Upping the game- tips and strategy to play larger parties in higher difficulty

[Rhygar]

Seeing little by way of gameplay guide on this board, I'd like to present some of the gameplay tricks I'd used in my games so far. The game is pretty balanced in that you can probably finish the game with any party that strike your fancy that said, there are some characters that's inherently more suited for the more demanding set of game conditions. If you are a veteran player or a semi casual player who isn't quite interested in the meta gaming , feel free to skip by. If you are a player who like to get a measure of the game on your own terms like I am, please note this could be a spoiler of some sort. For everyone else who struggles with the game especially on larger parties in higher difficulty mode or just want play better i hope this post will be of use to you to improve your game experience.

 

This is by no means comprehensive and is more really some observations and tips in gameplay I'd uncovered in my numerous play through. I certainly have neither the patience, inclination or competance indeed to write a comprehensive guide that I would approve of

 

With caveats done, let's head on to the gist. For all considerations the typical setup will be a six man party in legendary conditions in this digital edition of the game.

 

1) run as many explorations as you can in a single turn, for every character.

If there's only one single rule that you need to abide in and which all others can be distilled into, this will be it. In fact, if you are able to do this consistently I believe the game under most conditions will probably be a fairly easy task to win. And in fact, I can stop writing here. So my foremost apologies if I'd misled you into thinking there's something you don't know of in here.

 

A)For most characters, the means of extra explore comes in the form of allies and blessings.

 

It goes without saying that every single ally you can include into character deck should be capable of exploration on discard. There will be some characters for whom you will feel it's necessary to include certain ally that give boons rather than free exploration such as healing (father zantus) to extend their survivability and this goes back to what I mentioned above about optimal characters and the not-so but for the most part your aim should be to stock up on allies that provide an extra explore.

 

Blessings . Do not waste any single blessings you may draw on beating checks if possible. There are various ways with which you can ramp up the die count without blessing and, failing which, there's an order of priority which I'd like to observe when deciding whose blessings I'd use.

 

i) divine casters are gold for general purpose dice ramping and this game provide all forms of different aid and guidance spells. Use them primarily when available especially in aiding someone on a weak die check(charisma for harsk for eg.) and equip as many as you can to all divine casters you have in party to increase the odds of finding one when someone need help with siren for instance. Think of such spells as, in effect, blessings used to increase die count- you simply can't have enough of them in a sense. The spell "find traps"is simply invaluable for when you would, surely, run into a barrier and one of first spell I'd go for in such cases.

 

ii) if it's a combat check, use those orbs or cloud spell.have the casters equip at least one if not more and you can have Lem punching the villain dead naked if you have enough . Those cloud spell, incendiary cloud being a fav of mine , works a treat in horde situations and could mean the difference between facing that zombie horde again or clearing that location this turn. I'm positive they are a reason for lem not being rage-trashed in my party at least

Or, if you have Valeros or harsk, or lem activate those abilities. Goes without saying that if you need to recharge a card to activate them, choose anything but allies or blessings.

 

iii) when out of options and before using a blessing consider the implication of failing the check. Some aren't automatically doom and gloom and self-banish after resolution in some cases with some barrier or banes.( which means you don't waste that exploration) If you have a stash of acquired item/armor/weapon after a run on your current turn, or you have an armor card you could risk taking a hit from that barrier or monster. It's ok to fail a check at times.

 

Iv) when all fails, use a blessing from the character that has the least remaining location deck cards OR an excess of blessings/allies to what's required to complete his exploration of his remaining location decks on his next turn. The latter is for the case of a boa henchman scenario or when the henchman/villain happens to be the last card. lacking that one exploration to close the location means it cost another 6 turns before you can do it again and 12 turns before you can use that character on other locations. Significant.

