Eye of Judgment General FAQ v0.2 By Jerry Hsu (confucious@gamefaqs, PSN - confu2000) The latest version of this document will always be at http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhgfk5zc_6c4gmz8. I can be contacted at [email protected] Table of contents 1. Introduction 2. Setting up 3. Gameplay 3.1. Basic Turn Order 3.2. The Board 3.3. Cards 3.4. Status effects 3.5. On-screen Information 4. Strategy 5. Tips 6. Troubleshooting 0. History v0.2 - Made the card information section more comprehensive. Restructured layout slightly. v0.1 - Initial faq. Mostly random troubleshooting tips. 1. Introduction The Eye of Judgment is a collectible card game for the PS3. It uses the Playstation Eye to read cards and track in-game stats for the player. A game will typically take 30 to 60 minutes though a drawn out game can take up to 90 to 120 minutes. This FAQ is a WIP. Frankly, the manual for the game sucks so I'm trying to supplement it for new players. 2. Setting up The game manual does a reasonably decent job of explaining how to setup the camera and play area. A few tips which are also repeated in the troubleshooting section: * You don't need a particularly bright source of light and in fact, too much light may tend to cause glare which can also interfere with reading the cards. * For camera settings, using a manual setting instead of the automatic setting will usually produce better results. * Make sure that your Playstation Eye stand is fully compressed. If the alignment view shows any significant space between the mat's grid and the green overlay grid, then your stand is too tall and can be squeezed down further. * Lightly ironing your mat to remove the folds greatly improves the play experience. It may also help detection to a small degree. * During online play, the game will draw cards for you (to prevent cheating). So having your cards organized into multiple piles will help make finding them faster. 3. Gameplay 3.1 Basic Turn Order Start Phase Both players start with 5 cards. Each player may review his cards and choose to mulligan once (reshuffle and redraw) if they don't like their hand. After both players have drawn their initial hands, the first player begins his turn. Draw Phase A turn begins by drawing a card from the deck and receiving 2 mana. The first player does not draw a card on his first turn (to balance the advantage of going first). If a player can not draw a card during this phase (or at any other point) due to the deck being empty, he loses. Attack Phase During a turn, a player may, in any order, try to: 1) play spells, 2) activate an existing creature to have it attack, 3) rotate an existing creature, 4) summon a new creature. Existing creatures may be turned 90 degrees once per turn and activated once per turn. Some spells may also end the turn as part of their effect so read the descriptions carefully. Options 1 to 3 may be performed multiple times per turn (2 and 3 on different creatures) as long as the player has mana available to pay for the associated costs. Summoning a new creature will end the turn so the other actions must be performed first. If a player has no creatures on the board, he may summon a creature to any field. Otherwise, creatures may only be summoned to fields adjacent to any existing creature (allied or enemy). Fields that are valid for summoning have a white highlight effect. Newly summoned creatures will automatically attack. Creatures will not attack if there are no enemy creatures in range (ie, they will not attack allied creatures if those are the only ones in range). Creatures will attack allied creatures if they have a forced multiple square attack pattern (Twin Goblins for example) and there is an enemy creature in range of one of their attacks. Likewise, creatures can not be activated if there are no enemy creatures in range. If a creature is attacked from a direction that it can attack, then it will normally counterattack. The attacking character first does damage and then if the defending character is still alive, it will perform its counterattack (ie. damage is not simultaneous). The counterattack is a normal attack and so creatures that have multiple square attack patterns will attack creatures on all squares (including allied creatures). Resolution Phase At the end of the turn (either due to summoning or ending the turn with the "End Turn" card), there are a few things to check. There is a hand limit of 7 that is checked at the end of your turn. If you have more than 7 cards in your hand at the end of your turn, the computer will direct you to discard down to 7. If you now control 5 fields (due to summoning your 5th creature), then you win. An important thing to note here is that you must control 5 fields at the end of your turn. If you summon a 5th creature, but it dies or causes another of your creatures to die prior to the end of your turn, then the game continues. 