Five Elements Circulation

[dejion.andrews]

Can someone please explain how “Five Elements Circulation” works. I am struggling to understand what the definitions mean in context to my other cards, and maybe the elemental system entirely.

Is the five element generation interaction limited to only to this card, or is that how the Element System works in general?

[ImThatJGuy]

Basically it checks: "does the card on the left GENERATE the card on the right?" if so, it will activate the card on the right's effect. Also, as a bonus, it ACTIVATES the element on the right, meaning "[Element] Spirit" will always be active for that particular element (although I am guessing you already knew that part!).

For an element to GENERATE another, just check the chart. Wood generates fire, etc. The full list: Wood > Fire > Earth > Metal > Water > Wood

So an example of using FEC:

Water Spirit Seal > Five Elements Circulation > Wood Spirit - Sparse Shadow (Adds +1 Atk)

The turn would go like this:
1) Water Spirit Seal activates.
2) FEC activates - this will use Wood Spirit - Sparse Shadow's effect, giving + 1 atk
3) Wood Spirit activates on its own now, with the bonus of the +1 atk.

Not an amazing combo, but I have used it before mid game.

[kyo]

this faction is not friendly to beginners. If you are interested in it, you could start with a deck with single element and get familiar to them. At least this is what i did

[Kitsunin]

So the circulation is only relevant for the Five Elements Circulation card?

Also, WTF is Overcome in regard to elements? Overcome With Each Other, one of Du Lingyuan's Fates, has an effect if the previous card has the effect of overcoming elements, but I don't get what that means. I've seen the effect trigger on opponents when it was their first card. Does it mean to Activate elements? I don't think so because when I put it after Five Elements Circulation it didn't work.

[weaponofmd]

Normally you can do a series of 3 cards like wood -> fire -> earth. With the overcome card, you can do something like wood -> overcome -> earth. You can use that overcome card to replace a single card that bridges 2 other elements.

Du Lingyuan can only put it first if she has the fate to activate her innate element first. So, if she has her wood innate activated, she can put overcome first and then follow it with an earth card.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)
wiki has a picture of the circle and it shows the overcoming arrows as well.

[Kitsunin]

Originally posted by weaponofmd:

Normally you can do a series of 3 cards like wood -> fire -> earth. With the overcome card, you can do something like wood -> overcome -> earth. You can use that overcome card to replace a single card that bridges 2 other elements.

Du Lingyuan can only put it first if she has the fate to activate her innate element first. So, if she has her wood innate activated, she can put overcome first and then follow it with an earth card.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxing_(Chinese_philosophy)
wiki has a picture of the circle and it shows the overcoming arrows as well.

That doesn't explain it, but it does help a little. What is the overcome card? There is no such thing as a card that refers to "Overcome".

"Overcome With Each Other" states that it activates the element of the following card if the previous card has the Overcoming Elements effect. The translation is an abject mess. Does that mean that "Overcome With Each Other" will Chase and activate the following card's element if said following card's element Overcomes the card before "Overcome with Each Other"'s element? Or the reverse? Or something totally different?

Does the Overcoming of elements have any meaning whatsoever in the game besides being related to the effect of "Overcome With Each Other"? Does the element circulation have any meaning besides the effect of "Five Elements Circulation"?

I absolutely understand the Chinese elements, but the translation is really bad to the point it's impossible to tell what gameplay effect their interrelation has.

Which to be fair, is because it's really complex and not easy to communicate even if you speak English.

[ℐ ❤ ℋ𝒾𝓀𝒶𝑔𝑒]

It's easy and you must try it

[Kitsunin]

I went to the single player mode and figured it out, here y'all are! :

"ELEMENT spirit" effects can be triggered in three ways!
1. Their Element has been "activated".
2. The previous card played was the same element.
3. The previous card played was the PREVIOUS element in the cycle (this is what is called "Five Element Generating Interaction").

So, you can for example play Metal Spirit Seal -> Water Spirit - XXX -> Wood Spirit - XXX

and all of the ELEMENT Spirit: effects will trigger.

"Five Elements Circulation" could be added BETWEEN any of the cards in the above example: In that case, it would Activate the element of the following card AND duplicate its effect.

"Overcome With Each Other" triggers its effect if the PRECEDING card "Overcomes" the FOLLOWING card, meaning that the following card is exactly two steps ahead of the previous in the element chart.