For this reason it's of strategic importance perhaps to place the strong characters who can trailblaze that bit better ahead in the order of taking turn( for eg, seelah as first to go, you get a better sense of how many explore you need for next turn to close her location and can assuredly figure out if she can spare a blessing as her hand will probably consist of more blessing than the remaining cards in her location deck provided she had a good run)

 

B) it's also important to know how not to oversize your dice count so as to not waste a blessing when you have to absolutely use it. It's no rocket science here and you don't need statistical models either to compute how many dice are enough in my experience. I use the mean of the die , rounding down. Eg, 1d6 will have a mean of 3. Add up the mean of all die you have ramped up to see if you meet the check. In important checks such as closure , feel free to add an additional die .

 

C)how many of blessings/allies you can draw every reset , other than being dependent on hand size, also depends on how much of a clean hand you have prior to reset. For this reason I don't like to keep that belt of strength(if I even have it at all) on hand. It gets discarded, along with extra weapons. Armour get recharged always. Use that cure early , like when you have only blessings or allies in discard to recharge back. Have improved mending on hand? Discard that sole weapon at next monster , and redraw it back with improved mending, before discarding it again prior to reset if you have weapons left in your decks. Have an aid spell on hand? Use it even on a goblin next other than a sole weapon or blessing/ally i don't usually have any leftover cards prior to reset in order to draw as many blessing/allies on next reset.

For this reason, this style is not without risk such as if you pulled a fantastic hand consisting of all blessings and meet a goblin scout that snipe you for 3 damage. By and large though, I'd had far greater success with it than lamentation of a goblin kind.

 

D) hold off on those cures. Either use it early if you draw it or if late, when you really need a heal or risk dying. You may recharge blessings/ally but you will equally recharge all those potions of glib , club you picked up and discarded. It's actually sometimes a good idea to not recharge those weapons if you have the option to do so indeed. For divine casters I don't have more than one cure on deck and at times I go through an entire scenario not using a single cure or lost a recharge check on early cure of blessings. In the case of certain divine casters such as seelah, Kyra, there is an option to optimise their deck in the midst of the game and cure spell in both its use midway through the game and in its inclusion in their deck actually impede the quality of draws more than its benefit.

 

 

Will stop here and add more as I find them or when the tequila leaves my head . Feel free to contribute , comment

[Matsu Kurisu]

Great write up. Thanks

[Bajie]

On legendary,permadeath

 

Study the connections of locations in relation to one another and take note the closing conditions. Some maps have deadend locations, and might be (quite often ) better to assign someone there even though none of your party is good at closing them (bust up the blessings)

 

Take advantage of scrying items or spell, even if its bottom scrying (Brodert). If you know a location has an henchmen early, it might be better to hold off on extra exploring it or busting blessing/allies. It might be better to just put a character there an explore normally, use its blessings for assist instead, so that when you encounter the Boss at other location you can just close it without combat. (Specially good on scenarios that buff up bosses for every henchmen kill)

 

Get the Holy Candle everytime. And use it rightaway. Same with Heal Potion and Cure. A turn you leave them on your hand is an extra explore or blessing not used and not drawn on

 

Recharge those Magic armors. Discard those extra weapons. Except on late rounds where you down a couple locations and the Boss have a damage first ability.

 

Know the number of Monsters including Henchmen/Bosses in a locations. Some characters ( depending on builds ) just isnt plain cut right to combat early on ( Lini/Lem )..put them on locations with 1-2 monsters so they can assist and spend their Aids/Blessings on other locations safely and if they do encounter and get beat up on their turn, they discard nothing or trash cards.

 

Put auto-success Items on characters that have low stats on such items. ( Amulet of Fortitude on Ezren ). Its given to put Characters on locations they are good on (Ezren on Academy, Merisiel on Guardhouse, etc. ) but after that, moving to the next location where they can close efficiently usually involves passing on locations they suck at. Here's why you put those item on them.

