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Team Selection Strategy

In general, there are several things to consider when selecting a Leader Card and Support Cards for any given quest or goal in Mythmonger. These include:

The elemental types of the card(s) you want to collect.
The raw power of the card(s) you want to collect.
The supporting traits of all cards in the area.
The elemental types and raw power of other cards in the region.
Your available cards to use.

Before Starting

Before selecting your team, bear in mind two things with regard to faction alignment.

Firstly, your faction alignment affects which cards you able to use (for example, see Hermit Sage and Stoat Clipper).

Secondly, your Leader Card (and not your Supporting Cards) determines how your faction alignment changes - cards with a Technology alignment will move your alignment towards Technology and so on.

Leader Selection

Your leader card should be at least elementally neutral (no advantage or penalty) compared to your target(s). Generally a slightly weaker card with elemental advantage will perform as well as or better than a somewhat stronger card that is elementally neutral.

It is generally preferable to select a leader with an elemental type that isn't weak against the other cards in the area. However, if you do not care about collecting those cards at all, it is often simpler to simply ignore them. In other cases, this is impossible to accomplish.

Finally, bear in mind that the elemental weaknesses/strengths have a relative impact on your supporting abilities as well. That is, if you have elemental advantage over an opponent and a trait activates which grants you +10 Attack, you actually gain approximately +11 Attack (there appears to be some amount of rounding) due to the elemental advantage.

When thinking about leader selection and element types, the ratio to keep in mind is 3/4 (for weakness) or 4/3 (for strength). If you're considering a choice between 3 leaders, where one is neutral, one is a weaker element, and one is a stronger element, check the power levels, modified by the above ratios (derivation is left as an exercise for the reader).

LEADER SELECTION EXAMPLE 1: Suppose you have the following choices (and assume traits are equal), against a fire element card:

A) A fire element card with power 25.

B) A water element card with power 20.

C) A metal element card with power 30.

Which one is the best choice against the fire element card with power 20?

A)This one is just power 25, same element.

B)This one has an effective power of 4/3*20, or about 27.

C)This one has an effective power of 3/4*30, or about 22.

The answer is B.

Support Selection

Selecting supports can be a complex and daunting issue.

Firstly, note that the raw power, luck, and elemental type of supporting cards has no impact. Only the traits can affect how combat goes.

Secondly, in most circumstances, +Defense is stronger (increases your chance to win more) than +Attack. The exception is that +Attack tends to be stronger when your leader has less power than the opposing leader.

Thirdly, traits with the description 'Power Type XXXXX' change the elemental type of the Leader Card of whichever team that trait's card is on when they activate.

When comparing traits, players typically use the average bonus and do so by multiplying the chance for the trait to activate times the value of the trait (e.g., 2% of 37 Attack would be 0.74 or 74 depending on whether you ignore the decimal places). These values can be compared freely to find the card with the best (largest value) combination of traits.

A final note: Pay close attention to traits which change the elemental type (of either side) and traits which only activate against certain elements. These traits can be extremely helpful if used to your advantage and annoying or disastrous otherwise.

Helpful Tips

This is just a place for random useful tips that people may have.

Challenge Cards

Challenge Cards are an integral part of strategy and are the only means the player has to influence what Character Cards they attract on their turns and patrols. There are a wide (and growing) variety of Challenge Cards, which fall into one of several categories:

General Challenge Cards (Basic Challenge Cards and Heroic Challenge Cards)
Faction Challenge Cards (Magic Challenge Cards, Nature Challenge Cards, and Technology Challenge Cards)
Specialty Challenge Cards (such as Requietory Challenge Cards and Dream Catcher Challenge Cards).

Acquisition

Generally speaking, most Challenge Cards are acquired by purchasing them with coins. This is usually the simplest and most cost effective way of doing so. Heroic Challenge Cards are a notable exception, as they cannot be bought with coins. They must be obtained from quests, traded for, or bought with real-life currency.

Note that while Heroic Challenge Cards can be converted into Faction Challenge Cards, doing so is not recommended. It is generally more cost effective to buy Faction Challenge Cards with coins, as HCCs are harder to obtain than coins are.

