Building an Ultra-Highlander Magic the Gathering Deck

Prolog 

It’s a gaming post, people! Continue reading only if you’re interested in what I’ve been doing with gaming – in particular with Magic: the Gathering. (MtG, or just “Magic,” one of my very favorite games.)

Introduction

In MtG, players use collectible playing cards to build customized decks and then take turns playing cards from those decks against other players, who are playing cards from their decks. Generally speaking, for most formats of play, decks are built to contain 60 cards. 60 is the minimum for almost every play format, so almost everyone who plays builds to exactly 60, but more than 60 is allowed.

For most MtG game formats, there is a limit of four copies of any individual card in a player's deck. [Other than basic lands, which are the base resources in a deck. I wouldn't even mention them except it will matter later.]

Highlander

But there is a format of deck building called "Highlander" - and in this format, "there can be only one" of any card (again, other than basic lands.)  Constructing with this rule typically results in a less predictable deck, but it's an interesting challenge.  (The “Highlander” name is from the movie. If you don’t know why, you should probably see the movie someday. The quoted rule comes from the movie.)

It's almost like having a puzzle. Under normal deck building rules, it’s often the case that I build with a particular card as my inspiration.  Let’s call it Card X. To make it more likely I'll see Card X during a game, I would like to have four copies of Card X in the deck. But Highlander means I can only have one. So, what should I do? Are there cards similar to Card X I can add, so when I see the new Card X', I use it in a similar way?  Are there cards I can add which will make it more likely I'll see Card X?  

Similar Cards for Highlander Decks

I’ll give you an example. In Magic, the creature cards in your deck fight for you. Each creature has two base attributes of Power and Toughness, denoted by P/T on the card.  Take this creature – Llanowar Elves:

 

On the bottom right corner, you can see 1/1, meaning this creature has Power 1 and Toughness 1 – almost as small as you can be.

Well, as I said, your creatures can fight for you. (That’s not what this creature usually does – but I’ll get to that in a bit.) If you send this Elves card in to fight for you, it’s likely to lose its battle. If you want to give it a better chance of surviving, and dealing more damage to your opponent, you might want to give it some Power and Toughness it does not normally have.  This, in the jargon, is called “pumping” it.  Well, of course, in your hand you might have a spell to accomplish this like Giant Growth:

 

This card gives a temporary +3/+3 to the Llanowar Elves, making it 4/4 for a little while. In the deck I decided to design, I wanted to be able to pump my creatures, and Giant Growth is one of the best, most efficient pump cards.  But I can have only one! Since the cards I can actually play – my “hand” -- are only the cards I’ve drawn from my deck of 60 cards, and since that hand typically contains no more than 7 cards, it’s not likely I’ll have Giant Growth. In a normal game, I’d have four random chances to have Giant Growth in hand, so I’d like to find three more pumping cards to make my chances of having a pump card when I want it. (In fact, I might want more than that!)

With so many sets, but the same basic playing rules, Magic has lots of options.  Here’s one:

 Predator’s Strike does what Giant Growth does, plus something more – but costs more to cast. (In MtG, the player is “casting spells” when playing cards.). So it’s a good possibility for a similar card.  But this is where the “Ultra” comes in.

“Ultra”?

A few weeks back, I had an idea to make the Highlander puzzle even more challenging. I was looking at the HUGE number of cards I have, and thought "what if I also limited myself to only allowing one card from any SET in the deck?" Others may have come up with this idea, but for me, it was new, and so I decided I'd give myself this challenge -- and I called this new format "Ultra-Highlander."  No more than one card per set in the play deck.

For those of you who are not MtG players (are you really still reading this?), Magic cards are released in "sets" -- collectible groups that come out at a rate of about four per year. I've been buying MtG cards since 1993 -- 27 years. While I haven't bought cards in every single set, I have bought large quantities from the vast majority of them (I counted 83 sets from which I purchased at least a box.)  And over the years, I've also acquired a few cards from most of the sets I didn't buy in large quantities.  So, when I decided to attempt "Ultra-Highlander" I knew I had thousands (tens of thousands) of cards from which I could select.

