They're taking a little bit of monster train with um
with enchantments.
Yeah.
Yeah. I I kind of want to put this on Bash. I kind of want to put this on Bash because Bash is a setup card, right? So the more if we hit them and then we have additional energy, we can use it to hit them while they're vulnerable and get more out of Bash
if we were damaged the top one too because like we could also upgrade Bash itself,
right?
And because we may not be getting an upgrade depending if we need to spend our quest on it.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, let's try enchanting. Let's try the new stuff. Yeah. All right. So, we're going to try enchanting bash. So, bash says Oh, and it's got the little icon. Okay, great. So, now it's
Oh, sorry. The um the other option would be to put it on um the strength uh enchant
that effectively makes it pre and we'd only play that once in combat anyway.
That's another really good point. Yeah, one of these two.
Yeah.
Um

actually, here's a weird thing. I'm curious if if if putting things on cards is going to be a thing.
There's also the the possibility that you're only allowed one.
Yep.
I would therefore put it on the inflame
to leave Bash free to do other things,
right?
Yeah. I think
they're equal.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we'll put it on flame. Uh in find out
Yeah. Uh okay, great. You scour the overgrowth and find a pot with good arration. Then you trek around, searching for an untouched spot where light peaks through a cracked wall. Carefully, you reinforce the pot with bark and vine to camouflage it. Fill it with lomy, nutrient-rich soil, and nestle the seed just beneath the surface. Finally, you gather dew from nearby plants and pour it over the soil. Grow big little seed. Unknowingly, this the sapphire seed attaches to you spiritually, thankful of your hard work.
By the way, I love the quest system or sorry, the encounter system that they're keeping. You pretty much know what happens.
Yeah.
Like it gives you choices, but it tells you what each choice does.
Yes.

Um, okay. Go over here.
Oh, you are right to guess that hatching will take a thing.
Yes. Um, at the restaurant, you can stop and take a breather after selecting one of the options. You must move on. Choose wisely. Well, I think we hatch.
Yep. So,
okay. Upon pickup, gain the card bird swoop. A bird pip will accompany you in battle. It is a zero damage or is a zero cost deal 14 damage attack. That seems a little strong. I'm worried now. Why are they allowed to give us this? Is that a rare event? I'm confused and a little worried
actually. But we also we traded an upgrade for it.
That's true.
And we still have to draw the card. So there's still a card cost.
That's true.
And we gave upgrading or resting in return for it actually. And we gave up the other thing we could have gotten from that the other reward as well.
That's true.
So from what we've given up, we gave up

the other reward and arrest and it's still a card draw.
That's true. Those are all really good points.
Um so
we don't know what a company by a bird pip is. I'm very interested to see what that was.
Yeah.
Okay. So I think here
I think we need to take more fights to get more cards to beat up that elite.
Let's see. cuz we're only going to get one more rest before the end rest. Right.
Correct. So, my current path is one of these two and then we go fight this
one more question mark. I'm enjoying the question marks and then head right up for all the fights.
Okay, I'm I'm all right with that. All right, we'll take another another good so far.
Oh, what are these?
These are ninjas.
Inklets and they are slippery. The next time Inklet loses HP, it loses only one HP instead.
Fascinating.
We're about to take damage. Oh, there's the bird, by the way.
Yeah, here's the bird. I don't know what it does. So, uh,

we have no block, so we're obviously going to have to start whacking.
Yeah, I'm thinking if we can kill something. I got to do math, man. I don't want to do math.
So, remember, the first hit isn't going to do as much. So that means we're probably ignoring bash. We need more cash.
I was gonna I was gonna Okay, so this this is free. So we play this because we gain the one energy back. All right, great.
So strike setup strike strike would mean that we do
uh enough. We could kill this one.
We could kill this one cuz setup strike knocks off the um slippery and then we do enough with these two to kill it because of the strength bonus. So
I think we do that to minimize incoming damage. Yep. ink ninjas.
Oh no. Okay, good. I thought this was going to be
not the little
Yeah, the blobs from act three. I was going to be like, "Oh no."

Right. We take three. We take three.
Okay. There's birds. So remember, not Yeah. Not bird swoop first.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we do uh actually
exactly one damage there and
kill them.
Uh and then we can yeah double block and not take any more damage cuz we'll go exactly to full off burning blood.
Uh this kills and gold and a card. Oh, I like that it it tells us that it was unknown enemy. That that is a special icon here up at the top where it says a previously unknown room containing hostile enemies.
Love that.
Uh yo, we've got two we've got two all star.
Just two absolute all star. Shrug it off and armors are both allstar iron
hard on both of them, too.

Yeah. And then stomp. deal 12 damage to all enemies, but cost one less energy for each attack played this turn.
So, that means we pretty much need four energy to make that work well. Or something like anger or something else.
We could just play three strikes.
Sorry, never mind. My math is
it's three. So,
um I kind of like this as because we don't have any AoE right now. That's my concern.
That's true.
And it would work well with strike setup. Yes, because then setup strike reduces the cost and increases the ring. Yeah. Okay. I think we take stomp here.
Um,
also if we happen to pick up, that's going to be an amazing [laughter] card.
They better have kept Sneak eye. All right, we take this fight.
Oh, no.
Pick up all the attacks that we're going to want to for a while.
Yeah. Okay, so this is a Mert tends to attack for four damage two times. And we don't have a lot of block, but what we can do is just do damage. So that seems

good to me. [snorts]
Okay, we're going to take eight. And that's fine. I'm very worried this
a lot of damage.
It's fine. It
sorry that we did.
Yeah. Uh okay. So we obviously inflame here and then this is only 24. So we're going to block and then do 16.
Mhm. And if we decide we didn't want to take the nine damage, we could use our potion, but it feels like
correct.
We're still okay at this point.
I'm kind of down with that. Also, I'd like to point out another small uh upgrade. It's another small quality of life upgrade.
Birdie birdie. Okay,
if you'll notice, end turn three. It doesn't say end turn. It tells you which turn it is, which is very different than the first game that didn't tell you which turn it was, and that matters
because that probably also reinforces that something will be happening. Yep.

The bird
12 gold, a strength potion premium, and then
thunder clap with slightly upgraded art, rage with slightly upgraded art, or a second setup strike.
We have enough attacks. Rage is not impractical, especially because we have the one that reduces in cost as you play other attacks.
That's true. We also have Thunderclap as another source of vulnerable for our stuff. But I do agree that we need some amount of block which we're currently not getting. So I'm kind of inclined to take rage.
I would say yeah. And actually I'll be back in 15 seconds. Grab a thing.
Uh chat, we're taking this path to get to an elite. So I'm gonna I'm gonna roll into this fight as Jeff gets back. What are you? All right. Great. So, we have an assassin raider who's going to attack for 11, a crossbow raider who's going to defend, and an axe raider who's going to attack for five, and then block. Great. Amazing. Um,

you know, that's a really great question. Violence. Violence had a really interesting observation that um wonder if strength affects the pet card specifically. And that I don't know. That's a very good question. Also, why are you not in the thing? Oh, it did. Okay, cool. Great. Awesome. I missed that. I don't know why you're not showing up in the thing. Very interesting. Hooray. We're having we're having problems today with our uh with our combined chat feature. So, YouTube, I see you. I hear you. I can't put you on screen, and for that, I apologize.
Ooh, so pretty. Well,
all right. So, we have an assassin raider who's going to attack for 11, a crossbow raider who's going to block, and an axe raider who's going to uh attack for five and do a thing. So, I think
rage was a good pickup.
Yeah. So, I think we uh this kills, right? If we go rage,

set up.
Yeah. Strike, dismantle, take zero. Say go. Is it rage? Rage with an attack heavy deck is nice.
Yeah, it's it's a way to Hey, I know I'm going to need to block, but I don't really want to block. Oh, hey, the problem with our deck rit large. Um,
so let's see options if we're worried about it. Um, we do have a fire pot and we do have an attack potion.
Uh, this is strength.
Oh, strength. Whoops. Sorry.
Uh, so we could block, strike, fire pot, throw an extra strike here. that lets us conserve HP. And the reason that I'm considering that is we're about to go into a mandatory elite. We don't have a chance to dodge
a couple of elites in a row.
Uh correct. We don't we have this potential rest, but that we want to use for an upgrade to beat the elite. So, I kind of think that weirdly,

uh it's defend to block this five.
Yeah.
Strike here. throw this fire pot at this one to not take
still the same 20 damage.
14 more.
I think it actually threw.
Yeah, it does. The animation I think is one of like the big upgrades here.
That's probably one of Remember I was saying that they now have a there's now a staff list.
Yeah.
Um there I think they hired an animator.
I love the bird attack. It's so good.
All right, so we gained six health back. We get
forgotten and battle transfer back.
It's all the good stuff. It's all a a hit list of the ironclad greatest here. So, we've got a battle trance, a true grit, and an uppercut. And I think it's absolutely battle trance,
especially because we have both the um the what's the shield card for zero? Um
uh rage, right? We have we have a rage,

we have bird swoop, and we have stomp, which gets better the more cards we play.
Yeah, all three of those. Yeah, I think Oh, man. Upgraded battle transfer starting to slim your deck down. Sorry. Uh, true grit is also
Yeah. is very good. But the risk of it not being upgraded is very high. All right. Or for Ooh. Oh, it's not just a chest in a hallway anymore. Oh, I love this.
Will, you know what this means, too? What?
Okay. I think they're level specific. We're in the swamp.
Okay.
That was a swamp, like an overgrown chest.
Yes. All right. Relics found throughout the spire grant unique bonuses and remain throughout your run. They can be found at treasure rooms, random events, or by defeating elites. Got it.
We get gorge. At the start of each combat, gain four plating. At the end of your turn, gain block. Plating is reduced by one at the start of your turn. Okay.
Wait, let's see. Oh, wait. That's slightly different.
It is not um plated armor,

right? It's not the ablative. If it takes more damage than that, it goes down. So, it's a 4 3 2 one straight.
Correct.
Um,
still nice.
Still Yeah, still very nice. Okay, our first elite.
Whoa.
Wait, hold on a sec. I sense Oh, I sense an interaction. I sense a story interaction. Oh, I'm so excited. I'm so excited. All right, first things first.
What's the little flag? Let's Oh, end of his turn, he gets a strength. Okay.
Yeah. So, this is
territorial.
Territorial. At the end of turn, it gains a strength and it intends to attack for 16.
So, the question that I have is, do we immediately chug the strength pot?
Right. For those who have not played much spire before, things like a strength pod in this case will give us strength just for this fight. It will give us two. So if we're going to use it, ideally you get the most utility by using it at the beginning of your fight rather than halfway through when you're

like, "Oh, this is going poorly."
Yeah, I I think we ought take it now. We can take no damage here, but we're not gonna
Well, actually, we could hold off a turn
because we could inflame and then block, block, block.
Let's see. We're always going to inflame, but because inflame is free,
right?
So,
um, we get four extra health, too,
right? So,
sorry, four extra armor. So, we could also do a double block and one sword, which means we should decide on our health potion,
right? So, we're definitely blocking, right? So now the question is, do we do do we want to do eight or 10? So it's here's a here we're going to do some nerd math real quick. So this is 91.
Mhm.
Um and these are each eight. So the deck currently deals [clears throat] um I'm going to do this a little weirdly, but go
the hardest part is when we don't know when we get bash.
I'm gonna assume we draw bash last.

