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Tips on building an efficient deck

AuthorMessage
Explorer
Mar 03, 2009
73
After playing this game for a while, I've come to realize that most people I group up with seem to fight in a very inefficient manner. Most of the time, I end up killing 50% to 75% of the enemies before the others kill one. I realize that everyone has a different playing style, but you can still take some steps to make your deck more efficient, and make your battles go easier.

For me, I like to have the battles go as quickly as possible. To accomplish that, I figure out which spell would be the best to use in the given situation. For example, my Death wizard is currently in Mooshu. I figured out that using one 40% blade, one 30% trap, and then Vampire is usually enough to kill the mobs. I have Wraith, but at 6 pips, Vampire is usually more efficient. So, in my deck goes 4 blades, 4 traps, and 4 Vampires. (I keep 4 of each since that's the most enemies I will face when fighting mobs.) That's it. I keep treasure attack cards in my sideboard in case of emergencies, and I have some off school attack cards that came with some of my clothes. I usually discard these off-school cards as soon as they come up, since it's not as efficient using those as opposed to using my main school attacks. Main school attacks are ALWAYS more efficient with pips once you start getting power pips. I also usually discard all but one or two wand blasts if the enemy rarely casts weakness. Discarding these cards makes it more likely that I will get the card I need, when I need it. Since my attacks also heal me, I don't need to bring healing cards. I can heal after the battles if needed, since health wisps are easy to come by.

With my fire wizard, I usually bring my "damage all" spells. In Mooshu, I used Meteor. In Dragonspyre, I used Dragon. I figured out what boosts were needed with each of these to get the job done, and that's all I brought. After the battle, I simply ran around and collected health wisps to refill my health.

I see so many people loading up their decks with shields, weakness, off school attack spells, really low level attack spells (like people casting one and two pip spells in Dragonspyre), minion spells, pacify spells, extra boosts that aren't needed, etc. I saw one kid today casting Stun Block on himself while fighting mobs in Mooshu. He ended up with about 4 of them on him. Why? I have no idea. These things are not needed when fighting mobs. They simply take up room in your deck, sometimes use pips that would be better used for attacks, and make the fights last much longer than they need to. If you trim your deck down to the bare essentials, you should be able to kill the mobs off long before they kill you. If you are a school (like Storm) with low health, you can toss in one or two healing cards in case you get people that jump into your fight, but I wouldn't bring any more than that. What I do with my Storm wizard is keep healing treasure cards in my sideboard (instead of attack cards), so that I can draw them precisely when I need them.

Each school and each player's style is different. But if you take the time to figure out the most efficient way to kill the enemies, and then only put those things in your main deck, the game will go much easier. Use the sideboard to your advantage by keeping what emergency cards you may need in there (attack or healing cards). This will keep your main deck trimmed down, but still give you an emergency resource to draw from. It may take you a fight or two to figure out what you need, and each type of enemy could require a different strategy, but once you figure it out, the game will go much easier for you.

Cat



Explorer
Mar 29, 2009
85
Wow that's really in depth
But i like how you describe different playing styles.
Personally, i like having a lot of shields and blades, one because of my school, and second because i normally fight in large groups and other people need them.
I'm one of those people who dont mind fighting for awhile, and take my time with attacking. And i also hate multiple attacks, i'd rather just finish it off in one.

Catherine Windrider Lvl 49 Balance

Explorer
Mar 03, 2009
73
I have a balance grand also, and I can see having shields for that character. Basically, you spend several rounds building up pips for Judgement, so that is a good thing to use while waiting if you're getting beat up. Toss in those blades and you're good to go. Once I started getting decent power pips though, I skipped the shields and used each round to put up what boosts I could in order to shorten the fight.

I do have a question though, and please don't take this the wrong way. I am just curious. Why do you like longer fights? Personally, I get bored when I have to kill 10 of these guys, 10 of those guys, etc. I really just want to get it over with and move on to the more interesting quests. I figured people just hadn't figured out a good strategy yet. I never thought anyone would enjoy making a fight take longer than they had to.

