[Free Epic and Legendary Card DLC for Limited Time on Steam]

 

I can't seem to access the download button on Steam to get to the free cards.  Is it not actually enabled yet?

 

It is available for download as far as I can see. Are you not able to download it from here?

 

That is correct.  I go click the download button and nothing happens.  I even go one step above that to the 'download all DLC' and it doesn't try to do anything with it.  That page comes up but it doesn't let me actually download the DLC pack.

 

For that matter when I load the game, everything's locked up, and I can't access any characters.

 

Edit:  The DLC finally decided to work.  I guess the 20th time's the charm?

 

Edit Edit:  So Steam says I have the DLC but all those cards are showing up as "?" cards in my collection.  And the dice didn't unlock either.

[Free Epic and Legendary Card DLC for Limited Time on Steam]

I can't seem to access the download button on Steam to get to the free cards.  Is it not actually enabled yet?

[Legendary mode 5-1 Progression Break]

Another issue I ran into on this subject:

 

Actually beating a Hound of Lamashtu triggers the stealth event to summon another Hound of Lamashtu, beating that one triggers another event and another Hound of Lamashtu.  I downed four Hounds before I couldn't wrangle enough of a die roll for the fifth, and then it was the fact that I had no outside cards to make the dice show up as per the first bug listed above that made me have to break out of it through forfeit.  I don't know if they're supposed to combo multiple times and it seems to mainly happen with running into the actual Hound of Lamashtu henchman hiding in the decks.

 

One more:  Having a skirmish card (Skeleton Horde in this case) show up also triggers the stealth checks for Hounds of Lamashtu, but only on the first hero who fights.  That dog is literally everywhere.

[Legendary mode 5-1 Progression Break]

When triggering the extra Hound of Lamashtu for failing a sneak roll after a monster encounter, I can fail the roll for stealth, fail the roll for wisdom, and no further rolls appear.  There are no dice, and no arrow or option to continue. 

 

The ol' Vault-and-back trick doesn't fix this one, though I am able to get dice to appear if I use a blessing or spell from someone else.  If I don't have any outside sources of aid, I get stuck and have to forfeit.  This may be in the same vein as the disappearing dice bug?

[At 5.4, and giving up. Anyone else just not having fun anymore?]

I can say...nope. I am still very much having fun poking my 4 person parties through things up to and beyond 5.4.

 

For that matter I am happy to see the difficulty go up like this. Things up to deck 4 were pretty easy. Deck 5 was the first time my parties struggled to beat scenarios in less than 5 tries.

 

Its a matter of prep, planning, and manipulation. Like the greed room. Don't like the condition? Plan for it. Use someone who has expendable or very few items and don't let them carry things you will miss. That sort of thing will help the enjoyment of the game.

[Treasure chest RNG has serious issues.]

I seem to recall on another post somewhere that the treasure boxes have some correlation to your progress too.  I don't know if this means your highest story box or just the one you played most recent, but treasure cards have a little bias where if you're supposedly chugging along in AD5, treasure boxes you open should contain a higher percentage of Deck 5 loot.

 

I don't remember if that was actually implemented or just how the devs said they wanted it to work though.

[Who a better Support wizard: Ezren or Seoni?]

P.S. I always keep a charm on Ezren. It's like having an extra card in you hand. It's a random ally, and often it's an explore. And it's fun.

 

Charm Person is a great spell until you can get a couple Haste spells instead.  Between two Haste and his skill to get extra turns on Magic acquisitions, I hardly miss the fact that he lacks any blessings for extra turns. 

[The nature of difficulty, and how it changes with numbers]

Ok, lets see. The game has been asking me for my feedback since I started playing and I felt it was time to begin. I do not like to whine, since I do enjoy the game, but these are the issues that are most annoying and undermining of that enjoyment. At least relating to direct difficulty.

It will also, unfortunately, be a rather long text since I really hate whining without arguments to back them up (or refute). (And because I'm a long-winded old bore, of course)

 

1.

My number one issue with the game design is the one directly related to the topic title, "The nature of difficulty, and how it changes with numbers". More specifically, the number of heroes in the party.

 

There is something innately crazy about a game that gets more difficult as a whole (as opposed to more difficult on an encounter-level) when you have more heroes, but that is not really what is annoying.

The annoying part is that the change in difficulty is a matter of statistics and luck independent from the abilities of the heroes in question. More precisely, it becomes a matter of initial card order and little else. The problem, simplified, is this:

 

The game is set up so that you have 29 turns in total. These have to be enough to work through a number of 10 card piles equal to the number of heroes plus two. Over time we can count on the henchman/villain in each location being on average the 5 or 6th card. An average becoming more and more likely as we increase the number of piles. The increase in difficulty for party size is almost solely linked to this fact of statistics.

