F2P Strategy?

[cyberkal]

As a wholly f2p player i would like to ask you guys on what should be the optimum buy path using ingame gold only? Atm i've already bought and played through AD1 and am sitting at 1k gold. Should i:

 

1) save up for a new character? and if yes, who? Seoni? [1.5k]

 

2) save up for AD2 (Skinsaw Murders)? [4k]

 

3) save up for the character add-on deck? [10k]

 

I am leaning towards Seoni atm, but hey if you guys think otherwise i'd like to hear it :D

[Hannibal_PJV]

I would recommended the ad2. It will give you more options when if playing Also quest mode.

[FallenSkyknight]

Personally, I plan to pick up two of the Core characters (Valeros and Ezran for the core D&D feel) before getting AD2. Grinding up to 4k for Skinsaw has a lot more game play variety with all the different party combinations four characters give instead of just the starting two.

[Feywood]

Speaking as somebody on the same path, I'd advise you to be patient and pick up The Skinsaw Murders rather than another character. It's entirely possible to beat all of the available scenarios on legendary mode with just the two starter characters, and owning the next adventure will give you access to better loot, and a more interesting variety of scenarios to run while you're working on gathering the gold required to buy the other things you want.

[pinguinman]

I was asking myself the same and i ended up with the same plan:

 

1) grab a character (valeros or seoni)

2) AD2

3)another 1k5 char or save up for the add-on deck

[cyberkal]

after much deliberation, im gonna save up for AD2 (at 1.7k now). but was wondering, as feats only unlock when you complete a scenario, would replaying the scenario later once i have myself a third character unlock their feats as well or do i need to play a new storyline?

[Doppelschwert]

I was asking myself the same and i ended up with the same plan:

 

1) grab a character (valeros or seoni)

2) AD2

3)another 1k5 char or save up for the add-on deck

 

This is also what I think works best.

 

after much deliberation, im gonna save up for AD2 (at 1.7k now). but was wondering, as feats only unlock when you complete a scenario, would replaying the scenario later once i have myself a third character unlock their feats as well or do i need to play a new storyline?

 

Each character tracks his advancement independently. I picked up seoni after having the first 8 scenarios completed with kyra and merisiel. While I played through the first 8 scenarios again after adding seoni to kyra and merisiel, seoni got the rewards while the other two did not (as you gain rewards only once).

[hfm]

The AD sounds like the best idea as a first purchase. You'll be able to farm more diverse locations to start getting other content like characters.

[Brainwave]

Interesting. I have a different take on this. The character add on deck is going to take roughly 50 Legendary adventures to farm out (assuming they all give 200 gold which seems to be the case). Well slightly less than that due to small amounts of gold acquired during adventures but something close to that. So at some point some serious adventure farming is going to have to happen just for that alone, and at least for me having more adventures to pick from doesn't really help with that. In fact I'd rather just do it on an easier adventure that I can complete more quickly and not be failing periodically. In addition, I'd rather do that farming for the character add on deck first, before I'm already tired of replaying stuff. Even for someone that enjoys the game and has played the card game several times, I doubt many people are going to come up with that much gold just from casually running adventures for fun that actually matter.

 

So I'm just running Poison Pill on Legendary until I get that and maybe the same for everything else, not sure yet.

[Doppelschwert]

Interesting. I have a different take on this. The character add on deck is going to take roughly 50 Legendary adventures to farm out (assuming they all give 200 gold which seems to be the case). Well slightly less than that due to small amounts of gold acquired during adventures but something close to that. So at some point some serious adventure farming is going to have to happen just for that alone, and at least for me having more adventures to pick from doesn't really help with that. In fact I'd rather just do it on an easier adventure that I can complete more quickly and not be failing periodically. In addition, I'd rather do that farming for the character add on deck first, before I'm already tired of replaying stuff. Even for someone that enjoys the game and has played the card game several times, I doubt many people are going to come up with that much gold just from casually running adventures for fun that actually matter.

 

So I'm just running Poison Pill on Legendary until I get that and maybe the same for everything else, not sure yet.

 

While that is true, the second adventure deck will give your characters a skill, feat and card upgrade which means an easier time in those low scenarios, making the grind potentially faster.

 

Apart from that, quest mode (once it works) will probably be the most motivating grind, since you will also advance constantly in this mode and see something new all the time.

[Hannibal_PJV]

Yes the quest mode is much more interesting for grinding, because there is that unlimited different random scenarios. But it is more fun, if you have more locations open, aka more adventure paths open!

Thats why adventures first.