Okay. just for the sake of uh of planning. So this is 26 uh 34. No, sorry. Yeah, 26 34. Um
we also don't know when we draw setup strike,
correct?
Yeah, we're going to assume that we don't get any of those benefits, right? I'm just looking at the raw damage, right? Okay.
Um 36 24 uh this is
73.
Yeah. So it's like 70. It's 73 total. So we won't kill unless we something changes
and that was across four or five six
7 8 nine attacks
correct. So I see
so that would be 18 more damage. So that would
let's see if we attack this turn that would kill it using
the strength pot.
Yeah.
Okay. Let's do it.
Okay. So, we're going to take two here. And that's okay.

By the way, one of the reasons I'm more anxious to do it is this is an escalating fight.
Yes.
The longer it goes on, the harder that thing's going to hit.
I agree. Okay. Um,
always going to battle trance.
Uh, are we?
Well, let's see. I want to get rage. I Okay, so we're drawing at a three in seven, which is not the worst. And we would do that first, but we currently have all of our energy spoken for because we um bash, bird, swoop, strike, stomp, and that's everything,
right? But we have a 50 roughly 50% chance of also then taking zero damage.
I agree.
And I think we're going to do enough. Yep. There we go. Okay,
there we go. Bash strike bird swoop and barely not lethal, but that's okay because we're guaranteed to get lethal next turn.
Yep. And that was kind of the magic of

going for the rage there is it like that just saved us 12 health.
Yep, it did.
Or actually a little less cuz we would have gotten the three for free.
Yeah. Saved us enough health that it's worthwhile. Die. Oh, sad. All right,
39 gold, a block potion. We upgrade our strength potion into a vajra, which is just one permanent strength.
Oo, okay. Buyer.
Okay, we got Okay, so we got we got thoughts. One, budgeon is back and it's uncommon. That's weird. Bludgeon used to be rare. That's a thing.
I don't disagree with that. It's a it does a lot of damage, but it's still a three cost attack. Yep.
Interesting. So for for some of these, by the way, budgeon obviously as a straightforward upgrade, it does more damage, right?
Py it could have cost less or do more or do something else,

right? Upgrades are not always linear.
So in this case, py two for two energy at the start of each turn is pretty interesting. And then
and actually one thing about energy, energy is almost always exclusively a boss relic that you get.
Yeah.
Or one of the characters like core interaction signature core interaction loops. So it's not a common thing to get it.
Yeah. I kind of want py here.
Yeah. Actually, show me evil eye again. Let's see.
Uh it's eight and eight block if you've exhausted a card and 11 or and 11 block. But we don't have
We don't have a lot of exhaust yet.
We have no exhaust right now. So I think
Py seems really good especially since we have um battle trance to draw extra cards.
I agree. [clears throat]
Okay. Now we take this fight.
Yeah.
AND THIS FIGHT IS OH, WE HAVE two nibbits. Ah ah
one nibbit. Ah ah ah two nibbit. Uh we

attack the one with less HP first. Although this one no this one is powering up. So, we attack the one that's powering up first
because it will be the bigger problem. Uh, and then we play this to use all of our energy. It's like we do have a block pot. It is still 12 block.
By the way, one strength may not seem like a lot, but one strength really adds up over the fights.
It do. Um,
okay. So, we're going to be able to eliminate that guy. Uh,
that word was is really nice. Like it
battle. Wait, wait. Battle trans.
We got Yeah, we got to battle transfers. Uh, okay. So, it's bash dismantle.
He's one short. Are Are you kidding me? That's fine. We're We're taking 12, but

we're healing for six, so we're only really taking six.
Yeah,
stop it.
We have the same thoughts on this. An energy pot. Very nice
thing, too. Energy. Okay. Oh,
okay. Very
tremble.
We have whirlwind.
So, here's an interesting interaction.
Whirlwind can be played for zero. And it works well with rage therefore
and works well with rage and also works well with stomp
because it doesn't care that the attack has done anything. It just cares that we've played it. So I can go bash strike whirlwind for zero then play stomp.
We also have plier which upgrades our energy.
I agree. And we have free draw, right? And
I'm getting a lot of attacks in our deck like more than I would normally like but I think whirlwind because of our other interactions.
Yeah, I agree. If one of these was a block card, I would be much more tempted to take the block card, but they're not.

So, whirlwind.
Um, okay. We go left because that's how we get an extra upgrade in,
I think. So,
yeah,
like we don't need the rest. Let's see. We haven't We actually haven't upgraded yet.
Okay. So, we get to pick a card to upgrade. And options are
So, the same as three to eight. Um,
this is 18. This is probably
Yeah. What does stomp do?
15.
Okay. Just a little more damage. Slightly more damage isn't amazing. It's nice. Yeah,
but like battle. Let's see. That should inflame is probably going to go to three. Yep.
Um battle trance does it go to four.
Yeah, rage goes to five. Battle trance goes to four.
Yeah, three to five block per attack is actually pretty big.
I agree. But the other big one would be bash for the third vulnerable. But
let's check. Let's make sure it still does three vulnerable.
I believe it does. Okay, one extra turn of not having to use that is really good. Yeah. And then of course there's Py, which is just going to be one extra or four, five energy a turn

instead of four.
Good call. Violence correctly points out that bloodletting is a downshift. Bloodletting was also uncommon and is now a common. Very good call.
Oh, you're right.
Yeah, we're getting It feels like we're getting a downshift in things that cause the ironclad to pay life. that those are
because I said I don't remember any of those being in the common set last game.
Yeah, I agree.
So, they're leaning into it.
The other one is
short list. Py.
Yeah, Py. Trance.
Rage.
I think Py, Rage, um, and Bash are all
Oh, and Battle Trance. Yeah.
One extra card is always strong.
I am generally not
to argue though with Bash. Yeah, it is our only real source of vulnerable and it makes dismantle so much better and everything else better. Let's just upgrade.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think
the extra turn where everything stays nice and stays vulnerable is um pretty

huge.
All right, come here. Elate. Oh, no. Strategic intends to give us three status cards and upon dying summons
something.
Okay. Well, Fortunately,
we're always in plane.
Yeah, fortunately for us, we have a setup turn.
Mhm.
And actually, battle trance will help quite a lot with status cards as well because it's going to let us um uh it's going to let us churn through those more quickly, right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Hate that. Correct.
Whoa.
Oh, those look gross. Infection at am unplayable. At the end of your turn, if this is in your hand, take three damage. Gross. I hate
So unplayable, but they're looking for discard or um so we can kill it this turn

or um let's see. Nine
9 and 15 is only
24. We're off by a tiny bit.
We are off. We could use the energy pot to kill it this turn.
Let's see. Wait, how much is whirlwind doing with our strength right now? Eight.
Eight.
Yeah. Eight.
So, we could drink the energy pot and whirlwind. We could drink the energy pot and strike whirlwind stomp.
Mhm.
We could also play py and defend. take nine damage and be set up basically with now an unlimit not unlimited but enough energy for whatever comes after.
I kind of think
I did say it was going to spawn something.
We also have a block potion.
Mhm.
So we could like py defend block pot not take uh well we're not getting full value then. This is eight and that's only 16.
Yeah.
So we wouldn't use the block pot. I

think we do the setup.
Yeah, I think setup is wiser here. Although that looks real weird. I'm I'm kind of a fan of that.
There's only one way to handle this. Yeah. Kill with fire.
Hermes. Well, and it's also because we don't know what happens after this. Like if we'd fought this guy before, we'd have a much better idea.
Um,
jump.
I'm going to do the setup strike because we don't know what's going to happen. And that way the
Oh,
let's see. I'd say hit the one with the most hit points.
Yeah, I agree. They're called wrigglers, and I hate them. Oh. Oh. Oh. Can I get a whirlwind? Can I draw a whirlwind? Can we draw whirlwind, please?
At least we get a rage.
Yeah, we get rage. And we get to play our whole hand. So, this kills here. Mhm. And then the guy on the left, I think, is exactly
either of these. Um I think

the guy on the right cuz Yeah, we'll block enough with the
We don't want to take additional uh status cards if we don't have to.
And Rage was a really good choice this run.
Yeah, Rage has been Rage has performed much better than I normally expected to if I'm being honest.
Oh, it's because we're so attack heavy.
Yeah, that's true. Um I think we just kill both here.
Yeah, Stomp is going to kill everything. If we spread it out.
Yep.
All right.
We didn't get the infection. [laughter]
Rage has been really good this run. You say, Jeff, what if we HAD RAGE ON A RELIC?
It's a raging fan.
Yeah. Every time you play three attacks in a single turn, gain four block. Excellent.
Flame. Oh man, I disproportionately have always loved flame barrier.
Yeah.
Although pillillage is kind of interesting. Deal six, then draw cards until you draw something that isn't an attack.
I don't think we cycle the deck fast enough for Rampage.