A party of 1 needs an average of 16,5 explorations to even find all of them, much less beat them.

A party of 2: average 22

A party of 3: average 27,5 (break point)

A party of 4: average 33

A party of 6: average 44

This means that the difficulty of a large party has nothing to do with the difficulty of encounters and challenges. It is the difficulty of actually finding the villain at all, a matter of almost pure luck. A party of 4 or more will be required to use up abilities for the sole purpose of skimming cards and hope they do not run into something inconvenient.

Even finding the villain early can also be more of a disaster for a large party if you fail to defeat it, or it escapes somehow, since it then eats one turn for each open location...

 

Of course, you might point out that a larger party has access to more in the way of items, blessings, companions and spells, but these too suffers from the same basic problem. There is no guarantee the cards you need are in the right place at the right time, and the chance of them being so decrease with the number of locations.

In short: Each heroes functional worth decrease in a manner that parallel the difficulty-increase, not counterbalancing to it.

This in itself is bad enough, but this is a difficulty multiplier in those scenarios when enemies become stronger based on numbers, such as Mom in "them ogres..."

To beat her you need to keep the cards you will have to use up in order to find her in the first place...

 

 

2.

Check difficulty and higher levels. The progression of difficulty for some checks feels skewed.

They progress to keep them difficult in relation to those classes that specializes in those stats, in general.

They should progress more in relation to those in the middle. A wizard should have serious difficulty avoiding things like dragonfire or rocks unaided. A rogue or monk should not. Especially when those checks have to be made by a random character (or several) almost every other round.

Blessings are useless in these cases, since you really can't afford to use the 2-3 blessings needed to give a D4 character a reasonable chance at a difficulty 8+ check.

 

3.

The third thing that annoys me, on a much much lesser level than the first two, also relates to difficulty.

Why is the limitation on movement only used in on legendary difficulty?

The restricted movements challenges the players skill in planing his deployments and encourages the use of movement related abilities.

It should be a separate difficulty option, since I think it would be fun to occasionally play with restricted movement without the horrors of two wildcards.

 

 

I will offer the following thoughts.  While these are very valid perceptions on the game, there are a few reasons for what makes it fun.  For me, at least.

 

1.  Most board games are competitive, and thus more players make them harder by virtue of having other players be the difficulty.  Co-op board games are fewer in number and have to have a better way of making the NPC 'threat' still manage to be a threat no matter how many folks are brought to the table.  Some games, like Sentinels of the Multiverse, do this by directly buffing the power of the enemy in relation to the number of PCs.  Pathfinder Adventures balances this by giving more cards to deal with in relation to the number of PCs. 

 

If you look at it from a pure base numbers game, then yes.  The game does, in fact, get crazy hard with six folks vs. three or even one.  But this game is all about the cooperative nature of using skills and cards to beat the odds.  The chances are that if you have more than two players, one of them is likely a healer, and you're probably using those blessing/ally cards to great benefit to equalize the timer.  For that matter, very few bosses actually do increase in difficulty based on the number of players at hand.  They've got their target numbers to hit, and those numbers are often much harder to hit when you've got one or two heroes vs. four or more. 

 

You also need to keep in mind the temp-closing mechanic.  You don't actually have to sift through every pile, you just have to close two down to get to where you can kill the villain when they pop up, and that applies whether you've got one hero or the full six.  In fact with more characters, you have more ability to throw favorable location-closing combos where they're needed, and less worry about keeping every character's trump cards handy so they can bust those locations.  It's even perfectly valid to, say, focus-fire a couple locations down as a party, and then spread out to handle temp locations until someone finds the villain.  I've been working with a 4-person party myself, I very rarely actually run out of time on any but the strictest and craziest Legendary maps.

 

The third thing to keep in mind:  Failure isn't bad in this game.  The only time failure is bad is if you're going hardcore and get someone killed.  That's bad.  Otherwise?  If you don't succeed at a map, chances are you might have picked up at least one upgrade for somebody that will help the next run out.  The fun is in building the deck and finding the tactics that get you through the encounters.  By the time you're in Deck 3 or 4, you have enough skill-ups, card-ups, new cards, and powers, that it gets a lot harder for the game to properly phase your party.