[Brainwave]

Yes I agree about quest mode, although I'm not 100% sure how it will work, will probably be the better method for grinding gold. On the other hand I have half the gold I need for the add on pack already, so yay

[Convicsik]

Which ever you decide, I would hope you f2p people spend some real money at some point. I'm not saying spend the whole $25 ( though it's totally worth it ) and I understand not everyone has the same amount of disposable income, but if you don't support the developer financially, they can't support the game. After playing this glorious app, my worst fear is that they won't continue on with Skull and Shackels and the rest of the expansions. I was soooo pissed at the devs after all the delays, but they were 100% on point when they said it would be worth the wait.

[Brainwave]

This is indeed a good game and the developers made the decision to allow players to unlock content via in game currency. I for one don't particularly appreciate being told that I should spend money at some point when this method has been offered as an intended option because I as a player should be second guessing whether the developers are making enough money off their intended system to support themselves...

 

Feel free to support them however you like and I will do the same. Personally to be honest I'd rather they'd just charged $5 for the app and another $5ish for the rest of the stuff and didn't even have the in game gold stuff at all. But apparently they preferred this type of more all or nothing pricing system, their choice, not mine.

 

All of that said, I may well decide to spend actual money at some point, but I don't like being told to do so by a random player.

[StormbringerGT]

This may be weird coming from someone who worked on the game (conflict of interest)... but...

 

I'd recommend going with an Adventure deck, there is where you will be able to get earn more gold, you can grind out Legendary difficulty scenarios, however, for repeat money. After buying the adventure decks, starting on some characters would open up your play options.

Having a party who can cover a closing check for each attribute type tends help with coverage (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma).

We also have an issue with Quest mode right now so I'd stay away until we roll out the patch, but technically you can just take your two characters and play Quest Mode to keep getting gold. It is how I pay for my treasure chest addiction.

In any case I hope you enjoy!

P.S. Not a sales plug... but the daily gold, which just costs $1.99 for 30 days, will trickle you with 200 gold everyday which ends up at 6000 gold at the end of the month. It is a good return on money for gold.

[cyberkal]

oh wow a dev response   . thinking it over, i sure did say something really bad from a dev standpoint  (i like this game! but im not gonna pay for it!) but as someone who has no disposable income atm, i appreciate that you guys made this game entirely accessible to people like us   hopefully in the future when i am better off, the game will still be up and i can finally contribute my share 

 

that being said, thanks for the all insight guys! always like it when the community can come together (even for f2pers like me) 

 

p/s: and sorry for all the emojis. just discovered it  

[Brainwave]

Thanks for understanding. Also, to repeat something I wrote previously, if you guys were to make something small like say the Promo deck only available via real money for a reasonable price, like a couple dollars, I'd gladly support your game by purchasing that. I was also already considering daily gold but since it appears that currently there's no way to get the P cards at all other than as part of the $25 pack, I just thought I'd mention that you guys might want to consider having it purchasable separately in some way.

 

 

 

 

This may be weird coming from someone who worked on the game (conflict of interest)... but...

 

I'd recommend going with an Adventure deck, there is where you will be able to get earn more gold, you can grind out Legendary difficulty scenarios, however, for repeat money. After buying the adventure decks, starting on some characters would open up your play options.

Having a party who can cover a closing check for each attribute type tends help with coverage (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma).

We also have an issue with Quest mode right now so I'd stay away until we roll out the patch, but technically you can just take your two characters and play Quest Mode to keep getting gold. It is how I pay for my treasure chest addiction.

In any case I hope you enjoy!

P.S. Not a sales plug... but the daily gold, which just costs $1.99 for 30 days, will trickle you with 200 gold everyday which ends up at 6000 gold at the end of the month. It is a good return on money for gold.

[altonu]

I originally planned to go with the pure grind for gold route, but I really wanted Seelah, and at my current rate, that was gonna take another several days at best, so I broke down and bought the 9.99 gold pack.

 

I did get adventure pack 1 before spending any real money, and had planned to save up for char pack then adventure pack 2, then more characters, but I figured, 9.99 will give me a better gaming experience while I earn gold for the rest of the content.  If I look at it as 3.33 over 3 days it does not seem quite as steep of a price.

 

I have both an iPad 4 and a newer Android tablet, and I plan to try pure free mode on the android, but on that one I plan to get Ezren (and maybe Lem since I keep struggling with both Int and Charisma checks), then adventure pack 2, then save up for the character pack.

 

Having even just a little more character variety has been noticeable and worth it to me to go for that.

