Dev Diary #18 – Black Oaken Heart

Hi all! We’re wrapping up the Adventure milestone, with a complete adventuring system and five test adventures. I’m playing through them now, and thought I’d narrate the process to give you a taste.

My party, consisting of the brave human warrior Sir Otto, the stout dwarven priest Thorgon and the nimble elven wizard Mistress Elva, have just returned from looting Sir Batford’s manor. It was a tough fight; in fact, so tough that I had to cheat my way through the final battle (ahem). Perhaps a little balancing is in order.

The intrepid trio bandage their wounds, sell their stolen wares, and are ready for a new adventure. Scanning the list of adventures available, I pick this:

Black Oaken Heart – Only one thing can save the dying Baroness: core heartwood from the malevolent Oakenshade, King of the Black Forest. Quest into the shadowed wood, made perilous by the malign walking trees that make it their home. Bring down King Oakenshade and return his heartwood to the Baron, before his beloved’s time runs out!

Who could turn that down? Black Oaken Heart is a tricky adventure. I’ve played it before so I know what to expect, but there are clues in the adventure description that a fresh adventurer might spy.

What do you think of when you read “malign walking trees”? The first thing that comes to my mind is bark. Tough, tough bark. So, I’m expecting lots of Armor cards in the monster decks. The second thing is fire! Wood burns… trees burn… some fire would be useful, I’m sure. Another thought is that walking trees are likely to be fairly big tough monsters, so I’m not expecting large groups. That means area of effect spells and crowd control cards probably won’t see much use. Finally, this adventure takes place outdoors, so I’m expecting reasonable sight lines and not much blocking terrain, although probably lots of individual trees for cover. That means I should equip long range spells in my wizard deck.

I go back to the adventuring party screen and check out my decks. In Batford’s Manor Sir Otto made good use of axes. In fact, he was carrying these three weapons:

Yep, that’s a lot of Chops. Chops hit two targets at once! They’re not huge damage or range, but that ability to strike twice with one card is invaluable when fighting large numbers of foes in melee – like servants and guard dogs and other chaff that you find in Batford’s Manor.

The other reason to combine these three weapons is that there is an internal synergy between the cards. Strong Chop, for example, boosts the damage of other Chops when you play them, in the same way that Bash boosts the damage of other Bash cards. So the Reliable Axe, which has nothing but Chop cards, gets a lot more useful when you have a few Strong Chops, courtesy of the Copper Axe. I won’t go into the function of the other cards in there right now.

As I mentioned, I’m not expect large numbers of enemies in the forest adventure, so Chops aren’t likely to be very useful. On the other hand, axes and trees do go together like toast and vegemite, so chucking out all these chops cards isn’t strictly necessary. I don’t strictly need to revise this weapon load-out, but do I have some gear that might be better?

My first though is that I’d like some Penetrating attacks that get through armor, since Chops don’t tend to have this keyword. Scanning my item collection, this weapons turns up:

That’s Penetrating Stab there in the card suite. Vicious Thrust is a penetrating attack too, so two out of the six cards in this suite have Armor bypassing properties, as you might expect from a Sharpened Pick. I’ll let you in on a secret though – I know that these walking trees have a Trait that makes them invulnerable to piercing damage! These attacks are all Piercing. Hmm. Maybe Penetrating isn’t the best keyword to look for. I’d be avoiding the armor problem but exposing myself to another one. It’s time to search again.

OK – jackpot! This is the weapon I want – and I’m lucky to have it since it’s a Rare item.

Shredding Strike does reasonable damage, but what makes it shine is this additional property – it shreds (discards) any armor that gets in its way! And, it’s a Slashing damage attack, so I don’t have to worry about resistance to Piercing damage. Perfect!

I swap out the Reliable Axe, the weakest of my existing three weapons and equip the Can Opener instead. It’s only a level 5 weapon, but the relevance of the cards to this adventure is more important than its absolute power level.

OK, what else would be good? I don’t have anything as great as the Can Opener, but this weapon looks pretty useful:

Clumsy Poleaxe is a mixed bag, which is often characteristic of Rare items. It has three gold cards, all of which are extremely powerful and relevant to this adventure. Staggering Blow is a melee attack that does great damage (9) and forces the target to discard two revealed cards from their hand! That ability isn’t always relevant, but against monsters with hands stacked with Armor cards it can be really useful. You use another attack to reveal the Armor cards and then hit them with the Staggering Blow to discard them. Then you unload on them with the rest of your attacks!

Unfortunately Clumsy Poleaxe also comes with Slowed, which is a terrible drawback card. As you might imagine, it Encumbers you, slowing all your movement. Vulnerable is a bad card too – it which makes you take more damage whenever you get hit. I figure those two drawbacks are bad, but I’m willing to take them in exchange for the Staggering Blows.

Wow, that took longer than I thought! But, deckbuilding is a really important part of the game. Anyway, I’m about set with my warrior now. I gained a level on the last adventure, so I’ll swap in that awesome Polished Shield I’ve been wanting to use and that Synapse Helm that was beyond my level cap, and Sir Otto is ready to go.

Thorgon, in his healing and support role doesn’t need much modification.

I follow much the same path with Mistress Elva that I did with Sir Otto, hunting around for attacks that deal with Armor or have Penetrating keywords. This involves a trip to the shop where I flog off some of the stuff I recovered from Batford’s Manor and buy myself a Wand of the Blue Shard which comes with two Penetrating Bolts. It’s a common item, so it’s pretty cheap and well within budget. Those bolts are long range, which will help if any of the trees have ranged attacks and I need to hit them from afar. It will also allow Elva to stand back behind Otto and Thorgon and zap from safety.

Looking through Elva’s deck, I sure wish I had some fiery magic: some fireballs or similar would go down very nicely. The problem is that I simply don’t. Maybe I was unlucky with my looting or maybe the game just hasn’t decided to dole out fiery magic items to me at this level. In any case, I’ll have to make do with what I’ve got. If I can’t beat the adventure I’ll come back and check in the shop again – perhaps there will be some new fire items in stock.

Finally I empty the remaining gear from my trusty mule “Ben”, and my party journey out to the forest. Next week I’ll tell you how that trip goes. Can I rip that precious heartwood from King Oakenshade’s trunk or will my heroes end up decomposing in his forest?

Disclaimers:

• Many of the cards are missing their final art – hey, we’re in development!
• The blue glow around the items and cards is a selection glow – that comes from taking in game screenshots.
• The trees of the Black Forest reserve the right to change their decks between now and the time you venture into their domain.