Slay the Spire artwork of the new character The Defect

After being teased for quite a while now, Slay the Spire's long-awaited third character has now arrived onto the beta servers. Continuing with the tradition of bizarre and highly unique characters, the newly added The Defect is essentially a robot wizard that is built around using orbs that provide both passive and active bonuses. So far The Defect seems much more complex than both The Silent and The Ironclad since you can not only maintain three of these orbs, but also cycle through them in order to change up your tactics. Perhaps most importantly, however, he is also a whole lot of fun to play as!

If you would like to give The Defect a try, as well as offer the developers some much needed balance feedback, you should go and join the beta through Steam. Simply right click on Slay the Spire, go into Properties, select the Beta tab, and then choose the new beta branch from the dropdown menu. Once you've done that the download should start automatically, after which you'll be able to juggle magical orbs to your heart's content.

The final thing worth mentioning is that The Defect will be the last character released while Slay the Spire is still in Early Access. There are going to be more characters released going forward, either for free or as paid DLC, though for the foreseeable future the focus is going to be on polishing and updating existing content in order to make it ready for launch. Personally, I'm hoping for a new mode with a lot more levels as the current ones just don't last that long, especially when you get a nifty combo you would love to keep playing around with and perhaps even improving further.

Once The Defect goes live I'll make sure to let you know, but until then you can keep an eye on his development by visiting either Steam or the official website.