New player with questions

[keybounce]

I have just started, and have a lot of questions. I notice I am confused, so what am I misunderstanding?

 

First: How does perma-death work? I tried doing a solo run of just the rogue (Merisiel), figuring that the backstab-when-alone ability would help me kill things. Naturally, it failed badly -- ran out of cards, and died. I did not have perma death, so I can try again.

But ... If there are only 11 characters (not sure if the others are DLC or game unlocks), and you only get one of each (character was locked after being selected), and you've lost a few to perma-death? I did not see a "start over" button anywhere.

 

Second: How do you use the blessing deck? Each turn a blessing is revealed, but I can't see any way to use it, other than blessing of the gods letting me replace that text with the text of the blessing deck. Is that the only way, or is there something else I'll find later?

 

Third: Do I have the basics of the resource mechanics right in this summary:

1, each character starts with 15 cards/hit points, and can expect to spend about 1 card per location card,

2, each location has 10 cards,

3, the number of locations is 2 + number of characters,

4, so the number of cards you might have to go through is 20 + 10*characters,

5, but you have a maximum of 30 turns, possibly less, before the blessing deck runs out

 

Implying that while more characters gives you more firepower and hitpoints for defeating and closing, the increase in number of cards to go through makes bigger parties harder? (Which gets to the recommended size of 3-4 characters?)

This also implies that free explorations becomes very important, yet so far each free exploration I've seen requires discarding (not recharging), so there's a limit if you can't heal.

And finally for now, is Kyra the only person that can heal/recover cards? Given the timing of things, does that make her the only one capable of solo, or required in small parties (few party member cards)? Equally, is the paladin ("crusade") required on large parties as the only one capable of skipping less important explores?

Edited Monday at 12:51 AM by keybounce
Miscount -- PC's have 15 cards, not 20

[keybounce]

Location question: "apothecary" has an effect if you do not explore. How can you *not* explore?

Equally, at "General store", when you close it, you add random items, and then get the top card -- so why add 1-6 items -- what does adding more than 1 item do?

 

EDIT: So exploration is *Voluntary!*. You can actually skip it, especially useful if you know what's on top and want to leave it there for later.

As for adding items to the closed place -- closing does not mean the place is empty. It just means that (unless you have something else as a location rule) you remove what was there. More things can be added, or only *some* of what is there can be removed (location rule). So closed locations can still have things to find by exploring.

 

Edited 10 hours ago by keybounce
Answers on exploring and closed locations

[keybounce]

Ok, Lem is also a healer. It took me a while to understand -- once per turn, he can trade a spell in hand for the discarded cure spell, and then cast it to get cards back. So as long as he does not lose all of his spells, he can heal his own spells. Beyond that, he seems to be all about having others do better at things; so he would be paired with teamwork guy (Valeros).