Protean Grimoire 5 - Survival

Protean Grimoire 5

Protean Grimoire is a difficult one to crack. Don't lose heart if you cant win stage 5 in the first attempt, it is a long struggle to reach there.

The task in Protean Grimoire 5 is to survive for 15 rounds of enemy assault. That means getting to round 33 without losing.

Every round, one of the enemy creatures will randomly get battleblow (+300%). Battleblow shoots up the creatures attack to 4000. Your creatures should have more than 4000 hitpoints to survive this.

There is a lot of magic and poison in this grimoire. Mythril Drone doesn't work. It is difficult to out-heal two pyres and a 4000 attack hit. Then there is Rip.

There is also an enemy with chainstrike, so the creature you place in front of her needs to be unique. (otherwise your duplicate card with die from +220% chainstrike damage)

Enough about the horrors of the grimoire, now onto deck building!


There are three ways to beat protean grimoire.

Method 1

• Hero: Predator level 10
• At least 6-7 Henrietta(guild map 6) melded with immunity 7. 
• One or more unmelded Dragonlords or Ash Beasts melded with bless.

Rune up maximum for health and healing. The idea is that the Henriettas help you get past 4000 HP, Rip and Freeze. They also provide the healing required. You will need some non-Henrietta cards to throw before the chainstrike enemy. Grizzly level 10 will easily survive the hero hits with this much healing.

The heroes needs to have HP boosting talents (Faen stamina for Predator, Protection for Judgement)
If you still cannot succeed, consider taking an HP boost with 15 gems. (the small silhoutte figure next to the profile on the top left will take you to the HP boost screen)

Method 2

This is a lot lot more easier, if you have the card called 'Sacred Wolf'. Many of us got this card cheap during an event (with less than 1000 gems spent, because nobody wanted this card then!). This is the method that I use.

• Hero: Judgement (from tournament mall) with a minimum of extra +30000 HP from runes.
• Sacred Wolf (from events)
• 4 Nidhoggs (from coupon altar or guild map 2) 

Sacred Wolf

Play your cards when 6 or 7 of enemy creatures are out. Sacred Wolf and 4 Nidhoggs, along with 3 rounds of Protection from Judgement will give your creatures over 5000 HP. Place your Sacred Wolf against the chainstrike enemy if the chainstrike enemy is among the first 5.

If the enemy with rip comes in the first 5 slots, you will lose in this setup. If you have a creature that can resist rip (like Cancer or Virgo), use it in place of one of the Nidhoggs. This doubles your success rate because you can now counter if rip appears in the first five enemy draws.

It is very much recommended to get 'Group Tactics' talent for judgement. Group Tactics along with a rip-resist will take your win rate over 90%.

Method 3

• Hero: Royal Guard any level
• Oracles melded with immunity 7 or unbound (Seraphs melded with bless could replace some oracles)

The idea is that Royal Guard would be able to limit damage every round (including chainstrike damage). Immunity oracles are required so that they heal some damage every round, to be able to lose HP again and fill the rage bar of Royal Guard for the next round. Also immunity helps in avoiding the instakill enemy.

There are a few people who successfully use this deck to clear protean 5.

In the meantime, if you don't have the cards yet... Protean 4

If you don't yet have the cards to beat protean 5, you can still go for protean 4. The setup for this is much easier. You just need to have a Predator or Berserker with very high hero vigor rune (from glory altar). Take random 10 creatures, drop creatures one by one per round just enough to keep making Grizzlies or Boars. You will reach round 33 comfortably.


Let us know how far you are into cracking the grimoire.


For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions , complaints or suggestions, or if you need help or advice, feel free to comment.



Thanks for reading!

Sacrifice Cards (Melding Paradigms Part 2)

Melding Paradigms Part II - Sacrifice Carriers

Sacrifice Source: Venom Tyrant from Seals

Sacrifice skill sends another card in your hand to the graveyard and increases your creature's attack and hit points by 120% (at level 8).

Skills for Sacrifice Carriers

Stoneskin or a high level of Immunity is a must for a Sacrifice card. That is because you do not want your Sacrifice carrier getting retreated again and again, only to sacrifice your whole deck to the graveyard.

The sought after skills to amplify with Sacrifice are
(1) Bullseye - so that the enemy does not escape the damage through dodging
(2) Sweeping Blow - so that three of the enemy creatures can get hit with 2600+ attack
(3) Direct damage based on attack or HP of the card

Bullseye leads us to Anathema, which is one of the best sacrifice cards. The flip side is that Anathema can get locked down, and die easily, since it does not have any defensive skills.

Anathema

Pit Dragon is another popular Sacrifice carrier with Bullseye, because it is immune to lockdown. However that card has the possibility of destroying its own deck by getting retreated.

Sacrifice Graboid (also called Sacroid) is one of the heaviest hitters in the game. It has sweeping blow, and can one-shot human cards that have 5000 Hit points. Awesome card!

Sacroid with Sacrifice Rune

Twins with Sacrifice is another very powerful card. In addition to Stoneskin, it has 30% chance to one-shot-kill the creatures that try to hit it with a basic attack.

30% chance to deal 2000+ direct damage to an attacking creature. Not bad!

The rare cards Taurus, Capricorn, Libra, Cancer and Soul Shrew are super powerful with Sacrifice. Most F2P players like me would never get those melds, but it is important to know those. If you see a Sacrifice Cancer, better take a Sacrifice Graboid with you to kill it ;-)

The elite club of sacrifice beasties

The Sacrifice Rune 

This rune enables you to do Sacrifice by using a portion of the sacrificed creature's health, instead of killing it. This rune also gives rage boost to your hero when Sacrifice happens. Sacrifice without a rune does not give any rage to your hero.

