Again here is the Wiki part about the Poker. This is highly recommended ofc to get to know about Poker battles in EW.

https://loveofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Walkthrough

When a table (board) is finished, there are 8 lines of cards which cross the 9 (=3x3) cards in the middle (lines are 3 horizontal, 3 vertical, 2 diagonal). And there are 4 “border lines” (2 horizontal, 2 vertical). Btw I call them lines, coz the term “hand” is already used for the cards the players (MC and enemy) hold in their hand.

When you (or the enemy) create a line of 5 cards, this may contain one or two Pairs, a 3s (3 of a kind), a Straight … up to a RF (Royal Straight Flush).

Border lines are not created directly. Borders are empty at start and will be filled while players place their cards on them.

It is highly recommended that YOU fill the border lines and that you do NOT leave them to the enemy. If you trigger gems 8 times or more out of 12 (including border lines), then your chance to kill the monster (M) early is very high.

Ok, lets see how to do that.
I guess everyone agrees, that a good start to go into the end-game of a table is to have a 3-3 situation. This means, there are 3 cards on the horizontal border and 3 on the vertical border (or the other way round). There are 3 kinds of 3-3 situations:

T = middle cards on table .. X = border cards . O = empty

A - after 6 turns…………........…..B - after 5 turns……….........….…C - after 4 turns

O X X X O…………….………………..X X X O O…………………….……….X X O O X
X T T T X……………………………….X T T T X……………………………….O T T T O
X T T T X……………………………….X T T T X……………………………….X T T T X
X T T T X……………………………….O T T T X………………………………O T T T O
O X X X O………………..……………O O X X X……………….…..…………X X O O X


Normally 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th turns are yours, in between are the ones of M (Monster). Corner placements of cards count double, coz they increase the horizontal as well as the vertical number of border cards.

If you find the first kind of 3-3 situation (A), then you better discard the 7th turn (or even better: Stun the M with Lightning, like described in the guide for gems). After that, M will fill in one corner (4-4), MC succeeds to get the other corner. With a final 5-5 he gets all of the 4 borderlines.

Third situation (C) is similar: 5th turn - discard (or stun), M does a 4-3, MC does a 5-3, M the 5-4 and MC the final 5-5. All borderlines for MC.

Second (B) is more difficult. With the next move (6th turn), M will probably fill in the empty corner, creating a 4-4. You get a 5-4 (two borderlines) with the 7th turn and M the 5-5 (the last 2 borderlines) with the 8th turn.

Discarding does not help here, but stunning in the 7th turn would definitely help. In that case you get 2x 2 borderlines.

Stunning not always works (dependent on gems, we will talk later about gems). Therefor situation B is somehow risky. To avoid that, one might prefer the situations A or C. Means you look out to have either no or all corners filled before the end.

I guess that’s all about card placing.

Sometimes you will place a lower line (like a 3s instead a 4s or a SF) to stun the enemy. With good timing you avoid to let him hit you multiple times.

On the other hand there might be situations when it is even better to let M take 2 borderlines (hopefully not all 4), when you have an advantage through this. If you are strong, Ms borderlines will not kill you (at least not always). You will never be killed anyway, but when you lose a fight you have to run and have to leave EW early. Take the strongest M at the end of an EW visit.

If you see that you most possibly will kill a M with the next move, then borderlines are irrelevant anyway.

Or you have a rare possibility to deal a huge amount of damage, which is higher than the borderlines M gets after that, then go and get it.

A word about the card lines (or hands, as some say):

In standard Poker games, there are no Jokers at all, or – if there are – they are limited to 2.
In LoM Poker, in long fights there might come a point where there are more Jokers than other cards.

This comes because Molly is very busy to bring Jokers into the game, and when a table is cleared and a fresh one placed, all these Jokers are still in the game. My most extreme experience was 8 of 9 cards on the table were Jokers, and 5 Jokers in my hand, with Mollies move still available.

One backlash about this is, that the M also has lots of Jokers in his hand, and still gets new ones. And he will use the Jokers on the table in the same way as you do. This might be overwhelming specially the easy and casual players (who may ask for Mollies 5 Jokers as much as possible).

On ultra it is advisable to not overuse Molly. A high tier M with lvl8 or lvl9 gems and lots of Jokers - hitting a RF at you is not very funny. And find strategies to finish a fight soon (max 3 tables).

Let’s see how card lines with lots of Jokers are counted: Most extreme line is 5 Jokers. These stand for A K Q J 10, which is a RF (highest possible line in LoM).

4 Jokers and a 10 or above are also a RF, coz the highest Joker stands for an Ace. 4 Jokers with a 9 or below is a SF.

To get a SF with 3 Jokers you need 2 cards of the same suite, being 4 steps apart (or less). Could be a RF, if one of the Jokers stands for an Ace.

To get a 5s, you need 3 Jokers and 2 cards of the same value, or 2 Jokers plus 3 cards of the same value, or 1+4.

