Trials of Fire

I just saw this card, and context is everything.

It’s a card that is on a dagger the Occultist starts with, his whole schtick is to hurt himself and his allies for gains. So this card does what it literally says - deal 2 damage to an enemy with no defense (ideal obviously), or two damage to an adjacent friendly and gain 3 will power". Meaning, if you have a viable target (an enemy with no defense), this is basically free damage with a huge WP gain. If that isn’t the case, you can still hurt an ally for 3 willpower, which is probably huge. The Occultist has an effect where when you play you first non-power card on an ally, that ally draws a card so to further this, you could do two damage to an ally, let them draw a card AND gain 3 willpower.

It’s a melee attack, so the “adjacent” part vs. the enemy is implied. It defines “1 space” since it’s not a melee attack when applied to a character, I suspect.

I just encountered him at the end of a long Trial of Fire run, and he was a beast but we were super high level with lots of epic and legendary equipment and upgraded cards, so he went down fairly quickly. I have a tough time with the Necromancer myself, I think because I’m usually under-equipped/leveled by that second phase of the Water Gem quest, and I think Lurker would normally give me problems in the same way, but I got lucky. Creepy and cool fight though, I have to say.

Yeah, I didn’t think the lurker was bad - the Red Dragon has killed me 2x now though.

Boy, howdy is this game tough! I had to bump the difficulty down to “easy” just so I could see what I would get by completing the “starter” campaign.

Then again, maybe it’s just me.

I’ve played several scenarios, some more than once, and I’m finding the difficulty jumps around a lot. Sometimes I acquire just the cards to steamroller opponents, sometimes I don’t find the cards or the opponents I run into are tough for the way I’m set up.

Just as an example… I tend to build around my hunter as a ranged killing machine. Which works incredibly well when my witch gets that card that can be played as a power on the hunter allowing him to ignore line of sight. Get that card, and everything is sooo much easier. Get two of that card, and nothing can stop me. Miss out on that card, and it’s torture getting through some of the fights.

I cannot remember the last time I found a game that made time disappear as effectively as this one. :)

One thing I missed and just picked up, and I’m not sure if this is a change from the last time I played about a year ago … you can use the healing herbs when resting to level up one of your core skills with the meditation option. I was under the mistaken impression that meditation only got rid of skills.

I’ve been doing much better since I started using the herbs for that.

It funny because when I first played since 1.0 I was all “man this is just a cake walk, maybe I need to go up in difficulty.”

Then I got to the Red Dragon.

The Red Dragon to my party:

I felt more like …

1.01 Update includes “Right clicking on any of the deck details popups will lock them in place, allowing you to mouse over the cards for details”

Not just you, it is proper tough.

I am a grizzled early early access player and have been in the top 50 scoring players for several of the campaigns. I still party-wipe.

My three attempted runs since full release have had be literally in sight of the final boss battle, taking one more battle just prior, and full party wiping within it. Awesome!

Anyone want to compare / share / trash talk scores? Add me to your Steam buddies with Friend code 66985455 :-)

I’ve sent an invite. I’ll probably start this game next now I’m done with Urtuk on Desolation a few times.

Just added you, not many of my Steam pals are playing this yet.

Invitation sent!

I think I already have you three on my Steam friend list

Really enjoying this one so far.

Completed water gem on easy and am really enjoying this. My sense is that the game expects you to play on easy for awhile to unlock the tools to make you more competitive at higher difficulty levels, and to learn the game. It helps that I long ago surrendered any semblance of pride about these things, I guess.

Managed the water gem quest on Medium on my second attempt, that dragon at the end is nasty! Only killed him because my ranger, last man standing, was able to do a 25 damage shot to finish him off.

Not beaten the dragon yet. Last time I got that far I had him on 1 HP :(

I had to drop down to Easy to defeat the dragon

I just beat him now too. I lost when I tried once during early access. I lost again at release. 3rd time was the charm. I think it is because the last update took away one of its bonus willpower points so it couldn’t do quite as much each turn (depending on its cards). Played on medium and didn’t lose any heroes this time, but I was close to losing one. I dumped a bunch of defense on him and got him out of the way in time.

Toughest I have faced yet is the Sun Priest and accompanying guards. Quite a combination of overwhelming defense and very good offense. And some very good counters to my hunter, who I probably over-rely on.