Last edited August 21, 2020 (6:00 AM)

Welcome to this guide for the Dragon Clan. GAMERSSSSSS I have been awake for 36 hours

While all other heroes have day or night affinity, which gives them an extra dice on odd or even turns respectively, Dragon Clan members have rot affinity.

They don't get any extra dice, but don't suffer dawn damage from rot infection. Additionally, if a Dragon Clan member is in a rot battle with an opponent more rotten than themselves, that opponent will receive two less rot die than usual.

No dawn rot damage is a great perk. The main drawback for most other heroes when they get infected is bleeding away loads of health over the course of the game. Dragon Clan members can accumulate rot almost guilt-free because of this.

The -2 rot dice for opponents perk doesn't mean much when you go for rot victories. If your opponent gets 8 rot dice instead of 10, they're still going to kill you. However, it lets you have a kind of "rot allowance." Bane Blades, Reaper's Tridents, Poppets, and Marauder Gauntlets are amazingly powerful equipment that some heroes may choose to forgo out of fear for the rot dice they will give the king should they fight, not to mention the constant dawn damage. Dragons can equip one or two of these items "for FREE" as long as they stay below 3 rot, which will prevent their opponents from gaining any extra dice.

Unfortunately, this means that if you do not gain any rot during the game as a dragon, you are wasting potential. Every other hero is getting extra dice every other turn, and you're getting nothing. Think twice before burning away those rot spells, because they might be your only chance to use your clan bonus.

For purchasing the Dragon Clan DLC, you get this lewd looking thing. What's it do?

• Walking onto a settlement terrorizes it, lighting it on fire.
  
• When you successfully terrorize a settlement by walking onto it, you gain 1 Gold, 1 Rot, and lose 1 Prestige.
  
• Incite Revolt does not trigger this effect.
  
• Any effects that remove you from the tile before your movement "ends" (namely Welcoming Party, or dying to a Mercenaries peril or other damaging peril) will prevent the settlement from being terrorized and you from gaining the bonuses.
  
• You can not claim settlements by walking on them, but Emissary can still claim settlements for you.
  
• Walking onto a settlement with a merchant, such as Biff's Black Market or Roxy's Recruiting will terrorize the settlement before you can visit the merchant. Merchants are useless to you.
  
• Walking onto a settlement that is already terrorized has no effect.

I wanted to give this amulet its own section, because after using it liberally with most of the Dragon Clan and other heroes, I'm going to take a controversial opinion: This amulet is a honeypot. That is, its a trap.
Many people, myself included, took one look at this amulet and saw FREE ROT.
As you can see from this very fair and not at all cherry-picked data, Ruin doesn't actually do as much as you might think it does. In practice, you're more than likely just going to feed prestige to your opponents as they recapture the settlements you visit. Honestly ask yourself: How many times do you capture a non-terrorized settlement in a game of Armello? How many of those happen in the early game when you can benefit from corruption quests? I may not be the MOST skilled player, but I'm willing to guess that it's probably less than 8. If you want to try for a Rot Victory, taking either of the other two rot amulets (or just a stat amulet) will still allow you to have prestige as a fallback option, and Decay will also let you have spirit stones as a fallback. EVEN IF you don't care about versatility and adaptability (you should) and you want to forgo all other options in favor of rot (you shouldn't) Ruin STILL might not be the best choice. Spoil gives you two extra rot immediately, which gets you 40% closer to reaching the all-important corruption threshold. Once corrupted, you can start offsetting damage by killing things and take rot quests to speed yourself along towards out-rotting the king and any other players attempting to play the rot game.
You may think:

Originally posted by "stupid dumb idiot strawman":

"Well, it's still good. My hero can't mill the spell deck very well so Ruin is a great way to guarantee myself some more rot!"

