Slay the Spire 2's Alchemist Is Getting Even Better at Playing With Poison

Most deck-building strategies involve finding ways to hurt your enemies while keeping yourself alive. The Alchemist has a slightly different philosophy: poison yourself, figure out how to survive it, and make the whole arrangement work in your favor.

Seth's custom character for Slay the Spire 2 already revolves around that unusual balancing act, using Antitoxin to absorb self-inflicted poison damage and special Mix cards to fuel attacks, defense, and other effects. Now, a new update expands the Alchemist's Reshuffled Spire collection with nine playable cards and a particularly nasty addition called Dregs.

Dregs is an unplayable status card that gives you two Poison whenever you draw it, then draws another card. On its own, that's hardly a welcome addition to your deck. But the Alchemist has ways to turn poison into an advantage. The new Hopped Up attack gets cheaper as your Poison increases, while Toxic Aura spreads damage across every enemy whenever your Poison triggers. There's even Switcheroo, which lets you swap your Poison with an enemy's after adding another three stacks to yourself.

It's a fun bit of deck-building mischief. The same poison that threatens your survival can become part of your offense, provided you've got the right cards and enough Antitoxin to keep yourself standing.

The update also introduces Cocktail Strike, which rewards playing different Mixes during combat, and One for Later, which adds a copy to your draw pile whenever a Mix is added to your hand.

The Alchemist is still evolving, but this update gives its already unconventional playstyle a few more ways to get dangerously creative.