Across the Obelisk is another entry in a long line of roguelike deckbuilder-type games, and already it's proving itself to be among one of the best. One of the main factors for it being so well-received is its complexity and variety of builds for each of the 16 different playable characters.
RELATED:The Best Roguelikes On Steam
There are hundreds of cards to unlock for each Class, a ton of different pieces of Equipment to find, Pets to discover, and Madness levels to unlock. The game can be pretty overwhelming at first because of this, so let's go over some of the biggest tips that should help when you're just starting out.
Don't Worry Too Much About The Pre-Run Setup
Especially for the first few runs, and even more so in multiplayer, you really don't want to get too heavily into cutting, upgrading, and modifying cards in Senenthia. Once you've gone through the game a fair number of times, you'll easily acquire enough Town Upgrades, Perks, and leftover Shards to mostly build your deck however you want in the first town.
In the beginning, you're simply not going to have enough Shards, Gold, unlocked Cards, unlocked Equipment, and Town Upgrades to do it all. Rather, you should really focus on just upgrading each character's best two-to-four cards, adding one or two core cards from the Magic Forge, removing one or two of the least useful cards at the Church, and moving on from there. Some of you may spend 20+ minutes in this first phase of the game before any combat even happens, and it can really deter friends from sticking with you in a multiplayer setting.
The Golden Rule Of Deckbuilders: "Don't Bloat The Deck"
This next tip applies to just about any deckbuilder out there, even Riot's Legends of Runeterra, and it's to always keep your Deck as low in card count as possible. The more you inflate your deck with cards, especially ones that haven't been upgraded in Across the Obelisk's case, the worse off you'll be. Now, considering you get the opportunity to pick a new card after every single battle in the game, this might seem like an impossible task in self-discipline, and it is. You absolutely should take some cards from the rewards screen now and then.
But, generally, you'll only want to take the cards that have the purple names, high rarities, and so on, while ignoring the rest and getting extra Shards in exchange. Remember, you can cut each character's Deck all the way down to 15 at each Church in each Act's town, so it's never too late to trim an overinflated Deck.
Keep A Close Eye On Obelisk Corruption Rewards
Another aspect of Across the Obelisk that only adds to its replayability is the Obelisk Corruption system. In a run, you'll sometimes have an "Obelisk Corruption" pop-up option appear before combat. This pop-up gives you the choice of increasing the difficulty of the upcoming encounter in exchange for a myriad of possible rewards. Now, these Corruptions have a ton of different possible configurations for how they'll change the combat or what rewards they'll give out, which is why each one has a "difficulty" tied to it.
That said, a lot of them, even the "Extreme" difficulty ones, are worth challenging for the rewards they're offering. In particular, the rewards that give you the opportunity to upgrade a card for free on each character or give you access to an Exotic Equipment shop (with a 30 percent discount) are by far the best ones. The more "overpowered" cards of Across the Obelisk can cost up to 1,500 Shards just to upgrade, so being able to do so for free mid-run is well worth it. And, the right Equipment can absolutely turn a character from sub-par into ridiculously overpowered, so it's always good to check out shops when possible.
Your Act 2 And Act 3 Choices Matter
During a standard Adventure Mode run, you'll traverse across four different Realms in total. You'll always start in Selenthia and traverse it before fighting the Old Tree, Ylmer. After this boss fight, however, players can choose between three different Realms for their next map, these being the green portal for the Aquarfall Marsh, the red portal for Velkarath, or the blue portal for Faeborg.
Each Realm has different encounters, events, unlocks, and so on. But, what beginners need to know is that the difficulty curve between Act 2 and Act 3 is pretty substantial. So, you should absolutely always try and pick the realm you find the "hardest" as your Act 2 and save the boss fight you have the least trouble with for Act 3.
RELATED: The Best Card Games For Six Or More People
Unlock Requirements Aren't That Obtuse
As previously mentioned, Across the Obelisk has a huge amount of unlockables to obtain, from Characters, Cards, Items, Equipment, and even Pets. A lot of these bigger unlocks, especially Characters and Pets, require following a "quest" of sorts that either a Map Event, Character Event, or Item description elaborates on. Most of these involve interacting with Map Nodes across different Realms and obtaining certain Items.
While some of you might feel that these Questlines almost "require" following a guide, they're really not that confusing or mysterious. Most, if not all, of the Quests in Across the Obelisk hint at or directly tell you where to go, but since this game has a lot of text to read, people like to skim more often than not — which leads to them missing crucial info.
Always Keep Some Gold On Hand
Throughout the game, there are a fair number of events that are primarily cleared by giving a certain NPC some amount of Gold. Now, most of these events do also have alternate methods to get around spending money that you'll likely discover on one of your many replays, but not all of them. In particular, both Faeborg and the Aquarfall Marsh have areas on their maps that are only accessible by boat.
The main method of obtaining this boat is paying for it with somewhere between 800 and 1,000 Gold. As such, you'll always want to keep at least 1,000 Gold on you to cover all bases in every scenario.
While it's absolutely recommended to play this game however you want, and figure out what works best for you, it is also worth mentioning what the "meta" is among the player base.
In general, players tend to follow a sort of "five core cards" build for a lot of their characters. These builds revolve around having, at most, five cards of any cost that function as their "main" tools — whether that's Offense or Defense. For example, Andrin has a build entirely centered around Fan of Knives, and he uses cards like Camouflage and Sharpening Knife to buff Fan of Knives to huge levels.
This "meta" is built around the idea of the other cards in their Deck being zero-cost and/or Vanish cards that directly or indirectly buff these core cards. For example, a player may meet the minimum of having a deck full of 15 Cards, but if ten of those cards Vanish for the rest of combat after one use, that means they're basically getting the same five incredible cards on every draw.
Upgrades And Transformations
Finally, let's talk about card upgrades. You can choose between two different Upgrades for every card in Across the Obelisk — one that turns the Card's name gold, and one that turns it blue. There's also a purple-name version, but those are only obtainable as rewards either through combat or events. Now, it's not consistent, but usually, one Upgrade lowers a card's Energy cost in exchange for less damage, while the other increases the damage (or the number of monsters hit) in exchange for an additional Energy cost.
However, these Upgrades don't have to be permanent. You can easily choose whichever Upgraded card works for where you are in your run, and then just Transform it to the other upgrade once your build allows for a higher-cost card. That said, Transforming does cost Gold, at least until you get the Town Upgrade for the Altar that makes Transforming free.
NEXT: Relatable Things We All Do With A Trading Card Game
