Starting to upgrade cards?

[coinich]

Grind Gods with that or a tweaked Rainbow deck; you can spin upgraded cards and sell the ones you don't want.

[Delreich]

Start here: Elements 101: An Index for FAQ (http://elementstheforum.smfforfree3.com/index.php/topic,1303.0.html)

If you've already got a deck to tackle lvl3, the links most likely to be of interest to you are the ones on strategies and decks for beating the false gods.
Why the gods, you say? Because any card you win from them will be an already upgraded card, which you can sell for 1100+ if it's of no use to you.
Probability of getting a card is fairly good if you can just win. You'll get an expected 0.36 (http://elementsthegame.wikia.com/wiki/Scorpio) - 0.57 (http://elementsthegame.wikia.com/wiki/Rainbow) cards per win depending on the god.

[Dragoon]

Thanks for the responses.  Seems like the advice is to simply take a rainbow deck and grind gods (mostly losses with the occasional win), upgrading my cards as I get the cash, until I finally have a winning deck.

Honestly, I think I'll pass.  Elements seems like a great game, but I was hoping to dive in and enjoy the deckbuilding aspect of the game without a lengthy money/card grind.  Seems like every time I want to try a new deck, I have to wipe my existing deck and go through the card grind all over again (or just grind enough money to be able to buy all the cards I want for every deck).

Yeah, I'd suggest either trainer for unlimited deck building fun.  As for the gods, it will mostly be losses at first, but that's because you haven't learned how to make the best use of your deck while countering the different god's strategies.  I've played 88 games so far with a completely unupgraded deck without any rares the whole time.  I've won 47 of them giving me a little over 50% win rate.  So it's not mostly losing with just a few meager wins if you know what you're doing.  You can read the different guides to get some tips, but for me, the fun part was learning what works on my own.  Of course after a while, I would highly recommend looking up some of the guides to get some ideas that you might not have thought about.

[Echodork]

Hi, first post

So I started playing Elements on Friday, and so far I'm really enjoying it.  I started playing with Aether, and after I learned the basics I moved to a Gravity/Darkness/Light Otyugh deck that got through the 500 rank quest pretty quickly.  I dabbled in PvP a little and got crushed by some fully upgraded rainbow decks, and that made me realize the advantage of the quantum/rainbow deck approach.  Long story short, I've built up a Time mark rainbow deck.  I've hit 1000 rank, I'm able to beat the Level 3 elementals 97% of the time, and I have about a 40% win ratio vs. Top 50 decks (including several Elemental Mastery wins... thanks, Steal).  I get steamrolled by the False Gods.  I have about 400 electrum, and no upgraded cards.

So that's where I am right now.  My question is... what do I do now?  To beat the False Gods (and most other players), I need a deck full of upgraded cards.  But at 1500 electrum for each card, it seems like getting a fully upgraded deck will take weeks and weeks of grinding against L3s/T50s.  Am I missing something?  Is there an alternative to scraping out 90,000 electrum 15-30 at a time and hoping for lucky spinner rolls?

I'd love to try out a variety of different decks (mono fire, poison, boneyard animator, mutator, couple other ideas I have), but again, I don't really want to spend weeks grinding out cash to buy copies of all the cards (and then upgrade them!).  Is there an easier way to do it?

[Echodork]

Thanks for the responses.  Seems like the advice is to simply take a rainbow deck and grind gods (mostly losses with the occasional win), upgrading my cards as I get the cash, until I finally have a winning deck.

Honestly, I think I'll pass.  Elements seems like a great game, but I was hoping to dive in and enjoy the deckbuilding aspect of the game without a lengthy money/card grind.  Seems like every time I want to try a new deck, I have to wipe my existing deck and go through the card grind all over again (or just grind enough money to be able to buy all the cards I want for every deck).

Thanks again, and good luck

[jmizzle7]

You can use one of the two trainers to try out all kind of decks, unupgraded or upgraded.

Take a look at:
http://chriskang.free.fr/trainer/trainer.html (http://chriskang.free.fr/trainer/trainer.html)
and
http://www.elementsthegame.com/trainer (http://www.elementsthegame.com/trainer)

It should be noted that http://www.elementsthegame.com/trainer is the official trainer, while Chris's trainer is a tweaked one with a little bit of added fun. Neither affect the actual game itself or your profile.

[Tigerente]

You can use one of the two trainers to try out all kind of decks, unupgraded or upgraded.

Take a look at:
http://chriskang.free.fr/trainer/trainer.html (http://chriskang.free.fr/trainer/trainer.html)
and
http://www.elementsthegame.com/trainer (http://www.elementsthegame.com/trainer)