So I was doing Melvelous the Magnificent again this evening, and was a little better prepared this time. My Fighter managed to have Three Shining Aura cards from his helmet and armour, so I felt pretty good about going in against Melvelous. Poor Moricad (my fighter) never made one save. Not one. And that is a 3+ on a d6. I was frustrated at first, but then got to thinking about how I would combat that. So I figured I'd come here and see what you guys do. Do you only stock cards that make their rolls easily? Do you just stock a LOT of cards of the same type, so that one of them is bound to make it? I'm curious.
I usually chose lower roll armour with less armor value over better armour with higher rolls needed. I prefer likeliness to chance.
Same here on the armour. But really the thing is you don't know which cards are coming, so be careful and try not to get in a situation where a bad draw will kill you. Hope is not a good strategy in this game, unless you're already desperate.
Mathematically speaking perfectly random results mean that after rolling a 1 it is just as likely to roll another 1 than it is to roll a 6, although to most people an alternation of results appears "more random". In the case of armor in Card Hunter, overall I can calculate the effectiveness of an armor by multiplying the damage prevented times the probability, so an armor that prevents 2 points of damage half of the time has an effective armor value of 1. That doesn't make all armor with an effective value of 1 equal, because for example against lots of small attacks you might feel more comfortable with having a 100% chance of preventing 1 damage. Apart from adding cards that modify dice rolls, like Chain Harness, there isn't much you can do to affect randomness in dice rolls. But a far bigger source of random variation in Card Hunter is the "luck of the draw", and that one is easier to manipulate: Cards like Leadership, or anything that lets you draw cards and thus go through your deck faster is making your deck "less random" and more reliable. Currently playing an all-human party with three Advanced Flexibility in it, and its awesome.
Always be looking to improve your equipment. Don't get complacent about this, keep checking the stores and playing MP for items. If you can improve just a single card by upgrading an item it makes your deck that little bit better. Once you done this for a couple of items your deck will be noticeably more consistent. If you haven't drawn the cards you need, play your best to avoid the enemy or at least limit your exposure. On some levels this is impossible, but against Melveous you can often buy yourself a couple extra turns if you aren't aggressive. Accept that you will lose and just be willing to start over. I swear at this game more than I should be, but sometimes a level just isn't going to work out. You can always play it again.
Dice SEEM to hate me... so I try to avoid them. Use things that get around armor and use only the 1+ armors myself for the most part. I generally don't use blocks and always try to attack from behind so to avoid those as well... I've totally given up up whirlwinds. they kill me every time I use them.
Any time your opponent is doing less damage than your armor reduces, you'd be better off with a more consistent, less-strong armor. Other than that one exception, as far as I can figure, you're statistically best off with the armor that gives the highest 'net' value (% to trigger * armor value). And has Keep, naturally. That said, of the armors that have equal 'net' values, I will always choose the most consistent armor. Randomness always favors the enemy -- not because the RNG does, but because RNGs are inherently streaky, and any one streak going against you is more devastating to your game than any one streak going for you benefits it. There are always more enemies to kill, but when you get a string of bad luck, you end up blowing an entire afternoon's adventuring without going anywhere. So, yeah, combating the randomness by getting as many of the same (good) cards as possible (go Tricky Pick!) is huge, as is picking the most consistent net-value armor you have. In fact, IMHO, the less-consistent armors are probably overvalued in-game, just slightly.
Also, if you feel like armor isn't doing enough good, you can always look for other solutions. - Instead of picking more armor cards, you can go for additional moves and hybrid armor/move cards like Thick Hide Armor. If you can move away from the foe or out of LOS, you won't even need to make the armor rolls. - You can also go for more damage instead of more protection. If you happen to find them, there are boots with step attacks, divine armor with Invigorating Touch, at least one helmet with Stunning Blow and so on. The faster you can kill foes, the less attack cards they'll get to play.
I mostly go for Reliable Mail. Any other armor cards are there just because they come with some other good cards. And then there's Frenzy Aura and Horned Plates where I really hope they won't trigger But well, if going for very hard adventure, unreliable armor with higher damage prevention might have some perks. Crafted Mail has same average prevention than reliable mail, but in a short run it can prevent twice as much (or none). So if enemies have mostly 4+ damage attacks and you're having troubles, Crafted Mail can help you through (or not, but if you're failing anyway...) They probably are, Enchanted Harness will help them immensely and probably make them OP in some situations.
Generally I prefere to more reliable armor types, even if they dont tend to block that much damage. This far it worked alright for me and my absoulte top favourite armor cards is Resistant Hide followed by Reliable Mail since the ony simply block 2 damage from all attacks and the other prevents most of the magic attacks from damaging me, no dice roll required. Can there be anything more reliable?
I normally stick to heavy plate for that reason as it only fails on 1. Another thing I use +armor roll cards on my priest in combo with holy armor to give it more chance to proc