I kind of want
Yeah, Rampage is the one you take early on and you try and keep your deck slim.
Yeah, I think Flame Barrier, we do need more block.
We do. And actually, it goes well with Py in that Py gives us that extra energy.
Yeah.
To use a big attack. Y flame barrier is particularly good against lots of small creatures or creatures that do a lot of hits. And at least one of the bosses at the end of Inspire One at the end of the first act started by doing a six turn two six attack hit.
Yep.
Where things like flame barrier are just amazing.
Those are all attacking. This would also be amazing right here. So I think we have to get our stomp off. Like there's no way we don't end with a stomp here considering the amount of energies enemies.
Uh unfortunately we cannot stomp and
if we strike doesn't Yeah. I'd say we

ignore the we throw on the uh rage.
We don't I mean we don't need to but yes. Uh so we strike here
and then we stomp everything.
Yeah
because I think that's way more valuable than the um
Yeah. I was trying to see if there was bashmath that could leave one of these vulnerable, but I don't think there is.
Although,
I think that's one of the other good reasons to have put the that seed on the um the strength uh power.
Yeah,
the inflame. There we go. Cuz we can always play inflame. We can't always play bash. Oh,
this does eight three times.
There we go.
And then they died. Mhm. [clears throat]
Ooh. Is the deck big enough to support a second battle trance?
Yes.
Yeah. I think that's not
I There's almost no ironclad deck in my opinion, personal opinion, that can't support at least two.
Seems fair.

Okay. Well, we don't need to rest.
Correct. Um, I kind of like
upgrading battle trance is slightly less
agreed
needed now
because we're more likely to draw the second battle trance, which is bad. The only card you don't want to see off battle trance is the second battle trance because you can't use it,
right?
Let's see. Let's check the upgrade. If flame barrier is the same. Yep. Now more block and more damage per hit.
Um, I kind of like py. Honestly, if we're going to spend the time uh playing it, we should be getting full dividends out of playing it. And two energy goes a lot longer, a lot further than one,
especially with a second battle trans.
Yeah, I think that's right.
Cool.
And in general, if you're new to Spire, like upgrading a a more rare card is generally good. All right. What What you What you got for us?
Whoa.
I'm sensing ink is now a theme. Like birds were the main line through from one
because we thought the ink ninjas before

too.
And that teaches us something. What good tutorialization
because now we know what slippery does. The next nine times banttom loses HP. It loses only it only loses one HP instead.
I hadn't noticed the nine below because you had the mouse over it.
Yeah, it's nine. But the tool tip says,
by the way, the tool tip adjusts for the number of stacks. So that's nice. Oh, I wonder what a whirlwind does.
I imagine it's three instances of one damage.
There have been weird interactions before, but I would assume you're
uh I think there's no world in which we don't battle transfers.
We get our inflame, which we play not because it's going to help us, but because it lets us increment things. And then we've got four here. We're going to just proc ornamental fan instead.
Yep. So,
yeah, we just go to town.
Yeah, we just go to town. Um, actually, let's find out. Uh, how compar.
Yeah. Uh, oh yeah, let's do one of these

and then one of these.
Yeah, it does. It does take two stacks.
Okay.
Okay. And then our plating kicks in.
Weirdly, we're very well positioned against this deck, against this enemy specifically.
Yeah.
Because the
flame barrier here is not bad.
Correct. And then we just strike and strip a stack.
Yep.
It's interesting. This is all about lots of small like silent with his kn her knives would be
the thorns stripped two stacks.
Noting here.
Okay. So, we now know
any actually, can you mouse over the tool tip? Was it any damage?
The next time it loses eight.
Yeah, lose hit point. Okay. So, Flame Barrier was an exceptionally good choice then.
Yep. So, we know that we would draw these three cards.
Y
if we were to do that,
we probably don't want to be Well, let's see because we're going to want to play our Py when we get it.

Correct. So, my thought was battle trance to guarantee these three cards. Energy pot for Py
and then lots of small attacks with rage. Yeah. Well, and then and then uh bash dismantle uh to strip the last stack off and start doing damage and then just accept that we're going to take damage because
we need to try if we can hit three attacks though.
That's true.
We're going to get a lot of extra block.
Yeah. Um we kind of have to choose then between pirate.
Sure. Let's choose to spend the energy pot.
Yeah. Okay, cool. So, I think we're definitely doing this.
And I think we're definitely doing
this to get higher into play.
Yep. And then rage.
Well, we will only get two attacks if we do this, by the way,
cuz Bash is one of them, right? We only have three attacks in hand, and Bash is

one of them. But I think that's going to have to be okay cuz we need to set up turn. Also, we are playing we're playing like this is 20. This is zero. We heal to full at the end of this fight. So, like
I know
you do take the hit. So, the first one does one, the second one does 16. How excellent.
We're taking some amount of stupid damage.
Wounds.
Oo, wounds.
And they go into our discard pile, which is unfortunate because we just reshuffled.
Hooray. Uh, we just trance
and then we
now we just start whailing on it.
Now we just start.
It's vulnerable. We got strike set up.
Yeah, we're we're very good.
We have five energy per turn because
Wow.
because that's fair and balanced. Um,
yeah, we just at this point we just play

everything. Yeah, at this point we're just we're in what what I actually called the playing cards phase of the uh the thing. It is nice that these fights escalate though. Um
yeah, I think that and whirlwind probably kill it.
Yeah, it does. Math. Oh, we've discovered the we've discovered an epoch. What? Wait, what was that? There was a thing. We got like a little popup that said epoch discovered and it had like little purple chain.
I wonder if that's going to be a log book entry.
Transform all attacks in your hand into giant rock.
Okay, now here's a big question and I don't know the answer to this. Is that one giant rock or all giant rocks? That is to say if I
That's a good question,
right? So that's that's a yeah, that's a good one.

I think it's one.
I I kind of think it might be demon form is still silly.
Uh and thrash deal four damage twice. Exhaust a random attack in your hand and add its damage to this card.
Oh man, I want to see that with Bludgeon.
Yo, for real? You just
What was the upgrade on that?
Uh six damage twice.
Okay,
so not ever worth upgrading. But I imagine, by the way, that that's permanent or that's for the rest of combat. That's my instinct, right?
So, let's see. Demon form is usually hard to get in play because it costs three.
But we have Py.
We do have five at this point. And one of the things about demon form is demon form is a if you can hold out long enough, you're just going to win,
right?
Card like two or possibly three strength escalating. Yep.
Is good. Primal Force would be

interesting because it could theoretically slim down our deck or get rid of a whole bunch of strikes to make our deck slimmer with our battle transfer other more interesting cards.
Oh, I have a thought, Jeff.
Yes,
that says transform. Is that permanent?
I don't know. We have so many questions.
I kind of feel like we have to take Primal Force for science.
Gotcha. My guess is it's for the battle.
I agree, but also science.
Sure.
Okay. I'm I'm I'm I'm now in
I'm okay with science.
Right. Well, it's Look,
hive.
There's There's Excuse me. This is the beginning of the What? What? I have questions that begin with [clears throat] and end with.
Oh, you know what else? By the way, we haven't seen Yowi yet. That's true.
So, we didn't start out in the loop

because I believe
right
also we need to prioritize a shop. We have way too much money. It's burning a hole in our pocket. Um, but let's
because gold isn't power. It's potential power.
That's correct.
Oo,
a puppet has arrived. Pale the melting dragon.
Oh, actually, before we get to that, Will,
yes. At the end, there was no boss chest. This is the boss chest.
Oh,
at least that's my guess.
Yeah. Okay. So, you may add two relax to your deck. It's three. Gain 15 block. Next turn, draw two cards and gain two energy. It's behind Jeff, so they can't see it. Pale's wing. You may sacrifice card wards to Pale. Every two sacrifices, obtain a relic or at the start of your turn, draw one additional card.
So, Pale's the melting dragon.

I kind of think it's Wing.
Okay, let's go over those again. So, relax was two expendable cards that um
15 block.
Yeah, two next turn we draw two cards and gain two energy and it exhausts. Tail's Wing is we can sacrifice card rewards and every two sacrifices that we do, we obtain a relic.
And we're starting to get to the point where we should be taking less card rewards. They have to be really good to
Yes.
just not blow out our deck,
right? And then draw one additional card, but we're already we've already got two battle transites,
right? I mean, it wouldn't hurt because we'll have the energy at some point.
I agree. It wouldn't hurt, but we're not hurting for it.
Yeah. Right.
And relics are pretty much always great.
This seems bananas.
Let's do it. It's a little bit like black star, but
it is a touch. So, let's look on routing. So, we can go to the left and not get a fire before our first elite.

And that seems bad.
We can go
Can you highlight the merchants, by the way, as we go up?
Yes.
Okay. So, if we want, there's two merchants or one to two merchants on that path. And that's the only way to get merchants until the end of the act.
That is correct. short of a question mark.
Correct. Um, and we can take I kind of like this ending, right? Where we have an option to take another merchant at the end of the act,
right? And we have a elite.
Okay. So, going down. So, that's one elite, one campfire.
So, if we go this way, we have to come through this way or this way.
So, we're only we'll get two elites and one campfire if we do that.
Yep. Or we could get two elites.
Actually, we could hang a left,
right? Yeah, we can get a second shop though, which feels like a waste potentially wasted floor. But we do get another elite and another fire.
Yeah,
we're getting this shop here instead of this shop here feels bad. But I agree that it's not the worst thing.

We could also head up that way and see what happens.
I think regardless Yeah, I think we want to go here and take some more question marks because we've seen that they're absurd. They're just straight up absurd.
Sure, let's learn some things. science.
It's interesting that there's no
What are you? Well,
I'm still impressed that there's no end boss chest with the boss relic pick. Like they incorporated that into something new.
Yeah. And that like it feels like a way to control the variance over what the selection is, right? You got Pale. These are the relics that Pale or these are the things that Pale might be offering you. And it might not have
We'll have to see what the range is. Pale probably has
six, I would say. My my guess is probably around six.
Okay.
Okay. So, what do we want to sacrifice to primal force to see how it works? If we're doing it completely for science, we should probably have two attacks, but also all of our attacks are really good right now.
Yeah. I kind of Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of want to like just bash setup strike

bird swoop and just say go
and take the take the nine
and just uh take less cuz we've got the fan too. So, we're going to take
Oh, that's right. The fan. Yeah. So, we're
I think Yeah, fine. You're right with both of those.
Yes.
Yeah. [snorts]
The little bird just jumping around makes me so happy. Like, this really feels like an um a game that shows the quality of the details,
right?
Like,
which is something they just didn't have the staff to be able to do in the original,
right? Like the taking the chance to do all the things that you wanted to do before and couldn't is always a really cool thing to see.
Block is not removed. Stunned if all block is removed. Fascinating. So we rage strike strike stun you.
I play this for fun.