 

Take advantage of Ambush. If you've downed the location deck to 1 or 2 monsters..its better to fail on Ambush and get free explorations and be lucky to face a henchmen or boss via Ambush. Saves time..a lot ^^

 

Don't rush the game. When you start the game fresh with a new party, its ok to fail. Early on focus on getting chests and items/weapons. You don't want to move into higher tier and be under

 

Just my 2 zeni.

[chainsawash]

Will stop here and add more as I find them or when the tequila leaves my head . Feel free to contribute , comment

 

Great post made more impressive it was written under the mighty power of tequila.

 

Get the Holy Candle everytime.

 

Easier said than done!

Also a good tip regarding Ambush. Yeah, it makes the combat a little more difficult, but I've won games because I was able to dig down to a key villain/henchman when running low on time.

[Rhygar]

 

Will stop here and add more as I find them or when the tequila leaves my head . Feel free to contribute , comment

 

Great post made more impressive it was written under the mighty power of tequila.

 

Get the Holy Candle everytime.

 

Easier said than done!

Also a good tip regarding Ambush. Yeah, it makes the combat a little more difficult, but I've won games because I was able to dig down to a key villain/henchman when running low on time.

Well, I had another power write up coming regarding ezren and some other tidbits but I'm glad the tequila stopped me from posting more. especially the bit about ezren who can morph into game breaking godmode. Still I hope this help folks who want to consistently beat scenarios in legendary in 6 man though. And

 

Nice contribution by bajie and kudos for doing ironman permadeath which I hadn't done before . Very good tips which I might have overlooked.( or hadn't made it through in my inebriated state) From my play through before I stopped playing for abit I largely find if I can utilise the core rule #1 consistently I have a near 100% completion rate across all the riffraff combos of condition the game can throw out. ( variants combo inclusive of boas, night approaches, in addition to specific story mode scenario power etc ) .

 

The holy or is it divine candle can be a game saver regardless of party size or scenario condition such as for times when you dawdle a bit looting rather than clearing locations. That said with new cards and generally as I had expected before , as the party level up the 'impossible ' conditions become much more manageable and the tough ones becomes trivial. I don't recall my last 30 games using it even though I usually have someone stashing one away in their pack for that rainy day.

 

Happy gaming folks

Edited June 26, 2016 by Rhygar

[elcoderdude]

Not understanding the dislike of Cure.  It does have more of a downside in the digital game than in the card game, which I'm more familiar with, because, unlike the card game, the digital game doesn't let you pass on acquiring cards you don't want (and I am wondering WHY NOT?) Still, you can use the Craft skill on those items you don't want, etc. and do your best to avoid the dross.

 

In a party of six, discarding allies and blessings to explore quickly, taking damage on the occasional under-blessed bad roll, not to mention game effects & BYA damage, Cure is pretty useful.

Edited July 7, 2016 by elcoderdude

[Frivolimous]

with a 6-man party, unless you're actively shredding your deck (ie. Seelah), or you're losing a lot of fights, you shouldn't need that many cures.  With a maximum of 5 turns per character, you can discard 2 cards per turn and still have a hand of 5 at the end (assuming a base deck size of 15).  I take along cures in my 6-man just in case, and have Healing Wands and Priest guy, but now that my deck sizes are getting larger I'm considering cutting down on them.

Edited July 8, 2016 by Frivolimous

[elcoderdude]

Many characters are going to have a 6- or 7- card hand before too long.

Even with a 5-card hand, in your example, on the last explore of your last turn you have 0 cards in your deck.  

 

Admittedly, discarding 2 a turn is a lot. But still, that's a little closer than I like to cut it.

[Frivolimous]

Just sayin' that cures aren't as important, that's all.  You should still have 1 or 2 restorative spells or items as backup but you don't need to keep healing constantly like with a 3-4 man party.

[firestormkirby]

Not understanding the dislike of Cure.  It does have more of a downside in the digital game than in the card game, which I'm more familiar with, because, unlike the card game, the digital game doesn't let you pass on acquiring cards you don't want (and I am wondering WHY NOT?) Still, you can use the Craft skill on those items you don't want, etc. and do your best to avoid the dross.