Repeatable Quests

There are a number of repeatable quests which give Challenge Cards as rewards. Several of these are particularly notable because they award Faction Challenge Cards, which are expensive, or award Heroic Challenge Cards which cannot be bought with coins in game. Others are the only way to obtain more of certain Challenge Cards.

The quests include:

However, not all of the quests are particularly cost effective. Some of the quests which exchange Character Cards for Faction Challenge Cards award fewer coins worth of Challenge Cards than what the turned in Character Cards are worth.

As for quests that provide Heroic Challenge Cards (HCCs), please refer to the HCC Quest Guide for a cost-benefit analysis.

Usage

Challenge Card usage varies depending on whether the player wants to attract only specific Character Cards in an area (such as when questing), or anything and everything.

General Hunting

Basic Challenge Cards tend to be the most commonly used challenge card. They are cheap and usually able to attract the majority of the character cards in an area. Heroic Challenge Cards are also commonly used, as they are able to attract nearly any card in the game (notable exceptions include the Skeleton King and most cards in the East Core Mines). Heroic Challenge Cards are, however, more difficult to acquire, so they are typically reserved for more difficult tasks.

The East Core Mines is a notable exception to this. Basic Challenge Cards attract only Blank Cards. See the location page for more specific information.

Specific Hunting

When hunting for a specific card or cards, it is generally helpful to have more information about what you are looking for. There are a number of Challenge Cards with more specialized attraction and knowing exactly which one to use is aided by knowing the faction (and sometimes related quest) of the card(s) you are looking for.

Faction Challenge Cards preferentially attract cards of their faction. As such, they can be used to avoid attracting unwanted cards while questing, or improve the likelihood of attracting uncommon or rare cards. Some cards can only be attracted with Faction Challenge Cards or Heroic Challenge Cards. Note that in areas with many cards of the same faction, Faction Challenge Cards are only minimally effective at drawing out uncommon and rare cards. In this case, Heroic Challenge Cards may yield better (faster) results (though this is at a higher price).

Specialty Challenge Cards are generally associated with a quest or specific location which explains or hints at their usefulness. While usually useful (or required) for their specific task, these challenge cards are typically not very useful for anything else. Requietory Challenge Cards, for instance, are introduced by the Dead Kingdom quest and are used only in the final stage of that quest. The East Core Mines introduces eight different Challenge Cards designed specifically for use only in that location.

Tips and Tricks

This is a location for any other tricks (not trading related) that players have found for acquiring or using challenge cards.

Managing Factions

Each faction has its own quirks and advantages and disadvantages. This section discusses the difference between the three factions in terms of gameplay, as well as general techniques to changing (or not changing) factions.

Note that collectors must eventually play as all of the factions in order to gain access to the various quests needed to get all the cards.

Changing Factions

Because only your leader card, and certain quests, change your faction standing, changing factions is a matter of choosing to use a leader of the faction that you want to become, instead of choosing leaders of the other factions.

Note that leaders that are perfectly neutral (for example, see the Skeleton King and Sell Sword) do not change your alignment at all when used.

In general, changing factions requires you to use less effective cards initially, because most of the better leader (and support) cards have faction requirements you do not initially meet.

An alternative to moving towards your desired faction is to use a moderately powerful 'off-neutral' leader, such as the Hollow Champion, who will gradually move your alignment towards neutral. Once your faction alignment is more balanced, you can change leaders again to move towards your desired faction, having gained access to some mid-range cards of your new faction without you having to go through a prolonged 'weakened team' period.

Using the East Core Mines

East Core Mines's unusual tier-based set-up makes changing alignments there easier than in many other locations. The goal of this technique to take advantage of the weakness(es) inherit in the various tiers.