This, of course, gives me many options, so that might sound like it would be easy.  And, of course, if you just wanted to throw a deck together, it would just be a matter of grabbing cards. But I wanted to create a deck that would be have a fair chance of competing well enough that it would be fun to play multiple times.  And making a competitive deck with the restrictions I’ve laid out leads to some challenges.

So let’s get back to selecting a card similar to Giant Growth.  You see Predator’s Strike is from a set called Mirrodin, and that set has a load of fun cards! If I select Predator’s Strike from Mirrodin, my deck cannot contain:

Sword of Kaldra, another card that can pump creatures. How do I decide? 

Pure Color - Green

Mtg has the notion of “card color.” There are five colors of magic – green, white, blue, black and red. Cards can have one or more of these colors, or they can be colorless.  So, basically, six possibilities.  Each color has advantages and disadvantages, but more importantly, individual players have a color or color combination that they prefer. I am Green. I build decks with all colors and all color combinations, but when I think about what I am most drawn to, when I analyze which cards make me want to build decks most often, I have to be honest with myself and admit that Green is my favorite.

So, when I decided to create an Ultra-Highlander deck for the first time, I made one important decision: the deck would be all Green, and only Green. While this almost certainly limited the deck’s potential effectiveness, it means I only had to consider pure Green cards. Another challenge for the puzzle.

And it means I won't use Sword of Kaldra – a colorless card.

Reprints: Cards in Multiple Sets

Another factor to be considered is “reprints.”  Some cards have been used in more than one set.  Giant Growth, being one of the original cards created in the very first set of MtG, and being very useful, has been printed in 17 sets!

In my definition of "Ultra-Highlander = maximum of one card per set" I decided that Reprints gave me options, rather than limiting me. That is, if I use Giant Growth from the Revised set, I couldn't use any other Revised card, but I could use cards from any of the other 16 sets it had been in. 

Reprinted cards, then, gave me more options! As I built the deck, I noted which sets contained each card I considered.  Then, as I chose other non-reprinted cards from sets, I eliminated the reprint possibilities. Ultimately, for example, while I didn't eliminate every other set for Giant Growth, I used the Fifth Edition (5E) version, because I didn't have another 5E card I wanted to use more, and this let me choose any other card from the other sets.

Synergy? Not So Much

Three of the four annual MtG sets introduce new abilities, and those abilities are often most valuable when played with other related cards -- either building decks from one set only, or from sets which are related. These cards are designed to work well together – they have “synergy.” Many of the cards which are most often used when building typical competitive 4-copies-allowed decks are most useful because there are other cards which have the same abilities or they have attributes that make those abilities particularly valuable. Those cards are most often in a single set, or a few related sets (called "blocks") and so have “set synergy or block synergy.” This results in some cards becoming less useful in a Highlander format, and particularly less valuable if you can't use another card from the set.  So one of the first challenges is identifying when a good card in the set is good in this environment, or if its level of set synergy disqualifies it from consideration.

Let me use an example: Timberwatch Elf

Here's another card that can pump. The amount it pumps is based on the number of Elf cards in play, which can be amazing if your deck has lots of elves. That's synergy. And Legions, the set in which this card was released, had lots of Elves! Now, I've built many Elf decks through the years, and I can tell you, I include this card in pretty much every Elf deck I've ever done.  

But, when selecting cards for a generic Green deck, I thought I would not have Elves be a high enough percentage of my creatures to make this card as valuable as some other Green card from Legions. I kept it in mind, but sure enough, by the time I was done selecting other creatures, I only had seven other Elves out of the 22 creatures in my deck.  This card, which is so good in some Green decks, does not make the cut in my Ultra-Highlander Green because it's synergy ability is too low.

[Now, it did make me consider whether I could build a good Ultra-Highlander Elf deck, but I managed to resist following that squirrel, so I haven't tried yet. I am convinced this card would be my Legions pick if I ever did build one, though!]

Reality (Limited Time & Energy) Sets In

 As I mentioned before, I have a lot of cards.  Look at my Magic: the Gathering closet.

Every white box you see in that closet is full of Magic cards. As are the white boxes you can't see.  As are some boxes in the basement - with cards I will never, ever use.  It's a lot of cards.  A lot.  While my supply is not infinite, it is effectively uncountable. 

