I can't even beat Covenant 1, help.

[Pokelot]

I keep reading that other people are having a really easy time at this game and I'm just not. I feel that I pick decent cards and try to exploit them, when I can. But a lot of the time I just don't get very good cards/upgrades and get annihilated by bosses like the 8 Stealth boss. Can anyone give a breakdown of what they exploit with each of the clans when played? I usually do the following.

Hellhorned: Exploit attack and rage, multistrike if I can ever get it
Awoken: exploit tanky sweepers and heals
Umbra: exploit space expansion, gorge and morsel creators
Melting: exploit increasing burnout , I guess?
Stygian: exploit frostbite multiplication or spell weakness sweeps

[Zeel Ara]

First step is to not look at the factions like that. Don't build for some perceived "Archetype". Focus exclusively on evaluating you current situation and taking things that will improve that. Your objective is not to build toward some conceptual goal, but rather to prepare yourself for the next fight (and the seraph variation you will be facing). Look at what you are going to face and what options will be presented to you, and play around that. There's obviously more to it, but it's the most basic mistake that people new to the genre makes; conceptualizing builds instead of playing the current situation.

Try out this approach and I'll all but guarantee that you'll see improved results. After that there's a million and three new lessons you can learn and things you can improve, but the above is the most fundamental skill that you will benefit from learning early on.

[Miltiplayer]

Remember that a bigger deck doesn't mean it's better.

Take cards that fit in your deck, but don't feel obliged to always add a card. You can ignore new cards and skip them for a small monetary reward.
If your deck is smaller, you draw the cards you want more often.

Use "duplicating cards" and "purging cards" spaces on the board te make your deck more lean and focussed on the thing that is working. Remember: duplicating cards that have upgrades, copies the upgrades as well!!! Duplicating gives you more acces to your strong cards and purging cards makes your deck more consistent by removing the (for your current run) garbage.

[Othadon]

Alright so this game presents to you 3 questions any deck you build needs to answer.

How do you kill back row?
How do you kill bosses?
And how do you kill waves with 2 heavy enemies?

Any deck that is able to answer these 3 problems is very likely to succeed.

This will help you discern what cards can help when drafting. If you already have a holdover vent or a monster with sweep, or frostbite shark, you certainly dont need another card that helps with backrow. If you already have a crucible collector, or frost tethys, or multistrike alpha fiend you probably dont need to draft things to help you kill bosses anymore. Double heavies is most often the trickiest problem to solve.

But generally if you keep these questions in mind while drafting cards, you will avoid deck bloat, and be able to create successful strategies.

[sleepy_worm]

Othadon's answer is the best advice. I struggle to express it that clearly. Late game, I often take the gold during a card draft because my deck is already complete.

Anyway, here are some of my mental shortcuts when deciding what my deck needs when drafting. If I say +10, I really mean +10 or +20.

Back row:
HH - Vent with +10 / Molting Imp with Endless / move tanks with Hidden Passage
Aw - spikes / Husk Hermit with Quick / Glimmer with +10 / Vine Grasp
SG - Titan Sentry with Endless / targeted spells / Tethys with Sweep
Um - Penumbra with Trample / Mine Collapse with +10 / Antumbra Assault with +10
MR - A Fatal Melting / move tanks with Dripfall / Exploding Candle (artifact)

Boss:
HH - champion / Alpha Fiend / floor stacking with Hidden Passage
Aw - Thorned Hollow / Animus of Will and Razorsharp Edge behind a tank / Awoken Hollow and Adaptive Mutation / floor stacking with Restoring Retreat
SG - champion / Hoarfrost Effigy with Holdover / Lodestone Totem and Nameless Siren (or any high damage unit) / Ice and Pyre + spell weakness
Um - champion / Crucible Collector / Alloyed Construct / Overgorger / Furnace Tap
MR - champion / Big Sludge / Legion of Wax with Multistrike or Largestone / Bounty Stalker / Wickless Baron with Multistrike if I'm desperate / Engulfed in Smoke with Holdover / floor stacking with Dripfall
Clanless: Dante or Spikedriver Colony

Heavy Enemies:
For many clans, boss strategies can work on heavies (not spikes, lifesteal or any other "pure outlast" strategies), but the difficult part will be setting this up earlier than the last wave. Moving shield units out of the way with ascend/descend cards is very useful. Piercing armor is more niche and outside of a Sting build I never get it to work, unless you count Inferno. Here are some strategies that don't tend to work on bosses but should help with heavy enemies.

