Armello

What do the keys and chests do, again? Do they just give you new dice and stuff?

Yep, just new dice. One die per chest.

If I were cheap though, but wanna jazz up my rolls I'd just buy one of the cheap/common colors. Just about 4-12 us cents...

edited 16th Sep '16 10:36:05 AM by Malco

Played a multiplayer game and got a key, but no chest. Sargon's player in that match was really good. He picked a ring that gave him constant Evade and just built up Rot until he had 12 by the game's end.

You get either a key or a chest, keys are a bit rarer (higher chance if you win, I think).

Sargon is good at rot since he can just pick the rot cards that appear...

Today I learned that game keeps track of negative AP.

How to see this: get down to 0AP or walk into a palace tile, then equip the -1AP heavy plate armor and try using Hot Rot Wine or Strategist...

BTW Don't try for the Machiavellian achievment, it doesn't work... yet.

I finally did the 13 Rot achievement... and I got all the way to 20...

edited 19th Sep '16 12:23:00 PM by Malco

Won another game and got another key, but still no chest XD I played Amber this time and despite failing half of my quests, I also managed to encounter the Druids (and ask for the Moon Scythe), get the Hand Cannons, and gather four spirit stones. Thanks to drawing Hot Rot Wine, I was able to get into the castle via the Key, drink the wine, and then go for the King.

The player using River had enough time to go "Oh Wyld, no!" before I banished the King XD

^Funny, I keep getting chests, but no keys :'D

I imagine that they didn't know I had Hot Rot Wine and instead just hoped they could attack me in the castle while I didn't have any AP, or that the Guards would get me.

I have a run of getting keys recently after getting 8 chests straight. And I just bought 3 keys too.

I think my win rate in multi is "a bit" more than 25%. I wanna boast that my win rate is 40-50% but that's probably just crazy, but as River said, it can't be as bad as Thane... :p

Without hand peeking (which isn't present in the game), there's no way to "know" an enterprising kingslayer has wine/strategist. The only recourse is to pray they don't have it. :D

Or if we're gonna be a bit paranoid, if yer winning by Prestige, better prevent anyone within 3AP of the palace for getting in, preferably before their turn even starts (because they'll be unstoppable by then, unless there's a hero standing directly in their way). Standing on the palace tile yourself might be a deterrent.

I find Wine or Strategist often Too Awesome To Use sometimes, but sometimes it pays off...

In a recent game I held a copy of Hot Rot Wine from Day 2. (It also denies one copy of it from the other players.)

Since I was River, and I can't possibly beat the 15 Prestige Sargon who was just prancing around with his treasures and killing off Sana at every turn, I was just waiting for the Dawn of the Final Day to guarantee a win, but Thane breached the palace on the second to the last day, making me go for King Slayer early and burning the wine just to attempt it instead of Thane. I also had Iron Pike and I had to hope for that 1 sword roll to deal 1 piercing damage on top of my 1 snipe damage...

edited 21st Sep '16 11:43:33 PM by Malco

I finally got a Chest that gave me Blood Dice. I was hoping I could win, too, but Zosha beat the King with one health left.

Finally, I got the "Force of Nature" and "Cry us a River" achievements! It's like all the stars have to align for the River one...

Yeah, some of that stuff is kind of difficult to get.

Force of Nature is actually kinda easy but I didn't think of how to do it until recently... it involves little RNG and a bit of rigging, and requires having previously won a Rot Victory.

I started a singleplayer game as Sana, picked as opponents the most likely characters to get corrupted (IMO): Amber, Sargon and Mercurio—and rigged them all with Rot amulet. Then I just let the game run and waited for one of them to fall to the dark side...

There is an achievement guide in https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=522193015 but since the game updated a bit after that, including Usurpers, I wanna add my thoughts about it after personally going after them...

There's a halloween event where you can get some fleshy looking dice.

The rolls sound like stepping on fleshy stuff in Starbound...

So here's the latest patch out. And he's my thoughts so far.

The King's voice... well it feels like Shao Kahn taunting you all the time. I miss the pig-like HHHooooouuuhhh sound when he gets hurt from rot though... and he now says some gibberish when he gains a point of rot. So he does get grating after a while... (you can turn him off though, in voiceover volume)

Also I killed him in kingslayer, and he sounds so lame while dying! I miss the lion's roar already. :)

Now the bounty system though... it's gonna be weird. They fixed some of the bounty-related cards too, basically instead of bounties being worth more, you start at a "level 2" bounty instead. So there are three levels and at the third the guards gain "super speed" (ok, 1AP) chasing the criminal. So this is indirectly a nerf to the "spellcaster" build... kind of, unless you keep drawing Mirror Image or the +fight -wits cards...

