Lord of Verminion Guide

Lord of Verminion Guide:

A lot of people are asking for help with Lord of Verminion (LoV) so I thought I would make this small little guide to help players understand this game.

N.B: This does not cover controller controls, so I cannot comment on them.

Contents:

1.1 - Selecting your minions
1.2 - Cost and Strengths
1.3 - Abilities
1.4 - Tips
2.1 - The Battlefield UI
2.2 - Movement
2.3 - Combat

1.1 Selecting your minions:

The first thing to do is to create a "deck" of minions that you may want to summon in the game. This is found in the "Gold Saucer" tab of the "Character" menu. You will want a decent balance of minion types with various strengths and abilities.
When selecting minions try and select as few as possible while covering what you need to. This will allow you to be quicker in identifying the minions since there won't be an absurd of small little icons.

Tip: When dragging your minions onto your hotbar divide them into types going from left to right: Poppet -> Monster -> Critter with Gadgets being placed on the side. Try to keep a gap in between in set as this will further allow for quicker differentiation. This will help in the early stages identifying what type is strong against what as this is the strength chain.

The first thing to know is the minions type which is found in the top right. The line below this gives the minion's stats. In order they are: Health, Attack, Defence, Speed, and how many minions are damaged when it auto attacks. A minion with low attack Might be better than a high attack minion if several minions are talking the damage as opposed to one at time. On the next line there are two sections: Cost and Strengths

1.2 Cost and Strengths

Cost is simply how many points are used in summoning the minion. You have a maximum of 240 points each game so being aware of the costs is important. Similar to stats, higher cost minions generally have better stats and abilities than lower cost, but you get fewer of them which can result in an ultimately weaker board.
Also, your first summoning is limited to 60 points so piling high costs can give you a really slow start, while only going for small costs would prevent you from effectively using all your summoning points.

Next to the cost are Strengths. These relate to how well the minion damages structures on the board. A Yellow Icon means that the minion is effective at damaging the structure while a dim icon means that the minion is relatively ineffective.
In order, these icons mean: Gates, Search Eyes, Shield, and Arcana Stone. When a structure is destroyed it cannot be used for a time with exception of Arcana Stones which do not come back and if you lose them all, you lose.
Gates are where you will summon from, if one if destroyed then minions cannot be summoned from the gate. If all three gates are destroyed you won't be able to summon any minions until they respawn.
Search Eyes are structures that allow you to see your opponents minions and where they are. In higher level play denying this information is essential as you can start countering your opponents plays without them knowing.
Shields increase the defence of Arcana Stones.
Arcana Stones are basically your life, whoever loses all of theirs first

1.3 Abilities

Abilities are actions that every minion has access to that differentiates them from others of similar stats. In order to use an ability an Action Party must be formed. This is a fancy way of saying have 4 of the same minion in close proximity to each other. Minions will require Ability Points to use the action, which are acquired via minions fighting or interacting. I will cover execution of abilities later in 2.1 Battlefield UI.
The graph next to this shows the area that each ability will effect.

1.4 - Tips
• Try to select minions that interact well with each other. Some minions buff only themselves when a similar minion may buff everyone.
• Diversify. Included minions of different types with different costs so that you can always have an option.
• Included minions that have the ability to destroy structures. It will take forever to destroy much if you don't.

2.1 - The Battlefield UI
We have covered the function of Gates, Search Eyes, Shields, and Arcana Stones, so I won't talk about them anymore.
At the start of the battle you will have a few seconds to make a starting force. On the play screen there is a hud that displays the minions that you selected as well as two buttons and a section with A, B, and C.
The buttons are used for abilities (large red) and activating set traps (smaller blue). The A - B - C section allows you to select which of your three gates are active. The active gate is the one that a minion will be summoned on when you select it from the bar. You can queue up several minions on each gate, but they will only be summoned according when they were input.

Example:
You have queued three units on Gate A then clicked on the B to switch the active gate to Gate B, then clicked some more minions. The three minions that were queued for Gate A will be summoned before the minions that were queued into Gate B will be summoned.

The three lane bar on the left of the screen shows the current order your minions will be summoned and into which lane they were selected. By clicking on a minion in this area you can cancel it being summoned, and the queue will move along to the next one in the order.

On the right there is a feature that allows you to see what minions you currently have and can be switched to show what you opponent has, making it a lot easier to build counters. Furthermore, when looking at your minions on this screen sometimes you will see "!!". This indicates that particular minion has enough AP to use its ability. If four of the same type of minion have !! and are in proximity, you can use the ability.

2.2. - Movement

The tutorial does a good job of introducing movement, though there a few shortcuts that you can be aware of. If you double click on a selected minion you can select all of the same minions.
Try to anticipate your opponents actions as there is a bit of delay between input and execution. There are no rally points or waypoints so be prepared to do a lot of moving between minions to move them where they are needed, and to the gates to send your minions into battle.

2.3 - Combat

Combat is handled through auto-attacks. Enemies that are in proximity of each other will automatically attack the closest enemy to it. This occurs while moving as well so chasing is an option. That being said, chasing has to be done manually. When you click and enemy to attack it just moves the minion to that place instead of moving the minion to wherever the minion that you wanted to attack is going to.

Summary:

There is a lot of things to do but don't be discouraged. This will take time to learn. For who get anxious just remember that the other person isn't going to care about you. No matter what you do in a few minutes you will longer exist in their mind.

Also, losing is good. Be happy to lose, it's part of the learning experience. It means that you are trying new things and from that you are getting better.

Hope this guide helps and let me know if I have missed anything or need to clarify something better.