HH - Inferno / move shield units with Railbeater (tricky)
Aw - Vine Grasp units behind shield units / Bramble Lash
SG - Lodestone Totem in the top room and let the Pyre kill them / damage spells
Um - Blazing Bolts
MR - Entombed Explosive or Remnant Host / Sacrificial Resurrection (also good for clearing out trash from your deck)

Now that I look at it, that is very long for a "mental shortcut". The list gets a lot shorter when you only have to worry about two clans, though. Good luck!

[Dreth Syg]

I'm still relatively new to the game with only 46 hours played and am only Covenant 13, but a lot of what the others said is good advice. I would add that you should do the trials whenever possible, even if you're taking a bit of Pyre damage doing so. You need to get good at evaluating when your deck can handle a trial or not though. My last run I had to skip the last one that gives +400 gold because I knew it might kill me and I didn't need the gold to win.
Like others said, even if you've had success with certain builds, you're going to have to adapt from one game to the next.
Think about what spells would benefit from Permafrost, Holdover, or Doublestack upgrades to really make your deck click. I usually Permafrost cards to deal with bosses or in case of emergency. Furnace Tap is a crappy spell in most instances, but if you freeze it then cast it on your heavy hitter during the boss wave it can easily push you over the top, particularly if you've managed to Doublestack it too.
My last game I didn't have the strongest unit lineup, but it was able to hold on just well enough. I had a plan to deal with Seraph with a Permafrosted Forever Consumed. Due to draw order I had to stick my Icy Cilopyhte with Multistrike on the 2nd floor instead of the 1st. Seraph wiped all my units on the the first 2 floors and still had a decent chunk of life left. But I had put 10+ spell weakness stacks on him. I had a couple of Kindles in my hand for good measure and ended up blasting him for 7,200 damage when I only had some morsels sitting on the 3rd floor. As Umbra/Stygian, if I had just kept investing in units and filling out every floor I may well have lost.

[Dreth Syg]

Also, if you're having trouble with the stealth boss, just put your main line up on floor 2 or 3 and then have a secondary line up of units below them. This way he will lose most if not all of his stealth by wiping out your decoys, and your main group should be able to win easily at that point.

[Lord Nightcrest]

Regardless of clan, focus on a limited number of cards that have some basic synergy and upgrade them. Purge as many as you can from the remaining basic cards. Don't pick a card every time it is offered unless it makes sense for your synergy.

Once you focus on removing cards instead of adding them, Cov1 becomes easy.

[Ichthyic]

also, don't forget: the very VERY first thing you should do on any run is... look at what type of Seraph you will have, and make sure you can beat that type of seraph by the time you get there.

seraph gonna eat your spells? pad your deck with extra spells, and try to put "no consume" buffs on your most important spells.

seraph going to remove half your buffs/debuffs? either look for things that can really really stack buffs/debuffs, or else try a passive (like thorns), spell damage (lots of spell weakness plus some good damage spells), or frostbite deck (multistrike on units with frostbite damage, add spells that boost frostbite damage, etc).

I think most of my losses early on were not paying enough attention to what kind of seraph I was going to face.

don't plan your deck ENTIRELY for seraph, but do spend around... 25-35% of your picks making sure you can win that fight.

[DJDiceZ]

Just want to say that it's okay to struggle. Most people don't even reach covenant 5. But if you keep playing and try to improve, pay attention to things like why you died, what your deck was lacking, learn to identify the strenghts and weaknesses of your cards and enemies, avoid blaming rng and balance, etc... you'll eventually get better if you truly want to, no matter how slowly. Do ask yourself what you'll need and what you lack for the upcoming fights throughout a run, and how you can patch up those shortcomings.