3.2. The Board The board is a 3x3 grid. Boards in general seem to always begin with 2 fields each of Fire, Water, Earth and Wood elements and 1 Biolith. Each field has two sides, the second side indicated by a small cutout in the lower right corner. The element of the second side is not necessarily the opposite element of the top side. Flipping a field is called a "fieldquake" and can be performed by spells and some creatures. More information on elemental effects are in the next section. 3.3. Cards Card Basics There are 2 types of card, creature summons and spells. All cards have a summoning/casting cost which is listed as the first number on the left side. Creature cards also have activation/rotation cost, initial HP and base attack values. Some cards have a lock and chain symbol around their summoning cost. Almost all biolith cards seem to have this. The summoning lock is in effect while there are fewer than 4 creatures on the board (in total for both players). After the fourth creature is summoned, the summoning lock will release and creatures that are locked can now be played. If the number of creatures drops back below 4 (due to being killed), the lock will go back into effect, but any creatures already summoned are not affected. A creature can have one of 6 elements: Wood, Earth, Fire, Water, Biolith and Neutral. Wood and Earth are in opposition, Fire and Water are in opposition. Biolith and Neutral are both neutral. For Wood, Earth, Fire and Water, creatures summoned on fields of their own element gain a +2 hp bonus and fields of the opposing element results in a -2 hp penalty. Biolith and Neutral creatures have no penalty or bonus for any field. In particular, this means that Biolith creatures do not get any benefit from being summoned on Biolith fields. Cards have two icons at the bottom, attack and defense. Attack icons with only solid red arrows indicate that the creature can and will attack multiple fields (Twin Goblins). Icons with solid red and light red arrows indicate that the creature has the option of attacking any one of the fields (Hellfire Spitter). The primary purpose of the defense icon is to indicate blind spots for the creature. An attack to the blind spot of a creature will do +1 damage. In general, if a creature is attacked from a position that they can themselves attack, then they will counterattack. Some defense icons may not make this obvious. Special Creature Types Fortress is a special type of creature. Despite what the attack icon may seem to indicate, fortresses do not have an initial attack when they are summoned. Fortresses will counterattack as appropriate. Incarnations are another special creature. Incarnations can be summoned on top of another creature of the same element. When they are summoned this way, the cost is the difference between the incarnation and the creature it is replacing. For example, if a Hellfire Spitter is in play, the Scionder Fire God may be summoned on top of it for a cost of 8 instead of the usual 9. When summoned this way, the incarnation does not get an automatic attack and your turn does not end. Creatures that are summoned this way can not be activated on the same turn. You may still summon another creature afterwards (provided you have enough mana). 3.4. Status effects Cards may gain or have inherent status effects. Quickness - Quickness allows the creature to counterattack first when attacked. If the creature attacking also has quickness than that creature will attack first as normal. If a quickness counterattack kills the attacker, then the defending creature will take no damage. Protection - Protection will absorb a certain amount of physical damage. Protection from multiple sources stacks (ie, +2 protection from one source and +1 from another results in +3 protection total). If a creature has 2 hp and +2 protection, then a 3 damage attack will only do 1 hp of damage. A 2 damage attack will do 0 damage. Protection does not defend from magic attacks. Dodge - Dodge provides a 50% chance that a physical attack will miss. Dodge can be provided from multiple sources. So a creature will 2 dodge attempts has effectively a 25% chance that a physical attack will miss. Magic attacks bypass dodge. Perfect Dodge - Perfect dodge provides a 100% chance that a physical attack will miss (effectively immunity from physical attacks). Magic attacks bypass perfect dodge. Invisibility - Invisibility provides immunity from both magic and physical attacks. Your only hope for a creature with invisibility is to either remove the source of invisibility or to try to move/fieldquake the creature to an opposing element field and hope that the resulting hp loss will kill it. Possession - A possessed card is still owned by its original owner but can no longer be controlled. The possessor may trigger the card's attack on the turn after it is possessed. 