Quests with Drawback cards only

I’ve finished the campaign and am now getting started on the quests, the ones I found most interesting are those only allowing drawback cards since they force you to completely rethink your strategies and not rely on old favorite items.

So my question here is pretty general: how do you play the drawback cards only quests? What characters are you using? Which items are the best for these quests? And so on…

It’s also obvious that some drawbacks really aren’t that bad (like Combustible when the enemies don’t have fire spells), while others can screw your plans pretty badly (like forgetting that your elf is Superstitious and losing an entire hand). I’d like your thoughts on this as well.

 

Lot actually depends on what you have gotten. I didn't have any non-token warrior weapons, so couldn't really use warriors for low level stuff.

Mages have good staves with Unstable Bolt or Arcane Curse

And Blind Rage is probably best drawback to have.

 

I just finished up the last drawback quest last night. The more you play the more you learn, it is very important that you don't put too many cards that do direct damage to yourself as I learned early that you can easily end up doing half your life so when your choosing items always think of them working together. I used the same party I used the first time I did the campaign. Human warrior, human priest, dwarf wizard on all the quests except for the two geomancer levels which I used triple wizard. In my opinion the best item is the Runestone. I recommend putting it on the first four tokens you get and it will do the heavy lifting for you on a large majority of the missions. Try not to use too many Raging Strike on your warrior as it will get you killed on any level with lots of ranged attacks much in the same way how you can kill the goblin berzerkers.

IMPORTANT: Something you might not realise is that you don't actually have to use an item, not equiping an item at all can be beneficial to putting on an item with a drawback that is just not worth it.

 

Yes, and I was stupid enough to sell some of the items with drawbacks during the campaign since they seemed pretty useless at the time. So now I try to search the shops for items that could come in handy, in the lower levels there really aren't that many to find, holy weapons and shields seem almost impossible.

In the beginning it seems like wizards are the easiest characters to get into decent shape using drawback items.

It would also be interesting to hear your thoughts on when its better to just keep a slot empty instead of putting some item with a too big drawback in there.

 

The worst thing about playing drawback quests is that you lack the item variety usually required to adapt your build to the more focused challenges you find in the later adventures. The best thing about playing drawback quests is the avalanche of drawback cards - most of which are traits, and so cycle your deck like crazy. You only need a few 'power' cards in your deck to draw them reliably, and having a couple of power cards is usually exactly why an item was given a drawback to balance it! Blitzing is a very viable strategy for drawback quests ... which is good because between the minimal healing equipment, damaging traits, and armour discarding, you can't expect your party to flail around for very long before sort of spontaneously exploding against any enemy assault.

Some drawbacks are indeed pretty much harmless (if you're careful). Blind Rage is more often a boon for warriors. Squeamish is only rarely a problem for a burning, terrain, or control -focused wizard. Mind Leak won't bother a combat-orientated priest if you make note to cast any spells first. Literally all of the weapons that my party used were Rare or Epic though (plus my sweet, sweet triplicate Shuddering Relics), so don't expect to pull off a non-terrible build without a good deal of luck and/or grinding first.

 

Runestone is something of a beast, I agree. Other items on lower levels I like so far are Advanced Flexibility and Demon's Hand. I would like more tips that don't require tokens, though.

 

Here's a top tip:

To find all items you have that match the "with drawback"-criterion, enter "handicap" as your search term in the box.

 

That's good, but what I'm really looking for is which items you found useful and which are mainly making things worse.

 

Heh, as I'm lucky bastard, my warrior has gotten pretty good with few drops Raging Battler, Rageblood Dagger and Blazing Shortsword are good. Especially the shortsword, but only one of those atm. Three attacks with 12 damage in tokenless weapon, yes please.

 

That shortsword is good enough to use on the normal adventures, too. I definitely wouldn't mind getting one of those...

 

One thing I like to if I can do is match the drawback cards. Especially if they are traits. That way if I get a few in the same turn they overwrite themselves. I ran Lair of the Yellow Dragon last night and I used 3 Runstones on my Wizard. Really good item, but I like Blood Locket better. I wish I had more. I don't know how many times Path Of Knives helped me win an encounter, but I got it early on Xanthicious with a couple Winds Of War and it was awesome. He ended up killing himself for me.

 

Now I have finished all the drawback quests. They weren't that difficult once I found some good items, but I really liked doing them. So from now on I'm not asking for help anymore but I'm happy to provide it if you need some useful hints.

 

I play an all human team, each with Advanced Flexibility. Gives you a good chance of discarding those bad cards to hopefully draw good ones. I think it's a great item for drawback quests.

 

I'm not sure Blind Rage should even BE a drawback! The only time it is likely to hurt you is if you are playing a scenario in which you are likely to have to walk around for a while with nothing to hit.

 

Well, strictly speaking Blind Rage is a paper quality card... but so is Wimpy! R i g h t ...

Anyhow, does anyone have a good recommendation for a no-token drawback divine weapon? All I have are three Accursed Maces. As the name suggest, that thing is so terrible you're better off barehanded. And no, the game has not blessed me with any Vampire blades yet

 

The only other one I know of is Possessed Blade, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it.

 

Divine Weapons with Drawbacks (In no particular order)
Vampire's Blade
Possessed Blade
Accursed Mace
Demonic Blade
Temple Blade
Gray Blade
Giant Skeletal Arm
St. Xarol's Axe
Axe Of The Dark Soul
Glinting Eye Hammer
Madman's Maul
Cudgel Of Wrath
God's Rage

A good amount of those are epic or legendary.

If you're not sure which items you have qualify, type "handicap" into the item search panel from within the game.

For me it usually comes down to items with 'Raging Strike' or 'Blind Rage'

 

I actually ran Arrogant Armor for a lot of these... once you get it, the traits float away harmlessly giving you useful stuff. Less of an issue if you aren't using all your item slots, but with 1/3rd of my deck drawbacks and the rest rather powerful, if I pull the arrogant armor, I turn into a steam roller.

In general though, I avoid selfing and things that effectively remove you from the fight for multiple turns. Fright and trip suck, but it's only one turn and if you keep it to one it's manageable. I also ran a LOT of Demonic Miasma, so my priest was not very mobile and focused on things that can be done standing still. By a lot, I mean 3/5 turns I had one or more in my hand and would likely be unable to move, I stacked it with ill fiting armor because, why not, I couldn't move anyway, then I put in trip... so yeah, my priest pretty much didn't move.

EDIT: fixed link

 

I like the idea for a priest... I hadn't thought of that ... I had already accidentally discovered that Arrogant Armor stops those negative traits from sticking though

 

If a negative trait sticks to you first turn, and you draw the arrogant armor second turn, will the first turn negative trait drop off? In my experience it stays, but I could have remembered wrongly.