Slay The Spire 2 The Trial Guide: How To Survive Jury Duty
Getting drafted for jury duty is miserable in real life, but in Slay the Spire 2, ignoring your civic duty literally kills you on the spot.
Reaching Act 3 is a highly stressful experience. You are probably limping away from a brutal elite fight, bleeding out, and desperately hoping the next Unknown node is a quiet campfire or a free treasure chest. Instead, you step into a massive building, walk under a golden archway, and get showered in confetti. A shady figure known as the Grand Arbiter points at you, calls you Entrant 332, and forces you to be the Decider for a high profile court case.
If you are struggling to even survive long enough to see Act 3, you should probably take a step back and read my Slay the Spire 2 Beginners Guide before you start worrying about courtroom politics. But if you find yourself sitting in the decision chair staring at a smirking nobleman, you need to know exactly what you are clicking.
The Illusion Of Choice
The game immediately presents you with a prompt to either accept your role as the Decider or refuse it. As gamers, we are naturally conditioned to poke the bear. We assume that refusing a mandatory order will unlock a secret boss fight, reveal a hidden lore path, or grant us a special achievement.
I tested this theory so you do not have to ruin your own save file. I clicked refuse. The Grand Arbiter gives you a very stern warning that rejecting this privilege is punishable by death. If you double down and refuse a second time, the game is not bluffing. Your character instantly dies and your run is permanently over.
There is no hidden easter egg here. I thought I could outsmart the developers by holding a Fairy in a Bottle to resurrect myself after the execution. The game ignores the fairy entirely. It is a hard coded instant death screen designed specifically to punish curious players. If you are grinding your way up the difficulty ladder, losing a perfect hour long run to a text box is infuriating. You can check my Slay the Spire 2 Ascension Guide to see how much harder the game gets, but trust me, you do not want to throw away your progress here. Just accept the job.
Making The Verdict
Once you sit in the chair, the trial begins. The defendant is a corrupt noble who barely bothers to defend himself. You reach into your pocket and find a mysterious note offering you a massive payout if you declare him Innocent. The restless crowd is screaming at you to make a choice.
This is a pure risk assessment scenario. There is no right or wrong answer, only the answer that fits your current deck economy.
Playing The Righteous Judge
Choosing Guilty is the ethical choice, but more importantly, it is the safe choice. Healing for 10 HP in Act 3 is incredibly valuable. Enemies in this tier hit like freight trains, and chip damage accumulates fast. If you are sitting below half health and you do not have a campfire coming up on your route, take the heal and walk away.
It is boring, but surviving is inherently boring. You keep your deck clean and live to fight another floor.
Taking The Bribe
If you choose Innocent, you are accepting a massive payout of 300 gold in exchange for the Regret curse.
Three hundred gold is an absurd amount of money to get handed to you in a single event. If you have a Merchant node coming up on your map, that kind of cash can completely break your run wide open. It is enough to buy a game winning relic, a crucial potion, and remove a card. If you are wondering what you should be shopping for, take a look at my Slay the Spire 2 Best Relics Guide for a tier list of the top items.
The catch is the Regret curse. Every time this unplayable card sits in your hand at the end of your turn, you lose HP equal to the number of cards you are holding. It is a terrifying penalty that can quickly drain your health pool if you get a bad draw during a boss fight.
You should only take the bribe if you have a reliable way to mitigate the curse. If you have the Omamori relic, it will simply negate the curse from ever entering your deck, giving you 300 free gold. If you have the Blue Candle, you can exhaust the curse for 1 HP and be done with it. You can also check my Slay the Spire 2 Tier List Unlocks to see which characters have built in exhaust mechanics to manually burn the curse out of their hands during combat.
You also need to consider your overall deck clutter. If you are already holding a bunch of unplayable junk, adding Regret is going to severely impact your draw consistency. I recently wrote a Slay the Spire 2 Quest Cards Guide detailing how easy it is to bloat your deck, and combining quest cards with curses is a recipe for disaster.
If there is no shop before the final boss, the gold is completely useless to you anyway. Never take a curse if you cannot spend the money.
The lore surrounding this event is still highly debated among the community. The game drops you into these bizarre scenarios without much context. If you enjoy digging into the narrative fragments scattered across the acts, my Slay the Spire 2 Epochs Timeline Guide attempts to piece together how this corrupt court fits into the broader history of the Spire. You can also compare the rewards from this event to boss drops in my Slay the Spire 2 All Ancients Relics Guide.
