Slay the Spire is known for revolutionizing the roguelike deckbuilder and inspired a whole genre’s worth of titles. However, one underrated element that other card games fail to emulate is its events, mostly beckoning players to play it safe or risk it for more power. I’ve mostly seen it from mods for the first game, mostly absent or lacking in other roguelites.
Fortunately, Slay the Spire 2 brings even more great events. One of them is the Byrdonis Egg event, found as early as the first act. This quest offers the players two choices, with one of them asking you to carry the egg to hatch at the next rest site.
Where is the Byrdonis Egg Event?
The Byrdonis Egg event is one of the randomized encounters represented by the question mark on the map. Entering these encounters can place you into an event, combat, shop, or treasure. The Juzu Bracelet relic can help narrow down your chances by removing combat encounters from these unknown rooms.
When pathing through unknown rooms, you’ll hopefully find the Byrdonis Nest event as early as the first act. The event sees your character find an abandoned egg in an alcove, then offers you to either eat it to gain 7 max HP or bring the egg with you.
Max HP could be useful on the fragile newcomer, Necrobinder, but the benefit of completing the Byrdonis Egg quest is something all characters could appreciate.
What happens if you hatch the Byrdonis Egg?
If you hatch the Byrdonis Egg, you get a trusty Byrd companion accompany and help you in your run. Taking the egg adds the Byrdonis Egg to your deck. As a card, this is an unplayable quest that will use up one of the draws to your hand. We’ll need to hatch the Byrdonis Egg at the next rest site to get rid of it.
Choosing whether to carry the egg can feel like a gamble, especially when you don’t have enough draw to get a good turn going. However, this short-term inconvenience is something you’ll always endure once you reach the long-term reward for the first time.
Lucky for me, the rest site was only a few floors from the Byrdonis Nest event. Once at the campfire, you’ll have a new option to hatch the Byrdonis Egg, alongside the usual rest and smith. Choosing to hatch the egg will use your time in the rest site, locking out the other options on that floor.
It’s all worth it because the green bird will stay by your character in combat, represented by the Byrdpip relic on the top left. You’ll command the new companion with a card called Byrd Swoop.
This card costs 0 energy yet deals 14 damage, 18 if you upgrade it. Slay the Spire 2 also gifted the bird with its own animation during the attack. I strongly suspect this companion will steal the hearts of many players, just as it did with mine.
The Byrdpip doesn’t interact with the Summon keyword brought by the Necrobinder, nor acts as a minion for the new character, Regent. It’s a simple high-damage 0-cost attack card with a flavor to it via actually seeing the companion.
Additionally, in case you’re curious, bringing the hatched youngling to the Brydonis elite fight doesn’t trigger any special interactions. I was hoping for a skip or a secret interaction that makes the elite fight easier, but anything is possible in the future, as Slay the Spire 2 is still in early access.
Hatching the Byrdonis Egg early brings another attack you can use to whittle down the Vantom boss Slipper stacks at the end of the first act.