In the card game you are actually supposed to roll for every card you encounter and cannot automatically fail.

 

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1h4#v5748eaic9tfj

 

 

 

If I'm told to attempt a check, and I don't want to succeed, can I just choose to fail? 

 

 

No. You don't have to spend resources to succeed, and if you have a choice of skills, you don't have to use your best skill... but you do have to attempt the check.

Resolution: On page 11 of the rulebook, under Attempting a Check, add the following to the end of the first paragraph: "When you are required to attempt a check, you may not choose to fail it."

[Bajie]

 

Not understanding the dislike of Cure.  It does have more of a downside in the digital game than in the card game, which I'm more familiar with, because, unlike the card game, the digital game doesn't let you pass on acquiring cards you don't want (and I am wondering WHY NOT?) Still, you can use the Craft skill on those items you don't want, etc. and do your best to avoid the dross.

 

In the card game you are actually supposed to roll for every card you encounter and cannot automatically fail.

 

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1h4#v5748eaic9tfj

 

 

 

If I'm told to attempt a check, and I don't want to succeed, can I just choose to fail? 

 

 

No. You don't have to spend resources to succeed, and if you have a choice of skills, you don't have to use your best skill... but you do have to attempt the check.

Resolution: On page 11 of the rulebook, under Attempting a Check, add the following to the end of the first paragraph: "When you are required to attempt a check, you may not choose to fail it."

 

Hallelujah

[Longshot11]

 

Not understanding the dislike of Cure.  It does have more of a downside in the digital game than in the card game, which I'm more familiar with, because, unlike the card game, the digital game doesn't let you pass on acquiring cards you don't want (and I am wondering WHY NOT?) Still, you can use the Craft skill on those items you don't want, etc. and do your best to avoid the dross.

In the card game you are actually supposed to roll for every card you encounter and cannot automatically fail.

 

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1h4#v5748eaic9tfj

 

 

 

If I'm told to attempt a check, and I don't want to succeed, can I just choose to fail? 

 

 

No. You don't have to spend resources to succeed, and if you have a choice of skills, you don't have to use your best skill... but you do have to attempt the check.

Resolution: On page 11 of the rulebook, under Attempting a Check, add the following to the end of the first paragraph: "When you are required to attempt a check, you may not choose to fail it."

 

The rule you quoted is about voluntarily failing a check.

 

When encountering a boon - the player may deny the attempt to acquire (automatically counting as "failure to acquire', but NOT as 'failure at a check to acquire'!), thereby skipping the check completely; ergo, the above rule does not apply.

[Frivolimous]

Interesting... I was about to argue with you Longshot, but then I checked the rulebook.  On page 10 it says:

 

"If the card is a boon, you may try to acquire it for your deck; if it’s a bane, you must try to defeat it (see Attempting a Check, below). If a card’s check section says “None,” look at the card’s powers, and immediately do whatever it says there."

 

The word 'may' implies that 'may not' is also an option.  This is further emphasized by the fact that for a bane it says 'must'.  Nowhere does it describe the process of what 'may not' entails but later on page 10 it says:

 

"If you succeed at a check to acquire a boon, put it in your hand; otherwise, banish it."

 

Sucess at a check to acquire a boon means you put it in your hand.  All other results end in banishment.  Ergo, choosing not to try to acquire a boon for your deck should simply result in banishment.

 

So... basically... in the tabletop version the rules indicate that you may choose not to acquire a boon which results in automatic banishment.

 

Lawyered.

Edited July 10, 2016 by Frivolimous

[Frivolimous]

Oh... lol... on page 15 it actually says, verbatim,

 

"If you encounter a boon while exploring a location, you may attempt a check to acquire the card. If you succeed at the check, put the card in your hand; if you fail, or choose not to attempt the check, banish the card"

 

So... no fancy logic needed... lol.