I'm a long time video gamer, and normally can get by just fine. But this game is killing me. I loved it at first but somehow I can't seem to win any campaign battles any longer. I feel like i have the best possible gear and cards for what is possible for my level, but i am getting my bottom handed to me with every battle. Here is my party. Can anyone help? Thanks!! ------------- Drildhilu Level 7 Elf Warrior Trogsbane Thick Club Rickety Polearm Jerkin Of Thorns Spellthwart Shield Shifty Skin Hat Jumpdragger Boots Untrained Evasion Novice Slicing 2 x Reaching Swing 4 x Lunging Hack 1 x Weak Block 1 x Walk 1 x Mail 1 x Penetrating Cut 1 x Clumsy Chop 1 x Thick Hide Armor 1 x Weak Chop 1 x Hard To Pin Down 1 x Slippery 1 x Rusty Armor 1 x Slowed 1 x Superstitious 1 x Backbiting Strike 1 x Spiked Mail 3 x Missile Block 1 x Perforating Strike 2 x Penetrating Lunge 2 x Slicer 1 x Simple Strike 1 x Puncturing Stab 1 x Shuffle, Team! 1 x Able Stab 1 x Reliable Hide Armor 3 x Trained Bludgeon goldylocks Level 7 Elf Wizard Jade Battlestaff Lizard Fryer Ring Of Hot Spikes Akon's Amulet Burning Bangle Alchemist Robes Patchwork Boots Untrained Evasion Novice Sparking 1 x Simple Bash 1 x Superstitious 2 x Weakened Armor 1 x Deadly Spark 2 x Ember Spray 1 x Powerful Spark 3 x Short Spark 1 x Stone Spikes 1 x Spark Generator 1 x Long Spark 2 x Boiling Armor 1 x Glob Of Flame 2 x Bash 2 x Hot Spot 1 x Slippery 1 x Acid Spray 1 x Run 3 x Walk 4 x Spark 1 x Dissolve Armor 1 x Sorcerous Bolt tofu eater Level 7 Dwarf Priest Vigun's Blessed Blade Long Axe Of Retribution Healer's Mail Heavy Wooden Shield Rusted Iron Boots Soothing Relic Novice's Healing Ring Poisoned Relic Trained Healer 3 x Reaching Swing 3 x Strong Hack 1 x Talented Healer 1 x Healing Presence 1 x Healing Spirit 1 x Simple Bash 3 x Minor Heal 1 x Weakened Armor 2 x Wavering Faith 2 x Righteous Frenzy 1 x Parry 1 x Flimsy Block 2 x Mail 3 x Heal 1 x Dash 2 x Bad Medicine 1 x Healing Pulse 1 x Rusty Armor 1 x Misguided Heal 1 x Stab 1 x Unholy Frenzy
Oh boy. Really? It matters what adventure? I guess that is already part of my problem. I thought a good solid standard build would suffice for anything. I have one healer, one Wizard and one Fighter - standard stuff for role playing but perhaps not for this game. Well i have the supplement adventures "Mauve Mantitore" and the main adventure "The Compass of Xorr".
Not only adjusting for the adventure - it's often best to optimize per-map within an adventure, especially on the first runs when you won't have extra levels and probably have some fairly weak equipment. Examples of adjustments: Spellthwart Shield is great vs. spells and projectiles, but you won't face either in Xorr. Most other shields would work better. Twisting Shield works very well in Xorr because most of your opponents have step attacks. Trogsbane's penetrating attacks work well vs. armored opponents (maps 2 & 3), but high damage non-penetrating attacks (like Vigun's Blessed Blade has) also work well. (Their armor isn't as good as the Trog Gougers'.) The Men at Arms (maps 1 & 2) are loaded with parries, so are best taken down with magic, or attacked from behind. Bef0re someone else says it, using elves can make your task more challenging. On the plus side, they're much better at getting behind targets to negate blocks than the other races. I hope this helps.
Yep, in the campaign half the challenge is building for the adventure. Some adventures you'll beat first time through, but many you'll have to go lose to to figure out what that adventure's strength is, and then build to exploit their weaknesses. If you want the spoiler version you can always search the forums for discussion about certain adventures to get the "walk through," but that usually takes the fun out of it. You definitely can beat everything with 1 wiz, 1 warrior and 1 priest (1/1/1) - I did my first time through - but different formations will make some maps much easier. Regardless whether you change your characters or not, you'll have to swap items over and over again. Also don't be afraid to replay beaten adventures to gain more items and increase your experience/hp. Good luck!
