Tainted Grail – Near Death Revelations

A guide to getting MASSIVE event GAINS.

Overview

Note: Credit goes to Gurrflumfr

First off this is not a guide to optimal strategy or anything like that, the event hasn’t even been out for a day yet. That said I am currently the frontrunner and this guide is just to help you get started on the right path, I’ll leave finding the truly optimal way to play to you, come kick me off the leaderboard!

The Simple Build

Here I will go over the copy paste build to success for you. If you just want to beat the event with a decently high score and don’t need any depth, you will find everything you need right here.

The “build” as it should be assembled. Keep in mind that you should skip all cards not listed here and if the passives are in no way useful for killing the boss you should skip for cash to buy the consumables listed below.

To start off with, you absolutely need the cards: Two feints, Power of Wyrd, Rapid Attack, Rush, Double Pain.

Optional cards if there’s nothing else of value: Focus, Draw, Mark of Blood

Priority Passives: That Was Warmup, Armor Crusher, Combat Sequencing, Physical Training.

Optional Passives: Momentum, Desire to Fight, Wyrd Man, Freshness.

Reforges: Staggering Strength, Wind Up.

Purchase the consumables: 1 Seal of Unfolding, 3 Wayfarer Leaves, 3 Tome of Knowledge, and 3 Strong Healing Elixirs (the biggest one), these can be afforded by selling your 3 candles and a map.

Card Purge: 5 Attacks, 4 Stand your Ground!s, 1 Shield Bash.

The third milestone: Make sure you have all your consumables in quickslots. You will almost certainly need to use one of your elixirs during this fight, don’t worry about it, you won’t need more than two for the boss.

The Herald: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ALL YOUR CONSUMABLES IN QUICKSLOTS. Use your seal of unfolding as soon as the fight starts and beat him down, try to double your rapid attack with physical training and double pain (doubling to feints will have minimal effect). Use your ultimate whenever it reaches 15 charges except for the final round. Save one of your tomes of knowledge and two wayfarer leaves for the final round in order to play your entire deck, finishing with two feints followed by your ultimate. You can ignore the attacks from the herald as you’ll be doing more damage to yourself and you got rid of all defensive cards anyway.

You should be able to reach 100k damage easily as long as you get the required cards and 2-3 priority passives. Optimizing your play will get you to 160-180k with some luck.

Cards to Choose and Why

From this point onward things will go much more in-depth with my thought processes while playing. Again, you should keep in mind this is likely far from optimal but it’ll get you thinking about what IS optimal.

Here’s the cards that make the run work:

Two Feints: This is your big damager, primarily for the final turn but it stacks up multihits really well up until then regardless. Due to the nature of the available card pool during this event this is the highest damage card I can seem to find. It is usually good to focus your turns around playing this card with 4-5 stacks as long as you don’t have to compromise Rapid attack. Keep in mind that if you duplicate this card with passives or active cards it will not get the chain effect on the duplicate so you are much better off duplicating Rapid attack.

Rapid Attack: This is your MVP card, though it is one of your least damaging. You should look to duplicate it at every opportunity with double pain, physical training, and Freshness. This card will stack up your ultimate very quickly as well as being your primary vehicle for Armor Crusher. Casting Rapid Attack every round (preferably multiple times despite having one copy) is how you prepare for the big two feints in the final round.

Power of Wyrd/Rush: It cycles your deck and gives you energy, cast these any time they’re in your hand. Be careful not to kill yourself with Power of Wyrd as unlike Rush it doesn’t disable if you don’t have enough health to pay. These are the only reason you need potions for the final boss.

Double Pain: Doubles Rapid Attack as seen above. If the draw shapes up so it is impossible to do so then double Small Strikes.

The cards that will increase your total Damage:

Draw: Since our deck does not shuffle during this event you don’t have to worry about redrawing it during a turn. This is purely to assist with Warm Up and Combat Sequencing, increasing the total amount of attacks you will play for Two Feints on turns before the final turn.

Focus and Mark of Blood: Also increase Warm Up and Combat Sequencing (though if you somehow have neither they become a liability but that run won’t hit high damage numbers anyway). I found while playing that there was room for more draw in my combos so I started picking these up and they have never gotten in the way. Play them immediately upon drawing and they’ll add a slight bonus to the final total.

