Whatever: What is the optimal strategy?

[FoxyBox]

A few things I've noticed in playing Whatever:

1) High-hitting cards are best. Status-granting cards that deal 0 damage are next to worthless. Payn's card sounds great on paper but that lack of dishing out damage makes any deck he's in very dependent on his letters matching with the rest of the pack.
2) Letter overlap seems to be king. It's important that all or most of your cards use the same set of letters, so you're dishing damage nearly every turn.
3) Keep it lean. As with all deckbuilding mechanics, 6 is the minimum. You'll play with 4 of those 6 at the start of the game. Synergize six cards and you'll be golden nearly every time.
4) Spread of letters also seems important, but not as important as letter overlap. It seems better to have a tight spread of letters in common with each of your cards than to have a wide array of unique letters across your deck.

At first I thought it was best to have variety in the deck. Lots of letters = more chance to "hit" in the letter row. But it seems better to have fewer letters that let all your cards go off, with little variance to activate the effects of each card.

Am I on to something here or is there a different, better strategy?

[paulbbg]

O decks seem really strong right now, mainly because you get TOLLO out the gate, and you can usually farm gel cubes for TRIGOO and GOO which are both pretty solid, and GOGGO has synergies with all above, add a damage buff card like CRYPT and you can get some pretty insane single letter combos. I am looking to expand the playable cards post 1.034, right now we have bang on 40 cards, id like to expand it to maybe double that, just to get a few more good synergy cards on mobs that can be used beyond O.

Ive seen some people beat Orthos on stream however not using the cheese above, having a more balanced high base damage deck (headbutler, piper, etc)

[FoxyBox]

Originally posted by paulbbg:

O decks seem really strong right now, mainly because you get TOLLO out the gate, and you can usually farm gel cubes for TRIGOO and GOO which are both pretty solid, and GOGGO has synergies with all above, add a damage buff card like CRYPT and you can get some pretty insane single letter combos. I am looking to expand the playable cards post 1.034, right now we have bang on 40 cards, id like to expand it to maybe double that, just to get a few more good synergy cards on mobs that can be used beyond O.

Ive seen some people beat Orthos on stream however not using the cheese above, having a more balanced high base damage deck (headbutler, piper, etc)

Interesting assessment! I've been avoiding GOO and BIGOO because of the damage they deal to yourself.

Some other things I've noticed:

5) Longer words tend to have more vowels, and then vowels stack in your deck, becoming high damage dealers.
6) Shorter words activate more frequently. This is kind of a no brainer but can affect how you think about constructing your deck - if you want to cycle cards more or less frequently.

I think stacking letters is key though. I'd struggle to put CRYPT in with an "O" themed deck based on the discovery that using a turn or two to fill his word out is never as advantageous as hitting those wombo combos with a stacked letter or two. The GOGGO card is insane for this.

Also can I say just how cool it is to talk to the developers so candidly in Steam discussions? It's been great! I love your game ^_^

[paulbbg]

Hey appreciate it Red Fox, its hard to get good feedback unless I get into the mix and talk to people about their experiences, so talking on forums and streams is an important part of it. I imagine we will have a few more conversations here about cards and stuff post 1.034 update, infact, I might even post the full "planned" card list here sometime after, that way the community can get involved in seeing if anything stands out as a bit ♥♥♥♥/OP, maybe there might be some cool ideas for cards also.

I didn't spent much time adding in whatever, it was more sort of a running joke that RPG's need cards and fishing, and here we are...

[FoxyBox]

Originally posted by paulbbg:

I didn't spent much time adding in whatever, it was more sort of a running joke that RPG's need cards and fishing, and here we are...

lol I love that this is why it's in the game

[Nespadh]

Since there is no real way to defend in the game, I just put everything in maximising damage output as fast as possible. So I only take cards that do 2 damage and cards that adds another monster and I've had no problem beating everyone. From what I understand the last person you can play whatever with is Orthos? So I figure he's the toughest opponent.

[Rufert]

It would be nice being able to see the opponents hand somehow though. As is their turns are pretty confusing especially when their cards flash up pretty quickly.

Oh oh! Perhaps a card that removes letters from the opponents pool?

Or wildcards removing said letters from the opponents pool as well?

Edit: Also it's not a card game, I don't play cardgames. The abilities are just oblong.

