Beginners Guides to Trials of Fire

Basic Guide/Advice for Beginners

The Basics

Things you can do you with the cards in hand:

• Discarding cards either makes you obtain 1 WP per card ( WP are shared between characters) or move the character that discarded that card 2 spaces, the unspent WP it will transform into defence points next turn for the character who discarded that card.
  
  
• Unspent WP that came from an action card will not be converted to defence points, those WP will be lost!
  
  
• You can save one card per character each turn, this way you can play a useful card next turn or discard the card if not longer useful and get more WP
  
  
• You can reshuffle your hand, but it's limited and only recommended to use when you're in a bad spot, also number of reshuffling comes from your gear quality. the better quality more reshuffling you can do. 1 Quality point = 1 reshuffle

Replacing/Upgrading Cards

When leveling up you can choose either upgrade one card or replace one from your character deck.
Also you can upgrade a card using meditation.

You only can upgrade a card ONCE

Upgrading Cards

My advice, don't upgrade basics cards like swipe, power shot or advance, here's why, those basics card don't provide any additional effects when played. Instead upgrade core cards (That's the only power card that the character has) or other cards you replaced before.
Upgrading basics card may provide a little more damage but that's it, move cards may be the exception but still, there is better cards for more movement and/or additonal effect when played.

Keep in mind not all upgrades either reduce WP cost, or augment damage/defence, they can have additional effect when played so check out what the next upgrade does with right click over the card

Replacing cards

It's better to replace the basiccards for similar cards, for example, replace Swipe for Pommel Strike,
Swipe only does some damage, pommel strike does more or less the same damage and makes the next melee attack cost 0 willpower, both cards cost the same WP, but with the latter card you can start chaining combos with cards.

In short replace move cards with another move card with additonal effect (like drawing another card, applying an effect to enemy etc..), attack cards with attack cards etc you get the idea

Advanced deck building/Forgeting cards

Once you're more familiar with deck building the above advice just don't apply to you,
certain you can replace cards from your core deck with attack and power cards but that leaves an unbalanced deck, you need certain number of move cards, attack/defend and power/debuff cards.

That leave us with the deck culling, you can have a small deck that can pop combo cards more faster than a bigger one, so for your core deck you have the option to forget cards, for cards that come from gear you have honning action.

Hone item/Atune

Honing items

Don't forget to hone items, the reason to do this is the the following: having a big deck makes harder to chain combos if none of the cards can be combined in your hand in that turn, those cards take longer to appear, also not all cards are that good, and just take space, you can say that could be dsicarded and gain 1 WP or use to move, but that's a card wasted, you can move farther using a proper movement card.

Atune

Use this action to keep the card from an especifc item when you want to change for better gear, honestly, great when you need to share an especific card to another member of the party.

Note: Atuning item upgrades the card selected, but leaves the original the same leve it was previously

Synergy

Here's comes the best from the game:
Chaining combos.

For begginers, i say start with each character cards, with time and practice you can make synergy between characters cards, but for now focus on just one. it's easier that way.

Advanced synergy comes from the non-starter characters.

Alchemist: can create lot cards, either if you have a bad hand, that's a lots of WP, try to upgrade/combine those cards to get either more options or more cards to draw.

Witch: This character his/her deal is to steal cards from the opponent and debuff them

The other characters have their ways to draw more cards in your turn but with the characters before mentioned are way easier to generate WP and be able chain combo with using those WP generated that way.

Power for everyone

Many powers can be applied other than the character with the card in hand! a few times some power can be placed on enemies (Burden card from the witch)

This is where the fun begins,
you can help your characters to gett buffed in ways that themselves can't.
An example of this, alchemist has a card in which can deal additional damage if has 5+ of defence, the warrior can easily buff that quantity of defence, the alchemist alone i say it's gonna take a while to do it solo, eve more harder to do if he/she is fighting the enemy.

Combat

Order of difficulty of the enemies:
from Easy to Hard
Summons < Beast < Melee < Ranged < Magic <Elite Melee < Elite Ranged < Elite Magic < Boss

The harder to kill, the faster you have to get them.

Of course, depending of the situation if you have the chance to kill in one turn whatever you have close, just do it, the less enemies, less cards, meaning less WP and/or attacks from the killed enemy.

It always better to kill summons first, in case the summoner is too far away or it's not possbile to make damage to him that turn.

Note: if you have the chance try to kill the summoner go for it, if the summoner dies, the summons die too


Behavior for beast and summons it's quite simple, they will try to surround and hit you like a piñata.

For basic melee humanoids this apply too. If they're at disavantage they will retreat.

Ranged will try to hit you from afar, if it's not possible the enemy will advance to another place where it can hit you. Try to close the gap when figthing ranged

Magic: Similar to ranged, but since they their attacks doesn't have range restrictions or aren't blocked by the terrain they can hit hard from turn 1. Try to kill these first

For the elites version of melee is slightly different, these elites are highly mobile, so they often apply hit n run tactics, you have to debuff them. ranged elite are higly mobile too. my advice is to make your party have cards that allow you move more distance to keep it up with these elites or use chill/inmobliize.

for the magic elite this one should be your first target, they can deal lots of damage from long distance with no resctriction.

Advanced synergy

Evoultion of synergy

• Synergy cards for the same character
  
• Synergy cards between characters, each character fills a role (Support, Damage dealer, Tank)
  
• Same as above but characters fulfill dual roles (Tank can deal damage too, Support that can Tank when tank is down)
  
• For this level, doesn't matter what character you have, they can fill any role

[Bmx Bandit]

@Blastom: i guess it's not obvious to people who don't play card games like Magic: The gathering, but in this case, you have to burn 3 cards to get, in this case 3 WP + using the card, that would be 4 cards, Might look expensive but you have to buff your self to make even more powerful or gang up to deal extra damage as the say below.

[Falconbrunch]

@Dralmar: I believe it does include the extra WP, since 1 card = 1 WP. Wild Swing does 4.5 avg for 4 resources (since 1 card = 1 WP) making it on average a teeeeny bit more damage per resource that Swipe's straight up 2 damage for 2 resources.

[PorkSocks]

Blastom: During the part of the game where you're using Swipes, you should also be using gang ups to increase their damage. They definitely output more than a Wild Swing, especially if you have Adreneline from the Warrior or Punish from the Assassin.

[Dralmar]

Blastoms calculation of Swipe vs. Wild Swing does not include where the additional 2WP come from to play WS. Whether burning cards or using cards, their is a cost for the use of those WP,

[Bmx Bandit]

@Dralmer what card? anyway there many ways that you can lower the costs of WP in the cards in play.

[Dralmar]

What about the "card" cost to get the 3 willpower? You did not factor that in.

[Blastom]

Something may be good to let the beginners know - a card doesn't only cost the willpower to play, but the willpower and itself.
For example, a swipe accurately costs 1 willpower and 1 card (itself), so 1 damage per 1 card/wp.
A wild swing costs 3 willpower and 1 cards for 4.5 avg damage, so 1.125 damage per 1 card/wp. Not so bad.