The Red Mage

Note: This mod is in beta testing.  There will be bugs and there are several assets missing.  Please report bugs as you encounter them.

The Red Mage

Jack of all trades, master of panache. Kupo!

A complete custom character for Slay the Spire 2, inspired by Final Fantasy's classic Red Mage. Rapier in one hand, spellbook in the other, moogle overhead.

How the character plays

Three Schools. Every card is Sword, Black Magic, or White Magic (a few are more than one). Your last three school cards played each turn appear as colored circles beside your character.

Sequences — the core mechanic. The moment those three circles exactly match a combo on the on-screen training chart, it fires:

• Pure chains conjure a card into your hand: 3 Sword = Manafication (0-cost: 2 Energy, draw 1), 3 Black = Meteor (22 damage to ALL), 3 White = Holy (10 damage + 8 Block).
• Mixed combos command your Moogle familiar: 11 trained actions from Mog Rush (9 damage) to Kupo Kiss (heal 5) to Flourish (damage + Block + heal).

Order matters — Black-Sword-Sword (Kupo Hex) is a different move than Sword-Sword-Black (Mog Rush). Unmatched circles aren't wasted: the oldest rolls off as you keep playing. 14 combos total, all listed on an in-game chart with hover tooltips, plus a "Last Fired" history so you never miss what triggered.

Dualcast. Playing a spell charges Dualcast; the next spell consumes it for a bonus printed on the card (extra damage, draw, debuffs, energy...). Cards that would benefit right now glow gold in your hand.

The Moogle. An invulnerable familiar who floats beside you, flutters happily whenever a sequence resolves, and performs your trained combos. He came with the hat.

Contents

• ~60 unique cards with full art
• 12 relics (including 4 boss relics that warp how sequences work — chains of 2, doubled Moogle actions, and more)
• 8 potions (Ether, Phoenix Down, Saboteur's Venom...)
• Custom pixel character with cast / hurt / death animations, campfire and merchant scenes
• Themed spell VFX and sound effects for every card family
• Sequence pips, training chart, outcome announcements, damage previews ("Total Damage" on every attack)

Requirements

• Slay the Spire 2 (early access, tested on v0.109)
• BaseLib by Alchyr — available on the Steam Workshop (also required by other custom characters)

Installation

1. Install BaseLib (Steam Workshop, or drop it in your mods folder).
2. Extract the TheRedMage folder into your game's mods directory: ...\Steam\steamapps\common\Slay the Spire 2\mods\TheRedMage\It should contain TheRedMage.dll, TheRedMage.pck and TheRedMage.json.
3. Launch the game and pick The Red Mage on the character select screen.

Known issues

• With large mod lists, Slay the Spire 2 occasionally crashes during boot (a base-game race in Steam callbacks, log ends at "SteamStatsManager: User stats received"). Just relaunch — it is not caused by this mod, and the odds improve with fewer mods installed.
• Don't update the mod mid-run; finish or abandon your current run first.

Credits & attribution

• Card art / energy orb: "Painterly Spell Icons" by J.W. Bjerk (eleazzaar) — CC-BY 3.0, OpenGameArt. Used with attribution, as required.
• Spell VFX: "Free Pixel Effects Pack" by CodeManu — CC0, OpenGameArt.
• Sound effects: CC0 public-domain sounds via lavenderdotpet's CC0 collection.
• BaseLib by Alchyr — the modding framework this character is built on.
• Character & moogle sprites: from Final Fantasy (PSP) / Final Fantasy V — © Square Enix. This is a non-commercial fan work, not affiliated with or endorsed by Square Enix or Mega Crit; sprite assets will be removed or replaced on request from the rights holder.
• Relic, potion & power icons: "98 Pixel Art RPG Icons" by 7Soul (Ails) — opengameart.org/content/98-pixel-art-rpg-icons — CC-BY 3.0
• Plumed Chapeau icon: "Straw Wizard Hat 16x16" by simranzenov (OpenGameArt, CC0), recolored
• Character select icon: "FFXIV Red Mage Symbol Wallpaper" by charleigh95 (depeazy) on DeviantArt — fan art of the Final Fantasy XIV Red Mage job symbol (symbol © Square Enix). Will be removed or replaced on request.

Permissions
Code and original content: feel free to learn from, fork, or build on with credit. Square Enix assets remain the property of Square Enix; do not redistribute them outside this mod.
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Nexus Mods Support Ending

Thank you to everyone who has supported this, and my other mods, over the course of 2026.  All future updates to this and my other mods will be exclusively through Steam workshop and my Discord, which can be found here: https://discord.gg/7kJMtFCarU.  Thank you everyone!
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v0.0.7 — Kupo?!

A community-powered update: one new combo, one rule change a player talked me into, and one very good bug catch.

New training combo: MOOGLE RAY
Black - White - Black — the polymorph weave. The Moogle transforms the front enemy into a harmless moogle: it visibly turns into a little bobbing pom-pom and skips its next turn, then reverts. The training chart has the new row (15 combos now). Kupo?!

Dual-school cards fire EVERYTHING they complete
A player asked the right question: if Jolt is both Black AND White, why does R-B-Jolt only trigger one combo? It shouldn't. Now a card that counts as multiple Schools fires every combo it completes at once — R-B-Jolt triggers both Flourish and Mog's Lullaby, each with its own callout. And yes: a well-placed Enchanted Riposte can cascade Meteor + Pom-Pom Spark + Moogle Dance from a single play. The wildcard finally wildcards.

From v1.2.1: the Circlet insult is fixed
Touch of Orobas (the Orobas event's starter-relic refinement) used to "upgrade" the Plumed Chapeau into a Circlet. It now forges CHAPEAU MAGNIFIQUE: your Moogle acts one Act better trained — stronger actions, upgraded conjured rewards, and a 4th training tier beyond Act 3, so it's never a dead pick. Gold band included.

