It took me some tries to figure out a viable strategy. At first I thought the knight's skill wasn't very good but it's actually pretty useful. Overall, a pretty solid and fun roguelike card game. Not too easy but not impossible either, once you figure out what everything does.
Here's what I found out about game mechanics (skip if you like figuring things out by trial and error):
- Ring of Balance increases max hunger and halves max health. I was wondering why it was doing nothing, it already had.
- Knight's skill is AoE, and halves your current armor. It hits before the enemy.
- Enchantment's 'subjugate' places the targeted enemy in your hand, with halved attack and health. You can use it to attack, but it doesn't attack first.
- The game always rounds up as far as I could tell (haven't checked Ring of Balance).
And tips about the strategy I followed (Knight):
*** SPOILER WARNING ***
Newbie tips:
- Kill 1 HP enemies without a weapon. Maybe 2 HP as well.
- You don't need to kill enemies if all that remains is the door. It's also ok to skip if you see the exit + key + all enemies.
- Grab as many weapons as you can.
Build tips:
- No hunger when opening monsters and +1 when killing help.
- Only one stress reducer or none if you got enough +food.
- +Armor relics are good, but keep in mind armor ingots become half as effective.
- Biggest threat are the traps that wake all enemies. Make sure you always have at least 5 mana + armor (item). Or Vanish, which is one of the best items before the boss.
Boss tip:
- Buy weapons before the last stage, have at least 8x 10 attacks and a few more. I beat it without opening any cards. It counts number of attacks (including spells like Berserk), and I don't believe it counts cards opened or it'd be quite impossible to beat and all cards are items. I haven't tried Whip, but another commenter recommended against it, not sure if it's been rebalanced since then.
Update:
Vampire
- Shields get replaced, they don't stack.
- Does increasing damage and restores hunger (living only) with normal attacks.
- Killing enemies increases skill damage. Using it decreases it by 10.
(I got a no-numbers-on-cards penalty. I ended up using Berserk twice against the boss)
Reading other comments, I realized the other characters aren't unlockable, they're for the full version.