Nobody asked me, so here's my advice: A Guide for Rusty Returning Veterans

It’s not just newbs who need guides. You were good at this game once, but what the heck is going on now? A couple years back I was coming back from a 4 year hiatus (I had quit cold turkey in 2015), and I was in your shoes. I bravely dipped my toes in the ranked pool and had my toes nibbled off by werewolves, all out attacks, ancient grudges and even my own lasers! Elo and dignity shredded! I realized I was not ready, but I made a plan. You can of course go your own way, do your own thing, but sit back and listen to the tale of a guy who came back and brought his decent collection to 100% completion within 18 months. Here is what I learned and what I did to get caught up.



1. I stopped playing ranked. I did not have the items to be very competitive in ranked, and I quickly realized I wanted to acquire some of the newer items such as Snitricks’s Last Stand, Howling Pain, Chekhov’s Dirk, Relic Of The First Vampire, Vollmond Boots, Snarlcub Hide, etc. Most of these newer powerful items are from the Castle Mitternacht expansion. I learned the hard way that the Expedition to the Sky Citadel expansion was okay, but did not have as many fantastic items as Mitternacht.

2. I made a plan to acquire the items I needed. I figured that farming campaign and leagues were better payout than ranked. For starters, a game of ranked that you have a 50% chance of winning is a good chance you get nothing for your time. Same thing for league matches, except you don’t just get a chest on the ranked chest path, you also get rewards at the end of the league relating to your placement in your pod. LEAGUE LOOT > RANKED LOOT!!! Also, your equipment shortcomings will be evened out in Quick Draw and those leagues which use set decklists. Furthermore, many leagues matches are much shorter than the 20 min timer on ranked games. Many are only 10 or 15 min allotted to each player. This makes for faster games and more chests! So I played leagues a lot until I could get 1st place in almost every league pod I joined. Usually a single win in league is enough to get 1st, 2nd or 3rd place and therefore a purple chest. I sometimes would farm and play multiple games of league, though, because some of them are fast easy chests. Some of the bring-your-own-deck leagues like Triple Duel and Death March have only a 10 minute clock and tend to be quick and brutal. Farming campaign is also much more fruitful than ranked, in the sense that I hardly ever lose to the AI, so your time is not wasted in the same way it would be if you played a ranked match for 30 min, lost and got nothing! Absolutely nothing! More importantly, in campaign you can narrow your search down for the items you are hunting for. From Scarponi’s FAQ: “In the Campaign items will drop as loot for an adventure only if the item's level is equal to the adventure level +/- 3 (treasures will drop at +/- 4). Additionally the closer the item level is to the adventure level the more likely it is that it will drop as loot.” So if you farm a level 9 module, you can get loot in the 6-12 range. I don’t mean to spin fantastic tales of farming level 8 module and it raining Asmods. In most areas, there are so many items in range that it is a longshot to hope for a specific item. However, I noticed that one of the items I really wanted was a little easier to get: Snitrick’s Last Stand. I kept hearing about that one in hushed whispers and loud proclamations much like Vibrant Pain back in the day. I figured out that there are only 12 possible legendary items at level 21 (one of which is not randomly dropped: Crown of Chaos) and another dozen at level 20. Snitrick’s was a level 20 item, and that meant if I farmed level 21 modules, the loot would tend to be 20/21 and that if a legendary item did drop, there was a 1 in 23 chance it would be Snitrick’s. I farmed the Spreading Blight, Belly of the Beast, Passageways to Death, and Sanctum of the Cyber Tyrant daily. I did get a few Snitrick’ses that way and a few more from League chests and Randimar. I also did the Loot Fairy twice a day and farmed a few other modules when I could. They key to campaign farming is to have optimized teams to quickly clear modules. Additionally, I would recommend having Club Membership if you can afford it. When you are getting an extra item, it helps, even if you are just selling it. From extensive farming and league-playing I was able to generate about 10,000 gold a week from just selling all the stuff I didn’t need. With that money I was able to buy whatever I wanted from Randimar each week. VOLUME OF CHESTS > QUALITY OF CHESTS! Some of my very best items dropped out of a normal brown chest in the 1st or 2nd part of a module. If you keep kicking the machine, eventually something good will drop out.

3. After I got in a groove of farming a few campaign modules and getting the Loot Fairy twice a day, I found a thread by Happenstance about farming Caverns of Chaos (http://forums.cardhunter.com/thread...he-caverns-of-chaos-so-you-dont-have-to.8486/) and thought “Hey this looks like good loot.” I began playing in the down time after refresh but before loot fairy changed locations when you don’t want to exhaust your modules. I would also play CoC after I got LF taken care of. Lots of CoC, lots of good quality loot. You do not need to beat CoC to “win.” I consider it winning if any of the levels spit out something good. Practice makes perfect, and if you can get good at CoC (and lucky!) there is a lot of good loot and treasure dropping in there at rare, epic and legendary level $$$$.

4. I made new friends/reconnected with old ones. Information is available on forums and Discord, but you cannot beat the knowledge I picked up directly from so many great players in this game. The community is one of the best parts of Cardhunter, and you’d be missing out if you didn’t soak up some of that collective know-how. You’d be surprised at how easily we spill the beans, too (or maybe not if you’ve read this far).

5. Know your nerfs. A lot has been changed in this game, and you will need to adjust to some rulings and adjustments. Depending on when you left, you may have missed some very necessary balance changes that occurred due to some abusable combos or just plain overpowered cards. I did find this: http://www.cardhunter.com/2016/06/summer-balance-news-playtest-open-now/ but if anyone has a comprehensive list of card errata/balance changes/nerfs/buffs, let me know!

6. Know when you are ready to return to ranked with a vengeance (pun intended). For me, I overshot my goal of “catching up” and overcollected instead of returning to rank in earnest. I’d gotten into such a loot-churning groove, that I had to force myself to turn back to ranked. That’s the biggest mistake I think I made: not diving back in once I had the gear for it.

 

And THAT'S why you're my hero!

 

Yea, Leagues are always the best way to get started or get back to the game after AFK for years

 

You heard it here first! Duck is the new meta!!

$:^ P

 

Marvin the Paranoid Android sez:

"Sounds dreadful."

 

I seem to have a high tolerance for pain, so said the doctors.

 

I miss you Haiku.

 

I miss y'all too.

I hear tell that the game now works for 64 bit mac tho, so maybe I'll download Steam and start using it. I wish there was a different way, but, I guess this is how it is for the time being.