Slay the Spire 2 has a new character—notably, a new character in testing—and as the patch notes themselves point out, that testing will very much be needed: "We expect to make a great number of content and balance changes before the Fool is ready for the main branch."
I decided to hop into the beta branch myself and take her for a whirl, and—yeah, those changes'll have to come. The Fool's central mechanic is her bow and arrow—she can fire an arrow/shoot card to deal damage equal to the card's base damage plus her aim. So if a shoot card deals 15 damage and she has six aim stocked, she'll deal 21.
This is a little busted, because by default, the Fool has 6 aim already put in her bank. Her non-strike starter card, Foolish Shot, already deals a hefty 15 damage for just one energy. With aim, the first time she uses it, it deals a whopping 21 damage, which is a heck of a damage output for the Fool's first round of combat.
The saving grace here is that when a card that fires an arrow is used, that arrow becomes lodged in a target, who gains the Impale status. You can't play any more arrow-based cards until you either Dislodge (another game term, hence the proper nounage) an arrow with a card that dislodges, or until you have more than one arrow.
In my runs, I wasn't able to figure out the latter. But I really didn't need to, because I was one-shotting bosses the whole way up the spire. One card in particular, Repeat Shot, seems borderline broken. While it is a rare, it shoots a target for 20 damage (when upgraded) X times, plus your current aim.
With precious little setup, I was casually knocking (or should I say nocking) out around 78 damage on turn one just by having the card pop into my hand. Add even a little aim generation to your deck, and Repeat Short solves single-target fights for you. By making them dead.
There are some other interesting mechanics, too, such as a trio of melodies you can activate and trigger other cards off of. Wah Blast, for instance, hits twice if you've got a Cho or Ki melody active. There's also Stretch, which gives you extra block on the usage of your next block card, Sadness, a status card that can be turned into Joy which gives you energy and card draw, and tarot cards via a power called Mythic Form.
Obviously, she's broken. I absolutely shouldn't be one-card tapping bosses on Act 1 just because I happened to first-turn draw into a single rare card. But she is already very fun, and I look forward to seeing what more balanced version of The Fool will look like in the full game.
Other than that, the testing branch now has two new modes: Blitz, a more bite-sized version where there's no map or gold, and Dread, which appears to be an Ascension+ mode for masochists. Could never be me.
