What is my goal when picking cards?

[Red Earth]

I've gotten as far as the third chapter and I'm still not sure what I'm doing.
Obviously the point of placing tiles is to place enough to spawn the boss, but any tile can do that. Also, there are specific resources that drop from location or enemies. But what about when I'm just doing to fight the boss? What's the difference between a grove and a graveyard? Why do I want spiders spawning? Loot and experience are needed but I don't know if there's significant differences between enemies, and which ones I WANT to fight, and which are meant as the "cost" of some other card. Are Harpies something I want to fight, or are they the price I pay for the peak the boost health? Are vampires worth slaying, or are they just the cost of getting counts lands? I assume the tree village, bandit camp, and goblin camp are all meant as as the cost of using the other cards they spawn from and not something you want... right?

[Nibbie]

I know different enemies give different amounts of XP and quality of items, with the general rule being harder = better rewards, but I don't know the particulars of enemies. Theoretically the more enemies you fight the better, because you level up more and have more chances of loot, but obviously there is a point where there are too many enemies and you get overwhelmed and die. The general idea is to fight as many enemies as you can safely handle, so the camps and such can be positives if you can handle them, but negative if you can't.

[Slyke]

In short it's about balancing the strength of particular enemies with the strengths of your current character while taking into account tile bonuses.

Originally posted by Red Earth:

...Are Harpies something I want to fight, or are they the price I pay for the peak the boost health?...

In other words, it's both and it's up to you to figure out the best proportions or you could end up with the worst of both worlds.

[LordMondayIX]

Matchups, synergies, and knowing what your character most wants to scale.

Warrior likes good loot, Rogue likes killing as many enemies as he can, and Necro likes both.

Warrior is good against enemies with high attack speeds but low damage per hit that he can abuse his high defense and counter against, but suffers against enemies that deal magic damage or can crit. Rogue hates enemies with attacks that can't be evaded or reflect damage on hit, as well as punishing a high attack rate or being immune to damage to all (so, ratwolves). Necro is the hardest to build for since he both wants to kill a lot of enemies to maximize the benefit from suburbs, but also wants high quality loot to scale. My only real recommendation there is scorch worms, which have a disproportionately high 85% drop chance for tier 4 loot.

Second to that, know what landscapes and roadside tiles you synergize or don't synergize with, and you should pretty much always keep 'oblivion' in the deck. It's just too useful not to. Villages are really good, bandit camps are really bad.

[talemore]

Defeat the boss or complete the world.

Up to you what you want to fight.

It's your world.