I have them sorted, so I can find most things when I look for them, but if Green-only cards are 10% of those cards, that still makes the number of cards to consider quite large.  

I started the process of selection by going though a few sets, looking over the Green cards, and pulling one, two, three, maybe four candidates from those sets. Then I decided to use Gatherer online to look for possible cards from sets, figuring I'd probably know if I owned a card I might want, and if I owned it, I'd be able to find it.  And that worked pretty well, too, for a while. 

I used Gatherer, for example, to find as many Green creatures with the Flying ability as I might own. (Flying creatures are harder to protect against. Flying is a weakness for Green, which doesn't have many and most are quite weak, compared to Flying creatures in other colors.) 

Gatherer reminded me of the card

Bayou Dragonfly.

I knew I had this card, even though I had not pulled it out for consideration when I was just grabbing cards.

By this point in the process, I had used Excel to create a spreadsheet where I could record all potential cards. I added Bayo Dragonfly to the file. I figured I could find it if it made my list of top possible cards from its set (Tempest.) 

 

 

 

 

 

Pilfering (and Tearing Down)

This Gatherer process gave me a bunch of options, but it also caused me to look at a bunch of cards I never owned (yes, there are cards I never owned!) so I decided to go back to looking at real, physical cards again.

This time I decided to take a different approach. Rather than going to my unused cards, sorted into sets (mostly), I went after cards which were already in other decks. My reasoning was, if a card was good, I probably already had it in a deck.  

So I started pilfering existing decks.

The photo is post-pilfering.  That's my box of Green-only decks. (Not all of them. Some of my Green-only decks are also in my "recently built" box, and others are in my "favorite decks" box.) 

I grabbed a few likely candidate decks, looked through the cards, and if there was a new card option for my Ultra-Highlander deck, I searched my loose cards for another copy. If I found it, great. If not, I pulled the card out of the existing deck. And, if there was no natural replacement to put in the deck, I tore it down.  Some of these decks had been built over 10 years ago, and not played since. It was time. It made me a little sad, but then again, it gave me a deck's worth of cards to consider using elsewhere, and that made me happy.

So, I raided the Green decks and a few Green-and-some-other-color decks, grabbing potential cards as I went, adding them to the Excel file, and tearing down decks that needed to be sacrificed to this Great Endeavor.

Ultimately, I started getting tired.  I had been working at this project in my limited spare time for a few weeks.  I had a Big Pile of Cards, and a spreadsheet with 136 possible cards to use in the deck.

Trimming to 37 (or so)

OK, remember a couple of numbers I have mentioned so far.  First, just above I mentioned that I had 136 potential cards for my deck.  Then, remember there are supposed to be 60 cards in a final deck. 

But I don't get to use 60 of the 136! 

A deck needs to have land in it, as well.  Land provides the basic resources to cast the spells represented by the cards.  Because the cards will be randomized, you need to have a number of land cards in your deck which will make it likely you'll have the resources to cast what you need. In general, I've found that I need to have 23 land in a 60 card deck to make it most likely to play well. [There are always exceptions, but let's not get into them now, OK?]

The point is, I needed to trim the deck to 37 cards, each from its own unique set. 

The trimming process is an iterative one.  As an experienced deck builder, I first created the categories of cards I knew I'd need, and examined my candidates to see which cards were best at the categories. I needed Removal cards -- cards which could remove threats my opponents might play. Removal is limited in Green, but there are options. In particular, since one of the weaknesses of Green is Flying, there are cards to remove fliers. And, because enchantments and artifacts can royally mess up a Green strategy, removal of those is good to consider.  I also needed to have Finishers.  Cards which, later in the game, could be used to do the last bit of damage to my opponent. And so on.  I grouped cards into their categories.

But often, I'd find I had put a card into one category, and another card from the same set into another category.

Example: Taunting Elf and Silvos, Rogue Elemental

The Taunting Elf can be used to force your opponent's creatures to ignore all the other creatures you have, so an attack which includes this elf can be very damaging, often finishing your opponent, if you have some other Big Creatures to send into the attack.

Silvos, however, is a really fun Big Creature to send into an attack! Even without Taunting Elf in the Attack, this guy can do some damage, and survive!

