Hey everyone,
Welcome to Part 3 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Last time, we discussed our exploration mechanics including the mist of mayhem, lore and our unique fate encounters system. Today, we’ll examine the second key gameplay mechanic of our adventures mode: Strategic Resource Management.
The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:
- Exploration
- Strategic Resource Management <- You are here
- Tactical Turn Based Combat
- Team and Deck Building
Strategic Resource Management
Your survival in Summoners Fate depends heavily on your ability to carefully manage the resources of your expeditions. These resources include your Summoner, your hero companions, your deck of cards, lives, gold, dice, and… marshmallows? Oh yes! Marshmallows. What bonfire at the camp would be complete without them? Let’s explore each resource and how it connects to the meta strategy layer.
Summoners
Your Summoner is your primary character and conduit to the game world. If your Summoner dies, your entire party is defeated and you’ll need to spend one of your lives to continue. The number of lives you have is determined by the difficulty you chose for your adventure. If you’re playing on hardcore, for instance, it’s game over if your summoner is killed. But, assuming you have lives left, you’ll have the option to retry and continue your game. When you retry, you’ll return to your last auto-save point (typically, right before you entered the mist that started a battle or right before the encounter feature you interacted with). You’ll also regain some health and cards to help give you a fighting chance.
Cards
Your deck of cards represents magical spells, enchantments, weapons, equipment and characters that you can call into battle.
Explore creative strategies with over 400 unique cards to choose from.
On your first adventure, your initial deck is randomly selected from a set of signature spells matching the primary color of your chosen Summoner. You begin the game with 3 cards. Your first goal is to first build up your deck to 20 cards. Next, you’ll aim to optimize your deck for your desired strategy by selectively replacing cards within the 20-card max while resting at campsites.
In the first chapter of your adventure, you can quickly build up your deck by defeating enemies and destroying crates and barrels to find cards. Defeating elites (enemy Summoners) will frequently yield an option to choose one of three possible cards to further hone your deck in the direction you want to take it. As you progress through chapters, card drops will become more scarce, so you’ll need to acquire gold to buy cards from shopkeepers.
Shops
Each world is populated with a number of shops that range from mercenaries to merchants. The nice thing about merchants is that they have a wide selection of inventory, as well as a set of cards exclusively found in shops.
Sides' Roadside Shop is one of many merchants you'll encounter in the game. Tip: Shopkeepers prefer to setup near roads so they can sell to as many travelers as possible. Consider following the path if you're in the market for buying some new cards.
Gold
Gold can be found in crates and barrels as well as dropped by enemies. As you progress through chapters and face harder enemies, the frequency and amount of gold dropped will also increase. The primary source of gold in Summoners Fate, however, is treasure chests. Each world has a number of hidden treasure rooms filled with chests of gold. You may have to get past some tough enemies to find them or navigate a safe route around them.
Oooooh! Shiny! (Goblins love gold)
Dice
Dice are an essential resource that provide you with some agency during fate encounters. Recall in our talk about Exploration that Fate Encounters are story driven scenarios where the outcome is a combination of your decision and the roll of dice. You can spend this resource to roll additional dice during these encounters and increase your chance of a desired outcome.
Want to impress a fairy with your smooching skills? Spend some dice.
Like other resources, dice can be found in objects and dropped by enemies. The best source of dice are elites and bosses who will typically drop a set of 3 or more dice.
Retreat
In addition to being useful for fate encounters, dice can also help you avoid an undesirable defeat in combat by bolstering your chance of a successful retreat. You can scout and retreat from most areas in the world without consequence using the retreat command. However, if you decide to engage in battle, your units will become locked into the fray. You can still command them to retreat, but now it will require a roll of the dice. Be sure to have dice on hand if you decide to take on a battle you might not survive.
Campsites
Campsites can be used to rest and recover your party’s health and reshuffle discarded cards back into your deck. When you set up camp, the cosmic tortoise and additional party members you’ve recruited will join you at the campsite. The cosmic tortoise carries all of the cards in your collection. You can interact with the tortoise to customize your deck by adding and removing cards you’ve found.
Warmed by the fire and satiated by the taste of roasted marshmallows, your battle weary heroes rest and recover their strength.
Each world has a limited number of campsites available. Since campsites are depleted of their supplies after use, it is very important to consider when to rest and when to conserve this invaluable resource.
Guardians
During your adventures, you’ll have opportunities to recruit permanent team members known as Guardians. Guardians will always match one of the magic types your Summoner can cast, so you’ll always find different characters depending on which Summoner you choose to play. Guardians will follow your Summoner as you explore the world and, unlike the creatures you summon in battle from your deck, will remain with you after combat is over. You can have up to two Guardians in your party at the same time. Additionally, any character that can serve as a guardian can also be placed in your deck and summoned during battle instead.
You can customize your party while resting at camp or whenever you recruit a new character. Defeated guardians will also rejoin your party at camp.
Loyal Units
In addition to guardians, you may also encounter loyal units. Like Guardians, they will follow you and stay in your party after battle. However, they cannot be removed from your party and are not recovered at camp if they are defeated in battle. Effectively, these are “extra” characters that can bolster your team with added numbers for the limited time they manage to survive. So, consider carefully how you protect these characters, as it may be desirable to bring them into battle with you when fighting challenging enemies like a boss.
Marshmallows
No campsite is complete without marshmallows to toast on the fire. Not only are marshmallows a favored treat to the characters of Summoners Fate, they are an essential resource that allow you to restock used campsites. If you find a stocked campsite but don’t need to rest, you can take the supplies to restock a campsite later in your adventure. Later in your adventures, enemies may also drop small quantities of marshmallows.
Strategic Metagame
Your resources, your cards and the health of your heroes are limited and carry over with you in each new area of the world you explore. This adds a strategic layer to Summoners Fate where you must carefully consider how you approach surviving the dungeon.
Do you blast the mob of goblins with a fireball or save this spell for the boss fight and attack them directly with your warriors instead? This may cost you health instead of cards. What if you lose your Cleric in the fight? You may be in trouble if you encounter poisonous snakes in the next room. Should you use your dice to free the bear, or save them to impress a fairy wish giver with a satisfying kiss?
Summoners Fate challenges you to contemplate your high-level strategy as you engage in turn-based tactical battles, which we shall cover next time in the Guide to Summoners Fate.
Enjoying our content?
Give this article a thumbs up and share Summoners Fate with a friend.