Passives to Choose and Why

Reforges:

Staggering Strength: This is the only one that is useful for the boss.

Wind-Up: The alternatives aren’t GREAT though I’ve tested them and they’re okay. However Wind-Up is what will make your final round immensely powerful. I find that the 20-60% damage increase is more effective than the damage you’d gain from using your ultimate at max every round before the final turn.

The passives that you NEED for a high damage run:

Combat Sequencing: This simply extends your turns by 1 extra card an energy, occasionally even 2, and is required to get the maximum damage on the final turn.

Armor Crusher: You’re going to hit this boss. A lot. This ends up being about half of your armor reduction along with Rapid Attack.

The passives that will help you get first place:

Warm Up: You don’t really need to pay attention to it, it’ll just give you extra cards now and again which can turn a bad/average turn into a turn you play your entire deck.

Physical Training: If you can make sure you duplicate Rapid Attack every time this triggers you are looking at some BIG damage. Otherwise duplicate any Swift Strikes or Two Feints to get 3 extra hits for armor reduction.

Wyrd Man: This will make your reforges more flexible.

Momentum: This is a decent increase to the multiplicative bonuses applied to your damage.

Freshness: One more duplication of Rapid Attack from the very beginning can make up for a very big chunk of your total damage dealt.

Desire to Fight: lets you get off a full deck turn to maximize Armor reduction from Armor Crusher.

Milestone #1

Before milestone 1 if you have event gear already feel free to equip it, it’s mostly cosmetic.

When approaching the milestone use one of your candles before starting the fight, then remove the candle from your combat quickslots in your inventory (this will prevent disasters later on).

The fight is simple, the choices that come after are not. You’re going to need to skip a lot of things.However you can choose to take ONE passive (If you hit none of the passives from the recommended section) from the following: Haste, Killing Spree, or the 20% increased gold income I can’t remember the name of.

Haste: Makes the following pre-herald fights easier.

Killing Spree: Allows you to enter the boss with 30 charges to immediately reduce his armor by 100.

Gold increase: Guarantees you get enough to buy all the consumables you need. You could also just skip for a similar amount of gold, I haven’t done the math.

Milestone #2

At this point if you’re doing these on autopilot like me you should unequip your candles from the combat quickslots if you haven’t already otherwise your run may end in an embarrassing fashion.

In the shop sell everything you currently own, buy one Seal of Folding and three Wayfarer leaves, tomes of knowledge, and strong healing elixirs. Then make sure you have all four of them equipped in your combat quickslots.

At this point you could still take Killing Spree to stack up during the next fight if there are no alternative passives.

Milestone #3

This fight is going to be tough. You’re going to have to use a potion unless you got haste, but that’s why you bought three potions, only two are needed for the boss. If you have killing spree don’t use your ultimate during this fight. Keep in mind after the fight you will be healed to full health.

The great Purge: This is very simple, get rid of all your Hold your Ground!s, your Shield Bash, and five of your Attacks.

The Final Fight

(Be sure to use your seal of unfolding before anything else, it’s not a huge deal if you don’t on the first round but it’s embarrassing.)

I can’t fully explain how to perform this fight in a reasonable amount of time, and then you wouldn’t be playing the game anyway. Use your stances instantly as they enter your hand, prioritize multihits, follow the previous instructions for Rapid Attack, and use a potion when you reach 25 or less hp. You will also find yourself in very rare tough positions where your only option is to play two attacks and end your turn. This is where you use the tomes of knowledge (keeping one for the final turn) to draw your other card draw at which point you will have access to Combat Sequencing and then you are basically guaranteed to play your entire deck.

Wayfarer Leaves: These are very important, you need to save two of these and one tome of knowledge for the final turn NO MATTER WHAT. That final turn can make up for more than 50% of your damage. You may notice you still have one left over, use it if it will allow you to play your entire deck when the countdown is 4 or lower. You don’t need a leaf and tome on the same turn for this.

Aside from that your focus is simply to set up the final turn where you play a maximum stacked two feints with 0 energy remaining, 30 charges, as much negative armor as you could have dished out, and a 12k damage ultimate that is small by comparsion to what that two feints just did.

Nothing would make me happier than if you guys pushed me off the top 10, have at it!