The rune is available on glory altar and has a reasonable drop rate (I have 5 sacrifice runes).

Sacrifice happens before your hero's skill is triggered. Hence, your hero could trigger his hero skill using the rage from a rune-enhanced Sacrifice, on the same turn.

Vitality, Violence or Protean runes are good runes to have on sacrifice cards, because the stats provided by them are also doubled.

Finally ...

Sacrifice is a trade off between the stability of your deck and the gain in power. If you put sacrifice on an unsuitable creature (say Light Brave) you would weaken your deck instead of strengthening it. Sacrifice is also is a hard-to-obtain skill. Use it only on worthy cards that can gain from it.

Also check out
Melding Paradigms Part 1 (Recycle and Revive carriers)
Melding Paradigms Part III (Immunity Carriers)

For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions , complaints or suggestions, or if you need help or advice, feel free to comment.

Thanks for reading!

Recycle and Revive Carriers (Melding Paradigms Part 1)

Recycle and Revive Carriers 

Sources: 

Recycle 1 - Thalassa
Recycle 2 - Hypolyta, Dahlia
Revive - Great Mystic (Revive)

Thalassa, Dahlia, Hypolyta and Great Mystic

Thalassa can be obtained from Seals. Hypolyta, Dahlia and Great Mystic are not freely available. You will likely have to spend gems on Boosters on Value packs to get them. Another way to get Mystic and Hypolyta is to do the Gem Mines till the first chest for several months.

Combo skills to go with Recycle are: Immunity, Rebirth, Stoneskin, Unbound, Dodge, Frost Armor

Recycle (or revive) carrier is usually the most important card in a deck. You don't want this card to get disposed or retreated. This is why cards with Stoneskin and Immunity are preferred to carry Recycle.

The Horned Beast the most popular 4 star immunity creature for Recycle

Also you want the recycle card to not get locked down. It should keep recycling your creatures every round. This is the reason why Immunity (again) and Unbound creatures are preferred.

You want these cards to have a second chance if they are killed, because once this card comes back, it will bring other creatures also back from the graveyard. This is why Rebirth is a good skill to have.

Dullahan has both Stoneskin and Rebirth, making it a good Recycle carrier

Survival skills like Dodge and Frost Armor are required to stay alive for as many turns as possible.

Creatures with Revive skill cannot be revived themselves. Hence, creatures with high turn numbers (Like Fafnir (6 turns) and Octavius (8 turns)) are considered better carriers for Recycle 2.

Octavius - You don't want to meet one with or without Recycle 2!

Common Recycle/Revive carriers, their rating out of 10, skill sets

Recycle:
Horned Beast: (10/10) Immunity, Dodge
You could level up these skills later with 4* skill essences. I know people with Horned beasts that have Dodge at 10(70% chance to dodge), Immunity 10 and Mass Heal 10 (250 heal per round). Absolutely OP creature, it has a post for itself here.

Harbinger: (8/10) Rebirth, Dodge
Dullahan: (7/10) Rebirth, Stoneskin  [D] Revive is more preferred for Dullahan because he dies easily and has Rebirth
Light Brave: (6/10) Rebirth, Dodge
Sword Master: (6/10) Frost Armor, Magi Shield
Pit Dragon: (5/10) Unbound
Sentry Angel: (4/10) Frost Armor

Revive Carriers

Mythril Drone: (10/10) Immunity, Mythril and Spellbinder(survival), 4 turns
DragonLord: (10/10) Immunity, Frost Armor, 4 turns

Kitsune and Kumiho with Revive, together known as the foxy sisters (10/10)

Kumiho has Demonization that protects her against Disposal and Retreat. Kitsune has unbound. Both of them revive each other through 'Gemini' skill and could revive other creatures through 'Revive' skill. Foxy sisters with revive meld is terrific!

Note: Some people prefer Frostblade 10 on Kitsune, because then she can freeze up to 5 creatures every round with Dance Macabre.

Flame Summoner: (9/10) Immunity, Rampart
Fafnir: (8/10) Immunity, dodge , 6 turns
Mimirs Tree: (8/10) (Immunity, Block , 6 turns
Magmus: (7/10) Immunity , 6 turns
Abaddon: (7/10) Immunity , 6 turns

Octavius: (7/10) Hollow Protection against cloning and many effects, Renewal OP survival skill (10/10)
Octavius has 8 turns wait time, hence only Recycle 2 is recommended for it (So that you can revive it back directly to hand if it is dead).


Caution Note: Oinari in the Gem mines has [S]Revive. Do not spend ore on her mistaking her skill for Revive. She revives a creature only when she enters play.

Oinari's [S]Revive is not that useful

What are your Recycle/Revive creatures?

Also see
Melding Paradigms Part II - Sacrifice
Melding Paradigms Part III - Immunity

For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions , complaints or suggestions, or if you need help or advice, feel free to comment.



Thanks for reading!

The Mine and the Ore Mall

It is YAPAM time! 

Yet Another Post About Mines. 

(Sorry for the poor joke)

1. Is it worth spending energy and gems in the mines?
2. What creatures and heroes should you buy with your ore?

The Mine is a place under "Secret Region" where you can spend energy or gems to collect ore and creature shards. It gets unlocked at level 25. This post is about how best to make use of this awesome feature.