3.5 On-screen Information The sides of the screen list your mana, number of cards in your deck, number of cards in your hand and number of cards in your discard. The first row for creature overlays shows the current HP and attack power. The second row shows the costs for the creature: summoning, activation, rotation. Note that though activation and rotation start the same, they can be affected by various status effects independently. The third row shows icons indicating from left to right: quickness, protection, dodge/perfect dodge, change to a cost. 4. Strategy <empty for now> 5. Tips * It can be hard to see the elements of the board at times. R1 will toggle through a few displays, one of which shows the front/back elements of the board. The normal hp/attack display also shows the elements of the field the creature is summoned on by colors in the upper left (top field) and lower right (flip field) corners. * During online play, you'll want to use the status screen frequently to see what the opponent's cards can do/attack patterns/blind spots (since you won't have them physically in front of you). L1 will bring up the status screen and I find it easier than using the status card. * During online play, the computer draws your cards for you to prevent deck stacking. Press X to review your current hand if you lose track. * Creatures do not have a "max" hp, just a starting hp. Healing effects will always work and have no inherent limit. 6. Troubleshooting Q: The Eye doesn't recognize my cards on the field. A: The game is capable of working with fairly low amounts of light. Among things I've heard, I'd say the first thing to do would be to go to camera setup and change the camera setting off of Automatic exposure and set it to Warm/Normal/Blue as appropriate for your lighting type (incandescent, fluorescent) and Dark/Normal/Bright for the amount of lighting. Many people find that Warm/Dark works well. Another thing is to make sure the stand for your Eye is properly assembled. The tubes for the stand are very tight and it is easy to have the stand be too tall after you initially assemble it. During the alignment screen where the Eye shows the field with a green overlay grid, the grid should match up with the field very tightly. If the grid is larger than the field by any amount, your stand is probably too tall and you should apply some more force to squeezing it down. Another way to tell if your stand is too tal is if it seems wobbly. The stand when properly assembled should be pretty stable. Q: The Eye can see the field fine, but I can't get it to recognize my discards (for spells or other effects). A: The first thing is to make sure you're holding the card properly. The Eye sees the cards by using the green triangles and the black bars at the top and bottom. If any of those are obscured, it won't recognize the card properly. So either holding the card in the palm of your hand flat, or along the middle, sideways with your fingers between the green triangles should work well. I find the second lets me hold the card steadier. The second thing is that the Eye wants the cards held up towards it. This means that you should hold the card in the air about midway between the board and the Eye. I've found the Eye can get confused if the discard card is too close too the board. Q: The game lets me setup a room and I can even voice chat with my opponent, but when it starts the game, I'm stuck at waiting and then the opponent disconnects. A: I believe this problem is due to your router. I think the game uses VPN for transferring the game data (cards played). Some routers do not handle VPN data well. I've had problems with the Apple Extreme Base Station. For this particular router, I need to specify the PS3 as the "default host". This might be known as DMZ on some other routers. If you have problems, I suggest googling your router model with "VPN" or "VPN problems" to see if there are any solutions. Q: The game tells me that a card is invalid to place but I'm sure it is. A: Especially in online, the game has certain states that it enforces to prevent things like accidental re-summoning of creatures. If you place a card and the game reports that it is invalid, remove the card and wait a few seconds for the game to recognize that the state is correct. Then replay the card. It should be accepted at this time. Playing a card too quickly will most likely result in "invalid" messages. It's also possible that there is a limitation that you're not aware of. In offline, the game will enforce card restrictions such as having only 3 of any single card in your deck. Online, the game will prevent you from playing a spell card if your hand does not contain the appropriate discards needed to fuel the card. And remember to be aware of things like summoning locks.