Pox Nora

Pox Nora

37 ratings
#1 Getting started on PoxNora
By MentalMoles
If you have just completed the tutorial and wondering what next? I hope this will help to get you started.

I am planning to do something a bit more in depth soon, possibly on Youtube so I can demonstrate what i'm talking about, but this will be a basic guide to point you in the right direction in the meantime.

Who am I?: I have been playing PoxNora almost since its release, since around mid 2007, in that time I have been an experienced player and moreso a community guru, having many Youtube videos of PoxNora posted and streaming some dev Q&A's with the new developers of PoxNora, I also host regular community tournaments with prizes.
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Troubleshooting
If you are having problems loading the game here are a couple of common solutions to those problems.

Make sure you have the most uptodate version of Java installed (remove older versions)

If your client won't load try reloading it by right clicking and Run as Administrator

If your client still doesn't load, try going to http://www.poxnora.com/download.do and download the non-steam version of the client

If you are still having issues, go to the PoxNora Forums and create a thread in the bugs forum - http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?forums/bug-reporting.6/

If you still cannot play the game at all, try sending Senshu a private chat on the forums - he is the PoxNora Community manager and will do his best to resolve your issues.
First Steps
The first thing i'd say if you are confused, or unsure where to go next is to ask somebody for help. There is a lot of friendly helpful people on PoxNora that are willing to put time into helping resolve issues, answering your questions and helping you improve at PoxNora. I do hope to be answering some of your questions within this guide though!

Consider joining a guild! There are a few good helpful guilds, I host one myself specifically made to help new players progress and improve within PoxNora to apply click here: https://www.poxnora.com/guilds/apply.do?i=3229
Gaining Gold
PoxNora used to have a reputation for being a "Pay to win" game, however this has changed! You can now build good basic decks very quickly and cheaply and eventually build many competitive decks without spending a penny. To make the most of this Gold pay attention when you login to your dailly goals - you can gain around 2-3000 gold per day just by completing these goals and doing the dailly skirmish.


Did you know? You also now get free runes just for playing games, so go to single player or the battlegrounds and try out some training games, you may well get crushed at first, but its a learning experience! If you are being beaten badly in the battlegrounds, try asking the other player what you are doing wrong and how you can improve - many existing Pox players really want to help you learn the game!
What to do with your gold? (Marketplace accessable top left of Pox Client)
This is something I hope to cover in more detail in the future, but for now, I can assure you the best option is to buy Extended set Boxes and Extended set packs, these runes are worth more on the rune Forge (which i'll explain soon) and are generally more runnable runes. Buying the boxes is your best value, but of course you can buy less often and it can take time to build up enough gold for a box, so you are probably better starting off buying the Extended Set Packs to get your collection started.


Consider buying an Avatar for your favourite faction - the avatar levels up and becomes more powerful than an ordinary shrine. The Avatar also comes with a Warbanner which is a Relic that you can have in your deck to buff all champions you have on the field, it is considered a staple in most Full Faction Battlegroups.

Building your first deck
Building your first deck:

Building a battlegroup on PoxNora is one of biggest features, there is a lot to this but i'm going to explain only the basics in this guide, to help you build your first battlegroup!

Choose a faction

There are 8 Factions in PoxNora click this link for the lore on each faction so you can pick your favourite! https://www.poxnora.com/factions/viewfactionprofile.do

Choose a theme within a faction

There are hundreds of themes, and while you don't have to stick to one theme for a deck (the options are limitless) it is a good way to build your first deck so you can get used to the game. I'm going to start by mentioning my favourite Faction and Theme - Ironfist Stronghold and Dwarves, to view all the cards filtered into Ironfist Stronghold and Dwarves go to this link: https://www.poxnora.com/factions/viewfactionprofile.do and select the drop down boxes for Faction and Race.

Champs, Spells, Relics and equips?!

Many new players find all the different elements quite confusing, especially when building a deck - to give you a rough idea, most decks usually include 16-18 champions, 1-3 Relics, 1-2 Equips and the rest as spells. This gives you a good balance and i'd strongly advise on sticking to those numbers for your first deck.

Which cards are good?

This is a very difficult question to answer as there is literally thousands of cards and a LOT of them are very runnable. I'd advise looking at champions with efficient Nora Costing, notice each champion has a nora cost above its head usually ranging from 50-100. Most champions fall into roles which i'll try to explain in a more in depth guide in future, but for now think fighters and supports, you generally want to have 3-5 support champions maximum and the rest as fighters - at least in the beginning.