Energy Mine - Worth It!

Energy mine is certainly worth the trouble for free-to-play players.

For one, you get 4 star hero shards from the ore chests . It is good to level up your Predator and Berserker early on. Both are extremely good heroes at level 10 and useful for Grimoires and Guild Maps.

Secondly, you can get Mythril Drone. Drone should be your first purchase from the Ore Mall before any of the Heroes. This card will help you tide through guild maps and amass gold required for melding and leveling up your creatures.

Thirdly and most importantly, you can buy 5 star heroes from the Ore mall.

These are the best Ore heroes ranking by my experience

1. Armageddon
2. Oceanus
3. Spirit Arbiter
4. Vile Songstress

Armageddon can help you beat some difficult Explorer Map levels and Trials. He is good at level 1 itself because he permanently removes enemy cards from play. There is a whole guide about Armageddon here.

Oceanus is very good from level 5 onwards. He works well with all kinds of deck and wrecks your enemy with his own cards.

Spirit Arbiter is good only at higher levels. Once she reaches level 6 or 7, she  could remove multiple cards from play. She is terrific. Not recommended as the first hero because it will take you a long time before you can level up and make use of her.

Vile Songstress is good at level 4. She is regarded as the strongest Ore hero by many. However, in my experience, she is weaker than Oceanus and Armageddon.

Alchemist requires very specific deck with a lot of magic. I wouldn't recommend her.

Odin, Thor, Hydra and Blademaster are completely useless. Don't spend your ore on them unless you are getting one of those for a guild map deck.

I recommend finishing the mine daily at least until you have your first good 5 star Hero.

Creature Cards

Mythril Drone is the only creature worth spending your ore on. 

Mythril Drone - Must Have.
Jormungand is waste.
Dusk Huntress has Delay 4, but she will turn obsolete faster than you think.Sea Wizard is good, but not a game changer. You can also get her from Guild Map 6.
Oinari has 6 turns timer and she does nothing on the battlefield. S[Revive] is only a slightly better skill than [S]Disposal. Not worth 25,000 ore.
It is a shame that Deck Heroes gave S[Revive] to the awesome mythical character Oinari and gave [Revive] skill to a card named 'great mystic'.

The Gem Mines

I'd recommend starting on the gem mines only after you are full on Alice Bond. Until then save all your gems for Alice Bond only.

The gem mines are good until the first chests. The second chest usually drops some useful creature shards that include Kitsune, Kumiho, Great Mystic, Hypolyta, Paragon, Arch Deva and Revenant. Do not exchange these good shards for ore. Once you are full on Alice Bond, you can do the gem mines daily and finish these creatures multiple times.

The gem mine chests have a very very small chance of dropping full creatures as well.


For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions or suggestions, feel free to comment. Thanks for reading!

Card Review Pale Dragon

Pale Dragon

Skills: Miasma, Reflect, Sprite Link

This card is used in Transmutation

Pale Dragon pales in comparison with all other dragons in the game. Pale Dragon's skill set is not bad as such, but a Frost Rager (3 star) melded with Sprite Link is a better card than a Pale Dragon melded with anything.

Pale Dragon is the favorite giveaway maze card in Deck Heroes. By the time you have found out about transmutation, you would have a few dozen Pale Dragons. That is good because Pale Dragons can be used in transmutation of the 5 star creature Sylph. (Sylph = Oracle,Pale Dragon,Icy Huntress,Bloody Lord)

Sylph is a useless 5 star creature which pales just as bad as Pale Dragon, but you could get lucky and get a good 5 star creature from a failed transmutation. Who knows?!

Titania with Battleblow

Skills: Ambush, Chainstrike, Rebirth

Today's post is about BB Titania! Not Big Beautiful Titania you dirty mind. BattleBlow Titania!

Titania is depicted as a human card, but she is the queen of fairies in popular fiction. 

Her special ability, Chainstrike, ignores Frost armor and hits all copies of a card with 220% damage. It is very common to see decks with 3-5 creatures of the same type. (2 or 3 Horned beasts with recycle, 5 Frost Ragers melded with Sprite link, decks with several copies of Anathemas or Phantom Lieges etc) 

There are also some popular deck combos with 10 cards of the same type. 10 Dark witches melded with Discord and 10 Blood warlocks melded with Earth totem are the two most common. Titania is your answer to those decks. Titania can finish the whole deck in one hit.

Particularly, killing two Recycle-horned beasts in the enemy deck in one shot is very desirable. You don't want one recycler dying first and the other recycler bringing it back!

With a chainstrike rune (tier 3 blue rune), Titania ignores dodge. That makes it just as good as the bullseye ability. It is absolutely worth the effort to get your chainstrike rune to level 10. 

Her other two skills contribute well to her fighter role. Ambush gives additional +450 damage on her first hit. Her high level rebirth lets her comes back from dead and ambush your enemies again.

Her reliance on physical attack makes Battleblow an ideal meld. You can get copies of her from the coupon altar, gauntlet and guild maps.

Ah! BB Titania is very useful in guild maps. She can hit for more than 220,000 damage per creature in a berserk-warhungry deck.

Do you own a Titania yet? 

Card Review Sacred Wolf

Sacred Wolf

Skills: Rip, Rebirth 7, Guardian Spirit 1 (Takes damage in place of your Hero and reduce it by 40%)

This card is a must for clearing Protean Grimoire 5

Sacred Wolf probably has the worst skill set across all 5 star creatures in the game. Most players have hero health anywhere between 30,000 to 90,000. A 2000 HP card that dies by siphoning damage off your hero is the last thing you want in your deck, Right? Then how is it useful?

