Introduction Tutorial

[Chapuz]

openEtG Tutorial

openEtG is a little wonderful TCG (Trading Card Game) based on the flash game Elements.
This tutorial will explain you the basics of openEtG.

First of all, the "What am I seeing and what do I do?" section of the tutorial. This will guide you for the initial steps of this journey.

If you are completely new and this is the first time you enter to this game, follow these easy steps to create an account and get started!

Spoiler for Entering for the first time:

The first thing you see are the Login and Sandbox buttons.



The Sandbox is a tool for people who completed this tutorial, I will mention it later. Forget about it for a while.

First of all, create a username with a password and click in Login. Your account will instantly be created and only you will be able to enter to that account again (with the password you just made).
You will see this little menu and start your elemental carreer:



Here you must choose one of 12 elements to start playing with. You will be given 3 of decks bases in that element. But what element should you choose? Each element has its own style and personality and offers different playing styles. But don't worry, this only defines your starting path. You will eventually get every single card of this game, not just the element you choose!

  Earth is the element of the defense. Its features let the players protect themselves, delay opponents' creatures for a long time and increase their Health to survive longer in their battles. Never underestimate a good defense, as Earth elementals' advantage come from it.
  Air is the element of lightness. It has cheap tools and strong (yet fragile) creatures. Air elementals like their games be fast and fluid, simple and without many troubles.

  Light is the element of protection and divinity. Light creatures have high health and it has spells and abilities to heal them during the battles. Playing with Light can also make you immune to certain annoying effects.
  Darkness is the element of trickery. Darkness elementals can drain Health and steal resources from the opponent, as well as other handful surprises. 

  Fire is the element of destruction. Its creatures have very high attack. It has also a lot of cards that damage the opponent and its creatures in various ways. Fire players like winning their matches with sheer and frontal strangth.
  Water is the element of versatility. Water elementals like freezing opponent's creatures and using synergies with the other elements to grant them various powerful effects.

  Life is the element of the healing. Life elementals like having high HP and attacking with lots of small, cheap creatures. They can also multiply their creatures and make them attack multiple times. Life players tend to heal during the battle, granting them additional advantages.
  Death elementals gain advantage of the... well... deaths. The deaths during the battle will grant them various beneficial effects and advantages, like shielding the player, make the creatures stronger, creating new creatures and poisoning the opponent. Death comes with versatility, versatility brings death.

  Time is the element of speed control. Time elementals like gaining drawing multiple cards per turn, stop the opponents' creatures from attacking and send them back to their hands. It has also effects that don't let the opponent play a lot of cards per turn. Do not undestimate the passage of time; when the foe makes a step, you can make many.
  Aether is the element of space and dimensions. It can make copies of creatures and from copies of cards in the foes' decks. They also have immortal creatures and other interesting and powerful effects.

  Entropy is the element of randomness. It can scramble the opponents' resources, generate powerful mutants, random creatures, effects and even cards. There are never 2 matches of Entropy followers alike, as chaos leads its own path.
  Gravity is the element of order. Gravity elementals like preventing the foes' tricks before they even happen. It use huge creatures as shields, eat the opponents' creatures, drain opponents' resources and bypass their shields shields.

 Random: You can't decide what to choose? Let fate guide your first step!

 Build your Own! will give you no deck at all, but a bunch of free booster packs to buy cards later. This option isn't recommended for new players.
Choosing any element will give you some free booster packs too.

For this tutorial I will choose  . It is ABSOLUTELY  NOT because I already know one of its decks has kittens and I love them, okay?
After choosing your starter element, you will be directed to the main menu, which is explained in the following lines.

Now, before talking about everything in this sea of buttons menu, I will make a reeeealy quick introduction of the different parts of it. Then I will make you play your first game, and finally go deeper on the game features so you understand what's going on here.