Wishful thinking. Remember, the map is randomly generated. You may only see two or three settlements on the other side of the map. You may go the entire game only capturing a single settlement, or less! If you waste your turns running after settlements, you're going to be disappointed when one of the three other warrior-heroes waltzes into the palace after completing all their quests while you're still on quest number 2.
Is there ever a good time to take Ruin? Objectively, probably not. But subjectively it can be useful. Bots, for example, love nothing more than to waste their turns capturing your settlements. So against bots, or humans that place too much importance on settlements, it can be useful if you want to force rot. Technically that makes it a counter to Mercurio, too: He can't steal your gold if you have no settlements [overused thinking-man maymay.jpg]

Sulfur -- Negates swamp damage. The closest another ring has ever come to rivaling Celestite. You don't realize how much damage you're taking from swamps until after you've used this ring.Basalt -- Gain stealth on dungeons and first rolled sword is poisoned. Kind of like the Rat Clan's Black Opal, except slightly more useless because dungeons have nasty perils 24/7 and rolling a sword isn't guaranteed to happen late enough to actually poison someone, or at all.Axinite -- Gain +1 dice in combat until the end of your next turn whenever you kill something in combat. This effect DOES NOT STACK, you will only ever get one extra dice from this ring. Still pretty nice for combat-based characters, but might make you miss sulfur.Cinnabar -- Gain a random magic card that costs 1 magic whenever you lose prestige. Interesting synergy with Ruin that any dragon can use. There aren't any 1-cost spell cards that dragons really want to have though, so I usually leave this one untouched.Tremolite -- Start with an extra Rot. Ending your turn next to a creature gives them +1 rot until the end of their next turn. Stacks with Spoil. Ideally, this will let you rush to corrupted status, and threaten opponents with an extra die against them in combat. Unfortunately, this can also lead to you giving rot to banes or other corrupted heroes, causing them to out-rot and kill you. Ending your turn next to another hero isn't always convenient, and one extra dice isn't much of a threat. You can combine this with the Intimidate amulet for shenanigans, but it isn't particularly effective.Serpentine -- When you complete a quest, lose 1 rot. If the rot is lost (meaning you completed the quest while infected) you gain three magic. Pretty awful compared to your other options, and you can only use it a grand total of 4 times per game, MAX. Compare this to the Bear Clan's Jade, which gives the same amount of magic every two turns as long as you're in a forest. If Serpentine activated its effect more often, it would be really useful for mage builds and while keeping you within your "rot allowance." In its current state, however, I can't recommend ever using it.

Sulfur, like its cousin Celestite, is what you will want to take to most of your games. It is consistently useful on every Dragon Clan member, save maybe for Agniya. Axinite is a good choice on both Agniya and Oxana. Basalt can come in clutch sometimes, but ending your turn on dungeons can waste a lot of AP over the course of a game unless you take Sprint, not to mention the chance to spawn a bane and waste AP and health in the ensuing fight.

Did you think I was going to make some kind of fart joke about Sulfur? Really? How old are you? We should be gassed that. Your scents of humor need refining. I'm just trying to tooter players who are new to the game, and you pass shade on me with this crap. Unbelievable. Next time I see you in game, I'm dumping all my smell cards on you.

You've heard of best for last, now get ready for worst for first! I dislike this hero quite a bit, I only had fun for one or two games while leveling him to 10, and all my victories felt like flukes.
Volodar's hero ability lets him enthrall banes after ending his turn next to them:

• Enthralled banes hold their position until they fight something.
  
• Enthralled banes will not attack you, but will still fight you if you try to move to their tile.
  
• Enthralled banes attack the first non-Volodar creature that walks within 1 tile. This includes king's guards.
  
• Enthralled banes return to their normal behavior after surviving a single fight.
  
• Enthralled banes do not have scout. Enemies can sneak by them with stealth or through forests at night.
  
• Enthralled banes only attack after a move action. They do not attack if you lose your forest stealth because it turns to day.
  
• You do not receive any bonuses if an enthralled bane successfully defeats or kills someone. No prestige for you.

Volodar, in my opinion, suffers from a terminal case of top-down design.