Protean Grimoire

In Protean 5 Grimoire you have to survive 15 rounds (30 turns) against the enemy onslaught. Every round, your creatures and hero takes in insane amount of damage. 'Spellbinder' skill of Mythril Drone doesnt work in this grimoire, so your creatures might also sustain magic damage and lockdown.

One way to get past this problem is to use the hero 'Judgement' in a deck with Sacred Wolf. Judgement has super healing abilities and she will keep healing your deck as you take damage. Sacred Wolf will keep Judgement alive by taking damage off Judgement.

This deck also requires other Neander creatures with 'Earth Totem' skill to keep the starting health of Sacred Wolf high.

Surely get one Sacred Wolf if you get a chance!

Armageddon Strategy Guide (Mine Heroes)

Armageddon

Armageddon is a Morti 5 star hero. His skill (Reanimate) is to resurrect enemy creatures from the graveyard to fight for you. Armageddon shards can be bought from the Ore Mall.

Reanimate permanently removes a creature from the enemy ranks. This makes Armageddon very useful for clearing Explorer Maps and fighting in Gauntlet.

Here are some good strategies that you can use in an Armageddon deck.

Talents:

Deathless (casts Rebirth for all your creatures on the board) is a must have talent. It activates when there are three or more Morti on the board.

If you have a purely Morti deck, deathless will be cast as soon as you have played 3 cards, and cast again the next round when you have atmost 4 cards on board.

It is better to have Deathless cast on as many creatures as possible. A mixed faction deck is better for making maximum use of deathless. The advantage is that, by the time you have 3 morti cards on the board,  there would usually be 6-7 cards in total (the rest belonging to other factions). Deathless will be cast on all creatures on the board.

Deathless has '70%' chance to rebirth. However when Deathless is cast a second time, your creatures effectively gain 91% chance of rebirth. (Chance of not rebirthing from two casts of deathless is 30% x 30% =  9%). It is a very good talent to have.

Cripple reduces enemy attack. This helps the survival of your first played cards and assist in casting Deathless to maximum creatures. Quite a good complementary skill.

Cull kills all enemies with less than 30% health. Some people prefer this over Cripple. You cannot cull a creature and resurrect it the same turn, because cull is cast after the hero skill is activated. This reduces the usefulness of this talent.

Deck Composition

1. Disposal and Instakill cards

For Armageddon to be able to use his skill, you need to have a dead creature in the enemy graveyard first. What if the enemy has recyclers on the board who keeps on emptying their graveyard?

That is where Disposal comes into picture. Play a disposal card when Armageddons rage is full and the disposed card will be reanimated! You could even wait a few turns with the rage bar full, until you find a desirable creature in the enemy deck to be disposed and resurrected.

Instakill also works fine, but you dont have the control to target a specific creature as with disposal. Instakill kills randomly.

Some good creatures to meld disposal on are Hell Wolf, Harbinger, Royal Dragon, Undying will, Demonic Templar.

2. Recycle cards

For recycle I usually recommend only 'Recycle Horned Beast'. With Armageddon however, Harbinger is also a good substitute. Harbinger can trigger undying if played too early in automatic battles, and can have an effective 96% chance to return again.

In tournaments you have to field 3 decks. If you are short of recycling creatures for three decks, you could rely on undying in your Armageddon deck.

3. Kill during the enemy turn

Where Armageddon shines most is manual battles (explorers gate and gauntlet), where you can whittle away the enemy deck through reanimation.

But what if the enemy has multiple recycles, revives and immunity (Immunity counters Disposal and Instakill. That is how it is later in the explorer maps).

Any creature doing damage during the enemies turn is good with Armageddon.

I'd recommend to get 'Killer Queen' from guild map 6. She casts 'Guilt' from which creatures take damage after they attack. Sooner or later an enemy creature is bound to be in the graveyard after the enemy's turn and you will add it to your deck through reanimation.

I went all the way from map 12 to 14 using Armageddon and Killer Queen Combo. Another creature that can cut through immunity is Flame Summoner (available in the guild mall.)

What level is good for Armageddon?

The strength of Armageddon is in nicking a creature from the enemy. For that, level 1 is powerful enough. Don't spend ore trying to upgrade him. Save your ore to upgrade Oceanus or Vile Songstress.

The James Bond Audition.

We will finish with a poor joke about the Ore Mall heroes.

The three Ore Mall heroes - Armageddon, Blademaster and Oceanus - were attending an audition for the next role of James Bond. They were asked to introduce themselves.

Arma : "Gedon. Arma Gedon"
Blade : "Master. Blade Master"
Oce : "I hate this game!"


For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions , complaints or suggestions, or if you need help or advice, feel free to comment. Thanks for reading!

Card Review Arcane Hunter

Arcane Hunter
Skills: Battleblow 4, Ambush 7 and Dodge 8

Arcane Hunter is a card received from the Maze. It is not a useful card. Humans have much better 4 star fighter cards like Swordmaster and Techno Chief.

Arcane Hunter is also not used in transmutation, which makes him dispensable.

It is a good master card for melding off dodge 8. Meld dodge only onto 3 star creatures (preferably on fighter cards like Border Ranger. On 4 star creatures, meld Frost Armor instead.)