The minimum you can get with 3 Jokers is a 4s. Just a single non-Joker card is needed.

Another hint: Look out what cards the M has in his hand. Mostly you can see 3 of them. If he has – let’s say – 2 Kings in his hand and there are 2 Kings in line on the table , M will most probably line up 4 Kings, hitting you with his 4s gem. That’s most undesirable. 😉

Don’t just look into your hand and at the table. Look into the Ms hand too. Block what he is planning to do, even if this means that you do not place the best line you could do in this situation.

Fortunately, Droid created the Poker in a way that we can see most of Ms hand. Use this to your advantage.

Also look into the Wiki to see the skills of your enemy before or while you are fighting him. After a time you know all his skills (gems) by heart.

If the M has lots of attack (Rage /Cluster combo) you will need some shield. If he has high Shield gems, you may use Pierce. If he has Poison (MinoLord, Spiders), better block his possibilities to use his Poison gems before the table clears. With Poison it is possible that both will lose.

When you place your cards on the borders of the table, look out to create high tier border lines during the whole game.

If there is an Ace in the top border and you have an Ace in your hand you want to place, put it beside the Ace on the table. If there are only 2 Hearts in the low border, put your Heart beside them.

Assuming you are quite sure that you will get all the border lines when the table is cleared, then you will do a 5-fold attack with max effect.

At start, don’t forget to go to Katies gym asap. She has some gems as a gift for you. And Chloe will gift you a Fire3, when you ask her about gems. But be sure to have CHR 6 before you do. Otherwise, this chance is gone. Chose “There’s a minor wrinkle in your plan…” to get this gem.
Put your gems into your “gem-suit”, then you can use them in the fights against Ms.

At start there might be the paradox situation that – although a 4s is valuated higher than a 3s, you may prefer a 3s, coz in the 3s slot you have a good gem and in 4s slot you haven’t yet. Just look out which gem you have in which slot, before you decide about the cards you place on the table and what card line you want to create.

At day 12 and later you can buy gems from Adrian in the Uni Library. A Diamond4 (does pure damage, 100£) and a level 2 gem (Diamond or Lightning, 50£) are good choices.

As soon as you have enough money, a Diamond7 is quite helpful for the 4s slot (250£). But don’t be overhasty, keep some little money for gifting girls.

In the beginning, in your first couple of fights in EW, you will have to go with the gems you have. That might be quite a mixture of many different ones.

There will be lots of gems coming when you kill Ms in EW. Sort them into the gem slots, according to the probability a card line will come. The probability for 4s is quite low, but with Mollies Jokers, 4s will come often, may be much more than other lines.

Earn lots of money, but collect it, coz you do not know what you will find. There are even lvl 8 gems in EW, rarely, but they are. Save your money until you know what important gems you will need after collecting a lot of gems in EW. And decide about your strategy.

When you have collected a decent gem deck, you may think about different strategies with different gem decks. There are 3 columns available: I, II, III.

When you have chosen an M in EW, you can use the skills of your allies first. Then click the gem button (top left) and chose your gem deck (I to III). Within the deck you still can replace and move single gems as much as you want. E.g. replace Ice gems against an Ice Elemental.

After you have placed your first card line, gems still can be looked at, but cannot be touched.

Entering EW, there are lots of different events.

Shrines: There are some story building events. And sometimes you will find some ingredients, or gems or little money, but Bella will not be able to help in shrines.

Rest (at the campfire): Some story building events (upgrading of allies, or at least some events who explain the different characters more, for better story understanding).

Very important: If your HP are down, you can (partly) regenerate them.

Bella is also very useful while your team is at the campfire. She is able to lead you for another 5 moves in EW. Having 15 moves instead of 10 is quite a difference, 20 instead of 15 (with X) is still useful, but less (in %).

Treasures: Here Bella will help finding (special) ingredients, as soon as she is available.

Monsters: Look out if you are strong enough for the M which you are encountering. Some of the high-level M, you will meet much sooner than you can handle a fight against them. Specially on Ultra! Keep the heavy ones for the end of one visit in EW. You still can shuffle all cards if you prefer, and hope for “more acceptable” ones.

Back to gems. At start, you have to make the best out of what you have, what you get as loot, and what you can buy with the little money you have. Read in the Wiki about the qualities and details of the gems. Get to know about the different effects. Change gems and slots. Experiment.

Some ppl are totally fond of Lightning like Torman. Having a full Lightning deck will stun most M for a long time and quite often. Backside of this is: Time between stuns is increasing: 4, 10, 20, 30, 40, … And the primary damage is not really high, while there is no secondary damage (like with fire and others), beside the stunning effect. This means, if you cannot kill the M soon, it will be a long and tight fight against high tier Ms.

Tbh, I never was fond of pure lightning. When I tried, the results were not really good. But ofc everyone has his own experiences.

I wished, that there were some M with immunity against Lightning (beside Lich and Dragon, who are scripted). But I can understand that Droid will not touch book1 again, to avoid the risk of breaking something which is working right now. Demons could be tough fighters, if they were immune against Lightning e.g.