Spoiler for Basic Menus tutorial:

You will see the main parts of the menu numbered in pretty little and discrete labels in the following image:

Spoiler for Main Menu:

1. Stats - The stats show the name of your account and the amount of won and lost games of PVE (Player vs. Environment) and PVP (Player vs. Player). Losing doesn't have any consequence, but they get recorded for... statistical stuff and challenges that require creating a new account, I guess? My account currently has waaay more loses than wins.

2. Cards & Decks - This is where we make the decks we play with. Luckily for you, new player, you were just given 3 decks to start with. The 10 buttons you see threre are quick deck slots that let you select up to 10 decks you can save on them. For now, select either of the first 3 (because the other 7 are empty slots, unless you already made a new deck in them)

3. Basic AI Battle - These are the different levels of opponents you will face: Commoner, Mage, Champion and Demigod. They are listed from easier to tougher and will be your best friends opponents you will face the most.

4. Tips - There you will find non-obvious tips about the game itself. This box will also say what the things of the menu do when you put the mouse over them.

5. Card of the day! - You will be gifted 1 random card each day you log in. I just won a Graviton Defender. YAY!

6, 7, 8. - Ignore them for now.

Already got the basic stuff? Great! Now let's go to your first battle!
Pick either of the three first decks on the Cards & Decks quick slots and click on Commoner, the first of the main 4 opponents of AI Battle! (don't try harder opponents for now, all you may find is a harder foe than what your starter deck might stand a chance)

Spoiler for Battles!:

Before jumping into the battles, let's get a quick view of how to see the cards and the information they have:

Spoiler for Cards:

This is an example of a card:



The background of the card tells you the element it belongs to:
  Fire
  Water
  Life
  Death
  Light
  Darkness
  Air
  Earth
  Entropy
  Gravity
  Time
  Aether

1- Name of the card
2- Card image (credits to the amazing artists)
3- Cost (in this case, 10  quantum)
4- Attack | HP
5- Text, ability. In this case, it has a passive ability called Airborne
6- Creature symbol. Other cards have other symbols:
Creature - The main damage source against your opponent.
Spell - These cards have instant effects.
Permanent - These cards have a permanent effect while they are in your field.
Weapon - These permanents attack every turn and have a special effect
Shield - These permanents reduce the damage of the opponent's creatures or prevent them from attacking somehow.
Pillar - The main source of quantum (see in the next spoiler)

7- Rarity symbol. This dragon is Uncommon, other cards have different rareness. All the cards of the game are balanced, there is no thing such as "Rares are better than Uncommons". Rarer cards are although more powerful and many of them are key cards for many strategies.
Ultra common - These cards are free, you can add any number of them to your deck and have an unlimited amount of them.
Common
Uncommon
Rare
Super rare
Ultra rare

Not 2 battles are the same, so I will show you a normal screen of a battle and explain the stuff you see in there.
First things first: Bottom half = you. Upper half = Opponent.

Spoiler for Hidden:

Don't worry, its easier to understand than what it looks like. I will number the stuff you see below.

My Quantum: This is the "mana" of other games. They are the resources you play your cards and abilities with. Right now you see I have 7  and 4  quanta.

My Creatures: These are my main damage source. At the end of my turn, they automatically attack the foe's health (green bar on the upper right). The white glow on the creatures mean they have an ability that can be used. This creature, called Schrödinger's Cat, has an ability that costs 1  and it's called 'deadalive'. It also has 1 attack and 1 health (that's the 1 / 1 you see on it). I've only had it for one turn. At the end of my last turn it attackes my opponent, and that's why he is at 99 health instead of 100.

My Hand: Here are the cards I can play. The game lets me start with 7 cards and each turn I draw 1 card from my deck, and that card goes to my hand. The white glow on them indicates I am able to play them (because I have enough quanta to pay for them). The 3rd card has no cost and can be played even if I had no quanta at all.

My Pillars and Permanents: The pillars are the main source of quantum you need to play the cards. They generate 1 quantum of their element at the end of your turn. Other permanents have different effects and abilities. You can see everything the cards do by hovering them with the mouse!