I'm thinking of kind of uh states and interactions here.
Mhm. We've got a lot more. Um, there's a lot of cool stuff going on.
Okay, gold card. Uh, bloodletting, iron wave, sword boomerang. That feel
the bloodletting bloodletting plus has a tiny possibility for whirlwind, but I think let like comparing that to half a relic,
right? Yeah, that's the hard part. Against half a relic, I think no.
Mhm.
Right. Like we don't want upgraded commons right now. We're looking for like an upgraded uncommon, a rare, something.
I'd take an upgrade to shrug it off.
That's true. Yeah, we need an upgraded card that fits a need we have like block, not more energy.
Hey.
Okay.
Oh crap. All right. Well, we've got a we've got a shop. Um Okay.
Actually, hit the map again before we go in. Let's see. So we have to take the other shop

and we could head off then to the right.
Yeah, it's much more likely now. It's like the one thing we didn't want to see. All right, this is our first shop of the new game.
Okay, shops have not changed over much.
Mhm.
We have Okay. Well, so much. Let's go about this methodically.
The relics are usually some of the most important stuff. Upon pickup, choose an attack or skill to enchant with royally approved. The card has innate and retain.
Start with it in your hand is innate
and it retains every turn.
So, or if you don't use it.
Correct.
So, basically, it's you know you're going to get it and you can hold it as long as you want until you need it.
That is correct. Or every time we play 10 attacks, gain an energy. Straight up nunchucks.
Always good.
Whenever you enter a shop, heal 15 HP.

Not worth it.
On ascension zero, especially not worth.
Yeah. On higher ascensions, maybe. Um, we have discard any number of cards, then draw that many.
So, same gambler, same liquid,
same liquid thorns, same skill pot.
Removing a card, removing a strike is always an option.
Correct. We also have a stone armor on sale which would give us four more plating.
Mhm. [clears throat]
Wait, is it was the other one plating as well?
Yes. So it would stack with our gore.
Yeah. So that's going to Okay. Put us up to eight.
Yep. We have a pillillage which doesn't feel great. A taunt is kind of interesting. It blocks and applies vulnerable. And our upgrade is eight block and two vulnerable for one energy. So, come get this.
Yeah,
receive bloodletting. What's the other one? Unrelenting.
Unrelenting. Deal 12 damage for two energy, and the next attack you play costs zero.

There was a block version of that last
Yes.
one,
but it was it was swivel and it was um
Watcher.
Watcher. Bolas is kind of interesting. Deal three damage at the start of your next turn. return this to your hand.
Oh, cute. So, that one is particularly interesting because of both rage and ornamental fan.
Yeah.
It's not great, but it helps trigger both. Actually, it would also go really well with numchucks.
Yeah. Um, so let's see. This is this. We could afford both of these and nothing else.
There's also a um
What would we want in Nate? Well, let's look at our deck. Higher.
Higher and would not have
for the turn that we need it, for the turn that we're able to play it.

Um, let's see. We could get partial use out of it on inflame because we would always have two points of strength that just started. If we can apply two enchantments, which we don't know,
even a battle trance might not be bad.
Oh, let's see. Hold on. Um, Thunder just said attack.
Oh, choose an attack or skill. That's correct. Yeah, that's a very good point. Significant.
Not a We were both looking at powers.
Yeah, that's battle trance is not bad because we would just start with one and we'd be able It's like draw three cards whenever you need the first,
right?
But I don't know if any of these are good enough. Yeah, to spend that over bullet nunchucks.
Yep. Or possibly card remove.
Yeah. What removing a strike?
Probably.
Probably.
And the reason for those people who haven't played a lot of Spire, basically one of the things you this game really really put on the radar was removing mediocre cards to make you draw better

cards more often. [clears throat] Like it's not necessarily an intuitive why would I want to pay to make my deck smaller because most RPGs you take your stuff to the shop and you're like hey shopkeeper buy it from me not I will pay you to take it.
Yeah. Um I kind of just want to try this bullet nunchucks.
I'm going be really honest.
Uh we can't even afford the stone armor. Unfortunately we're off by two gold which is a shame. Uh, I like by the way that it's um, again, this is one of those they put a lot of care into it. The merchant is not just sitting in the middle of the hallway anymore,
right? The merchant has a whole scene. Merchant is in a place. I love it. Oh my god. What are these?
Let's see. What was the imbalanced? Um,
if Bullbug rocks attacks are fully blocked, it becomes stunned. And we know it attacks first based on

its position.
Correct. Enemies always attack from left to right. Bottom to top, top to bottom.
Yeah.
Well, looks like we're not going to get to
Oh, no. We will full block if we flame barrier. This would also be a good chance to check uh to set uh check out what Primal Force does.
Well, because we except
we should play at least one card.
Well, then we're giving up stomp for it. That's the problem.
Mhm.
Um are we down to give up stomp for a giant rock?
Actually, we can't play the giant rock this turn. Let's wait till our next
Yeah, let's wait till Let's wait for another chance.
Mhm. We
like the little the little eye spin.

Seems like an excellent turn to fire.
Yep.
And then um this is buffing. So I'm going to smack this one cuz I don't know what that buff does.
Okay, we are now online. We have actually no we still have our inflame. There it is. Let's see. How much does Whirlwind do?
40.
40. Yep.
40 seems like more than their HP.
Chop.
A swift pot to draw three cards. Phenomenal.
Okay, so we're halfway to an artifact. So, body slam damage equal to block.
Not great.
Importantly though, that's during our turn and not after the end when we get our bonus.
Correct. And we've got a lot of bonus stuff. Bully is another free attack for nunchucks, but we don't have a lot of vulnerable and it's kind of low card quality without that. Yep.
Oh, wait. Uh oh, that's apparently we missed that one of the uh bugs had plus

15 strength. So, I'm kind of glad we killed it when we did. Um
I missed that, too.
I Yeah. Okay. Uh I think we Let's get the relic cuz I kind of want to see if it's a choice or if we get a specific relic.
Yeah. Let's find out. Sacrifice
Bellows. The first hand you draw each combat is upgraded.
Nice.
Very nice. Big about. Um, okay. We have to go to the shop. And that stinks. Actually, there is a method to this.
Mhm.
Which is that we have to walk by this shop. We don't have to go in.
So, let's tell why.
So, the way that this works is that if
worked and we assume worked, we're assuming it still works this way. is that if you see a relic in a shop, it is removed from the relic pool and you can't see it again that run.
Mhm.
Which means that if you don't think you can make a meaningful difference to your run, you're generally speaking better

off not going into it because it might show up again later when it could be useful, right? There's no
but it also may take some bad relics out. I say we check it out though, Will, since we're learning and there also might be something on sale.
Yeah, that's fair. It is. It is. Uh I agree that we should look because we're learning. I also think it's worth mentioning at this point that normally this would be a skip, but we're learning.
Uh we can buy nothing, but we have
gnarled. Upon enchant up to three attacks with sharp three, which is just three extra damage.
Mhm.
Happy flower.
Yay. Returns
pendulum. Whenever you shuffle your draw pile, draw an extra card.
Oh, that's cool.
Perfected strike back legend. Expect a fight. Gain an energy for each attack in your hand
as a skill. Okay.
And it reduces to one energy. Fascinating.
And actually, so that's one you're going to have to have pretty high card draw

for. Mhm.
Was that ever information ever presented to the player by the game? No. Uh, that is one of the Okay, so to be totally fair, that is one of the things that Jeff and I know because we've spent, and again, I cannot stress this enough, way too much time playing the first one.
It's too much.
Way too much time, right? Um, and that I think is part of it, right? Um, it's also because we play at a level where that matters. If you're playing on a zero, that doesn't matter. You can do whatever you want and just mess around and have fun and try things and see what works.
At 820, it really starts to matter or whatever the highest tension is for this one, it's really going to start to matter.
Ascension 20 and Slay the Spire is difficult enough that a good number of people can have never beaten it.
Yeah, correct. It is designed
from the get to to have a less than 50% win rate. Like that was their design

intent when they made it.
Mhm.
Um I want to see what Salvo does. 16 damage, 12 or 16, and retain your hand. Upgrades seem less great right now. Like there are a lot of upgrades that just seem less great.
What was juggling?
Juggling is um innate.
Okay.
Add a third copy. A third a copy of the third attack you play each turn into your hand.
Okay.
So if we get that with bolas.
Yeah.
Now we just bas
that could be almost not an infinite bolos. That could be a lot of bolos.
The problem with that is that our hand fills up with them and then we start having problems, right?
We could roughly do it five times and then
Yeah.
Uh yeah, that that is very true. Nova is correct. It is mathematically possible to get an A20 run that is unwininnable.
Wrote an entire EC episode about it.
That was a long time ago. All right. I don't think we want to perfect.
I think we should move on.