[Tobold]

I run the game on two platforms, iPad and Android. As those aren't compatible, I only bought the $25 bundle for the iPad and use the Android tablet to play the F2P experience. Buying the first adventure, Burnt Offerings, at 80% off is a no-brainer. But then I would much prefer buying one or two more characters rather than AD2. Ezren and Valeros for 1500 gold each are solid choices to get you a "classic" group of fighter, cleric, thief, mage. Note that if you don't want to grind to get there, you can get all this for $5.

 

The reason why I would prefer more characters is that in Pathfinder Adventures your deck is also your hit points. If you play with only 2 characters, each character has up to 15 turns to play. Every time you play a card that is discarded after use, you weaken your character's health. Yes, Kyra can heal to some extent, but you still need to play your cards conservatively. Playing with 4 characters gives each character a maximum of 8 turns, so they can play their cards far more aggressively. Plus the added characters have different skills, so you can deal better with locations that require for example intelligence / arcane checks to close.

 

The full character add on deck for 10,000 gold I would consider more of a luxury. I'd buy it only after unlocking all adventures.

[Hastur]

I'm going to be honest, but I don't intend to be dismissive or nasty, merely candid.

 

I detest apple.  Not so much the products which have often been so forward thinking as to be almost prophetic, but because of the applebots who look down their noses at Android and anything non-apple.

 

I don't like feeling like I have to grind for stuff.  I'm completely done with my first party through the 2nd add-on deck and about halfway done with the heroic and legendary settings, but I'm only doing that because I want to do it.  It's still fun and, when it ceases being fun, I imagine the completenik in me will throw in the towel and I'll stop.

 

So, with that in mind, and not putting anyone else down, for me the 25 buck price for all the characters and the scenarios they already have released is trivial.  I figure there are some folks who would have gladly plopped down a few hundred and some folks who feel the pain of spending the twenty odd bills.  Of course, I wonder how folks who have a hard time with the cost of the bundle could have afforded the tablet to play the game, but I also know that life is funny in that you never know how things are for anyone and it's not good to make assumptions.

 

I have accumulated about 5k in gold and I'm figuring I'll save until I have 10k or so simply because I'm accumulating gold pretty quickly, I still have yet to start my next run, and while I'm doing all this, as I start to ration my play time after playing more, there will be more releases.  I might throw in the towel and use my gold more quickly, or I might decidet to wait even longer, but 10k sounds reasonable at this point.  With that in mind, I would have to say that real expenditures make it a lot easier to horde gold and not feel like I have to grind.  Like Convicsik says up above, I want people to put some more money into the enterprise that will pave the way for more development, but I'm not going to begrudge gold farming.  Obviously, there must be some merit to the free to play idea or developers would have abandoned it a long time ago.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Hastur

[trashcondor]

@Hastur: something nice to spend gold on are treasure chests. Expanding the vault with cool new cards enriches the game which is automatically a win. And you may get cards such as Poog of Zarongel

[Hastur]

Yeah, Trashcondor, I have that one on Merisiel in my current party, but I didn't spend gold.  I think it was a random roll or maybe a charm spell.  Still, I think one of the random items you can get in those chests is deathbane, which would be really cool!  Funny story:  in my physical game, I was confused and so all of my characters only have the basic items and what they get as scenario rewards.  I have deathbane on Ezren in that scenario and I thought the only way to give it to another character was to literally start off in the same location or meet up later when he had it and hand it off.  Ironically, the game is much easier following the actual rules.  lol  ...But one or two items really tempt me to spend the gold, for sure!

[FatePAC]

Poog of zarongel is a promo card in the actual so i assumed it would be the same here.

 

I started this game intending on going the f2p route and earned and spend my gold on AD1 and 2 characters before i decided to just buy bundle instead. I think this game is worth it considering the cost of the physical game and i hope will be able to continue with it.

[torm3ntin]

I bought the Daily Gold bundle. Not for the gold itself but to support the game while i'm still deciding if i want to spend the 25 bucks.

 

The first thing i'm unlocking is both Scenarios. More LOOT and more stuff to farm.

2nd thing will be more characters.

 

The initial characters can solo every quest i have done so far. After you get a feel for the game and farm good items like staff of minor healing, you can pretty much leave them on their own soloing stuff.

[da_mayor]

I picked up Lem first, because he's who I WANTED to play.  I wasn't thinking about strategy so much as FUN.  If I'm gonna grind, I'm gonna love doing it.

 

Then I saw that the Bundle came with promo cards like Poog of Zarongel and caved and spent the $25