How to make the deck?

You can look at the cards you own and create decks all within the client, simply click the Rune Manager link in the top left corner of the client, there is no limit to the number of decks you can create so get creative, but for your first deck i'd advise on keeping it simple. Press create deck and put the cards you want to use into the deck once the deck is full, you will be able to que up for games with it immediately.


If you are lacking cards for the faction and theme you want to use but have others left over from packs, look below for the explanation of the Rune Forge.
The Rune Forge (Accessable via the client, link is in the top right corner)
So after you have gotten your first bunch of runes, either as rewards or from packs you will be able to cash in on the runes you don't want - by forging them. This gives you Forge credits which you can then use to create a card of your choice. This is the best way to start creating your first deck.

How do I know what to get?

First decide which runes you want to try in a deck, a good tool to decide which runes to run in a deck, is by using a website called http://www.poxbase.com - To follow through on the earlier example of Ironfist Stronghold and Dwarves, to view all Dwarves click this link http://poxbase.com/race/22 PoxBase allows you to build a prospect deck on their website without owning the cards. Which makes it a lot easier to plan which cards you are going to need.

Once you have the deck known and just need to obtain the cards?

Once you know what you want, look to the top right corner of the client, there is a link for the Rune Forge, there you can sell the cards you don't want and buy any card available, once forged you will be able to add this card to your decks. (Note: It is often cheaper to obtain runes via trading website http://www.poxbox.com than by using the forge, so consider both)

Trading
Trading is a very complex subject that could use a whole guide of its own, so i'll only be warning you and mentioning the absolute basics here!

PoxBox

Most players of PoxNora use the website http://www.poxbox.net for all their trading needs, it is a privately run PoxNora card shop that allows you to trade your cards, for cards they have in stock, it is an immediate bidder on your trades once you submit, and very easy to use. It is safe and gives you a good guideline of what runes are worth! This will often be cheaper than using the Rune Forger!

WARNING:

Certain runes on PoxNora can be hard to obtain and therefore valuable, most notably limited edition runes and Legendary runes, do not trade these away unless you are sure you are getting a good deal, there are some people that will try to rip off new players to get good runes cheap, don't let that be you! Look at the value of a rune on PoxBox before deciding whether you are being offered a good deal.

Beware of people offering real money for runes, it could be a scam.
Summary
Thanks for reading my guide, I really hope it helped you out getting started, Feel free to leave comments or questions and I will do my best to get back to you.

Again, if you would like to join my guild please click here to apply: https://www.poxnora.com/guilds/apply.do?i=3229

I often stream and upload PoxNora videos to youtube, my twitch channel can be found http://www.twitch.tv/poxnora_live and my youtube channel can be found http://www.youtube.com/poxreplays

Most existing PoxNora players will be using the PoxNora forums rather than the steam forums, so make sure you check out the PoxNora forums to get involved with the community: http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php
12 Comments
Lupo 17 Mar @ 3:18am 
is this still viable?
Barnaby 1 Sep, 2022 @ 12:38am 
great guide :)
Sadistic Sweety 31 Mar, 2018 @ 6:38pm 
Thank you very much for this guide! Always nice to have helpful players around. Much appreciated! :Like_Yellow:
orz57 15 Jan, 2017 @ 5:51am 
I loaded the game thru Steam yesterday and the tab at the top that shows Rune Manager, Forge etc is not there. Any ideas?
Sharif 8 Feb, 2015 @ 10:44pm 
Excelent !
QueenOfSheba 12 Jan, 2015 @ 1:57pm 
Yes it opened once I completed a skirmish thanks :)
MentalMoles  [author] 11 Jan, 2015 @ 4:42pm 
@queenofsheba If you have yet to visit www.poxnora.com go there and login to your account, then hover over the rune manager tab and you'll see an option for the forge there.

I'm imagining that the reason you aren't immediately seeing the Forge on the client is because the link may not show up until after a certain stage of the tutorial. (note: you can press escape and skip tutorial to open up all options within the client)
QueenOfSheba 8 Jan, 2015 @ 2:56am 
Hi I do not have link to anything like runeforge or rune management on steam client or client I downloaded from pox nora site. Is this intended or am I bugged do you think?
MentalMoles  [author] 17 Oct, 2014 @ 12:30pm 
Wegar, click the link above and apply - we have lots of other new players adjusting to the game also!
Lupo 17 Oct, 2014 @ 5:13am 
nice one, i want be on your guild to learn more of this awesome game :)