by Nikita Thorn
Ippei burst out laughing as he looked off toward the dark wilderness. “The good news is you probably won’t get to do anything remotely close to that degree of epic again until we’re very deep into the War Games. They really spoil you now; maybe to get you hooked from the beginning.” A thought seemed to flash through his mind and he turned his pondering inward. “So I guess for Jade they give you your class card of the Light Deck, since I got the Endless Prowess for mine. So, this means for houshi they would get the… oh, that’s the epic back-from-the-dead mirror ward card. I’m sure Kentaro would love that. And for Foxy… ”
Seiki hid an amused chortle as he listened to his friend ramble on. War Games were allegedly the sole reason Ippei played at all, and from how he was talking about it, the fact could not have been more obvious.
“Well, probably the Nine-tail enhance.” Ippei finished his thought, apparently not realizing he had lost Seiki a long time ago. The samurai turned back to him. “So, the lieutenant already explained the cards?”
“I didn’t really ask,” said Seiki. “I was waiting for a lore-free version from you.”
Ippei cleared his throat. “Okay, so War Cards, like the two you got to use in the tutorial, are just like special war abilities all these daimyo clans can activate in PVP wars out the East Gate.”
Seiki nodded. He had only seen a little of the East Gate clan wars, but he understood the gist of it. During a siege or a battle, apart from the troops every clan member commanded, clan leaders also had access to special abilities. Some could be used to revive or heal troops, while others sent messages, or filled supplies. According to Ippei, this made the battles more balanced and gave smaller clans a chance to win against larger armies if they played smartly.
“War Cards are pretty much the same thing, but the PVE version. This allows you to be a bit flexible with your group combination, so if you really can’t find a healer, you can use certain cards to help you. I suspect that this is how they get away with complaints about things being difficult, too. You wiped? Well, obviously you didn’t play the right cards.”
“And how do you, uh, get these cards in the first place?”
“You’re almost guaranteed one card with every boss as your personal drop, and sometimes you also get them from the extra reward boxes from the Shogun if you do well enough to be on the weekly leaders’ board. Sometimes, the trash demons drop them, but that’s quite rare. And you only get one or two in each stage, and you need to roll against all the other group members to get them.”
“I see,” said Seiki. “So it’s all about these cards, then?”
“Well, it’s actually about upgrading your unit, but it’s the War Cards that keep things interesting. Some cards just give you buffs, like the Honor Deck. The paper ones give you 5% increased whatever buff for everyone and all your troops. The jade ones give you 12%, and useful procs on top of that. Other ones do much more interesting things, like there’s this ninja one that creates an illusion of a fleeing unit that you can use to lead the demon army into a trap. Or there’s a rain card that really makes it rain. Useful if you’re doing a siege event and your machines are burning.”
“Uh, okay,” was all Seiki could say.
“You got the tutorial in one go, right? You should have a bonus card. Pull up your War Cards menu.”
Seiki concentrated on the word, and information trickled neatly into his consciousness.
WAR CARDS – INSCRIBED CARDS
Honor Deck
[empty]
Sky Deck
[empty]
Horse Deck (1)
Inscribed Card of the Steady Steed – Kitsune Card of the Horse Deck. Riding energy requirements reduced by 20% for all players for the rest of the instance. Burn this card at a tano-shrine to activate its effect.
War Deck
[empty]
Equipment Deck
[empty]
Calamity Deck
[empty]
Light Deck
[empty]
“Seven decks,” explained Ippei. “Each deck has seven cards, named after available player classes. For example, the Honor Deck: you have the Samurai Card of the Honor Deck, the Ronin Card of the Honor Deck, and so on, you know, with kitsune, ninja, ryoushi, houshi… and, uh, obake. If you have collected a card, you can take it out like an inventory item.” The samurai retrieved his own paper card from his chest pocket.
