Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Complete Culdcept Geekery
Fair Warning: This post is all about Culdcept Saga for the Xbox 360. If you've got no interest, just skip today's post and come back tomorrow... otherwise you're liable to fall asleep at your keyboard.
So, after what was a playtime that ran on for far too long, I finished (but not completed) the game tonight. Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it, and definitely had a good time in terms of the singleplayer mode. Apart from a length that overstayed its welcome, the difficulty curve was right where it needed to be and most of the tweaks that had been made to the PS2 formulary were good ones.
The final few matches were real pains, though.
The second-to-last match was a sickening Scroll Hell where the opponent basically chewed through my lands while I was helpless to stop the damage. The upshot was that this opponent was all offense and no defense, so it turned into a waiting game that ended with me simply strolling along and taking each land back once they had been leveled up for me.
The final match wasn't too bad, just painfully drawn-out. The boss made use of the extremely annoying combo where a creature's ST is turned to 0, and then followed up with a Doublecast spell switching the creature's ST and HP, equaling instant non-combat death. (Those particular spells should not be Doublecast-capable, if you ask me.)
On top of that, the boss was constantly using Enlightenment to activate his creatures' Territory Abilities which wasn't bad until he cast a Lightning Dragon that could hit any creature on the board for 30 damage. Ouch. Even still, the AI didn't abuse it too much and it just boiled down to running a lot of laps, nothing fancy.
Both of these matches ran well past 100 rounds, so I'm glad to have them behind me and the story mode done. Besides, with all the time I've been sinking into the game, my to-play pile has gotten out of control... time to start knocking them off my list again.
Final Stats:
Victorious in 34/42 matches, final card count of 531 cards (total.)
Winning Deck Composition:
Avenger x2 - Good numbers for both attack and defense.
Barbarian x1
Chimera x1 - first-strike defender to hold lands.
Fire giant x2 - high attack and critical on Blue.
Gas cloud x2 - awesome land defenders.
Minotaur x1
Aspidochelone x1
Fate x1
Kelpie x2 - these will end matches, just hold lots of defense items handy.
Lizardman x1 - another first-strike land-holder.
Mistwing x1 - negates Red and Blue.
Sir Gawain x2 - 70 ST after round 20; he killed a lot of enemies for me.
Yeti x1 - negates Red.
Cerberus x1 - attacks twice; pair it with Stormcauser or Vorpal Sword.
Gargoyle x1 - first-strike land-holder... see a pattern here?
Spiny Agama x2 - 50% damage reflection, great defender.
Wereboar x1
Woodfolk x1 - very versatile with a Support ability.
Magma Avatar x1
Stymphalides x1 - penetrates Yellow and Blue.
Eagle Rapier x1 - for first-strike defense.
Fire Shield x1
Magma Hammer x2 - can't have a Red/Green deck without these.
Nuclear Fusion x1
Prismatic Wand x1
Stormcauser x1 - one of the best cards in terms of offense.
Tower Shield x2 - turn anything into a Gas Cloud.
Vorpal Sword x1
Water Shield x1 - to protect Kelpies.
Anti-Element x1
Crusher x2
Drain Magic x2
Holy Word 0 x1 - for whenever I wanted to collect a fat toll twice.
Hustle x2
Peace x1 - to nullify an opponent's death zone, or to protect your own land.
Reflection x1
Relief x1
Senility x1 - for when you just can't breach the defense.
Sink x1
This deck served me well, but it's not as tight as I'd like it to be. I will definitely be tweaking it, and it's possible I'll drop the whole Kelpie gambit at some point. Anyway, I'm still going to be playing multi online for the forseeable future, so if you see me on Live, don't be afraid to hit me up for a match!
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Congrats on finishing the game. I still have a ways to go.
Your deck looks good. If I were you, I'd drop the whole Kelpie angle and replace them with a couple Walls of Ice. Kelpie may work great against the AI, but it's much less effective in multiplayer -- it immediately marks you as a target, and it's pretty easy to kill/circumvent. I'd also consider lightening up on all the first strike landholders across multiple colors in favor of more all-rounders like Minotaur (only 1 in a primarily red/green deck?!) and Knight.
(this is sleeve btw)
Hey Sleeve, thanks for the comments.
I agree about the kelpie. Although it worked pretty well for me for the first 3/4ths of the game, it wasn't much use in the last four or five matches before the end. Honestly, the reason I had been using it was because when the AI fell victim, it dramatically shortened the length of the average match from about two hours to 45 minutes.
Wall of Ice is a good choice, and there are definitely a few other tweaks I would like to make. Just for variety, I'm actually planning on starting a brand-new single-colored deck, probably green.
The thing that sucks about Culdcept is that there isn't any way to trade in cards you don't want, or buy cards that you do. I have some good deck ideas based on some of the cards I've seen opponents using, but without any way to pick or choose what you have, it sort of frustrates the whole experimentation process.
A longshot hope I have is that there will eventually be card packs or some sort of store available via Live... I'd much rather pay a couple bucks and get exactly what I want than to grind game after game with a very real possibility of never getting the few things that I'm after. Trading being limited to in-person blows the big one. too... that was a big missed opportunity, IMO. Maybe there will be a patch for that later.
Probably not, but a man can dream.
Nice post, Brad. Congrats on beating the game. Now that I got a break from work, I just keep playing Culdcept. Did you end up getting most of the cards? That's the only reason I could think it would be so long.
Hey Doug.
I haven't counted, but i think i only have about half or a little over half of the cards.
The reason it was so long was that the story mode makes you go through a *ton* of stages to get to the end... when you think you're at the end, you get sent back a few stages. get to the end again and you get sent back again. the third time is the charm, but it's a long process that can't be helped.
Believe it or not, i only played *one* game to farm for cards... the rest were either multi or story mode matches.