 

2.  The checks themselves can be annoying, running into the wrong check with the wrong character and all, but that's how they reflect how it would happen in the tabletop game, and is another party-difficulty slider that's all about resources.  With only one or two players, you probably can't afford to throw too many extra blessings, and thus maybe it's a good idea to invest in an extra armor or two to keep around, just in case?  With only two folks, you have the extra turns to spare, so having a card in your hand occupied by a 'just in case' armor isn't going to kill you too much.  In a bigger party?  Folks probably focused more on having the extra blessings/spells to sift through decks and eat bosses, so there's usually somebody with an extra blessing or two to help you out so your character and his piddly d4 doesn't get his hand wiped out by that random pit trap.  This is, again, where the co-op in the game really shines, in figuring out how to spend as few of the party's resources as possible to win. 

 

3.  I'll agree that I don't understand why adding in pathing is what makes something 'Legendary' instead of 'Heroic'.  I would have much preferred something like the jump from Normal to Heroic, some further modification of the scenario's ruleset to add more difficulty.  Pathing doesn't actually add difficulty to the well-prepared group, if anything it just helps you assign who goes where out of necessity of keeping loss of turns to movement to a minimum.  The only map where movement was a big issue was Here Comes the Flood, and trying to outrace that stupid sea monster.

 

As for the wildcards...  To those of you who just reset for a better pick just to avoid 'annoying' wildcards, do you do the same thing in playing the real game and the first thing you run into is a bad barrier and a botched roll?  They're just like any other game rule, if you're going to play the game, you should just play with what you're given, and if you lose...then try again!  They shouldn't have to police whether people reset games based on the wildcards picked, they're there to add a difficulty to play through.  If you're just gold-farming anyway, I doubt half of the wildcards that can pop up actually put too much of a dent in any given run. 

[Who a better Support wizard: Ezren or Seoni?]

There's some disagreement here, so I'll hop on the scales with my 2 cents:

 

Ezren is unquestionably the better support. It's not even a contest.

 

Neither Ezren nor Seoni have any abilities that are inherently support-oriented. So it all comes down to the cards. Whereas Ezren has 8 spells and 0 blessings, Seoni has 3 spells and 5 blessings. Seoni has to use most, if not all, of her spells for combat. Otherwise, you'll have to use her hero power to fight things, which has 2 problems: 1) It slowly kills her, and 2) That ability actually sucks. So she's discarding cards to her ability, discarding allies to explore, and discarding blessings to "support" the party -- she's gonna need a lot of healing to survive all that discarding. Judged in terms of support, Seoni is literally the worst supporting character in the entire game. She's like a negative support. The party has to support her!

 

Ezren, by contrast, can actually take a decent amount of support spells, and while he doesn't auto-recharge them like Seoni does, with power feats he'll eventually get to the point where anything 9 or lower is an auto-success, and 10's and 11's are almost sure things. This is functionally almost equivalent to Seoni's auto-recharge. And unlike Seoni, Ezren doesn't suck resources away from the party since the only cards he'll ever be discarding are (possibly) his allies.

 

Ezren's not a great support, mind you -- the support characters in this game are Valeros, Lem, Harsk, and the divine casters -- but as he's not the literal worst support in all of Rise of the Runelords, he is better than Seoni.

 

Lets add in the fact that, currently, the only Arcane items are either Wands, which get outclassed pretty quick (not counting the fabulous Loot wand), and Flasks, which a successful 'recharge' still lands the item into the discard pile and also require the user to be in the same room as the threat being fought.  So Seoni's auto-item recharge ability ends up not that great when she still requires some kind of healing to back her up with an inventory of her most useful 'support' item, the flask. 

 

With that said, Seoni's ability does mean that her three (or six at max spell slots) spells can all be utility.  If she's loaded on utility spells and Flasks, maybe with a Staff of Minor Healing or two, and her blessings, then yeah.  She can play a pretty mean support, with the ability to whip off an Arcane Blast any time she damn well feels like it.  Give her Poog and Father Z to help her heal discards and you've got a pretty decent support-wizard.

 

If you want someone to load up on magical Orbs instead, Lini is probably the best choice.  The Orbs all count as divine and with her animal helper she's bound to (almost) never miss a recharge.  Plus you get the benefit of loading her up with Heal/Aid/Swipe spells for the rest of your party's needs.

 

I actually have a party with Lini and Seoni doing this schtick.  Seoni wanders off, blows a lot of monsters up with spells and flasks, comes back for a heal or two, and Lini supports by throwing balls around + Aid spells.  Very entertaining.

[Any reason for Lem to pick Charlatan?]

So here's my thoughts on Virtuoso vs. Charlatan.

 

Virtuoso:  You probably picked Lem to be a spellcaster/buffer.  You probably buffed Charisma, took heals, attack spells, or some combination of the two, and took the self-buff ability so Lem could potentially go solo things.  All around a good fellow to have in a party.  But...

