Special quests

[Sloth]

This was a close game but I was just able to barely win with a 40 card deck. I would not have won without the Quest for Ancient Secrets.

There might be some lands or creatures that could provide a similar sort of experience for these types of decks/challenges.

Sure, if you have a good idea, please help me in improving the special quests.

My next special quest: The artifact dungeon with Eon Hub.

[friarsol]

My next special quest: The artifact dungeon with Eon Hub.

Sounds like a Stasis/Frozen Æther deck to me.

[Sloth]

Ok, this might cause some discussion:

Artifact Dungeon

AI starts with: Eon Hub x 3

| Open

20 Island
20 Swamp
1 Complex Automaton
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Esperzoa
1 Forethought Amulet
1 Masticore
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
1 Puppet Conjurer
1 Razormane Masticore
1 Rejuvenation Chamber
1 Rusting Golem
1 Soldevi Simulacrum
1 Soultether Golem
1 Thran War Machine
1 Urza's Blueprints
1 Aku Djinn
1 Arnjlot's Ascent
1 Benthic Djinn
1 Binding Grasp
1 Blessing of Leeches
1 Breeding Pit
1 Carnophage
1 Cloudskate
1 Cosmic Horror
1 Demonic Appetite
1 Drifter il-Dal
1 Ebon Praetor
1 Fledgling Djinn
1 Flow of Maggots
1 Greater Harvester
1 Grinning Demon
1 Illusionary Forces
1 Illusionary Wall
1 Illusions of Grandeur
1 Imaginary Pet
1 Junun Efreet
1 Juzam Djinn
1 Kezzerdrix
1 Kuro, Pitlord
1 Liege of the Pit
1 Lord of the Pit
1 Melancholy
1 Minion of Tevesh Szat
1 Molting Harpy
1 Moroii
1 Mystic Remora
1 Oni Possession
4 Pact of Negation
1 Pact of the Titan
1 Phantasmal Forces
1 Phobian Phantasm
1 Pit Raptor
1 Pit Spawn
1 Raven Familiar
1 Sangrophage
1 Sarcomancy
1 School of Piranha
1 Serendib Efreet
1 Shauku, Endbringer
1 Skull Collector
4 Slaughter Pact
1 Spindrift Drake
1 Spiteful Bully
1 Thirst
1 Trusted Advisor
1 Unstable Mutation
1 Vampire Lacerator
1 Waning Wurm
1 Whipstitched Zombie
1 Yawgmoth Demon

I've added anything I could find, that has a drawback that can be ignored without an upkeep (including Cumulative Upkeep, Fading, Vanishing and Echo). The cards range from weak (Whipstitched Zombie) to powerful (Pact of Negation).
Lots of the cards would never find their way into a normal AI deck (Ebon Praetor, Greater Harvester, Shauku, Endbringer), that's why included so much.
Yes it became a gigantic pile, but trust me the power level is quite high. It should therefore appear later than my first two special decks (maybe 35 wins?).

[Chris H.]

Currently the number of wins needed for these opponents vary from 25 to 120 wins. I would like to suggest that we have three of them at 20, this will become the new bottom end. They should be easy.

At the top end we can have 100 wins. We want to reward those who are willing to play long term quests. But we also want people who play short term quests to enjoy themselves.

The Eon Hub deck might be a 50 to 75 win type of deck.

The Court Jester deck, quest13, uses Teferi's Puzzle Box. This card does not have a lot of power but can make you think somewhat with it in play.

[Sloth]

Currently the number of wins needed for these opponents vary from 25 to 120 wins. I would like to suggest that we have three of them at 20, this will become the new bottom end. They should be easy.

At the top end we can have 100 wins. We want to reward those who are willing to play long term quests. But we also want people who play short term quests to enjoy themselves.

The Eon Hub deck might be a 50 to 75 win type of deck.

Rearrange the special quests as you see fit. But I agree with Sol that the current special quests are available so late that a lot of users won't see much of them.