Again, I'm not trying to be derogatory, I'm just curious.

Cat

Survivor
Apr 28, 2010
11
Thank you for taking the time to write that, I'm sure it will be helpful to many people :)

I tried a minimal deck a while ago and it really was more efficient but for me it made the game less fun to play. It became tedious to cast the same spell continuously, I like a bit of variety.

It seems I have a different playing style to you, efficiency and speed really aren't a priority for me as I tend to have fun in other ways when I play a game.


Defender
May 30, 2009
157
This idea would be great, in a "grown up" way of thinking. But we are talking about kids, mostly younger kids, who throw cards into their deck and hope for the best. Not to mention, allot of these younger players are going for that "one big hit" and try to buff as much as possible.

When you run into an adult, and that is pretty much all I have on my friends list, you will see that even though the playing style may be different, the basic idea of having a nicely constructed deck is the same. While I agree that having mostly you own school spells in hand, I have to disagree that having nothing BUT your school spells is somewhat a bad idea in most cases. You need something else to be able to take care of those creatures that are you own school and (yes I know about converts) shield against the opposite.

Everyone's playing style is the different, just like everyone's idea of a perfect deck is different. Sometimes you just have to remember who you are playing with most of the time. I think it is safe to say that allot of the kids you run in to aren't going to know what exactly the convert, stun spell, dispell, or whatever, is really for. So they randomly casts spells they have in their deck if they have one up and don't have the card they are looking for up.

Thanks for your helpful insight. Just remember who most of these characters are running around the spiral with you.


Adherent
Mar 12, 2010
2831
Sometimes I like making the fight last longer too. This is true especially if we have four players. I watch what the other players are casting and I will try to "finish off" the bad guys in case the other player didn't have enough power. And sometimes I cast a small, one-pip spell so that the other players can get a chance to "finish off" the bad guys too. Rather than use a big spell and get rid of a bad guy, I might even use a blade or trap to help the other players take care of it. Seems like more fun that way.

Explorer
Apr 29, 2010
60
Minimal decks are great for farming efficiency but I generally find the play style boring and repetitive (W101 already is too repetitive for me). I prefer using a larger deck and enjoy the uncertainty and variety it brings. I don't like having to reset my deck much or run multiple decks for different battles.

Explorer
Mar 03, 2009
73
I can definitely see wanting a bit of variety. You can have variety and have it be efficient as well. It just takes a bit of logic and figuring out how to do it. Like I said, every one plays differently, and the example I gave was simply how to get the job done the fastest. Hence the title: "Tips on Building an Efficient Deck". I am sure there are plenty of other ways to play that are not really efficient, but enjoyable none the less. This thread was made to give a bit of info on how to get things done in a quick, efficient manner.

I realize that most of the people I see casting odd spells are probably kids, which is kind of why I wrote this. I figure adults have the logic skills needed to figure out how to form their deck, and thought young kids especially might benefit from this kind of advice. Maybe get them thinking a bit more about strategy. Not a bad thing to learn. Maybe they still want to throw out odd spells from all different schools, but at least this info would be in the back of their minds.

As for having off school attacks, I very rarely use them, but do keep them in my sideboard for emergencies. That way if I need an off school attack, I have it available but can still keep my main deck efficient with just main school spells. I didn't go into fighting same/opposite school enemies, but maybe I should have since it seems some people (probably kids or very new players) aren't sure what the prisms are for. I see people using them on just any old enemy, instead of on enemies that are of their same school. I've even seen people casting their main school spells on enemies of that same school without using the prisms. This does seem to be an area that needs more discussion, or at least more of a description during in game training.