 

Charlatan:  This version of Lem has a pretty specific purpose.  He's a hunter of henchmen and a vanquisher of villains!  Okay, well maybe not so much by himself...  With the skillset Charlatan provides, this Lem does load up on Sleep, Paralyze, and Sanctuary spells, maybe an Augury or two, grabs a handful of allies and blessings, and then essentially does Merisel's job of looking for that Boss-type so he can Paralyze/Sanctuary them, let a buddy show up, and sing a song to help squash the big bad guy.  This version of Lem doesn't need Charisma as much, and so you can consider upping Dex instead, give him a halfway-decent weapon, or even a couple suits of armor to augment the skills Virtuoso's self-buff would have otherwise handled.  The 8-hand size allows you to keep blessings and allies flowing through his hand and still have room for the Sleep/Paralyze you may need to put off the big battle.  Those powers of +2 to Ally/Hench/Villain are there specifically so you don't have to bump up his charisma to get a boost to grabbing allies, and to make his Dex attack that satisfying +4 base.

 

Is Virtuoso still the better path?  For general utility and 'bard'ness, yes.  It's hard to get around how useful Lem is at max Charisma, throwing heals and bolts and buffing his own worth.  But I could see a party that already has a healer and/or a wizard taking Lem along to throw him at a location and just dig like a bandit in a fresh grave to find the Henchman/Villain, and then either decide to use the shiny dagger he has to off it, or Paralyze him for some bigger party beef to come along and do it instead.  A different flavor of Merisel that can actually hold a heal spell.  Though that weakness vs. undead can be an issue. 

[Quest Mode Questions]

Two questions that have been bugging me lately that I would love to get some dev-type thoughts on, should such be available.

 

1.  I read elsewhere that the vault for Quest Mode differs from the vault in Story Mode as you guys had more freedom to decide what items belong on what tier.  I've only hit level 19 so I don't know if the Quest Mode vault is showing me the full picture, but I notice that Staves of Lesser Healing were nowhere to be found in the B, 1, or 2 levels of rewards.  Are the Lesser Healing Staves actually available in Quest Mode? 

 

What do you guys even think of the Lesser Healing Staff item?  I know at one point, when we had sneak peeks at loot cards that didn't really exist that there were hints at better than Lesser versions being considered, and while I know there won't be any confirmation one way or the other whether they are going to ever hit the game, I'm at least curious what you guys think of Healing Items as a whole.

 

2.  Do you guys have any plans on upgrading Quest Mode to allow some of the Story Mode's Loot items in?  Loot Items have some of the most interesting effects so far and have certainly helped make upper story decks be more entertaining to play around in.  It would be nice to know that completing some random (or even not so random) Quest mode might end up with a Loot item drop.

 

Thank you and keep up the good work!  Looking forward to Decks 5 and 6, and all the tasty Quest Mode improvements!

[Pathfinder Adventures Dev Blog: Changes to Chests]

So the issue I have with this is that it's being marketed as a positive change instead of as a necessary evil.  Taking away the gold option for chest bundles is not an improvement.  And it's not a reaction to requests.  I would be willing to bet there were literally no people saying 'gee I wish these didn't cost gold at all and only cost money so I could buy them in bulk'.  Gold AND/OR Money?  Sure.  That option should exist.  But making it more annoying to spend the free resource doesn't equal more money for you guys, and sure doesn't improve the game at all.

 

You want to change it, fine.  I'll accept that you don't want to hand out free chests to folks who already bought parts of your game and were using the gold they earned playing for bulk chest purchases.  It feels like a very petty move on your part, but it beats not letting you buy any chests at all for gold, which I am sure came up in some meeting or another. 

 

Just don't tout it as some kind of thing you added on for our benefit.  Nothing stinks worse than corporate spin.

[Suggestion: Add a Quantity Option for Repetitive Actions]

As long as we're talking salvage upgrades, when you do allow for quantities of salvagable cards, can you throw in a threshold feature?  Like, say, if it's set for 3, then only salvage cards that have more than 3 copies within your vault all at the same time?

[Concern at the state of the game]

I play this on my phone so I haven't had a problem getting game gold anywhere I go.  I know it's not technically supported but I have a big-arse phone so it plays fine.

 

These guys are smart.  The whole entire purpose of Quest Mode is to make sure their players have things to do that aren't Adventure Deck linked for as long as they want to play the game.  A mode that will only get better over time.  If that's not enough for some players, that's just how it's going to be.  Some folks want the world right now, or at least faster than they can have it. 

