Hi guys, I've just started playing this amazing game. It is kinda like MTG and WoW:TCG, but fast paced. Is FREE and you can earn every card on the game by winning gold defeating other players or the IA, with not paying a single dollar. There are a lot of strategies, and the activity is huge, lots of tournaments, strategies discussions, balance discussions, etc.
You can play online, by creating a room or using matchmaking system, that usually takes 2-3 seconds to get a game from your level. Activity is really high. Also, you can earn Shadow Crystals to buy boost packs or pre-builded decks.
The best thing is, that you can play it on PC, in iOS or Android plataforms, with the same account. I really liked that stuff.
Shadow Era is free to play and available on a wide variety of platforms, so you can seamlessly switch between them with a single player account. For this reason, it doesn't matter which platform you choose to start off with, so you might as well pick whichever is most convenient for you right now:
Web browser iPhone/iPad/iPod Android PC Mac My personal favourite is the iPad version because the game looks gorgeous and the user interface is very slick, but I have also used the Mac application and the web browser version on Chrome and Firefox.
2. Choose an Email Address and Password
This is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll offer some advice anyway.
3. Choose Your (First) HerO You are now presented with ten Hero cards to choose from (there are 20 Heroes in total). You can flick through them by clicking on the cards to the side of the central one.
The Hero you choose here will depend on a few factors:
If you are planning to buy or earn some in-game currency right away, the Hero you choose now will have little significance, since you will soon collect all of them with minimal effort/expenditure. Just pick whoever you like the look of.
If you are undecided about the game for now, and you are not sure if you will be expanding your collection quickly, I recommend picking Eladwen Frostmire or Boris Skullcrusher.
Note: You can only get Human Hero decks when signing up. Shadow Hero starter decks can only be obtained later.
4. Become Familiar With Your Deck Each game you play will involve you and your deck of cards, which you build from your collection. Before each game, you are free to make whatever deck changes you want, providing you have the required cards in your collection. Let's see how this works now.
From the world map screen, which should currently be in front of you, toggle the main menu with the icon at the top middle position, and choose DECK.
You will now see the Deck Builder, where you can click on each card in your current deck (the one that came free when you signed up) to see it more closely.
If you have played Magic: The Gathering or World of Warcraft TCG before, the card meanings should be relatively intuitive to you. If you've played any other collectable card games before, the cards should still make some kind of sense to you.
The Warrior, Mage and Hunter classes are available to both Humans and Shadow. The Priest and Rogue are only Human classes, while Elemental and Wulven are only shadow classes. Below you can view those icons and which class each represents.
that game looks really good! i remember checking it out like a year or so ago, but it has come a long way since then it seems! if they even gonna print the cards and have $140,000 in funding for that then it must be pretty solid. i'm definitely gonna look into this more.
lets be honest here nothings going to be better than MTG, there is only so many things you can do with TCG's and MTG has done it all already, over and over again.
On Feb 22 2012 01:23<span style='color:#d20000'> (11 min)</span> Project Psycho wrote: lets be honest here nothings going to be better than MTG, there is only so many things you can do with TCG's and MTG has done it all already, over and over again.
I agree in most aspects, but I do think MTG made a design mistake in including lands, and that the "mana" system of this game (and duel masters) is superior. Lands make for mana flood and screw, which aren't fun for anybody. MTG is still by far the best TCG don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan.
Have played it quite a bit. Mostly on iPad, but some on the phone as well. It's a quite good TCG, and a lot cheaper than MTG.
It's also managed to stay relatively complex strategically while having immensely reduced the amount of needed touches and touch precision needed to play it, compared to for example MTG. Thus it is very playable on even a comparatively tiny phone screen.
If you like TCGs I highly recommend checking it out. After all, it's free as long as you're not in a hurry to get extra cards. If you're curious TotalBiscuit did a "WTF is..." on it a while back:
I have 2 questions, by the way this game is really fun. 1. What is the gold used for, can it buy booster packs too? 2. How can you get all the cards for free without using real money?
On February 25 2012 14:50 Absurd Bunny wrote: I have 2 questions, by the way this game is really fun. 1. What is the gold used for, can it buy booster packs too? 2. How can you get all the cards for free without using real money?
