Poker Quest is one of a kind

[pyrhic]

But you still get that xp, and maybe more, if you fail. For instance in a recent run, my xp for the first level was a decent 75. I couldve taken the bonus which would netted me a total of about 112. Instead, i kept going, made it about through (and defeated) the second boss and now can claim 281 (181 +100 bonus - later edit: and finished just past the third castle with 245 total xp). So basically, you can eclipse any bonus if you can make it through about half the next level. If you’re really beat up in the boss fight - just take the bonus and try again. If not, go and see how far you can go. Or maybe you’re just tired of this build or class, then just cash in and go again. I dunno, I just don’t see it as a penalty…

Oh, and I’m trying a run as queen now, to refresh my memory on her mechanics - I find she’s the opposite of what you’re saying. At lower levels, she’s really powerful - able to wreck lower mobs and bosses because their simple patterns are easy to interupt. At higher levels I find she struggles - the damage from the curse is greatly diminished at that point, and reliably interupting higher level mobs from using their abilities is increasingly difficult. But it can be a matter of picking your fights too - avoid mobs with locked abilities or requiring high card counts to trigger (since you’ll be trading 2 cards for one of theirs, often the value of your two cards exceed what you’re getting), and focus on mobs with exacting criteria (4 card flush, 3card straight, one of each suit). Also be really careful of mobs relying on black cards - since your key ability gives you all the spades, this is what you’ll fall back on to fill out your hand with cards, and probably be left to trade with when all else fails. Oh, and hex - avoid mobs with hex since it’ll interfere with your ability to swap cards effectively.

[jsnell]

@pyrhic

It’s the first hero you have with the ability to manipulate the enemy’s cards.

I got the Rogue and the Mage before the Queen, are they unlocked in a random order? Both of them have a cheaper and easier to use ability for manipulating the enemy cards. Sure, there’s some rare cases where being able to give the opponent specific cards can be used to trigger a positive ability, but more often than not I was in a situation with the Queen where I couldn’t take away a critical card without giving something equally good in return.

@pyrhic

Oh, and I’m trying a run as queen now, to refresh my memory on her mechanics - I find she’s the opposite of what you’re saying. At lower levels, she’s really powerful - able to wreck lower mobs and bosses because their simple patterns are easy to interupt.

Let’s ignore the first battle, and assume you just automatically win it to get the money for the first extra card draw upgrade. Even with three cards, it’s really hard to disrupt the opponent and get anything done at the same time. Both your active cards are primarily driven by small-medium cards, face cards tend to be almost useless. But against most opponents, you’d prefer to steal their face cards and donate small cards.

If you draw 6 cards per round, sure, those are amazing abilities. But you don’t. The only way to get the cards to feed into those abilities is by either gems or the “draw all spades” special power. And while the special power is strong, it is so expensive that I don’t see how you can afford to use it in every combat. (Or worse, use it multiple times in the same encounter.)

[pyrhic]

@jsnell

I got the Rogue and the Mage before the Queen, are they unlocked in a random order? Both of them have a cheaper and easier to use ability for manipulating the enemy cards. Sure, there’s some rare cases where being able to give the opponent specific cards can be used to trigger a positive ability, but more often than not I was in a situation with the Queen where I couldn’t take away a critical card without giving something equally good in return.

You’re right, sorry, I was just skimming over them as i reviewed, they do have enemy card manipulation in their arsenal, but I’d argue it isn’t cheaper as both are powered by energy - which is finite. When I’m playing the queen, i’m probably manipulating the enemy’s cards every combat round which would be impossible with rogue/mage. Maybe its more proper to say that enemy card manipulation is core to the queen, whereas its ancillary to the other two?

@jsnell

Let’s ignore the first battle, and assume you just automatically win it to get the money for the first extra card draw upgrade. Even with three cards, it’s really hard to disrupt the opponent and get anything done at the same time. Both your active cards are primarily driven by small-medium cards, face cards tend to be almost useless. But against most opponents, you’d prefer to steal their face cards and donate small cards.

If you draw 6 cards per round, sure, those are amazing abilities. But you don’t. The only way to get the cards to feed into those abilities is by either gems or the “draw all spades” special power. And while the special power is strong, it is so expensive that I don’t see how you can afford to use it in every combat. (Or worse, use it multiple times in the same encounter.)

