At last, made it to level 3 with a lovely thief deck, then lost out to a Phoenix......damn they are hard to kill and my draw didn't allow me to kill the egg....so BOOM! I lost. Also managed to unlock the Professor and isn't his ability just great....but, it's a double edged sword as you can potentially end up with so many unwanted cards. What kind of decks to Prof players go for? Any tips?
Love love love the game overall, but after several dozen more plays there are some annoyances that I feel are worth mentioning, from a gameplay perspective. I'm a board gamer at heart, primarily, and I love DQ (uh, Dream Quest, not Dairy Queen, though I love that, too) because it has a very basic similarity to Mage Knight, the board game, which is a favorite of mine. And of course the deck-building and battle style is in the vein of Magic and Dominion and other similar board/card games. And there's a great amount of depth in the system, which is fantastic, reminding me of a great solo boardgaming experience (e.g., Mage Knight, Arkham Horror, etc.). But coming from that perspective, I know a lot of people like me would probably agree that when you're building something up over time, having it taken away from you, particularly by a very random means, is a very bad feeling that can sour you on a game. I'm speaking particularly of the ghosts that ambush you. Ambushing you is bad enough, but I can accept that as something you need to be aware might happen... the bad part is that they take away from your permanent health, 2 per turn. You may have just chosen health for your level upgrade, or chosen and paid for health over something else at the lemonade stand and now boom, all that you added is gone, and then some, perhaps. And even though you may have defeated the ghost, you lost all of that health at a time (2nd/3rd level) when you probably needed it most. Granted, the whole game is not a huge time investment for one session (maybe a half hour), but it's still very frustrating to spend that time only to have it fail because of a random ghost that drains your permanent health. I would suggest that the ambush itself, which for me often comes at a time when I'm not at full strength, is enough of a kicker for the ghost to have. At the very least, reducing the amount drained from 2 to 1 per turn would still be nasty but not as debilitating or annoying. Another thing is the health pickups... As precious as health can be, I think these should really be able to be used when needed, and not disappear when you have no choice but to move over them, when you're already at full health and are wasting them. Have them function like the other locations or treasure chests, where you can access them if you want to, but leave them alone if they're not needed. Along the same lines, a 2nd or 3rd level without an oasis is often a death for me. Well, granted, I often die on the 2nd or 3rd level, regardless, but I think it's much more likely when there isn't an oasis and it can be nearly impossible to survive between a certain set of monsters that you may be obliged to fight.
Quick note on ghosts (and other permanent health drains) - the maximum health comes back at the end of the fight. It's only permanent in the context of that fight. It's only different from, say, piercing damage in that you can't heal it back until you're out of combat On health packs: there are two things going on here. One that managing health and how you sequence monsters is an important part of strategy and two that there needs to be some mechanic in place to limit exploration. If exploration is unlimited, you end up with a huge pacing problem where you explore, and then completely determine your strategy and then execute. With limited exploration, there's a lot more depth because your strategy evolves as you find out more about the level. There are two mechanics in place to limit exploration and you touched on both of them: ambushes and health packs. Ambushes are a risk - the more and farther from your start you explore, the more likely you are to get jumped, particularly by something mean. It means you need to play a little paranoid, even of things you can't see. Health packs are the other - they mean that, if you want to gain information, you have to spend a resource that you might need in the future. Also, they cause you to sequence monsters differently so that you take damage before getting blocked in by health packs. There's some cases where you have to eat health packs before seeing any monsters, but that's part of the randomness inherent in the game (and I think it's a good thing for totally unrelated reasons). I could be persuaded to alter the spawn slightly and increase the number of health packs when there's no healing pool, but probably not to change the way health packs work.
Thanks for the reply. If ghosts don't permanently drain your health, then that's fine, and I apologize for not noticing that. Although I can't imagine a situation where they would have enough turns to ever completely drain it. I suppose if you are healing back in some way on your turns, and can't get back to the full point because it's draining, then that hurts you a little at the end of the fight. Which is fine. My whole beef (unfounded) was about the permanent drain that I thought was happening. Good points on the health packs. How about something like if you step on them and you're already at full health, they drain halfway? I'm not sure if that could be implemented, but it would still be some discouragement as far as the exploring aspect.
Depends which class you're playing. I played a priest run earlier where I ended nearly every fight after floor 1 at full health, 15+ shield. These weren't short fights... I think the Titan got up to Angry level 2.
so I unlocked the professor class and did this on floor 3. Professor and flee is just not fair in the slightest. Spoiler 19 cards drawn. Genie wish reduced enemy mana to zero. The lich's spell fully healed me. Dragon roar discarded 3 of the lich's cards. Double meteors cast. I got 2 boots of speed on and the gem gives me a draw each time a spell is cast.