Okay, here comes Whoa.
What is going on? The decimalipede has three segments. If other segments are still alive, revives in two turns with 25 HP.
Is that the same for all of them?
Yes.
Okay. So, they all have reattach. This is going to be one of those ones that five or 10 fights in we will have learned what each of the three segments do
correct
differently and therefore which to attack first. Kind of like in Slavers where you're like ah that bad guy who could debt you every once in a while has got to die first.
Yeah. That that that particular dude dies first or killing um the stabby boy in the red mask fight.
Yeah,
I think it's flame barrier bird swoop dismantle.
Could be. It could also be Py, like suck up some damage and set up Py for every round after this

because Whirlwind would be particularly good in this fight. Yeah, you're right. Especially my concern is if we're not going left because we're going to see another shop we can't use, then we don't have a fire before the next elite. So, I'm kind of in HP uh preservation mode.
We're also at max hit points.
That's true.
Like, if we're ever going to spend hit points,
now is a good time to do it.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I'm on board with that. Uh and then we I still think we bird swoop dismantled to start working on one of these. Let's work on
Let's see. Hold on. Um well, bird swoop's always going to happen. We could also because these are all upgraded,
we could get eight plus we could get 12 points of or 12 block.
Yeah. like the upgraded defend is
not terrible.
And we are going to get whirlwind we know pretty soon.
That's true. Um I'm going to hit the one with the most, right? Cuz uh with five energy, we want them below 40 because 40

is the magic number for killing them all at once with
Actually, we already have a point of strength. I think that's going to be 45.
Uh
oh. Oh, did we just get weakened?
We just got weakened. So that math went out the window.
Let's look at some battle turn.
Hey, so let's see what what was bolos exactly. It was
three damage at the start of your next turn. Return this to your hand.
Okay, so we're always going to be using bolos,
right? So it looks like it's
up big rock. So it looks like buff buff buff debuff debuff debuff multiattack multiattack multiattack I'm guessing because and that's like the whole it's wriggling along thing. So
I probably could. Yeah.
Um we could
primal force is going to be interesting too cuz we have to we don't know if we're going to get more than one rock.
Yeah. Okay. So, I kind of think I want

to get rid of the one that's going to make us weak
or the one that's going to do 14 damage this turn.
That's also true. Um, can we do that? So, that's six and then three, five. Also, this isn't affected by weaken. Oh, no. Because it would be four, but because weaken is 25%.
It would be four, but now it's three again. So it doesn't show as red because it is the base value, not a changed value.
Let's see.
Looking at our energy, we will always be using defend, right? There is no
We can just get that out of the hand.
Yeah, let's get that going. Okay, so then we set up strike first. Olas primal.
Okay, do we want to chance two rocks or one rock? I kind of think I'm down to trans both of them cuz they each turn into a gyro real quick.

Okay. And we're weak again, buts. Okay. So, this is four damage x times.
So, 20 damage,
right? Um,
let's see. We could also, so we know we're guaranteed to knock out if we use that with at least two energy the first segment.
Yep.
Goal should be to knock out the second segment as well.
So, if we bash Bola's whirlwind, I think we get it.
And we need three attacks, which just for the extra block. Yep. Uh, this is technically more damage on this segment, but this is
this will be 20 damage to the center segment,
which is enough.
Which is enough.

Great.
There we go.
Plating takes care of this.
And then we have to kill this immediately.
But now we are weaken is gone.
Weaken is gone.
There we go.
Uh, yeah. So, we go inflame
rage just in case.
Yep.
The math was bad.
Rage just in case. Neither Jeff nor I can do math, but it turns out we can do math.
That was a cool fight.
Yo, we got horn. Let's go. Boat. Boat. Boat. Boat. Boat. Boat. All right. Anyway, um
I am reticent to take Cascade simply because um Primal exists. Primal Force exists and it could transform stuff. Uh although it does transform back. That is nice. It is temporary, not permanent.
Yeah. So that was kind of as expected.
Yeah.
So we could play up to five cards
for free
based on our energy level.
Yeah.
So I don't think we're going to take

tremble or anger.
I agree. So it's either this or nothing. Oh, what's the upgrade? X plus one.
Mhm. Oh, so an upgraded version of that means we can also exhaust our energy on other things and get at least one extra card play.
Yeah, regard for free. We just don't get to set it up.
I think that's worth taking.
Sure.
Okay. Uh I think we go right here. [clears throat] I think we go right and take this elite and see what we can do with it.
Okay.
Oh, they're cute.
They're called chompers. Of course they are.
Um, okay. So, we start
battle.
There's our rage.
That's a very good start.
Um,
oh, they have artifact charges.
They do. So, we go
bash. Well, is bash in this fight worse than a rock?
I think primal force is pretty sweet here. Like, I think we always bolo.
Well, I think we always bird swoop

bolas.
Yeah. And then I think we primal force for for two rocks which we then use to kill this one.
Take that technology. What do you know about my giant rock?
Hit it with a rock.
I'm Oh, the return of days, my beloathed. Uh, okay. So, this is an obvious first bit.
Um,
oh, we just hit our energy. We just hit our free energy off nunchucks.
So we can
So let's see because we have zero actually I would say because we have zero block but we already what was where did we get the block from?
Uh corn.
Oh it's second turn horn clelet.
Horn cleat. So we're good on block. So we can just go uh
we could fire whirlwind. We could cascade and just see what happens.
Feeling chaotic.
We could strike whirlwind stomp which is just a ton of damage.

Mhm. I kind of like that the best cuz then we just kill with the rest of the deck.
Okay.
Rock, rock, rock. Yes, primal force and anger is incredibly good. You're correct.
Okay,
I'm liking those bolos. Like the return the extra attack. Ooh, grapple. And now you got to shrug it off.
Deal mine. Whenever you gain block this turn, deal seven to the enemy.
So that's
that's upgraded. I'm curious what the unupgraded. Can you click on that and see the unupgrade?
Seven and five.
Okay.
Um,
so that would be particularly good with rage.
Yep. But we also it would be the 25th card in the deck. So lining them up is going to be difficult.
Yeah. Um

let's see. Pommel Strike is all is a classic from last time which was just always good. Like nine damage in a card is good. Shrug it off. We're a little light on block and it replaces itself. And we have the energy.
Yeah.
To support eight block with a card replacement. I
I think we take a shrug. As weird as that sounds, I think a shrug here is just good. Okay. More fights. More fights. More fights.
Ooh, sleeping.
Slumbering beetle.
What's the slumbering say?
Awakens upon taking turns or losing HP three times.
Okay. Is that 15 armor keeps getting back? What was the 15?
15 plating. So, it'll get 15 and 14 then 13 then.
Okay. So that that okay that's a big
which was the one that got all the strength last time.
That one's not here. That was a nectar bullbug. So we have a rock bullbug which is imbalanced and a silk bullbug which

intends to dis uh to debuff us which I would bet a significant chunk of money is weaken and I hate it. So
okay. So you're right. We always rage.
We always rage and then I think
strike setup. Yeah.
Yeah. Setup. was like and then I'm okay with burning a slumber here to kill this before we get debuffed. And this turn we get horn cleat. So that's good.
Uh okay. No, that's that's cool. I I love I love when my hand looks like the first hand that I drew on the first turn of the game. No, that's fine game. No, that's cool. So,
though kills here,
which is very nice. And then,
uh, bad things happen. Great. Awesome. Love it.
Well, we're going to whirlwind.
Yeah. Yeah. If we're going to whirlwind, so if we bash bird swoop's

whirlwind,
think that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah. So we go bash bird swoop bas that this wind
kill that one.
All right, great. And we're going to take some damage here. And that's just
Oh, I wanted you to play primal force and get zero rocks.
Oh, that's fair. No rocks. No rocks for us.
So we inflame and then I believe we shrug battle trance. Yeah,
actually there's a weird one here. There's a very weird one. There's a world where we end up with just Py left in the deck and we can cascade into it for one less.
It's thin, but it's there. Um, so I I do think we shrug.
Mhm.
And then we battle trance.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's see. Cascade. If we cascaded now, we have Oh, never mind. So, two or is it Cascade or

Cascade Plus?
Cascade. We didn't upgrade it yet. Um,
I think we draw.
Yeah,
I think we draw. Dang. So, the last card in the deck is dismantle.
It is vulnerable. Right now
it is. So, we have a choice. We can defend or cascade. So, cascade would be 8 11 twice. 22 or 8 goes to 11 with strength plus 50% is um 16 twice.
So not enough to kill it.
Not enough to kill it. Uh
we could flame barrier.
Um
we could flame barrier and take nothing.
Yep.
That's like not
That seems like a good option.
Let's just not take damage. Good. It's buffing itself by the way. We we are on a clock but that's fine.
Yeah. Well, we did a little damage with that.
Wow. Right. But we know we killed this turn because dismantle bolas.

Yeah.
Fish oil.
Sabah. All right. Uh, gain one strength and one dexterity.
Mhm.
Okay, great. Vicious. Whenever you apply vulnerable, draw a card. Gain five block, deal five damage. Add a copy of the third attack each turn into your hand. Don't think we have enough.
And I don't think we want to bloat our deck.
Let's see how many cards we have that does vote number one.
Just one. Just bash.
Okay. Yeah. If we had more, I would Oh man. Vicious with thunder strike or thunder. What's the one that does thunder each? Yeah. Yeah. Thunderclap. Very good.
Yeah. This feels like a sacrifice.
Yep. Agreed. Uh, we go left because we could get an elite.
Oh, it is different. What? These are

cool looking chests. I love all the details.
Okay,
old coin.
Okay, shop's back on the menu. Uh, we go left. We go to this shop.
Left and ending with the shop.
Yeah, seems good to me. Uh, second last. I am I'm very happy with it so far. What are you? All right, great.
So, it's going to buff itself.
Yep. Um, I think we just bolas and stomp it.
There's not anything else to do. There's no setup.
We've never used Primal Force. I'm just want to see if it I was curious if there was an extra animation or anything.
Not. Yeah, it plays uh plays Oh, it gets five thorns.
I hate everything about this. Luckily, this is our um
turn. We're going to take a bunch of damage here, though.

What's the middle potion right now?
Uh swift draw three. We could block for 12 when we're done. I kind of want to bash dismantle and skip bolas.
Yeah.
And then I kind of think we need to drink that potion.
Yeah. We're three potions. We might find another. I think
I agree. Uh, all right. It's a toad. Thorny toad. Correct.
Totally. Oh, the the spikes went away.
The spikes go. How fascinating. All right. Well, we py defend here. Actually, yeah, we py defend here. We are sad about it. That's okay. Okay. Battle trance.
Do we shrug or trance?
Oh, yes. Um,
no. This is uh this is this is 12 five times. This kills.
Okay.
Just kill.

