Thyraxus

I prefer the Orb of Firestorm (from AD3) over the Flask of Fire for the following reasons: can be reused with Arcane or Divine (instead of Arcane only like the flask) easier check (target number 10 vs. 13) for re-use gets recharged instead of discarded upon successful check it is not limited to the same location The last point is the most significant one. It means that if your party is spread out and one of your characters is facing a troll (or a similar moster requiring the Fire trait to defeat) somewhere alone but unfortunately not currently having a source of fire in their hand, another character can support them with the Orb from anywhere else. With the Flask, that character would have to happen to be at the same location. The only advantage of the Flask (2d6 vs. 2d4, i.e. a +2 on average) is not big enough to make up for that extra flexibility, IMO. That's why I never kept the Flask around in any of my decks for long when I got one, except when I was unable to find an Orb to take its place.

I just realized: it's even worse. I didn't get the reward for AD 4 either. I can't remember exactly when I completed that one on legendary, but it definitely was after the release of the PC version of the game, so relatively recently; I just didn't notice until now. See here - all scenarios completed on legendary: But the "Guide to the Beyond" is still missing from the vault: And, as if to taunt me, when I now complete a legendary AD4 scenario, the victory screen shows me the card again (but still doesn't unlock it in the vault): The cards from the previous adventures (up to and including the Black Arrow Longbow from AD3) were unlocked properly, but I guess that's just because I got them before whichever update introduced this bug...

I just completed all the scenarios in adventure 5 on legendary, and the reward screen at the end of the last one even showed me the "Blessing of Thassilonian Virtues" which you're supposed to get when you do. But in my collection, the card is still missing. I even tried to close and restart the app multiple times (because I know from experience the vault may take some time to sync on occasion) but that didn't help - it's still not there. This happened just now, so the app version is the most recent one at the moment; running on an android phone. My PFID is 37F8FE96F765266B

My recommendation for getting a feel for the pacing of the game would be to play a party of 4 characters. This means that in a normal scenario there are 6 locations with 60 cards to explore and 30 turns to do it, making it an even 2 explorations per turn you would need to do in order to be able to dig through all of the locations in their entirety. And that's not too hard; you get one exploration for free and spending one blessing or ally per turn to get another one shouldn't be too much of a drain on your resources most of the time. Not all of them need to come from your deck after all, you have the chance to pick up more of them from the location as you go (and some characters have powers that give you extra explorations, or are equivalent to one, but don't cost a discard). And if all else fails, there's always the Cure spells to get them back if you have a divine caster in your group. So, as long as you manage to keep up that pace (one free exploration plus one additional one), you'd still be able to complete the game in the theoretical worst case where all the henchmen and the villain are on the very bottom of their respective locations, and you never manage to close any locations temporarily when encountering the villain. Of course this assumes you win every combat and check, which might also not always be possible and losing might cost you resources and/or turns, but then again, you often will encounter be able to close locations early (there's a 10% chance that the henchman will be your very first encounter of a location, meaning you have chance to close it in one turn, saving nine turns) so it kind of evens out in the end. Also keep in mind that you don't have to close all locations - because in a typical scenario there are 2 more locations than characters, once 2 of them are permanently closed and the remaining ones are all guarded by one character each, any encounter with the villain can mean an early win (as long as you have the means to close all the locations temporarily and defeat the villain).

The best character to complete the "Shovel the Cards" challenge, IMO, is Amiri, because she buries a card for activating her rage ability. Just do that on every check where you can do so (all combat and a few non-combat ones) and you'll complete this one rather quickly. Put her in a location with a power that involves burying cards too (Mountain Top would be a prime example) and you'll get it even faster - just be careful not to die...

A similar problem exists with combat checks involving weapons that alter some die results, like the Fanged Falchion where a 4 rolled on a d4 counts as a 6 - there your probability to succeed should be higher (in some edge cases at least). For example imagine Lini using a Fanged Falchion, an animal companion and a blessing of Gorum to roll 6d4 (disregarding any constant bonuses) - without the "die promotion" taken into account, she'd hit a 15 with roughly even odds (57.08% chance of success), but when factored in, the odds rise to a 76.64% chance of success against the same difficulty.