I can't have both in the deck at the same time!  What do I do? Which do I select?

And that, of course, is when the puzzle starts to take shape. Do I have other Big Creatures which can fill the role Silvos would fill? In Green, the answer is YES. (Which is one reason I love Green.)  So Taunting Elf stays.

Isn't that sad? Isn't it disappointing to leave Silvos out of the deck.  Yes, it is. Sort of.

Plus 15

When played competitively, Magic is played as a "best 2 of 3 games" match. 

For such matches, in addition to your deck of 60 cards, you can bring a "sideboard" of 15 cards.  This allows you to modify your deck between games, based on what you saw of the opponent's deck.

So I decided to create a sideboard for my Ultra-Highlander deck. But now I had to decide what kind of rule to make for the sideboard.

The simplest would be to keep the "only one per set" rule.  And maybe that's what I should have done.

But I didn't.

Instead, I put in 15 cards, only one of each set. But, it was allowable to duplicate sets between the main deck and the sideboard. This means that, in play, if you sideboard IN a card, you are forced to sideboard OUT the card from the same set.  So, in my example above, if Silvos comes IN in between games, then Taunting Elf has to come OUT.  I like the puzzle-within-a-puzzle this created, as I balanced the kinds of cards which would have to alternate.

Truth in advertising: I rarely PLAY "best 2 of 3." That's for tournaments, and I typically play casually with family and friends. In casual play, I don't usually play a deck more than once per gaming session, because I have so many decks! And even if I play a deck multiple times, my opponents rarely play their decks again.  So if I want to actually try the sideboard, I am going to need "a little help from my friends" to see how it works.  I'm sure Paul will indulge me a couple of times, if and when we can ever play MtG again!

Basic Land

One more thing. As I mentioned before, a deck needs land to play. Basic lands are the primary way to get mana (the base resource of the game) and the Basic land for Green is the Forest.  I did not even try to figure out how I might get 23 different lands which could produce Green mana. I knew that everything other than a Forest would be less efficient, and if I tried to play with one Forest and 22 other lands, I'd never be able to play a competitive game.  

Instead, I went into my trove of basic land and found 24 Forests from 24 sets.  They became my mana base.  While not all of the 83 sets I mentioned above had their own Forests, enough do that 24 was not hard to get.

Wait! 24? What?

Yeah, you caught me. You noticed that I said that 23 lands in a 60 card deck is the optimal number (IMHO) but I put 24 lands in the deck.  What's that about?

Well, shoot.  Here's the thing.

If I were actually going to try to win a constructed deck tournament, I'd try as hard as I possibly could to make my deck exactly 60-cards in size. In order to have the same percentage chance of drawing any given card as my opponent, I'd want that.  And, for that reason, even for my casual decks, I build to 60.

But I don't really play in tournaments. It's been years. And if I did ever, I wouldn't bring this deck, unless I was willing to just expect to lose.  

So, with that in mind, when I tried trimming my deck to only 37 functional cards, but I just couldn't drop the last two, I added one land to balance out the ratios and I called it good. I have 63 cards.  I'm leaving it as a future task to find two spells to remove, once I've had a chance to play the deck a few times and decide which cards I was never happy to see.

Epilog

So, there we go.  I've defined what an "Ultra-Highlander" deck is, and I've described the process I used to create my first one.

I enjoyed the process, and what's more, I learned from it.  I think I could create my next Ultra-Highlander deck much more quickly, at least if I do it before I forget how I approached it (or if I read this post again, to remind me -- which is one of the purposes of the post!)

Now, the only thing left is to provide the deck list.  And I will.  Really I will.

But I know there is a standard format for those things, and I need to go research what it is, then find a way to build it from the data I have in my Excel file.  It might just be copy/paste, but it's more work than I want to do at the moment.

Besides, I don't want my list to get out before I actually get a chance to play the silly thing!

One More Thing

If you have read this entire post, I will be amazed and grateful.  Most people I know do not play Magic: the Gathering, and I can't imagine anyone who doesn't play the game will make it this far.  And, of my MtG-playing friends,  I'm not sure I know any of them who would have the patience to read the entire thing. It's long! So, if you did get all the way to the end, thank you! I'd like you to let me know you managed this feat of perseverance. Maybe I can find a way to reward you with something Magic-related. In addition to my gratitude. 

And now, let me leave you with a wish for every game of Magic you play from now into eternity:

May you never be mana-screwed!

 

 

Skyrim Complete - Character 3 - Sheria

I was browsing through my old posts and noticed that I wrote about finishing the main quest in Skyrim almost three years ago on April 21, 2017.

As it happens, we just "finished" our third play-through of this fantastic game on Wednesday, April 15, 2020.

I'm not near the game system right now, so I won't document the character to the extent I did in that post, but we played as:

Sheria - a Breton. 

She was level 63 when we stopped.

As I read the previous post, I realized that Sheria never even did the "bar fight" that led to Will acquiring the Sanguine Rose staff, so I already know there's a quest we could go play, if we wanted.  That's indicative of an attribute of Skyrim which is so enjoyable -- there are hundreds of quests you can undertake, most of them not even connected to the primary story line.


Character Name: Sheria
Level: 83
Game Days: 490
Calendar days: 178  10/19/19 - 4/14/20
Play time: 441 hrs; 57 min; 32 sec

Skills: Primary skills I focused on are above the line.

•  Conjuration 100; Legendary; 51 - We even started the early game summoning familiars and raising zombies for a while.  As soon as we could, we got the Summon Dremora spell and started using "Dreamy"
• One Handed 100; Legendary; 59 - Started with a mace, because swords are scarce early, but soon moved into a sword. Eventually, after Legendary, we even took the Dual Flurry perk and started using a sword (right) and mace (left)
• Smithing 100 - never went Legendary so we could make the best (Dragon) weapons.  Sadly, in this play through, the key NPCs required to start the quests for Stahlrim smithing had been killed, so while we collected a bunch of stahlrim, we never got to smith with it.  We collected every stahlrim weapon and piece of armor we could, but it was not the same.
• Enchanting 100 - again, never Legendary, so we could dual enchant items for ourselves and our companion 
• Alchemy 100 - just so we could certainly get our Smithing and Enchanting to be as high as possible when using them
• Light Armor 100 - never went legendary, so we could gain the benefit of no-weight dragon scale armor.

--------

• Speech 96 - we bought levels very early on, to get to the Merchant perk, which allows sale of any kind of goods to any kind of merchant (Speech 50 - critical to the way we play the game), but I think we only bought between 10 and 15 levels.
• Destruction 96 - we tried to use Destruction magic early, but I am bad at aiming, and hit Lydia too much.  It becomes much easier after the Companion's Insight active effect is obtained, but that's from a Black Book quest in Solstheim, which we completely avoided until all the main quests were done.
• Lockpicking 100 - We never tried to raise this. It happened organically.  We did eventually use some "Legendary Acquired" perks to get to the Unbreakable (100) perk so we could stop spending so much time unlocking the tough locks.

Late in the game we started working our way to Extra Pockets (Pickpocket 50) but only got as far as 41, because we don't like picking pockets.  These levels were almost all taught to us by instructors, with a few books.


Companion: Lydia for the whole game, except a brief time when we were trying to decide who we should marry.


Spouse: Argis the Bulwark

Children: Lucia (girl) then Alesan (boy)

Main Quests:

Dragon: Sovngard reached and dragon killed on January 1, 2020.
Civil War: Chose Stormcloaks again.
Dawnguard/Vampire: Never became a vampire; defeated around January 18, 2020
Black Books: All of them. Key (Apocrypha) complete February 1, 2020.

Quests completed: 130


I fully expect to play this game again sometime in the future -- starting a new character.  After a year or so, Sherry and I miss being in the world, and we've forgotten enough details that playing becomes "fresh" again. If we do decide to play, I think I'll try it on the PS4 -- I don't mind paying for the game again; we've had so much enjoyment from it -- so I can determine if transitions would be shorter on the more advanced system.
 

Zelda: Trial of the Sword Complete

I know, I know.  I don't blog anymore. (That may change; I miss it.)  But I have to mark this milestone.

Last night, we finally completed the Trial of the Sword in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

It's one of the quests added by the expansion downloadable content, and it is easily the hardest thing we had to do in the game. Battle strategy, adaptation, resource planning, honing skills, using every resource you have, learning from your mistakes -- it was amazingly difficult, and thus, in the end, gave us a real sense of accomplishment.

We did not read any of the hints available on line, so we really felt like WE did it. (The "we" includes Sherry, who strategized with me, and who kept an eye out for things in the environment on each level and warned or advised me. Video games are a two-player thing for us.)

Anyway, this challenge is broken up into three stages. Each was tough, and each subsequent stage was tougher than the previous. The final (third) stage took us more than two nights to master. What frustration! What FUN!

If you bought this game, there are several great reasons to get the $20 DLC. This quest is the best of them. Oh, sure, the game-play enhancements are very useful (map & teleport enhancements make it worth the $20 alone) but here's why I say this is the best:

By the time many of us face "The Boss" in this game, we've advanced Link to a point where fighting Calamity Ganon is fun, but it's not likely to make us feel like we're challenged.
The Trial of the Sword is CHALLENGING!

Great expansion. Great game.

==============  Link (hah!) and Image and Spoilers ==========




Here's the link to the page that advertises the expansion, and a picture of the fully powered Master Sword.  I will try to get around to writing some spoilers -- things you should NOT read if you want to play the quest without knowledge.  I'll post those below the sword picture.

https://www.zelda.com/breath-of-the-wild/news/expansion-pass-dlc-pack-1-detailed/

=====  Design discussion with Spoilers  =====

Zelda: Trial of the Sword Play Notes

OK, so for the rest of this blog, I’m going to just write about the Trial of the Sword, with no attempts to limit spoilers.  There are things I want to say about how the Trial is put together, about how we approached it, and what made it so challenging.

General design:

There are three phases to the Trial.  After successful completion of each phase, the Master Sword increases its damage strength by 10, so by the time you’ve completed all three, the sword will progress from a decent 30-strength, to an impressive 60-strength (which doubles around Ancient technology to an overwhelming 120-strength.)  That is the in-game reward for completing the quest.  The REAL reward is knowing you figured out how to get through these trials.

Each of the phases has these similarities:

• ·         Link is stripped of all material possessions at the start of level 1 of the phase.
• ·         Link can keep any objects he finds in one level to carry forward to the next, limited by his current capacity at the time he enters.
• ·         The weapons carried by foes in the levels are constant, but the contents of containers in the levels are only mostly-constant.  There is some randomness.
• ·         Each phase has sub-phases – after a certain number of battle levels, there is a replenishing level. 
• ·         The replenishing level is directly preceded by a mini-boss fight.
• ·         Link loses all possessions gained when he completes each phase.
• ·         If Link dies during a level, he must start the WHOLE PHASE again, from the beginning.
• ·         You CANNOT SAVE during a phase. 

Each of these design points has significant effects on what strategy and tactics you need to adopt.

From here on, I am going to talk about how each of those design points affected our game play.  I am sure others will approach the challenges differently, but this is what we learned, and what we did with what we learned.

Link is stripped of all material possessions at the start of level 1 of the phase.

The quest tells you this as you start, so it’s not really much of a spoiler.  But how do you deal with this fact?  Is there anything you can do to mitigate some of the loss you experience when everything is taken away?

We did two things before entering each phase:

·         We ate a meal which over-filled our hearts.. Generally, this was a +5 meal.

·         We consumed something that increased our defense for a long period of time.

You see, it’s going to be tough to get healing in the phase. There will be chances – I’ll get to that – but every fractional heart you bring in will be important in the long run, and for us, adding extra hearts (the more the better, clearly) and preventing loss of hearts was more crucial than being able to attack better or than having some resistance. 

But we learned early on that this is basically one of the only ways you can use what Link has gained outside the Trial to help inside the trial.

But here is a very important point – while Link is stripped of material, and (sadly) stripped of the powers granted him by each of the Champions, he still has all of the powers he gained at the beginning of the game – two bomb types, magnesis, etc.  These powers are, in my estimation, crucial to survival.

