Slay the Spire 2 Adds Its First New Playable Character The Fool and Two Game Modes in Massive v0.113.0 Update
Slay the Spire 2 has just reached its biggest Early Access milestone since opening the Spire's gates back in March. Following the tease in its recent October Neowsletter, indie studio Mega Crit rolled out Beta Patch v0.113.0 on Thursday, November 12, 2026, via the official Slay the Spire 2 Steam page, delivering what the developers call their largest beta update to date.
Headlining the patch is the playable debut of The Fool, the sequel's first post-launch Early Access character, alongside two wildly different game modes,Blitz and Dread,five new narrative events, and a wide sweep of class and relic adjustments.
The Fool: A Bow-Wielding Bard Built Around Lodged Arrows and Melodies
Introduced by Mega Crit with an enthusiastic "Wah!!" as "a silly musician who wields a bow," The Fool brings a distinct rhythm to the Spire. Rather than spoiling every card and archetype in the patch notes, Mega Crit intentionally left the specifics blank so beta testers could uncover the bard's kit organically.
Early runs shared by players across the Slay the Spire Reddit community have already mapped out the three interlocking pillars of The Fool's deckbuilding identity:
- The Quiver and Lodged Arrow System: The Fool enters combat with a starter relic that acts like a specialized Vigor buff restricted exclusively to arrow attacks. Firing an arrow card deals heavy upfront damage, but leaves the arrow physically lodged inside the target. While that arrow remains stuck in an enemy, all other arrow-dependent cards in your hand are locked out. To dislodge and recover the arrow mid-fight, you must either strike the target three times, defeat the enemy outright, or play dedicated dislodge cards. High-risk upgrades push this further, including an upgraded rare card that triples the damage of your next shot at the cost of destroying the arrow for the rest of the encounter.
- Musical Melodies (Wah, Ki, and Cho): True to the bard theme, playing cards tagged with Wah, Ki, or Cho activates the matching melody until the end of the turn, unlocking secondary effects and scaling bonuses across other cards in your hand.
- The Sadness and Joy Loop: Several cards generate unplayable Sadness status cards with Retain that clog your hand until paired with conversion skills that transform Sadness into Joy,a 0-cost skill that draws a card, generates Energy, and exhausts upon use.
Blitz and Dread Modes: From Mapless Chaos to an Ascension 10 Gauntlet
Alongside the new roster addition, update v0.113.0 introduces two contrasting game modes designed for rapid experimentation and extreme endgame mastery.
Unlocked as soon as you clear a single Ascension run on any difficulty, Blitz strips away the traditional macro-routing of a climb in favor of condensed, fast-paced deckbuilding chaos. In Blitz, the floor map is completely gone, Gold is rendered useless, and the Merchant's inventory behaves in strange ways. The mode features its own track of 5 Ascension levels shared across all characters.
For veteran slayers seeking pure punishment, Dread requires reaching Ascension 10 on every single character in the game, explicitly including The Fool. Summed up by Mega Crit with the warning "Death is expected," Dread activates every Ascension modifier at once, significantly empowers Act bosses while allowing them to buff every regular enemy in their respective Act, and steadily piles Curses into your deck as you climb.
Five New Events, Class Reworks, and How to Join the Steam Public Beta
General pacing across the Spire also gets a notable tweak in v0.113.0, as Rest sites can now appear one floor earlier in every Act. Explorers will encounter five new events stocked with exclusive relics and cards: Waterfall of Obvious Secrets (adding the Dingy Dagger card) and Wuppy in Trouble (granting the Wuppy relic) in the Underdocks; Museum of Torture in Act 2 (featuring the Obsidian Vice, Thumbscrew, and Tormentous Collar relics); plus Shrine of the Warlord (Mighty Weapon, Mighty Shield, and Mighty Wings) and Thermae Nonupeipe (Bath Towel and Bath Robes) in Act 3, alongside a new Byrdpip evolution.
Echoing the tight design standards co-founder Casey Yano recently highlighted when explaining why Mega Crit views Ironclad's starter card Bash as the perfect design benchmark in Slay the Spire 2, several existing class cards have been reworked. The Ironclad's 3-cost Expect a Fight now grants 15 (20) Block and reduces the cost of Attacks in your hand by 1 Energy until played. For the Silent, Expertise now retains your entire hand for the turn in addition to drawing 2 (3) cards, while Memento Mori has been reshaped into a 3-cost Sly attack dealing 19 (23) damage to the enemy with the lowest HP. On the Ancient relic front, Neow's Dowsing Rod now transforms its card after 4 "?" rooms instead of 5 (and that "?" room can no longer be a combat), while Nonupeipe's Brilliant Scarf has been nerfed from triggering on the 5th card to the 6th.
In a standout week for indie roguelikes following Dome Keeper's long-awaited arrival on PS5 and Nintendo Switch, Mega Crit notes that while the main default branch has now been updated to the stable v0.111.0 build, v0.113.0 is currently exclusive to the testing branch. To play The Fool right now, right-click Slay the Spire 2 in your Steam Library, open Properties > Game Versions & Betas, and select public-beta from the dropdown menu. Part of the Mega Crit team will also be in Shanghai on November 21 and 22 for WePlay 2026.
My Perspective
I love that Mega Crit resisted the urge to spoil every single card effect in the patch notes. Going into the beta branch blind and figuring out a brand-new Slay the Spire 2 character by actually playing the cards is one of the best joys of Early Access. Having a single arrow physically stuck inside an enemy until you land three hits gives combat an immediate tug-of-war rhythm that pairs wonderfully with the Wah, Ki, and Cho bard melodies.
Maëlle "Kaelen" on the deckbuilding meta: "From a pure theorycrafting and tempo standpoint, The Fool's quiver restriction and the Sadness / Joy conversion loop demand tight turn-by-turn sequencing. Voluntarily clogging your hand with unplayable Retain statuses to bank a massive Energy and card-draw burst feels like a clever twist on stance-dancing, but with a real punish window: if you miscalculate your multi-hit count and fail to dislodge your arrow before a boss's big attack turn, your primary damage dealers sit dead in hand. Paired with Blitz mode cutting out map routing and Gold management so you can stress-test raw card synergies in twenty-minute sprints, v0.113.0 is an incredible sandbox for labbing new archetypes."
Based on the outskirts of New York City, Chaya 'Chayane' spent five years studying software engineering in Montreal before returning to her home state. A Full-Stack developer and Deep Learning AI architecture researcher, she explores neural networks and algorithmic optimization while engineering data pipelines for Retrocharting and Gamescharting alongside Grimtag. A gamer for over 20 years and an avid collector of Nintendo history and The Legend of Zelda, she explored World of Warcraft's Azeroth before bringing her deep technical background to video game analysis.
