Any recommended deck unlocks?

[Moonbane]

almost the point of being able to unlock my first new deck. eyeballing mage or paladin, but rogue looks neat too.

[76561198294287433]

Rogue is my personal favorite! You get quite a bit of flexibility with all the agility energy you'll be gathering.

[ShawnieBoy]

Been enjoying the paladin myself - didn't get on well with the mage :(

[Moonbane]

Originally posted by ShawnieBoy:

Been enjoying the paladin myself - didn't get on well with the mage :(

The mage is fragile i guess? Been playing with the paladin, quite sturdy. Though debuffed cards ruins his day.

[Moonbane]

Originally posted by Skelezoid:

Rogue is my personal favorite! You get quite a bit of flexibility with all the agility energy you'll be gathering.

Rogue is really engaging to play, the extra cards really helps out. So easy to get stuck for many rounds with nothing to do because RNGesus is frowning on you. While the enemy blows you to chunks.

Edit: Seriously, the rogue is capable of making obscenely lenghty card streaks! Im not sure how the other classes can compare to that!

[Nafen 🐱]

I guess it's based on preference

[Moonbane]

Originally posted by Nafen:

I guess it's based on preference

Just got defeated after a 15step journey on the first try of my rogue. The others failed far earlier.

[Strider Beta]

So far Monk and Rogue are my personal favorites. Rogue I've made it to 14 and the gameplay can get very fast. Monk I only just unlocked and made it to 12 on my first run. Finding he can play almost as quickly as Rogue, especially if you're able to pick up Shadow Stalk from the store, and he's much more defensive. Haven't bought any of the deck upgrades yet, planning to unlock all decks first then upgrade whichever deck I'm enjoying most at the time after. So far leaning towards Monk unlocks though.

[Moonbane]

Just defeated Emperor Stuck on first time meeting him with my Rogue. Key was abusing dodge and shield bash to keep him locked down. Only when he had only one card left, he managed to play gain 7 more cards and i had to whittle them down, but then he was a goner.

Also, the giant in the Cliffs of Mythos. First time i encountered him, he squished the gibs out of me. But this time i came prepared. Using dodge and again and again. His 15 damage giant stomp ended up with a cooldown of twenty rounds, while i took my merry time cleaning the deck and launching the ocassional stun to keep him in check.

[Strider Beta]

Lol, glad you managed to take out that damned giant! Finally got to him on my 2nd run as a monk deck and had crap draws. He opened with stomp and I couldn't do a damn thing about it! Got me enough to buy the Bard deck though, which is hands down my least favorite deck right now. Hell, my Mage deck actually managed to die to the first fight (craptastic draws, don't judge me!) and I STILL hate Bard more! Only have Paladin left to unlock and unless that deck physically comes out of the screen and burns down my house I've officially found the worst deck in the game. :P

[Freyhon]

That's odd, my Wizard also died in the first fight once, too- and seems to be really underpowered compared to the other decks I've tried. I wonder why the Wizard only gets one "deck exclusive" ability (which isn't very powerful in the first place). Is there something I am missing here?

[Moonbane]

I think its more like that the willpower line just isnt that effective overall. Plus you dont get resources for destroying hidden back cards. Meaning that Zap is already impotent from the get go, compared to the more versatile attack cards. Setting willpower behind in resources from the beginning.
So far ive found the only truly useful willpower cards is healing type cards.

The attack line seems okish, somewhat useful with its flexible attack types. But its about all what it got. You get far more bang for the buck by relying on defense for stuns, or agility for deck control imho.

Defense excells because it has incredibly powerful stuns, which is much stronger than armor which I find quickly proves itself to be a trap to focus on. As poison in particular ignores armor, and bosses frequently rolls poison.

But agility....omg, it has soo many tools for deckcontrol. I daresay its the strongests of the four lines. The rogue exclusive of flipping your top card. You get to love reshuffling the top visible cards when enemies sets all of them to maybe kkkkk. Or maybe setting a sequence instead for easy pickup of a bunch of cards. Or like when the jam cube condenses the piles, you reshuffle the deck back out into more piles again. Or as I pointed out, using dodge to repeatedly increase the cd on their current high damage ability that is ticking and keeping them from making any action.

Edit: Warrior has 0 exclusive cards btw. Havent tried Wizard yet, unlocked it last night as I finished off my game downing Stuck.

And I think Warrior, Wizard and Paladin suffers from starting with Insight as their green spell. Its so horribly useless. A waste of agility energy when theres so much better spells to use it on.


Edit 2: Tried the Wizard....oh god. it really is sickly underpowered. You suffer horribly for not having a heal spell, and while magic sword lets you gain more willpower energy. You rarely get any resources from Zap because it only hits hidden backcards most of the time. Won over the claw fiend at 1hp. Even managed to die to the nibbler at the beginning as a wizard. How embarrasing! Things only pick up if you manage to survive long enough to get a heal spell from the store. You just have to get lucky to survive long enough to get a heal spell.

Edit 3: The wizard can potentially be salvaged if you play him like a priest. Using magic sword to generate willpower to constantly heal yourself. You simply cant afford to waste willpower energy on destroying back cards and getting no resources, when willpower is your only way of healing.