So there's some paid board skins - spring and fall, and honestly, they look spectacular.

Oh, so the king talks now? Cool.

Play a session and give it a listen, you will probably find it jarring. I wonder if there's an option for classic grunts, because I'm used to those. :)

More thoughts:

So, there's something weird about bounty right now. If the declaration passes where "the king declares all the heroes enemies of the crown" and gives them all a bounty, the guards ignore heroes newly slapped with said bounty... for now. I suppose that's an anti-frustration feature and I'm handwaving it as the guards not being aware of the new declaration yet.

There's also a bit of an evil trick with the new bounty system: using the Bounty card to frame someone right before night ends, the next day it will become level 2 already. If the Royal Bloodsport declaration was up during the night, they will already have level 3 by the morning and "enjoy" guards chasing them down immediately.

The new thief card is extremely annoying. It's like a one-way merchant's agreement. All take and no give for the "victim".

So the Bandit Clan was released recently. I guess the only reason it didn't come out this long was because Sylas was hard to balance and had to be re-worked for the new (compared to him) outlaw system.

Sylas right now seems a bit OP, but honestly if the other heroes just let him get to Traitor level of outlaw-ness then they deserve to lose by a battle victory, or Sylas just ripping through them and farming them for prestige. Did I mention that Sylas can win prestige victory now?

The main counters to Sylas are the new Sharpshooter card (because nobody enjoys a 4 HP nuke castable from anywhere on the map) and Reprieve. I suppose people love spells or straight up combat and forget their trickery cards.

Twiss is annoying, but when I play her she seems quite unfun to use. She's soft-countered by pierce, and figuring out where her next quest is and just camping her quest or placing a guard/bane on top of it (somehow). While starting at 2 fight, there's a build for her that makes her a passable warrior by taking the Fight ring and only pumping Fight and Wits. Kingslayer is so funny looking when Twiss does it.

Horace doesn't really have any special combat or magic utility, but along with Celestite and his power of swapping positions with guards, he can traverse the map quite easily. He feels more like the respected guard captain who was forcibly "retired" but still loyal, and not a Bandit Clan member. Prestige victory seems to be the thematically appropriate thing to go for.

Scarlet seems to be a bit weak and too RNG-based, relying on banes to go into towns, drawing cards that terrorize settlements (Incite Revolt. Cub's Blood is a cheap alternative), or praying that the prestige leader decides to tell the king to summon banes or terrorize towns.

edited 3rd May '17 1:34:13 AM by Malco

Is it just for backers, or for everyone now?

I wasn't a backer and I bought them. :)

They cost as much as the Usurpers, however the Usurpers are at 10% off right now.

edit: And the (rumored?) promise of "Bandit Clan comes out when iOS version does" is indeed broken since the iOS version is nowhere to be found.

edit: Machiavellian achievment works, just did it. :)

edited 3rd May '17 6:57:02 AM by Malco

Yeah, just looked at the trailer. I'll probably prefer Horace out of all of those guys.

I had a game where I was Sylas and everyone was putting me down then I won a surprise battle victory and I got all the commendations... :)

Right now though, I'm having difficulty logging into Steam through my wireless broadband ISP, locking me out of Armello, even singleplayer since it seems to require an update before I do anything with it. When I get to my parents' home this weekend, I'm not logging out or restarting my laptop ever again. Sleep mode forever!

Off-topic (?): Flashback to March 31, 2015 when Starmello was announced...

edited 5th May '17 1:07:52 AM by Malco

^April Fools?

Seems so xD

I almost won a game, of course the king rolled 11 swords, just enough to kill 6 health zosha through 5 shields. While RNG was indeed a factor, I realized it was also a mistake by me as I thought I needed all the dice to increase the chance of killing him, instead I overkilled the king by 5 swords meaning, I should've burned 1-2 of my shield cards.

Sometimes RNG is a b...

My favorite character is still Zosha, followed now by Sylas and then Amber/Elyssia/Mercurio for third place.

Also, about that YMMV page entry about Mercurio's power being terrible, it actually kind of isn't to me... I just get to draw more trickeries and run through them faster. :)

Finally, I didn't notice, but Ghor got sliiiightly nerfed in that he doesn't stealth in forests at night for free like everyone else. Can anyone check/confirm if Ranger's Cloak gives Ghor stealth, though?

So today I learned that The Stranger can be taken away by Bribery.

Oh yeah there's a new patch too. No big gameplay changes just new dice and hero skin fragments.