Characters#

ℹ️Early access launches with five playable characters: the returning Ironclad, Silent and Defect, plus the new Necrobinder and Regent. This page covers mechanical axes and roles, not card-by-card numbers.

The Five at a Glance#

The verified hard numbers first (starting HP and relics sourced from community databases such as switchbladegaming.com and brokenbuilds.gg):

The starting data already tells you the mechanical differences: Ironclad trades on raw HP for fault tolerance, Necrobinder has only 66 HP and must hide behind summons, and Regent gets a free payout of Stars in every fight.

Characters Aren’t “Strong vs Weak” — They’re “Different Answers to the Same Question”#

The spire’s exam question never changes: finish three acts while your resources keep draining. The five characters differ in which resource they spend to answer it:

• Ironclad spends health for power.
• Silent spends card sequencing and loops for efficiency.
• Defect spends growing resources for late-game burst.
• Necrobinder spends summons as shields + execution thresholds for survival.
• Regent spends setup turns for payoff turns.

Internalize that and you’ll stop asking “which character is strongest” and start asking “how does this character’s resource convert into wins.”

The Mechanical Axes#

Ironclad#

• Role: the most straightforward strength character; highest starting HP and the best fault tolerance.
• Mechanics: a strength growth plan — stack Strength to make every attack card hit harder, while playing “pay health for power” cards to accelerate. Classic strength-axis cards (the Barricade / Demon Form / Impervious family) return in this game, but the card pool has been redesigned for the sequel.
• New flavor: Vigor — bonus damage on your next attack card, effectively a second burst axis alongside Strength; the starting relic Burning Blood’s fixed 6 HP heal per fight is what lets him trade blood so freely.
• Recommendation: the first character for beginners. The logic is easiest to verify: stronger means hitting harder.

Silent#

• Role: the rhythm and card-cycling specialist.
• Mechanics: Poison (damage over time that ignores block), Shivs (cheap multi-hit attacks), and a deep toolkit of draw and discard effects.
• New flavor: Sly — if a card with Sly is discarded before the turn ends, it plays itself for free. This rule turns discarding from a cost into a payout, pushing Silent toward long loops with many discards rather than one-shot heavy hits.
• Recommendation: for players who love sequencing and stretching a single turn as long as it will go.

Defect#

• Role: one of the steepest growth curves with the highest late-game ceiling.
• Mechanics: orbs have been reworked — channel orbs into a limited number of slots, then Evoke them to release their effects; Focus amplifies orb power. Confirmed orb types include Lightning, Frost, Dark, Plasma, plus the newly revealed Glass Orb.
• Core question: which orb to keep, and when to cash it in. That is Defect’s decision every single turn.
• Recommendation: the most “systems-y” character; resource-management enjoyers will feel at home, but the early game is fragile.

Necrobinder#

• Role: the lowest starting HP (66), surviving through summons.
• Mechanic 1 · Osty: summon a giant ghostly bone hand that can attack and absorb damage; re-summoning raises its max HP. The starting relic Bound Phylactery keeps it on the field automatically from turn one.
• Mechanic 2 · Doom: stack Doom on enemies; at full stacks they are executed. Version context: since Major Update #2 (v0.107.1) its base duration dropped from 3 turns to 2, and the same patch buffed related cards like Death March, Sic ‘Em and The Scythe — always cite Doom numbers with a version stamp.
• Mechanic 3 · Souls: a 0-cost, draw-2 card that Exhausts. It’s how a low-HP deck finds its answer on key turns.
• Recommendation: harder to pick up, but the “summon as a blood bag, finish with an execution threshold” logic is unlike anything else.

Regent#

• Role: the classic “bank one turn, blow one turn” character.
• Mechanic 1 · Stars: a second resource with verified rules — not cleared at end of turn, no cap, starts at 0 each combat and can only come from card effects; the community values it at roughly 3 Stars ≈ 2 Energy (sts2front.com, unofficial conversion). Many of his cards require spending Stars to play, so “how long do I bank before I strike” is his real question every turn.
• Mechanic 2 · Forge: an independent subsystem that costs no Stars. The first time you Forge each combat, the Sovereign Blade enters your hand; every Forge after that makes it nastier. The Sovereign Blade has Retain, which means you decide when it fires. The starting relic Divine Right grants 3 Stars at the start of every combat — a free head start worth about 2 energy.
• Background flavor: an heir to a throne of stars carried into battle by attendants; arrogance is part of the kit.
• Recommendation: long-term planners who don’t mind saving resources early will love him.

How Characters Unlock#

In early access the roster doesn’t open all at once — characters unlock step by step. The verified chain is:

Ironclad → Silent → Regent → Necrobinder → Defect

The unlock condition is completing a run with the previous character: the official epoch table reads “Played a run as the Ironclad → unlocks Silent,” and community consensus is explicit that win, lose or abandon all count — in other words no victory required, no Act 3 boss required; finishing a run (even by abandoning it) is enough.

That directly overturns a popular myth: “you must win through the chain in order to unlock all five.” You don’t. The only character-related progress that demands a win is the daily-climb epochs (each of the five characters beating Act 3 once).

Where Is Watcher?#

The first game’s fourth character, Watcher, is not in the early access launch roster. The official stance is that more characters will be added during early access (the “new characters” item on the roadmap), but no specific character has been promised. So “when does Watcher return” is currently unconfirmable — don’t buy any specific return date.

How to Choose#

Whichever you pick, the first discipline is identical: keep the deck tight, not thick. A character’s mechanics only decide which direction to trim in — they don’t change the value of trimming itself.