 

I'll admit I wish the updates came a little quicker, but I also understand how hard coding and bug-fixing actually is.  Fix one thing, five more bugs pop up.  Ripples of issues across a spider web of code.  That's just how programming is, and the main source of delays to any update.  I'm pretty sure they're not holding back, as that would earn them less money overall. 

 

I would also like to point out that the physical card game averaged two months between their Adventure Deck releases.  You think waiting a monthish now is bad, imagine when you had to wait longer without the benefits of things like Quest Mode or treasure cards to keep things fresh.  Just this game sitting on your shelf you wish you could play more of.  Not to mention the physical game costs several times more.  Keep in mind what you're getting when you play this digital version!

[Ideas for the best 3-4 person party]

 

 

I finished the Rise of the Runelord full campaign (end of adventure 6) in the physical game with 2 friends, we played with Lini, Seoni and Harsk.

 

Lem might have been a good alternative to Seoni, especially with the virtuoso role allowing him to buff himself later so he get to be almost as good as Lini for closing various locations and serve as a wildcard.

 

The group was only lacking a true melee character (Lini was rather good in melee, but she only ever used one melee weapon), we had a friend that played valeros at the start of the campaign but he moved to another city so stopped playing.

 

I think that Lini, Lem, Harsk and your choice of a hero with the melee skill should be very versatile.

 

 

Lini, Lem, Harsk, and Amiri happen to be the team I trounced Legendary difficulty with.  I can totally vouch for the versatility and power they brought forth for handling even the extra screwballs Legendary puts forth.  I kind of consider Amiri and Valeros very swappable as they'll both get the melee job done and done well.  I just took Amiri for her extra Move actions vs. Legendary's adjacent-movement-only rule.

[Gold in app]

Dont forget that not only can you not earn gold offline, you can't encounter treasure too. So for much of the content, it IS online only.

So offline mode ends up being more a copy of the real game instead of the real game with awesome upgraded cards.  Still, I happen to really like my treasure cards helping my campaign/quest runs, so I will concede that point.  Here's hoping they find a better way to lock down gold without letting all the pretty, precious, shiny treasure cards be online-only.

[Gold in app]

The gold hack idea seems like a lame reason to me.  It is insulting to be assumed to be a criminal on the off chance I might be.  I see lack of offline play a big issue for PA.  I took my tablet on a trip with a 5+ hour plane ride each way and I couldn't play my favorite game.  That was frustrating.  All because I'm assumed to be out to screw the developers?  My understanding was that this was a short term way to make syncing game data with your account easier.  I don't like it, but I can accept that reason at least.

 

There is no lack of offline play.  There is a lack of earning gold currency.  I would totally still play this game without earning gold if I was on a trip that didn't include some kind of connectivity.

 

More importantly I think the topic of hacking and program protection is important.  Piracy is not only real, but it's pretty rampant.  The moment someone figures out a way to make something that should cost something else (time and/or money) free, there are plenty of people who will take advantage of it under whatever guise they feel justifies the means.  The devs should totally be allowed to protect themselves and their property from those folks, whether or not you, yourself, are going to be one of them. 

 

Have an analogy:  Do you lock your doors at night because you assume your friends are crooks, or because of that chance someone who really is a criminal is going to rattle your doorknob while you're not connected to the conscious world, come in, and take your stuff?  Should your friends feel that you are labeling them as potential criminals for locking your door?

 

Does that mean this is the best way to do it?  Maybe, maybe not.  We don't know what other options they're already looking into or have tried.

 

It could have been worse.  You could be completely locked out of the game without a connection. 

[Can we exchange cards in future updates ?]

 

 

 

Maybe I'm slow today,, but how exactly would those 'farmers' make money?

 

As for multiplayer, I'm pretty sure if and when it comes online it will have contingencies anyway. The fact that I'm not 'farming' doesn't mean I can't have gotten lucky and decked out my character with overpower treasures. Also, consider that the Treasures are supposed to be 'extra' boons not normally found in the RotR decks, not 'overpowered' cards as such. And if any are - this is an issue in and of itself, regardless of multiplayer, farming or trading.

 

By selling legendaries or hard to find cards.

That would involve sending money to some shady character's bank account BEFORE he hopefully, maybe gifts you the card in-game? Maybe I've take one 'Faith in Humanity' Feat too much, as I don't believe that would become a practice (or at least not significantly common one).

But yeah, given that trading would directly cannibalize Obsidian's chest sales, even without farmers, I dont see that happening.