Seiki reached into his pocket. With a thought, the Inscribed Card of the Steady Steed - Kitsune Card of the Horse Deck materialized in his hand. It looked similar to the first one the lieutenant had asked him to burn, with tidy characters written in tidy rows on the thick paper, but the symbol on the back was a horse in full gallop, drawn artistically with simple brush strokes.
“War Cards are personal,” said Ippei. “You can’t trade, destroy, loot or Pickpocket them. You can even throw it into the fire right now and it will burn, but it will still be there in your menu until you burn it at a tano-shrine in an event to activate it.”
The samurai handed Seiki his own card to compare, which had on its back a hand-drawn cloud symbol. The front read:
Inscribed Card of the Life Spring – Houshi Card of the Sky Deck. Revives all players who die in the next minute and calls them back into combat with a Fatigue penalty. Burn this card at a tano-shrine to activate its effect.
“This is real useful when things are going badly and you know you’re not going to make it.” The samurai tapped the card with one finger. “Yours is good when you’re charging ahead, but I’d recommend you collect three of them and trade up for Wood, since that one gives you a free gallop meter that is going to be very useful in timed events.”
Trying to wrap his mind around the concept, Seiki simply repeated the only thing he remembered as a question. “So, you collect three of the same cards and trade them up to a better card?”
“Yes. Cards come in three grades: inscribed, engraved, carved—which is just a fancy way to say paper, wood, and jade. Paper and Wood Cards you have to burn in one of the stone shrines like you did with the first card in the tutorial. With Jade, you don’t have that restriction, and you can break it any time to activate it, and they’re usually rather…epic.”
Seiki concentrated again and found that floating in his consciousness were also different tabs for ENGRAVED CARDS and CARVED JADE CARDS, which listed the same seven decks. Both tabs were currently empty.
“As you can guess, Jade Cards are pretty rare, since you have to collect three Paper Cards to trade up to Wood, and three Woods to trade up to Jade, so that’s nine cards. Unless you do something in Hard Mode and get an instant upgrade. You know, that’s why I wanted us to do the tutorial together in the first place, since I thought that maybe we would be able to find a way to save at least one card and still finish the quest.” He shrugged. “Well, can’t say I didn’t try. I straight up asked Kato if I could keep my Jade Card, and he looked at me and said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ippei. You know what you have to do to end this’. I don’t think I’ve seen the lieutenant actually break character before.”
Not sure how Ippei could have asked a dying lieutenant that question, Seiki could only guess the samurai scenario must have been a little different.
“So seven decks with seven cards each. That’s 49 cards,” Seiki concluded for his own sake. “But each card comes in three grades?”
“I guess you can think about it that way, but I consider them all different cards,” said Ippei. “Because an upgrade from paper to wood isn’t always simply a better version. This is where most people get it wrong. Sometimes, using a bunch of paper cards together is actually better than a jade card.” He pressed his lips together. “But like I always say: people don’t read.”
Seiki continued with the math. “So, 49 cards, three different versions each… that’s 147 cards in total.”
Considering he only had six class abilities, Seiki was not quite sure what to think about access to more than a
hundred temporary war abilities. It seemed a little overwhelming.
Ippei waved his worry away with a hand. “You’re not going to be using the cards all the time. In normal or public mode, you don’t actually need them to clear an event, unless someone messes up really bad or if you get incredibly unlucky. So you save your cards for only when you’re pushing progression, or when you do challenge runs, or to compensate for the times when your group isn’t ideal.”
“Going for an example here. What did your Jade Samurai Card do in the tutorial?”
“Jade Samurai Card of the Light Deck, the Card of Endless Prowess.”
Ippei had made it sound so important that Seiki could not help laughing.
“What?” said Ippei.
Seiki tried keeping a straight face. “You actually know the name of the cards by heart.”