[paulbbg]

Originally posted by Nespadh:

Since there is no real way to defend in the game, I just put everything in maximising damage output as fast as possible. So I only take cards that do 2 damage and cards that adds another monster and I've had no problem beating everyone. From what I understand the last person you can play whatever with is Orthos? So I figure he's the toughest opponent.

Correct though that may change in the near future.... Currently Orthos is the hardest player.

[Naïvety]

Goggo is overpowered. he only takes two letters to activate and does at least 2 damage with either one along with scaling your damage by adding another source. When combined with bigoo and trigoo it just makes it that much more powerful. If you have those three on the field and get an OG couple it does 14/40 damage and also adds an additional card in a single turn, it's nuts.

[Chronoshade]

I've been playing Zealot, headbutler, law, goggo, orthos and garmatha and have been able to beat orthos pretty consistently. Setting aside how strong goggo is (2 letters to get a big benefit while also dealing dmg is too good to pass up) just having headbutler, zealot, law and garmatha in hand is enough to get some great turns with A T and L and only having to find one W to make the whole hand better seems pretty good.

All of these cards are straightforward to get without farming enemies except Zealot with is from a Crypticism but I don't remmber which

[paulbbg]

Originally posted by Naïvety:

Goggo is overpowered. he only takes two letters to activate and does at least 2 damage with either one along with scaling your damage by adding another source. When combined with bigoo and trigoo it just makes it that much more powerful. If you have those three on the field and get an OG couple it does 14/40 damage and also adds an additional card in a single turn, it's nuts.

Yeh his card is on the "rejig the end effect" on his card to make it either passive, or slightly negative (1 damage to yourself maybe) just to push it toward a non complete card. I am still figuring out the best position for it, since its a fairly easy card to get.

[Credissimo]

I prioritize getting additional letters because I hate being out of options. For the same reason I like to have a variety of different letters so I'm not dependent on having to draw something specific and it taps into ressources that would otherwise be useless. Few vowels, more rare consonants. Because that is what you will be drawing most of the time. When you go all in, everything's the same, you may explode once in a while, but you are not flexible.

[Lord Bummington]

Originally posted by paulbbg:

O decks seem really strong right now, mainly because you get TOLLO out the gate, and you can usually farm gel cubes for TRIGOO and GOO which are both pretty solid, and GOGGO has synergies with all above, add a damage buff card like CRYPT and you can get some pretty insane single letter combos. I am looking to expand the playable cards post 1.034, right now we have bang on 40 cards, id like to expand it to maybe double that, just to get a few more good synergy cards on mobs that can be used beyond O.

Ive seen some people beat Orthos on stream however not using the cheese above, having a more balanced high base damage deck (headbutler, piper, etc)

I wasn't aware enemies dropped cards.

[paulbbg]

Originally posted by Lord Bummington:

Originally posted by paulbbg:

O decks seem really strong right now, mainly because you get TOLLO out the gate, and you can usually farm gel cubes for TRIGOO and GOO which are both pretty solid, and GOGGO has synergies with all above, add a damage buff card like CRYPT and you can get some pretty insane single letter combos. I am looking to expand the playable cards post 1.034, right now we have bang on 40 cards, id like to expand it to maybe double that, just to get a few more good synergy cards on mobs that can be used beyond O.

Ive seen some people beat Orthos on stream however not using the cheese above, having a more balanced high base damage deck (headbutler, piper, etc)

I wasn't aware enemies dropped cards.

Yeh most enemies in the game drop a card or two, per type, drop rates are pretty low so it might feel random at times.

[Lord Bummington]

Originally posted by paulbbg:

Originally posted by Lord Bummington:

I wasn't aware enemies dropped cards.

Yeh most enemies in the game drop a card or two, per type, drop rates are pretty low so it might feel random at times.

Gotcha, I was about to ask if it was random since I've fought a few slimes but never got their cards, guess that explains it.

[FoxyBox]

Originally posted by Lord Bummington:

Originally posted by paulbbg:

Yeh most enemies in the game drop a card or two, per type, drop rates are pretty low so it might feel random at times.

Gotcha, I was about to ask if it was random since I've fought a few slimes but never got their cards, guess that explains it.

Since it was mentioned here I've been keeping an eye out for it. I was grinding for letters (I'm close to the end of the game I think) so I went over nearly every part of the map, just killing mobs for tits n giggles. One of the slimes I fought dropped a Trigoo card. The notification was very small and quick, so it explains why I never noticed it before.

I guess I'd put that in as feedback for the (superb and excellent) devs - leave that notification on a liitle teensy weensy bit longer so people notice it.