My Shield: These are very particular permanents, you can only have 1 of each one on the field. If you play another, it replaces the old one. Elemental weapons are all rare!

Mark: Your mark automatically generates 1 quantum of its element at the end of your turn. You can choose it when designing your deck.

My Health: The opponent's creatures attack directly to my healh. If it reaches 0, I lose. If I can make my opponent's health reach 0, I win. Right now I have less health than my opponent, so we can say he's winning.

How to play
Starting the game
At the beginning of the game, each player draws 7 cards from their decks decks. Under your deck you will see a button called "Accept Hand" and another one called "Mulligan". Accept hand means you will start the game with that hand. Mulligan means you will reshuffle your hand into your deck and draw another 6 cards (one less than before). This is useful when you started with a bad hand, like having no pillars or pendulums. It shouldn't happen a lot, as your deck has a lot of them.

Playing your turn
In your turn, you play the cards from your hand and use the skills of your creatures and permanents (they will have a white glow indicating they can be used).

Finishing your turn
Then PRESS SPACEBAR or click in the "End turn" button to finish your turn.
Your creatures and weapon will automatically attack your opponent, and his HP will be reduced by the amount of damage dealt. Finally, your pillars and pendulums will generate quantum. Quantum is cumulative! Unlike other CCGs/TCGs, the quantum you haven't used one turn is saved for the next one, meaning that for example you can play a card that costs 3  with only 1  pillar, which will produce  quantum every turn since it's played.
After that, your opponent starts his turn and do the same as you did in yours.

After the Battles
If you win a battle, you will gain gold and a random card of your opponent's deck (except for ultra rare cards)
The gold reward is based in:

• The opponent you defeated
• Your HP
• Various bonuses listed on the winning screen

Do you already know what happens during a battle? Have you played a couple of them? Let's go to the next step! I call it "Edit your decks, make a new one and go nuts"

Spoiler for Advanced Menu Tutorial:

Cards & Decks
[1] to [10] buttons
This buttons lets you quick select the deck you will use for the next battle. To do this, you need to have a couple of decks saved first. How to save decks in your account is explained below.

Deck

Spoiler for Hidden:

Here is where you will put in and out cards from your deck, as well as creating new decks. Let's see how it's done!

Spoiler for Hidden:

Ok, here we see many things:
The colorful square of the center is your deck. Your starter decks will have around 35 cards, but you can make it anywhere between 30 and 60 cards. If you hover a card with your mouse, a big image will appear showing it completely.
The elemental symbols just under your deck lets you choose your mark. The mark produces 1 quantum per turn of that element. Chroma generates 3 quantum of random elements.
The buttons with numbers at the top of your deck are called "quickload", they let you load up to 10 decks you have saved in your account. See below to learn how to save them!
The bottom half of the screen has the cards that are out of your deck. Use the elemental symbols on the left to filter the cards by element and the rarity symbols to filter them by rarity.
The "Show All" button lets you see all the cards and upgrades, so you can know what cards you are missing and what they do.

How to manage your decks

Saving a deck in your account
You can have practically uncountable decks saved in your account. This is how you save one:
1- Create a deck in the deck builder screen
2- Enter a name for your deck in the upper text box
3- Click on the "Save" button. Now the deck is saved in your account, with the name you just entered.

Watching and loading your saved decks
Type "/decks" in the chat box, and you will see the name of your saved decks. Only you can see that list.
To see a deck you have saved, just click on your deck name that appeared in the chat and the deck will be loaded.

If you have many decks saved and want an easy tool to look for specific ones, the command "/decks" has an extra feature: If you type "/decks SomethingHere" you will see all your decks saved starting with "SomethingHere". I particularly have my decks named as "un..." for my unupgraded decks and "up..." for my upgraded decks, so when I look for my decks I type "/decks un" or "/decks up" for a faster search.

Another way to load a deck you have saved is typing the name of your deck in the "Name box" and click on the Load button.

