Universal Earthcore: Shattered Elements (by Tequila Games)

1. Those special boosters usually last for a day that is why so it was probably a diff booster, those 20 card pack called army can be bought with crystals and u get a better value they only cost 399 and have gold will reduce the cost. Also once you start leveling you can get 100s of crystals at specific levels. I'm level 72 right now and get 700 crystals when I level up. Check out ghe wikia for more tips and feel free to add to it thanks

 

That's a bit fairer then, I hadn't realised you could buy boosters for crystals instead of gold.
Still, I hope no more stuff vanishes...

 

If it makes you feel any better I crashed three times total when buying the army pack and didn't receive a single card. Sure I was angry but after calming down, I realize I had a good bill of health, a loving family, a bright future and continued on. It's all about perspective and that is the thing with life is that moments come and go, we can try to stay in the moment but time will move on with or without us. As to the gold multiplier thing you can get it again from leveling at specific levels, lottery which is a high chance so it will come again.

 

Wikia

Also please check out my wikia

Earthcore-shatter-elements.wikia.com I'll try to add content weekly and upload videos with commentary thanks

 

Fantastic game and very reasonable F2P mechanics. I've worked my way up to silver league and level 17 after winning all of the Adventure games and haven't felt like I needed to spend money. The production values are very good and game balance seems to be very fair. Even low level players have a chance against high level ones with careful strategy.

I'm also excited about how seamlessly I've been able to play on both my iOS devices with perfect synchronization on each one.

Since the developer has been so honest and open I thought I might ask one question that baffles me with these F2P games. Most F2P games seem to offer an option to spend up to $100 on in game currency. In my opinion this is absurd. Especially in a game like this where that money won't even guarantee that you get all the cards. Each deck is a lottery so you might spend the $100 (1.6 x more than you would typically spend on a console game) and not get much for it. Are there really people out there dumping that kind of money into a mobile game? Do you really feel that your game is worth $100 per person? Or is it a little like fishing and you just throw that out there in case you get lucky and catch a sucker?

I don't mean to offend because your game is more than fair, but if I were a developer I don't think I could realistically charge someone that kind of money for a chance to win a few virtual cards. $60 has been the norm for years on the price of a console game. And many of those offer hundreds of hours of gameplay for that price. As much fun as I have with this game, I'll grow tired of it and move onto something else soon so I can't justify more than $5-$10 on a game like this.

 

I have to agree wholeheartedly with wedge598. That said, maybe there are people spending that sort of money. I remember(back in the day) when I was playing Dungeon Keeper iOS, there were people dropping insane amounts of money on the in-game currency. Maybe I need to get a better paying job!

Jokes aside, I'm really enjoying this game The only real gripe I have at the moment is regarding the main menu where you have to swipe left/right to navigate between Tavern, Strategium etc. It is really slow, even on an iPhone 6. I'd ditch that menu altogether and have the online pop-up menu instead as the main navigation method.

And for anyone that wants to add me, user ID: romiem

 

Instead of swiping try clicking on the next one, it's faster and it's all about demand. This game hasn't hit globally yet, so not only is the population Incomplete but who knows what other features will be added to make the demand grow. I think this game is trying to be a more competitive version of hearthstone and look how crazy people drop money on hearthstone

 

I wish the descriptions for the quest were more informative and specific. I'm trying to do the one I think is called Loyalty. It says to play the same card three times in one battle. Does that mean three copies of the same card? Or play the exact same card on three rounds of a match?

I'm sure that I have played the exact card three times in three turns of the same match but it didn't unlock.

Does it have to be multiplayer? Because I did it in single player...

 

I may have found an unintended card balance issue with the Justicar card. Since this card is a Warrior faction it cost 2 less risk for a Warrior faction player to use it. However, it's skill allows you to turn a lower skill card opposite it and of the same color to dust. So it's actually a disadvantage for a Warrior to use this card. As a Rogue I was able to play my 10 risk Justicar opposite a Warriors 8 risk Justicar and turn his to dust. This would drastically reduce its usefulness in a Warrior deck I think.

 

Thanks for your reply - I actually managed to get past it in the end, seemed to be a weird problem for 15-20mins but fine now!

 

Is there anything that can be done about the massive file size for this app? 1.5 GB for a simple card game? How is that possible? Even Hearthstone is only 1.0 GB

 

SWEET! I struggle constantly with my 16GB iPad and I tend to find myself gravitating toward games with lower memory footprints. But I love this one so I'd hate to give it up.

 

I'm missing 9 cards and those cards are the goblins and trolls that don't come in booster pack #foreverincomplete

 

Earthcore impressions

I think this game deserves more attention than it's getting so I wrote down some detailed impressions. Hopefully this will get some people off the fence and encourage them to try the game. Warning long post!

First of all, the production quality - which I don't honestly care about myself - is very high. The artwork is well drawn, and very detailed, in a twisted/dark fantasy vein. The battle animations are smooth and intricate and the user interface looks professional with scaling and rotating and so on; all runs well on an iPhone 6.

The core gameplay - the battles - is utterly different from Hearthstone or MTG. I don't want to spend time talking about other games but let me just say that, if you're expecting some kind of derivative or twist on either of those two systems, you will not find it here. This is a "lane-based" system where battles are resolved between three of your cards and three of your opponent's cards, placed on the board in three lanes. Each card pairing is simply decided by rock/paper/scissors (actually water/earth/fire). If that was all there was to the game then the turn order would play out like this: you place first card. Opponent cannot play opposite you so he places his first card somewhere else. You are allowed to match his first card so you choose the element which wins; now his second card matches (and presumably beats) your first card; you have to play your third card in the only remaining lane and then he matches it with his last move. He would win two matchups, you'd win one, and you'd move onto the next turn.