This might sound a little nuts but I def could see a multiplayer mode in this where as two people start with a set amount of gold and each have three shops one blacksmith and one church. From there you construct your deck and face off another player. After the round you do the same thing with more gold etc like you would be hitting floor 2. best out of three wins. I dunno sounds cool to me but like I said I could be just nuts.
I think competitive multiplayer probably has too much variance to be fun for a long time (and I'm pretty sure the balance is way off), but there was some discussion towards the end of development about cooperative multiplayer. If I had infinite resources, that'd be a cool thing to work towards, but as it stands it's probably beyond the scope of what I can do.
Something a bit more feasible could be something like the dev of the PC game Coin Crypt setup via Daily Challenges. Each day all palyers are allowed to make a single attempt at a run with a predetermined same class and fixed random seed number for that day so everyone is seeing the same stuff (might even have to treat as if all achievements are unlocked so as to again ensure everyone is on the exact same footing). The resulting score from your Daily Challenge would then be displayed on a local Daily Challnege score board which only displays your last run score with the Challenge date. These runs would earn no achievements nor even achievement poinnts. Since the game has no global scoring at this point, players would just need to trade screenshots of the Daily Challenge score page for bragging rights. As a side benefit these Daily Challneges could act as a fun way for many palyers to get a brief preview of many cards and classes they had yet to unlock themselves.
Thanks so much for this game! Thoroughly enjoying it and pretty much playing it non-stop when I have a chance. Someone asked earlier, and I think I understand the overall mechanic, but the guy that likes/hates cards still has me puzzled. Twice he has liked cards that start with "1". First time I saw this I thought "Great! Time to dump some of these Attack (1) cards!" He gave me curses in return. Looking at my cards over the next few games, I haven't seen any cards that start with a 1...only cards that have it at the end. Should he be accepting the Attack (1) cards when this like appears? Was it maybe that the Attack (1) cards I gave him might have also triggered the hate condition? (I don't remember what the hate was) Back to the monk! Meditate is delicious.
I am having lots of Fun with the professor. The weird thing is that level 1 seems actually more difficult than level 3 as he starts so weak and you can't pick up good cards on the first level except from a few opponents (piranha, wizard, maybe warrior) Thanks for an awesome game!!! Seems he gets fewer gold as well which would make sense.
Fixed - he's not supposed to like numbers. I've taught him a lesson and he'll start behaving himself in the next update (not 1.05, but the one after). Thanks!
Please add a donate button so I can give you more money, $3 was far too cheap for this, it's easily the best game I've played all year on any platform, except maybe Hearthstone Absolutely amazing game
Another run with the professor. Went smoothly then I met gelatinous blob on level 1. I took one slurp from him. Battle was slow and getting slower. After a while it hit me - slurp exiles attack cards. So then he was level 3 angry, we were both at full health and neither had offensive cards left.... I could flee but with almost no gold, no camp and no enemies this is the end. Thanks again, great game!
Thanks! Just tell your friends/co-workers/family - that's more than enough payment for me =) Also, 1.05 is now out! (Missing 1.03 note) - new Ranger names - Matthew and Jack. New Features: You may now select "Random" as a class Confirmation dialogue for upgrading only one card on level up Technical Fixes: IPhone interface update. Important text is now much, much larger and most buttons should be easier to hit. Several other related quality of life changes IPhone 5S now appropriately uses the iPhone interface rather than the iPad interface. Reduced memory usage, particularly in complex fights Increased the visibility of the Surrender button in fights (the skull in the upper left) Balance Changes: The professor, bard, and dragon no longer earn achievements and their unlock point cost has been raised to 10,000 points each. Characters now start with 2 attack2's instead of 2 attack1's. The passives that used to provide that now provide 3 gold instead. Passives that previously provided 5 gold, now provide 3. This is a net no change to fully powered characters, but should make the early game a little smoother. Fixed a bug where multiple Reenact cards could trigger on the same card. Small balance changes (generally making them easier or more deterministic) to the following monsters: Banshee, Wraith, Hand of Glory, Sphinx, Ussuri Ambusher, Mime, Priest Shock now costs 4 mana Storm Shape now reduces damage taken by half as long as the mana shield holds Please resubmit your reviews! Having them for the current version makes a huge difference for me.
Btw I had a bug in the previous version 1.03: met the final boss with the prof, when I wanted to see his deck the app crashed. When I restarted I was back on the final floor, so no harm done. I did not dare use my ability again. Maybe it is fixed now, though. Thx for the update!
