Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale [Beginner Guide]
Meteorfall: Krumit’s Tale [Steam] is inspired deck building card games like Slay the Spire and Dream Quest, but plays *very* differently. As a result, much of the conventional wisdom of how to play similar games doesn’t apply in Krumit’s Tale. This guide is aimed at helping new players get comfortable with the mechanics, and understand some of the basic strategies.
The Goal
The goal of each dungeon in Krumit’s Tale is to clear the dungeon of all monsters. When the dungeon begins, all the monsters that reside in that dungeon are shuffled with all the cards (items & abilities) in your deck, and then dealt out in a 3x3 grid. As items are acquired and monsters are slain, new cards drop down.
Thus, the core objective is to figure out how to use the items & abilities you’re dealt to defeat the monsters as they appear.
The basic gameplay loop to clear a dungeon is as follows:
- Identify enemies that can be easily defeated without any items or abilities (Skeletons, Gobloids, Peasants, etc... ). These are enemies where your starting attack is enough to defeat them after a couple rounds.
- Defeat these basic enemies to earn gold
- Use the gold to acquire items & abilities from the dungeon, which will allow you to defeat more powerful enemies
- Repeat, until you’ve defeated all of the enemies in the dungeon.
The trick, of course, is to figure out how to defeat all the enemies before running out of resources (health and gold).
*Everything* Is a Resource
This is probably the most basic and important concept in Krumit’s Tale.
Given that the goal is to clear the dungeon, consider:
- You can ‘spend’ health by fighting monsters to earn gold
- Gold can be spent to acquire items
- Tiles you don’t need can be discarded for health and gold
- Unused tiles at the end of the dungeon are converted to gems, which can be used to buy stronger items
You should always consider how to efficiently use health & gold in order to progress through the dungeon.
Consider a case where you need to obtain 1 gold. One way to do that is by discarding an item you don’t need. However, discarding an item is also worth 2 health. If you’re already at full health when discarding an item, you’re effectively ‘wasting’ 2 health worth of resources. Instead, considering fighting a weak enemy first, taking some damage, and then discarding the tile afterwards, to maximize the benefit you get from discarding it.
More Cards = Good
In most deck-building games such as Slay the Spire, Dominion, or Dream Quest, conventional wisdom in most cases is that having a small deck is good. This is because the game is designed around ‘cycling’ your deck, and so you want a small & efficient deck that you can keep running through.
In Krumit’s Tale, there is no cycling through your deck — your deck is dealt out along with the monsters to form the dungeon. Unwanted tiles can be discarded for health / gold. Therefore, unlike other deck-builders, having more cards in your deck is a *good* thing in Krumit’s Tale. Worst case, you can discard cards you don’t need for health & gold.
Take Advantage of Your Perks (and build your deck around them)
Every time you clear a dungeon, you’ll get to choose from perks — passive bonuses that bend the rules of the game. You might get a perk that shuffles extra potions into the dungeon, or a perk that makes all weapons deal +1 damage.
It’s worth thinking about which perks you have when adding items to your deck, and possibly even building your entire deck around them. One example is a perk called ‘Balanced’, which sets the cost of all abilities in your deck to 2. If you have low cost abilities (0 or 1 cost), this is a huge negative. However, if your deck revolves around high cost (3+ abilities), you can literally build your entire deck to take advantage of it.
This is especially true for the starting perks for the heroes, which help define their play style:
Bruno starts with a perk called ‘Sturdy’ which restores 2 health whenever he acquires an item that grants block. When acquiring an item, it makes sense to wait until you’ve lost some health, in order to make good use of the perk.
Greybeard starts with a perk called ‘Arcanist’ which deals 1 piercing damage to the top-most enemy in a column whenever he acquires a spell. This means that when acquiring an ability, it makes sense to choose an ability in the same column as an enemy you want to defeat, or possibly clearing an enemy so that you can deal the perk damage to an enemy below it.
Mischief is a challenging hero that has has to make up for lower attack with the ability to quickly one-hit KO enemies. While other heroes have 2 starting attack, Mischief has only 1 attack. However, she gains stealth against ‘solitary’ enemies (enemies that are alone in their row). This means that positioning is super important for Mischief. Stealth is a powerful buff that makes your attacks do additional damage and gives you ‘blitz’ (allows you to attack first)
Muldorf specializes in summoning minions. Minions can take the place of your hero in battle — taking a powerful hit in your place. His starting perk, Necrodude, causes enemies to spawn a Tombstone tile when they die. You can spend health to summon a skeleton minion from the Tombstone. Managing your health is super critical as Muldorf to make the most use out of Necrodude.
Be Efficient
As mentioned previously, everything is a resource — your health, gold, the durability of items you’ve acquired, etc… With any resource, it’s important to use it efficiently.
With that in mind, when fighting enemies and using abilities or your item’s durability, consider if you’re doing so efficiently. You don’t need to use powerful weapons to defeat basic skeletons — save those weapons for more powerful enemies where you need to defeat them quickly.
