Cloud Strife - The Mercenary

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Ex-SOLDIER, mercenary, Buster Sword on his back. Cloud brings his own 88-card pool, two fighting stances, and the ATB bar and Limit gauge from Final Fantasy VII. Take hits, fill the gauge, then end the fight with a free Limit Break.

What's inside

• 88 cards with their own art: 4 Basic, 20 Common, 36 Uncommon, 26 Rare, 2 Ancient.
• Two stances. In Operator, every 2nd Attack you play each turn gives 1 ATB. In Punisher, Attacks deal 2 more damage and you Counter for 3 while you have Block. Shift cards swap between them.
• ATB is a second resource. It carries over between turns and pays for abilities like Braver and Triple Slash.
• Limit gauge (0 to 10) fills when you lose HP or Counter. At full Limit, your next Limit Break costs 0.
• 7 animated Limit Breaks: Cross-Slash, Blade Beam, Climhazzard, Meteorain, Finishing Touch, Ascension and Omnislash. Each has its own move, timed so every damage number lands on a strike.
• Materia spells (Fire, Blizzard, Thunder and more) and 9 relics, starting with the Buster Sword.
• Phoenix Down: take a lethal hit, kneel, and get back up.
• An animated Cloud in combat (slashes, a heavy overhead chop, casts, hurt, death and revive), plus his own character select art, map pin, rest site and merchant poses.

Card numbers are balanced against base-game cards of the same rarity and cost.

Limit Breaks

More in the Images tab and the trailer.

Requirements

• Slay the Spire 2 v0.107.1 or later
• BaseLib v3.4.7 or later by Alchyr. Get it from the BaseLib GitHub releases. The BaseLib Nexus page may lag behind (it listed 3.3.8 on 10 Oct 2026).
• About 1.3 GB of free video memory for the combat animations

Install

1. Install BaseLib v3.4.7 or later (its files go in Slay the Spire 2\mods\BaseLib\).
2. Extract this mod's zip into your game folder, so the files end up in Slay the Spire 2\mods\CloudStrife\ (CloudStrife.dll, CloudStrife.pck, CloudStrife.json).
3. Start the game. The main menu says "Running Modded", and Cloud appears on the character select screen as The Mercenary.

To uninstall, finish or abandon any Cloud run, then delete the mods\CloudStrife folder.

Troubleshooting

• Log file: %APPDATA%\SlayTheSpire2\logs\godot.log. A good load prints "Finished mod initialization for 'CloudStrife'".
• Cloud isn't on the select screen? Check that BaseLib v3.4.7+ is installed and that the three files sit directly in mods\CloudStrife (not mods\CloudStrife\mods\CloudStrife).
• Windows Smart App Control can block an unsigned mod DLL, and the game then starts without the mod. The log shows the error; allow the file.
• Back up your saves (%APPDATA%\SlayTheSpire2) before you try any mod.
• Two optional dev console commands are included: cloudtest <CARD_ID> plays a card against a 9999 HP dummy, cloudshot <name> saves a screenshot. They do nothing unless you type them.

Compatibility
Made for single player. It doesn't change any vanilla card, relic or character. Co-op needs the mod on every PC and hasn't been tested.

Credits and AI disclosure

• Design, direction and playtesting: AltDoug
• Code: written with Claude Code (Anthropic)
• Art, animation and trailer music: AI-generated with fal (GPT Image 2.5, Nano Banana 2, Wan 3.0 Prime, BiRefNet v2, FILM, SeedVR, ElevenLabs Music). Every take was picked by hand and checked in game.
• BaseLib and the character mod template: Alchyr (the grey energy orbs come from the template)
• Slay the Spire 2: Mega Crit

Fan-made, free and non-commercial. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Square Enix or Mega Crit. Cloud Strife and Final Fantasy VII are trademarks of Square Enix. No game files or official Square Enix art are included. Please don't reupload this mod.