 

 

They do it for lots of other online games. WoW for example:

 

http://www.igxe.com/WOW/buy-WOW-Gold-WorldofWarcraft/BOE-Weapons/allServer-USD.html

 

Sad but true.  Pretty much any game that has some kind of commerce draws folks who want your money in exchange for whatever the currency is.  Imagine in a game like this, if those Staff of Healing/Improved Healing/True Healing were actually in game right now.  How much would you pay to have a few copies in your vault without the hassle of digging through a million chests to find them?

[Thoughts on all characters]

As long as we're sharing experiences and character thoughts, I offer the following.

 

I've played through the campaign with three parties of four characters.  One set for Normal, one set for Heroic, one set to wreck Legendary. 

 

For Normal I used Ezren, Merisiel, Kyra, and Valeros.

Heroic used Seoni, Sajan, Lini, and Seelah.

Legendary used another Lini, Lem, Amiri, and Harsk.

 

Character Thoughts:

 

Ezren - At first I really didn't like him.  Yes he had a lot of spell slots, but unless I parked him at an Academy or somewhere with spells he wasn't doing me a lot of good exploring.  It wasn't until deck 2 that he started coming into his own, getting some of those fine Treasure items and spells and bumping his Recharge skill up to help him keep his stock.  Haste was a big help.  By deck 3 he was probably the strongest character in the group, able to breeze through decks with half-blast half-utility and a couple flasks.  Nothing short of a random Satyr or Siren could really derail him and villains pretty much just melted.  Give him time and he becomes a powerhouse.  Augur and Scrying also helped make up for his general lack of exploring, with the latter allowing him to help other locations from wherever he's parked himself.

 

Merisel - Definitely a good scout.  She is THE character to have for Jail locations, where she can literally grab everything through disable checks, and anywhere else she's great because most barriers end up more like tiny speed bumps.  Sneak Attack helps greatly, giving her an Amulet of <blank> Fists to back up her small amount of weapon slots took advantage of those Sneaky stabs and her large item pool at the same time.  If she had a weapon, she could recharge the amulet for the backstab.  Her evasion was pivotal many times in tracking henchmen/villain decks without triggering them for proper ambushing.

 

Kyra - Probably the weakest member on the Normal team, though that was because I focused her on healing.  Very good heals to keep the other party decks happy, especially Ezren through the first couple decks since wizards seem to have a problem bleeding cards until they get the brainpower to recharge them properly.  Didn't like having to sacrifice her main turn to heal, but given the strength of the heal and that it allows her to take a divine item and turn it into a heal, I understand the trade-off.  I found it best to stick her with other party members, typically Valeros or Ezren, to keep their decks up and handle the occasional divine check.  Next time I play her I want to look into a more battle-focused version to compare to the paladin, but playing the healer wasn't a bad role.  I will say that because of her heal I felt fine with turning her limited spell set into more support-type cards, with a Holy Light or two to really fry the occasional undead powerhouse. 

 

Valeros - This guy is a beast, plain and simple.  From the start he's chucking weapons left and right, recharging them because DICE, and when Kyra was hanging out with him that Cooperation skill ensured she was able to hold her own in combat on her turn too.  My issue with him was with his smaller hand size and sometimes having too many weapons and not enough targets.  Discarding weapons to draw blessings was painful.  Overall though, a very solid character generally able to hold his own, but really shines when paired up with someone.  Sidenote:  I use a Valeros/Lem combo in Quest Mode.  Valeros Cooperation and Lem's bard songs, they buff each other like crazy.  It's a beautiful thing.

 

Seoni - Initially I liked her more than Ezren because of her auto-recharge.  With some experience playing Ezren I now know I like her for other reasons.  Like her auto-item-recharge.  Those flasks can be a real pain to recharge!  Seoni's limited spell set didn't feel like a disadvantage until I realized I was burning through her deck faster than a chain smoker at a family reunion.  I found myself loading her with attack spells to take advantage of her recharge so I didn't have to rely on her card-immolating ability to kill things, with a Haste spell thrown in because Haste is love.  Once she got some flasks though, she became a lot more able to keep a steady flow of cards back into her pile, with the occasional love tap from Lini to bump her blessings back into her deck.

