Quest Mode: Guide to Formats, Worlds, and everything

[lujo]

God, no, don't mix Odyssey and Onslaught. They're completely different mechanically and power level wise and don't add anything to one another. Really, they just don't, it was an awful metagame. Invasion + Odyssey was an interesting deckbuilding environment with lots of stuff going on from both blocks. Odissey + Onslaught was just Odissey decks + Smother to kill Psychatog and Wild Mongrel if you're black.

If you're making worlds the best possible advice would be to screw lore completely and aim for mechanical coherence and/or support. The reason mashing the two Ravnica's or the two Mirrodins or the two Innistrads together works somewhat is that their mechanics sorta complement each other.

Oddisey block + Weatherlight from Mirage Block + Whole Mercadian Masques , for example, make a silly good metagame if you somehow add the painlands for multicolor support. That's because all three sets are about using your hand, graveyard and lands as a resource in otherwise unorthodox ways. Not saying "do it", just that it would probably make an interesting metagame.

[Marek14]

...Wojek just means "soldier" in check...

It's "Czech", and the Czech word for "Soldier" is "Voják", with a different vowel -- "Wojek" might be from a different Slavic language.

Eh, speling Češki in English always gives me a headache, I'm perfectly capable of being a dingus mangling a language . "Wojek" is what happens when an english speaker tries to read Voják (they read it as Whoah-jack or Wojek). I had a gf who's surname was Vojak, and that's exactly how a tourist pronounced it right in front of me. Same ting happened to "Boros" , it's "Borac" but as pronounced by an english speaker who got told it doesn't end in "k". I think they did this sort of thing to avoid the Kamigawa mistake and not confuse english audiences about how you pronounce things (ecept, lol, they managed to arse up with he name of the set. Spelling it Ravnisa or Ravnitsa was out of the question because it would be pronounced more properly, but would feel too foreign to look at).

FWIW, in Czech, "Ravnica" doesn't really evoke the image of "plain" (rovina), more like "equation" (rovnice). But I live in Prague and the architecture fits

[lujo]

FWIW, in Czech, "Ravnica" doesn't really evoke the image of "plain" (rovina), more like "equation" (rovnice). But I live in Prague and the architecture fits

It's literally "plain" in any of the Yugoslav languages and most of the rest of the linguistic/cultural flavor is from there. It can be downright embarassing when the name used is very mundane. The architecture would definitely be from Prague , I mean, you're making a Slavic themed but not Russian set, where else would you go for inspiration?

---

On topic - has anyone considered "cubing" a world? Like, making a world consist of a limited number of mechanically tied card groups but not necessarily entire sets to avoid "porting" broken things?

[dingbat1]

Here is my quest world update.
I've moved Nemesis and Prophecy decks into the Mercadia directory, and I've split Odyssey and Onslaught into separate worlds.
I cleaned up the Rath and Kamigawa decks to reflect the correct versions of the cards.

I've looked into doing the same for Mirrodin, Innistrad and Zendikar, but a lot of the decks contain cards from e.g. Magic 2010 or Magic 2015. Most decks in the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor decks contain cards from both blocks, making separation difficult. I haven't even attempted to look at Ravnica. So, I've renamed these worlds to reflect the fact that they contain cards beyond the appropriate block, and created empty directories for the individual blocks (as well as all remaining blocks)

I/We/Someone will need to create block-limited decks and challenges for each of those sets, but at least there's a lot of material that can help out. I'll get to it eventually, but, I don't know to what extent I can commit right now, so I just wanted to get this out there for everyone who's interested.

Furthermore, I have two additional folders:
SEMI-SORTED contains about 500 block-constructed decks I've found in all kinds of places. About 1/3rd have been sorted into the specific blocks, and 2/3rd still need to be sorted.
UNSORTED contains nearly 1500 decks that I had found which were originally sorted per year, but were in a different format. Someone (can't remember who, and I feel bad not giving proper credit) converted them to Forge and sorted the decks according to the most common set. I believe the decks were all Standard at the appropriate time, and so could contain cards from different blocks and the appropriate base set. Note that there may be significant overlap between decks

These two folders contain nearly 2000 decks, which may be useful in helping create block-limited worlds

http://www.mediafire.com/file/1uggadbgx5kzr7z/Forge+Worlds.rar

[dingbat1]

oops. Alara, Theros and Tarkir also need cleaning up.

