Lord Batfords Manor - Insanity

I signed up for this rant, so here it comes:

Whoever designed that level, congratulations, you're evil. Also, you suck.

The other 5 parts of that module are fairly easy. But the manor is pure insanity. The dog will kill your spellcaster in one turn, basically as soon as it can reach him, he's dead, nothing you can do. The guards have an estimated 5 million blocks and the entire difficulty level of this one part is higher than all the other parts COMBINED.

After about a dozen attempts, the fun level has hit zero. This stupid level needs a re-balance. It's just stupid to give you primary school tests all year and then hit you with a university level test at the end of it.

 

Don't waste melee on guards unless you can hit them from behind since they almost always have a parry. high damaging magics like big zap are useful on guards since they never have anything to block magic. Save your melee for the dogs.

I bet an item with Battlecry would be helpful to get the guards to drop their parries.

 

Just breezed through the module... killing the servants helps, and as shazbot said, blast the guards with damaging spells. Good luck!

 

If every module was easy peasy, you would just sift through the campaign and, at the end of it, you would still be a mediocre player.

Nope, CH doesn't hold your hand, nor does it gently give you a slightly-harder-than-the-one-before mission after the other.

Adventures, especially from a certain point onwards, are specifically crafted to test a different set of skills. Your role as a player is to come up with an adequate strategy for the situation at hand, turning an almost impossible task into an epic success.

It's doable. You'll get slapped by the game just enough times for you to spontaneously come up with the right solution.

And that day, my friend, you will have learnt something useful.

 

It's easy to agree with this sentiment when you are beating modules. I feel like I am a genius when I make a perfectly crafted deck tailored to a certain module and acheive success. On the other hand, its hard not to get frustrated when you get stuck on a certain module.

 

I'm not whining that it's hard. I'm complaining that the final of six(!) maps is INSANELY OP compared to the other five. It's like the difficulty level is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4396.

That's not called "tough", that's called" badly balanced". And frankly, the ****ing dog kills my TANK in the first combat round. Basically, in this map you can look at your first hand, and if it's not perfect, you can just resign. And that's just crazy.

 

I can see the frustration. But I also want people to feel like geniuses when they finally end up victorious.

As I said, it's a learning experience. It can be a harsh one, at times, but still well worth being experienced in all of its rudeness.

 

That's nonsense when so much depends on the luck of the card draw. If your first draw gives you only movement cards (and yes, it has happened), what are you supposed to do?

 

Tom, I remember that fight my first time through that map and yes, it is quite alot harder than the previous maps in that campaign.
I know it can be difficult when faced with a seemingly unbeatable scenario, and if you choose to play you will be faced with many more (try playing the Mom AI in MP).
But I'm glad that they made the difficulty "crazy-hard" on some of these, the satisfaction when you finally overcome the odds is quite rewarding.
The players here enjoy helping, feel free to post your deck composition and maybe you'll get some tips.

 

Let me add something: The ****ing dog just killed two of my characters, in two rounds, despite heals thrown on them inbetween. I have no idea what went through your head when you built the deck for that beast, but it's a god-like being, period. I'm rage-quitting this ****ing module right now, and I'll go back to it when I'm level 99 just so I can wipe the floor with the ****ing dogs entrails. And I maintain that this is the by FAR worst-balanced module in the game so far. It is ridiculously unbalanced. The 5 first parts of it are too easy for the level given, and the final part is too hard. Way, way, way too hard. And I'm probably not a perfect player, but again, if I had had trouble getting so far, I'd be ok with not being able to beat the end boss. But breezing through 5 maps only to be roflstomped in the final one is massively frustrating and quite bad game design.

 

You are given 3 attempts. And even so, you can buy additional attempts with a very small amount of gold.

An unlucky hand can happen from time to time. The chances of always getting useless first hands time after time after time are pretty slim though.

Rest assured, everyone of us at one point have found a particularly hard adventure we struggled with. That's fine. You just need to calm down, take some time to mumble over it and solve whatever is giving you so many problems.

Maybe you just need to get off of the game for a little while and a wonderful idea will strike you when you don't expect it to.

The dog has very high mobility. Remember a few cards are there to specifically hinder that. Maybe you should just try to take the dog out as quickly as possible? Are you moving your chars around at all, or are you just letting the dog eat your warrior alive? Does the warrior have good armor/parries/blocks? Are you using a priest to keep him alive?

I could go on and on. But I guess other people will jump in to give a hand.

 

If your first draw gives only movement cards, then that is indeed an unlucky draw - but it would be quite rare given that movement cards typically make up less than 10% of your deck, and you draw nine random cards on the first round. In any case, if you do draw only movement cards, then you can use those movement cards to evade the enemy for one round so that you can draw some new cards on the next round.

