Thoughts after one week playing

My background: Played D&D and similar fantasy for a long time. Haven't played MTG but have several friends who have (and they all told me I should stay away unless I wanted to spend a lot of money to get a competitive deck). Favorite games include: Civilization series, Guild Wars, MUDs, Team Fortress 2.

First off I love the whimsical feel of Card Hunter. The art and sound effects are really good. I love it. The light humor right alongside the over-the-top 'serious' D&D descriptions works amazingly well. It was very entertaining.

It was also very easy to get into. I'm not from a collectible background but figuring out how to pay was a lot easier and more fun than most fantasy type games. Your powers are very clearly laid out in your cards, including armor and movement. It works great. I did sell some early equipment (isn't that what you're supposed to do in fantasy games?) before I realized I should just hang onto everything and only sell the treasure. The tutorials showing how the different stores worked was great.

Some of the campaign adventures were a little challenging, but I like challenges. Usually switching out weapons on my warrior (piercing, chop, or range 2 attacks) and giving my priest a bunch of frenzy was about all I needed to do to win. And some Firestorm on my wizard. The campaign is alright, but some of the fights feel almost a little too contrived. For these it felt less like a good overall strategy and tactics would win me the fight, and more like once I found the Achilles's Heel of the enemies it would become pretty easy to win. Or luck: I got lucky with a Firestorm card and was able to shake the cockroaches armor making the final fight in Against the Cockroaches a cakewalk. I'm only level 12, so maybe this changes in the later adventures.

But in games like this, I tend to fall in love with the PvP. I never completed any of the campaigns in GW, but bought all the expansions and played the PvP regularly. And the fun I'm having in PvP is making it hard to go back to campaign mode. But the more I play, the more I want to play around with abilities I see my opponent's using. I played one guy who said he had 18 encumbrance abilities between his two wizards. I don't think I've even seen that many in the store, much less have enough gold to buy them.

I managed to get to the Epic chest in MP the first day I went in there, but when my rating gets over 1000 the games become much more challenging. If I average 15 mins a game (I'm a bit slow), and win half, that's 40 games for a total of 10 hours of playing in one day. Maybe I'll do that every now and then, but it seems a bit excessive.

I took a look at the options for paying money and was a bit surprised it costs so much to be a part of the club. I was expecting to toss $10 or maybe $15 and have access to the full game. $50 for only six months? Sorry, there is no way I'm doing that. I do remember paying to play Neverwinter Nights per hour on AOL, but I guess I'm a cheapskate in old age or have been spoiled by too many games that allow you to purchase the whole thing. I'm tempted to do the $25 thing and hope to get enough cards I don't need to do it anymore, but for some reason I'm thinking it is unlikely it'll work out that way. There will probably always been items I'd like to play with that are so rare you almost have to be a member of the club to stand a reasonable chance of getting one.

Right now I'm going to alternate between grinding out the campaign (I'd rather play MP) for items/gold to see what kind of stuff I get at level 18 and some MP matches. Looking to see how hard it is to play with those rare items for the builds I want to try out.

Peace,
Hutto

P.S. I'm not saying CHANGE THIS NOW!!1! or anything like that. I'm not even suggesting I'm representative of a large group of people. Just offering one individual's feedback after a week of playing, for whatever that's worth.

 

the club membership only gets you one item on the pillow per chest so you wont be missing out on much and can still get every item in the game without it. the best thing to do thou is buy the treasure adventures and you can run over and over and they seem to drop better loot then just the average adventure alone. and what im most likely doing is just getting the club membership for the first 30 days and by then i should be ok on items to not feel so left out if i don't renew it. but then again i do like the game so i may just renew to support the game

 

Hello, great post, I've enjoyed reading it! Let me clarify some of your concerns regarding items and PvP. Most items are common and uncommon which are really good, but they're high level - meaning that when you finish campaign and do few high level adventures on resets you will get those items quite easily. Legendary items are EXTREMELY rare to find and some people might be finding one a day, and some might be finding one per week. Being club member helps you even out the odds of getting items (you simply get one more item and it's quality will always be of highest quality in the chest - this is good in case of PvP - since in epic chest you'll be guaranteed to get at least an additional (since it's a single item as club reward) epic, but in PvE - you'll be guaranteed to get common after beating entire adventure, and random item every mission completed - it's not as game changing as you would think, in fact - you'll find 90% of your items in PvE from... well, not being in the club. Club membership 'chest' doesn't have any increased chance of better loot, it's simply another 'slot' for item. That said - sometimes the said slot might be lucky enough to get you something good.

