My Beginner's Guide

[tinkady]

How to go from Nothing to a Super Duper Rich God Killer Super Duper Fast

I randomly decided to make a guide. I didn't realize you couldn't post directly into the guides section, which makes a lot of sense to weed out the bad ones, but here's mine and if its good enough hopefully it'll be moved there! (crosses fingers, knows that probably wont happen ).

Part One:
If you've already picked a deck to grind AI3/T50 with and are happy with it you can use it instead of mine.  If you've made a good amount of money already but need a good deck, just sell the deck you have now and buy this one (if they have no overlap, look on the forums to see if theres another good AI3 grinder more similar to yours).  If you haven't made much progress, just reset your account.  Then pick the deck and remove all the non-earth cards.  Play some of the easy levels (AI3 if you can) and sell cards until you are able to get the following deck:
Deck import code : [Select]58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 58o 590 590 590 590 590 590 591 591 591 591 591 591
If you want, you can replace a pillar with a short sword.  The strategy is pretty straightforward- play whatever you can, and evolve your graboids into shriekers.  You will usually win quickly or lose quickly because you have no defense.  So, your money made will be great over time.
There is some strategy involved- if there is a direct threat to your shriekers (Otyugh, arctic squid, etc) you can burrow them, but that usually isn't necessary.  If there is only a single threat, if you have enough quanta, unburrow all of them when you play a new one because one will get eaten anyways.  If you're close enough to victory that burrowing will just waste time, don't do it! If you can win earlier by unburrowing, then unburrow! You'll know what to do in these kinds of situations once you play for a while.

Now you should grind AI3 or T50 for a while.  AI3 is faster money, but T50 is a good source of rares, because pro players use rares and some even post rare farms- just towers and a bunch of copies of a few rares- which are easily beaten and greatly increases your chances of getting a rare item.  Later on your decks will be much better if you have up to four Shards of Gratitude and a Fahrenheit or two, and other rares are just useful in general, so if you're not in a rush to fight False Gods, sticking to T50 is probably a good idea because you'll have to do it later anyways. 
When you win the 500 point quest, choose ETERNITY as your rare item.  This is very important if you're ever going to play false gods later.  If you already won it through T50, that's great! Choose a Fahrenheit if you don't have one, or a Pulverizer if you're going to play Scaredgirl's deck instead of the one below.  Also Pulverizers are rarer in general, so they're good to have.

Grind until you have about 800-900 electrum, which shouldn't take long at all.  At this point, I would click on import/export deck in the deck managing section and copy the deck import code of your shrieker/graboid rush deck into a document so that you'll have it readily available when you're switching decks later on.  You’ll need it if you need to go back to AI3 or T50 if you run out of money due to a losing streak or want shards or other rares.

Part Two:
Now, you can fight false gods! buy a fire bolt instant kill deck.
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,6758.0.html This is the link where I adapted the deck from, and has lots of strategy tips, I highly recommend reading it if you're going to use this deck.
This is the version I use:
Deck import code : [Select]5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 5f0 4vj 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f4 5f7 5f7 5lg 61o 61o 61o 61o 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 61t 6rn 6rn
With this deck, you will wait till you're close to death and then stall with your dimensional shields until you have enough fire quanta to let lose 6 fire bolts at the same time and kill the opponent in one hit.  The shards are optional but very helpful against certain gods as talked about on the above link.  Having one or two Fahrenheits is great for this deck.  This deck is also good for PVP and effective against AI3 and T50, although it's much slower than the shrieker/graboid rush so I don't recommend it for that.

If you want a different deck to begin fighting FG's with, I also recommend (like basically everybody else) Scaredgirl's Time Rainbow http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=1615.0
This is what I used when I started playing, and might be better than the fire bolt deck because you can upgrade it over time and build into the deck below (sorta) while the fire bolt deck is not much better upgraded.  But the rainbow takes more time/thinking and isn't great with nothing upgraded.  Your choice.

Part Three:
You won't win every time, but overall the fire bolt deck deck is very easy to play and pretty effective against false gods and you have a chance of winning a rare card every time you win, so eventually you’ll have enough money to buy Puppychow’s upgraded entropy rainbow deck.  http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,1748.0.html  This link has tons of important strategy for using this deck against each individual god.  It is essential to read up on strategies, because playing a rainbow deck takes a lot more skill than the mindless firebolt or shrieker decks above.
Once you have enough money to upgrade the important cards, you can switch if you want, but it won't be all that effective.  I use the following variant: Deck import code : [Select]6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6qq 6rn 6rn 6rn 6rn 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u3 6u6 6u7 6u7 6u8 717 71b 74b 74b 7do 7gp 7n3 7q5 7q5 7q8 7t9 80h 80h 80h
Your deck doesn't have to be identical to Puppychow's or mine, fiddle around with what you like the best while keeping the essentials.  You could also try Yaladilae's Butterfly Angel http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php?topic=4212.40 which is similar to this deck. 
If you don’t have any Shards of Gratitude, as you build this deck up you should play a bunch of T50 and get some!  They make a pretty big difference…but if you dont have any shards 2 Feral Bonds will work too. Also, if you dont have any shards you should use some Antimatters (or a Purple Nymph if youre lucky) for extra healing.  Once you get 3 shards you can stop if you want and just use a feral bond for the fourth, something some people do anyways to get more elemental masteries. 

At this point, you can do pretty much anything!  You can keep earning money and make more decks, sell this one because you think i'm stupid  or whatever else.  It took me less than two weeks to get to this point, and now I have a bunch of cash sitting around and nothing to do with my life besides mess around on the trainer 

If you don't want to fight false gods for cash and want to upgrade your first deck for AI3 or T50, I recommend the following deck- 6x elite graboid, 6x elite antlion, 4x elite shrieker, 1x long sword, 13x earth tower.
I don't play much AI3 or T50 so I could be wrong about the specifics of that deck (it might be a bit short on  ), but like its unupped version its easy to play, very fast and has a high winning rate as well.  If you want to play PVP...ask somebody else.  I never do because my connection dies a lot  ???

So that's it! Please comment, hate, love, etc 

[xdude]

... Can you please explain me you are supposed to play the Mirror Shield in the Firebolt deck without having any way of generating Light quanta?

[Helios]

Further, I think this thread is more appropriate in the Newbie Tutorials section.

[dragonhuman]

... Can you please explain me you are supposed to play the Mirror Shield in the Firebolt deck without having any way of generating Light quanta?

because light is awesome that way

[PhuzzY LogiK]

Further, I think this thread is more appropriate in the Newbie Tutorials section.

I don't think threads can be started there.  They have to be posted elsewhere and moved by a mod, so that the newbie section isn't flooded and is easy to navigate.

[tinkady]

... Can you please explain me you are supposed to play the Mirror Shield in the Firebolt deck without having any way of generating Light quanta?

There was supposed to be a nova in there, sorry about that. added it now
for anybody curious as to why it's in there, it's necessary to beat anybody with a shield that reflects spells (there are four of them, I forget which)
if the opponent has a reflecting shield, you simply put yours up and target yourself, which bypasses the opponent's shield

[tinkady]

shameless bumpppp
anybody else have something to say? 

[Scaredgirl]

You should change that ugly Times New Roman font. It was designed for print sometime in the 1950's or something which is why it looks like crap on the internet.

Fonts like Verdana were designed to be read on screen.

[tinkady]

done. anything elseee

[smuglapse]

I don't see anything here that adds to what is already in the Newbie Tutorial guides.  The only difference is the middle step where instead of an unupped Rainbow you chose the unupped Fire Bolt.