I've been thinking about the Trog Cave and how some people had issues, others didn't, and some others had issues with the Wizard tower instead, etc. and then tied into the "feeling powerful" thing, I wonder if both could be solved by some of the early encounters giving you a piece of loot before you start the fight. The idea would be that this loot is designed to give you a helping hand with the encounter by ensuring you have at least one tool that helps with the help if you didn't get it randomly as well as showing you something neat/cool without making it part of the loot tables early on.
+1 Dood, a Lunge for the Trogs and a Pierce for the Tower and it'd be "Oh, so _that's_ how I kill this thing." I love it.
Having just passed Ruby Demon Portal I figured it would be a good time to write down my impressions so far. Suggestions for improvement in green. Graphically the game is gorgeous. It looks so much like an actual board game that my little kid asked me "When can we buy that board game?" (And thinking about it, if this will ever be sold as a real board game, I'd certainly buy it...) Sounds are ok and fit the theme. Although my kid kept asking me "Why is it making that noise" when hearing the various noises Gary makes during his explanations The whole concept of building your deck with cards tied to your equipment is great. And the actual cards are well done. More flavor texts please for the cards, they're always fun to read And if you don't have enough ideas for some cards, I'm sure the community will be happy to help... Haven't really gotten far enough to see how much real variety there will be in the cards. I was pleasantly surprised how well the game works on my netbook. The 1024x600 hasn't been a problem (except for a couple of screens where you can't currently drag/scroll) and the game works quite smoothly. I've only had clear slowdowns once so far but that may have been caused by something external. During the very first game I was a bit unsure if I could just close the tab since the Sign out button said (unfunctional) and I hadn't noticed any "Game saved" status indications. Likewise I haven't even tried closing the tab in the middle of an adventure since there's no hints anywhere whether I'll need to start from the beginning of the adventure the next time or will be able to continue from the same fight. The UI is mostly very intuitive but not always. For example I've accidentally used a card twice when trying to dismiss a zoomed in card by left-clicking on it since the zoomed view feels more like a 'press any key to close' type display mode. More hotkeys would be nice (especially for scrolling the battlefield and for full screen toggle). The text log in the battles is a nice touch. It would be even better if you could still access the text log in the victory/defeat screen (so I could copy-paste the whole fight if I wanted to). The difficulty is mostly ok, although the Trog adventures are probably too hard in their current form to be encountered that early. Then again I've been playing since C64 days so some players would probably appreciate an option to select an easier difficulty altogether. The enemy AI is good enough to be challenging but still random enough to give the player a chance instead of playing 'perfectly'. I'd also like to see a gender selection option for the initial heroes. In total this feels like a game I'll be playing for a long time (and wouldn't mind spending money on).
I'll just parrot what others have already noticed, that is, the troglodytes can drive one beyond frustration. Setting their armor cards to 5+ instead of 4+ would solve most of the problems, I reckon.
Wait until you do the prison break one, and you come against "Block Any Melee, 2+, *and* draw a card". Your Warrior just got nullified. That one will drive you balmy if you don't get decent ranged arcane/holy draws
Another thing, with regard to game performance, it seems to run better with Firefox than with Chrome (with Firefox, I get no slowdowns when drawing cards or applying (de)buffs on multiple units, unlike when using Chrome). Can anyone else verify that?
I can anti-verify that. Most recent Firefox, here, and it slows down after a lot of play (just like standard, it seems).
This might be more related to versions of Flash. Chrome has flash built-in, while Firefox has it as a separate component, so there might some version differences (even within the same version number).
Like many, I'm really beating my head against the wall on the Lair of the Trog Wizard. I think the problem stems from a lot of sources: -Due to module exhaustion, I can't grind out another level to help me. I guess I'll be able to tomorrow? But that's asking a lot from a new player, to make them wait a day before progressing so early in the game. -Related to the above, one of your characters will be stuck at level 1 by the time you get to Lair. -I haven't unlocked any good defensive gear slots yet. The warrior has a shield, but nobody can wear armor. -It's incredibly hard for a warrior to deal with the trogs, what with their range and abundance of free moves. They can't be pinned down or trapped by threatening their squares. -The last is really just bad luck, but I've found almost entirely wizard loot. My warrior and cleric are both really undergeared. This isn't something that necessarily needs retuning, though. It just seems a little early to be hit with such a massive roadblock. I know I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard before, though. Other things I've noticed that might help new players include putting a timer on adventures that are exhausted and showing non-adventure locations on the map, but level lock them. I spent a long time trying to find out where to change my characters' appearances before I realized I hadn't unlocked it yet. I don't know why it's locked at all, but if it has to be, at least put it on the map with a tooltip indicating what the structure will do and how to unlock it. Great, great game! I'm loving it so much despite the frustration with this one hangup.
OK, noted. We try to keep the number of things on the map very low at the start but this could certainly be unlocked earlier.
Very understandable, but i have to point out not having the avatar shop in as early as possibly might lose you money as some people quickly grow attached to there characters the way they are. Not me tho unless you make the full-plate warrior the standard i will have that avatar or someone will pay!
Just an update, but I eventually beat Lair of the Trog Wizard by first beating The Wizard's Workshop. It went much smoother with another level - and more defensive items - to help even out the other disadvantages. Workshop was a bit rough the first time, but once I know I had to kite the brass golem it was pretty easy. Maybe switch the levels on those two instead of making any balance changes? I still think trogs could do with a bit toning down since it's a very hard stop very early in the game.
I've tested it on two differentWin8 pro machines. On both, in IE10 desktop mode the screen goes black, but the progress bar never appears. The window title says "Card Hunter - Flash Player Installation" but flash is certainly installed and works fine on other pages that use flash. I'll try a 3rd win8 PC tomorrow at work and let you know how it goes. Edit: It works fine on both PC's with Chrome, which is obviously using the same version of flash, unless Chrome does things differently..?
Luck > Cards > Strategy The gameplay should be based the other way around, in my opinion. Either that or make the RNG more consistent.
