Card Hunter: CCG combined with RPG Campaign

[NickAragua]

I just want to say that the "Resistant Hide" armor that mages get from certain robes is solid gold in the campaign. It makes the wearer immune to pretty much all elemental magic, which is awesome when you can have your mage stand out front in a level full of fire/lightning sprites or whatever and absorb all their attacks. Even better, you can stand on lava. The only thing that'll get you is if you're forced to discard it via card or by standing on an acid tile.

Or, you know, being bludgeoned upside the head with an ax.

[Sudy]

Definitely glad that I ditched the dwarven warrior from beta and went with a human one. I'm really liking my dwarven mage; mobility isn't as important with a mage (except when escaping melee attackers), and extra hit points help.

Managed to bear level 2 of the gladiatorial qualifier mission, the one with the goblin hulk, or whatever he is. Never managed that in beta. Still not sure whether I love or hate this game, though. It keeps me coming back, but I get fed up easily and very frustrated at times.

[NickAragua]

Some more impressions:

Impenetrable Nimbus is awesome. Makes a guy invulnerable to damage for one turn. Wait until somebody's got a hand full of melee attacks, then give them a shot of Nimbus and have them run up to a crowd of bad guys. Half the people I played in multiplayer kept forgetting my guy had the card on and threw a bunch of attack cards against him. I chuckled.

The downside is that, like all other attachments, it's subject to the three attachment limit. If you see a guy with a Nimbus, just put a bunch of cheap attachments on him. Three cards, and the nimbus is gone, then you can continue whaling on him.

Alternately, you can "Purge" the Nimbus off a guy. It's not just for when you're on fire, it's also useful for getting rid of buffs on bad guys!

Or, you could just ignore the Nimbus guy. Unfortunately, in multiplayer, there's a strong incentive to hold victory locations, so it's a tradeoff - do you just wait it out and give the other guy a point, or do you waste three cards on an invulnerable character?

Defensiveness is an awful trait to have. I watched this one poor shmuck waste 4 magic spells in a row because I had a guy within three squares of the caster. At 50% odds, you want to make sure you're out of range before you start trying to fling those fireballs.

[LordMortis]

I'm still enjoying the campaign so I haven't re-dove into multi player yet. Maybe this weekend. I should finish the campaign this weekend or at least get to the end of what the campaign was in the beta.

I haven't the nimbus power yet. I have no idea what I've seen and what I haven't but I'm looking forward to the weekend.

[LordMortis]

I was hoping the campaign would be longer than in the beta. So I'm actually trying to go through and play the replays. Any one have any advice for how to survive having one hip point per part member?

[LordMortis]

Just go an email that an expansion has been released. I'm debating sitting down with this again. We'll see.

[IceBear]

I played the first mission of the expansion but it looks like the next one needs pizza slices to unlock. I could be mistaken as I hadn't finished the game so might need to have done some more on the base game to unlock more.

[NickAragua]

The 5 new missions cost 150 pizza slices if you buy them in bulk. I happened to have 150 pizza slices from when I got some founder's pack or whatever. Sold!

[LordMortis]

The 5 new missions cost 150 pizza slices if you buy them in bulk. I happened to have 150 pizza slices from when I got some founder's pack or whatever. Sold!

Wow. I bought pizza because I liked the game and wanted to support it. The only pizza got from the game was the introduction sales.

I want to say I needed pizza to do some of the sidequest dungeons and I was happy to unlock them with paid for pizza.

[NickAragua]

The first three adventures of the new expansion are pretty easy (level 7-9), but then you get to the level 18 stuff and holy balls it's hard. The first level is a bunch of fire sprites combined with these rust monster jackasses that get more than one attack per turn. About half of the rust monster attacks force you to discard all your armor and/or attack cards, and they also do a lot of damage and I've seen individual rust monsters attack more than once a turn. I finally struggled through the first fight and then I was promptly confronted with two 40 hit point trolls and two more rust monsters. Between the rust monsters and the bullshit 20 damage attacks from the trolls, we didn't make it.

Anybody got any tips?

[LordMortis]

I haven't made time to get back to this yet. I keep meaning to but then I sit down to video game I get distracted by something new (to me) and shiny.

[hentzau]

Really wish they would do an iPad version of this game.

[LordMortis]

In addition to doing whatever it is they'd have to do to make it work with Safari, they'd also have to tweak the UI something fierce. I tried playing on a Windows 8 tablet. (You also have to run the Windows 8 browser in some sort of legacy mode) I didn't like the way the UI worked touch screen at all. Mainly the problem was with map sizing and navigation, IIRC.

[kganey]

Really wish they would do an iPad version of this game.

Drop Forge Games has signed up to do this, but it will be stand alone and not connected to the online Adobe AIR game. Not sure how that will play out. It is explained somewhere on this Reddit AMA, but I'm too lazy to read it again.

The first three adventures of the new expansion are pretty easy (level 7-9), but then you get to the level 18 stuff and holy balls it's hard.

