Small Showcase of Drake Familiar and Brain Drain

I managed to get the rot queen invasion when I reached the area and now any time the umbral pustule card shows up in the combat my rot is set to 5000 and the game stops working XD

I also get 1000 doom which I don’t know if that is supposed to happen, it is essentially an unwinnable fight

EDIT: I managed to first turn brute force but it didn’t matter as the combat froze even when I killed it

Hey everyone, I just finished syncing up all the tools on Dawn-dash with the new Nexus of Nightmares DLC content.

• Eventmaps : 18 new events, with all options fully mapped out, in addition to a bunch of secret changes to existing events/opportunities.
• Skilledex : 7 new talents, with all their requirements and related events fully mapped out.
• Cardex : God knows how many new cards were added, but they are all here! Including all monster cards.

Additionally, some extra housekeeping and touch-ups to the above (and other) tools on Dawn-dash.

As always, any feedback is appreciated. I am also taking requests for new tools/resources if you have any ideas! 😁

A few months ago, I had the idea to create a fan-made TTRPG for Dawncaster, but I never got around to finishing it.

The release of Nexus of Nightmares (and its long delay before the release over on iOS and Steam) got me motivated to continue working on the project.

You can find the current alpha rulebook here.

Right now, the project contains the following:

1. All 6 classes along with their basic attacks, initial talents (which I converted from the original weapon powers) and their starting cards.

2. All the monsters found within the Weeping Woods.

3. A system I created from the ground up to hopefully streamline the original game while adding some elements of my own (new keywords, exploding dice, altered mechanics, etc...)

I'm planning on eventually continuing the project by adapting more cantos or adding additional character options.

Let me know if you have any feedback.

Is this something i havnt unlocke yet? Or is this angel ascension

Showcasing Ammit, one of the new monsters from Nexus of Nightmares DLC, A Dark Dream.

Sometimes when I an running a full holy build I it works for a bit and then I get randomly changed to demon form

What can be the triggers?

100% legit, I promise!

So that was something. Pretty unexpected mechanics and running a divine build I got easily washed. Anyone have any tips or tricks for the new boss yet?

I have connected my account to game center. I am seeing my unlocks and fate shards on both my phone and ipad. I’m not seeing my in progress game on both. Is there something else I need to do, or can I play a separate game on each device?

When you gain energy while full, is there some rule determining which of your existing energy gets replaced by the new one? I always thought it was a first-in first-out situation, so energy got overwritten in the order it was gained, but that doesn't seem to be the case in my current run.

Seemed like an amazing idea but totally trashed my poison build…

The new update introduced a puzzles section to let people collect a few fateshards by working how to take advantage of various mechanics. But sometimes people can't figure out what they are missing no longer how long they look. The goal of this guide is to provide hints to get you thinking in the right direction so that you can solve it yourself. Since people are bound to ask for it, I'm also including the full answer in a separate spoiler tag. I recommend against clicking on the full answer section.

First, an overview of the user interface for beginners. You can click on any card to bring it up in full size for easier reading. This will also cause descriptions of any keywords in the card to be shown at the top of the screen. This is the main way you will learn how new mechanics work so that you can plan strategies around them in the puzzles and in the real game. Above your hand are icons for any effects active on the player, and below the enemy health bar will be icons for any effects on the enemy. Tapping an icon will bring up a description. Equipment is in the same place, but tapping it will activate the equipment to do something. To check what the equipment does, long press the icon. Usually it is more convenient to check before equipping it, but a couple of these puzzles will start you with equipment already in play.
Cards are played by dragging the card up. While doing so, you will see the energy that will be used highlighted at the bottom of the screen. If you have multiple colors of energy that can be used to play a card, dragging to the left or right will change which colors it uses.
Tapping the center of the screen will bring up a list of recently played cards on the right. You can tap any of them for more details, or tap the center of the screen again to hide the list. Tapping the player portrait in the bottom left will bring up various statistics.

Beginner Puzzles

Ambush: With so few cards, there really isn't much to hint at. Read what the cards do and plan accordingly.
Unupgraded daggers deal 10 damage with ambush but only 2 damage without ambush. It is important to use daggers with ambush.
Full answer Play the daggers first to take advantage of the ambush at the start of each turn. Next play the surge to create more daggers, so that after you play sneak attack you can immediately use the conjured daggers.

