Defect

"Combat automaton which became self-aware. Ancient technology allows manipulation of Orbs."

The Defect is one of four playable characters in Slay the Spire. Once was among the like of Orb Walkers and Bronze Automaton as one of many ancient automatons, it has since gained sentience and seeks its way out of the Spire. It attacks foes with a high-tech arsenal, array of Powers, and elemental evocations. The Defect has a unique mechanic, the Orbs. Using cards and Relics, The Defect Channels these elemental spheres into a set of Orb slots, activating their passive effects each turn or Evoking them for a one-time burst. The Defect starts with three Orb slots, though cards and relics can add or consume them. It starts with 75 hp.

The Defect's starting Relic is Cracked Core, which Channels 1 Lightning at the start of each combat.

It was added to the beta build in Weekly Patch 22: Testing the Third Character during the early access. It is released to the public, along with the game and other two characters on January 23^rd, 2019.

Starting Deck

• 4 Strike
• 4 Defend
• 1 Zap
• 1 Dualcast

Orbs

The Defect begins with three Orb slots and considers the rightmost Orb to be the 'next' Orb to Evoke. Channeling an Orb inserts it into the rightmost empty slot. If every slot is full, each Orb will be shifted one slot to the right, popping the right-most Orb out of its slot and Evoking it. If The Defect loses every Orb slot, it can't channel Orbs at all!

Lightning, Frost and Dark orbs have a passive effect that activates at the end of the Defect's turn, right to left, or oldest to newest. The passive effect of Plasma activates at the start of the Defect's turn. While these effects are initially weak, The Defect can increase Focus and channel additional copies to sharply increase their potency.

Evoking

Evoking an Orb shatters it and unleashes a high-powered effect. Unlike the passive effects that activate at a preset time, Evoking an Orb activates instantly. Orbs can be Evoked by Channeling too many Orbs or by cards that specify Evoking them. After Evoking an Orb, each orb to its left shifts to fill its slot.

Focus

Main article: Focus

Focus is a stat unique to The Defect that affects Orbs the same way Strength affects Attacks and Dexterity affects Block. Increasing Focus increases the magnitude of both the passive and Evoke effects of each Orb, and decreasing Focus reduces them. It is possible to reduce an Orb's effect to 0 by decreasing Focus - the Orb will still activate, but will have no effect. Plasma is not affected by Focus.

Orb Types

Main article: Orb Types

The Defect can currently Channel four types of Orbs - Lightning, Frost, Dark, and Plasma. The X in each description refers to The Defect's Focus.

Strategy

The Defect's game plan almost always involves implementing a long-term plan each battle. By developing Orbs, Powers, and cards with escalating effects, The Defect sets up an insurmountable late-game position and then destroys its enemies. This is a radically different style from The Silent and The Ironclad, which tend to apply bursts of damage to take enemies out opportunistically.

As a consequence, The Defect struggles to win with a deck full of "good stuff". While it does have access to some individually strong cards, they don't present the sheer power that The Ironclad and The Silent enjoy.

• The Defect also has some chance-based RNG effects, like Lightning Orbs and Creative AI. These can salvage a weak deck by generating stronger cards, but clog up synergistic builds.

The class' strongly synergistic cards encourage some powerful and well-supported archetypes. Identifying and focusing on one is a key aspect of Defect strategy.

Builds

Zero Cost

The Defect has a high number of strong 0-cost cards, as well as unique supporting cards like Scrape and All for One and efficient card-draw Skills. Drown an enemy under FTLs, Streamlines, and Beam Cells. It's sort of like The Silent's Shiv builds, but way more back-loaded and visually impressive.

Damage comes from 0-cost cards that do damage:

• Claw
• FTL
• Beam Cell
• Go for the Eyes
• Streamline - requires 2 plays before it reaches 0 cost.
• Dualcast+
• Zap+

The Deck then also needs a lot of recycle/card-draw effects to get as many of the 0-cost cards in play per turn. The Defect has a lot of great support cards for this type of deck:

• All for One - the best one for this deck as it allows you to re-play all of your 0-cost cards you've played in your deck up until that point
• Rebound - allows you to double-play cards like Streamline and Claw to more quickly ramp up their effects.
• Hologram - replay a 0-cost card you recently played
• Scrape - good card draw that let's you immediately play any 0-cost cards it finds.
• White Noise+ - when upgraded it becomes a free power.
• Reboot - very good if you already have the core engine of your deck in place.
• Seek - great for finding Claw, or even better, All for One.