The actual variation, depth, and fun comes from the skills on the cards. Most cards have one skill, a few basic cards have none, and special 'hero' cards can have up to three. The skills can mix up almost every part of the above formula, doing things like moving cards around after the fact, changing the element of cards, stealing cards from your opponent, drawing new cards from your hand and so on. Cards have just a single number on them (called the "risk") and in most cases cards with an interesting/useful skill will have higher risks. The risk is the number of HP you lose if that card loses so when you play your really good cards you're going to want to be careful to play in a position that will win.

Further wrinkles are added by the fact that there is always one position worth double points, and if a pair of cards has the same element, neither wins (the game calls this a 'deadlock') they will stay on the table, face down (you can't use their skills again) and their risk values build up, making higher stakes for that lane on the next turn. Winning cards are returned to your hand, losing cards are discarded. A few of the special skills which change cards are permanent meaning you'll have the changed card in your hand for next time, which could be one you have stolen from your opponent. Given that you only have four cards in your hand and you will play three of them per turn, and a game on average is three turns, you will often only see 8-10 out of your deck of 25 per game. Whilst it's obviously good to win with a good card, and good to be able to use it again next round, you have lost your element of surprise - your opponent now knows some of your hand.

There is also a "class" system in that you choose a faction from the three available. As far as I understand it the only effect of that is that cards in your faction (unrelated to element, each faction has cards from every element) have their risk value reduced by two, which seems like something you can ignore as a beginner. Presumably it is more important in high-level play.

The single player component is arranged as five books each containing 8-10 battles, so around 45 battles or so, against an AI opponent. I have played all through this - it takes a few hours I suppose - and it serves as a fine way to get used to how the game works but probably not that much of an end in itself. The AI when it beats you will normally do so because it had better cards or a luckier hand. The only place I lost repeatedly was about three quarters of the way in where the AI has a hero card called 'Guard Captain' which is coded to always be in its initial hand and it requires specific strategies to beat. That provided my first incentive to go into the deck builder and try to improve my deck; by then I had earnt a bunch of good cards which I wasn't using, and the Guard Captain fell quickly to a better deck. In general the AI does not make good use of skills. It does pretty well with the Desert Archer's skill, a real pain in later battles, but it cannot anticipate your use of the card-swapping skills, making these a good way to win AI matches outright.

You gain xp for winning battles (and probably for losing them too?) and you gain levels. Levelling has no direct gameplay effect (unless it increases your HP a tiny bit?) but there is always a reward. Sometimes the rewards are unlocks (especially in the very early part of the game, the unlocks reveal the different areas of the game); sometimes they are cards, sometimes they are gold or diamonds, which brings me naturally on to...

The game is free and no one here will be surprised to hear that there is a currency system. There are two currencies, gold and diamonds. Gold is won from every battle (even if you lose), and the single-player levels have a three-star system with reward tiers of gold, diamonds and free cards. Naturally you can replay levels to get the rewards you didn't make. There are also achievements/quests designed to encourage you to explore the game's features and keep playing and they are generally rewarded by a few diamonds. There is a gold doubler which is given to you for free when your character reaches level 7 (and 10, and 20, and ...) which lasts 24 hours and can be renewed for another 24 at the cost of a single diamond.

Just by playing through the single player, replaying battles when I lost but never specifically replaying to get more stars, having the gold doubler on when I was awarded it for levelling up and when I remembered to extend it, I earnt about 64,000 gold. This is enough to buy two of the largest card pack ('Army packs'). I was also given an Army pack for free (not sure why!) and a couple of smaller packs for free, so you can definitely get a decent selection of cards, including some of the higher rarity (the rarities are bronze/silver/gold in Earthcore) without paying a cent.

The crafting system is all about the hero cards. When you win a hero card (the game gives you a few just for levelling up your hero or as rewards for single-player) it has only one skill, and two slots. You can fill in those slots with skills off other cards but you need three identical cards to do it; and they have to be 'compatible' (which I think means same faction but it's not explained and I'm not sure). I only got two heros from playing as much of the game as I have described here and I only managed to craft once, so one of them has two skills now.

There is also an "uncrafting" or "dusting" system which lets you chuck unwanted duplicate cards into some kind of magical blender which spits out a randomised reward. I haven't tried that yet.

Does this add up to a system that has as much depth and as much player skill involved as other popular CCGs? I don't know. Too early to tell. It definitely adds up to a system with plenty to learn and plenty of fun to be had whilst learning it.

I will write a second post about bugs I have found and my criticisms of the game, but I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending people try it for free, and I can't imagine anyone would regret dropping a few dollars to support the developers and buy some better cards.

TL;DR if you like CCGs and want to try something different, you should definitely give this a go.

 

i agree with pretty much everything you said. i do have some concerns when i see people with over 90 percent win rates at the highest rankings. 90 percent in a ccg seems very very high. obviously these players are quite skilled at the game but usually in a ccg quite skilled is 70-75 percent which leads me to believe there is a large advantage from having a lot of the heroes and the gold to craft them up.

im currently at 75 percent win rate and sitting at the bottom of the gold league without a lot of desire to keep trying to climb because i feel outgunned when i face off against decks with fully crafted sets of heroes. i chose a to make my heroes more support types and while this is fine i feel outgunned when i see someone with heroes that all have powerful rare card abilities like the ice rogue/wood spirit that can win multiple lanes with one skill activation.

i do think the game is fantastic but something about the decks full of heroes doesnt sit right with me. i think the crafting of the heroes is very cool but 18/25 cards in a deck being a hero sort of makes them feel less heroic and more common.

 

Note that matchmaking I'm getting paired with level fives that's why my win rate is above 90