Battles and decks

Cards carry stats, an element and abilities, and a deck of eight is a real construction problem. This guide covers the rules a deck is built under, how elements interact on the board, and where a finished deck can be taken.

A deck is eight cards

Eight exactly, and the composition limits are enforced by the server rather than suggested by the interface.

• At most 3 cards of any one element. Neutral cards are exempt.
• At most 2 legendary, 3 epic, 1 mythic and 1 chromatic.

You have five deck slots, so a spread of answers can live side by side instead of being rebuilt every time. The mode you enter uses the slot you last chose, and falls back to your first complete deck if that one is unfinished.

The limits are checked against a card's own element, not its skin. A skin is art; it never changes what a card counts as.

Where the numbers come from

A card's battle stats are derived from its power, its level and its rarity rather than authored separately.

Attack and health both climb with power and level, and rarity adds health on a fixed ladder from nothing at common up to +5 at mythic. Mana cost climbs with power too, plus a rarity surcharge for epic and above.

Levelling is not free: every eight levels adds one to the card's mana cost. A levelled card lands later in the game rather than being strictly better at the same price, which is what keeps an eight-card deck a set of decisions instead of a power ranking.

Elements

Nine elements — fire, water, earth, wind, lightning, light, dark, ice, and neutral — interact on three layers at once.

Advantages apply card against card. Two triangles: fire beats wind beats earth beats fire, and water beats lightning beats dark beats water. Two antagonist pairs hit each other harder in both directions: light against dark, and fire against ice. A favourable matchup is worth +25%, an unfavourable one −15%.

Field synergies recalculate whenever the board changes. Certain pairs standing together adjust attack or health — fire beside wind, water beside earth, ice beside water and others — and a few pairs actively conflict. Three or more cards of one element on your side give the whole board +1 attack and +1 health.

Passives tick each turn a card is on the field, and they are what give an element its identity.

• Fire gains attack every turn, up to a cap.
• Water heals itself each turn.
• Earth gains health, and taunts: while an earth card is alive, every enemy attack is forced onto it.
• Wind can attack the turn it is played, at reduced damage on that turn.
• Lightning doubles its next attack every second turn.
• Light heals a neighbour each turn, and can spend its action healing an ally directly instead of attacking.
• Dark heals your hero on a kill, weakens what survives its hits, and can drain attack from an enemy card instead of attacking — which ignores taunt, and is how dark reaches a protected back line.
• Ice freezes a card that survives its hit, costing that card its next attack.

Reading the board

Two targeting rules decide most turns, and both are enforced by the server, so a modified client cannot cheat them.

A card may only attack the enemy hero when the enemy's field is completely empty. Any live card blocks the face. And while any earth card is alive on the defending side, attacks are forced onto earth first — which is the counter to wind's ability to swing the turn it lands.

Together those mean board control comes before damage. A deck with no answer to a taunt wall spends its turns hitting the wall.

Where to take a deck

The same eight cards work everywhere.

Quick battles against an opponent built from real cards, scaled to your average power, paying coins and experience with a daily cap on rewarded wins.

The campaign runs across eight chapters of a story, each ending on a boss. Bosses fight in phases: at fixed health thresholds they buff their whole board, heal, summon, change form and start casting. The board telegraphs what is coming and how many turns away it is, so a phase is something to play around rather than something that happens to you.

The Abyss is a run — floors in sequence, a merchant and an altar between them, and a limited number of attempts a day.

Ranked PvP is real-time against another player. Seven tiers from Bronze to Legend, two-month seasons, and a soft reset at each season boundary that pulls everyone halfway back toward the middle rather than wiping the ladder. If nothing pairs quickly you are matched against a bot, which is tuned to your recent form — a win streak meets something sharper, a losing streak something gentler.

Ranked wins also unlock a daily reward track: five slots generated fresh each day, one unlocked per win, claimed in order, mixing coins, gems and free packs.

Guild modes take the same deck into cooperative raids and territory wars. Those are covered in guilds and events.

Two season passes run alongside all of it. The Arcanum Pass progresses on experience and daily tasks; the PRO PASS progresses on trophies earned in ranked play.