Gameplay Guide

Getting started

Difficulty

The difficulty you choose will alter your starting health (15 for easy to 7 for extreme), and the amount of cards you start with when you choose the "pile" mode. Also, cards will sell for less in shops and enemies will have more health.

Another difference is that on hard/extreme difficulty, enemies that use computer-generated decks (using .json files) will instead use completely random decks that will have nothing to do with their original deck theme.

Starting cards

You will have multiple options as to how your starting pool of cards will look

1. Pile. This will give you a random pile of cards based on the color you choose. The harder the difficulty you choose, the fewer cards you will get. When you use this option, it is recommended that you create a 40-card deck (minimum deck size) out of the 60 cards you get.

2. Chaos. This is a unique gameplay mode that completely randomizes the enemy decks and the deck you start with. This setting is not recommended for new players

3. Standard. With this start, you will get three 20-card preconstructed jumpstart decks from the set you choose (or all of them).

4. Constucted. With this setting, you start with a custom preconstructed deck based on a popular theme that's easy to expand during your run. (Recommended for new players). Your starting color will determine which starter deck you will get

General hints and tips

1. Don't immediately sell cards that are not useful in your current deck. Some cards can be very useful in certain boss fights, for instance, cards with " protection from red" are very strong against most red bosses.
2. Make sure to travel to the biome capitals early in your run. Every capital contains a shop that sells 1 life and an item that allows you to teleport back to that capital. Also, they sell items that can't be found elsewhere.
3. Every boss gives you +1 starting life. So if you're having trouble with a certain boss, it might be better to try your hand with other bosses.
4. Arena challenges in the capitals can be a good source of money, items, and cards. Though you need a rather strong deck to consistently win there.

Insane Guide

If you are playing on Insane and need some pointers, user KingNishi has written up a nice doc about it

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RgO20QpdVOpU-g_E1RL8q1r0C5GUy6y-nnxgXNbi9Wg/pub