Zoeti is a turn-based roguelite that features a deck of playing cards used to create card combos and activate skills in the heat of battle. Learning those combos and skills is the key to completing the runs. Today, I’m going to talk about some tips for each character to give the best chance to complete a run.
General
Like in every roguelike card building game, understanding the general rules of the game is a must to prepare for any battle and Zoeti is no different. Every run is going to throw you into different scenarios from skills you have, bosses you face, the hands you draw and more.
In Zoeti, you use abilities by playing different types of hands like pairs, straights, and flushes so setting those up is key to surviving any battle. You retain the cards in your hand at the end of the turn and you can see the next few cards you will draw from the deck. This will allow you to set up the next turn to use powerful abilities!
Your hand limit and draw amount are displayed on the bottom right. In the image above, I have 8 cards in my hand with a hand limit of 10 with 6 cards to draw. You can’t draw over the hand limit so if I were to end the turn right there I would actually only draw 2 cards. Sometimes, it is better to play cards just so you can have more draws for the next turn.
Campfires and the Inn gives you an opportunity to heal some health, upgrade your skills, or add a character ability. You’ll need soulstone fragments, which you get in battles and events, to upgrade skills and character abilities.
Idols are a very important part of each run. They can give you powerful accessories if you are willing to give them sand coins or soulstone fragments. There are 4 different idols you can run into in each run.
- Batons is the god of fire, enhancement, and healing.
- Coupes is the goddess of ice, defense and soulstone fragments.
- Denieres is the goddess of items and coins.
- Epees is the god of wind, attack, and card draw.
You will not know which idol you’ll run into until you go to the idol node on the map.
Valentina
An honorable knight dedicated to protecting the weak and standing as a bulwark against evil, Valentina blocks incoming attacks with her stalwart shield and puts the might of raw muscle behind every sword swing.
Valentina uses buffs such as strength, temporary strength and charge to increase the damage and it’s important to understand the differences between these buffs and how to use them effectively.
Strength and temporary strength increases attack by one per stack. So, if an attack damages for 4 normally then one strength would increase the damage to 5. Temporary strength is lost at the end of the turn while strength is kept during the battle. Strength and temporary strength are great with small multiple attacks but are weaker with stronger one-hit attacks.
While strength and temporary strength excel for a flurry of small blows, charge is amazing for the single, massive attacks. Charge increases the next attack’s damage by 10%. So a 50 damage attack does 55 damage with 1 charge and you can stack way more charge to kill bosses in 1 hit.
Valentina not only can buff her attacks, she can buff her defense as well with defense performance and temporary defense performance. This is similar to strength and temporary strength but instead increases the amount of armor you gain when you use a defense card. In fact, one build you can create with Valentina is to stack armor and then use the ability Fiery Shield Strike which does damage based on your armor.
Alves
An elusive trickster, Alves knows how to hamstring his enemies’ quickest attacks, evade their most devastating blows, and make them bleed for every swing they take.
Alves has a few clever ways to mitigate damage taken from enemies. Alves can stack evade to completely dodge attacks, which might seem complicated but becomes intuitive as you play. Each stack of evade will dodge up to 10 damage, however, if the damage incoming is more damage then the evade, then the attack will go through and you will take the damage. Evade is very weak against multiple attacks as each attack will take away stacks of evade. If you have 5 stacks of evade and an enemy is going to attack 5 times for 1 damage, all your evade stacks will be taken away.
Alves can mitigate damage by inflicting “Cripple” on the enemy as well. Cripple halves the damage the enemy can deal, making it extremely effective at reducing incoming big hits to manageable small ones. This can be used in combo with evade to dodge devastating attacks with high damage.
To deal with multiple attacks with low damage, Alves can debuff the enemy’s strength. Subtracting the enemy’s strength will lower their damage by the amount of stacks you have debuffing them.
Alves starts with the smallest starting hand size but has many abilities to draw and control what is in their hand, which means Alves has the easiest time finding a straight flush in his deck. The draw power Alves has can lead to some very explosive turns where he can draw through the deck multiple times.
Nicora
An ingenius mage, Nicora combines the raw power of elemental fire, ice and lightning to burn, freeze and shock her opponents into submission.
Nicora uses elemental damage to inflict status effects on enemies and each element can debuff the enemy in different ways. Fire damage burns the targets with damage over time effect which damages the enemy on the end of their turn. Frost damage freezes the enemy by reducing their attack damage. Thunder damage stuns enemies when you stack it up enough of it. The stun will skip the enemy’s action on their turn which can stop truly destructive attacks.
Nicora’s spells can overload her which lowers the amount of cards she will draw. If you stack your overload too high, the following turns you may not have enough cards to survive or kill the enemy.
Nicora can also channel powerful spells between turns but watch your incoming damage. Chant is a buff that if you still have after the enemy ends their turn will release a power spell. If you take damage, you lose chant based on how much damage you take and if you run out of chant the spell will not activate.
I hope these tips help you on your future adventures! If you want to check out Zoeti, you can play it on Steam or on the Nintendo Switch!
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