There are LOTS of ways to play and lots of strategies to use. Many schools have a decent variety of spells that will get the job done. The strategy I described is the way I play and is efficient, but if others have similar efficient strategies using other methods, consider posting them here. I really think that young kids especially have a hard time figuring some of this out on their own, and as a result, have a hard time with the game. Maybe this is why you don't see too many players in the upper levels. There's plenty in all areas Wizard City and Krok, so I don't think it's simply a case of people not having susbcriptions, although that could be partly the reason.

Cat

Explorer
Mar 03, 2009
73
Another thing I didn't go into was fighting in groups as a support person. What I described is basically for fighting solo, or for fighting in groups as an attack person.

You can build efficient support decks also. For Balance as support, I bring triple blades, triple traps, and the various other boosts that balance has. I also bring Helping Hands. I bring all the types of boosts when fighting a big boss (maybe three of each kind), but will only bring the big ones when fighting mobs, as they have significantly lower health and need less boosts. I keep treasure Judgement cards in my sideboard in case I need to attack.

For life as support, I bring various healing cards, and keep Centaur and Seraph treasure cards in my sideboard in case I need them. I bring Feint as well. I never did get that spell for my Balance, and I really really should have. It was my second character, and I still didn't know what I was doing. :(

Cat

Explorer
Jul 08, 2009
74
This is a great topic because it where so many people make mistakes. I can not tell you how many people I have helped with deck construction. In almost every instance, people have way too many cards in their deck. Its the most common problem I see.

Most people flip out when they see my deck. In most cases people are afraid not to have things to fall back on. In reality you only need a few cards to kill most monsters/bosses.

While I understand people have different playing styles, I always get a kick out watching people start on the same quest that is something like kill 8 monsters and they are on their second group of two and I have finished all four.

When you really see the difference is somewhere like Big Ben in Marleybone. When I go in with someone who has the same idea, we complete it in 30-45 minutes. Ironically with a smaller deck, I die far less, and usually when I do die, its because of the other people I am playing with who are dilly dallying around with too many cards in their deck.

Survivor
Feb 16, 2010
23
I had to comment. I have just recently made Grand with my first character and I'm finding that I'm 'dumbing' down my deck, removing all the specific spells for specific situations and concentrating on just the basics to kill. I also carry three decks. As a Myth with Life secondary, I have a mainly attack deck, mainly defense deck, and a healer deck, depending on which role my group needs me to play. I also have the annoying habit of tailoring my deck to the specific fight. If the bad guy doesn't automatically drag you in once you enter, why not stop a second and tailor your deck and TC's to that specific enemy. Takes a minute and eliminates the cards you don't really need to make room for cards you do. My thoughts, and thanks for this thread. Wish I had it when I began. :D

Mastermind
Jan 01, 2010
351
Yes, thanks Cat for starting this thread! Deck building and game strategy is definitely one of the more interesting things about W101, especially for us adults.

I have a very efficient deck as well, just enough shields, the strongest attacks and the blades and traps necessary to boost for the particular enemy. I never attack with off-school spells (waste of power pips) and find most of the other boosts, weaknesses, etc. just get in my way. But that's just my style, maybe because I have 6 wizards and play them all so don't have time to spare!

However, it seems a lot of folks - maybe it's the kids - don't know the basics. I was battling with a myth wiz yesterday and he threw the two-headed dog (my myth doesn't have it yet so I don't know the name). He had no blades or anything on it! I politely asked him if he had blades in his deck and he said yes 2 and asked if he should included more! LOL, I told him definitely and that he should also get Spirit blade. Then I threw Centaur and did 2000+ damage to his 800. I think he got the message. He seemed to appreciate the advice.

But I also see people use spells I have never seen then found out I have them! I just never use them. It is fun to mix it up sometimes and see what happens. Also, as the wizards advance (4 of mine are in DS) it is also fun to learn the best strategy to match their different and increasing strengths.

Anyway, guess that is why I am still obsessed with this game and my kids have moved on to new horizons!