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 23rd, 2019.
Cards
Starting Deck
Defect Cards | |||
---|---|---|---|
Starters | |||
Attacks | Common
|
Ball Lightning • Barrage • Beam Cell • Claw • Cold Snap • Compile Driver • Go for the Eyes • Rebound • Streamline • Sweeping Beam
| |
Uncommon
|
|||
Rare
|
|||
Skills | Common
|
||
Uncommon
|
Aggregate • Auto-Shields • Boot Sequence • Chaos • Chill • Consume • Darkness • Double Energy • Equilibrium • Force Field • Fusion • Genetic Algorithm • Glacier • Overclock • Recycle • Reinforced Body • Reprogram • Skim • Tempest • White Noise
| ||
Rare
|
|||
Powers | Uncommon
|
||
Rare
|
Mechanics
Orbs
Main article: 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.
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 (except for ). It is possible to reduce Orb effects to 0 by decreasing 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, who 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 a higher number chance-based RNG effects, like , Chaos, and Creative AI.
The Defect's strongly synergistic cards encourage some powerful and well-supported archetypes. Identifying and focusing on one is a key aspect of the Defect strategy.
General Build Archetypes
These are the standard types of decks that may give you an idea of direction for your deck, or what you want to go for. Keep in mind that none of these builds are mutually exclusive. Many of them are more of a general strategy, which can be adapted or combined into multiple builds in a single deck.
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, Claws, 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:
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:
There are also some extremely useful neutral cards that either help get 0-cost cards, or are 0-cost cards themselves (or both):
|
Lightning Damage Over Time
|
---|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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. |
Snecko Eye
|
---|
This build makes use of Snecko Eye, paired with the defect's high impact cards.
|
10 Card Infinite
|
---|
With this build, the defect is capable of going infinite against most opponents.
|
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 |