 

Treasure hunts are well worth - additional content and more places to get decent items! I would definitely suggest buying last two treasure hunts - wyverns and ooze king, as those are the most challenging adventures in the game, currently available

 

Don't take this a a complaint, but if that's true, it's kind of a shame. What you said about the most challenging adventures being locked off, that is.
I'd probably be feeling even more pressure to buy those modules if I could get a taste of that, you know?
Have they ever considered letting part 1 of say a 3 battle module be playable without unlocking? those of us looking for that little something to push ourselves over the pay ledge might respond better if we could experience a taste of what we're missing.

Edit: actually I take that back a little. I might just think to myself, "Thanks for the extra free farm". It's hard to tell how I'd respond. I think maybe more of a preview of what I'm missing would be helpful, however. Right now I get a little two sentence blurb about the locked mission, and a display of the epic item I might get, and that's it. I'd probably be more impressed by a little diorama of that slime you mentioned, and a view of one of the battlefields. Sort of like seeing a demo shot or something.

 

It's only my opinion about being the hardest modules also: you get free 150 pizza as you play campaign, so you can unlock those treasure hunts easily.

 

So far I've been spending it as the game tells me too. I hear that it's a good idea to actually not do that.
Can you recall when that's supposed to happen during the campaign?
I'm at lvl 15, so I'm probably past the points where I could be expecting pizza freebies?

 

I agree with pengwin, spending the pizza is totaly up to you, and I dont see a particular use to it, so unlocking one of the modules to check it out is as good an idea as any (I would definitely prefer that to just buying a new costume).
I had the same concerns as you at first because we all know that more often than not f2p is code name for "buy to win" but I really think that this game is different in that regard. yes, the extra item is nice but is very rarely
a build changer (sometimes even in gold or purple chests the extra item is just a common or uncommon) and while the extra adventures are fun and challenging, I dont find them superior to the free adventures, just different.
I play for a long time now (from the merry beta days), and eventually did give some money but only because I felt guilty for spending so much time on something I know people put so much time and effort in... the club membership and the extra adventures were honestly just a bonus for a clearer conscience
having said that, I know that for some people spending even 20$ can be difficult, but I really think that you can
enjoy the game even without spending a dime.

 

Everyone has a different opinion on what's hardest; in beta I had the most trouble with Garnet Portal and Cockroaches, and only beat Temple of Terror and Yellow Dragon by exploiting the AI's blindness to Impenetrable Nimbus. The treasure hunts weren't too hard, but had lots of monsters you won't meet in the campaign (though they are available in custom scenarios); I especially liked all the projectile attacks in Lord Batford's Manor.

 

A one-month follow up: I'm still missing so many cards, and the few rare cards I do have I don't have enough to make using them dependable. It is increasingly frustrating to play against decks with far superior mobility and movement control than me. This frustration leads me to playing even worse. Have you guys considered some MP format involving more balanced decks?

I realize there is a treadmill in place, but that's not really my cup of tea. I enjoy the actual combat mechanics. I don't care for the loot drop mechanics. I'll probably still play from time to time until I find another RPG game to scratch my turn based strategy itch. I'm sure the developers have their loot tables and have a solid business model in place that will appeal to a lot of the MMO/D&D/TCG crowd. PvP crowd? I don't know...

I'm guessing there may be one or two people who read this and think: Hogwash! You don't need rare cards to win! Please, post your winning deck of mostly common/uncommon items with a few rares thrown in. I brought this up in chat and someone suggested this build. Needless to say, I don't have many of those items.

 

I am happy to hear that you have stuck with it for a solid month! The game has only been out for about a month and a half so your are pretty much on track as far as time goes. I am not going to post any builds here but there is a thread that has a whole list of different options:

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/retail-mp-builds.3781/

Some tips to maximize your chances of getting the items you need:
1. Complete the campaign (really, everyone should do this).
2. Try to get at least the first 3 MP chests every day, or every you get a chance to play. Once you have completed the campaign I would say that this is the most important.
3. Check Randimar's every week and pick up anything that you can afford that looks good. It changes every Sunday at 00:00 GMT so you have a week to decide. Even if you don't think you are going to run a particular strategy it might still be worth it.
4. Find out what level item you should be looking for and farm those campaign missions. Items can drop in missions that are a few levels higher or lower than the item. I am not positive, but i think it is +/- 3 levels.
5. Do the quests associated with those missions. Some of these are difficult, but some are very easy.

 

I do agree that there is too much variance in who ends up with the good items. Indeed the way the game is set up right now it is basically one huge luck fest on who gets the best items... and thus who can compete at the top level! I played one player who had a few of the very best items in the game already and he was 1500 (at least when I played him) despite not exactly having the soundest strategy. To me that is pretty silly!

 

I was all set to do this, but I've been gradually replacing items with rares and epics as I acquire them, so I actually have more rares in there than I thought. But I went through and replaced all of the rares and epics with uncommons and commons with similar purpose, and the general idea is still the same.

http://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/retail-mp-builds.3781/page-2