Originally posted by The evil pygmy gorilla that lives in the snack cabinet, whispering "ideas" to unlucky game developers:

So we've got this character, he's like, the prophet of the rot or something. Since that's kind of, uh, a religious topic in our game world, we should probably make him a mage. Yeah. So, low fight. Also he can't have high health, because that would overlap with our bear designs, so low health too. Oh uh, he's looking too much like Sargon and Twiss now, so let's just switch his wits and spirit stat. Oh right, hero ability... hmm... probably should do something with banes, because he's like, THE rot guy, right? Maybe he can like, control them and make them kill people? Eh, sounds kind of under-powered, people aren't that scared of banes. Let's make it so that he can like, summon tons of them at once. Nah too powerful... lets just make it in an area around him. Yeah perfect. Lets just ship it! Oh also, we're out of Doritos.

Volodar is a mage, in an anti-mage meta. In an environment where there are at least two fighters per game, you can't count on the other players dropping enough perils on them to slow all of them down. In fact, any other mages are just as likely to spam spells at YOU because you have low health and they can kill you.
This isn't the end of the world... for any mage character except Volodar. Notice how every mage has some kind of defense mechanism against fighters:

• Sana has high health to survive attacks, and her hero power lets her fight banes and the king for prestige and kingslayer victories.
  
• Ghor gets his wood armor.
  
• Sargon and Twiss have access to evade, and Sargon can selectively draw defensive items.
  
• Yordana can curse her threats away

What does Volodar have? He makes banes attack. Fighters don't care about being attacked by banes, in fact they welcome it. Every time you enthrall a bane, you're either A) Doing nothing because a king's guard is going to walk within range, or B) Feed another prestige point to one of the omnipresent fighter players. (Followed by getting murdered.)
Volodar's power also conflicts with his rot affinity.

Originally posted by Volodar:

"I'm a mage, right? I can mill the spell deck and get lots of rot. My rot affinity makes it nice to have rot because I have fewer drawbacks, and don't have to worry about my low health ticking down, and the rot will let me kill the king to compensate for my low fight."

Except one of the best ways to ensure you get enough rot in the late game is to kill banes. But you don't want to kill banes, because then you're not using your hero power. Why would you play a hero with no hero power?

Originally posted by Volodar:

Okay, maybe going the rot route on THE ROT HERO isn't optimal somehow. Maybe I'll go for more of a generalist build and use the summon bane cards I find for my hero power.

But wait, now you're gaining rot that you don't want by summoning all those banes. You can't go for a kinglsayer with all that residual rot, and you're wasting your rot allowance that you could be spending on potential rot treasures.

You see, Volodar's hero power becomes a kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. You can't really play around it, but you can't nobrain it like Horace either, because you're a mage. If you don't use your hero power, you may as well play Amber or Sana, who do similar things but have abilities you can probably use once per match or so.

Volodar might be viable if Serpentine was better. It's clearly made for him, being the only mage in the Dragon Clan. If Volodar could reliably lower his rot and receive magic for doing so, he could be a strong magical threat while keeping his rot allowance in check. But good luck getting to those quests to lower your rot while three fighters farm you and your banes for prestige. Even if Serpentine was better, you'd start dying to random perils and spells without sulfur because lol4health.

Volodar is so unpopular that the Devs don't even play him. He had a redeeming factor in that his Bell played a really cool sound effect, but that was broken shortly after release and now he uses Fang's sound effects for some unknowable reason. In fact, none of the dragons have working sound effects. sadge

The only times I had fun with Volodar was when I got my banes to kill people. This only happened about twice in the entire time I spend playing multiplayer matches as Volodar until he was level 10. Both victims were very new players with items that didn't help in combat, and the banes got lucky rolls. One disconnected and the other created an NMA shortly after dying.
Okay, I'm done whining. Let's move on to some builds and strategies.