I would offer you that there is much advice you can find already on this forum if you look around a bit Like Sir Veza said, elves are squishy, you might want to consider creating another party and leveling them up to where your currently at. In addition to giving you more options to switch out characters depending on the adventure, you'll also have a larger pool of items to choose from. Not to try to discourage you from using elves, but it does have to potential to hinder your progress. Once you have a more established collection it will be less of an issue. Check the shops regularly for items to supplement your team. It helps a lot when just starting out. Well sounds like you got that part figured out which will probably help you more than anything else. Tailoring your party to a specific adventure is an integral part of the game, its one of the core tenets of the design philosophy, I believe. Its difficult to give precise suggestions without knowing your inventory, some observation at a glance though Drildhilu Level 7 Elf Warrior Your damage is pretty low for a fighter. The highest attack you have is 6, and only 2 of those so try to get at least a few 8's if you can at the least. Also I'd lose the reaching swing, not a big fan in particular of anything that increases the opps chance to block. Since you will be engaged in melee most of the time, generally your shield choice should be focused on parries or block-all cards, I can think of a few levels where having 3 missle blocks might be a decent choice but compass of xorr definitely isn't one. Twisting Shield is a good uncommon tokenless shield if you can get your hands on one goldylocks Level 7 Elf Wizard I'd drop the jade battlestaff, yes the bash helps if enemies get in melee range, but as an elf wizard you're already in trouble if you have to resort to bashes, and your hp is really low to want to go attack creatures in melee. Go for range attacks, rely on your mobility and wizardly tricks to keep you alive. Also change out Akon's Amulet, its a great armor removal card, but really only needed on wizards for a few specific quests (ex. trogs, cockroaches, return to woodhome, etc.). I would suggest if you have any cold attacks at this point to try and find a slot for one as well. And of course, as anyone will tell you, Firestorm and Volcano can make life a lot easier, but I'm uncertain how much you have access to at this point. Also I'd lose the alchemist robes, for well, almost anything else. Try to use an armor with the KEEP keyword. Even lowly Humming Hide Robes over this. As far as traits go often the more the better, essentially creating a more focused deck, Electroporter Novice is a popular tokenless choice, or Focused Electromancy to soup up your lizard fryer tofu eater Level 7 Dwarf Priest I would imagine with this setup you're often drawing a lot of unnecessary heal when what you want instead are attacks or buffs. Maybe consider Entangling Roots to have in the toolbox, should find its readily accessible in the shops as well. You've got a few frenzy, which is good. Get some vampire attacks on him too, or at the very least more attacks of any sort, out of 33 cards you have like what 8 atks, and nearly half of those are reaching swing, adding +3 to your enemies blocks. Also those heals themselves are not ideal and taking space. Particularly misguided and minor. And upgrade to a better armor then weakened, priest can be very good secondary melee, and he'll last even longer with armor with keep Reliable Mail, as a good example. Last piece of advice, I'd ditch Superstitious, you have 2 char carrying a chance to discarding their entire hand into every battle just on a the minor off chance something dies, well guess what, SOMETHING ALWAYS DIES, just kinda sets the odds against your favor in regular pve.. Hope that helps a little, good luck !
Something to note about items, especially as your collection grows: Rare/Epic/Legendary items are not necessarily better than commons and uncommons. Trogsbane, for example, has rather mediocre damage. I'm not a fan. It is certainly serviceable though - you simply might not have many better weapons. Work with what you have. Healing is still ok at this point in the game, but it will get progressively worse as enemies start to do more damage. The best general gameplay tip I have is to think about where you're going to move your characters. Getting caught out of position with your squishy characters can be problematic, especially since your healing might not be efficient enough! I use a very squishy SP party myself, (Elf Warrior, Human Wizard, Human Priest - squishier than yours, actually!) and careless moves have led to many close calls and deaths. Another way to get items is to get the 1 or 3-win chests in Multiplayer each day. The free adventuring party given to you is plenty capable of snagging wins. But yeah, as others have said, tailoring your build to the module is pretty darn important.
A standard build does work at first, but you've hit the wall where you have to start playing the game inside the game. The above advice is great. Don't get too discouraged, once you get a handle on searching the shops for specific items that exploit the adventure's weakness and swapping around a few items here and there within the adventure you'll start to take off again. Oh, and Superstitious is horrid. I tried to be stubborn and use it when I first started and it ruined me at the most inopportune times. Especially since I'd forget it was there! ><
OH! And because I don't think it was mentioned above, if you shop for items (you can beat the whole game without doing so but it does speed things up) DON'T SELL ITEMS until you get a lot of copies of the same thing. After you beat the game there are quests that become unlocked that require certain items (even bad ones) - you'll kick yourself if you sell them now and have to buy them back for more later.
