Finished the game on Grandmaster Difficulty, AMA.

[Grandork]

For those that don't know, Grandmaster difficulty is attained by having enough curses (around 10 curses, but some are worth more than others).

Some simple questions that I will answer here:

What are the best potions?

The best potion is the one that draws an extra card. You can get it at level 90. This makes it so you will always have the last say, instead of letting the enemy have it. No more trying to guess how many points the enemy will get on the last, no more losing because the enemy, for some reason, was able to pull 40 points out of his ass on the last card (looking at you Treant).

Other good ones are the +3 Mulligan you start with and the double cast first spells.

What are the best spells?

This depends highly on your build. Mirror Image and Masterful Portal are the two strongest options, for a single reason: Elite Cards. The Elite Cards are beyond broken, and you know what is better than a single Elite Card? Two Elite Cards. Or Five.

Mirror Image will copy a card on the field as a 1 Power Card (Doesn't Play) and Masterful Portal will copy a card in the deck (3 choices) as a 4 Power Card (Plays the Card).

Masterful Thunder is an excellent option that deals 4 to 8 damage and, if it kills the opponent, it deals the overkill damage as damage to adjacent cards.

Masterful Cleanse is quite powerful in a swarm deck and can give up to 18 points with a single cast.

Purify is powerful, since it can unlock a unit of yours, remove poison or spy and also reset the enemies boost.

Transformation is also very good for swarm decks, for 5 Mana you can Transform 3 units into Random. This can give you a huge amount of points.

[snuggleform]

When do you unlock grandmaster difficulty? So far I have unlocked apprentice difficulty as my max, I can't take 10 curses it stops me from going that high.

What are the best curses to take?

How do you decide whether to add or create a unit? (I try to trim the deck down to 10 cards which guarantees I'll see exactly all of them naturally, and add/remove from there)

Does Archmage mode cap out at +100 energy gained as I suspect?

[Grandork]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

When do you unlock grandmaster difficulty? So far I have unlocked apprentice difficulty as my max, I can't take 10 curses it stops me from going that high.

What are the best curses to take?

How do you decide whether to add or create a unit? (I try to trim the deck down to 10 cards which guarantees I'll see exactly all of them naturally, and add/remove from there)

Does Archmage mode cap out at +100 energy gained as I suspect?

You need to finish the game. I.e. get all of the Mutagen. I'm not sure if you can just play normal until you get every mutagen or not. I didn't, I played hardest difficulty possible until Grandmaster. (Tier 1/2/3/4/5)

Curses depends highly on the deck. If you are going swarm deck, then you never want to have your board occupied. If you are going boosting deck, then it's fine to have it occupied a bit. If you really don't interact with the opposing board (you can take the spell that instantly kill an enemy if you really have to) you can take the +3 armor. Reducing the Max Energy is fine too. If you think you can handle it, you can always up the amount of points the enemy starts (don't really recommend this). If you don't much care about fighting elites, you can always take the fog of war. No skipping is fine too.

I play with the Extra Card potion, so that means I play with 11 units. In honesty, you just take a look if there is a really good card for your build and take it, if not, remove until minimum. It's fine to have 1 card over (although, I did lose a run once because my needed card was stuck in the last one).

Never played Archmage mode.

[snuggleform]

Opinions of the different starter decks? Which is best?

What difficulty did you start losing lots of battles on? Which fights gave you the most trouble and how to counter them?

[Grandork]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

Opinions of the different starter decks? Which is best?

What difficulty did you start losing lots of battles on? Which fights gave you the most trouble and how to counter them?

Depends on what part of the game you are. The BEST Deck, as in there's little to no counter to, is a Melusine deck. She's just OP AF. But, it requires you to kill an elite first. Once that is done, you drop her, clone her a couple of times and watch as she gains 10+ Boost per turn. She also has Veil, so she is immune to Poison, Spy and Doom.

Uysogota of Coruo, from the Bulwark deck, is by far the easiest deck to win. He's a powerhouse from start to finish, especially if you mirror him. Only issue is that you can easily lose to Poison and Spy.

Detlaff, from Hive Mind, is another very powerful choice. Clone him before you level him via Elite and consume him. With this deck, I was able to reach close to 6k points against the last boss.

I started losing a lot of battles on Master Difficulty, because I had to adapt my strategy to the ever increasing curses. Learning how many Constrained I could get away with, if the enemy having armor or not was a big factor, how much time I needed per turn, etc... Once you learn to tailor the curses to your deck, they hardly hamper you.

Fights that give a lot of problem depends on the deck. All of the boss fights are piss easy and gimmicky. For the Ice Dragon, you just have to break his right wing (Frozen Units can't be Boosted) and you are solid. The other two are a joke not worth mentioning.

For normal enemies, the ones that are hard to beat usually revolve around stealing your stuff, either through Spy (Inquisitor) or Poison (Frog). For the spy dude, you just play your weak cards first, let the guy mark them and play your strong cards later. For frog, just make sure no unit has too much boost.

For Elites, the one that comes with the 4 Chapters is a ♥♥♥♥ fight, depending on RNG. The trick here is to kill the one Chapter that has the Deathwish (Draw One Card), while having an extra card. This will make the Elite deal 2 damage per turn, which isn't bad. If you kill 3 Chapters in the first turn (By using Masterful Thunder), then he will easily overwhelm you with 4 damage a turn.

Last, but not least, learn to understand what the AI prioritizes when damaging. If you know who they will focus, you can easily make him the scapegoat, while your more important stuff stays alive.