Brainwave

Looks great but it does appear there might be a few bugs still to address. I'm also wondering what was intended regarding gold farming vs the exploit mentioned in the notes.

Yep, I forgot about crown of charisma. Considering there's at least 2 scenarios I can think of where acquiring allies is actually more than just a bonus, and in many cases it can help a low charisma character auto acquire one, it's definitely a solid item.

That's about where I am with it. Although even in AP1 I can come up with enough items to fill Meri and Kyra's item slots. Kyra has a thieves tools and Meri has a masterwork tools, a spyglass, a regular thieves tools, a staff of minor healing and a Sihedron medallion. Even if I could possibly toss one or two of those items or if I had enough characters in the party to get to the point where there aren't enough good items to go around - at some point via loot cards alone there will be enough good items. And at that point, definitely forget about it. Oh and one other starter item that I like, specifically for Lini or Sajan, is the amulet of mighty fists. Decent weapon substitute at low levels and grants the magic trait, which barring having an attack spell on hand or Kyra, can be tough to pull off with a starter party. Mostly I was wondering if people played vastly different than I do - like tossing a masterwork tools for a one use item and then just hoping to pick it back up later. But yeah none of the one use effects seem good enough to be worth that cost. I do agree if I'm still sitting on caltrops, I'd probably take a potion of healing or something similar over them, though.

Make it something in options that isn't automatically turned on. Something like "Skip rolling on checks with no chance of failure" initially set to not checked. That way a new player won't even know about it unless they go out of their way to check that box. Because there's a lot of rolling in this game and definitely after 40+ scenarios I wouldn't mind skipping that darn detect magic recharge check.

A comment in another thread about healing potions got me thinking. Does anyone make use of the various cards that banish on use? What I mean is, after the first couple of scenarios, once you've got cards in your deck that you actually want instead of just random basics, would you sacrifice a useful card in a deck to make room for a banish on use card? And I don't mean situations where you had to banish a card and there's a slot open... I mean is there any banish type card that in general to you is good enough to take even though it means tossing a pretty good card of that type to make room? These can be anything from potions to allies that banish to do various things, to the new revamped holy candle. And cards that can banish on like a die roll aren't really the same, I'm mostly talking about cards that are one use and then go back to the box. Personally, while I'm sure I have done so before, I can't recall a specific one use card I would take over a decent card that will stay in a deck after the scenario. And it's not just because they are one use, it's also because you're losing some other card that you actually wanted which you will have to find again later (or find something better) after your one use of the banish card. But maybe others are more fast and loose with their decks or some of these cards are better than I'm giving them credit for, which is why I'm curious.

Yeah don't hold up the Google folks cause of crazy Apple antics. Overall I really like apple products but the way the store and updates work is kind of annoying. This isn't the first experience I will have had waiting on an update while others are already playing it.

There are enemies later on immune to element type damage for sure but still the vast majority of the time, on is better.

I don't think this is true. There's a difference between what *skill* you are using for a check and the *traits* associated with a check. This can be confusing since some things, like melee, can be both a skill and a trait. If Merisiel (no melee) used a mace, she would be rolling her strength die and the check would be given the melee trait because all the keywords on the left side of your principle combat card are added as traits to the check (which is also why a card with the magic keyword defeats monsters that require the magic trait). So if she was fighting a monster that caused you to take 1 pt of damage if your check had the melee trait, you'd take that damage. However the skill you are rolling for the check is still strength. If you wanted to use the soldier, you'd have to switch to your default d4 melee die instead of her d8 strength die since the soldier is only used on melee combat checks (which refers to the skill being rolled on the check). Like I said, it's confusing but pretty sure this is correct.

How does his look ahead ability work? Does it prompt you or do you have to remember because I can't tell you how much I've forgotten to use that ability. If it's some kind of automatic prompt that makes him a better character if I'm playing him, sadly.

Right, and this is an overall rule that's not really explained in the tutorial. When using a card for a character power in general (like recharging or discarding a card for Merisiels sneak attack) youre not considered to be "playing" that card. So for example if you are in a location or fighting a villain that doesn't allow allies to be played, you could a still discard an ally to activate Meri's or Lini's abilities, you just couldn't use the ally for the actual card abilities of that ally card.

Oh I'm the same way, sort of. I ran Poison Pill exclusively with the starter characters to get the 10k needed for the add on pack and still haven't unlocked AP2. But if I were playing a more "for real" game (story mode), I'd probably just run each adventure once, barring failures. Playing with different cards in different games is partially what makes the game fun for me and a completely optimized game each time would be boring.