Using Tier 1 cards, a player will encounter 6 Earth, 2 Wood and 1 Water cards, with the top Attack of these cards being 8. Pick a main card that has a faction alignment, such as Blacksmith of Esert (for Technology), Forester of Esert (for Nature) or Wizard of Esert (for Magic). Now, take in the team Earth, Metal and Wood Elementalists (one as secondary, and the other two as links) to get +8 defence against Earth, +6 defence against Water and +5 defence against Wood.

Such a beginner's setup will mean that a player will win nearly 100% of the encounters. The exceptions include activation of other traits such as the negative trait of the Wizard of Esert which could strengthen the opponent instead.

Later Tiers of the East Core Mines can similarly exploited by using a leader of the desired faction and necessary element. Because the vast majority of encounters on these Tiers are automatic wins for the player (assuming the proper element is used) the actual strength of the leader is largely irrelevant. As such, this provides a means to change factions without taking a penalty for using a weaker leader to adjust factions.

Using Sinkbot City or the Charred Lands

Due to the relative elemental purity of Sinkbot City and the Charred Lands, switching factions while hunting in these locations can be much easier than in other locations, incurring fewer penalties for using a weaker team. The goal with this technique is to compensate for the weakened team by making use of the strong anti-element traits available.

This is accomplished by utilizing teams featuring strong, consistent anti-elemental defense supports which do not have substantial (or any) faction requirements themselves. In the case of Sinkbot City, the Citrine Heart Vine provides a vastly increased capture rate. In the Charred Lands the Greater Immolator and Topaz Helbander serve the same function.

The strength of the anti-element support is such that most opponents are greatly or completely weakened, making the power (and to an extent, power type) of the player's leader less important.

Faction Descriptions

Below is a general description of how each faction pans out in the game. Note that the exact power balance changes frequently and so this is all subject to change.

Neutrality

Neutrality is not a faction choice, but rather it is the choice not to choose. It offers its own advantages and disadvantages. It has a greater variety of cards to choose from, but loses access to the strongest from each faction. It also tends to be harder to achieve and maintain as truly neutral character cards don't move you towards neutrality; they simply don't change your alignment at all.

In terms of cards available to it, neutral players have access to a variety of supports of various levels of usefulness and a generally more limited set of leaders as most of the better leader cards (excluding the Skeleton King or Goblin Captain) have substantial (>40%) faction requirements.

Magic

The Magic faction tends to favor the use of strong Attack supports to overpower the opponent (see the Hermit Sage and Silencer). Magic tends to suffer from a very limited selection of leader cards of a small number of elemental types. These leaders, however, tend to be fairly powerful.

Nonetheless, the Magic faction is still quite strong and viable to play.

Nature

The Nature faction features a variety of potential leader cards with a variety of elemental types. On the whole, these leaders tend to be slightly weaker than those of Magic or Technology. Nature has a number of potent supporting cards, with an apparent emphasis on traits which target certain elements.

On the whole, Nature is more flexible than the other factions with regards to leaders and supports.

Technology

The Technology faction features a decent selection of stronger-than-average leaders. The downside to these leaders is that they tend to have a combination of beneficial and harmful traits, leading to a 'lottery' playstyle, with wide swings in power. Technology faction supports tend to feature some sort of negative drawback trait, and are on the whole somewhat weaker than those of Magic or Nature.

Many players find the chancy nature of Technology teams to be distasteful. As in-game players may help each other during hunts in the same location, the uncontrollable activation of a Tech player's negative traits (see Auto Choppa, Farm Equipment and Gravel Gunner) can lead to disaster for friends in the area.

Despite this, it is still quite viable if you like a more chaotic playstyle.

Selling Cards

Unless you are intending to donate heavily (and if you are, more power to you, and thank you for supporting the game) you will need to sell cards to make money. You will definitely need money for challenge cards, and you may well want money for purchased cards (such as Stoat Clipper and Sell Sword) and/or travel.

Before you start selling though, you should pay attention to the price-to-power ratio of your cards. For a starting number, it seems that you can get by okay by selling only cards with prices of 1.5 times their power or more -- money may be a bit tight, but not painfully so. Once you've worked with that for a while, you'll be in a better position to determine your own money needs and adjust as appropriate.

Strategy