Guest posts by LaFlibuste

1

Design Theory / Re: Pseudoquanta

« on: August 07, 2011, 11:12:06 pm »

Sorry if this idea has been voiced before, I must admit I haven,t read all 11 pages. Anyway: maybe there could be blood quanta, blood quanta basically being your life? Blood pillars healing you is probably a terrible idea for balance, though, so a blood deck would need to use another means for healing. Or to replace an eventual blood pillar, there could be a blood altar, that would do something along the lines of: sacrifice target creature you control and gain double it's HPs to use as blood quanta. You will loose the remaining life at the end of your turn.

I could really imagine some creatures that would be a little like rustlers, but would use your life to generate quanta (of your mark?). It would probably be somewhat themed around life and vampires, so it might be redondant with darkness, though . Hmm...

Anyway, just thought I'd throw the idea out there

2

Music / Re: Rate the song above you

« on: August 06, 2011, 04:51:52 pm »

Forum newb here, hope my input here is not unwelcome

4/10 I'm not really a fan of this style of music, I find it too repetitive and not really interesting in the long term. Plus, one of the first added beats started off off-beat, although it eventually placed itself after a few seconds (it also happens near the end when the theme comes back, also it takes much less time to place itself). Although on the whole I've heard worse stuff, I think it's still nicely done on the whole.

Something I discovered recently: Prejudice, by Tim Minchin (

)

3

Elements Articles / Re: Using Quanta Index to determine the optimal number of Pillars in a deck

« on: August 05, 2011, 03:14:45 pm »

This is most interesting. I haven't read the whole thing, though, and I wondered if an answer was found regarding quantum pillars and towers. It would also be nice if you could somehow include pendulums, too. And Novas? And for non-mono, non-rainbow deck (like, 2 or 3 colors), how do you do it? Count each color separetely?

If answers for these have already been found, it'd be nice if it could be included in the first post, or at least place a link redirecting to the post/page where this is answered. Sorry for being lazy

In any event, I may eventually try to find a solution for these. My first thoughts on this is:

1) 2-3 color decks count colors separately;

2) Pendulums count for 1/2 of a pillar towards each color;

3) Towers should possibly counted like normal pillars, because they "only" give a bonus on the first turn. If you must, count them for 1.1 pillar? 1.2?

4) Quantum pillars/Towers I am not sure about, but I would either guess that: a) Rainbow decks with quantum pillars/towers have a higher ideal QI (6, perhaps?) or b) Quantum pillars in a rainbow are valued a bit more than regular pillars in a mono, something like 1.5-2 (counting them as 3 normal pillars seems wrong to me on account of them being random and a bit less reliable) (also, obviously quantum pillars in a mono/duo/trio should be valued less; maybe 0.8?). For Quantum towers, apply the same logic as other towers: give them a 0.x bonus?

5) Novas in a rainbow, are they worth 1 pillar? 2? 4 (the amount of turns it takes a pillar to generate as much quanta)? And Supernovas are worth double that amount? They both generate a lot of quanta instantly, which is very useful to get a jump start, but it doesn't generate qanta turn after turn, like a normal pillar does. In an 8 turns game, a quantum pillar generates 27 quanta, whereas a nova still only generates 12...

6) Is it customary to count the mark as a pillar? IIRC, it hasn't been mentionned in the first post. And how do you count the mark in a rainbow? Ignore it? Count it for less then a pillar (0.3)?

4

Introduce Yourself / Salutations

« on: August 04, 2011, 08:28:55 pm »

Hey there people,

I've discovered Elements on Kongregate, so far I like it a lot (although I have to take breaks because I tend to swear a bit too much for my on taste on bad luck streaks). I'm espescially happy that it is free, which is a great boon to my experience. I've been playing for maybe a week, have been lurking around the wiki and, more recently, the forum for a few days before I considered posting and restarted a few times (~4?), mainly because of the weapon choice for the 500 rating reward. I've had some success with a fractal devourer/minor vampire dark/aether deck, but restarted with a fast aggressive rainbow deck (I wanted to pick Eternity as my weapon, I previously had Lobo). So far I'm farming AI3 for ~10k Electrum, in order to have a half decent thing going for FGs. I have somewhere around 2,5k after ~2 hours of farming.

I might be interested to eventually join in the war, although I'll have to build better versatility in my arsenal first and try out more mono decks, for I hardly have a favorite element as it is (remember I mostly played dark/aether and a bit of rainbow). So maybe I won,t be up for the next one (IIRC, war 4?), but possibly the one after that, if all goes well.

See ya 'round, people!

5

General Discussion / Re: The Noob Diaries - How to Become Rich in 8 Hours

« on: August 04, 2011, 04:53:18 pm »

[..] regardless of whether or not it is a failure.

I thought the thread was pretty interesting. I've been lurking around the game, forum and (old?) wiki for a few days now, and tried different approaches, and this still gave me good cues. Even if you judge your initial attempt a faillure, especially in regard to your results facing the half-bloods, I still got some good cues from it all:

1) In retrospect, EM are not really worth it. I used to play a fractal devourer/minor vampire dark/aether deck (and tried a few others along the way, but this was my most successful), got quite a few EM, but reading this and trying it out, I realise that by the time I made 1 EM with my old deck, this fast rainbow one won 2-3 games, which means having grossly the same amount of electrum and 6 more chances at spinning cards.

2) Half-bloods are tricky opponents, if anything, and may not be worth the trouble. As Kardo said, it depends wether or not you feel lucky. The Electrum reward is definitely not worth it: it is higher, but games are lenghtier to play and much more likely to end with your demise. What really makes up for it is the opportunity to win upgraded cards, but maybe you'd still be better sticking with AI3 until you could up about 4-8 cards and just going strainght for the FGs, which, while they prove to be much stronger opponents than HBs, give good card pay-off.

Also, I'd say kardo was successful. Sure, he got lucky with the HBs, but if you replaced that with 2-4 hours of elders, I think it'd mostly even out.