In the initial stages, Elements can be pretty "daunting" since (a) you don't have many rares, though you are assured of at least one; (b) improving your cards can be pretty tedious; (c) the HBs and FGs seem almost unbeatable; (d) farming T50 requires that you put the "work" to complete a decent farming deck; and (e) each player must face whatever "instant gratification" issues they may have.
In my case, before I started playing, I read a lot about the various decks and the cards, and the strategies and what-not. I work, so I prefer to read walk-throughs and guides for the games I play so I don't waste time. (Yeah, I would love to explore, but I'm no longer in college so I don't have the luxury of putting off critical tasks til the last minute.) I started out with mono-Aether (way back when it was version 1.13 or something), got a Lobotmizer, worked up to where I could beat Ai3, then i switched to Rainbow. The critical thing was to upgrade the Pillars and Novas, as they can be used in any number of variants. Again, with more grinding, I managed to complete a decent Rainbow. Then I got bored and quit for a bit- my score was around 47K at this time.
I came back in version 1.23 to find that quite a lot had changed. My Rainbow was not as effective and even Ai3 could be problematic
. So I read up on the forums, found Terroking's deck, constructed it and farmed t50- I completed all the Shards except Divinity, and I got my first Eternity and Pulvy. Since I enjoyed the speed and damage output I kept at it til I had completed almost every rare weapon. From there I built a smaller Timebow, farmed HB's a bit, constructed ROL-Hope, and after reading about "Why Bother" decided to play it as it was easy to construct. So now I can play maybe 10-12 games vs FGs and win upped cards worth around 3000-4000 electrum on good days. I'm very grateful to Terroking, Yaladilae, Amilir, Puppychow, Scaredgirl, Qoholet, and many other players who posted deck ideas and discuss strategy. All in all, there are good and bad draws, but having a good deck concept can really help mitigate the bad ones.