It's like they gave you extra dice because they realize what a jerk that villain is.

The thing is, farming adventures is intended as a possible way to gain cards for those that wish to do so. And while it might seem odd at first that you keep cards after a forfeit, think of it this way - your characters still went out and tried to complete that adventure and got that stuff. Just because they ran out of time (which is basically what Forfeit is without having to press skip turn a bunch of times) doesn't change that before they ran out of time they found a chest with a Longsword +1 in it. Now it's certainly possible to abuse this by just starting adventures over and over and just quitting out if you don't feel like finishing, but to be honest it's really up to individual players to just not do that if they want to play the game with more of the expected amount of cards encountered vs forcing every single possible upgrade into every deck. But it's not really any different than playing old style console RPGs where you'd go from city to city and each time there'd be a new vendor with better stuff. You could go through some random encounters a little bit each time to buy some of that stuff OR you could obsessively farm encounters until you could buy every single item upgrade, every single time.

Regarding #3 I had a similar thing happen last night with the Scout? The human monster card that does 1d4-1 damage to you before combat. I ran into him with no armor, thought no problem as long as he doesn't hit me for much, he hit me for 3, leaving me with one card. And then the encounter ended with no combat at all. Not sure if the Scout went away completely or back into the deck. Everything else resolved correctly. I suspect it's a bug regarding monsters with before combat checks, as I've also seen issues with before combat shenanigans in Approach to Thistletop. That's the one where goblins are supposed to get a +d4 difficulty, and it generally worked right but twice when fighting a goblin with a before combat effect, the dice would roll for the increased difficulty, the before combat effect would resolve, and then the combat would happen without the increased difficulty being added.

If they scale that could be really tough. Since the game itself already scales I was assuming that those powers were set. I mean +2 to a check is always going to make that check more challenging, since the check target numbers go up over the course of the game.

I picture the two L's just kinda chilling in some random location, a Hill Giant shows up. Lem's playing a tune and not really paying attention and Lini's teaching her new pet some tricks. Harsk, ever the serious one, grumbles under his breath "not again", and takes out the Hill Giant with his crossbow, and the other two don't even notice.

Very thorough!

Currently the only cards that I don't believe are accessible to us f2p folks are the P cards (Promo deck) that only appears to come with the full $25 purchase. I'm hoping and have suggested elsewhere that they make that deck purchasable separately. Even if it was real money only, assuming a modest price, I'd be interested. Pretty sure everything else available right now can be bought with gold. Be careful about purchasing characters if you're going that way as 4 of them come with the character add on pack.

I don't have an answer for you here but in another thread it was suggested to add a list of all traits currently associated with the check. If that was in place, it would eliminate questions like this...

Solid argument. Once I get everything unlocked I think I'm going to play a game with the dynamic duo, Lem and Lini.

Might slightly disagree about Lem being best at the Academy. Doesn't Ezren get a free explore when he acquires a spell or something? It's been awhile since I've played him and don't have him unlocked here but I remember him burning through th Academy once in like 2 turns. Lem is certainly good for the reason you described but the best, not sure. Another Lem bonus that I'm not sure has been mentioned and may or may not be obvious to new players is his ability to choose whichever "favored" card type he likes when starting a scenario. The most popular way to go is to pick weapon and since he only has one weapon, you can guarantee that he will have that card in his hand every game. In my experience this means if you can get him something good like the deathbane crossbow, then he never needs any other weapon slots. Now it does suck if somehow he loses that card and has to heal it back and dig for it again, but that probably won't happen too often.

Heh. The issue to me is that in beta testing they needed someone to say "you sounds like the active player, we need a better term for this" which apparently didn't happen. But overall I didn't bring it up to assign blame, just merely to point out that it's confusing (which is backed up by the fact that there needed to be a rules discussion in the post you linked to decide what it meant) and thus people will be confused and think it's a bug. And while a FAQ for a tabletop game to clear up some concerns is fairly normal, I'm not sure if most people playing an app will care to look at something like that.

I'm confident that the power of Lini could defeat all of those difficulties!

The mind boggles at what people complain about... As someone else posted in a different topic, this kind of option is fairly normal in other pay as you go type apps. FarmVille, for example. But even if it wasn't, so what? It's pretty clear how it works, it's right there in the description of the daily gold. If you don't want to do it, don't buy it.

Are you playing on Android? On my iPad I can't get past the loading screen.