I'd put this down for more than a year (roughly end of Beta) and just picked it back up along with the expansion. I found this play through (up to level 18) to be much, much easier than it was during Beta. Only a few adventures had me replay more than once or twice. The expansion cards and setting are pretty cool tool. But the expansion levels at 18+ feel like real end game content. Like they are put there for the people who have sunk serious amounts of time in the game and are looking for an excuse to sink crazy amounts of time in a few new levels. Ouch.

Finally, I'd never tried multiplayer before, but I'm digging the fixed deck league tournaments. Short, sweet, and lots of loot. Since both sides have the same deck, though, it often comes down to pure luck. Some luck is cool, but pure luck shouldn't take 30 minutes a game.

[ColdSteel]

I also started playing this about a week ago for the first time since beta. It's much better now and really has its hooks into me. I've got a party at level 15 and another one at level 11. It's not too difficult to handle the campaign now as long as you spend enough time to grind up some cards before attempting the higher levels. As F2P games go, this is about the best I've tried. I spent $10 to unlock all 11 adventures and used my free pizza to unlock all the expansion adventures. That's access to everything at a very fair price. The rest of the stuff like Club membership, extra figures and chests are just fluff/convenience. I've tried some MP too but it's not as much fun as SP.

The only thing I find difficult in the game is getting gold. You have to really grind and grind maps over and over to get any and even then it's not much. I did the Kobold mines over and over this past weekend and after an afternoon of work I still only had earned a few hundred gold. I only have one firestorm card so that does slow me down. Wish I could get more. There's a good one for sale at Randimar's this week but it's 2500 gold. I don't have anywhere near that much.

[kganey]

The only thing I find difficult in the game is getting gold. You have to really grind and grind maps over and over to get any and even then it's not much.

Agreed, the "buying items from shops" part of the game is awful. I have a Legendary treasure, which will sell for 1,000 gold - far more than the usual 100 gold selling price for a Legendary but still not enough. Buying a Legendary item, for comparison, is 2,500 gold. So to buy a Legendary, you have to sell 2 Legendary treasures, 2 epic treasures, 2 rare treasures, and 2 uncommon treasures. Or you could sell 25 legendary items, or 125 epic items, etc. It's crazy.

I basically ignore shops. Gold is only good for entries to tournaments. As a tournament entry, the gold should more than pay for itself. It costs 50 gold to enter, and I've never received less than 250 gold in treasure from participating.

[LordMortis]

I never found gold too difficult to "collect" as I hated maintaining cards I know I'd never use.

There were no gold costing tournaments when last I played but I would play a bit of mulitplayer and that was good for some cards, again convertible to gold if they were useless. That's more fun for me than playing an adventure again and again.

Also I rarely bought cards. There just never seemed to be anything that interested me much.

I should go back and play some more.

[ColdSteel]

Prices have changed a lot since beta. Selling cards in not efficient because most of what you find sells for only 1 or 2 gold. Rare items sell for 5 gold. Epic items only 20 gold. You can sell legendary items for 100 gold but they are hard to find and not worth selling. For example, I've found exactly one legendary in two weeks of playing my way to level 15 and I've put in a lot of hours. Selling cards for gold isn't really viable.

[GreenGoo]

Wow, love the look, especially the module "covers."

I must have looked at this thread from work the first time, as I didn't see the pics before today.

Love the look too.

Just read an article today about this game. The designer mentions he was heavily influenced by the original D&D or AD&D which I assume shows up in the game play (I haven't played it). It certainly did in the module "covers".

I'm going to have to check this game out finally.

[MonkeyFinger]

Is this the one where I remember something about pizzas.. as a currency?

[GreenGoo]

Is this the one where I remember something about pizzas.. as a currency?

I'm gonna say yes. That sounds right.

[LordMortis]

So an update to the Guild of Dungeoneering got me to play that and it felt hollow but gave me an itch to play this again. It looks like my install ported to Steam and the publishers remembered my account from 2014 and I remembered my password. This is scratching an itch for me and it looks like there is more content. It also looks like there is a series of three or four paid for content that I would happy to add to my game but some of it is rather expensive.

They also added Co-op, so somehow you can play with friends.

There are bunches of new dynamics and tons of new items in the last 7+ years.

I'm a bit sad that if I start new characters under my existing account, I don't get to play the campaign again. I both want to start all over and not lose all the goodies I accumulated and the fact that I paid for pizza based stuff to support the devs (and may do so again). BlueManchu (who seem to have sold to Unity) really set the bar for video CCG games after Microprose version Shandalar back in, what, 97, maybe?

I may have to crawl out of my shell in figure out how to do MP... with... strangers... Probably not though...

I was hoping the campaign would be longer than in the beta. So I'm actually trying to go through and play the replays. Any one have any advice for how to survive having one hip point per part member?

Heh, I hated this when I sat down to replay over the weekend. I apparently hated that challenge in my replay in 2014 as well.

[NickAragua]

I remember plowing through most of this with a friend way back when. But I did get pissed that there was no way to replay some of the campaign missions, so I hear you on that.

[LordMortis]

How does Co Op work?

[NickAragua]

It's been a while, so I don't really recall very clearly, but I'm pretty sure you split control over the party somehow - one person has one guy, the other person has the other (or other two?).