Hold on to at least one copy of this card because of its chance of featuring in future transmutation recipes.

Building A Guild Map Deck

Guild map is the main source of gold in the game. Gold is required to evolve and meld creatures, for refreshes to find good raid targets, and for drawing essences from the coin altar.

The gold you get is 5 times the damage you cause. 500,000 is the maximum gold you get from one attempt.

A level 20 player who just joined a guild will not have much in her arsenal to cause damage. She often throws her Flame Brave at the enemy and gets at most a few thousand damage.

I will introduce you to the creatures and tactics to attain better damage and eventually a million damage and more.

Enemy Hero Talents

The heroes in guild maps have three talents, which you need to be mindful of

• Soul Bind - Seals off both you and your opponents Graveyard, negating rebirth.
• Mantra - Restore 100% HP to your hero, dispel control and damage effects from all your creatures.
• Blood Curse - Deal direct damage to enemy hero equal to 5% Max HP + 500 damage.

The creatures also have "Tenacity" skill, making them immune to retreat, Disposal, Instakill and all negative effects that reduce attack.

Early Decks - Survival

Essential thing for guild map survival is healing your hero. Blood Curse hits your hero every round. You want to be able to heal that damage back.

For healing the hero, you need creatures with "bless" skill. You also need "mass heal" to heal your creatures every turn. There are two creatures that you should look for.

1. Blood Warlock
2. Oracle

Earth Totem and Frost armor are the optimal melds for these cards

Both these creatures can be farmed from Map 6. Blood Warlock is 3 star and hence easier to obtain. The down side of a Blood Warlock is that you cannot put Frost Armor on a 3 star creature. Always meld your Blood Warlocks with Earth Totem (increase HP of all neander creatures). 10 Blood Warlocks playing together can buff each other with +2700 HP and heal 2000 damage per turn. They are very powerful in groups.

Oracle is a great card with higher HP and the possibility of melding Frost Armor. Try to meld atleast two Oracles with Frost Armor (usually called Frostacles). It takes forever to get enough Oracles to meld but they are worth it.

People also use Frost Ragers melded with bless. I recommend blood warlocks with earth totem over Bless Ragers. That is because Bless ragers dont do that well alongside a 'Berserker' Hero (discussed below) and they dont have mass heal.

Bless Rager lose the relevance quickly with a Berserker

Causing Damage

Guild Map battles last for around 60 rounds. After that your hero sustains exponential damage every round and the combat soon gets over. Since 60 turns is a long time, the creatures who increase attack every turn does a lot of damage.

Ursa Major is a good card to use because of its Frost Armor+Anger combo. Swordmaster melded with Bloodlust 7 or a Techno Chief melded with Frost Armor can attain incredibly high damage output.

Heroes for Guild Map Deck

The Predator Hero you get at level 25 is OK for guild map because the grizzly tanks some damage. But you will soon notice that it is not enough.

The creatures which normally has 4 turn timer (like Frost Rager) or 6 turn timer (like Hell Wolf) has only 2 turns when it comes to the guild map. Because of this, the enemies play cards faster than you and ends up hitting your hero, often killing him too soon.

This is where you need Berserker.

Berserker

Berserker is a 4 star Neander hero who summons boars to protect him. When Berserker is hit with blood curse, the boars absorb the damage and increase the Berserker Rage. If a boar gets killed from Blood Curse, Berserker will have full rage to summon another Boar. This makes him invincible to damage from blood curse.

Unlike Predator's Grizzly, Berserker can have up to 3 boars alive at a time.

On top of that, Berserker has two invaluable talents that makes him the ultimate survivor hero.

(1) Spiky Bits

This skill enables your creatures to reflect magic damage to ALL enemy creatures. For example, if your creature imbibed with 'Spiky Bits 8' is hit with 100 magic damage, it will take only 60 damage and reflect back 280 direct damage to all creatures - that is 2800 total damage if the enemy has 10 creatures standing!

You can easily get to 50,000 damage using spiky bits on magic heavy dungeons in Guild Maps.

(2) Full Alert

This skill enables a high level of 'Block' to all your creatures. This skill is much better in practise than on paper. 320 block (from level 8 Full Alert) to all creatures is pretty good. It helps you set up your decks in the initial stages of the battle, until your healers arrive on the board.

The Boar Attack Boost

A specialty of the boars is that once they are level 5, they will increase the attack of all your Neander cards. Three level 5 boars can give +330 attack (+690 at level 10). These attack increases are permanent, additive and happens every round.

I still use my Berserker in the Tournament. People fight my Berserker with 5 star heroes and lose. He is that good.

Going against Spiky Bits with magic cards is suicide.

Zora Marauder Deck

Zora Marauder is a 2 star Neander creature with a unique skill called Battlewill. A lot of oracles with Zora Marauder can pump up their damage. Zora shards are found only in Trials.

With one area-of-effect damage card like Capricorn or Octavius in the deck can pump up the total damage pretty quick.

Zora is more difficult to get than a Berserker

Paw Master Deck

Similar to a Zora deck, but you will need several Frost-Armor-Oracles and just one Capricorn or Octavius. The Oracles should have more health than your Octavius or it wont work.

As long as paw-master keeps targeting the same unit (Octavius) for every activation of 'elixir', its attack will shoot up over 100,000 easily and you can one-shot maps.

Makeshift Deck while you build up

While you are building up your guild map deck, you still need some way to do quick damage and get the gold required for melding.