Valeros and Lem have great synergy when they stick together. Valeros' ability can help Lem with tough combat checks (which he can struggle a bit with on his own) while Lems inspiration ability can help Valeros succeeding at checks for closing locations or acquiring boons.

Judging from the icon for the achievement, it refers to the Prologue which was the Tutorial *before* the version that introduced Steam support (the icon shows Orik, who was a character in that prologue). So the achievement was introduced on Steam at the same time it was made impossible to get...

Hmmm...?

So there was that Play Store notification on my phone, informing me that there was a new update available for "Pathfinder Adventures" and I'm all excited about what's new, but all the update says is "Added privacy policy". That's it? For a moment I almost thought it said "piracy policy" and wondered if that was some kind of pun and stealth reference for things to come - Yarrr.

She also was my character when I first played, and I had a lot of fun with her. The other players were so stunned by the stunts she can pull, they almost accused me of cheating, or at least of having read her abilities wrong. My favorite: recharging an entire bad hand (like when the starting draw doesn't have a weapon due to her favorite card being 'Ally') by repeatedly scouting 'in place' (which kind of feels dumb, because basically you're just looking at the exact same card over and over) so I could draw a complete fresh set of cards. Actually, that didn't even occur to me at the time. Nice catch.

Another great item is the Amulet of Inescapable Location - unfortunately that's a legendary treasure, so it requires an inordinate amount of luck to get. But once you have it, it's amazing - for those who haven't seen it, it lets you examine the top 5 cards of the deck, place all monsters found on top of the location (in any order) and shuffle the rest. And it's a discard-or-recharge, not a bury. It's essentially a super-powered monster-only Augury (minus the option to shunt the monsters to the bottom though - but combining with an actual Augury in a one-two-punch can take care of that and be well worth it). Now give that thing to Lem and he can do that every turn as long as he has a spare item in hand to swap it out for and he'll become the supreme locator of henchmen and villains...

And then they went and created a character like Adowyn who is arguably even more OP, because thanks to her cohort she has a scout ahead power like Seelah/Harsk, only on steroids because she's neither limited on how often nor at what point during her turn she can use it. Basically, she will know what's next in the location deck any time and as often as she wants to, as long as she has her wolf companion (who is trivially easy to keep around due to her powers) and a card to recharge. And scouting it is even more powerful than evasion because it works even on banes that can't be evaded. My guess is that this was at least part of the reason they introduced the "trigger" keyword in the Mummy's Mask set (stuff happening even when you only examine a card without actually encountering it)...

Thanks for the explanation

I'm sorry, but you will have to elaborate on that. I've never had a chance to play S&S, so I have no idea how that is even possible.

When playing arcane spells with Ezren, I noticed that the icon for the "Spell Collector" power keeps popping up when the recharge check starts. And it seems like it's not just a display issue, the bonus from that power is in fact actually applied to the check as well, even though the description of the power says it only applies on checks to acquire spells - no mention of recharges. Here's an example: It's Illusionist Ezren, "Scholar" alternate, 4 points to Int, 1 power feat in "Recovery", 2 feats in Spell Collector. He should be rolling recharges at a base of +6 (+1 Arcane, +4 from skill feats, +1 from Recovery) but in fact gets to roll at a +10 (no int-boosting items or bonuses from other characters, that's just the base value), which means the +4 from Spell Collector has been added to it. Not that I am really complaining, it makes keeping those powerful spells in circulation a lot easier - but it's still wrong...