Well, at this point in my game, i’m starting with about 30 coin, so i immediately upgrade my draw, my gem draw, and my world view. Still, you’re correct, in that sometimes you can’t damage all you want, and you just have to focus on defense. My last run, I went through the entire first level until the battle before the boss before i took any damage. That’s probably a little too excessive (as you can usually rely on some healing through the level to top you up), but i think its a good indicator of what the class can do if you choose your battles carefully. My next order of business is trying to upgrade the brooch - it’s got a fantastic upgrade curve - at 13 coin you get 2 uses per turn, and with another 16 you can use 9 and below instead of 6.

Back to the game itself:

I find the map traversal to be fantastic in the game, and even better than spire. For instance here’s where i am with this run:

I have 3 paths i can go - the bottom row is kinda where I want to go, i can upgrade my energy pool there, and even sell some of it off at the wizard beyond it. Then i can grab those 3 gems and move on towards the castle. That’s a pretty strategic path though, and by taking it, i limit myself to only 5 of the 9 remaining unexposed nodes. Then there’s the middle path - two battles, with an easy 9 gold (the first of those, the dealer is so easy as the queen, as she can pretty much bust the dealer at will), and ending with maxing out the gems. Then there’s the top path - the blacksmith is useless to me (my minimum upgrade cost is 13 i think), and the rat battle can be tricky (he triggers off of pairs, and drawing 5 cards, he could well draw into 2 pairs which i can’t fend off), but he’s a lightning rat and lightning is very random (0-100% damage), so it won’t be too difficult. However, going the top path will allow me to access any of the 9 remaining nodes. Hmmm…I wish the rat battle and the blacksmith were reversed, and that would be an easy pick, but i think i’ll go middle.

[Lykurgos]

Strong suggestion to try out Challenge Mode + Unprepared

This lets you start out with your own choice of purchases from a shop, rather than the default hero setup. Yes, this exposes you to RNG right at the beginning, but also lets you create a much more viable starting setup than the default. Feels to me like a great way to play it.

Even better, you keep the consumable that lets you create an instant shop, so when you get a chance to refill a consumable, like at a campsite, you can enable it to be used again later.

[Lykurgos]

Here is an example of a very strong tableau, facing off against the third act boss (I won). It is my most effective build yet in at least 25 runs (all partial, I am yet to complete a full run) enabled by many meta progress unlocks and very good options encountered in first and second act shops.

Rogue is the second hero unlocked. His energy special is stealing an enemy card for 3 energy. Early on, this is a fight winner by itself, since it can often deny the enemy their card trigger. Later on, with enemies that draw many cards, have multiple abilities and draw hidden cards, it becomes less effective, but still very useful.

The first two weapons in the bottom row are those the Rogue starts with. The first requires a 2-card straight, dealing 2x the card value damage. I have not upgraded this since that just enables more cards within the straight, and straights are too rare to be reliable. The second, which I have fully upgraded, simply takes any one card and does 2x damage. This is great for consistent damage output.

The Knife also has Curse All 10. This is one of the extremely powerful buffs that an Enchantress can give. If you see an Enchantress on the map, start saving your coins. There is nothing to compare. When I use this card to apply Curse 10, any ability the enemy does not use will apply 10 damage. Then, if Curse remains (which it does if the ability s not used) and I apply it again, it immediately applies another 10 damage.

The second big battle winner in this tableau is the Axe of Poison. I focus on using that first every single turn most of the time. It is a very easy ability to trigger, only requiring card value, rather than any special combinations.

Pouch of Holding is a fantastic utility card. With this, I can always bank a couple of cards. For example, bank Heart cards to use the double damage on the first weapon, which can take the damage to 80+ in one hit. It also enables storage of cards I might want to swap using the Card Swapper. The Card Swapper is fantastic for disrupting enemy ability triggers. In this boss fight, I was able to prevent the boss from using the Magic Missile and Dance abilities almost entirely.

Duke the Dog is just a crazy bonus. Food is often scarce and it is easy to run out, especially if using it to recover HP. Being able to apply a Stun is incredibly powerful though except . . . except something something spoiler-y

[pyrhic]

So I just unlocked the Huntress and tried what seemed to be a rather lacklustre hero, and something remarkable happened:

I won! That’s my second highest score, and only the second time I’ve won (first was mage).