Fell into the trap of looking at all the stuff.
Yeah.
There there is there is sometimes a problem where we just need to kill them. We take headbutt here because we have cascade.
Could do that. Um,
if armorament happens to show up in our first hand, we'll also have that for the rest of the battle.
We could also sacrifice it and get a relic.
I actually kind of like a relic, too.
I kind of like the relic. Let's let's let's high roll for a relic.
Yeah,
we got bronze scales. Starting combat with three thorns. All right,
in we go.
What are you the antimmancer? It's a bee knight. Okay, great. This enemy attacks
tends to attack for three seven times. Where? Where? Hey, hey, hey, deck. Deck, I'm going to need you to cough up the the the the flame barrier real quick. [clears throat]

Oh, I've got a question, too.
Show me cascade a second.
It's play. So, we could both battle trance and cascade if we needed to.
Correct. To get there. Um, and whenever it's hit by an attack specifically, add a days to your draw pile.
Yeah.
Gross.
Okay. So, we could get theoretically three more cards, but they'd be completely pot lock.
Yeah, cuz it's it's upgraded cuz it's plus.
Oh, four. Yeah.
So, we if we defend defend, we take one.
Yep. And it actually it's going to take a freaking ton because we have the bronze scales,
right? I kind of think
might be a fight we just play defensively.
Yeah, it might be py defend plus though. Like this is the elite. We have a rest. We have a question mark.
I kind of think we just need Py online, right, to to play out. take some extra

damage for that. But
I I think that might be worth
Let's give it a try.
Yeah, I think
we could also play Cascade if we wanted to.
Yeah, let's play play the top card of our draw pile.
Mhm.
Great. Excellent. Awesome. We've gained a dazed. Amazing. And we have gotten our thing online. Oh, it wasn't as bad as I thought cuz we had the the plating as well. Yeah.
You know, battle trance plus dazed is actually great because now we just get rid of dazed faster. I'm pretty happy.
Okay. Well, show me the battle transa.
Uh, this is 18.
If we attack three times, we won't take anything. Yeah, I think just
I Okay, I am going to
I'm less sure about bolas because it's so low impact and we're getting dazed,
right?
Let's do strike strike dismantle and

that'll get us the extra block. I I also want to highlight that the um the previous elite in this one like you can see and this is the thing that I love about Spire is that each elite fight tests a different part of your deck.
Yeah. And your ability to assess it.
Correct.
Hold on. I have a cat doing a thing. Be right back. Kill the thing.
I will kill the thing. Bees. It's buffing chat. have so many days to help. Oh, that's horrifying. Oh, I hate everything about that. Uh-huh. Yep. I'm going to need to draw three cards. I think I'm drawing three cards. Don't really think there's any world where I'm not drawing three cards.

Oh, we're good. Never mind. All right. So, we uh we flame barrier. We're going to set up strike bird swoop. Do this. Do that. And you die. All right. Great. I had to use a potion and it was totally worth 39 gold. A planosphere. Whenever you enter a question mark room, heal four HP. Um Barry is on their second run. Within my first couple steps, I got my max HP down to one, then proceeded to wreck the first act. We're so back, baby. I'm If you're enjoying this,
my entire day tomorrow is dedicated to Slay the Spire 2. Tomorrow, I am starting stream at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, and I am playing until I cannot stress this enough. I cannot play any more Slay the Spire. This is like I'm so excited.
Start inspired and keep going until you lose your inspiration.
Yeah, that's correct. I had to burn the draw pot, but I got us a planosphere,

which heals us for four for every question mark we enter.
Nice.
And a card. Anger plus vicious or rage. Nah.
Um, anger is a tiny bit interesting just because of some of the other stuff we have, but with the bol since we already have the bolos.
Yeah. We're getting a free attack every turn. We don't need it.
Yeah. Like and it's still against half a relic.
Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. Half a relic it is. And onward we go. Um, do we want to upgrade? If we upgraded, what would we upgrade?
Um, let's see here.
Cascade. It's It's a little less appealing, right? Because of bellows,
right? So, let's see. Um, inflame is always going to be fine.

That's true.
Um, battle trance is always going to be fine.
That's true.
Like, one extra card is
Yeah.
like is [clears throat] good. It helps us get through the deck faster and we have enough stuff that synergizes.
I'm going to say we upgrade in flame for the very simple reason that I don't want us to top out our damage potential, right? And we don't have any infinite scaling right now. So having a higher floor damage floor by getting through and playing me in flame I think is worth the worth the upgrade.
The other option would um be actually no sorry yeah I think it is inflame
especially because it plays for free.
Mhm.
Yeah. We will never draw that and not play it short of something really weird.
[laughter]
Arms suddenly jut out from a nearby hole, clutching a suspicious bag of riches and a clearly cursed relic. This or that? A scratched up voice whispers from below. I think we take that. And the reason that we take that is cuz we're about to go to a shop so we can

remove the curse. Give me your relic.
It's It's also ethereal.
Like it only is there once and then it disappear. Actually, we have enough battle transances. We might even leave it in.
This This is a pseudo ascender bane before we have ascenders bane. So, let's
like I'd rather take a strike out cuz the strike stays there.
Yeah.
Every other combat your card rewards gain an additional power.
Wow.
I love some of these relics. These are really interesting choices. Like I'm
Some of these are also making every run's going to be a little like that alone.
Yeah. Well, like or or Pale's Wing, right? Yeah, we we're less incentivized to build a thinner deck because we won't be getting relics for sacrificing things. We're absolutely going to a shop cuz we have 500 gold.
Yep.
Punch dagger.
Okay, Jeff. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, wait. Hear

me out. Hear me out. Hear me out. Yeah,
momentum on bolas
because momentum says increase the card's attack damage by five this combat when played and bolas returns to our hand every turn.
Yep.
Okay, great.
That's pretty strong.
Centennial puzzle.
Yep.
Amethyst aberine. Enemies drop 10 additional gold.
We So we'd have to 18 enemies in it breaks even,
right? We also have an offering.
Mhm.
And a remove
and card remove.
Yep. We have a lucky tonic for one stack of buffer as well.
What's secret weapon?
Secret weapon is a tutor.
Get any attack out of our draw pile into our hand.
Oh, okay.
And the upgrade no longer exhausts.
But I think I'm absolutely down to punch dagger on the bolas. Let's start with

that. Um
um should we remove something?
I think we should. Let's Let's remove uh I I actually agree with your logic on a strike,
I think.
And again, because we have two battle transances, I'm especially ke like not worried about the clumsy.
Yeah.
And we could go even further on this and pick up an offering. Yeah, I'm kind of in favor of the offering. In favor of the offering. Uh, and I think that's it.
I don't think we need anything else.
So, Will, are we wrapping here or
We can It's It's up to you. Do you want to Do you want to wrap here or do you want to push on and finish this run?
Um, I actually have to bow out. You can keep going. And you could also keep the street. You This could be an extra long design club. Yeah.
First look.
Yeah. Okay, I think that I think that's

a good play. I think we're going to do that because I would hate to leave the YouTube audience like midway through. I feel like the number of comments we'd GET BE LIKE, "NO, WHY DIDN'T YOU FINISH THE RUN? I WAS SO EXCITED. You just got bolis with a punch dagger. How could you?" And I don't think my soul could bear that. So,
we'll we'll keep going.
I want to at least see what the boss is. And I'd say keep going.
All right. We're we'll we'll keep going. So, we're going to um
safety. You need a heal. I might rest here cuz I have no idea what this boss does.
For safety, I think we're going to heal here.
Okay. And again, if Will and I if once you know the fights, you can basically go in
claim them better.
What is this? We're Okay, this is cool. We're fighting in a sand pit.
Tends to give you six card status cards.
Six status cards. All right. Well, let's start with a battle trans plus. Yeah.
Oh. Uh, I guess the other question is, do we want to use our fish oil here,

which is one strength of one dexterity? And I think the answer is probably, but let's see how we draw.
Yeah. P on the other hand,
we got Py on turn one. I cannot imagine a better time to play this.
Yeah.
Um,
is there any re Oh, I say not to play Cascade. The one that turns everything into rocks.
Yeah. might not be
would be let's say you're always gonna play bird swoop.
Yeah. So my question is do I take the one extra damage and I think I do. I'm just gonna I'm gonna use this here for safety again. I really want to I there is some amount there's no small amount of personal pride the idea that we could win our first run.
Uh so I want that. I want I want that in my soul.
Don't forget to play whirlwind for the energy.
Correct. Very good. We're incrementing nunchaku every time we do that.
And this turn we're going to get a freaking 10 energy. Get f Oh, what is this? Get further away. Increase sand pit by one. Increase the cost of this card by one. Sand pit.

In four turns, you will be eaten and die.
Okay,
I need to get a hat to tip it to me. Like, what a brilliant interesting boss that I'm so about this. That's fantastic. I love
It's interesting because it's a it's a bloat card but that you actually want to play.
Correct.
Or sometimes you want to play.
Correct. But it also doesn't exhaust.
Right.
Okay.
So basically it's just rage and everything here.
Yeah.
This is one where the double um battle transances is going to be extra useful.
Yep. I agree.
Oh, 28 damage.
Yep. All right. So, we're definitely going to offering.
Mhm.
Shrug it. Shrug then battle trance.

Yep. Shrug. Uh, we're not going to overdraw.
Okay, great. We got bolas, so that's very good. So, I think we go
bash setup, strike, stomp,
bolas. Just let just we're going to start throwing things.
Uh
yeah, we're going to be able to get good use out of that ornamental fan.
Yes, I just want to look at Olas. Yeah, it is. It is taking it. Um, I'm definitely gonna
Yeah, trade the strike the trade the strike for a rock for sure.
Yeah, absolutely on that one. Uh, and then the question is I don't need to play a frantic escape because I know I'm drawing one next turn.
Yeah,
right in our deck. Hold on. I I'm doing a

quick count here. 1 2 3 four
six five six. Okay, cool. So, they don't exhaust. I was double checking because that is a big thing, right? Cuz if they exhaust, that means you need to play all six to get as much distance as you can.
We wait for the reshuffle.
Yeah, I think we're going to wait for the reshuffle. Take one here.
Uh, that is correct. Nova, assuming hand size works the same way. Hand cap is 10 and overdrawing results in excess cards going straight into your discard. Yes.
Why Why do you not attack me on the turn I draw flame barrier, you jerk? You absolute jerk.
Frantic escape.
Yeah, I'm absolutely going to proc a frantic escape and then say go.
All right, he's half dead. Uh, this is pretty good. Actually, this is not like kill good, but this is pretty good.
Yeah,
this might be kill now. This might be

kill now. So let's um bas
Mhm.
dismantle
swoop.
Yep. This is game.
This is this is kill. Yeah, this is kill.
Jumped. Epoch discovered. We've discovered two epochs.
Mhm.
All right, we've done it. The cleverness of us.
A gambler. Oh, wait. Hold on. The first time you gain block from a card each turn double the amount gained. Interesting. Fantastic
card. Okay.
Feed. Feed.
It's hard not to take feed.
Feed. Oh my god, this is such a good card. All right, we're going to take feed.
Okay. Oh, especially with the double battle transances.
Yeah. Order. What? Hold on. Wait. Wait. Chad is now heckling me. Order for what? He died.
You didn't play bash for or in um at the right time. already vulnerable. I killed with bash for style and mash.