Welcome to the fighter meta, get buff or get rekt. With Scratch and one or two fight quests, we can raise our fight stats into the "might hurt me back" category for other fighters. The only way we're going to survive long enough to stand a chance is to raise our fight and body stats and keep healthy on the journey with sulfur. Take fight and body quests, unless you see something really nice as a quest reward. Always be on the look out for rot treasures to use your rot allowance. Spend your starting gold on whatever equipment you can, then start drawing from the spell deck. Draw from the item deck again whenever you have spare gold to look for more equipment, and if you get lucky and get a good set (two armors and one utility or weapon), start drawing from the trickery deck instead. After your first or second quest, reevaluate your strategy. Did the game throw a couple spirit stones at you? Did it dump a bunch of rot cards and a rot treasure on you? Adapt your quest choices to reflect the options you've been given. Ironically, the "wormchanter" is pretty good at collecting spirit stones with his stat spread once you buff up your fight stat, so start chasing spirit stone quests if you think you can get all four. Did you get a rot treasure and a hand full of rot spells? Embrace it and go for rot like any other non-dragon would. Don't stop moving just to Enthrall banes, only do so when convenient or necessary.

or or or or Yeah baybee, we're going for rot. Is there another mage, Fang, or any hero that might take Ruin as one of your opponents? Go for Spoil. You don't want to find yourself with a dead weight amulet because your rival terrorized all the settlements before you could, and you can use Spoil to get corrupted faster and outpace them with rot quests. Feel like you keep getting whittled down? Take Decay. Decay will keep you plenty healthy while you sling rot around, and you can replace Sulfur with Tremolite since you have another source of damage mitigation. If you decide on Ruin, sulfur is best to keep you healthy, but if you're feeling saucy (or if stranger games gave you mirrored-min layout) you can take Cinnabar for the synergy or Tremolite for the memes. Again, spend your starting gold on equipment (prioritize armor) and then start milling the spell deck.

or or This build is just to try and make Serpentine work. Our goal is to spend an arbitrary, middling amount of rot (enough to exceed the regular "allowance," but not enough to become dangerous to the king) and get away with it. Take Fight or Soak and go for the generalist strategy, or take Decay for some extra healing. Spend any rot cards you get, but prioritize hurting other people rather than becoming more rotten yourself. Give some Dark Influence to a goody-two-shoes Fighter like Horace or Sylas. Plague your enemies. Forward the Call of the Worm to that 7-wits Barnaby. Spread the love of the rot to everyone you can, then finish your quests to get back down below 3 rot and receive more resources to mill the spell deck. If your enemies decide to give in to your temptations and become corrupted, your rot affinity should keep you from feeding them dice. Just try not to go too overboard, because if you exceed your 2-rot allowance you won't be able to step near anyone for fear of their retribution. Also, this strategy doesn't work, so don't try it.

• Don't
  
• Stranger games with bonus health is cool I guess
  
• Dire Banes maybe?
  
• Please reconsider

Pick any one of the following:

• Pick anything with a big weapon.
  
• Build a generalist with more fight, like you usually do.
  
• Get lucky and out-rot him. There's a 50/50 chance you can out-rot him with any mage character.
  
• Throw a few spells at him. He has Sargon's health problems and also cannot evade fighter damage without a ranger's cloak.
  
• Who cares, Volodar is a non-threat

Many first Impressions of Agniya were tempered by her "weird" stat spread. While she has very high starting health, She has a middling fight stat, poor wits, and average spirit. In practice however, it turns out that her hero power and a decent fight stat are all you really need to become an immovable object.

Agniya's hero power is Consecrate, which heals her for one health for two turns every time you kill ANY creature in battle. Note that you must kill them in battle; you do not get the bonus if you kill them with card effects. This effect STACKS, so once you get the ball rolling, Agniya becomes incredibly hard to kill. Trying to spam spells to weaken her? Too bad, she just healed it back in two turns or less. Think you can take her on in a fight? Better hope you can break through her giant body stat in one turn, or else she'll come back at you with full health the next. My favorite thing about this ability is how it turns king's guards and banes into health packs. It's so annoying to breach the palace at night and then have to fight off three or four kings guards the next morning, isn't it? Well, with Agniya, this becomes a positive experience because every guard you kill heals you. You might think you're a shoe-in for a prestige victory after bursting Agniya down to one health with spells while she's in the palace, only to be disappointed when she suddenly has full health before fighting the king. Play around Consecrate, and you won't be disappointed.