Comparing the two primary arcane spellcasters, i.e. Seoni and Ezren, I have to say, I definitely prefer Seoni. Ezren can really shine in very specific circumstances (like tearing through high-magic locations like the Academy in a single turn) but he suffers from the fact that he has no blessings which makes him very a very slow explorer when the stars are not aligned just right. Also, if you're not careful (or very unlucky) he can be caught pants-down facing a tough combat without an attack or evade spell in hand (or only ones the bane is immune against). Seoni, on the other hand, has blessings for extra explores, can pick up allies on the go much easier for even more due to her high charisma/diplomacy, and never is defenseless because she can always discard a card for an Arcane Blast, although immunities can be a problem with that (several fire-immune monsters and even henchmen in the later scenarios), so getting that Acid Blast powerup may be a good idea to deal with that. So, overall, Ezren has certain undeniable strengths (try playing an Illusionist with Mind Trick and as many Invisibilites as you can get for some fun) but can be hampered if conditions are not optimal, whereas Seoni may provide a little less utility (due to her smaller arsenal of spells and items) but her performance both in combat and exploration speed, while it may have fewer "peaks", overall is a little more consistent and reliable IMO.

... aaannd now its back. Ninja devs on the prowl?

Guess that was a different issue from mine, my treasures were never missing, but the wool hide still is AWOL.

Was the Festive Wool Hide promo card that was given out around christmas last year a limited-time only item? Because when I just checked my Card Vault (to take a closer look at the new Rooster card), I noticed that it was gone. I know I had it at some point, and I'm wondering if it's actually supposed to still be there or not.

It's a reveal for a +2 on combat checks though, and considering she's more of a fighter than a caster, that bonus is useful a lot more often in my opinion. The fact that it also adds to diplomacy is a nice extra for grabbing allies (although only the alternate version of Seelah can really make use of that due to the base version lacking Diplomacy as a skill).

But if you want to actually use them to hit things, you can only do so at the +4 difficulty penalty they incur for requiring weapon proficiency, which Ezren has no way of getting. Something similar bothers me (even more so) about Ordikon's Staff, which seems like it's made for someone like Ezren (for having a way to pass a combat check in a chinch without having to worry about having an attack spell in hand, for example, or for dealing with banes immune to such spells), but then it requires Weapon Proficiency, which is kind of silly.

I had 7000 gold to spare so I went ahead to buy Lem's alternate and gave it a try (mainly because I had one party going - my "casters only" party I mentionend here - where he was still the last character not in his "alternate mode"). That was before I was even aware of your post. Then I came here to comment on my experience, read your contribution and had to realize that you have already expressed pretty much exactly every single opinion I had. Or, in other words: I agree completely with everything you wrote. Just one minor thing to add: what's especially great about having an armor card is that any bonuses from it are tied to a different card type from all the other usual sources, so you can just stack it on top of whatever else you can throw in the mix. The armor I gave my Lem was a Catskin Leather. It requires a recharge to activate its special bonus instead of a reveal, which means it's not immediately reusable like the Snakeskin, but it gives a +3, which is nice for tough combat checks.

The one I'm playing now I call the "Magic User's Club", i.e. only characters with some spellcasting ability: Ezren, Seoni, Lini, Lem, Kyra and Seelah (after AD3 Harsk with a role and Nature's Gift could become a substitute player...). Very strong party with lots of support to throw around, with tons of healing so you can just keep pilling bonuses on just about any check and cycle it back with a Cure or two afterwards One other thing I might want to try would be the "Fencing Club": Valeros, Amiri, Seelah and Kyra, i.e. only characters with Melee skill - and to stay with the theme, only sword-type weapons - might be interesting. If you were to try something similar for an "Archery Club" (only Ranged skill) you'd have Harsk sitting around pretty alone (not that he'd mind that, though), so you'd have to relax admittance requirements a little to something like "only characters able to use ranged weapons efficiently" and would probably end up with something like Harsk, Merisiel, Sajan, Lem. Lini would be a possible contender (especially as her "Wild" alternate with the larger d8 in dex) and, if you really want to have a full 6-person party, you could make Weapon Master Valeros with the Close Quarters power become a honorary member... Any other ideas?

Yesterday (2017-01-23) there still was a weekly challenge (the usual complete 3 dailies for 500 gold, IIRC, and I did the first daily for 1/3 progress), but today it's gone. I only see the new daily challenge. Isn't there supposed to be a weekly challenge (and the one displayed yesterday was in error), or has it gone AWOL?