Once you are level 35 and has access to Runes, you can use a makeshift deck of Level 0 troll scouts with Level 0 Ambush Runes equipped. Each Ambush rune will do 2000 damage to the guild map creatures and you can easily get up to 20,000 damage while you are working on a better guild map deck.

A cheap way to get some quick damage done!

Waiting for the Opportunity

Until you can consistently do 100,000+ damage, look for opportunities where there are only one or two creatures left in a guild map dungeon. Go with a 5 card deck (2 frost armor creatures and three blood warlocks) and place the frost armor creatures before the enemies. Place the healers on the right so that they heal without getting hit.

This way occasionally you will be able to cross 100,000 damage and get half a million gold.

Watch out for dungeons with Venom Tyrant or Dahlia. If 4.9 is about to get finished and 4.10 has a Venom Tyrant, wait until some guild mate finishes 4.9. Then you can attack in 4.10 and let Venom Tyrant sacrifice a card. That is a quick +100K damage.

War Hungry - Berserk Decks

This deck does not work well anymore because of a patch that stopped berserk and warhungry activating together.

Once you have a spare 5 star hero (like Hydra or Odin), you could build up a War-Hungry-Berserk deck. This is the most reliable way to do damage in guild maps.

The idea is to do as much damage in just one turn using multiplicative 'battleblow' skills. In the deck shown below, all 5 creatures have 'Battleblow' skill. They are played together when the hero health has fallen below 30%. Berserk and Warhungry skills from the Hero will multiplicatively increase the creature attack.

All creatures are equipped with Battleblow. This simple deck very often does close to 1 million damage!

Hydra with the right talents

Multiplicative battleblows amplify the attack many fold.

I was obsessed with guild map damage since my newbie days, more than any other aspect of the game.

For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions , complaints or suggestions, or if you need help or advice, feel free to comment. Thanks for reading!

Card Review Chimera

Chimera Skills: Dispel 6, Magi Shield 8, Atom Flare 7

Chimera is a wannabe anti-magic card. It is not useful against magic decks despite the anti-magic skills.

Theoretically, Chimera's Maji shield 8 gives protection from magic attacks, Atom Flare increases its attack every time it takes magic damage, and then Dispel 6 unleashes all the pumped up attack by with +120% boost against the caster creatures that have been attacking it.

Unfortunately the idea of "storing up attack" for later use doesn't work for a weak creature like Chimera. It just dies too easily, doing damage to at most one caster creature in the best case.

Chimera shards can be farmed from map 13. By the time you reach map 13, you will have a lot of great creatures available to farm including Queen Temptress.

It is not recommended to level this creature up.

Card Review: Space Invader

Space Invader is a premium 5 star card introduced as the top reward for the Primal Rifts event.

Space Invader

Skillset

Space invader has Sweeping Blow, Nobility 7 and Lifesap 7.

Sweeping Blow and Lifesap is a good combo. Nobility 7 converts 35% of damage sustained into attack. Unfortunately Space Invader has no defence against lockdown, and he might just die with a lot of unused attack.

Alternatives

The skillset is similar to Phantom Liege, a commonly available card from the coupon altar and guild maps. Phantom Liege has 'Seals' in place of Space Invader's 'Nobility 7' and one level higher Lifesap.

The 'Seals' ability of Phantom liege goes great in tandem with the Sweeping blow/lifesap combo.

The rarity of Space Invader makes it difficult to meld. It is easier to meld a Phantom Liege with immunity and protect him against lockdown, hence activating lifesap every turn and improving survivability.

Surprisingly another premium card 'Lava Wyrm' also has the same sweeping blow+lifesap combo, with a mediocre third skill.

Have you seen Space Invader in action yet? What do you think?

Primal Rifts

Primal Rifts is a betting event where players can get creature shards and crafting resources.

Primal Rifts Event Icon

Your decks are not used in this event. Primal Rifts mini-game is based on luck and your aptitude for betting.

Game

Every day of the event, you get to play the "Rift I" 5 times. Entry is free in Rift I. As soon as you join, you go to a room and wait for 8 players to complete the group. Once the group of eight is complete, you all go in together.

The three Rifts. Only first one is free.

The gem rifts require only 4 players to start.

The Rift has 5 stages. In each stage, you are allowed to open a chest from among 6 chests. A chest might contain a reward or a trap. If it is a trap, you are out of the game immediately. If it is a reward, you gain some rift points, the rewards (crafting materials and 4 star shards) and progress to the next stage in the rift.

There are three traps hidden among the 6 chests as shown by the skull

If you complete all the 5 stages successfully, you get a 5 star creature shard or a sparc as the reward.

Strategy

Every player gets a free "detect trap" roll. Players can also bid gems for revealing a trap. This is the only place where your group mates matter. If someone else in your group bids higher than you, the trap will be revealed to him.

If you are not planning to spend gems in the rift, your best strategy is to use the free turn of "detect trap" in the first round. That way you get to go past round 1, 90% of the times. If you plan to bid gems, then it might be better to use gems to bid in the first round when most others might be using their free 'detect trap'. You can use your free 'detect trap' in the later stages when the bidding is high.

If you do not open a chest before the time runs out, the game puts you into idle mode and continues to play for you. You can return anytime and collect the accumulated rewards.

Gem Rifts

Rift II & III costs 240 and 600 gems respectively to enter. The gem cost is per entry.

The gem rifts are similar in most aspects. It takes more time for players to join and complete the group to start the game. People in gem rifts bid aggressively. The rewards are 5 star shards in place of 4 star shards in the free rift.