 

Sajan - This monk.  He is deceptive in his power.  It is true, he very much has a problem doing things starting out.  Yes he doesn't have a lot of super-weak rolls, but he doesn't have a lot of super-strong ones either.  His blessing-recharge for attacks is a mixed bag, too.  Exploring was painful because every blessing burned was one less to use to punch things, and half the time he only had a couple available to do that with anyway in his hand on any given turn.  Yet he has some of the greatest potential for one-man-army damage, or for being able to provide some sweet party support.  A couple card feats in and he's able to rock out up to 6 blessings in a turn, 7 after role, and any of them that come up Erastil count for double-dice.  He was regularly loading up 4-5 dice on a combat without discards, more if needed, and a couple Staff of Minor Healing ensured that what he did discard (mostly allies) made it back into his deck without too much outside help.  I imagine when Deck 4 or 5 rolls around and has some better liquid items and fist amulets to abuse his Drunken Master role will be one of the most formidable things in the game. 

 

Lini - I think Lini is one of the best characters at the moment.  She gets the most Divine spell slots and her pet lets her get a minimum 1d4 roll on everything she does, sliding up to 1d4+2 before roles factor in.  She was my prime location closer, boon grabber, and occasional blaster with Holy Lights.  Many, many locations require Divine checks in Deck 3, so between that and throwing healing around, she was everywhere doing everything.  The only downside came when she bumped into a big monster or villain when all she had left was her pet and maybe a heal spell in her hand.  Shapeshift helps her combat, but it really only makes her into a worse version of Sajan if you don't build to use it.  I intend to build a very combat-heavy Lini sometime to see how fun it is to have both Pet and Shapeshift ripping into monsters.

 

Seelah - Among the main melee types, I found Seelah to be the most technical.  Where Valeros throws his weapons all over the place and Amiri hulks out, Seelah burns into her deck for dice boosts just to match the other two's normal strength scores.  On the other hand Inspired Grace gives that 1d6 bonus to anything she does, so it comes in handy a lot more often than Val's weapon recharge or Amiri's rage.  The only downside to Inspired Grace was when it ate a spell (pre-power upgrade) or one of her few weapons/armors you may have needed at an important moment.  Having no items at all also hurt given how many pretty nice items there are to use.  Very self-sufficient, but not the beefiest of fighters at a mere d8 for strength, you were pretty much guaranteed to lean on her Inspired Grace to kill anything important.  Her Crusade skill was very nice when it came to digging through decks to find the monsters though! 

 

Lem - Talk about a fun character!  This mini-me is great for setting him to follow anyone around, giving them buffs and slinging some spells around like nobody's business.  I didn't realize how powerful he would become simply due to his versatility.  I loaded mine up with spells from both divine and arcane schools, just one of each, because the start of any given turn anything he failed to recharge could be dug back up to use again.  The only character where flubbing a heal-spell recharge makes you smile.  For that matter, the only character where not recharging a spell is a totally valid tactic!  Then his buddy-buff skill pretty much acts like Lini's pet, just for anybody who's in the same room with him.  Cap all of that off with a great charisma score to bring all the allies under his flag and you've got a very interesting character to play with. 

 

Amiri - She is definitely a barbarian.  I often teamed her up with Lem, so she could wreck the monsters and he could grab the boons, or help her grab them.  That natural d12 strength made many fights possible just with her bare hands, but with a nice 2-handed weapon involved there were few monsters or villains that could stand in her way.  Rarely used the Rage power due to its nasty case of deck bury, but it sure made villain showdowns easier to manage.  She particularly shone in Legendary mode because of Move Fast.  When locations are linked, you could set her (and Lem) somewhere out of the way, and every time she cleared a deck she could just hop somewhere else at the end of her turn.  Once I got Move Another too, she happily dragged Lem along for the ride like some weird midget version of Thelma and Louise.  Very handy for getting around the movement limits! 

 

Harsk - This guy was the other key to my Legendary runs simply because I could start him anywhere and he could still provide turret-like support to the rest of the party through his sniper skills.  Between him and Lem, most rolls had at least one bonus die + some helping out with very little card loss needed.  A couple Staff of Minor Healing to make sure he doesn't need a lot of outside curing and you've got one fun ranger.  His self-scout helped to make sure he would rarely get in over his head, and his deck bursting with items, ranged weapons, and blessings allowed him to provide up to three cards worth of support to any important combat roll! 

 

Of course your mileage will very with any of these characters.  I will say that after pushing all of them through Hook Mountain that I have a strong appreciation for all of them now, even the ones I wasn't so fond of at first, and that all it takes is a couple power/skill/card feats to make anyone feel worth having in a party.  Some fare better in certain scenarios than others.  I had the roughest time with Here Comes the Flood with my Normal party simply because they had crap luck and not the best Charisma.  My Heroic and Legendary parties didn't stumble nearly as much.  On the other hand Legendary Into the Mountains was rough simply because two Wildcard powers and a bug made it nearly impossible not to take constant damage, and that will wreck almost any party no matter how good it is. 