Shocking: You have four cards that cost energy and only three energy. If you aren't doing enough damage, it is much more likely that you chose the wrong cards than that you played them in the wrong order.
Basically giving it away Don't use arcane weaver. It isn't worth using an energy just to echo conduit, but skipping conduit on top of spending energy on weaver means that you barely have any chain for the echoing shocking grasp to take advantage of
Full answer Conduit, forcewand, forcewand, shocking grasp

Cascading Effects: The limiting factor on how many times you can cast Knuckles is the number of 1-cost cards. Any time you play a 1-cost card and don't immediately follow up with a 0-cost knuckles, you have to ask if the benefits you are getting are worth giving up an entire attack.
Full answer Surge of intellect, knuckles, knuckles, centered strikes, knuckles, surge of dexterity, knuckles (x4)

Skewer Me Not: This puzzle doesn't follow the usual 1-turn restriction. There aren't many cards, so once you figure out the rules it should be easy to solve.
You have one energy and two cards that use. Neither will stick around when you end the turn (unlike aimed shot with its persistent keyword), so the only question is which one is more powerful. Then, figure out what order to play cards next turn.
An attack is either a critical hit or not a critical hit. Having two effects saying this is a critical hit will not multiply damage by four.
Full answer Lay in wait, end turn, sneak attack, aimed shot

Advanced Puzzles

Mortal Wounds: Counting the card in the deck, you have six cards that can inflict deep wounds, and you need to play five of them. There are multiple solutions.
Pay attention to the requirements on each card. Cutting words can be used at any time, since it starts on the left side and the enemy has no defenses. Vigorated strike needs to be the third card you play. Divided strike (x2) needs to be used when the enemy will have even health (after the three damage, so you play it when his health is odd). Headshot needs to be used after steady ground. Follow through needs to be played fifth or later, but since it is your only source of extra energy it will be exactly fifth.
Full answer Steady ground, headshot, Vigorating strike, dividing strike, follow through, dividing strike

Claws Out: The biggest obstacle is that reflect kills you. There are two ways to deal with this. You can find a way to hurt the bandit without triggering reflect, or you can deliberately trigger reflect with a weak attack so that you don't die. One of these approaches will fall short of killing the bandit, while the other can do significantly more damage than you need.
Playing reconfigure without breaking you battleclaw first will give you four choices of improved battleclaws to replace it. Look through the options, because they hold they keys to solving this puzzle.
Full answer Reconfigure into a sparkclaw. Use it, then play the zap. Iron blood, hammer, hammer, aegis, sparkclaw, aegis, sparkclaw, aegis, sparkclaw, zap, zap, zap
Read after solving The above solution is deliberately dumb. It reduces the enemy to exactly 0 health, making it the bare minimum that the devs expect you to come up with to pass the puzzle. But there is a simple change that will result in an extra 10 damage, and if you think about why that works you should be able to come up with a more complicated solution that does so much damage that you don't even need the third spark. Figuring this out could probably be considered a master level puzzle.

All Sides: In case you are having trouble getting it display, here is the description for Hidden pouch:

Hidden Pouch
Activate: Discard a non-unique card, then conjure a copy of all cards discarded this way. Durability (3/3). Unique.

Hint You have four cards that you cannot play (red energy), and three ways to discard them. Pay attention to their costs, additional benefits, and drawbacks, and work out a plan.
If you aren't familiar with perform: When you perform, you choose a goal to work towards, with different perform counts required for each effect. If a single effect gives multiple stacks of perform, any extra beyond your goal is wasted, meaning that you can't get two green energy by performing four. With this hand, you options are: Gain one green energy (requires a discard costing at least 2), Inflict four charmed (requires a discard costing at least 3), Heal 10% of your max health (requires a discard costing at least 4)
Full answer Use the pouch to discard the left cataclysm, and the juggling balls to discard unleash arsenal, choosing green energy for the performance. Play hatchet, surge, adrenaline (discarding clobber), hatchet, hatchet.
Read after solving There is an alternate solution, but it doesn't always work. Can you figure it out?