Go to Merchant, and then click on "buy" tab. There you will see all available cards, and you can buy them with gold. Also, you can get Shadow Crystal by doing offers for free!
I extremly recommend to NOT buy boosters. Use your Shadow Crystal to buy ELEMENTAL decks, and then sell it all for gold. You can get ~1800 gold, and with that buy good uncommon cards for your deck.
On February 25 2012 13:23 RoosterSamurai wrote: I've played it and got to level 6 but deck building is incredibly slow and I'm not about to spend any money on this.
On the PC at least you can drag and drop cards from your collection into the deck, rather than clicking the card then clicking add. It doesn't take very long at all doing it this way.
On February 25 2012 13:23 RoosterSamurai wrote: I've played it and got to level 6 but deck building is incredibly slow and I'm not about to spend any money on this.
On the PC at least you can drag and drop cards from your collection into the deck, rather than clicking the card then clicking add. It doesn't take very long at all doing it this way.
I started going insane whenever I accidentally hit "Clear" because all 30 of my cards would just disappear (currently just grinding against the AI for Gold and Crystals, since offers aren't working for me), until I made the magical discovery that you can just drag cards by holding them. Not quite as good as Dueling Network's system, but good enough.
I went the nubzy way and started out with the two mages (started with whoever the human mage is, then picked up the Shadow Mage starter deck).
Been playing this all weekend, very addicting. Perfect for people trying to get away from Magic the Gathering or those who just don't want to shell out lots of money on cards.
You can download the PC version for free, the games are INSTANT queue. Very balanced, if you think you are good strategy card game... come test your wits.
Started playing it on my iPhone today. I like it, it has depth while being easy to play even on a cellphone. That said, 20g everytime you kill an AI is ridiculously low.. there are no offers worth doing for dark crystals for me, and I'm definitely not planning to spend any money, so I'll basically just have to farm the AI over and over and I BETTER have a build planned out since any money spent on cards I don't need is a huge waste.
On April 16 2012 21:05 Tobberoth wrote: Started playing it on my iPhone today. I like it, it has depth while being easy to play even on a cellphone. That said, 20g everytime you kill an AI is ridiculously low.. there are no offers worth doing for dark crystals for me, and I'm definitely not planning to spend any money, so I'll basically just have to farm the AI over and over and I BETTER have a build planned out since any money spent on cards I don't need is a huge waste.
You can earn Shadow crystal by doing offers. For PC and for you cellphone device. Im from Chile, and I earned like 400 SC by doing offers. NA and EU guys can earn at least 800 SC becouse offers are differents. Also you can build a farming rush deck, if you want to farm AI.
When you level up, you earn 25 shadow crystals, and IA rewards get high. so at level 10 if im not mistaken, you earn 75 gold for every win against AI and 100g in PvP.
I played it for a little while now today and I have to say this is one of the easier F2P games when it comes to earning your stuff without spending real money.
On April 17 2012 00:19 FliedLice wrote: I played it for a little while now today and I have to say this is one of the easier F2P games when it comes to earning your stuff without spending real money.
And thats what I like about SE, you can earn every single card without having to spend any single dollar. Also gameplay and the lot of strategy it has make this one of the most competitive TCG around.
On April 20 2012 00:35 Bairemuth wrote: Just wanted to say this game is quite a bit of fun but the grind is a little annoying really.
Well yes, obviously, that's how they want to make money out of it. However, you can make at least one tier 1 deck with no money involved, so playing at a high level for free is definitely very possible.
I'm currently grinding my way up to a semi decent deck. To be honest, I don't really plan on investing time/effort into this game, I just needed something to keep me interested till Diablo 3 comes (open beta really sucked me in lol), but this does seem pretty interesting.
On April 27 2012 05:33 m00nchile wrote: I'm currently grinding my way up to a semi decent deck. To be honest, I don't really plan on investing time/effort into this game, I just needed something to keep me interested till Diablo 3 comes (open beta really sucked me in lol), but this does seem pretty interesting.
Do some offers on you Cellphone and on your PC with your account, and you can ear easyly 800 shadow crystals.
