SecondAscent
Death becomes a new co-op role: return as one of 11 cause-based support skeletons, keep climbing with unique powers, or choose forms freely in Arcade mode.
Screenshots 8 screenshots
About this mod Author’s original text
SECOND ASCENT
The mountain took your life. It does not get to take you out of the adventure.
Second Ascent turns death in PEAK into a new co-op role. When a scout falls before the rest of the team, they can return as a support skeleton shaped by the way they died — still carrying their gear, still climbing with their friends, but now with a strange new body and a completely different job on the mountain.
One unlucky step can turn you into the team's medic. A frozen climber may return as the fastest scout alive. A fiery death creates a walking campfire. Get eaten, and you may come back hungry enough to make everyone else nervous.
Death is no longer time spent waiting. It is the beginning of your second ascent.
What makes Second Ascent special?
- Death creates a role, not a spectator. Your skeleton form is chosen by what killed you.
- Every form changes how you play. Scout ahead, rescue friends, create anchors, clear fog, become a campfire, or swing across the mountain on a web.
- Your adventure stays intact. Your inventory and backpack remain with you when you transform.
- Built for co-op. Skeletons are unusual, powerful helpers rather than replacements for living scouts.
- Two ways to play. Use the original death-driven experience, or turn on Arcade mode and choose forms for a chaotic custom run.
- A rare choice in your pocket. A one-use Golden skeleton can appear in ordinary luggage—15% in brown, 25% in white and 35% in orange—and grants one form change even when quick selection is locked.
- Host-controlled rules, personal controls. The host decides the run's rules; every player can choose their own keys.
- English and Russian UI. Other game languages fall back to English.
Meet the skeletons
🩹 Trauma — the mountain's rescue worker
Trauma is built for the climber who refuses to leave anyone behind. It moves carefully, climbs with confidence, and can carry an injured friend without being dragged down by their weight.
Its bones are more useful outside the body than inside it. Trauma regularly supplies the team with Bone anchors, and with empty hands it can even pull out another one when the route desperately needs a new grip. Throw a Bone hard into a suitable wall or place it like a piton, and the whole team gets one more chance to survive the climb.
Choose Trauma when: your group needs a rescuer, a carrier, and someone who always seems to have one last anchor.
🔥 Fire — the walking campfire
Fire brings the comfort of camp wherever it goes. Its burning skull warms cold scouts, cooks food for the team, and makes a dark camp feel a little less lonely.
There is, naturally, a downside to hugging a living flame: anyone who gets too close may get burned. Fire also has an explosive temper. Before detonation, its blue flame and glowing body gradually heat through white, yellow and orange until both become red — a beautiful warning that everyone should probably start running.
Choose Fire when: the team needs warmth and cooking on the move, and you enjoy being both the campfire and the emergency.
❄️ Ice — the slippery sprinter
Ice is made for players who want to move. It races ahead of the team, chills anyone standing too close, and leaves temporary icy grips behind while climbing so others can follow its route.
The mountain has a sense of humour, though. Ice may occasionally lose its footing while sprinting, and its sudden cold flashes can turn a calm moment into chaos for everyone nearby.
Choose Ice when: you want to scout the next section quickly and leave a frozen trail for your friends.
🍖 Hunger — the supernatural scout
Hunger is fast, light, and always searching. It can sense edible items through walls and across long distances, making it the perfect guide when the group is starving and the next meal is hidden somewhere in the fog.
Looking at Hunger for too long has consequences. The closer another scout watches it, the hungrier they begin to feel. It is an excellent scout and a terrible dinner companion.
Choose Hunge
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: