Slay the Spire 2 is full of silly little secrets and, based on some of the unfinished Epochs you can discover in Early Access, there are plenty more on the way. Most of these can be discovered and unlocked by merely playing the game, but the latest one to be uncovered by players requires you to trigger two specific events and waste a 100 gold reward.
Be warned, this is technically a spoiler, albeit a small one, so don’t read ahead if you want to trigger this on your own. That being said, I’ve put about 40 hours into Slay the Spire 2 (and hundreds of hours into the original Slay the Spire), and I would never have thought to do this, so I’d advise spoiling yourself anyway if you actually want to have a chance of seeing it yourself.
As spotted by this user over on r/slaythespire, it’s possible to trigger a hidden mini-boss fight against the fake “Merchant” by throwing a Foul Potion at them. If both “Fake Merchant” and “Foul Potion” are alien concepts to you, these can only be encountered in random Event nodes during your climb. Personally, I’ve encountered the Foul Potion event a bunch of times, but only run into the “Merchant” once, so I’d wager that pulling this off is pretty uncommon.
The Potion Courier Event can only be found from Act 2 onwards, and the Fake Merchant can only be encountered in Act 3, so you’d also have to hold on to at least one of the three Foul Potions for a long-ass time to have a chance of triggering this. On the plus side, the fight itself looks like a cakewalk, and you’ll be rewarded with 300 gold and all of the Fake Merchant’s fake relics, which would cost somewhere around 300 gold to buy, once you beat them.
That’s a net positive of 500 gold vs. just giving the real Merchant one of your Foul Potions for 100 gold, provided you actually want all of the Fake Merchant’s relics. This is also the only way to get the “Merchant’s Rug???” relic, which is absolutely useless, but necessary to pick up if you’re trying to 100-percent complete the Compendium.