“All the known cards,” said Ippei, almost seriously. Before Seiki could ask, he finished his explanation. “Endless Prowess. Two hundred percent health and energy back for each damage point you do for the next five minutes. So you can go on a near-invincible rampage. Generally, each deck has its own theme, so they’re not that difficult to remember. The Honor Deck, for example, just gives you standard buffs. Not very exciting, but reliable. The Horse Deck buffs your mounts and riding, so it’s great when you need to charge into enemy lines. The Light Deck gives you specific anti-demon abilities. You know, it all makes sense.”
Seiki was still trying to suppress laughter at how serious Ippei sounded. “Yeah, but I’m talking about 147 individual... uh, arbitrary names. What’s the Jade Ronin Light Deck called again?”
“Supreme Strength.”
“And, uh, Obake Card of the… Equipment Deck, Wood version,” Seiki came up with a random one.
“Untrue Aim,” said Ippei. “Makes the demons miss more with siege equipment.”
Seiki smacked his own thigh in laughter.
“I swear, it all makes sense,” cried Ippei. “Hey, if you spend two years of your life dedicated to nothing but progression, you’ll have memorized all of them, too. Wait till you’re three months in and see where you’re at.”
Still laughing slightly, Seiki continued to look through the list. Something caught his attention. “Calamity Deck?”
“Oh, that’s a fun one,” said Ippei. “It has you fight at a disadvantage by debuffing your troops, but if you manage to beat the event you get extra rewards. The paper houshi card from that deck makes your troops sick. The paper obake card allows friendly fire, so ryoushi can’t just spray Rapid Shots randomly like they do. The samurai card makes your troops refuse to retreat and will try to fight to the death.” His mouth curved into a smile as he remembered something. “And there’s this Jade Kitsune Calamity. That one was a legend. Someone pranked the Nobles in Beta and smashed it during their run. Apparently, the card triggers an utterly stupid random event, and that time it rained sake on everybody, so they were all fighting drenched in sake and dead drunk. Even the demons were all smashed.”
“Did they beat it?”
“Of course not,” said Ippei. “But it was hilarious. Unfortunately, the Nobles were too uptight to appreciate the joke. Actually, people speculate that the Calamity Deck is only there to keep people playing nice, because if you piss someone off enough, they can burn one of these to spite you and it’s usually a wipe. And there goes one of your weekly runs.”
“Let’s say you do your week’s three events. How many cards can you expect to see used and dropped?” asked Seiki, still trying to figure out the odds.
“The deeper you go, the more stages, the more bosses, the more drops.” Ippei pointed toward the wilderness directly below them. “The first event, Muraki Woods, has only one stage, so that’s almost one card guaranteed. If you re-do it in more difficult modes, the chance goes up. So, usually in 2:1 you get an average of two cards, plus ten percent chance for an automatic upgrade. In 3:1 you usually get three, plus twenty percent chance for an upgrade to Wood, and ten percent chance for an automatic upgrade straight to Jade. But at that point, you usually need to burn a few of your cards as well just to beat it, so most people don’t bother.”
“You know that didn’t really answer my question.”
“Right.” Ippei scratched his head. “Okay, from my experience in Beta, when you’re in the actual games, like pushing progression with the rest of the world, I’d say you come out at a net gain of about four cards a week.”
Seiki closed his eyes. “So, if you want to collect all 49 Jade Cards and you need 9 Paper Cards for each of them… that will take a total of… four-ninety minus forty-nine is… 441 cards. Four cards a week, that’s a hundred weeks, or about two years. And take into consideration that card drops are random, that means…”
“Never,” Ippei concluded confidently. “Since you’ll actually be spending your cards along the way. I’m pretty sure it’s designed so that no single person will ever be able to collect everything.”
“Okay.” Seiki let out a long breath as he started to understand the scale of it.
“So it encourages people to work together, across clans, and take in freelancers as well, since they might have something new to bring to the table. It also encourages people to sit down and strategize, and then maybe put up a notice looking for someone with a certain card to try out different ideas.”