Okay, I have to bow out for good luck on the run.
Well, thank you. Thank you. I'll be sure to tell you how.
Thank you for watching and for enjoying this extra extra long first look from Design Club.
Yeah.
We're We're going to lose a lot of the weekend to this game. I can tell you that for sure. All right, everybody say bye, Jeff.
Bye.
All right, chat. Uh it's going to be just us. Where's that?
Make me poof, Will. Make me poof.
I got a poof. Poofed. There. Now he's poofed. Um, all right. Uh, we're going to move on. We're going to keep going. Bye from the people. Act three is glory. What is that? What? Hold on. I got to turn this up, too. Now that I'm not Now it's me and the game talking instead of me and Jeff talking. I'm g turn that up a little bit.

Nanu serendipity incarnate. I haven't had a visitor in millennia. Looking quite drab here. Let's find something delightful for you to wear. At the start of each combat, fill all empty potion slots with random potions. The fifth card you play each turn is free. Mark seven random combats. Enemies in those rooms have one HP. Where's our shops? Back here and then nowhere else. Right. Okay. There's one there. We're going to work backwards. There. There. There. There. Here. There. Um, I'm kind of okay with like the the Yeah, these are all these are all super strong, right? Um, the last one, this

one, by the way, is Luxack territory. This is 100%. Do all seven of those line up. Do all seven of those line up to take me directly to the end of the game? If so, great. Are all seven of them on different paths and not helpful at all? Also possible. This is the high-risisk high reward one, right? Could that include the boss? That's a great question. Historically speaking, yes. If you manage to get to a boss with Nao's Lament, it does put the boss at one HP. That science has been done. It applies to all combats. So, assuming that this works like Nao's Lament does in Slay the Spire one, yes, it would. That's a great question. Um, I feel like we can play five cards a turn, but I'm gonna lose track of this. I kind of like delicate frond for just throwing stuff. Um, Zach asks, "How did that science get

done?" That's such a great question, Zach. Do you know that there are projects there were projects done to explore, categorize and catalog the seeds of Slay the Spire. This is how um the community determined that there are unwinable seeds. The community had to brute force it because it's a halting problem kind of. Um, so they discovered through this seed catalog that there was a way that you could have a seed that was completely mathematically unwininnable regardless of what choices you make. Um, so that's kind of cool. Uh, and in that process, lots of weird things were discovered. There's a seed that had an that has an infinite money glitch and an infinite card uh has a has an infinite money loop and an infinite card loop in it. that's very specific. There's only one known seed, I think, that does it. Um,

but there are seeds that were discovered where like you can get a thing where it's all question marks and not fights and you end up at the boss on the third one. So, yeah. Um, I that is my understanding, Micah. is my understanding that the unwinable seed is only unwinable on ascension 20. But I also do not know how the ascension level impacts the way that the seed is randomized. I what I don't know personally is if I took this seed dp n a pi and put that seed on ascension 20 how much they would be similar and how different they would be because the ascension is part of the generation process. I don't know that. So, I don't Oh, we're going to take delicate fond. Um, and we're gonna we're going to use our potions liberally. Uh, we're also going to take this path here. Take this path here.

Yes. Okay. A scroll of biting. Whenever scroll of biting deals unblocked attack damage to you, you lose to max HP. You what? Okay, great. Um, so unlike in other cases where we might save our potions, we're going to start eating potions now. Spite. What a truly beautiful card. What a truly beautiful card. I love it. I love it so much. Oh, that's so good.

Uh, I think we're going to take a breakthrough though because it's AoE and it is free this turn. So we will go inflame bolas break through stomp defend defend. and say and then you died. We get our attack potion back if we want it. Kind of an interesting question and we get it. Oh, that's how interesting. Taunt flame bearer second wind stone armor. I'm not against a taunt plus here.

I agree. I absolutely agree. I'm so very interested. I actually have um I actually have a friend uh coming to play Spire with me next week um to play multiplayer and figure it out. Uh, and I'm very interested to see how it solves the backseat generaling problem. Now, the question is, do I want Tom Plus or a random relic? Kind of want to plus. You didn't say it. Zero out of 10. Refund the game. He didn't say it. Chat. Chad, say the line. I need someone to say the line or I cannot proceed. This is very important. This is like a

crucial part of Slay the Spire. I I need someone to say the line. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Great. Excellent. There we go. All right. We have we have we have fixed the problem. We will proceed. Um you are going to buff yourself. That is well. Uh I'm gonna just offering right off the rip and then I'm going to do some stuff. I will taunt you. I'm going to hold out hope on the feed, which means I cannot play the cascade away [snorts] because of the primal thing. Oh, there

we go. He's got nine ritual. Nine. Take it back. I don't want it. I lied. It's fine. I don't I don't need her. Oh my god. Okay, cool. So, we're going to bash. Then we're going to bowl us. Then we're going to hit it with the rock. All right. Um I cannot redraw before he dies to my thorns. That's fine. No. No. And no, I think uh let's take that relic. My beloved, my beloved is here. Kunai. Oh, look at it. Look at it. It's so pretty, chat. Oh, my favorite relic. All right, let's go. By which I mean one of the most hideously broken relics in the

entire game. You find an invitation for Sil for Sil Galot to a tea party to decide and decide to show up in hisstead. Upon entering an unassuming rotunda, you find yourself in the midst of commanders, generals, warlords, and mercenaries having tea. The gigantic knight dawning a golden crown speaks. THOU ART LATE FOR TEA. You jump up at the table, kick the warlord knight in the face. The night lets out a haunting shriek and kills over. Everyone gasps. The patrons stare wideeyed at the corpse of one of the regulars, then burst into applause. We were wondering how to rid of Sir Wiggore. Incredible work. They dump out your poison tea and discuss tactics and secrets all night. A most excellent tea party. I got blood vial. So great. Okay, we taking three elites, chat? I think we're taking three elites. Um, and this shop. I think that's the

play. Add decay to your deck. Enchant a card that exhausts with souls power which lo which which causes a card to lose exhaust. I don't think I have anything I could like offering or feed but like or whenever you exhaust a card deal one damage to random enemy. Interesting. Neither of those are particularly great. I kind of just don't want the curse. I kind of just don't want the curse. So take the forgotten soul. You place your hand on the grave and whisper, "Ascend with me." In response, the flames draw up from the grave and coales into a burning soul and hover around you loyally. It knows what you are and wishes to escort you to your final destination. Yeah. One. Okay. Um, I think we want all of these for this

cuz this is at the beginning of it. So, I could I could I could pitch any that I don't want now. Think Wiggar's a me some Vtuber pronounced vigor. That seems right. What a creepy looking elite. I love it. I love it so much. It's so terrifying. I love it. This is great. No notes. Okay. Um, excellent. [snorts] I take one.

If no one has noticed, by the way, Horncleat out here being goated. Horncleat is just out here being completely goated, right? Just so we're clear. Uh we're going to burn the attack potion here for a It's a mini brimstone. That's amazing. Okay. I think we'll take the rampage just cuz I want another thing because I want to be able to go bash strike rampage and get the um and get the thing. I also need to speed up my damage here because it's not quite fast enough, especially [snorts] with me getting debuffed, but I want to keep it vulnerable the entire time. And I just drew both of my

vulnerable cards and I have 14 cards left in deck. It's not really ideal. Hey, could you don't just could you hear me out? I know you want to. What if instead Don't. We can heal. I'm not thrilled about it, but we could heal. And we could dodge this one if we're still not feeling it after this relic. I think we definitely chug the deck spot. I think we definitely shrug. Question is, do I cascade for three?

No, because I could turn feed into a thing. God, primal force and cascade are like not sympotico. Oh, order. Or order order. I should have attacked first for one more dexterity. I'm taking one more damage than I should have. That's an order. That's on me. [snorts] I I don't know. I think this one might get a mobile port. Um one video has I sort of feel like this one may not get a mobile port. I I think it could. I very much think it could. It's almost dead. I don't need the Py. I need the block.

[snorts]
This is 36. I think we just take it. I absolutely agree that there's a lot going on visually. Um I think it's not hardw. [screaming] All right, cool. And then I ate that guy. Great. Excellent. Power pot. Mercury hourglass. Um, I agree that there's a lot going on. I

think it is it's a little difficult to say, right? Devices have gotten a lot better and there is definitely a world where they could do a less intense mobile version, but the mobile version is also not aimed at phones. It's aimed at tablets and a tablet could play this, right? It's currently the the draw that it has to run in 4K on my gaming rig is so low that like it barely bears noticing. Like yeah, one two punch. This turn your next attack is played an extra time. Interesting. We could just take an inflame plus though, which I kind of think is worth it because we need more strength cuz we're not we don't have like scaling like at all. Okay. Um

I think we're safety healing honestly. Like I could do a lot of things, but in the face of the unknown, HP is the greatest upgrade, right? Simply do not die. I'm so Spy one coded that I'm like, "Okay, so I have to take the key here." No, I don't. We haven't done that yet. That might not be in this game. Will, will don't. No, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Time for a wen me. A honk shoe perhaps. Rewarded, chat. rewarded. Bolas plus and a strike. Excellent. Love it. Um. Yeah, we're still going this way cuz I'm still crazy. So, that's fine. Yes, there are no choices in those chests. When killed, the new axe bot is summoned to take its place.

Okay, let's start using some powers. Dark embrace. Feel no pain juggling. Kind of am all right with a feel no pain cuz we're just going to feel no pain offering. And that's just three block. Inflame taunt. Dismantle. Hold this. Interesting. So, it does come in with an intent. That is very interesting to know. one attack and then we can stomp everyone.