In other words, "Overcome With Each Other" can REPLACE "Water Spirit - XXX" in the above example, in which case it will Activate the Wood element and Chase.

[teekay15]

That was probably the best way of explaining it so that i might get it to some degree before actually playing it...for all that if i have to read a wall of text to understand a card i think it might take a few repetitions in practise mode before feeling remotely comfortable with it.

[PHOBIE]

It's a design problem, stemming from under-development. Lacking QOL, like no actual interaction mechanics with the wuxing diagram.

Instead it wants us to memorize an element cycle (e.g. from wiki), then look at an in-game chart, then read all the cards and their effect, find out how to use it, and be done with all of that before the timer counts down.

But even if we do all that and understand that overcome means "bridge" or "bypass", then still our opponent doesn't know what we are doing and what is happening, it's just too complicated, and not fun to watch.

There is also Smash DEF and Cliff, and you'd think that they take extra care to translate the most complicated cards very accurately, but it's a travesty.

[weaponofmd]

It's not a design problem, knowing the 5 elements and how they work is already part of Chinese culture. I mean, when you see elves or dwarves, do you really need to get explanations from every single new game? When you see the word "mana", do you need some sort of explanation? 5 elements and how they work are part of assumed knowledge.

[PHOBIE]

I think people from Chinese culture will run into the same problems. Even people familiar with the Wuxing diagram won't immediately know how to apply this knowledge to the game mechanics.

The chart provided is not an interactive mechanism that makes for gritty gaming and interface: The haptic experience expected is replaced with an intellectual challenge bogged down by ungainly UI. [link]https://mathematics-at-school.com/images/shape-sorter/none-16-holes-intelligence-box-wooden-different-shape-sorter-baby-cognitive-and-matching-building-blocks-early-educational-toys-5.jpg[/link]

Mana also isn't explained well. You could say it's a given, but in reality games work off the premise that only the knowledge from inside the game is needed to play it; they are trying to immerse the player in a fictional world.

If you have to look at wiki every minute that will break immersion. But also it's like "copying from a textbook during a test – you’ll pass, even if you haven’t studied." "In other words, you’re using information from an external source to alter the outcome." (metagaming). https://techjury.net/blog/what-is-metagaming/

In that way the game is promoting the use of external source to win against someone who only plays with internal knowledge. And for getting the knowledge there's no game component, just a chart.

[Kitsunin]

I don't agree. I think the element chart is fairly clear, it's just that there's no proper description for how that connects to the actual gameplay. Like the cards say "Five Element Generating Interaction" and "Overcoming Interaction" like those are keywords in the game but they're not, they're game mechanics which never ever get explained in any other text. It's really bad design because even if you already knew about the elements, you still have no idea WTF their specific logical effect will be in this case.

It'd be like if a western game had Fire Earth Wind and Water and just expected you to assume "Element Defeating Interaction" means putting Water before Fire

But consulting the wiki constantly? Nah, I don't know the first thing about wuxia and this was the only thing that has confused me at all really. Once I figured out how it does work it took like five minutes to internalize.

[PHOBIE]

Then we agree that there is a disconnect regarding practical application. I would like to see that in the form of mechanics as pointed out above.

While I tried to understand the actual application and lost some games over that, I stumbled over bugs in translation, and that combined lead to a gameplay experience that wasn't engaging. I didn't feel like losing any more rank over that, and felt it had overstayed its welcome. I don't want to stress myself to find workarounds for sloppy presentation and unintuitive systems.

Wiki was an example how metagaming distracts from gameplay, including having to ask about unclear mechanics in community. As you pointed out, knowing wiki won't explain the specific logical effect in the concrete case.

[Kitsunin]

Yeah that's fair, I probably picked up all the rules easily because I learned most mechanics from previous auto-battler games.

Definitely very overwhelming at first and impossible to keep up with all the information but that was the most fun part of the game for me.

[Xfer]

Its also annoying that the different elements don't really play well with each other in very interesting ways - other factions do the same thing with much less work and more payoff (compare increase attack/force of water to things like sword intent). Cards that are the 'payoff' for using multiple elements are pretty lackluster and you're generally much stronger with a single or dual-element deck as the elements each do a specific thing and spreading your cards between multiples just dilutes their effect.