Seiki slowly acquiesced. Perhaps that was what the noticeboard in the middle of the fort was for. He was starting to understand why Ippei had always claimed the game out the West Gate was collaborative in nature, rather than competitive like the daimyo clans out the East Gate where players had to compete for limited resources.
“But then, of course, there’s still a leaders’ board in front of the Shogun’s palace, and that gives clans incentives to compete. However, it’s still very common to find alliance runs. When the West Defenders beat Kakoku two weeks ago, they actually had help from the Red Dawn Clan, some of the Honor Warriors, and some of the Nobles as well. The Nobles were probably finally sick of wiping on the last boss of Kakoku every week for the past three months and decided to be a team player.”
There was also something collaborative about the nature of how War Games progression worked. Once anyone in the world had cleared an event for the first time, a public mode led by one of Shinshioka’s capable NPCs—or ‘Easy Mode’ as Ippei called it—opened up, allowing everyone else to catch up and get practice on the event. According to the samurai, this was to allow new players to fast-track through the older events and get to the newest content with the rest of the world. So when the West Defenders finally beat Kakoku Fields, their victory felt like a real triumph for the whole player base, and the whole world celebrated.
Seiki rubbed his chin with a mischievous expression. “So I guess now everyone will be spending the next three months wiping on the first boss of the Hitsu Temple Ruins instead?”
Progression was becoming a big deal, especially now that the first people were venturing into territories never beaten before in Beta.
“We’ll be one of those people pretty soon,” said Ippei.
“Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. There’s still nine events before that, and you swear never to set foot near an Easy Mode.”
The samurai had claimed it was a disgrace to stoop so low as to join an NPC-led run, since there was a bonus reward for the first time you cleared an event—which was determined according to the difficulty level you had attempted the event on. There was also a bonus reward for clearing an event during the first-ever try. So Ippei had always stated that people were shortchanging themselves in doing Easy Mode at all, since it was arguably better to pay for a carry on normal mode, simply for the Tokens and Combat Valor.
“Hey, have some faith,” said the samurai.
Before Seiki could point out that, like the tutorial, things might have already changed since he last played, he was interrupted by Rumi who had appeared at the door. “Chief,” she said excitedly. “You might want
to know there’s a new notice on the board.”
“Thanks, Rumi,” he said, wondering why he kept forgetting that he had a unit under his command now. “I’ll come look at it in a minute.”
“Chief,” said the girl worriedly. “Those wounds still haven’t healed? The pearl-light flask clears shadow-bleed effect,” she dutifully reminded him. “And Lieutenant Kato is waiting in the central hall.”
Seiki found it funny how determined his unit was about getting him on the right track for quests. “Thanks, Rumi. I’ve got this.”
Rumi nodded in acknowledgement and disappeared back out the door.
“Is there a way to turn off this feature—” Seiki turned back to Ippei and found his friend staring at him with a wicked grin. “What?”
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
“What?” Seiki asked again.
“I just never had you pegged as one of those who are into the honey brigade thing.”
“What do you—” Seiki choked as he then remembered that samurai got to pick their own unit members. “I didn’t…”
Ippei tilted his head sideways and shrugged. “Well, they’re all the same in combat.”
“I really didn’t get to choose,” said Seiki, before quickly explaining what had happened with the Volunteers quest. “They even gave me an old man, and a kid.”
Ippei seemed surprised. “Well, that’s new. Ryuta’s quest was exactly the same as mine and he got to pick his guys. And he did end up picking quite a few girls. But like I said, they’re all the same, so it’s just a matter of… uh, aesthetics, or gender equality, if you want to go down that route.” The samurai lifted his palms up. “If you ask me, though, I just don’t feel comfortable saying ‘Hey, Sakura-chan, go there and bait that demon boss for a while and get your whole unit torn to pieces while I get other people to attack from the other side.’”
That reminded Seiki of an important question he had been meaning to ask. “Do they respawn if they die?”