Agniya is rewarded for killing things, and this build enables that. Take every fight quest you can, so that you've got 7 fight after your fourth quest. If you need a larger hand, it's okay to take a wits quest instead of a body quest as long as you're okay with losing the quest reward. But make SURE to max out your fight. Draw primarily from the item deck to keep getting better equipment (Try to get two defensive items and one offensive item) and good burn fodder for your battles. It's also okay to draw from the spell deck occasionally if you run out of gold, since 3 spirit will let you naturally cast most spell cards. Use any offensive spell cards and throwing axes that you draw to weaken your opponents before fighting them, so that you're more likely to kill them.

Similar to Sylas, Agniya doesn't hate getting bounties because it causes king's guards to run after you and offer their lives without taking up your AP. Even so, don't intentionally give yourself bounties unless you need to force your way past a guard, because prestige victories are always a nice fallback option.

Treat your rot affinity purely as a rot allowance. If you manage to get a rot treasure, you can equip it guilt-free and begin using it to feed Consecrate. Agniya has trouble getting large quantities of rot because of her low wits and spirit, so try not to accumulate more than 2 rot.

This is a very risky build in which we try to get corrupted. The +1 health you get for killing things while corrupted stacks with Consecrate, which can make agniya an absolute tank if you can pull it off. However, getting Agniya corrupted is difficult because she can't mill the spell deck very well. If you're lucky with map generation, and opponent behavior, Ruin can get you just enough rot to outpace the king. Tremolite gives you a starting rot, and can still give you the extra dice for combat if you end your turn next to your opponent.

I've said bad things about Ruin in this guide, and I still believe those things. But if you REALLY want to force rot on a low-wits and low-spirit hero like Agniya, Ruin is really your only option. You will have to accept that you just cannot win some games because the terrain generation will screw you with this build.

You're forgoing even prestige victories when taking Ruin, but that has an interesting advantage for Agniya: You no longer need to feel bad about killing king's guards. If you can get some good equipment, bounties become just another way to get more health per turn. Remember to kill Banes as well to siphon their rot once you get corrupted.

Agniya thrives when there's lots of low-health opponents for her to "harvest." You won't see games like this very often because people like spamming fighters like Fang and Sylas, but even in games with other fighters Agniya can sometimes find success by farming guards and banes.
Your hero power will keep you healthy when enemy mages spam spells at you, and may just prevent them from even trying.

Unfortunately, like most fighters, you will have to fight fire with fire. Dangerous fighters like Fang, Sylas, Magna, and Horace won't help Agniya snowball. High-health mages like Sana aren't super appealing targets as long as they keep at full health. Ghor's damage blocking ability is a fantastic deterrent. And of course Twiss or any rat with Turquoise can frustrate her by simply not dying.

It's hard to keep Agniya down with spells, but she also has money problems. Trickery cards like Cat Burglar and Hoodwinked can cripple her momentum if timed well. Don't waste your Bounty cards on her as she doesn't hate fighting guards. And like all fighters, any cards that reduce her AP like Mercenaries or Wake The Trees can prevent her from completing her quests on time and breaching the palace.

Every DLC pack has had an easy-to-play Fighter hero, and the Dragon Clan has Oxana. She has high fight and body stats, and a decent starting wits stat. Her spirit is one of the lowest in the game, but spells are for nerds anyway. Your starting gold isn't bad by fighter standards either.

Oxana's hero power is Flagellant. Whenever you fight someone with spell cards in their hand, you will randomly destroy one, gaining its symbol for your own combat shelf and increasing your explode pool by its magic cost. This is especially nice for Oxana because it increases the limited explode pool she would otherwise have. Sounds pretty good, but very easy to counter play. If your opponents simply empty their hand of spell cards whenever you come near, your hero power is neutered. Your hero power is also useless against banes, king's guards, and the king himself. Even without your hero power though, your fight stats can easily carry you to a kingslayer victory.

One of the less obvious advantages of Oxana are the Dragon Clan's quests themselves. The fight and body quests of other clans, such as wolves and bandits, come with stiff penalties for failure such as -2 health or -1 prestige. Dragon clan fight and body quests, however, have much more lenient penalties, like -1 health or -1 magic. This maxes Oxana a slightly more reliable fighter despite Flagellant not being reliable.

