The Vault and Extra Characters

[Sines314]

So, I was thinking of leveling up a second group in the same campaign I am currently running, just for fun. Same game, just grab some characters I haven't used yet and run them through the earlier stages. Maybe replace members of my current party if I end up liking them better. Is this going to bork up my Vault and the number of cards in my game? Or will that remain fine as long as I don't add more than one character, or bring in characters I'd leveled up outside of the specific story mode I'm in?

I know it'll divide the same amount of gear between more than 6 characters, but I can always trade that stuff back and forth in case any of the 'off-team' gets cards too valuable for me to want to be locked up. Or at least, I think it'll divide those cards between my characters. Does the vault consist only of cards not owned by the current active party members?

[Ethics Gradient]

Does the vault consist only of cards not owned by the current active party members?

Yes. That is the best way to imagine it.

 

The "Vault" is generated each time you play a scenario, and doesn't really exist outside that scenario.  Different parties have different vaults largely based on the cards in the character's decks.

[Sines314]

Out of a sense of fair play, then, I'll probably try to prevent myself from 'stealing' extra vault cards into a party whenever I add a character who wasn't in the party before. I was thinking about swapping Amiri for Valeros in my party, as I find myself almost never using her Rage or other special abilities.

When I hit the 'vault' button, does it show me my absolute vault, or the current vault after taking out my present gear? If it's only the 'current vault', does the game display the total cards anywhere?

 

Lastly, is there a limit on how many treasure cards are allowed in a vault? I presume it's not possible to fill the vault with 300 copies of a single treasure card and no others. I want to know when I should start selling treasure cards because I've gone above the practical limit and won't be using them.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Sines314

[Hannibal_PJV]

The treasure cards have their own pool in the location building, so selling not so wanted treasures really help the odds of getting those you want to get. Personally I like variety, so I keep my treasures as equal measured as possible so that I see different cards in different Gaming sessions.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[Ethics Gradient]

When I hit the 'vault' button, does it show me my absolute vault, or the current vault after taking out my present gear? If it's only the 'current vault', does the game display the total cards anywhere?

 

Lastly, is there a limit on how many treasure cards are allowed in a vault?

The vault you see after selecting a party is either the in-play Vault, or the Vault from the previous scenario.  That is why if your characters have been to AD6, but go knock out some challenge using Local Heroes, the "Vault" suddenly won't show a lot of adventure decks.  The "Absolute Vault" is the Gallery you can find from Main Menu -> Options.

 

No limit has been found on the treasure cards so far.  I've heard of a user having like 300 of one, so we're at least in "Short Integer" territory.  We'll only ever know for sure if someone gets like 66,000 of one particular treasure card.  

[Sines314]

 

When I hit the 'vault' button, does it show me my absolute vault, or the current vault after taking out my present gear? If it's only the 'current vault', does the game display the total cards anywhere?

 

Lastly, is there a limit on how many treasure cards are allowed in a vault?

The vault you see after selecting a party is either the in-play Vault, or the Vault from the previous scenario.  That is why if your characters have been to AD6, but go knock out some challenge using Local Heroes, the "Vault" suddenly won't show a lot of adventure decks.  The "Absolute Vault" is the Gallery you can find from Main Menu -> Options.

 

No limit has been found on the treasure cards so far.  I've heard of a user having like 300 of one, so we're at least in "Short Integer" territory.  We'll only ever know for sure if someone gets like 66,000 of one particular treasure card.  

 

 

So you could theoretically fill up your vault with 65,000 copies of an single ally, thus resulting in nearly every ally pickup being just that one? Hrm, that's probably something that should be changed :D.

[Ethics Gradient]

So you could theoretically fill up your vault with 65,000 copies of an single ally, thus resulting in nearly every ally pickup being just that one? Hrm, that's probably something that should be changed :D.

Funny you said that... there's actually a basic mechanism to prevent exactly such a thing from happening!

 

When you play with Treasure Cards "on," only a certain number are added to the active vault each game.  That certain number is divided equally among the active Adventure Decks, and up to that amount from each AD is randomly selected.

 

So... assuming you had 65,500 of a Treasure Card at each AD level, yes, it would be guaranteed to swamp the treasure pool.  However, the treasure pool is somewhat gated, so even at a worst-case-scenario (a.k.a. the absurd-case scenario) only like 20-30% of all vault boons would be one of those few cards.

 

Rough Order-of-Magnitute, you'd need to open a chest or two per minute for the better part of a year to get such silly numbers.  You would save yourself a lot of time if you just directly wrote Obsidian a check for $1/2 Million.  As an added bonus, you'd probably have the satisfaction of kickstarting development on Skull & Shackles!

 

Any other fun questions?

 

 

 

Edit:  Math error.  Misplaced a decimal point.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Ethics Gradient

[Sines314]

So, a finite number of treasure cards get added to the decks, but those are randomly chosen from the available options. As such, if I had 1k of the same treasure card, and normal amounts of the others, then it would make up the majority (if not all) of the card picks for that 'slot' (type and AD)?

I have no intention of attempting such a feat, of course, but I do like to know the nuances of how things work, and my example was the easiest edge case to think of.

[Ethics Gradient]

You got it!  Though, it's just randomly based on AD, and does not take into consideration card types.

 

The system isn't perfect.  But for minimal effort, it keeps the game in balance while still allowing some random variance.  Edge cases where you have some preposterous number of a single card wind up mitigated by hard limits on the number of treasure cards allowed to even enter the vault.  You could have 100 or 10,000 of a card, but no more than maybe ~25 will ever be in the vault at one time.

 

It would also take some pretty deliberate shaping to get to that point.  By the time you have 100 of a card, you probably have 20-30 of most others at that AD level.

 
Anyway, this was from back during AD4, but the mechanics should still be true:
 

The more you have of a treasure card, the more likely you are going to see it.  Understanding "why?" and "what should i do?" are slightly more complicated questions,

-----  

Here's a mostly-accurate example of what's going on behind-the-scenes:    

Running a "full" party on AD4/Tier4, expect about 100 of your treasure cards get randomly mixed in with all the regular campaign cards before the location decks are dealt. However, that's not 100 out of all your treasure cards, it is up to 20 each from AD0 through your current Adventure Deck (AD4, in this example).

You could have an absurd number of Smiths or Menagerie Keepers, but it will only screw up the treasure probabilities at the AD0 and AD1 level.  This method certainly won't guarantee a perfect distribution, but it is a simple way to ensure that having a ton of one card won't wreck the chances of seeing every other treasure card [i.e. It will just wreck the chances of seeing other treasure cards at that AD level].

Edited December 31, 2016 by Ethics Gradient