Unused items are converted into gems at the end of the dungeon, and gems can be used to buy more powerful items and abilities to add to your deck. When clearing a dungeon, using items and abilities efficiently means that you’ll receive more gems for unused items, meaning that you can afford to add better cards to your deck. Always keep that in mind when deciding whether or not to use items and abilities against enemies.
Replace Basic Cards
All heroes have some basic cards in their deck which make sense to replace at some point with more powerful or more efficient cards. In the case of Bruno, basic cards like Slash or Short Sword can be replaced with cards that are cheaper or more efficient. In the case of Greybeard, it may make sense to replace Icebolt or Scorch, depending on your strategy.
While having ‘more cards’ is always good, having the right cards is also important. Between dungeons, after buying cards, you can also remove (trash) cards from your deck. This is important, because you will be unable to proceed if your deck size exceeds the maximum value for your level. Consider removing basic cards and/or cards that don’t fit your perk / decks, in order to have an efficient and well-rounded deck.
Learn Monster Patterns
Learning the pattern of attacks that monsters have and building ‘muscle memory’ for how to deal with them will help you play faster, and get further. In Krumit’s Tale, monster attacks are completely deterministic. There is no randomization and there is no AI — the monsters always attack in exactly the same pattern.
For instance, with Bruno, many of the basic enemies can be effectively dealt with using Chainmail. Take the following example:
A Snotwulf has a ‘Blitz 2’ attack, meaning he attacks before the hero. On his second turn, he also has a ‘Blitz 2’ attack, which is another 2 damage. The hero will take 4 damage before the Snotwulf is defeated.
Using Chainmail however — Bruno will block the 2 attack. Because his block is equal or greater to the Snotwulf’s attack, the Snotwulf is stunned and missed his next turn. A single charge from Chainmail can completely neutralize this enemy.
Recognizing these patterns and coming up with efficient ways to deal with them will help you make quick work of dungeons.
Recognize Your Strengths
Each hero in the game has unique strengths and weaknesses.
Bruno is a very straight forward character. His deck is mostly about big weapons and big armor, going toe-to-toe with enemies. His deck doesn’t have a lot of fancy cards — it’s mostly about dealing damage and parrying enemy attacks.
Bruno suffers against enemy with high armor / block, such as Treants, Nukr0mancers, and Royal Guards. Bruno does have some cards such as Spear, Thrust, and Longbow which give him ways to deal Piercing damage to better deal with these types of heavily armored enemies.
Greybeard requires a lot more finesse than Bruno. He has a lot of direct damage abilities such as Fireball and Icebolt, which allow you to deal damage to any enemy without actually engaging them in combat. Greybeard’s ‘Arcanist’ perk and many of his area-of-effect (AOE) abilities require you to be much more thoughtful about where enemies are positioned. His ‘burn’ effect also makes positioning very important.
Unlike Bruno, many of Greybeard’s spells do piercing damage, and so heavily armored enemies are not a problem. Where Greybeard suffers is that he lacks the stamina that Bruno does for dealing with enemies with large amounts of health (such as bosses). As a result, Greybeard has many items and abilities that help conjure copies of his abilities — giving him extra stamina to deal with high HP enemies and long battles.
Mischief is perhaps the most challenging hero because she depends the most on the position of tiles on the board. Many of Mischief’s items and abilities target ‘solitary’ enemies, which mean you need to manipulate the board into a state where enemies are solitary (no other enemies in the same row)
In her starting deck, Knockout is an often underrated ability. This ability allows you to shuffle an enemy back into the deck even if you’re already in battle. Using Knockout effectively on the board can allow you to isolate an enemy and apply your stealth bonus. In battle, Knockout can be used to effectively flee the battle — returning later with your stealth bonus active to finish them off.
Hit-and-run tactics are important with Mischief as well. She’s weak without stealth and you lose stealth after attacking. If you can flee a battle, you can re-trigger her starting perk, Riffraff, to regain the stealth bonus (provided the enemy is solitary).
It’s less common for other characters to flee but it’s key for Mischief, especially against weaker enemies like skeletons and peasants.
Muldorf is a hero built around health management. Unlike other heroes, he doesn’t gain health from discarding tiles. Summoning his skeletal minions costs health and you can quickly end up in a situation where Muldorf’s low health can become a problem.
He does have some useful tools at this disposal though. Minions take the place of your hero in combat and can be swapped in to take a big hit in Muldorf’s place. Muldorf also has various items and abilities that increase his maximum health or give him Lifesteal.
Need more help?
I hope this guide illustrates some of the basic concepts and strategies of Krumit’s Tale! If you get stuck, join us on Discord, in the #krumit-chat channel — we’d be glad to help you out!
Reddit and the Steam Forums are also a great place to ask for tips or chat with fellow players about strategy.
We’ve also got a great wiki where you can review all the items, abilities and monsters in the game.
Get out there and defeat the Uberlich!