Much better than pure Lightning I like Droids suggestion to make a Poison /Lightning combo. Poison is very effective and strong, but MC should survive until the end of the table. To keep the M from hitting you, throw in a few lightnings and keep him poisoning. Like that, until the end of the table, most strikes come from you (if not all). Lightning doesn’t wear out as soon as in a pure Lightning deck and Poison will hit double (primarily at once, and secondarily at the end of the table).

Poison works around shields, killing M even if his shield is still there (and the other way round ofc).
Be aware of Ms with Poison (Spiders). If you are glad to kill them at the end of the table, it may happen that you both lose coz of the Poison on each side. M might be killed, but you do not get your reward for it, coz you lost too and have to run (=EW visit is finished). Best would be to finish him (her?) before the end of the table, but this is easier said than done mostly.

A deck with some Ice, or even a full Ice deck may also work quite well. Ice got some decent buffs lately (ok MC is the Winter King, like that Ice fits). But you cannot rely on it alone, coz quite a lot of monsters are immune against Ice.

Ice reduces the damage of the one who is frozen. Meaning some counterattacks have low or even no effect at all.

Next gem is Rage. It is really effective and fast, but also extremely dangerous for MC himself. Why? There is a backlash.

With Rage the attacker gets all his actions buffed up heavily, even when using defensive ones like shield gems. And Rage is stacking to an extreme extend. And … - … Rage hits the attacker himself (10% of every Rage attack, never forget that!).

This means, one has to watch out not to kill himself while attacking. That is specially the case when the attacker has 5 attack moves in one turn (one normal and - after filling the table - 4 border lines).

But no worry, I had my Rage stacked up to over 1000 without killing myself. But it is very risky. I warned you. 😉

If you are not afraid of the backlash, there is even a way to triple the risk: I am talking about the Rage /Cluster combo.

Cluster alone is much inferior to a Diamond (pure damage). But if you have some Rage stacked, Cluster triples the Rage effect. This means, if you have Rage stacked up to 1000, and you have a cheap Cluster in your Pair slot, even this little gem will trigger the full tripled stacked Rage. You will hit the M with 3000 in one strike (backlashing 300!).

On first sight, it looks against logic that a Pair is able to trigger the most possible damage.

But: 1st you have to prepare for that – stacked Rage is needed, using (high tier) Rage gems over some time.
2nd the risk to kill yourself is the higher, the more stacked Rage is involved.

On the one side, you will kill a M quite fast, on the other side, you have to think about some defense.

Dylan with Regen and 50 healing might be not enough against high tier M. Same with Emilie’s shield.

Shield gems are helpful. With Shield you are on the safe side. But don’t overdo it. You can stack up thousands of them, but a turn with casting Shield is a turn without attack (beside the Rage attack, which is working also while casting shield).

Once I had a Shield8 in the 4s slot.
The 4s, with lots of Jokers, came so often, that in the end of a fight, I had 24000 shield. M was a Golem with 12000 HP, and he was casting plenty of Shield himself, thousands of Shield. It took me more than 12 tables to kill him, although I tried to avoid the 4s as much as I could. With a Rage8 in the 4s slot and Shield somewhere else, I never needed more than 3 tables against this Steel Golem (2 tables against a Hellion Captain).

What other gems do we have?
Fire does decent damage and stacks up well over time (only -10% decreasing per turn, Ice is -30%). It works fine. Specially in the beginning you will fight with some Fire gems coz you will find them easily. And when you are lucky to find a Fire8 in EW, you might use that gem for a long time. Some Ms are immune against fire.

Piercing: Like the name sounds, piercing breaks shields. They work like diamonds, having pure damage without secondary effect, but less of it. But on Shields, the damage is tripled.

I use Pierce rarely coz other gems break shields anyway (just take a little more time). Pierce may be useful against M who cast lots of Shield themselves and are able to stack it up a lot. Steel Guardian with 12000 HP is such an example.

A word about Shield gems:
Every time you hit the M, and every time M hits you, your Allies recharge their skills. The harder the hits, the higher the recharging. When you (or M) cast Shield, then there is no hitting (unless there is some stacked Rage in the play). That means, without (or with low) hitting, there is no (little) recharging of Allies. This may be essential in the fight, coz without their contribution, you are much weaker (having less Jokers e.g.).

Therefore, if I have Shield gems at all, I prefer a high tier Shield gem over multiple low ones. This means: less turns without recharging of the Allies.

These are all the gems in the Poker of book1.

Don’t forget to visit Adrian in the Uni Library from time to time. Sell some superfluous (double) gems and buy the ones you need, but did not find in EW.

You can work with 2 or 3 gem decks for different strategies (I, II, III) and chose the one you will fight with against a certain M, before you move your first card.

I personally prefer to use just one deck. This means I have more gems left to sell.

The Guide LoM Part 4 is for those who did more than well on Ultra. For those who still want more challenge.