Maybe you can also update the quest descriptions with some more fluff.

White dungeon: "This realm is guarded by a divine entity laying his protecting hand on each living being"

Blue dungeon: "This realm holds knowledge so vast it can overburden the unwary"

[You know I'm not a native speaker]

The Court Jester deck, quest13, uses Teferi's Puzzle Box. This card does not have a lot of power but can make you think somewhat with it in play.

Teferi's Puzzle Box is actually an interesting card. It would be nice, if the AI deck would interact somehow with it.

[Chris H.]

But I agree with Sol that the current special quests are available so late that a lot of users won't see much of them.

Maybe you can also update the quest descriptions with some more fluff.

White dungeon: "This realm is guarded by a divine entity laying his protecting hand on each living being"

Blue dungeon: "This realm holds knowledge so vast it can overburden the unwary"

`
Your quest descriptions are a good example of what we should be looking for. I do not have much creative talent in this area. Some of the testers might be able to come up with a few creative descriptions along these lines.

I have only played one quest that went longer than 50 wins myself. As such, it is hard for me to figure out what we need to interest the long term questers.

I think that they may be looking for as many different opponents to face as is possible. They also might be interested in having a large pool of cards so they can create several different decks over the long term.

Sol, do you have any ideas on this issue. When should special quests start? How high of a win number should they require?

[Chris H.]

I gave the number of wins needed for the quest decks to become available some thought today. They currently range from 25 wins up to 120 wins.

I want to be careful in lowering these numbers. Lowering these numbers by 20% gives us a range of 20 wins to 96 wins. I felt that I should give people a chance to comment on this before I made the change.

[friarsol]

I'm probably not a good candidate for long term questing, but the 20-50 range should be fairly solid with available quests. We are starting with many more cards than before. I know after I hit 30 wins or so I'm starting to get bored with my deck, so I start a new one, so getting "Rare Special Quests" at 70+ is probably a good benefit for those players on the longer quest track. We should probably make these Quests Reward worth spending that much time in the Quest.

[Chris H.]

I'm probably not a good candidate for long term questing, but the 20-50 range should be fairly solid with available quests. We are starting with many more cards than before. I know after I hit 30 wins or so I'm starting to get bored with my deck, so I start a new one, so getting "Rare Special Quests" at 70+ is probably a good benefit for those players on the longer quest track. We should probably make these Quests Reward worth spending that much time in the Quest.

`
Yeah, I guess that long and short term questers are looking for the same thing ... more opponents to face. Reducing the number of wins by 20% could help.

I modified the quest.txt file and reduced the number of wins from 25 to 20 and launched forge. I discovered that the min number of wins needed is hard coded. The QuestMainPanel.nextQuestInWins() method will need to be changed.

This would allow special opponents to show up earlier but not more frequently. I will paste in the method from above and let others examine the code. Play balancing can be tricky.

Code: Select all

    private int nextQuestInWins() {

        if (questData.getWin() < 25) {
            return 25 - questData.getWin();
        }

        int questsPlayed = questData.getQuestsPlayed();
        int mul = 6;

        if (questData.getInventory().hasItem("Zeppelin")) {
            mul = 4;
        } else if (questData.getInventory().hasItem("Map")) {
            mul = 5;
        }

        int delta = (questsPlayed * mul) - questData.getWin();

        return (delta > 0) ? delta : 0;
    }

[Sloth]

If I understand it right, the player can start it's first quest with 25 wins. Then he can play 4 more quests?

So basically quests start at: 25,25,25,25,25,30,36,42,48,...

Changing the 25 to 20, we will have: 20,20,20,20,24,30,36,42,48,...

[Chris H.]

If I understand it right, the player can start it's first quest with 25 wins. Then he can play 4 more quests?

So basically quests start at: 25,25,25,25,25,30,36,42,48,...

Changing the 25 to 20, we will have: 20,20,20,20,24,30,36,42,48,...