You have gotten some good advice but here is some more. Remember this game relies on strategy both in maximizing your build and in playing your cards. Avoid losing cards (e.g. Superstition ) and use things that give you extra cards (e.g. traits and Parry). In MP SPR ( Short Perplexing Ray) is a huge card because you force 2 discards for 1 card putting you at an immediate advantage, in SP forcing discards are a waste since the computer will always have a card advantage. Also avoid all Black traits in SP (except maybe Combustable ) they will make things way hard especially early on, although Wimpy becomes much less of a penalty as you level up and get harder hitting attacks. Nothing wrong with an Elven Mage except they are probably the worst character in the game Dwarven Wiz are hugely popular and human wiz work fine. I made it through with a 1/1/1 Human Warrior, Human Wizard, Dwarven Priest and except for the F@#$ing chess boards never got stuck. General advice keep your party together for the most part, team up on one enemy at a time and kill, kill, kill. Look at the shops when you sign in sell your treasures and buy items which seems good. Remember every card on an item counts you only have 39 cards when you max out (even less at level 7) each one counts. Be greedy about what you use your tokens on Trained Healer is a nice item but you should have that token going to better attacks (or whatever looks good in your inventory) and use a tokenless with 2 traits if you have it. Have fun and keep hunting.
Wow. Thanks everyone. Now that I have read all your advice, I see another major problem with my current team. I sell all my old items that are a lower level then my character, but i don't get much money for them, so i end up not getting anything new. This makes what everyone is recommending (swapping cards for each adventure), impossible because i don't have any good/appropriate cards to swap them with. I guess this is how the publisher is hoping to make money, by getting people to purchase the cards they need to complete the adventure. I've been buying PC games since the Apple II+, so i don't mind forking out $20 bucks for a game like this, but it does sort of bug me that i would only get SOME cards for that amount and would then have to keep paying to get the next set of cards required to complete future adventures. I will give the game one more go with some new, non-elf characters and see how it goes. Thanks again all!
I don't buy items, I farm them. (Repeating previously completed adventures.) Items sell for very little, so as a rule it's best to hang on to items and sell treasures. The easiest way to gather treasure is to run the first two maps of the level 6 kobold mines (leave each before completing the 3rd map of the adventure). They have the highest treasure drop rate, and hopping between the two avoids exhausting them for the day. You should soon have enough to buy better gear. And don't be thrown off by level or rarity, compare the actual items. Good hunting!
Yeah. I don't buy the items with real money. I get the items by playing the game. I sell duplicate treasures to get more gold and use that to buy them in the shops. I spend real money on the special adventures and club membership. The best advice I can give right now is save all your items that aren't treasure. Sell treasure and buy items that have cards you don't see in your collection.
So that is the the trick don't finish them! Not that I have the time, but next time I am low on gold (which if my anticipated Oozeball addiction comes to fruition will be sooner than later) I will have to make some runs. Thanks Sir Veza, you truly are a farming deity.
This is an older thread, but I'd like to tack on some advice here if anyone else, like me, is also looking for an advice/noob thread. I have a Dwarf Warrior, Human Priest and Elf Wizard, all level 8. Levels 6 through 8 have been pretty painful since you gain only 1 power token every two levels, but the enemies scale steadily. You'll need to start carefully arranging your characters. Some of the quest drops were decent, but rare items are - well - rare. In the interest of making my gameplay less terrible, I needed to use mostly the store and fairly common drops to fill some gaps. I went with a Dwarf Warrior because, well, they have the HP and they are slow... so they should never outdistance their healer - they're mainly the tank. I went with a Human Priest because they can keep up with the Dwarf and I liked the sound of the Human tactical skills - they're mainly offtank and heals. I went with a Elven Wizard because I figured all races' Wizards would have low armor, so best to get the one who can move in and out of danger easily - they're mainly artillery. Problems I started to encounter: Dwarf out of range too often - can't tank what you can't hit. Priest has nothing but wimpy heals and moves - waves at enemies a lot. Wizard spell range is too short (2 range on big zap) - cloth armor and long sticks with sharp bits on don't mix. Since all the items that would fix this require power tokens - and power tokens are very painful to get in my level range, I needed to use as few as possible. My Dwarf was constantly out of range, so I watched the shops and got him: Skipping