How should I be approaching "pelts" and my gold teeth?

[Neonetik]

I've got a decent run going (I think) and would like to try and keep it up, but I just got to an event in the snowy area where I'm being offered pelts, and am a bit unsure of what a good course of action is.

I am being offered a free rabbit pelt, which I can take and ignore the others, or I could buy rabbit pelt, wolf pelt, or golden pelt. I have 14 gold teeth, so I could get a golden pelt plus a rabbit pelt, plus the free rabbit pelt of course, but I'm not sure if I should be saving my gold teeth for something else.

What should I be doing with pelts and should I spend my money on these? Should I go for gold since I can afford it?

Thank you for any advice about this.

[Truth_X_ile]

You are given a free pelt to begin with, it's not a choice, the choice is that afterwards you can buy more pelts, depending on how good of the cards you have already, you'd determine if you want more pelts or less

I suggest going with 1 of each, the free rabbit pelt you are given, buy a wolf pelt & a golden pelt, that is all

Mostly I have 1 rabbit which is given for free, 2 wolf & 1 gold, if I'm after the first boss & my run isn't that great, I'll take 1 more wolf & 1 more gold so I'd have 1 rabbit 3 wolf & 2 gold

The offset of having more pelts can be bad if there are flying enemies & your draws can end up being pelts causing dire situations, so it's a risk reward

Sometimes the trader won't come up either, or in the wrong path, so that's also a risk

My Favorite Person on Steam, Just Don't Tell Anyone

Good Luck & Have Fun

[RequiemsRose]

The trapper (the one selling you pelts) becomes something of a personal preference as far as how you approach it. Overall though, teeth are basically your in game currency and the trader (the one who sells cards in exchange for those pelts you pick up) is about the only real use for them so you don't have to worry about saving those teeth for any other use when making this decision.

The tradeoff that DOES come with this decision is that pelt cards count as free (so they might end up in your starting hand as part of the "fair hand mechanic"), have no offensive capability, and clog up your deck...so for the duration between picking up your pelts at the trapper, and trading them off for cards at the trader, you just have a bunch of functionally "junk" cards clogging up your deck and making it harder to live long enough to even make that trade. That said, the kind of pelt determines what "tier" of cards you get offered at the trader when you do get there. rabbit pelts get exchanged for common cards, wolf pelts get exchanged for uncommon cards and gold pelts are exchanged for rare cards (the same kinds you see at the end of a boss fight in that little box). Worth noting that while the common (rabbit) and the uncommon (wolf) tiers of cards will have 8 options available to choose from, the rare cards (gold) will only give you 4 options at a time so even if you want to grab literally every single card that is offered you will never really need to take more than that (and realistically you dont actually want every possible card offered).

[Digitalher0]

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

The trapper (the one selling you pelts) becomes something of a personal preference as far as how you approach it. Overall though, teeth are basically your in game currency and the trader (the one who sells cards in exchange for those pelts you pick up) is about the only real use for them so you don't have to worry about saving those teeth for any other use when making this decision.

The tradeoff that DOES come with this decision is that pelt cards count as free (so they might end up in your starting hand as part of the "fair hand mechanic"), have no offensive capability, and clog up your deck...so for the duration between picking up your pelts at the trapper, and trading them off for cards at the trader, you just have a bunch of functionally "junk" cards clogging up your deck and making it harder to live long enough to even make that trade. That said, the kind of pelt determines what "tier" of cards you get offered at the trader when you do get there. rabbit pelts get exchanged for common cards, wolf pelts get exchanged for uncommon cards and gold pelts are exchanged for rare cards (the same kinds you see at the end of a boss fight in that little box). Worth noting that while the common (rabbit) and the uncommon (wolf) tiers of cards will have 8 options available to choose from, the rare cards (gold) will only give you 4 options at a time so even if you want to grab literally every single card that is offered you will never really need to take more than that (and realistically you dont actually want every possible card offered).

This is the best answer you could have gotten. If you have a good deck going I recommend avoiding the trapper as pelts clog up the deck and require you to hit a specific event to trade them for something usable.

[RequiemsRose]

Worth mentioning there are some extra considerations that may come into play but most of those are "advanced" enough to potentially count as spoilers to a degree. I'll put those tips in spoiler text as a result though so you can choose if you want to know now or just tinker and find out for yourself:

Regarding a boss you may or may not have seen yet:
there is a boss later on in progression that also uses pelts for one of the fight mechanics. While it is often not worth it to grab extra pelts specifically for this fight, any pelts you do happen to keep in your hand during that fight will work in your favor on the second stage of the boss fight. You rarely want to bank on this, but if you are going to be stuck with pelts later game it's a potentially good time for it

Regarding a map node you may or may not have seen yet:
You have to go through a few runs before you unlock a node that looks like a mushroom. Not sure if you've gotten that far yet but that mushroom node is the mycologist. It's gimmick is that it will either merge duplicate cards or if no duplicates are present it will provide you with one. When the mycologist merges cards it combines the effects, like damage or sigils. You may occasionally want to grab an extra pelt card compared to what you plan to pick up because pelts can also be merged, and as long as a single merged pelt for that tier exists ALL the given card options will already be merged. (so if you grab 4 golden pelts, merge 2 of them together, and THEN visit the trader with your merged pelt and 2 normal ones, you can choose 3 of the 4 rare card options but all 3 of those cards will already be merged and effectively doubled in stats

[keybounce]

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

The tradeoff that DOES come with this decision is that pelt cards count as free (so they might end up in your starting hand as part of the "fair hand mechanic"),

A free card is never considered a "fair hand" card. So you can start with free cards in your initial hand, but that's because two of those are random from your deck. The 4th starting card will be a "fair" card if possible.

(Roughly speaking, a fair card costs exactly 2 energy, or as many bones as you can generate from free brittle cards (nb: that's probably a bug, it really should be 2 bones if your hand has a brittle card. Only act 2 can possibly give you two free brittle cards), or a playable mox, or as many blood (minimum 1) as you can generate from sacrificing free cards (this actually means you can start with a 2 blood card on turn 1, makes blood a significantly more powerful opening).