How To unlock all characters In Slay The Spire 2

For those in a rush to unlock every character in Slay The Spire 2, I don’t blame you. Mega Crit’s roguelike deckbuilder practically birthed an entire genre and has unsurprisingly, become an instant smash hit. With a roster of new and returning characters from the original, maybe you’re dying to just unlock Defect already so you can see if the Claw build is still strong this time around. If that’s the case, we have good news for you.

If you are racing to get the best Slay the Spire 2 characters in your roster I’ll explicitly spell out each character’s specific unlock conditions below, all you need to know is that playing every character as you unlock them will unlock whoever is next in line on the roster. You don’t even have to defeat the final boss in Act 3, as a failed run will count towards unlocking characters. So if you just want every character unlocked immediately and don’t care about your win/loss ratio, you can start a run, forfeit in the first battle, and repeat with every character until everyone’s unlocked in Slay the Spire 2 in this order:

How To Unlock the Ironclad - He’s your first character!
How To Unlock The Silent - Play a run as The Ironclad
How To Unlock The Regent - Play a run as The Silent
How To Unlock The Necrobinder - Play a run as The Regent
How To Unlock The Defect - Play a run as The Necrobinder

In terms of what that gets you, the Ironclad is your bread-and-butter Slay The Spire 2 character and will give you a feel for the core mechanics, with cards that inflict straightforward damage and inflict essential debuffs like Vulnerability and Weak. Additionally, The Ironclad can recover 6 HP after every battle thanks to his starting relic, making it especially forgiving for new players. Expert players can leverage this healing to use cards that give The Ironclad extra Energy and defense at the cost of HP.

Net up, The Silent is essentially your ninja class. She can stack several low-cost cards to attack several times per turn, or focus on inflicting stacks of deadly poison on enemies to chip away at their HP passively. She’s overall the easiest character for beginners to wrap their heads around aside from The Ironclad. That said, new to The Silent are Sly cards. These are usually weaker, but if you discarded they’ll play for free. This is its own powerful playstyle, as The Silent can choose to utilize cards with effects like “Draw 2 Cards, then Discard 2 Cards” to theoretically play moves worth several Energy for a fraction of the price.

Slay the spire 2 character unlocks — (Image credit: Mega Crit)

The Regent is a newcomer in Slay The Spire 2 an introduces a new mechanic: Stars. Stars are like a secondary form of Energy, as many of the cards you’ll find as The Regent will list a Star cost on top of Energy. However, while Energy will reset to your max Energy pool every turn (before card effects and relics are applied), your Star pool will remain the same regardless of your turn. This means you’ll have to work harder to accrue Stars in battle, but you can also stockpile Stars to inflict astronomical burst damage. The Regent can also power up a Sword using cards that grant Forge. He can spawn non-class-specific Colorless cards into his hand or transform cards outright.

The Necrobinder is another newcomer to Slay The Spire 2, and brings her own transformative mechanics - every turn she’ll summon her minion Osty, who acts as a wall that absorbs any damage you take after your Block is broken. If Osty is already on the field, any effects that “summon” will increase Osty’s Max HP instead. Additionally, several of Necrobinder’s cards can also add Soul cards to her deck, which allow her to draw additional cards without using any energy (these cards are removed from the deck after use). Necrobinder can also stack Doom on foes, which is kind of like a variation of The Silent’s poison - if you stack enough Doom on an enemy that it exceeds their current HP, they’ll instantly die after they take their turn.

Last is our final returning character, the Defect who channels elemental orbs that trigger passive effects at the end of its turn. By default it can channel three orbs at a time, and any orbs gained after that will “evoke” the orb at the front of the line, dealing strong damage or granting a powerful shield. The Defect has access to five different orb types, each of which synergize with different cards in its pool. On top of the orb system, the Defect can also deliberately bloat its deck with negative status cards to trigger card-specific effects. It also has access to a multitude of 0 Energy cards, which rewards players who can build decks that draw multiple cards per turn.

If you’re still wondering who you should focus on playing first in Slay The Spire 2, you can check out our ranking of each character here. Additionally, if you’re wondering what Slay The Spire 2 looks like when you play multiplayer with friends, then take a look at our complete guide here to see what you should expect.