Boots Novice Ferocity They aren't great, but they don't require power tokens and get him around faster. For a while I was using Marmot Boots for the incredible 8 move Wild Run. The Dash didn't hurt either. My main way of getting my Dwarf into the fray was giving him longer range weapons: Trogsbane Golem Cleaver Heirloom Assegai They aren't great, but they all increase his range a fair amount and have a lot of Penetrating attacks, and I use Untrained Impaling as his Martial skill. Those weapons may not look too powerful at 3 or 4 a hit, but bypassing enemy armor means all you need to worry about is blocks. A 5 chop looks nice, but may get cancelled by two good armor rolls, if it passes the blocks. If you have a lot of Frenzy from your Priest, that really ramps things up. I was also lucky to snag Battered Spiked Mail from the store - that Horned Plate card is fantastic. This means passing over fun items like Obsidian Club, Trained Ferocity, Good Spiked Boots, and Bellowing Helm (discard all blocks PLUS Penetrating weapons .... would be fun times), but those tokens are precious. My Priest was mostly dead weight. The pitiful Minor Heal doing only 2 HP of healing a shot often cost me more HP to spend a turn healing rather than running away since it gave the enemy another turn in weapon range smacking me for upwards of 3 HP. The other early healing card is Healing Presence, but it doesn't heal the character it is cast on and the priest can not cast it on themselves... which means my fragile Wizard was essentially a healing totem and had to stick close the guys with the sharp, pointy things so my tank could benefit from the heal... bad idea. So, I gave my Priest some horsepower with: Wrathful Club Feathergod Blade Wrathful Club features: Purging Strike: Smack enhancements off of enemies OR your characters (i.e. have a stack of 3 Burn cards on someone? Smack them off and drop a heal) Punishing Strike: Fan-tastic! Be sure to start a round with it. It often does upwards of 7 damage on enemies that make their armor rolls, and at level 6, that's something. If they miss their rolls most enemies are one-shotted. Playing it at the beginning of a turn makes it more likely the enemy will have lots of armor and blocks, but it is a nice, big gob of damage if it goes through. Draining Touch: No more self-heal problems, plus more damage. Feathergod Blade features: Controlled Overswing: Another save-or-die one-shotter. Ten damage will crush most foes around level 6, or leave them easy pickings for someone with more range - like a Wizard. Stone Feet: Essentially you grant 1 point of damage reduction on a character, plus they can't be moved by the enemy. Very nice if you have enemies with good movement and range swarming around. It can easily prevent more damage per turn in a bad situation than the cruddy heals you have can offset. ... and more Draining Touch It is tough to work in some decent heals along with some good weapons, but I was able to grab: Trained Cleansing for the useful Holy Presence (FINALLY - a healing aura centered ON the Priest) My Priest works mainly as an offtank, stepping in to spell the Dwarf and doing damage while self-healing, and then dropping minor heals on the Dwarf once the enemies run out of steam. They also act as a bruiser, dropping large damage to either open on a new foe or finish one off, while my Dwarf does more consistent damage. My Wizard was getting fairly chummy with the bad guys, which isn't the best idea for someone wearing what amounts to bathrobe. Luckily my Wizard's inherent - elvishness - results in lots of high-value move cards, so I could give them items with some decent armor: Rotting Leather Boots: Nothing remarkable Imp-proof Robes: These bring the great Resistant Hide armor, which cancels a LOT of the early status effects you run into. I love damage-over-time mechanics, but getting enough enemies in one spot while not hitting the rest of my party seemed way too hard to make the various Fire cards (which all have cone effects at this level) useful. So, I went with Electricity to get some better range: Silver Fir Staff: EVERY card on it has a range of 6 ... two 6 damage, two 2 damage, a terrain enhancement and a weak parry for when that one enemy slips into melee range. Lizard Fryer: three range 6, three range 4 and some decent damage The item that makes this setup more useful is: Arcing Electromancy: It sports two traits that up the damage of Electrical attacks and penetrating power of Arcane attacks, plus a great multi-target attack. Sadly, though, this means I am running without ANY Elf Skill, since all the ones that seem decent require a power token, and those that don't have negative traits (I hate negative traits). I haven't really missed having one yet though, since with simple Dash and Run and my range, I can stay well out of danger, and am relatively well armored against quick/mobbing/ranged enemies to bob and weave while taking the occasional hit. So, there you are. I'm not saying this setup is great, far from it, but I wanted to highlight how I tried to build things around the problems I was coming up against while also correcting for some of the inherent race and class weaknesses of my characters with items that were fairly easy to obtain.