 

I will also say don't underestimate the power of items!  When Deck 3 came around I found myself wishing I'd given a couple Card powers to item slots simply because of how many helpful tools popped up.  Orbs and Flasks came in most useful for helping chain-monster battles, particularly when they ended in a henchman/villain fight, and a lot of the Loot rewards end up taking Item slots, too.  Not to mention this upcoming update will add a whole slew of curious-sounding items to Decks B and 1...

[Are Treasure Chests bugged?]

As I posted on another thread, I think that I remember something about the dev having added a few cards in a patch (I think that it was for 1.3.0).

 

If so we can probably expect some additionnal cards for when they add deck 4.

 

And that's awesome.  I love that they're adding more stuff every deck.  The problem is they've got listings of cards in the Vault that is causing confusion as nobody can confirm whether they exist in the treasure card pools as of this moment or not.  Without knowing what's in there and possible to draw, or if the current pool is possibly bugged, folks who are currently getting treasure chests are essentially throwing money at duplicates they may not want in the hopes of getting cards that may not yet be in the game.

 

Given that chests are going to be a primary continual income due to their CCG-ness, I would hope it wouldn't be too big a deal to let the players know what they're getting for the gold spent.  My biggest concern is that the treasure cards listed in the vault are available, but as there have been posts about other cards (black bordered ones) being bugged and not appearing in the game, it's possible some of the treasure cards are too. 

[Are Treasure Chests bugged?]

It seems there is some controversy about treasure chests and their contents at the moment and I am looking for a little dev input as to what is fact and what is our illusion. 

 

Apparently there's a list of items that are beyond 'legendary', regardless of what they are actually listed as, that are simply not appearing in treasure chests at the moment and possibly haven't been since the beginning. 

 

The list can be found in this topic:  http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/87611-chest-drop-issue-has-anyone-unlock-these-cards-in-gallery/

 

No response is currently attached to that topic, and since they could be bugged I'm posting this here.

 

I can relate on my own experience that I've opened 150+ chests and still have about 94 individual treasure cards that are a complete no-show.  My missing treasures list is pretty close to the list in the topic noted above. 

 

So my question is, are all the treasure cards listed in the vault actually available in chests currently?  Are any of them not showing up due to code bugs?  If they aren't bugged and can show in chests at the moment, can we get a little transparency on the randomness factor?  Is it completely random or does it cycle?  Before I go blowing another load of chests chasing those 94 empty treasure slots I want to make sure there aren't any bugs mucking with the odds.

 

Thanks!

[Starknives and Finesse Questions]

I'm looking for a little clarification and/or advice as to the actual purpose of the Starknife card.  You get it by rolling dex/ranged, but it triggers a str/melee attack when used?  The mismatch means you snag it with dex, but then toss it to a warrior-type to off-hand wield it?

 

Also is Finesse going to mean something at some point?  It would have been awesome to have Finesse weapons allow for either Str/Melee or Dex-based attacks so the rogues/hunters/etc have more options open to them for weapon use.  Kind of like they're meant to be.  I'm kind of surprised they weren't originally designed that way.  I read somewhere that Finesse is part of the cards because they wanted to make sure they had tags set in case they wanted to use it for anything later, and that kind of makes sense, except that Finesse was sort of already established as a Thing in the tabletop RPG and it didn't seem like it would have been too hard to wrangle that mechanic into the cards, too.  Are there any plans for this?

 

I just want to see my monk use a starknife, and not suck with it, that's all.  :<

[Can't start quest mode]

I'm having the same issues with being unable to start a quest in quest mode.  After I choose party and difficulty it hangs on the loading screen.

 

One note to make, I went ahead and uninstalled/reinstalled the game.  When I loaded back up (which nuked all my local characters/parties/progress), I went immediately into quest mode (with no progress in Story Mode), selected a party of new adventurers and it let me into a quest.  Which I promptly failed because it only had 8 turns on the counter to make progress in 5 locations.  After that I tried for a second quest, got the hung loading screen again.  I reboot the phone, got in again, and got in to another quest (again with all of 8 turns), lost, tried to load a third quest, got stuck on loading screen and haven't been able to get back into a quest after four reboots.

 

Before I uninstalled I tried quest mode five times and got stuck at loading each time.  After reinstall I can seem to get in, but I have to reboot the game every time and going through the quest pops up all the newbie tool tips each time.  I have not tested what happens if I get some experienced characters in story mode and then try again to load up quest mode to see if it hangs like it was doing before the reinstall.  It feels an awful lot like there's some bad interaction going on between versions of characters for quest mode and story mode causing hangup issues.