The game keeps giving me completely unwinnable hands.

[MrDugan]

I'm not talking about the times where the game obviously cheats for the sake of progression. Just a regular card battle and the RNG hand that I'm given to start the match (which doesn't change at all if you save scum) is completely unwinnable no matter what combination of cards you try. Which causes you to fail, which causes you to lose your progress on the board and the cards.

Progress should never be RNG based, I don't care if it's a card game. I can't progress to see story/puzzles if the game keeps giving me completely trash hands. The AI has all airborne high damage cards that can straight up end the match in a single turn without having to follow sacrifice rules, and I'm over here struggling just to have enough cards I can sacrifice to get literally anything on the board that can take down enough cards to just not die after a single turn. It was fun up until this point, but I don't know how I'm supposed to progress with this cheesy BS.

[StayPuftMM]

Find all the items around the cabin and there won't be any issue.

[MrDugan]

Originally posted by Garent:

Find all the items around the cabin and there won't be any issue.

I've opened everything I can figure out how to open. There is literally nothing else for me to do in the cabin that I can find. It's just straight RNG screwing me over.

[StayPuftMM]

Then read a guide to tell you how to open the stuff you can't figure out.

[MrDugan]

Originally posted by Garent:

Then read a guide to tell you how to open the stuff you can't figure out.

It's all already opened. You aren't right just because you want to be. It's not a lack of the crappy cards that are in those things, or a knife to gouge an eye out with. It's crappy RNG giving me a garbage hand while the AI literally, blatantly doesn't even have to follow the same rules as me. I have multiple amazing cards in my deck and it's like the better they are, the less likely they are to show up. I had a fantastic death card that literally never came up in my deck. It doesn't help that I straight up cannot play cards because I don't have the sacrifices for it. The AI is just dumping high damage cards all over the table with wild abandon and I can't even play garbage because I have to choose between leaving crap cards on the table to absorb hits, or sacrificing a bunch of cards to play a single decent one. It's trash.

[Mitch2200]

the fact is that eventually youll get a winning hand and it will feel really satisfying, thats what happened to me after a bit of struggling. however, if your REALLY dont with it, and you dont mind the fun being stripped away, you could always just alter your save files

[1.2M | Missingno.]

If you find yourself in a position where you need to draw one specific good card and everything else is a brick, the problem isn't the unlucky draw, the problem is that you let yourself get put in this position to begin with. You need to make your deck more consistent with multiple paths to victory. Don't tunnel vision on one big unit that needs a lot of setup, only to not have a way to survive long enough to even set it up.

In other words, if you're always drawing bad cards, why did you put those bad cards in your deck?

[MrDugan]

Originally posted by Mega Missingno.:

If you find yourself in a position where you need to draw one specific good card and everything else is a brick, the problem isn't the unlucky draw, the problem is that you let yourself get put in this position to begin with. You need to make your deck more consistent with multiple paths to victory. Don't tunnel vision on one big unit that needs a lot of setup, only to not have a way to survive long enough to even set it up.

In other words, if you're always drawing bad cards, why did you put those bad cards in your deck?

A lot of those cards get forced into your deck. The path node where you pick a card based on cost and you just get a random card. Not all the cards that you pick up from opening things in the cabin are exactly winners either.

Before having totems, only having an ant queen and one worker ant isn't exactly great, unless RNG blesses you with both in your hand and you can manage to get both out plus the one from the ant queen so that they're worth having on the table. That's a lot of blood and a lot of if's, and I usually end up with just one in my hand at a time.

I'm not focusing every upgrade into one or two cards. But as soon as I upgrade a card it never shows up again. I upgraded a wolf card in the first map, made it to snow line and never had it get drawn once before I got killed again. Even purposefully trying to avoid picking up cards to have a smaller deck doesn't work, because I'll end up with one of those free pelts and it will always end up in my hand and be basically nothing other than a poor shield.

Constant crappy hands is one thing. It's a card game. Having zero check points and starting from scratch every single time you get a crappy hand is a whole different ballgame.

[RequiemsRose]

RNG does play a bit more of a role than I'd like sometimes but from the limited information I have to go on it sounds as though part of the issue is also managing your deck bloat effectively. You list a few examples of cards that are in your deck and yet never came up again, which implies your deck size got way out of hand. True, you can't fully prevent getting cards that you didn't really want but you can minimize it a lot more as well. (Also, if you haven't yet, the painting puzzle is also incredibly helpful. It can provide you with: the ability to redraw your card options, an extra candle/life, and bee replacements for your squirrels which would allow you to thoroughly abuse the insect tribe totem to your advantage )