Obviously there is a lot of luck in Card Hunter, but that doesn't mean players can't devise reliable winning strategies. I think one of the most enjoyable parts of Card Hunter is working out what strategy I should use to beat some of the difficult levels. ie. I tend to enjoy the thinking and planning part of the game more than the 'playing' and winning part of the game. Unfortunately, once a player knows how to beat a particular map, they can't unknow it. And so that side of the game doesn't last far past the first playthrough. Enjoy it while you can!

I've got one piece of strategy advice which you may already use, but I think works very well for almost every single player map: let the enemy move first. If the enemy still has movement cards revealed in their hand, then just pass or play a card which doesn't need you to move (such as a ranged attack, or a a boost card, or something like that). Because if you let the enemy move first, then it becomes much easier to chase them down for your own attacks, and much easier to run away from them if they still have unrevealed movement cards, and much easier to get behind them if you are trying to avoid their block cards.

 

I am moving around as much as I can, but you know the map has very low mobility especially once the guards are on you and you can only move 1 field due to control zones. The dog not only has high mobility. I repeat: He killed my TANK in the FIRST round, despite healing. I wish I had that kind of damage output. He did probably 30 damage. That's just insane.

Don't get me wrong, most of the modules are fantastic and lots of fun. Some of them are hard, which is cool. Some of them are crazy hard, but that's ok because when I get my ass handed to me in the first encounter of a module, I know that even if I make it in the 2nd or 3rd try, I should come back later, because the other encounters will be even harders.

But on this module, as I wrote above, the first 5 encounters are so easy, I was almost bored. But then, suddenly this final encounter jumps on you and it's not a bit more difficult, or somewhat more difficult, it's 20 times as difficult as the previous encounters in the same module. It's as if the other 5 were written for level 11 and the final one for level 18.

 

That is impressive. Let's look at his deck:
1x All Out Attack
1x Clumsy
1x Cowardly
2x Cowardly Attack
3x Dodge
2x Jump Back
4x Nimble Strike
6x Penetrating Lunge
2x Scamper
3x Vicious Thrust

What happens if you combine Cowardly Attack and All Out Attack?

So he can't one-shot any of your chars.

My advice is to hit him with frost if you can, otherwise keep your distance until he plays Cowardly, then try to kill him before Batford uses Raise The Alarm.

 

I played this map for the first time at level 14, went fine through 1-5, died 3 times on 6. I decided it was kinda rough, so I did other stuff, leveled up to 15. One shot it. I had a slicer warrior and fire mage that drew well and just aoe'd the guards down. Dog hurt, but it was dead after the 2nd round.
Another something to try, get some Wall Of Stone on a wizard . Plugging the lord and dog up in their little room gives you a few rounds to clean up the guards.

 

I thought the level with Alonzo the sniper was way harder!

 

Yes, IF YOU DRAW IT EARLY. Which is pure luck.

 

He's just giving you one card. There's multiple card to deal with 1 problem, if you don't have it first turn, you gotta get some other cards. The strategy is to build a deck so that you have a good chance of drawing useful things first turn. The game is luck based, the skills come in preparing the deck to beat the odds, and executing the strategy during the match.

Focus on the particular problems you are having. For example, you claim that this last level is way harder than the rest, while other people claim that Alonzo Sniper is harder for them. Why is that ? Alonzo the Sniper is a level with ranged enemy constantly dancing around you taking pot shot at you. If you your deck excel and make that mission easy, your team have very high mobility and can catch up to them. Someone's deck might not be so mobile, so they have trouble with Alonzo. Since they are immobile, they draw less move card and more offensive/defensive card instead, which favor situation in which the enemy swarm you and force you to melee during the first turn. So they don't have problems with the last mission.

What I'm seeing here is that you might have too many movement card, or too many step card with low damage, or too many long-term heal in your deck, which favor ranged and long-term combat. This deck will absolutely get destroyed if the enemy can force you to fight very early and focus fire 1 character.

Deck customization goes beyond one build for each module, each battle in a module is also different from each other, and you can change your gear around before going into it. I suggest you make some modification specifically for the last mission and try again to see how it goes. Changing only 1 item of 3 cards is the difference between steamrolling your opponent and get steamrolled. (That's what happen to me when I was stuck in a Handicap quest last night).

Edit: Just did some math to see how significant changing a single item can do to your character. Your deck has 36 cards. 1 single item has 3 cards. And you draw 3 cards the first turn. The probability that you will draw at least 1 card from the new item in your first turn is:

1 - (33/36)*(32/35)*(31/34) = 23.58%

This is very significant. The odds of drawing it the second turn is even higher. So changing your item works, even if it's just one. Just give it a try. The number increase the more traits you have in your deck.

 

The decks are 36 cards once you have all the equipment slots unlocked, so the math is a bit off.

 

I am off. Sorry about that, fixed