You are ranked based on the points you have accumulated in the game. Ranks 1-100 gets additional gifts as well at the end of the event.

Rewards for the top ranks.

What is your experience with playing Primal Gifts? Do you have a different strategy?

For posts on other game topics, check out the index page HERE. If you have opinions, questions , complaints or suggestions, or if you need help or advice, feel free to comment. Thanks for reading!

Deck Heroes Guide and Walkthrough

Welcome to Deck Heroes Guide and Walkthrough.

The first part of this walkthrough covers the most important milestones and game concepts until you are level 20.

As soon as you begin the game, a fairy named Alice will guide you through the tutorial. Alice is Deck Heroes' mascot and the most loved name in the game (you will know the reason soon!).

Alice will guide you through the explorer map and give you 'Flame Brave', 'Magic Weaver' and will show you how to enhance your creatures with essences. You will enhance Flame Brave to level 5 and unlock the powerful magic ability Pyre. You are going to rely on Flame Brave for quite some time.

The Combat Controls

The combat screen has 4 parts. The "Deck" from which your cards are dealt to your "hand", The "Hand" from which you play cards to the board, the "Board" where your cards fight, and the "Graveyard" where destroyed cards go - more or less like real card games. Cards are dealt from deck to your hand, in random order, one card per turn. Each card has a "wait" turn which it needs to finish after coming to your hand. Once the "wait turns" are finished, you are free to play that card. Wait turn is shown near an icon of an hourglass on the left side of a creature.

The order in which you play your cards early on doesn't matter because the initial levels are designed to make you win no matter what. It makes a difference as you progress to more difficult levels.

Once you finish map 1 (Dirgewood) and goes to map 2 (Selene'ndal), you get a new hero, Nightraider. Nightraider is not better than your Stormkalar hero, she is of the same level.

Alice will soon tell you about unsealing creatures. You can unseal your first creature once you have reached map 5.

Mazes

From map 2 onward you can play in Maze. Mazes help you level up fast and get gold. If you get something called a controlled dice while playing the maze, just hold on to them. They will become valuable from maze 7 onward where you can use them to land on gold chests, which has a chance to give you some rare 5 star cards.

A Word on Essences

Essences are hard to get at this stage. Use them wisely. Always enhance a card to either level 5 or level 10, not to the levels in between. It is only at level 5 and level 10 new skills are unlocked.

The only cards you should level up before level 20 are Frost Rager (you will get one soon), Magic Weaver and Flame Brave. Upgrading a card to level 10 is expensive, more so in case of Flame Brave which is a 4 star card. So try to get all of them to level 5 before you upgrade any one to level 10. I'd recommend to upgrade Frost Rager to level 10 first. That will give your entire team a huge HP boost and increase your survivability. Magic Weaver is a good second candidate for level 10 because Incinerate is a powerful offensive skill.

Alchemy

Once you claim the growth pack that comes in mail, you get a notification in the events window. If you follow it, you will come to the Alchemy page. Alchemy is a way where the game rewards you for piling up gems without spending. If you put gems into alchemy, you will get 120-130% of gems back immediately. After the alchemy for 50 gems, the next alchemy is at 500, 1500, 5000, 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 and 500,000.

Spend 50 gems in Alchemy to gain 60 gems back

Frost Rager

Alice will next take you to Arcadia and gift you with a "Frost Rager". This is a very powerful card with the potential to become an endgame card. Soon the "Bazaar" will also be unlocked. Buy only essence and energy from the Bazaar with coins until you are level 25. Also don't spend anything trying to buy a better Hero. You will get a powerful 4 star hero (Predator) for free at level 25. Any Hero you buy now will become obsolete.

In map 3, you can also do 'explore' for Frost Rager shards. It is totally worth getting three Frost Ragers for your first deck. 'Frost Armor' doesnt look like a useful skill when your enemies have only 150 attack, but soon your enemies will start hitting for 1000+ damage and you need Frost Ragers to survive that. At level 5, Frost Rager heals the damage it takes from physical attacks, and at level 10 gives health buff to your entire team.

Click on 3-3 to open the Exploration option

Click on the magnifying glass to explore for Frost Rager Shards. 

10 Shards will complete a Frost Rager.

You can also click on a creature and select "source" tab to open the exploration option.

Playing Your Hand in the Combat

While playing cards from your hand to the board, try to play tanky creatures like Frost Rager to the left. Healers like Magic Weaver and casters like Flame brave should be played to the right, away from enemy hits. Sometimes you might also want to wait a turn until the opponent has played, so that you get to hit her creatures before her creatures hit yours.

Coupons, Gold and Essences Raining!

At this point you will need more essences to enhance your cards.

The ones listed below are the only cards you should enhance now. The other cards you have must wait until you can get more essences from a guild.

Frost Rager,
Magic Weaver,
Frost Rager(a second one),
Flame Brave,
Frost Rager(a third one).

There are a few ways to gain essences.

One is to go through maps 1 and 2 and complete the dungeons in second difficulty level. Each dungeon will give you an essence II.

Another is to finish mazes to get essence cards.

A third option is to buy 'map guides' with gems. Map guides are good value at this level. However, you get a steady stream of essences, gold and great cards for free once you join a good guild (guilds unlock at level 20). I would not recommend to spend gems on map guides if you are not planning to spend money. First Map guide can be seen in map 3, the picture of a scroll and magnifying glass on the top center.