Edit 4: Strategy is a much, MUCH better green spell to have as it converts cards of a type into another. So if theres a willpower card, you could turn all of them into will, and thusly gain more from magic sword. However i think their starting insight card should be turned into a deck exclusive that turns 1-3 random cards into willpower cards and being cheap to cast. That would make magic sword a lot more effective.

Edit 5: Comet Storm seems to be first effective willpower damage card, useful in a pinch as a finisher as it damages front cards. Not randoms possibly hidden in the middle or back cards, and you actually get dependable resources from using comet storm.

Edit 6: My wizard got splatted after 10 wins by the black slime boss. Healing simply cant keep up with his damage output. So far I remain of the oppinion that deck control through agility is far stronger and highly effective against foes with long cd/high damage decks as you will see in large amounts in the endgame. With Defensive stuns comming in as a close second.
Agility users would have spammed dodge and kept those big hitter spells perpetually in limbo.

[Strider Beta]

For the most part gotta agree with all of Nefer's points, but Willpower does get one pretty useful late game spell in Cosmic Inversion, and Mage and Bard are probably the only decks that can reliably reach the high Willpower cost consistently enough to run it. Also found that buying the skull that gives you Willpower every time you get hit makes it pretty easy to keep your pool high enough to heal up any time you need it, especially love it against Thorn, Berserk, and Poison enemies. With you on Willpower attacks being mostly useless though. Only time I really love having them is when I'm dealing with Armored or Winter enemies so I can clear out back cards before they have a chance to become frozen or armored.

Finally made my first successful clear on my Rogue deck and have gotten very close with both Monk and Paladin. Monk probably has the best unique skills of all the decks imo; a blue damage spell with stun and a green spell that turns your active card into a wild card that can be matched to anything! If you can keep your agility pool high this can easily produce chains that would make a Rogue jealous!

[Moonbane]

Yes, Im starting to be of the opinion that Monks probably have the best mainset combination of lines. Defense+Agility. Counter Punch with Mastery is an extremely powerful combination in two very good lines.

But rogues have the best agility generation thanks to spamming nimble slash to really milk their deck control abililty and spamming endless amounts of dodges.

Edit: kinda sad that the best willpower spell is a healing spell. Ive gotten to try Cosmic Inversion, and its as good as you say to halt big hitters.

[Strider Beta]

Yeah Inversion is definitely worth trying, there's even an achievement for using Inversion to go from 1 hp to full in one shot. I'm personally of the mind that right now decks can be placed in 3 tiers; Monk and Rogue share the top tier, both play quickly and can control the battle well. Paladin and Warrior share the second tier with good access to the Defense line and the control it brings to fights, but a good bit less offensive speed. Mage and Bard are bottom tier, both have little in the way of defense so end up having to rely on Willpower healing far too much, which means they can't afford to expend any Willpower on offensive spells that won't give energy back.

I've come to see that Willpower attacks can be useful, especially in decks that don't naturally generate Attack energy, but they do feel far less useful than Attack spells. Attack spells can be reliably targeted and give back energy upon use whereas Willpower spells are mostly random and usually don't give back energy. Willpower can be useful for getting around ice/armor, but that alone isn't quite enough to bring it in line with Attack imo.

[Darth Bokeh]

I know OP is likely long gone, but here's a suggestion for latecomers - the Bard.

Why?

Because its Inspiration skill (receive triple value of next non-agility card reward) makes farming Rainbow currency for unlocks much faster. Instead of getting 1 rainbow rune, you can get 3. This stacks with other bonuses too (like Expose Weakness, which triples reward of non-attack cards, so 9 runes from one card when combined with Inspiration). Reaching and beating the final boss (where most runes are) is more luck-based until you fully upgrade the deck. I often end up with over 200 runs per run.

If you use Inspiration with Alchemy (turn all front cards into triple coins), you get 9 coins from one card. If you have the Fractal Clover, that's doubled to 18 coins from one card. Save up on attack and agility energy for the end of a fight, then when there are 1 to 3 cards left (depends on your attack skill), use Alchemy to turn remaining cards to triple coins, then combine with Inspiration for 1 to 3 cards worth 9 coins each. The Clover is expensive (80 coins) but I always get it when playing the Bard since it's easier to make back that money than any other class. I'll usually finish with several hundred coins leftover (If you beat the final boss, you also get a small bonus number of runes based on number of coins collected).

Skills I always try to pick up:

Stab
Alchemy
Expose Weakness
Overwhelm (use combined with Alchemy to hit all front cards)
Resilience (more situationally useful since Song is already a strong heal)
Reversal (reflect massive hits on later fights, like the Ogger)

I swap those cards as needed for the fight ahead. For example, if there's a fight where I know I'll need to clear many cards of a certain type (like Coin Swarm), I'll use Overwhelm. If I know a fight has big hits with a delay, I'll use Reversal.

Some useful guides:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Solitairica/comments/feq0fw/how_to_farm_rainbow_currency_150_per_run_with_bard/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Solitairica/comments/6s2exv/complete_epic_guide/