`
I was not sure if I understood the math or not. I also suspected that we could reduce the value that the int mul is being set to by one.

But I would like to get a few people to look at this before I change it as I do not want to make a mistake that would harm the play balance by too much.

[Chris H.]

Ok, this might cause some discussion:

Artifact Dungeon

AI starts with: Eon Hub x 3

| Open

20 Island
20 Swamp
1 Complex Automaton
1 Eldrazi Monument
1 Esperzoa
1 Forethought Amulet
1 Masticore
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
1 Puppet Conjurer
1 Razormane Masticore
1 Rejuvenation Chamber
1 Rusting Golem
1 Soldevi Simulacrum
1 Soultether Golem
1 Thran War Machine
1 Urza's Blueprints
1 Aku Djinn
1 Arnjlot's Ascent
1 Benthic Djinn
1 Binding Grasp
1 Blessing of Leeches
1 Breeding Pit
1 Carnophage
1 Cloudskate
1 Cosmic Horror
1 Demonic Appetite
1 Drifter il-Dal
1 Ebon Praetor
1 Fledgling Djinn
1 Flow of Maggots
1 Greater Harvester
1 Grinning Demon
1 Illusionary Forces
1 Illusionary Wall
1 Illusions of Grandeur
1 Imaginary Pet
1 Junun Efreet
1 Juzam Djinn
1 Kezzerdrix
1 Kuro, Pitlord
1 Liege of the Pit
1 Lord of the Pit
1 Melancholy
1 Minion of Tevesh Szat
1 Molting Harpy
1 Moroii
1 Mystic Remora
1 Oni Possession
4 Pact of Negation
1 Pact of the Titan
1 Phantasmal Forces
1 Phobian Phantasm
1 Pit Raptor
1 Pit Spawn
1 Raven Familiar
1 Sangrophage
1 Sarcomancy
1 School of Piranha
1 Serendib Efreet
1 Shauku, Endbringer
1 Skull Collector
4 Slaughter Pact
1 Spindrift Drake
1 Spiteful Bully
1 Thirst
1 Trusted Advisor
1 Unstable Mutation
1 Vampire Lacerator
1 Waning Wurm
1 Whipstitched Zombie
1 Yawgmoth Demon

I've added anything I could find, that has a drawback that can be ignored without an upkeep (including Cumulative Upkeep, Fading, Vanishing and Echo). The cards range from weak (Whipstitched Zombie) to powerful (Pact of Negation).
Lots of the cards would never find their way into a normal AI deck (Ebon Praetor, Greater Harvester, Shauku, Endbringer), that's why included so much.
Yes it became a gigantic pile, but trust me the power level is quite high. It should therefore appear later than my first two special decks (maybe 35 wins?).

`
I play tested the quest 6 deck with Eon Hub x 3. That is a good deck.

It is more powerful than the first two decks. 35 wins sounds good to me.

[Chris H.]

OK,

- Edited the quests.txt file, reduced wins needed by 20%.

- Edited the quests.txt file, added Sloth's deck descriptions.

- Edited the QuestMainPanel.nextQuestInWins() method, lowered wins
needed to 20 and reduced the int mul by one.

- Added a new description to quest 6.

[Sloth]

OK,

- Edited the quests.txt file, reduced wins needed by 20%.

- Edited the quests.txt file, added Sloth's deck descriptions.

- Edited the QuestMainPanel.nextQuestInWins() method, lowered wins
needed to 20 and reduced the int mul by one.

- Added a new description to quest 6.

Thanks Chris. I'm currently on vacation and won't be able to commit for the next three weeks. I will be on the forum to discuss stuff from time to time though.

[lazylockie]

another idea could be a Planeswalker theme. Starting AI's planeswalker could be Elspeth, Knight-Errant or Elspeth Tirel, assuming you have something like Cunning Sparkmage or Honden of Infinite Rage.

I've already made a superfriends-like deck, but there was no Garruk, Primal Hunter at the time.