When you do have to take a card, try to aim for cards that can effectively be incorporated into your existing strategy. Whether that's because it suits the tribe you have a totem for, it possesses sigils you can use on something else, it stands on its own well, or potentially its a duplicate you may be able to use at mycologists later on. When available, get rid of cards as often as possible as well. Campfires, bone lord, sigil swaps, and mycologist merges can help with this. When that isnt possible, avoid gaining new cards you dont need as much as possible and when that isnt possible either try to keep as much control as possible in the decision (so avoid the cost card selection spot and avoid the tribe selections as well unless you do have a totem that can apply to the card you get). You may also wish to avoid trapper/trader (mostly the trapper, if you visit trader without pelts you just get more teeth). If you can't avoid them, limit your pelt selections instead. You don't have to spend all the teeth you have, you can, but you dont have to. rabbit pelts give common cards, wolf pelts give common cards with random bonus sigils and golden pelts give rare cards. There are valid reasons to have an interest in any of these but if speaking generally, its really only the golden pelts you usually want unless you are after something specific, in which case you only need an absolute max of 5 golden pelts (and thats IF you plan to merge one pair, 4 otherwise). Realistically, you probably won't want all 4 rare offers anyway so less is often preferred.

[StayPuftMM]

Originally posted by MrDugan:

You aren't right just because you want to be.

Getting a little aggressive there for no reason. Do you have the bees that replace squirrels?

[bobhome2]

As a new player, I'm getting a little annoyed by the bloat/management. But I'm also pretty sure that there are ways to mitigate this in the future. I'm definitely enjoying it, though I wish I were better at it, haha. But all I can do, regardless, is keep throwing my poor sacrificial person at the table.

[Huge Beard Guy]

Originally posted by Garent:

Originally posted by MrDugan:

You aren't right just because you want to be.

Getting a little aggressive there for no reason. Do you have the bees that replace squirrels?

That's what I thought. I thought it was obvious that you read:

Originally posted by MrDugan:

Originally posted by Garent:

Find all the items around the cabin and there won't be any issue.

I've opened everything I can figure out how to open. There is literally nothing else for me to do in the cabin that I can find.

and presumed that there was still stuff in the cabin he hadn't figured out yet <> not that everything was already seemingly figured out.

[MrDugan]

Originally posted by Garent:

Originally posted by MrDugan:

You aren't right just because you want to be.

Getting a little aggressive there for no reason. Do you have the bees that replace squirrels?

Fact of the matter is that I already identified my issue. Bad hands due to RNG. The fact that they were wholly and entirely dismissive of that, and insisted that they must be right and it's totally my lack of ability to gouge an eye out with a knife that's the issue, is far more aggressive than me telling them off for being dismissive. But no one is coming at them. I'm just sending that same energy back to them.

It's obvious when you've hit a wall with progression in the cabin, and even guides will tell you that you can't solve every single thing right away. It had nothing to do with the puzzles and everything to do with card RNG.

Someone else was decent enough to actually address my issue and mentioned deck bloat. Other than NOT solving every puzzle and leaving some of those cards out, and then heavily prioritizing a path through the maps that limits card pick ups, there isn't a way to mitigate deck bloat. And having to focus on not picking up cards honestly doesn't sound like much better design than the seemingly poorly weighted RNG on drawing a decent hand.

TBH though, a large part of my complaint is that I'm just insanely tired of every single game being a rouge-like/lite. I wouldn't mind getting bad hands nearly as much if I didn't have to start all the way over from the first map every time. It's zero fun to me. I just want to play the rest of the game without reading the same prospector dialogue over and over.

[1.2M | Missingno.]

You're blaming far too much on a single hand without considering any of the factors that led you up to that point. Are you absolutely certain it's always just the RNG that's killing you every single time? And evidently only you, no one else?

Deckbuilding roguelikes are hard, and sometimes it can be hard to even identify where you went wrong since the littlest decisions can snowball later on. If you can record a run and show us what you're doing, I bet people can give you more targeted advice.

[MrDugan]

Originally posted by Mega Missingno.:

You're blaming far too much on a single hand without considering any of the factors that led you up to that point. Are you absolutely certain it's always just the RNG that's killing you every single time? And evidently only you, no one else?

Deckbuilding roguelikes are hard, and sometimes it can be hard to even identify where you went wrong since the littlest decisions can snowball later on. If you can record a run and show us what you're doing, I bet people can give you more targeted advice.

Not a single hand. It happens quite often, once I'm about midway through the wetlands. I'll get given every bad card that I have no idea how I'm supposed to avoid picking up, and even good cards, like ant cards, will be given to me in a combination that makes them all weak.

If every bad hand is somehow entirely my fault and not RNG screwing me over repeatedly, then it's deck bloat. I'd really like to know how I'm expected to not have bad cards when the game just repeatedly gives them to me. You don't have any control over what the game offers you, or gives you when you pick from one of the more random nodes.

[StayPuftMM]

Could you answer my question, please?