There are also some extremely useful neutral cards that either help get 0-cost cards, or are 0-cost cards themselves (or both):

• Madness - can be difficult to get, but if you are able to acquire it, it will greatly speed up your deck by turning your strongest cards into 0-cost cards
  • 2 Madness+ with All for One and Hologram is an infinite. Use both madness to reduce All for One + Hologram to 0-cost, and use each one to put the other back into your hand.
  • Seek+ makes this easier to pull off. Double Seek+ is even easier, as it allows for 3 of the 4 cards to be put into your hand immediately.
  • Bottled Lightning also makes this easier to pull off
• Swift Strike
• Secret Technique+/Secret Weapon+ - both of these when upgraded will allow you to get your key cards faster
• Panache - as you will almost certainly be playing more than 5 cards every turn, this will be a guaranteed 10 damage to all enemies every turn
• Thinking Ahead - upgrade this ASAP so that you can re-use it
• Violence
• Metamorphosis
• Purity - can get rid of strikes/defends in-combat, which, depending on the state of your deck, may allow you to go infinite
• J.A.X. - a rare card as it only comes from the Augmenter event, but any source of strength is a huge benefit for a deck that aims to play many 0-cost attacks every turn. As an added bonus, the card itself costs 0 and so, if you have the health for it, can quickly ramp up your damage to high levels in this deck.

Key relics that will help the deck:

• Kunai / Shuriken - Both of these are mandatory if you have already established the deck
• Frozen Egg / Toxic Egg / Molten Egg - if you are able to get these early on, look to buy some of the strong neutral cards that don't exhaust when upgraded
• Ornamental Fan
• Gambling Chip - can help speed up the deck
• Ice Cream - getting this will allow you to stack energy to play your high-cost cards, such as Sunder or Meteor Strike,or allow you to save up for a huge finisher, such as Tempest or Multi-Cast
• Prayer Wheel / Question Card - Either of these can help you get the right cards for the deck if you acquire them early on
• Unceasing Top - hugely beneficial relic for this deck, can allow you to go infinite
• Dolly's Mirror - can duplicate your key cards such as Claw or All for One
• Medical Kit - one of the biggest weaknesses for the deck are status cards, and this relic can get rid of them
• Prismatic Shard - very risky if you haven't already stabilized the deck, but if you have, this can give access to some amazing 0-cost cards from other classes
• The Abacus - as you will be cycling through your deck much faster compared to other archetypes, this can give some much needed block every turn.
• Vajra - strength is great as you will be playing many 0-cost attacks every turn.

Lastly, card-removal is disproportionately good in a 0-cost deck, and if you are able to remove all of your strikes/defends, you have the high possibility of "going infinite", which means you are able to continually play your entire deck until the combat is over.

• Merchant's card removal can get rid of some cards. The Smiling Mask can help with this as well.
• Peace Pipe is amazing here as it will let you remove an additional card at every rest.
• There are many events that remove cards for you

Lightning DoT

The Lightning Orb damage-over-time build tries to Channel many Lightning Orbs, boost Focus, and hold the fort with Block-granting Skills while the Lightning Orbs' passive wears down the opponents.

• Electrodynamicsgreatly helps you when encountering multiple enemies. It also Channel multiple Lightning Orbs in a single use. It becomes especially powerful with Bottled Tornado
• Loopspeeds up the process.
• Fission+ can Evoke the accumulated Orbs to finish off the weakened enemies
• Biased Cognition'sextreme Focus gain, along with Focus Potions, take this build to the next level.
• Steam Barrier, ,Boot Sequence andEquilibrium can help blocking damage.

Lightning Evoke

This build tries to Evoke as many Lightning Orbs as possible, beating enemies down eight damage at a time. Unlike other Orb builds, smaller is better - one Orb slot is optimal to facilitate Evoking.

• Electrodynamics greatly helps you when encountering multiple enemies. It also Channel multiple Lightning Orbs in a single use. It becomes specially powerful with Bottled Tornado
• Zap+ Channels a Lightning Orb for free.
• Ball Lightning is an attack that Channels a Lightning Orb. With fewer orb Slot and multiple copies of this card, it can rapidly Evokes multiple Lightning orb for a large amount of damage.
• Thunder Strike, Tempest, and Bullseye are this deck's premier finishers, dumping huge volumes of damage onto the enemy.
• Static Discharge can also be effective against enemy with multiple hits.
• Use Consume to reduce the number of Orb slot and boost Focus.

Frost Turtle

The Frost deck Channels as many of the eponymous Orbs as possible to into an unbreakable wall of free Block. Once the shields are up, The Defect can devote every Energy to damage.