There is a 4th option too. A geat option. A fantastic option. SECRET CODES GIVEAWAYS!!!

Secret Code Giveaways

These are codes released by IGG as rewards for specific events. The codes given here are for the US/English server. I don't know whether it works for other servers, or they have a different set of codes.

You get the gifts in your mailbox as you enter the codes. While redeeming from your mailbox, do not claim the glory points now! You will get raided and you will lose it. Wait until you need to upgrade skills for your Predator Hero (level 25) or to draw runes from the runes altar (level 35) before you redeem the glory points from the mail. Claim all other stuff from the mailbox.

Here is how to claim them.

Click on your profile picture to find out your IGG ID. Note it down.

Click on the "notice" icon on the right of your screen. The notice page shows up.

Scroll down the menu under Alice and click on "Secret Code Giveaway". Press "go".

Enter your IGG ID and the below codes one by one to claim the rewards.

1. GNYSFH98DHTP (317 Glory Points, 31,000 Gold, 3 Dragon Rider Shards) 
2. GAX74K3QX6ND (300 Glory Points, 3 Coupons, 3 Dragon Rider Shards) 
3. GXCMJJEY8J2A (30 Gems, 300 Glory Points, 3 Coupons) 
4. GAFQ8DJEQ88A (5 coupons, 5 Hydra Shards, 5000 Glory)
5. GHU6BAQNHDSC (5 Odin Shards, 5 Coupons, Essence IV)
6. GJJB5AW8U787 (Human meld IV - 5 coupons- 360,000 gold)

Claim your rewards (except glory points) from your mailbox. Use your coupons in the coupon altar to draw creatures. Now that you have a lot of gold, you can also make some 5x draws in the coin altar if you wish. Atleast one essence II is guaranteed with each 5x coin draw. Dont spend all your gold there, you need gold to upgrade your cards too.

Do not spend your essences on any 4 star creatures you get from the coupon altar yet. Most of the 4 star creatures are useless. Until you join a guild and start to get gold and essences, stick with upgrading only the 6 faen cards we have picked. (The exception is if you plan to spend a lot of money to buy gems. Then you could experiment without much difference)

                 

The Colosseum

The Colosseum will get unlocked at level 12. Fight there with the deck we have been building. If you have a Frost Rager or Magic Weaver at level 10, you should be able to win a few battles. As you climb up the Arena ranking, you will be rewarded with gems. Stockpile gems. You will learn soon that the game rewards you in many ways for stockpiling gems, mainly through Alice Bond and Alchemy.

Alice Bond 

Alice Bond is an event where you purchase bonds for gems and gets back 1.5 times gems in installments. It is like Alchemy, but spread over 7 weeks instead of the instantaneous deal. You also get rare and unique 5 star cards when you redeem the first installment of the bond (which is immediately after you purchase). This is the most rewarding event in the entire game and the reason why the name 'Alice' is so loved in Deck heroes. This is also the only a way a free-to-play player can amass 100,000 gems and compete with the top spenders.

The bonds are available for 4000, 8000, 16000, 30000 and 60,000 gems. If you don't plan to purchase gems with money, I'd recommend to stockpile and get 50,000 gems through Alice Bond before you start spending.

The Rush to Level 20

After claiming the bronze chests in first three maps (bottom right corner of the maps), you will have enough shards to complete an Ursa Major. It is a great card, but its usefulness comes later. For now, it is not as good as a Frost Rager.

From level 15 onward you can increase your combat speed by clicking the small button above the "graveyard".

Once you are level 18, "Trials" is unlocked. It is a good place to gain experience and gold.

When you are level 20, you get a new growth pack in mail. It is 10,000 glory points. DO NOT CLAIM IT NOW. Claim it only when you can actually use glory points, otherwise you might lose the glory points in raids.

At level 20, you can now join a guild.

Guilds

Joining a good guild is the most important decision you make in Deck Heroes.

Most good guilds have huge stockpiles of essences, 5 star creature shards and 4 star creature cards. Unfortunately you wont usually find them recruiting in the global chat. To join a good guild, go to the forums and ask if anyone would take you in.

The energy spent by players in a guild go as "contribution" to the guild map. Much of the guilds recruiting from the global chat are "energy farms", which means that they are guilds set up by alt-accounts of established players to farm new players for contribution. They pile up the contribution, then kick out all members, and then the player's main account will go in, clear all the maps and take the shards.

If you don't get a steady stream of stuff from the guild, then you are getting farmed. If the guild has a "free-for-all" shard system, and very few  shards to keep claiming, then you are getting farmed. If the guild has no communication channel outside the game, then you are not only getting farmed, you are also missing out on good company and learning.

The game does not have a reliable way to communicate between players. Most guilds in the game use an app called "Line" to communicate. If you are joining a guild from global chat, make sure that they have "Line" (or a facebook group or whatever). If a guild doesn't have any communication channels, then it is a farm run by the an established player (or unknowingly run by a clueless player - small chance).

There is a wait time of 7 days to join a new guild after you leave one. It might be less expensive to ask in the forums for someone to take you in rather than wasting weeks experimenting and switching guilds. (URL for the forum thread given below)

http://deckheroes.freeforums.net/thread/7450/looking-guild-thread

I stress this point so much because I have been farmed by such guilds over a few months before I made a request in the forum and got to know good company. I don't want you to get cheated.

This concludes the beginners guide to Deck Heroes. For other advanced game topics, please visit the index page HERE.

Thanks for reading and Good Luck to you!