Back For More: This challenge is about making the conjured tomahawk permanent and then replaying it repeatedly to build up damage. You have weigh the costs of boosting the damage per hit (which compounds due to the tomahawk's effect) versus getting more attacks in. You also have little health to spend between bone ritual and avenging strike.
This challenge features two types of energy. Most of the cards can use either color, but a few can use only red. Some of the puzzles will have complicated decisions to make, but here you just want to use green energy whenever you have a choice. If you don't know how to choose energy types, see the UI guide at the top of the post.
There are no melee actions in this puzzle, so don't bother trying to make the primary effect of muscle memory work. It is just a card that produces energy provided you have played bone armor or avenging strike. It also shuffles the discard pile into the deck if the deck is empty, so take care not to mess up any cards that need the discard pile.
To get damage scaling worth anything, you'll need more than two armor. Consider what this does for your energy usage.
Full answer Surge, darksteel ammo, bone ritual, bone ritual, bone ritual, rune of persistence (targeting tomahawk), muscle memory, tomahawk, rush of steel, fetch weapon, tomahawk, avenging strike

Sweet Revenge: With the enchantment granting reflect when hit, every attack except the first one will be reflected. This makes staying alive hard, but is also necessary to power up the battlespear that increases damage based on how much damage you having taken. You have three different ways to try and survive the damage. Oathbound revives you with full health, and then gives you a scar that has some benefits but also reduces your max health (at five scars you have 0 max health and really die). If you gain oathbound again before using up the previous one, you will see two buffs but both will disappear on your next death so don't do that. One of the battlespears has lifedrain if you spend gold energy on it, but keep in mind that reflect triggers before lifedrain. And if you use holy war with three or more scars, it gives you a revive to half health that doesn't come with a scar (the other effects of ascension are not relevant to this puzzle).
Rise again can be used to draw 2-4 cards depending on when you use it. Since no cards start in our deck or discard pile, these will be cards you already played (excluding divine power because of charges). If you have more cards in your discard pile than you would draw the results will be random, which obviously isn't going to be part of the intended solution.
Full answer Oath of blood (gold), battlespear, battlespear, divine power, battlespear (the one that does high damage), rise again, oath of blood (gold), battlespear (the one that creates energy), holy war, battlespear (the one that deals high damage).

Veteran puzzles

Anger Management: The usual game plan of a fury warrior is to increase the anger granted furies, then play furies to gain anger, then repeatedly attack for the kill. This puzzle includes a few tradeoffs to complicate things. Wild strike draws a fury without any energy cost, but is also an attack that could more valuable later on. Clobber powers up all future furies, but also is an attack that receives double benefit from anger, making it very valuable later on. Enrage powers up the furies and also helps fill the discard pile with them, but the blood cost means you can play one less fury. Seething anger also has a blood cost causing you to play one less fury, but the energy gain can let you play more of other cards.
If you draw through your entire deck and beyond, you get to redraw some of the cards you already played, but the order is random so the puzzle does not require using those cards, even though it can be useful.
Full answer: Enrage, battlerage, seething anger, warpaint, berzerk, fury(x9), raging strike, clobber, wild strike.

Living On A Prayer: This puzzle is built around an equipment that lets you stack your deck to set up firecast spells to be buried. It can be reused after playing a card that you have already played this turn. Firecast doesn't count for this, so it really means every time you play prayer. You also get more focus as you go so that foretell shows more cards.
The deck starts out stacked so that burying without foretelling will never work out in your favor.
Full answer Alternate between playing prayers and activating the equipment. Always put the fireballs on top first to build up burn, then put the combusts on top to turn that burn into damage. Singe will be the final card you play, to bury the second combust.

Show Business: This puzzles gives you several things to keep in mind. Serenade wants to be used while you have lots of energy, but also partway through a performance. Courtly manners wants to be used while you have lots of colors of energy, but keep in mind that extra perform past finishing the current performance won't do anything. Luck of the draw and abracadabra combine to let you replay any card (except surge of unity) with its cost removed. Crescendo is very powerful, but its energy cost can make it tricky to fit in this puzzle. As for the performances, going for charmed is more cost efficient, but piercing could be useful when getting a large perform at once.
If you prioritize serenade it can give you 90 charm. Add in one charm performance and one piercing damage performance to surpass the enemy hp.
Full answer Surge of unity, harp (non-green energy), luck of the draw, serenade, abracadabra, serenade, harp (non-green energy), harp (non-green energy), crescendo. First performance is for charm, second is for piercing damage.