• This archetype is supported by Blizzard and Glacier, and relies heavily on Focus and Orb slot buffs.
  • Barrage excels in this slot-oriented deck.
• Capacitor generates Orb slots. 2 copies should suffice, but you can take more if you want.
• Take as many Defragment as possible, and upgrade as many of it as you can. Focus is even more crucial for this deck as 1 Focus means 1 additional Block per channeled Frost orb.
  • Since Capacitor and Defragment are not expensive, Mummified Hand has even greater chance to allow multiple free cards play.
• Runic Capacitor grants 3 additional Orb slots.
• If you have the Frozen Core relic, it would fill your orb slots with Frost orbs. This would help you quicken the weak early game.
• Inserter rapidly generates Orb slots for free.
  • If you have Inserter, consider taking Consume to help boost Focus, as it can be repeatedly used and generate a rather large Focus per use. Once you have an adequate Focus, you can forego using it or Recycle it away.

Dark

The Defect can make the most of the tricky Dark Orb by defending for a few turns while it charges, then using Multi-Cast, Dualcast, or Recursion to Evoke it multiple times. This archetype isn't as well-supported as the others, but the satisfaction of Evoking a 54-damage Dark Orb three times (or more!) makes it worthwhile. Keep in mind that the Dark orb will target the lowest health enemy.

• This deck works well with Frost Turtle, as Frost Orbs help generate Block and allow you to stall the fight until you are ready to Evoke a Dark Orb.

Energy Greed

The Defect has better access to Energy sources than other classes, and there's no better way to leverage them than a Meteor Strike, Aggregate and TURBO, and stockpile with Charge Battery. Dump your Energy into expensive bombs like Meteor Strike, Sunder and Tempest, draw cards with Skim and fling them at enemies, or make a good old-fashioned Unceasing Top wombo-combo. When you have 7 Energy, anything is possible.

Powers Matter

The Ironclad likes Attacks, The Silent loves Skills, and The Defect completes the cycle with its affinity for Powers. Grab some Force Fields, drop an Amplify or Echo Form, stack up some powerful effects, and bury the opposition under your cumulative advantage. The Bird-Faced Urn is the perfect Relic to recover HP lost while setting up.

• Creative AI is probably the best card for this deck. It scales amazing with itself and with all of the other power-synergy cards that The Defect can get.
• Amplify - doubling any of your powers can be a huge spike depending on what the power is. Good targets for Amplify are cards like Defragment and Capacitor
• Refine the deck by using Powers to fill the roles of Attacks and Skills. Consider Static Discharge and Storm your damage-dealers, Buffer and Self Repair your Blockers. The Powers deck's win condition depends on the particular Powers you acquire. Most builds will stack up Orbs, but some use Attacks and others simply lean on Creative AI and let the Powers do the work. The Mummified Hand can become really useful with a power deck.

RNGesus

Chaos randomly Channels an orb for one cost, including Plasma, normally a two cost. Upgrade Chaos and pair it with Defragment and draw cards and hope to Evoke enough Plasma and Frost orbs to survive the next round.

Tempo

This aggressive archetype deploys efficient cards with debilitating drawbacks, and attempts to end the battle before the consequences arrive. TURBO and Steam Barrier provide cheap resources, and Hyperbeam or Biased Cognition bring big damage, and each incurs a significant long-term cost. If The Defect can slam the door before the Statuses overwhelm it, the player enjoys a quick, decisive victory that doesn't give enemies much time to deal damage.

Barrage

This deck centres around the three major cards: Barrage, Capacitor, and Defragment. If you want to get more value off of your orbs. The point of this deck is to acquire as many orbs as possible using cards such as Glacier and Chaos and then unloading a ton of damage using Barrage.

• Other cards that are useful are Trip or Beam Cell, to do maximum damage with Barrage. AlsoHologram or Seek, to find Barrage more consistently.

Snecko Eye

• The defect has several extremely powerful but expensive cards like Fusion, Echo Form, Sunder and Meteor Strike. By taking Snecko Eye early enough, you can focus on these cards for absurdly high-value turns. Many of these effects will generate more energy than they spend.
• All for One and Hologram can fetch cards which had their cost set to 0 the last time you saw them, even if they would normally be quite expensive.
• Most of the Defect's 0-cost cards are dead weight in this archetype, so it is important to home in on it as early as possible. If you don't get Snecko Eye from Neow or the first boss, pick a different strategy.

Unlocks

The Defect itself is unlocked by completing a run with The Silent.

Unlock Number	Prizes Unlocked
1st	Rebound, Equilibrium, Echo Form
2nd	TURBO, Sunder, Meteor Strike
3rd	Hyperbeam, Recycle, Core Surge
4th	Gold-Plated Cables, Turnip, Runic Capacitor
5th	Data Disk, Symbiotic Virus, Emotion Chip

Gallery

The Defect in-game

The Defect appearing in its Steam Background

The Defect featured prominently in the card art for Biased Cognition

The Defect as it appears in some official artwork for the game

The Defect's character select screen

The Defect seen in the Launch Trailer alongside the Ironclad and the Silent