For example, being able to tell that you died because your units couldn't even attack as they had no way to tank hits, or that your units had too little damage so they weren't able to stop enemies from reaching the pyre, can make or break the difference between someone who gets better and someone who doesn't. Sometimes you might be out of luck with cards and shops, but those instances are rare and even then, it's always better to assume you could have done better.

I'll elaborate on one of the advices given above: People will usually tell you to thin out your deck by removing cards. Your starting cards (stewards, weak spells like torch, etc...) are often the ones people will suggest, but it's not an always applicable at all times rule. To be precise, it's more about removing your weakest cards than it is about having a thin deck or getting those stewards out asap. You want cards across your deck to be as consistently strong as possible. Preferably, all cards should either be strong on their own, or enable you to setup the strenght of your deck faster, easier, better. So keep in mind that while most of the time, your stewards will be your weakest units, it's not always the case, and sometimes you might not have as many units than you'd want, in which case removing them too soon could be counterproductive.

[Duros001]

THIS! Card bloat! :D I was struggling to pass Coven 1 and read this page, now I'm Coven 2 :P

Quality over quantity, it seems so obvious now! Whats the point in having strong cards if the trash cards keep getting drawn

Thank you all so much

[Livy]

Wyrmkin/Awoken is an easy combo to unlock cov 25.
Wyrmkin gives you a tanky champion that can buff your other minions, while awoken got heals to keep it alive and easy access to sweep/multistrike/quick minions.

[tilemon]

I got stuck for the longest at a pretty low covenant until I looked up broken Combos.
They seem to be the only way to reliably win without getting 20 loses between each win.

I did Hellhorned / Melting Remnant both were set to the Alt.
Transcendimp with endless pretty sure I was able to get Burnout 1 on it a few times too.
Ashes of the Fallen artifact would make this even more busted.
Molten Encasement with endless was another thing I would aim for. Each turn I would Put it in front so it would die, and it would give everyone else 2 stealth. could stack A lot of stealth with it.
Consumer of Crowns was my heavy hitter, which cost less for each Imp, I would try to get Multistrike on it, then clone it once so I could have 2. with the Imp buffs or stealth I had no problem.

After a while I got bored and swapped to Awoken/Hellhorned
Shattered Shell with a Alpha Fiend merged into it.
Put that with the Champion that gives everyone haste. if you can also give it Multistike. Put it on in front.
Each turn It will attack First, Hit all enemies gain +5 attack for each enemy hit. And each enemy it Kills it will get another +3. It gets stupid strong stupid fast. I would use Armor spells on it just in case the enemy had some silly ability like Extinguish damage monster. I would use any attack boost spells on the champion since it has x3 attacks by the last stage.

[riverslq]

Publicado originalmente por Ratley:

First step is to not look at the factions like that. Don't build for some perceived "Archetype". Focus exclusively on evaluating you current situation and taking things that will improve that. Your objective is not to build toward some conceptual goal, but rather to prepare yourself for the next fight (and the seraph variation you will be facing). Look at what you are going to face and what options will be presented to you, and play around that. There's obviously more to it, but it's the most basic mistake that people new to the genre makes; conceptualizing builds instead of playing the current situation.

Try out this approach and I'll all but guarantee that you'll see improved results. After that there's a million and three new lessons you can learn and things you can improve, but the above is the most fundamental skill that you will benefit from learning early on.

2 years later and that has still got to be the worst advice ever for this game.

wow.

[Limdood]

holy necro batman....

and...not really. Its simply saying "don't force what isn't there."

Trying to force multistrike when you may not see it pays off....sometimes, but it won't make you consistent. Every hellhorned deck doesn't need a bunch of rage. Every awoken deck doesn't need to include a sweeper. Umbra decks can function without morsels. Melting decks can function without their units dying. Stygian decks don't need to blast damage spells endlessly. Work with what you're shown, not what you want.

[76561199418627359]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.