Slay The Spire 2 update fixes some spectacular multiplayer bugs, like the relic that gives infinite block

Slay The Spire 2 launched into early access last week to the tune of over half a million Steam concurrents, which isn’t too shabby for a game with placeholder art that looks like it was knocked up in MS Paint. I played a couple runs of the roguelike deckbuilder this weekend, and experienced such positive emotions as Wait, Doesn’t This Basically Break The Game? Delightfully Devilish, Seymour and Oh, I Forgot I Had That Potion.

I wouldn’t say I’m bowled over, mind. The original Slay The Spire precipitated a Cambrian explosion of roguelite or roguelike deckbuilders. The sequel has to stand apart from both its predecessor and from all the games Spire has in-Spired, like Monster Train. While not without precedent, the co-op functionality could be its silver bullet. So it’s just as well that the game’s first round of patches are targetting problems with multiplayer.

Developers Mega Crit put out a hotfix over the weekend that quashes a few formatting and translation errors in the Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, and Chinese versions of the game. It also tackles a launch blackscreen issue “caused by Sentry crash reporter mishandling log messages” (you’ll no longer need to delete the Sentry folder to resolve this problem).

The patch deals with a softlock caused by the Whispering Earring relic (which grants energy at the cost of playing your first turn for you) trying to play ally-targeted cards on Osty, the Necrobinder’s skeleton hand chum. There’s another fix for the Doormaker enemy’s music not transitioning when the portal opens. I have yet to fight the Doormaker – they’re an act 3 boss, and I keep getting eaten by the bastard sandworm in act 2 – so I can’t comment beyond saying that doors are a perennial, nigh-existential problem for game developers. Still, it sounds less bothersome than certain now-clobbered multiplayer bugbears.

The patch fixes a problem where players were unable to unlock Epochs in the Timeline or start new runs following a multiplayer run. It also deals with an issue whereby players could use several Beacons of Hope (which share block with party members) to generate infinite block. And it nobbles “a state divergence related to Pael’s Wing relic timing”, Pael’s Wing being a relic that lets you sacrifice card rewards for relics.

Have you been playing much Spire 2? Dipped into co-op at all? I haven’t tried it because I fear the lurking presence of rival sentiences in my recreational pastimes, but if you can tolerate other human beings, it does sound like fun.