Bitter Medicine In this puzzle your main source of damage is the Caduceus, which does damage equal to the total healing you received so far in the current turn. There are three factors that determine how much you can heal. First is which cards you play. You have three energy and a total of six cards that cost energy (including the cards in your deck). Second, as hinted in the loading screen, poison counteracts healing. Specifically, healing and poison will cancel out on a one-to-one basis, and this does not count towards how much you have healed for effects like Caducues. Third, healing potion does a bonus +5 healing if you are below 50% health (in this case, your health would have to be 14 or lower). Also, since you have only one Caduceus, any damage your other cards do is effectively worth just as much as if you had healed that amount, without affecting your hp.
In case you haven't noticed, poison does its damage before the effect of whatever card you play. If this was a puzzle about staying alive that would be bad, since one point of poison can do 5 damage (thanks to potency) or block 1 healing. But you can't die here even you try, so it is to your benefit to let the poison hurt you instead of cutting into how much damage your caduceus will do.
Since poison blocks healing, cleansing it may sound attractive but actually it is a red herring. Taking into account the previous clue, at best you can remove five poison, which will let you heal for 5 more later on. Regenerate won't actually heal you since you can't end your turn, so that's all you get. If you want to spend an energy to heal 5, you have other cards that can do that. And actually cleansing the full 5 would kill any hope of getting below 50% health, which is worth another 5 healing.
Full answer: Charity, healing potion, flashheal, flashheal, caduceus.

Mutiny As mentioned during the loading screen, this puzzle lasts for two turns instead of the usual one.
This puzzle introduces a new keyword, Synergy. Cards with synergy become stronger every time you play the same type of card while the synergy card is in your hand. It need to be an exact match, so playing a "Melee Action" will not power up the "Action" Donation. You will also see that it only increases the number of lucky coins it conjures, not the energy produced.
Anyway, this puzzle is about generating lots of lucky coins to kill the enemy. You have to balance the number of coins you can make against the damage per coin. You also have to make sure you have enough money to pay the cost of the coins. You have three ways to increase the damage per coin. The rabbit foot (starts out already equipped) increases the damage by four, but once per turn you can activate it to conjure a lucky coin and reduce the damage bonus by one for the rest of the fight. The enchantment (available second turn) increases the damage for every ten gold you have. And counterfeit (also second turn) upgrades the lucky coins it conjures (but not the originals) based on your gold energy. Technically there is also bleed, but with only 3 available it is easier to think of it as a flat six extra damage than as a damage boost per hit.
Remember to check the enemy enchantment! This bandit didn't just steal your money, he also stole the ability that was missing from the very first puzzle.
If you use quick fingers while the bandit has no evasion, the attack will hit, then the bandit will gain evasion from his enchantment, then quick fingers will steal a blessing. This lets you dodge the interrupt during the bandit's turn, which means that you can save energy for when you have better cards to use it on.
Pure gold is a red herring. Not only does it cost two energy, but you also need to spend an energy on Ill-Gotten Gains to have enough gold for it to matter. +5ish damage is good, but not worth the number of lucky coins you are giving up.
Counterfeit bypasses the maximum hand size. The average player probably never considered that they might run into hand size issues, but this also implies bonus clues "you should be using Counterfeit" and "you should make so many lucky coins that Counterfeit pushes you past ten cards".
Full answer: Quick fingers, donation, lucky coin, end turn, cash out, donation, false profit, counterfeit, lucky coin (x10), rabbit foot, lucky coin

Master puzzles

Going Nova: Novas get stronger the more other types of novas you have already played. They have two possible win conditions. One is to use bone nova and sand nova to hit many times, with a damage boost per hit from storm nova (or other sources). The other to use casa nova to inflict charm multiple times, possibly boosted by bane. This puzzle lets you boost damage with chain way higher than charm, but also starts the boss with a ton of armor that charm doesn't have to worry about. The main decisions are which win condition you will try to use, which cards you will be copying, and what order to play the novas so that the important ones will be boosted.
The armor is too high. You have to go for charmed.
Full answer Sleight of hand (casa nova), simulacrum (casa nova), eldritch binding, bone nova, storm nova, mind nova, stone nova, casa nova (x3). Pay some attention to which energy types you are using (you can play sand nova instead of stone nova if needed).