I could for instance dash stomp and then I could turn everything into giant rocks and then I could hit this guy with a giant rock. That seems a good turn one. I don't know. I probably could have flex potted and done more, but I didn't expect to kill that much. This is free. [snorts] Okay,

I got this plus one more. But you're super dead. Oh, order. Oh, it works that way. Oh, that's illegal. Oh, game. You can't do that. That's illegal. That Oh, dear. H. So, the stock interrupts ongoing effects. So, whirlwind stops hitting while the new bot comes in and then it hits the new bot. How fascinating. Whirlwind continues to gain stons. Uh for those unfamiliar, whirlwind is one of the best AoE options that's not a rare for Ironclad. It's very strong. It is actually one of the ways that people do the um speedrun. A true grit

or half a relic. I think we're taking half a relic. Give me Give me half a relic. All right. I don't know how much I want a colorless potion or a blessing of the forge. Kind of think I don't want this one. And I do think I want a blessing of the forge because I can get a giant hand and then upgrade all 10 cards with it. Okay. All right. We have a spectral knight who intends to debuff us. We have a flail knight who intends to bonk us for 15. And we have a maginite who intends to attack for six. Normally, we would assume that the maginite is the one that needs to die first because they're in the back and they're squishy. That's generally how this works, though not always. We also have a strength pot and a power pot. I'm

going to chug both of those right now because the whole point of having uh this relic is that I can use all my potions. No notes. Absolutely no notes legally. Not a chocoo, by the way. Just very important that we all note together collectively we've agreed not a chocoo. Uh we're going to take a free demon form though on the first turn of the fight. Great. Cool. Um so the fight's over. Uh we good. Good talk.

Next. While Spectral Knight is alive, all of your cards are ethereal. Yeah. It it defeated it graffitied up my cards. Yes. Dampen. While Maginite is alive, all of your cards are downgraded.

Yo, they cooked. Like we said, let them cook and we meant it. They cooked. So, this is Spectral Knight. This is Maginite. And this is Flail Knight. What a cool death animation. Order to unold the decks potion and a rainbow ring. The first time you play an attack, skill, and power each turn, gain a strength in a deck. And nothing I want. So, we'll we'll take another relic from Pale's Wing. We got tuning fork. Every time you play 10 skills, gain seven block. 10 skills

for seven block is the ex current exchange rate. An extra chest. Oh, no. Yes, extra chest. This was the chest. This is an extra chest. I also do love deeply that when it's not an event, it shows you what it was. Oh my god, look at this. Look, Hold on. Let's go back. Look at this. This is great. Oh my god. I did not even realize. Look at this. This is so good. You can see exactly which choices you made. And you could always see this. It was just never this convenient, right? That's so good. It shows the whole history of the run. every choice we made, what the rewards were, everything. So fascinating. Love it. Orium, it's never going to happen, but we can try. Okay. Uh, and off we are to a shop. Hello. Retain your first hand. When an enemy

dies at the end of your turn, gain a block for each card in your hand. We don't want to buy these. They're not worth it. Um, it's like gremlin horn card remove. It's like card remove a strike or a defend. It's probably card remove a strike. Yeah, violence. You could only see it before at the end of the run. That's correct. And now you can see it whenever. Apply three weak. A weak potion could go very far, but we are just yeing potions left, right, and center. Though, having the right potion for like an elite fight's pretty good. I think we're definitely card removing. I So, Trollfast, here's the thing. We've got a lot of card draw and it exhausts itself. So, and a strike wouldn't, right? A strike doesn't exhaust itself. We don't have a way to remove it. So, we only see this once, but we see a strike

every time we cycle the deck. And that's the reason that it might be Yeah, it might be better to remove this um rather than that. It also, and this is gonna be so weird, it might be better to remove primal force um because it's in it's stopping some of the other things that I want to do. Um how much do we cycle the deck? Enough with offering and two battle transances plus a shrug that replaces itself. We recycle it enough. Yeah. Um. Yeah. All right. Let's take out a strike. And with 295 gold, we could just take cloak clasp and then plan to never block. We take cloak clasp and plan to never block and just block with other stuff. It doesn't work on turn two, but it works every other turn, right? But

like that's not a good plan. Um I like taking the weak potion. Don't know why, but I feel like the elite's going to be a group or the queen's going to be a group and the gremlin knob's going to be helpful. The gremlin horn is going to be helpful. I don't know why I think that, but I do. So I'm going to lean into that. All right, we fighting elite. We have no fear. Look at the little guy. Look. Do I have to fight the little guy? He's just a little guy. Look at the little guy. He just wants to be a knight. He just He just wants to be a little guy and be a knight. Perceived. Perceived. [snorts]

This increments on Chaku in case you're like, why in the world did Will do that? I love the animations. They're all so good. Okay, so we're definitely going to inflame. Definitely going to shrug. Definitely going to inflame. We're definitely going to bowl us. And we got the strengthen the dexterity because of the rainbow ring. Very nice. Um I think we play the taunt here to strip the vulnerable. That's that's why we're doing that. saddest that we get is burns and they go to our hand. How horrifying.

[snorts] Love the burn animation though. That's great. Five strength attacking for four because he hates me. Okay. I can't get the weak through right cuz I can't like bash defend cascade plus Uh,

this guarantees we play the rest of our deck. Hold on, hold on, hold on. So then we set up strike trigger nunchaku. Anything

I'm missing here? I don't think I am. [snorts] Ow. And we we win, by the way. We guarantee win there no matter how many burns are in our deck because of bolas. This card is busted. This card is actually busted with with something like momentum. Just the ability to bring back a free attack that's scaling every turn is wild.

Well, thank you for relieving me from the burden of needing to do the thing. Um, hold on. We will not see another card reward. Do we want a flame barrier or a true grit? Perhaps a a singular true grit. or a skip. I think it's just a sack. Like I don't A third battle trans seems aggressively greedy, right? Like it it does seem a touch aggressively greedy to do that. Um but greed is good and I have no fear. Probably should probably should have like a healthy respect for the spire. I do not. So, here we are. And here you are. And here we go fighting the final boss on my first run through Slay Spire 2. I hope you all are enjoying. By the way, I hope I'm explaining enough. If I'm missing things, if you're like, "Why did Will do that thing?" Please do ask.

Um, I do need to be better about expressing a lot of those ideas because sometimes I just like blow through because obviously that's the most important thing, right? Um, so why did I choose to exist? I didn't. Next question. Um, you signed the queen on your first run. Nice, nice, nice. All right, we're going to take offering plus. Ah, interesting. This is much reduced from the original. Yeah, we're assuming this has three acts. All right, queen has a little friend. The queen is going to apply affliction to my cards.

Okay. The chains of binding. The first three cards drawn each turn are afflicted with bound. Only one bound card can be played each turn. And cards are unbound at the end of the turn. Okay, this is happening. Order. I should have inflamed first. That's my bad. Should have inflamed first. That's my bad. That's my bad. I'm taking one here and I don't think I care.

Um, look at the queen's face. Oh, yeah. No, it's it the the spinnies. Yeah. Yeah, it does look like someone who belongs with the collector. You're mine. We are permanently frail, vulnerable, and weak. Now, it does know it doesn't say that we're permanently frail, vulnerable, and weak, but allow me to assure you that these numbers mean that we are permanently frail, vulnerable, and weak. Um, I think we're raging here. Good. We're going to dash Bola's stomp then. It's going to So, this is a fascinating interaction. We're not going to take this, right? even though we don't block for enough cuz it's going to hit me for 12 the first time and then

die to the thorns, right? It's going to die to my thorns here. 7* 5. Okay, great. Excellent. I do love it. I think we need to get Py in play. And I think we're going to take a hit to do it. And I think this is fine cuz I'm going to drink the skill potion. And we're going to get a taunt, which is perfectly good. And then we're going to battle trans to draw three bolis. I'm only at one.

I have not yet played these. I could play the defend and then cascade for one. Get another defend. Okay, great. We're in there. We're in there. Get 400 HP. Also, what the poop is happening underneath the Okay. What? I have questions. Excuse me. Excuse me, ma'am. Ma'am, I have I have just a few a moment of your if you could I have h there appear to underneath the if you could explain the that would be great. I would love that if you could do that for me. Could you do that for me? Great. Great. Um, I think we're offering here I think we're offering here, but I also think we're definitely vulnerabling here cuz I can't play bash, right?

We're going to dismantle. Oh, I should have set up strike. That's That's an error. I have aired. Bird. Okay, she intends to upgrade. At least you don't need to hand it to her. She's got plenty already. Thanks. Appreciate you. We'll start with the trance.

Mhm. That's cool and all, but what if I threw this at you? So, the arch demon's thraw has arrived. Enemy kill. Victory. You dealt 1,240 damage to the architect, but it wasn't enough. You have dealt a total of,240 damage to the architect. The architect still stands despake despite taking 148,849,571 damage from all who have faced him.

All right, let's go gamers. We've unlocked several epochs. We've discovered many things. Let us do our unlocks. Let Let us see what we get. That's almost double your last win. Listen. In the timeline, reveal epox to unlock cards, relics, and much more. Chapter five. Meow. The reopening. Mother of re resurrection. Yao. Awakened from her slumber. Rise, champion. Again. Again. Yao will now greet you at the start of each run. And now I'm gonna be a jerk because I don't want to spoil any more of the game. This has been uh Design Club first impressions of Slay the Spire 2. If you enjoyed this, I cannot encourage you enough to go and purchase Slay the Spire

2. We're not sponsored by Beggar. We just love this game. Um we love this game a lot. Uh this is a really fun game. I encourage you to learn it for yourself. If you're interested in learning to play card games or learning to play games analytically, this is a great game to do it with because the game does exactly what it says it does and very rarely does things that it doesn't say and is at your own pace. Spire is a very rewarding game. I love absolutely everything that I've seen about this so far. Um, so please please consider checking it out. Um, yeah, if you Yeah, correct. We will open these if you'd like to come back. We'll be doing this tomorrow starting at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific here on Twitch. Um, if you're over on YouTube, come over to the Twitch. We promise we don't bite. Um, but we will be here. And uh, yeah, there is no design uh, sorry, there will be design club next week. However, there will not be a um a breakfast. Matt is out. Uh, so

unfortunately, we can't have breakfast on Monday. You'll just have to settle for brunch. Um, I will be live playing some World of Warcraft then. Um, thank you all once again so very much for joining me. I don't have a co-host, so I just get to do whatever outro I want. Um, uh, I don't I don't I don't know. Uh, bye, I guess. Who knows? [music]
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