Card of Darkness Cheats: Tips & Tricks Guide To Surviving the Dungeons

Embark on a journey through hand-drawn, vibrant world full of dangerous dungeons and mysterious secrets and ultimately save the world in Card of Darkness, a card battling game with roguelike elements.

In our Card of Darkness tips and tricks guide, we will go over smart battling strategies and how to get through the dungeons in one piece. Despite the cutesy art style and fun visual appeal, Card of Darkness is a tried and true roguelike, which means difficult battles await you!

But have no fear, as we are here to help guide you along the way. Let’s get started with our Card of Darkness cheats, tips and tricks strategy guide to surviving the dungeons!

Take your time and weigh your options!

The quickest way to fall in battle in Card of Darkness is to pick cards from different decks willy-nilly. Do not just pick the card that looks the most appealing to you at the moment; try to think of your adventure in the long run, especially if there are multiple floors to the current dungeon.

Every dungeon is basically a war of attrition in Card of Darkness – you need to be constantly replenishing your health and swords, and randomly attacking and looting can put you in a really bad situation very quickly. Take your time, as there is no rush or time limit to make you hurry. Make every decision count!

Keep track of your marked cards!

When you reveal a deck and flip over the top card, that deck becomes “marked”. If you make it to the end of the dungeon, you will not be able to proceed if you have any decks left on the field that are marked and have not been dealt with.

This marking mechanic can mean certain doom if left unchecked! This is why you should flip with the utmost caution – if you flip too many cards at random you will be potentially left with a huge mess to deal with if you are unlucky and spawn a bunch of monsters.

If you have not caught on by now, this is Card of Darkness’ core mechanic: risk versus reward. Will you risk revealing a new deck to potentially make dealing with another deck easier? Or will that spiral out of control and soon enough you find yourself with multiple marked decks?

Ultimately the choice is yours, but in general it is best to keep track of your marked cards so that you know which ones you need to deal with before you can get to the end.

Utilize your spells to make the dungeon easier!

You may come across scrolls containing powerful magic when you are working through decks. These scrolls will be kept in your backpack, and you can cast them at any point. Scrolls are one-time use but they can really help you out in a jam.

Some spells are offensive like the Fireball, which lets you deal damage to any revealed enemy. Some give utility, like the Teleport scroll which moves around an enemy, or the Flee Scroll which unmarks a marked card.

Point is, spells are very helpful and you should only use them when you really need their powers. Later on in the game, scrolls will start to come unidentified, which means you need to use the scroll first to learn what it does. When you learn the spell, any future scrolls in that dungeon will be identified.

In these cases, it may be more helpful to use unidentified scrolls right away so that you can be prepared with your later scrolls.

Change your Cards of Darkness around!

Each dungeon has a new Card of Darkness waiting for you at the end. Cards of Darkness grant passive bonuses to you as long as they are equipped, and you can initially only equip one at a time.

Cards of Darkness are very powerful and can help you get through the dungeons easier. There are some general all-purpose cards like Card of Health and Card of Life, which increase your maximum health. The Card of Drink adds an extra potion card to each floor of a dungeon, and Card of Growth increases the power of all potions by +1.

There are also more situational cards that may not be as helpful as other. For example, Card of Swords will double one random Basic Sword per floor, which would obviously be of no use if you are on a level where there are only daggers and no swords.

If you are having trouble on a specific dungeon, be sure to examine your choice of Cards of Darkness and see if you can choose a more optimized set built for the current dungeon at hand. Adapt, improvised, and overcome!

Get some supplies from the shop!

The main items that you can buy from the shop are tokens. There are three kinds of tokens: one for weapons, one for potions, and one for scrolls. Using a token will immediately summon the respective item, and the token will be consumed.

These tokens start out summoning low level items, but you can buy the respective token upgrades to increase the value of the items that are summoned. These tokens can save you when you are in a bind, so try to have a few on hand when you are tackling a hard dungeon.

There is one more item you can buy, and that is an item that unlocks an additional Card of Darkness slot. This is the most expensive item, and each one you buy increases the price of the next one exponentially. They are pricey, but they are very much worth it!

Keep trying even if you keep losing!

Card of Darkness is all about controlling the randomness of the game and knowing when to take risks versus when to play it safe. But, at the end of the day, it is still a card game, and with that comes innate randomness that you cannot influence.

When you are playing through a floor, you might end up get a really unlucky layout with too many high value monsters, and victory is probably near impossible. Don’t sweat it though! You lose nothing but progress when you are defeated, so keep trying.

In fact, if you collected any gold on a run but end up ultimately wiping out, you STILL get to keep all of the gold you had before your untimely demise. You are never wasting time when you are battling through a dungeon, even if you do not make it through to the end.

Deal with problematic enemies right away!

With each new zone comes a whole new slog of enemies. You can tap and hold on an enemy briefly to bring up a little info box that details how they enemies act. We recommend doing this to every enemy to know what you are up against.

The earliest example monster you will come across is the Gymgi. These fun guys love to spend their time working out, so every turn their value goes up by one. If you reveal one of these guys, it is best to take them out even if you are not planning to go that route.

If you leave a revealed Gymgi around for long enough, eventually they will become monsters that are capable of defeating you with one hit. You will come across plenty of monsters that grow more powerful with time, and these ones you need to be careful of.

Look for clues when dealing with bosses!

The bosses in Card of Darkness are puzzle battles, and you need to pay attention in order to win. We will use the first boss as an example. You are presented with a 4×4 field as usual, and you will see the boss has three hearts.

To damage the boss, you must find the heart hidden somewhere on the field. Start battling and clearing the field in any direction you like, and you may come across a picture on one of the empty grid spaces: a heart with four arrows coming out of it. This indicates that the boss’ heart is somewhere in an adjacent space, so start looking!

There are more bosses that employ tricks like this, so stay alert, fight smart like you usually do, and you should be able to come out on top.

That’s all for Card of Darkness! If you have any other tips or tricks to share, let us know in the comments below!