Also, click on this link and you can earn 125-200 free shadow crystals.
Stopped playing MTG ages ago as those around me also stopped but really wished I could continue playing. Will probably try this but a few questions before I do: How long is this 'grind' that people talk about? Are these offers for the in game currency region specific? Mainly concerned about Australia as we never get any attention when it comes to games D: How often are new cards added?
Just started playing this game casually(lvl 6) and I must say it's pretty fun. I've been actually able to build a pretty decent Mage deck without putting up any money out of my pocket. If this thread becomes a bit more active I would add some of you who still play for one custom games. Now to answer a few questions:
bored: The grind isn't that bad honestly considering every level you gain you get 25 crystal and if you like to buy a new starter deck it's only a 100 crystal. If you like the first deck you selected at the start of the game you can do as I and others have done and buy a starter, sell the cards and buy individual cards to help make your deck stronger.
Sili- If you are using a desktop and you remember the surveys you can put a request in letting them know you didn't get your crystal. They will respond back USUALLY within 24hrs and you should receive your crystal.
This needs to be bumped: It's a great game. Started playing a few games, seemed good. A quick visit to the forums and 5 dollars later, I had a top tier deck ready to rumble. (How many TCG's can you say THAT about?) As advised earlier, you can buy the Elemental deck and sell the cards for 1800-ish gold: So in practice, even rares only cost you 3 for a dollar or so. I bought a 10k gold deck for 5 bucks, so yeah. Enjoying it so far. Definitely worth trying out, and you can be competitive immediately for just a few dollars. Usually I don't spend money on these types of games, but this one is of a really high quality for a microtransaction game. It's no Magic the Gathering, but it's very good. (And orders of magnitude cheaper!)
Also meltdown is now an option in quick match, so you can now play 4 pack sealed deck vs an opponent for gold, and there is a tournament every week, most meltdown points at end of week earn the jackpot.
This is still by far my favorite mobile app, and play on my Ipad once in awhile,(I played in the america regional qualifier, and now I'm playing in some sealed tournament)
On January 17 2013 01:30 musai wrote: Last I played you were able to get shadow crystals for free (I opened like 200 boosters to get some shinies for fun), I wonder if they fixed that.
Sweet, I really look forward to the new patch. I've put many hours into grinding the ladders and theory crafting decks. Once patch comes out let's get together and play.
On January 17 2013 11:05 Pufftrees wrote: Sweet, I really look forward to the new patch. I've put many hours into grinding the ladders and theory crafting decks. Once patch comes out let's get together and play.
Some of the new cards are really cool. I have been theorycrafting quite a bit since the spoilers came out. I'm glad this expansion is finally hitting, cause otherwise I would have just moved on to solforge when it came out and forgot about this game, as of now I'm still gonna play solforge (since it offers drafts and automated tournaments), but I have regained interest in shadow era. Now I just need to qualify for the SE world championship, my 12th place in the america regionals needs to be put behind me .
Take care with the special offers though... some are pretty fishy and malicious. I loaded up a virtual families for another deck and had to fish through 20minutes of attempts to install crap on my comp. it was easy to clean up after, but I'm guessing most of those deals are loaded with trojans.
On January 18 2013 00:58 Kronen wrote: This is a pretty nice game!! I'm enjoying it.
Take care with the special offers though... some are pretty fishy and malicious. I loaded up a virtual families for another deck and had to fish through 20minutes of attempts to install crap on my comp. it was easy to clean up after, but I'm guessing most of those deals are loaded with trojans.
I don't even know if those special offers work, and I never trusted them, the only thing I've ever done was the free shadow crystal link on the shadow era forums, it gives you between 100-200 crystals.
In order to get a playable constructed, tournament worthy deck, you need to spend about 5-10$ or grind for awhile, I think I've spent 20$ and have almost everything now, I don't have any of the foils though.
