Slay the Spire 2 players can fight a secret Merchant mini-boss

Slay the Spire 2 hides a surprising secret: players can trigger a hidden mini-boss fight against a fake “Merchant.” Discovering it requires hitting two specific events and effectively throwing away a 100 gold reward, so consider this a small spoiler. To pull it off you must throw a Foul Potion at the Fake Merchant.

Both the Fake Merchant and Foul Potion only appear in random Event nodes during a run, and players report the combination is uncommon—some encounter the Foul Potion often but the Merchant rarely. The Potion Courier Event appears from Act 2 onward, while the Fake Merchant only shows up in Act 3, which means you might need to hold one of the three Foul Potions for a long-ass time to get a shot at the fight.

The battle itself seems straightforward and rewards 300 gold plus all of the Fake Merchant’s fake relics, which would cost around 300 gold to buy. That works out as a net positive of 500 gold versus giving the real Merchant a Foul Potion for 100 gold, if you want those relics.

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