2019 Beginner's Guide to Shadow Era (Making gold and getting a strong deck)
Hi everyone! Shadow Era is a great game, and there are a lot of things I really love about it. It's very free-to-play friendly, has a strong community, a large card pool and hero pool, and features a lot of strategic gameplay. The card sacrificing mechanic is probably my favorite part about the game, as it forces you to make a decision about which cards you want to keep and which ones you won't need later on in the game. The best players are all masters at making this decision. I made a video that covers everything in this guide, so if you are more of a visual learner, you may want to check that out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP0UavZ5J-I
How to play
I'm not going to cover this too much, because the game has a decent tutorial that shows you the basic ideas. But here are some of the basic ideas.
Turn Structure
At the beginning of the game, both players draw 6 cards. The turn is split into 2 phases, the sacrifice phase and the action phase. In the sacrifice phase, you may take one of the cards in your hand, and put it on your resource pile. With a few exceptions, you will never see that card ever again.
The action phase is very flexible. You can play a card from your hand as long as you can pay the resource cost, a number written in the top left corner of each card. Resources can each be used once per turn, so if you had 2 resources you could play one card that costs 2 resources.
Allies
Allies are cards that have an attack value and a health value. Once the health of an ally reaches 0, it dies and is sent to the graveyard. Allies can each attack once per turn. When attacking, the attacker deals damage equal to their attack value, and then if the opposing ally still has health, it can counter-attack. Damage is permanent in Shadow Era unlike in some other games (though there is an exception, with decks that can heal allies). Once an ally has attacked, it is exhausted. Exhausted allies can't do anything, but your exhausted allies are "readied" at the end of each of your turns.
Items
There are many different types of items in Shadow Era. Many of them have a durability value, and each time you use that item it loses a durability. An item with 0 durability is sent to the graveyard.
Abilities
There are also many types of abilities. These can be one-time-use abilities, abilities that last for a certain duration, or attachments that attach to an ally or hero.
Heroes
Heroes all have a health value, and once it reaches 0 you lose the game. They can use a Shadow Ability once per turn, but must spend Shadow Energy in order to use this Shadow Ability. Heroes gain 1 Shadow Energy per turn.
Making Gold
One of the nice things about Shadow Era is that every card in the game can be purchased for gold. There is a premium currency, Shadow Crystals, that you can use to get packs or buy pre-made decks. There is also something called XP, or experience points. Each hero has a level, and as you level up that hero you get shadow crystals per level raised. So, the main way to get gold is to find ways to get XP, which gives you Shadow Crystals, which can be used to buy packs/decks, which can be sold for gold. There is a neat tip to make this process a lot easier: once your starter hero gets to a high level, buy a different hero from the merchant for 200 gold and assemble a deck with them (the cards in the deck don't matter at all, the deck itself can be really bad). This will make it easier to level up through the following methods:
1. Meltdown
Ever since Meltdown became free, it is in my opinion the best way to make money for beginners. That is because you don't need a good deck. In rated, you will probably lose a lot when you are first starting off because your beginner deck is not designed to be very competitive. However, in meltdown, you get dealt random cards and make your own deck with those cards. It is true that meltdown can be difficult at first, especially when you don't really know what you are doing. That being said, meltdown also doubles as a great way to learn about different cards and about the game in general. If you make the top 25 meltdown players per week, you will make at least 100 Shadow Crystals (top player makes 2000 SC). In my experience, making the top 25 means about 5 or 6 victories, which is not that many to be honest.
2. Rated
If you are a beginner, I highly recommend offering a draw as soon as you are matched with another player. Often times, they will see your 0 rating, and decide to accept the draw. That's because they will lose a lot of rating for losing to you, and stand to gain very little rating for beating you. Drawing with another player grants 200 XP and 40 gold, which is a lot especially for a beginner.
3. Watching ads
This is honestly a really good way to make Shadow Crystals, but it's kind of boring to watch ads and only available to mobile users. In order to watch an ad, you must play the campaign at least once, and then an optional ad will pop up on the campaign screen from time to time. You get 5 SC per ad.
Buying a competitive deck
Once you reach 275 Shadow Crystals, I highly recommend buying the pre-made deck from the merchant called "Tainted Magic." Not only is it a very competitive deck, but it is very fast and easy to play. Finally, it can be used with virtually every human mage, so you can just copy and paste it to Nishaven, Loest, or even Aramia (just throw in some poisoned wells or tome of knowledge) and it should still work.
Hopefully that helps if you are a newer player. Let me know if I missed anything in the comments, and thanks for reading!