If you play in the tournaments on the forums, almost all tournaments give away shadow crystals. A 16 man tournament will usually give 1000 shadow crystals for 1st, and 500 for second. That's 10 booster packs or elemental starter decks.
the rewards for playing in real players quick matches are increased by a substantial margin. If you have stable internet, I'd say dont' bother with the AI (particularly if you dont' care about your rating). You get 100xp on a QMatch loss, and 400xp and 80g on a win. Considering levels and the currency that comes with them are just as important as gold, doing the MM system makes a lot of sense. If you're trying out a new deck, you can quickly leave games and tank your rating as well.
for those of you wanting to try out the multiplayer part of the game, different decks, etc without spending $, and for those of you wanting to test and try out the new cards, the test server is live(for awhile at least, until they are done testing the new set).
- your account is separate from the main game servers - all cards cost just 1g - you have 500g
The expansion is out on the live server now, so for anyone looking to update their ios device/android device, it should be there, it's a new app on IOS i believe.
Really amazing free online card game, a ton of depth and well.. explore for yourself. If you are waiting on Hearthstone and don't want to get into MTG (or just tired of magic like me lol) then this might be for you.
Actually tried picking this up a couple of times and then my mind screamed "No0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0" because it was a massive timesink and would actually eat my life.
Maybe i will give it a try and attempt to limit myself, Pufftree's expect over 9000 PM's soon.
Going to stream and commentate a bit while I play and build a mage deck. If you are pro please give me some tips but if you are new drop on in to check it out! Shadow Era Stream
Used to enjoy this game, and definitely enjoyed it enough in comparison to my zero dollars investment to warrant a positive review. I tired of this game very quickly though. The gameplay wasn't dynamic enough because the card pool is largely fixed. The grind to get more cards and increase the flavor of the gameplay is disproportionately huge. I don't feel the game is polished and interesting enough to warrant an pay investment, coupled with the fact that the gameplay isn't interesting/varied enough to stomach the interminable grind for cards, has driven me from this game in the hopes that Solforge and/or Hearthstone satiate my CCG itch. Honestly, the only one I think has a chance is Hearthstone with the free drafting ranked multiplayer.
I played this game for some time. I also played lots of Mtg and some other tcg.
I have to say, this is an amazing game for anyone with little experience with deep tcg. For most tcg veterans, this game is just very flawed by design (as i said, for the veteran pov, not relevant for any casual) . Also, there are some mayor imbalances in several match ups.
On April 19 2013 05:24 Belha wrote: I played this game for some time. I also played lots of Mtg and some other tcg.
I have to say, this is an amazing game for anyone with little experience with deep tcg. For most tcg veterans, this game is just very flawed by design (as i said, for the veteran pov, not relevant for any casual) . Also, there are some mayor imbalances in several match ups.
What kind of design flaw are we talking about here?
On April 19 2013 01:48 Kronen wrote: Used to enjoy this game, and definitely enjoyed it enough in comparison to my zero dollars investment to warrant a positive review. I tired of this game very quickly though. The gameplay wasn't dynamic enough because the card pool is largely fixed. The grind to get more cards and increase the flavor of the gameplay is disproportionately huge. I don't feel the game is polished and interesting enough to warrant an pay investment, coupled with the fact that the gameplay isn't interesting/varied enough to stomach the interminable grind for cards, has driven me from this game in the hopes that Solforge and/or Hearthstone satiate my CCG itch. Honestly, the only one I think has a chance is Hearthstone with the free drafting ranked multiplayer.
Hearthstone won't be supporting competitive play though, at least that's the news I heard from PAX .
I am looking forward to Hearthstone/Solforge as well, quite a bit, but without tournaments, etc, Hearthstone won't have what I want, compared to Solforge which is planning tons of tournaments, etc.
I am currently playing Might and Magic Duels of Champions, its out in NA and it's worth a look, IOS and PC.
Of course the best DCG imo is Magic Online, but yeah..
Shadow Era is pretty shallow I agree, but the new expansion has added a few new cards, it hasn't changed the gameplay much.
On April 19 2013 05:24 Belha wrote: I played this game for some time. I also played lots of Mtg and some other tcg.
I have to say, this is an amazing game for anyone with little experience with deep tcg. For most tcg veterans, this game is just very flawed by design (as i said, for the veteran pov, not relevant for any casual) . Also, there are some mayor imbalances in several match ups.