Here’s her default loadout:

Duke is a useful stun (removes all enemy cards) and a respectable attack, but at a food per use is a little extensive to go running all the time. Her main combat ability is an easy poison, but it has a 2 round cooldown. Planter gains you 3 food, but then needs to be refreshed at a campsite so its not really a great source of food. Probably her best ability though is her energy ability which refreshes all items (Unfortunately, it doesn’t recharge planter). I was…unexcited. I thought I’d maybe ge to the first boss, but figured, I’d run out of food and then just get pummeled.

I knew at first I’d need an item to supplement the spear if i had any hope of a long run. I was hoping for a direct attack weapon, but at first all i got was a precise sword of poison (adds 15 poison on any cards equaling 16). I didn’t love double stacking poison, as with no defense mitigation, i couldn’t stand very long in any fights without leaning heavily on duke. I was able to pick up a precise sword (iirc, did 10 damage on any cards equaling 10), but then the two stars of the run showed up. First was drawstone - which by default allowed me to draw 2 cards with any card total of at least 7 (upgraded, this was a crazy 5 cards), and more importantly, i noticed a cave with a boss battle in my path that offered Festertouch. Festertouch is a crazy ability to stack with poison - basically it accelerates poison damage(When enemies take attack damage, their existing poison deals its damage and decreases just like it does at the end of their turn). So if in normal play, i’d stacked up 30 poison, the enemy would play their turn, then the poison damage would apply and it would then go down to like 26 for the next turn. With festertouch though, as soon as you attack, they’d take the 30 damage, and the damage would step down to 26, which would then apply at the end of the round as normal.

So, the late game craziness which would ensue was like this: I’d stack on poison from the spear and poison sword. I’d draw some cards with the drawstone, i’d then attack with the precise sword and apply the poison immediately. THEN, i’d use her energy ability to reset EVERYTHING. Restack more poison, use the drawstone again, hit with the precise sword again to apply the poison again. So a normal round would be like 30 poison, then 10 damage, then 60 poison, then 10 damage,*, then if the enemy wasn’t going to hit (or not hard), i’d let the round end and they’d take a final 50 or so damage from the poison. Now if it was a heavy hitting enemy, or one I wanted to kill immediately, I’d just reset the abilities at the asterisk and go at it again. That 60 poison would become 90, get applied again (the next round would add about 170 damage), a round after that, about 270…

I killed the final boss in the first round. Well, killed him the first time, then he rebirthed, and i killed him for real in the 4th round (he had a nasty ability that stole all my energy, so i couldn’t just redo that same trick from round 1).

Crazy build: thumbs up, would recommend.

[robc04]

I have a crazy good build going where I was able to pay 35 gold to change the lightning ability of one of my cards to Curse All. Now I’ve upgraded it so it’s Curse All 62, so it can do a ton of damage vs enemies that have several cards they don’t use in a turn.

…

Decided to finish that game and got my second victory! That Curse All item was incredible - it just melted the final boss. Got my best score too.

The other game I won was with the Mage, who wasn’t too far behind.

I’ve got 35 hours in Poker Quest. It’s been my go to game when I’m eating breakfast or another meal at the computer.

[Spock]

I just played for free for an hour at Poker Quest by playsaurus . I enjoyed the gameplay, but this online version appears to be an alpha build, so it has placeholder graphics and almost no audio. It’s amazing how big a difference media make! Your screenshots certainly make the game look more vibrant. Also, I doubt I can save my online game. I will probably buy it from Steam next time it’s on sale.

[robc04]

I think it’s worth it. I hope you enjoy it when you get it.

[Spock]

Glory be, the online version I linked actually saved my game, even after I shut down the PC overnight. I guess the browser cookies remember where I was. So I play on! I’ve beaten a couple bosses so far. No idea how far I have to go, but I’m enjoying it.

I wonder why they leave this playable (if pre-release) version online for free play. Advertising, I suppose? It’s working in my case – I fully intend to buy this thing, but I’d prefer to wait for the inevitable sale.

[Spock]

My first run, as the knight of spades, ended in the third area maybe? Now I’m trying the huntress. She’s very thematic, shooting and letting DoTS do their thing, and using a hunting dog to stun enemies. But I have no shield as yet…