Do not bother trying to get corrupted with Oxana. The benefits of corruption do not outweigh the difficulty of achieving it with such a low-wits-and-spirit character.

or or or This is just a standard build for most any fighter. Amulet choice is personal preference: Scratch if you like fighting, Soak if you want to weather more perils, and Think if you want the card draw and burn options. Ring choice is also preference; Sulfur will help you stay healthy while you run to all your quests, and Axinite can help enable a few rampages. Other than that, there's not much strategy here: Draw mostly from the item deck for equipment and burn fodder, with an occasional trickery if you can afford it. Take fight and body quests unless you see a useful reward from the wits quest. Run to all your quests and punish anything that stands in your path. Hold on to any Hot Rot Wines so that you can kill the king before the other players have a chance to react. Remember to try and find rot treasures so that you can use your two-rot allowance.

or This build is to enable Basalt. Oxana has the highest fight stat of all the dragons, so trying for those poison swords makes the most sense on her. The main problem is that the board generator doesn't usually sprinkle a ton of dungeons in optimal locations, so Sprint can help you regain some AP you might waste while trying to stay invisible. Otherwise, Scratch will just give you another fight dice to try and get that poison sword to connect. Follow the same strategy as the stock fighter build, but this time try to end turns on Dungeons in the hopes that you'll surprise a distracted mage. If you get lucky and have turn 1, you can run onto dungeons from a forest tile at night for some added deception.

Oxana punishes anyone with spell cards, so picking her against mages makes the most sense. Obviously, you'll never see a game with fewer than two fighters, so picking her just to counter a single mage player will probably be your only opportunity. Generalists will generally build fight instead of spirit when an Oxana is in the game, so try to pick her when you know your opponents are locking themselves into a spell-based play style.

She's a powerful fighter, but not quite as good in a fight as similar fighters with hero powers that don't rely on your opponents' behavior. Magna is a good example of this. Generalists can also build up their fighting stats to make themselves less appealing targets, while still pivoting to spells to blast her from afar. Even certain mages, like Ghor or a Sargon with Turquoise, can either avoid her onslaught or simply stay out of range.

Nazar is one of the most unique heroes added to Armello since launch. He's the first hero to feature a completely even stat spread, making him a true generalist, but has very low starting gold compared to other generalists.

Nazar's hero power is Deceiver. Every turn, after the drawing phase, you get the following card:
Playing Illusion creates an illusory clone of Nazar on the target tile. Some observations about the illusion:

• Illusion is a free bonus card. You get it in addition to your other cards, so none of your wits are used up on it.
  
• If you do not play or burn Illusion, it disappears at the end of your turn.
  
• Illusion can only be played on adjacent tiles.
  
• Illusions appear during your next move action on the same turn. If you end your turn after playing Illusion but before moving again, no illusion will appear.
  
• Illusions do not take damage from swamps, even without Sulfur equipped.
  
• Illusions do not play the coin flip animation when sent to dungeons.
  
• Illusions do not use AP, and can be sent to mountains regardless of the caster's AP.
  
• Illusions can not be controlled beyond sending them to the tile, so it's best to save the Illusion card until your last move every turn to make them more convincing.
  
• Illusions do not trigger "on turn end" effects like Intimidate or Tremolite.
  
• If an illusion is targeted by any card, the card will completely whiff. The resources required to play the card will be consumed, the card will have no effect, and the clone will disappear.
  
• If an illusion is sent to a non-palace tile with a peril, both the peril and the illusion will disappear. This can be used to bypass perils. Illusions can be sent to palace tiles, but will disappear if that tile has a peril, and the palace peril will not disappear.
  
• If you cast Illusion to a tile and then move to the same tile before the illusion appears, no Illusion will appear.
  
• Moving to a tile with an illusion will play an attack animation, but the illusion will disappear and no fight will take place. The attacker takes the illusion's tile afterwards.
  
• Illusions disappear at the start of Nazar's turn.
  
• Illusions receive stealth in forests at night.
  