[serrasmurf]

Hi,
it's great to see that more worlds being developed and added to FORGE. But I don't see the reasoning for some of the remodeling. I created Ravnica, Mirrodin and Zendikar and combined the blocks on these various planes because:
- it's all on the same plane
- there is a lot of synergy between the different blocks, creating a lot of deckbuilding options (for both AI and player) that were never fully explored in an official format
why split?
The end result is also a bit messy now, when you travel in Forge you want to have the feeling of planeswalking...
KR,

[dingbat1]

Hi,
it's great to see that more worlds being developed and added to FORGE. But I don't see the reasoning for some of the remodeling. I created Ravnica, Mirrodin and Zendikar and combined the blocks on these various planes because:
- it's all on the same plane
- there is a lot of synergy between the different blocks, creating a lot of deckbuilding options (for both AI and player) that were never fully explored in an official format
why split?
The end result is also a bit messy now, when you travel in Forge you want to have the feeling of planeswalking...
KR,

Fair enough. I personally like the idea of having each block be separate, but I can see the argument for dividing by plane. I'm about to by very busy over the next few weeks anyway, and once it cools down, I'll just work on the non-repeated blocks, like Urza.

[Fizanko]

Does the "Starting pool colors" actually works for when you create a new quest or is it not doing what i thought it was (only generating starting pool of card with the selected colors) ?

I never tried it before so i never noticed, but as i aimed to do a white/red deck , i enabled White, Red and Colorless in the "Starting pool colors" option and after creating the quest i went to build my deck and saw :

[RumbleBBU]

Sounds like it was doing pretty much the opposite of what it was supposed to do.

This doesn't happen to me, however. I tested it and started 4 Quests, one with the exact combination you did, one single-color, one two-color, and one more two-color plus colorless. All produced the expected distribution, more or less.

Maybe try to start a new Quest and see if it happens again?

The current version of color selection is not my code, but I could look into it - if/when I manage to get the current source compile and run. Forge has grown a lot since I last dabbled with the code.

Oh, by the way, which version of Forge are you using? 1.5.56?

[RumbleBBU]

Add to that, if/when I get the current source compile & run again, there is one thing that needs improvement. The set unlocking part desperately needs a "Use core sets and expansions only" selection or something like that. I'm miffed that I'm usually offered a chance to unlock starter-level sets only!

My original selection algorithm for unlockable sets primarily offered core sets and expansions (the other sets were possible as well as long as they could produce boosters, just not as likely/common). It seems that the code was simplified at some stage, and the current version simply picks the nearest sets, which could just be starter sets.

[Fizanko]

I'm using one of the today's build, r32452 and it has been doing that every time i tried to create a new quest.
On the dozen of times in a row i have been trying to produce a quest with the starting pool of cards of the desired colors, it produced only produced those mixed results.

In case i'm doing something wrong , here are the settings :

- i change the color setting
http://i.imgur.com/pcXmN5t.jpg
and press OK

Then these are the other settings :
http://i.imgur.com/UsIkwdI.jpg

From there i press "Embark" for the quest to be effectively generated.
Then i go to build my deck and same problem :


As unfortunately i never ever used this color setting i have no idea if the functionality has been broken at some point (and so is an actual bug) or if i'm doing it wrong.

[friarsol]

It works fine for me. 2 things)

Are you sure you're switching to the right quest before looking at your pool?

What % is your bias in the preferences?

[Fizanko]

I deleted the test-quest everytime before creating a new test one so i can't select the wrong one.

In the difficulty preferences i see Color Bias being at 6, i changed it to 90 (as i assume it's a percentage) and generated a quest with the white/red/colorless colors setting and this time it worked, the starting pool is majorly biaised toward the colors i setup.



Thanks for pointing this preference setting, didn't noticed it before.

[friarsol]

In the difficulty preferences i see Color Bias being at 6, i changed it to 90 (as i assume it's a percentage) and generated a quest with the white/red/colorless colors setting and this time it worked, the starting pool is majorly biaised toward the colors i setup.

yea, it's definitely a percentage, and if it's less than 50 it probably creates a bias AGAINST those colors.

[Seravy]

How do I specify the deck the player plays must be legal in a certain format, such as Vintage to play in a world?
I see banned cards, but I don't see restricted...
not even sure if "banned" applies to the player or just the cards rewarded.
Ideally, I would want my main world (and all others) to at least restrict the player's deck to the vintage format.

...sigh, if I knew this wasn't the default 3 hours earlier, I could have kept the 3 mox rubies I found. 3 of those in my first 15 games and I'm planning to build a red deck ASAP...

...lol ok nevermind, the AI is playing 4 copies of moxes too! I still want to define a world where vintage deckbuilding rules apply though, even if it's not the main world and I have to fill it with AIs myself.