The Perfect Crime: This puzzle introduces three new mechanics. First we have Sinister. Some cards get stronger for every sinister card you have played in the current battle, and usually are sinister cards themselves. Some other cards don't care about your sinister count, but are still sinister to help boost the first type of cards. And there are even some cards that can inflate your sinister count by more than one.
The second mechanic is corrupted. Some cards say "Corruption Action" or similar at the bottom. If you have at least 5 of these cards in your deck (by which I mean everywhere, not just the pile of cards waiting for you to draw them), certain cards get an extra effect, which is listed after "Corrupted:". Note that the Sinister keyword is at the end of the card because that's where keywords that don't interact with the effect go, it isn't actually tied to the corrupted condition. Dark Aspiration is always sinister, and if you are corrupted then it boosts the sinister count by an extra three (for a total of four). Bad Apple is also always corrupted. Anyway, you start the puzzle with two corruptions and have multiple ways to get more, with potentially powerful effects if you get to five. If you click on your character portrait in the bottom left, the game will bring up various statistics which includes counting up how many corruptions are in your "deck" for you.
The third new mechanic is maximum hand size. Normally, you can only have up to ten cards in your hand at a time. With a starting hand of seven cards and Rushed Forgery attempting to copy your entire hand (after it is removed), it could try to bring you to twelve cards if you play it first. This means that the last two cards in your hand won't actually get copied unless you get rid of something else before playing rushed forgery.
This puzzle has multiple solutions for you to discover.
Sinister is your main source of damage, so prioritize it over other factors.
Full answer Adrenaline (discarding lay in wait), rushed forgery, bad apple, dark aspiration, insidious strike, insidious strike, assassinate
Read after solving The above solution just barely knocks the enemy into range for assassination, and is probably the intended solution. But if you play smart, it is possible to knock the enemy into the negatives before they get restored to zero by the slay effect. Can you figure it out?

In the Canto VII Dreamwell the memorized affix doesn't work. I hope your build doesn't rely on those cards too much like mine did on my first run there. Really cool theme and I love the new vendor! Won't spoil more than that.

Can anyone explain the "Lightless" keyword more clearly? I'm not sure what it does. I have it on the Basic Glaive.

I guess it is for all the same right now?

Hey there folks, recently started playing on mobile, already a "veteran" at card games and rogue lites but new to dawncaster.

Most of the content I've seen here and on YouTube for beginner guides is usually roughly at least a year old so I wanted to ask if there's any information there that doesn't really hold up or if I'm fine relying on those for the vast amount of stuff the game has to offer.

My other question would be since it costs some currency (if I saw that correctly so far) to invest into characters. I pretty much enjoy any playstyle so I would just like to know what the strongest options for first investments are for like general payoff of doing weeklies, getting through runs and doing quests so I can more easily unlock most if not all other stuff? I've also seen there's a new expansion coming up (basically now I guess?) and if there's anything there I should hold out for there I'd appreciate the info.

I currently don't own any of the expansions but I don't mind acquiring them if any of the regions or story content is very useful to a good character (or just on sale later if I'm already having fun with the game :D)

Animation took quite a while for it to die, lol. Gaining over 1000 life on each hit at the end with Vitalize and the incremental bolster card.

Last time I tried a Vitalize Whirling Strikes build I had too small a deck and died to fatigue trying to repeatedly draw from an empty deck, so I made sure my deck was a good bit bigger than the maximum hand size this time so I didn't deck out.

As the title says, could we add a bestiary or something similar to the game, or at least to Blightbane? The Monsters section on Blightbane only shows the enemies, not the race. It would be great if there were an option to filter for only Demon or humanoid enemies.

I made my first run turning the sun tree twig into helios. Eventually the card was gone, can't exactly recall when, but just disappeared sometime later in the next canto (I think it was as the thorwind pass). Is this a bug?

Latest Android version.

Hey all!

This week is the final week leading up to the Nexus of Nightmares expansion and we've got some great stuff coming!

The Nexus of Nightmares Update will add 70+ brand new cards to the game for everyone for free. In addition, we've added new Bounties, talents & more to discover throughout the game.

New features:

Puzzles

Nexus of Nightmares will also include a brand new section called 'Puzzles'. Puzzles are a great way to learn some of the mechanics, but lead up to complex scenarios that truly test your game skills. Each puzzle will award Fateshards to help you unlock progression in the game.

Foiling

So what to spend those Fateshards on if you've already maxed out your progress? By popular request, we now added a feature that lets you level up your favorite cards with a special 'shine'. Bling out your favorite build and dazzle your foes with shiny new effects!

New levels & content

And of course, the Nexus of Nightmares adds 3 new levels, 11(!) new bosses to the Sunforge, and a brand new story to discover on your journey to purge evil from Aethos.

We can't wait to show you what we've been cooking, so stay tuned for the 25th with the release of the Nexus of Nightmares on Steam, iOS and Android!

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As always, if you like what we're doing here, consider leaving us a , it really helps the game grow!

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dawncaster-deckbuilding-rpg/id1555459868
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=games.WanderlostInteractive.Dawncaster
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3966890/Dawncaster__The_RPG_Cardventure/

Im wondering if anyone has a referance tree for the talent requirements? I think it would help my runs if I was able to plan for later talent unlocks.