• If Nazar becomes corrupted or a spirit walker, the Illusion will NOT receive the bonus visual effects.
  
• If Nazar's opponents follow him with the camera by clicking his portrait, the camera usually follows the illusion when it appears, assuming it isn't sent to a tile with stealth.
  
• Illusion can be stolen if Nazar fails a card-stealing peril such as Wandering Circus. There are screenshots of non-Nazar players successfully cloning themselves after this, but additional testing is needed to know if you need to play it before Nazar's turn ends, and if the illusion disappears at the start of Nazar's next turn or the caster's next turn.

This ability makes Nazar the most fun hero to play in the Dragon Clan DLC, in my opinion. When you pick Nazar, you are effectively stating:

Originally posted by Literally you, my dude:

I am smarter than the other three people in this game.

And when you actually are smarter, Nazar is hilarious.

Let's get into my favorite builds:

or

I've talked garbage about forcing rot in this guide, but I think that out of all the heroes in the dragon clan, Nazar is best suited for it. Why? Take a look:
That's a FREE worm symbol every turn! And once you're corrupted, you can burn it in battles for offense and an extra dice.So which should you choose, Spoil or Ruin? Nazar can play the spell game, sure, but I usually want to focus on my fighting stats so that I can threaten other heroes (watching them hide from illusions is VERY funny). Ruin may not work as quickly as spoil, but the potential for more rot late in the game has been the difference between being able to take a rot victory and being useless against the king. Spoil is a fallback option if you think there's another Ruin user in the game, so you don't fight over settlements and can farm them for prestige.

Sulfur is pretty much a requirement on Nazar. Without Sulfur, you lose a potential tile to send illusions to without it being painfully obvious. Keeping your health high will be important since you only start with 4.

Draw items until you run out of money, then spells until you have money again, and repeat. If you get amazing equipment, draw from trickery instead of items.

Take quests primarily based on rewards. Look for rot treasures and warlocks, or equipment that will be good in fights, like Royal Shield. If you don't see any good rewards, take fight or body quests. Once you get around 8 rot, think about breaching the palace. Remember, you've got a free worm symbol every turn, so you only need a tree and sword/shield or sun/moon. Always have burnable cards for the breaching process, don't attempt to breach by rolling your wits or spirit.

or or or or This time we're actually keeping our options open and playing to win. Amulet choice is preference: Scratch if there are lots of fighters that you need to posture for, Soak for lots of mages that might try to nuke you, Think if you want to mill the spell deck, and Feel if you want to get closer to naturally casting Crystallize or Syphon.

You should really take Sulfur every game as Nazar, but Basalt can have some funny moments where you catch an enemy unaware because they didn't consider you could be stealthed on a dungeon and they nuke your illusion. Just be sure to take Soak if you want to use Basalt, or you'll be dangerously low all game.

Do your best to adapt to the situation. Look for items when you can afford it, or go for spells and trickery to slow down your opponents. Playing generalists is hard because you need some game sense to know the best times to change your approach, but after a few games you should get the hang of it.

Once you get good equipment, look for opportunities to breach the palace early. You get a free worm symbol every turn, so you only need a tree and sword/shield or sun/moon to breach the palace. Look for cards to burn before you breach.

• Nazar does best against distracted opponents. Don't play him during Fury Friday or when Stranger Games enables Fury Mode, because your opponents are less likely to tab out while waiting for their turn.
  
• Mirrored-Min Stranger Games are nice for Nazar because they give him more opportunities for convincing Illusion plays.
  
• Nazar can adapt to almost any situation. Play him when you want to try and frustrate other people, especially mages or trickery-slingers that might accidentally waste a card on your illusion.

Pick any fighter. It doesn't matter if his illusion fools you, because you're probably just barreling through to your quest anyways. You won't waste cards on it because you won't be drawing from the spell or trickery deck very often.
Click Nazar's portrait to follow him on his turn. The camera usually follows the illusion.

If you're considering buying the Dragon Clan DLC, you should probably do it just for Nazar. Ruin isn't that consistently good. Volodar needs love. It's 6am and I've been up all night; I'm going to go sleep for 12 hours.