What kind of design flaw are we talking about here?
Don't get me wrong, is a great game for free, but as i said, prolly not good enough for tcg veterans. Initiative is insanelly strong in this game, since every attacking creature deals dmg first. Also, some "leaders" (I don't recall the proper name) hard counter others like really really hard. This may have changed with the new expansion (or new rules), I played the game some time ago.
To follow on to Belha's point, I think the key difference with initiative is that you choose who you attack (blocking player does not chose). So when you summon a creature and the opponent already has a creature advantage, he can snipe that creature directly. Makes the creature strategy much different that MTG.
One mechanic that I feel is superior to magic is the resource. In Magic when you draw (forget about mulligan) you have your 3 lands and 4 regular cards or watever. So you essentially have 4 cards. In ShadowEra you decide which cards are resources. So when you draw those first 7 cards, WAYYYYY more playstyle options open up.
I really think Shadowera has plenty of depth for just about anyone. Quick ladder matches too with a nice match making rating system. The meta game really opens up after 300 rating or so.
On April 20 2013 18:07 Pufftrees wrote: To follow on to Belha's point, I think the key difference with initiative is that you choose who you attack (blocking player does not chose). So when you summon a creature and the opponent already has a creature advantage, he can snipe that creature directly. Makes the creature strategy much different that MTG.
One mechanic that I feel is superior to magic is the resource. In Magic when you draw (forget about mulligan) you have your 3 lands and 4 regular cards or watever. So you essentially have 4 cards. In ShadowEra you decide which cards are resources. So when you draw those first 7 cards, WAYYYYY more playstyle options open up.
I really think Shadowera has plenty of depth for just about anyone. Quick ladder matches too with a nice match making rating system. The meta game really opens up after 300 rating or so.
Yeah that's exactly what I've drawn from the few games I've played. Battle mechanics are shallow and not as interesting as Magic's, but the resource concept is very good. Land cards in Magic are really uninteresting (the basic lands at least), but here it doesn't take "interesting card" spots in your deck, and gives you some dynamic elements of choice while playing. Like, can you be greedy and pool more resources, which card do you sacrifice and such. Plus you can craft a deck to stop at a certain amount of resources, setting up your lategame when you want it to happen and then use every card you draw to attack your opponent (contrary to Magic where when you have 12 lands in play and you draw another land, you just put it in play, it doesn't do anything else and it feels really underwhelming :D). But the combat and spellcast system is not interesting enough to match up to the cool resource mechanics, unfortunately.
Edit: Also in Magic I don't like that you must have 1/3 of your cards as lands because you statistically need as many to be competitive at the start of the game. If you put more or less, you're screwed because you don't draw lands and can't do anything or draw too many and can't do anything either, but you most of the time don't really need 10-15 lands in play in lategame. Even though, you'll continue to draw lands, because you put them in your deck during deck construction phase, and that's not really interesting.
I guess only the balance between mana colors is somewhat interesting in Magic. "Resource" is a bit too unidimensional in games like Shadow Era, Hearthstone...
I tried Duel of Champions but it seems far too 'easy' and people get cards way too slow, so in the beginning everyone is playing with the same deck. The fast laddersystem and fluid gameplay is fun though.
Then I tried Carte and I love it! It is far more complex and allows way more strategies. Also you get a startingboost to buy some packs. Apart from the beta-ish UI and the weak translations imo this is far superior to Duel of Champions and way more fun. It features rewards (xp & currencies) on any games, building decks, sell and even crafting cards.
I fear that Hearthstone will have the same flaws and be just too casual. I played a little Magic when I was young, but when I want to play a TCG, it has to be a bigass puzzle and hold surprises and power.
Gonna give Shadow Era a try, but from what I seen in the TB video, it's not a real threat to Carte.
decided to throw down 15 bucks and give this a try and i have to say i like it a lot. but i fear the veeery slow expansion release rate together with the fact that the pool of cards released so far is pretty small might hurt the game quite a bit
its certainly much simpler than magic, but the fact that you can build up a huge amount of cards including expensive ones with less than 15€ spend is a huge plus. compare that to magic...
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