Loading a saved deck in a quickload slot
1- Select a saved deck from the "/decks" list
2- Click in the "Save to #" button, next to the quickload buttons, and then click on a quickload slot. Now the selected quickload slot is tied to that deck. Every time you press in that quickload slot you will see this deck, and press "Save & Exit" to go back to the manu and play with it. This means you can have up to 10 quickloaded decks.

Importing a deck code from somewhere else
Did someone send you a deck code and want to automatically load it in your account? You can just write it in the "Code text box" and the deck you want will magically appear in your current deck slot!. It won't load the cards you don't have in your account though.

Shop

Spoiler for Shop:

Here is where you can buy Booster Packs. Just select the type of pack, the element you want the cards from and press the "Buy" button. Cards have 50% chance of being of another element and 100% chance of being of the correspondent element if you buy a Nymph pack.

Upgrade
Here is where you can sell your cards and upgrade them.
You will be taken to a menu similar to the deck manager. When you click on a card you will be able to see it's upgraded version. You can convert 6 copies of the same cards to an upgraded one!
Polishing 6 copies of a card will convert them into 1 Shiny card. It doesn't give any advantage other than looking more awesome and you can show them off in PvP.

Players
Here is where you interact in-game with other players. Just type the other player's name in the text box and do the following:
Trade: You will be directed to a menu where you can trade cards with other players! Use this feature to look for specific cards to fill a specific deck or collection.
Library: Here you can see the card collection of the other players.
PvP: Here you can send a PvP request to another player.
Reward: If you have a Reward code from a Tournament or Event of the community, this is the button to take your reward.

Arena
Arena AI: These buttons will make you play against decks created by other players.
Tier 1 decks don't have any upgraded cards and they have very little bonuses on HP, drawpower, mark multiplier and deck size.
Tier 2 decks are harder than Tier 1, as they have more upgraded cards and bonuses.
Arena Info: Here is where you create decks and submit them to the arena so the other players can play against it. You will win some gold for every battle it plays and it will last longer as it wins more.
Your Arena deck must have at least 5 copies of your Daily Oracle Card.

Leaderboards
Here you can see the current Leaderboards.

Key Words, these you probably don't know what they mean at first glance.

Spoiler for Key Words:

Largeness: This indicates the Health Points of the creatures.

Strength: This indicates the attack power of the creatures.

Additive: These permanents are played all in the same permanent slot.

Nocturnal: These creatures work better at night, having effects with cards like Nightfall. Some of these creatures besides all and ones are Lycanthrope and Fungus.

Airborne: These are flying creatures, like all the  ones and Dragons. They take effect on spells like Sky Blitz and Draft, and bypass Wings shield.

Poisonous: Eating these creatures, like with a Scarab or Otyugh, will make the eater poisoned, making them take 1 HP per turn.

Aquatic: These creatures don't get drowned with Flooding. All the  creatures are Aquatic.

Burrowed: These creatures can't be targeted other than for removing their burrowed status, duplicating their attack.

Immaterial: These creatures can't be targeted except for some special cards like Shard of Wisdom.

Golem: Some cards interact with "golem" creatures, such as Boomstick and Lodestone

Ranged: Ranged creatures and weapons ignore damaging effects of shields. Damage reduction and miss chance of the shields is still applied to them.

Momentum: Creatures and weapons with Momentum completely bypass shields.

Throttled: Throttled creatures have their attacking abilities reduced to 2 times per turn when they have Adrenaline. For example, an Adrenalined Scorpion attacks 4 times, but only apply 2 poison to the opponent per turn.

Psionic: These creatures or weapons deal spell damage. They bypass most of the shields, but are reflected by other ones.

Note: All admins have total rights to update this tutorial at any time, specially because the game is in constant development.

[Lost in Nowhere]

The example battle deck looks like InnoSoSe. That makes me happy.

This looks to be a good introduction tutorial.

[flyingcat]

Thanks a lot, Chapuz!

[smashduke]

Thanks for the tutorial Chapuz!

[Chapuz]

Updated to April 2018.