Bug fix: the runaway Verfire
Conditional bonus numbers (Verfire's Dualcast damage, Vercure's heal, the Riposte / Zwerchhau / Redoublement combo bonuses) were quietly inflating every time an upgrade preview rendered — which is how one player's Verfire ended up dealing "38 additional damage" by Act 2. Fun while it lasted; fixed for all five cards.

Keep the reports and ideas coming — two of the three things in this update came straight from the comments. Kupo!

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v0.0.6 — The Moogle Grows Up

The little guy has been training, and it shows.

The Moogle levels up every Act
All eleven trained actions now grow as your run does:

• Mog Rush 9 → 13 → 17 damage. Pom-Pom Spark 5 → 7 → 9 to ALL. Pom Guard 8 → 11 → 14 Block.
• Kupo Hex climbs to 3 Weak + 3 Vulnerable. Moogle Dance reaches 2 Energy + 2 cards. Every other action scales too.
• From Act 2 onward, pure chains conjure UPGRADED rewards: Meteor+ (28 to ALL), Holy+ (13 + 11 Block), Manafication+ (2 Energy, draw 2).
• The training chart beside your character always shows the current Act's numbers — and the Moogle announces its level-up at the start of each new Act. Kupo!

Two card reworks from playtesting

• Composure no longer hoards your whole hand (all cards, no energy — not a great trade). Instead: your sequence circles no longer clear at the start of your turn. End on two black pips, open tomorrow with a third, collect your Meteor.
• Reflect is now a proper Power: whenever an enemy attack hits you, gain 2 Thorns (3 upgraded). It hardens under fire — multi-hit enemies beware.

Also in this update

• A proper character select icon: the Red Mage's job symbol on smoldering red.
• Crimson Flurry and Prismatic Parry now show in the compendium.
• Frame-tint polish (White Magic frames are actually white now) and new status icons for Composure and Reflect.

Balance feedback welcome as always — especially on Act 3 moogle numbers and the new Composure. Kupo!
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New character released: The Blue Mage!

The Red Mage's scholarly cousin has arrived. The Blue Mage doesn't get card rewards from a pool — he Learns them from the movesets of the monsters he just defeated. Beat a beetle, learn its moves.

• ~185 Learned cards across all four acts, with art of the monsters themselves
• Exclusive shop-only Azure Arts that power up your Learned cards
• Six Secret Teachings you earn by surviving deadly enemy moves
• Bestiary Pages milestones that grow stronger the more species you learn from

Get him here: The Blue Mage
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v0.0.5 - QOL

Quality of life

• School-colored card frames: red = Sword, black = Black Magic, white = White Magic, gold = schoolless. Your hand reads at a glance now.
• An animated character select background — fireflies in the forest, in full 1080p.
• The Plumed Chapeau finally has icon art worthy of the plume.

Heads up: the download is bigger than before (the animated background is made of real frames, not compression magic). Balance feedback on the new cards is very welcome — Manafont, Encore, and the forge cards especially. Kupo!
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v0.0.4 Update — Encore

The biggest update since release: 20 new cards, bringing the pool to 77.

New toys for the sequence engine

• Ballestra and Float count TWICE toward your Chain — cheap combo accelerators for Sword and White.
• Mimic copies the newest circle in your sequence, whatever it is.
• Sleight of Hand removes a circle that broke your pattern.
• Prefulgence hits for 14 and costs 0 if a sequence resolved this turn — assemble the combo, then punctuate it.
• Encore makes the Moogle repeat its last trained action this turn. The card fills in the action's name as you play and glows gold when it's ready. Yes, it stacks with Vermilion Cloak. Kupo.

And for every archetype
Spellblade decks get Enthunder (stacks with Enfire), dualcasters get Impact, Contre Sixte, Haste and Barspell, control decks get Slow, Stop and Libra, and Manafont fuels it all with an extra Energy every turn.

Quality of life

• School-colored card frames: red = Sword, black = Black Magic, white = White Magic, gold = schoolless. Your hand reads at a glance now.
• An animated character select background — fireflies in the forest, in 1080p.
• The Plumed Chapeau finally has icon art worthy of the plume.

Heads up: the download is bigger than before (the animated background is made of real frames, not compression magic). Balance feedback on the new cards is very welcome — Manafont and Encore in particular. Kupo!
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v0.0.3 Update — A fresh coat of paint (the moogle helped)

This update is all about the missing art. Every relic, potion, and power now has a proper icon:

• All 11 relics that were using placeholder art now have real icons — Murgleis's crystal-hilted blade, Joyeuse's gilded edge, the Vermilion Cloak in actual vermilion, and the rest.
• All 8 potions got fitting bottles and trinkets — Phoenix Down is a proper feather, Ether is the blue you'd expect, and Acceleration Draught is quite literally out of time.
• All 11 powers now show status icons next to your HP bar instead of blank squares — flaming blades for Enfire and Temper, a winged halo for Raise, a twin sparkle for Doublecast, and so on.

No gameplay changes in this one — purely visual. Kupo!
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v0.0.2 Update — The Architect will see you now

Thanks to a sharp-eyed bug report: reaching the Architect after beating Act 3 soft-locked the run — she and the Red Mage just stood there in quiet contemplation, forever. It turns out she simply had nothing to say to him yet.

That's fixed: the Red Mage now has full Architect dialogue — four different exchanges that unfold across your first several victories (she has some opinions about jacks of all trades; the moogle has some requests about Kupo Nut stocking), each ending with the proper closing volley and a completed run.

If you hit the softlock on an earlier version: update the mod and replay — no save damage, the run just couldn't finish before.

Also confirmed working on game version v0.109. Kupo!