New players -- avoid Chump death loop

[dholland]

New players, especially those unfamiliar with computerised card games, can easily fall into death loops. Especially if you're unlucky enough to have seen the Achievements for the Chump (complete 10 quests with one Chump) or the one where you complete the game without dying. Basically, the Chump is useless. And dying is part of the learning process. If you die twice in a row or more, you're in a death loop. So read on!

Ditch the Chump after the first quest for a tier 1 dungeoneer class (expand your guild, click on the 50 gold classes in the first tier. I found the cat-burglar easiest, if you can stand up to the terrible puns). You may still die trying to defeat the Rat boss, so if so take your time to upgrade your dungeoneer in-quest with the talents (holy, arcane, growth and anything with card draw or quickness are good, fire or anything with 2 damage is plan B) from loot from successful combats. Don't fight anything higher level and take a roundabout route so you don't have to fight the boss until you can't get any more loot upgrades and you'll be fine. What are card talents, you say? Cards have aspects, they either originate from your dungeoneer (saying cat burglar on the card) or from loot, in which case if you mouse over the card you'll see the talents, things like holy I or fire II. The point is, those talent aspects from loot add to the skills of your dungeoneer, giving him more cards and even making some existing cards more powerful. The basic idea is to have one or two talents as high level as possible, preferably arcane, holy, growth, but anything is better than nothing. So you have to pay attention to the loot choice mouse-overs, and try to avoid dropping anything that isn't first level and only if you're gaining a level in a powerful talent. Obviously, if you can't get what you want, anything where you don't lose is a good plan B.

If you kill the Rat boss, congrats. Next expansion is a blessing, I recommend Crone. The trick is, no other expansions until you have 500 gold (from quest completion, don't try to grind) for a tier 2 dungeoneer, such as the Shapeshifter. Next expansion is 500 gold for the 2nd tier Crone blessing. Good luck!

[Sturnidae]

Great tips! I loved using the Cat Burglar at the beginning; really helped get through that first dungeon. I also stay away from the "Uhh" card when it pops up on loot. I haven't seen much that justifies getting stuck with that card in your deck.

[dholland]

One problem: the game won't let me get the tier 2 shapeshifter without a few more tier 1 expansions. I tracked down a post from the developer: I need 2 from each lower tier section (2 from Might, 2 from Magic, 2 from Loot) to unlock the next higher tier.

[Doctor_Moriarty]

If you click or hold the cursor over an unpurchasable enhancement, the game should tell you why it is unavailible.

[dholland]

Originally posted by Doctor_Moriarty:

If you click or hold the cursor over an unpurchasable enhancement, the game should tell you why it is unavailible.

Oops! I get it now, you unlock within sections, so when the tooltip refers to unlocking X number of tier 1, it doesn't mean anywhere, just in that section. Maybe I just don't like to do what I'm told :-)

[dholland]

I've realized the game gets much more difficult than I anticipated later on (from the jungle or even earlier) and I should change some of my advice, intended for the casual player. I'd suggested using the Crone blessing to have extra card choices to make it less likely that your dungeoneer starts off with bad cards and gets into trouble. The idea is to have a high chance of winning battles, lose a few but still be able to make progress, playing intuitively without too much analysis. But the game gets so much more difficult later, that although this strategy works okay at first, you eventually hit a wall with death loops.

I now suggest the healing blessing, and getting items that add hearts without adding stupidity cards. These guaranteed extra hearts, if you analyze the monster cards, should let you be more certain of surviving battles even with the worst draw for your dungeoneer and best for the monster, since you can work out the worst damage combination for you and best for the monster if you know the cards, and see if you can still kill the monster before it kills you. But this requires more analysis than might appeal to casual players.

[John]

I've started using the Trickster's blessing to get more loot choices, just because it's the only one that's effects are permanent (although as you're probably only getting level 1 stuff, you wouldn't really be keeping it for long).

I think the main thing is to choose items that have what you need to deal with the enemies/boss (do they have physical attacks? magic?), and use fountains but put them at the side so that you can avoid them if they give bad effects.

Thanks for the advice about when to block the bosses (I noticed it by accident when I first played the Mimic level). Weirdly in this playthrough, it didn't work properly against the Mimic, but it worked fine against the Minotaur.