What's the benefit to increasing Covenant rank?

[DeadPoolX]

Is there some in-game benefit to raising your Covenant rank, beyond getting into a higher cup tier or maybe a new card visual?

I'm asking because I've played and beaten this game many times without taking on any Covenant ranks, but I've repeatedly failed at even achieving Cov1. Seriously, I've played Cov1 with every combination of all four groups at least 60 times and each time I've been defeated.

All I want to know is if there's a reason to put myself through this boring grind. If there's no actual benefit to this ridiculous treadmill beyond going to a more difficult Cov tier or a new card visual — none of which matters to me in the slightest — then I can go back to playing without even trying to raise my Covenant rank, which was FAR more entertaining and overall fair (despite the fact I still lose over 2/3 the time).

I don't want to hear chest-thumping bragging about how "easy" Cov1 is for you. Unless I specifically ask for your opinion, don't give it. I really don't care about your thoughts on difficultly or anything else for that matter. Please just answer the question.

[???]

The only benefits are higher difficulty, bragging rights and getting the achievements.

[Loviatar]

The only potential benefit is that if you play Cov1 or higher, your starting deck is no longer just base cards. You start with 5 random cards (2 commons from your selected clan and 2 from your allied, and a single card of greater rarity from your base clan). This leads to your deck being more versatile and stronger than just the base deck.

While not necessary to play beyond Cov0, keep in mind that the Last Divinity DLC requires playing on Cov1 or higher to play with the Wurmkin clan or use the Pact shard mechanics.

Personally, I find Cov1+ a more interesting level to play at, due to the randomized extra cards you receive. It varies the gameplay and can help inform your card choices as you go through the game.

When I was first starting playing the game, I was pretty sure I wouldn't get beyond the first couple of Covenant tiers. But then I got it in mind to try for the card border unlocks, which meant eventually getting to Cov25. It was a bit of a grind at times, but I also found it an interesting and even fun challenge that I eventually achieved. But in the end it's all in what you want out of the game. If Cov0 is your fun zone, that's what you should play, but you may enjoy things at some point in trying to work out deck synergies to get more satisfactory wins under your belt.

[BeastofBones]

@DeadPoolX

Think of it this way. Playing with no Covenant on is balancing the game around the idea that you don't know what cards fit what your deck is trying to do or what upgrades they prefer, or what the upcoming enemies and bosses do, and will thus make mistakes drafting and playing your cards. You're given lots of leeway to play unoptimally, but you still have a good chance to win, because the difficulty has been lowered to be forgiving of errors. It's the default difficulty that first time players will encounter, and has been balanced appropriately so that you still have a decent chance of winning.

Cov 1 despite what's been said on this board before in other topics, is actually quite a big step up from no Covenant. Heavy units are much tankier, and bosses have significantly more health, like the final boss immediately gets doubled health, which means you actually need to think about "scaling" or buffing your damage for relentless combat, as well as possibly including cards to provide sustain in relentless, which are often clan specific solutions (regen, armor, lifesteal, damage shield, stealth, daze, etc.). On Covenant zero, you can often get away with tanking with just raw HP. Cov zero is honestly just to get your feet wet, and Cov 1 immediately pushes you to start digging deeper into the mechanics of the game, or you'll likely take a loss.

Cov 25 assumes that you have decent familiarity with the game as you'll have played many runs by the point you get there. The expectation is that you're aware of what enemies and bosses will do, how to draft cards that either synergize well together or answer problems, and to plan ahead looking at the map for future routing. Playing on Cov 25 significantly reduces the number of incorrect decisions you can afford to make before the run is lost.

Why play on Cov 25? I think you could make a very strong argument that Cov 25 is the "intended" difficulty of the game if you plan to play the game long term, and all the Covenant levels building up to it are to help ease you into the experience. Nobody starts knowing how to play the game well, the game is slowly ramping up the difficulty so that your increased knowledge is matched by the game's expectation that you make less mistakes, hopefully keeping the challenge level not constant, but reasonable. Once you get to the end at Cov 25, the game should still present a reasonable challenge despite your knowledge, and thus offer good replayability. If you only ever play on no Covenant or Covenant level 1, you have absolutely no reason to explore many aspects of the game, because you simply don't need them to win.

If you've played other games, like take an FPS like Payday 2 for example, there's a good comparison to be had. The lower difficulties are there to help you familiarize yourself with the game, you can afford to make mistakes like standing out in the open for several seconds without being punished with being downed, or standing out near a bulldozer again won't instantly down you, you'll be damaged, but are given time to react and move away. The higher difficulties assume that you're already familiar with the game, and if you stand out in the open or YOLO at enemies, you'll quickly be downed as the punish. If you don't handle those snipers and bulldozers right quick, again you'll be punished. Conversely, you feel good and know that you're doing things right if you're not going down.

If you prefer reading, a good place to get started is LDAP's Monster Train Resources on the Web in the Steam Guides section. It has some basics, but mostly links to other guides covering specific topics.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2324004801

[DeadPoolX]

Thanks! You guys explained that all really well, and I appreciate it. :)

BTW, I didn't mean to sound so harsh in my original post, so if anyone took any offense, I apologize.

[Siozen]

The challenge. Although these days with some deck combos it should be because one is a masochist.

[winterplantkill]

I have reached only Cov 13 so far. It has taken multiple tries to go up each level. I don't really care about bragging rights or achievements, it's just the sense of achievement I get for myself when i beat each one for the first time that keeps me going.
I am not a great player, it has taken me a lot of hours to get this far but I am getting more and more out of the game, much more than I ever thought I would when I was struggling at the lower levels.

[Lance]

If you are posting something on a public forum you are specifically asking for people's opinions. If you don't want people to respond about the difficulty ( or lack of it at the level you're at ), don't talk about difficulty. In short, if you don't want to see those opinions, don't post.

To struggle this badly at cov 0/1 you have to be doing something horribly, horribly wrong. Eventually you're going to figure our what that is and then you're either going to stop playing completely, because of how boring the game would be at cov 0 at that point, or you're going to want to increase your difficulty level. That's the reason to advance through the ranks, because once you've figured out the basics those low level runs aren't really much fun.

[BeastofBones]

So like, the guy already got a reasonable response, and apologized in a later post, and you still want to take a shot at him?

Oh wait, you're the guy who posted Solgard was the best champion pre-DLC right? Gotcha, carry on.