And also importantly, the size of Link’s “pack” – the number of weapons, bows & shields – remains as well.  So, the farther these are advanced, the more options you’ll have.  We were maxed out on Bow pack, and had almost all the spaces for weapons.  This was very helpful.

 

Link can keep any objects he finds in one level to carry forward to the next, limited by his current capacity at the time he enters.

Items are scarce during the Trial.  Things you would never pick up when playing an advanced Link in Hyrule will be helpful during the combat levels.  We found ourselves using “arms” – you know, actual stal-creature arms! – as our weapons early on, because they were the best things Link could find, and you need to have something to attack with.  And though you might never use an acorn to cook in Hyrule, they help boost you when cooking the limited meal options you’ll have in the Replenishing levels.  More on that later. 

Our advice – don’t leave anything behind, until you don’t have space to carry more.

The weapons carried by foes in the levels are constant, but the contents of containers in the levels are only mostly-constant.  There is some randomness.

Because Link can only use items he finds, it’s very helpful to know which weapons he’ll have the chance to get as he progresses.  We found, as we repeated the Trial several times, that we needed to analyze which weapons we ought to use for which situations.  Using the strongest weapon available was definitely NOT the best strategy.  If you wear out a 48-strength one-handed sword in Level 8, you’ll be frustrated in level 15 when you’re using rusty broadswords.

However, weapons are not the only things you pick up.  You can get ingredients and arrows from barrels and crates.  Most of the time, the contents of those are consistent.  But there is a bit of variability. By the time you get to a Replenishing Level, most of the ingredients you have will be the same, but sometimes you will be able to create speed boosts, and sometimes you won’t.

Oh, and some levels have chests.  Do not miss them!  I should have mentioned this earlier, but for us it was critical that we had our Sheikah Slate set to detecting Treasure Chests when we entered the Trial.  This allowed us to ensure we did not miss any chests.

Each phase has sub-phases – after a certain number of battle levels, there is a replenishing level. 

The replenishing levels give you a chance to cook food and pick up equipment.  The first thing to do is look to see if a Fairy is hovering around.  If so, sneak up on it (or them) and get it (or them.) 

After that, we made sure to take absolutely everything we could into our inventory before we cooked some meals.  You’ll make different decisions than we did, I’m sure, but we tended to maximize hearts in our meal preparation (so it helped a lot to have experimented with this, and kept notes, while playing the game.)  The exception to this is for specific “boosts.”  There are some levels where resistance to specific dangers are important.  When that’s true, the ingredients you find in the Replenishing Levels make such boosts possible.  If you find ingredients to make cold resistance, you can be pretty sure you’ll need it.

The replenishing level is directly preceded by a mini-boss fight.

Oh, you can just count and you’ll know when the last combat level of a subphase is upon you, but it’s important for you to know that you’re going to be facing a mini-boss.  You can guess the kinds of creatures which are mini-bosses – they’re the ones you face in Hyrule that pop up as special fights: Hinox, Taluses (Talusi?) and so on.  Find a way to defeat these, and you get to Replenish (or you get to finish the Phase, and the Master Sword gets stronger.)

Link loses all possessions gained when he completes each phase.

This doesn’t matter so much from a full-game point of view.  You’re not going to get anything in the Trial that you couldn’t get elsewhere, and most of what you have left when you’re done with each Phase is no better than what you probably have in inventory already. 

But, it does mean this: after you’ve finished one phase, and the Master Sword gets stronger, and you decide to go on to the next phase, you start all over again.   With NOTHING. 

Each successive phase is different from the preceding one.  It’s longer.  And the levels are harder.

And you start with nothing.

So you have to learn all over again.   It’s frustrating.  And it’s great.

If Link dies during a level, he must start the WHOLE PHASE again, from the beginning.

This is the crux of the challenge, of course.  Get beaten by that final mini-boss before you can enhance the Master Sword?  Start over again at Level 1 of the phase.  You don’t realize how casually you’ve been treating death until you don’t have an autosave point.  Which brings up the final design point.

You CANNOT SAVE during a phase. 

Period.  Once you’ve started, you just keep going.  Oh, sure, once you’ve been killed, you will be sent back the Korok Forest and you can decide to leave and try again later (we did this after each phase, and in fact gave up for a while after trying the final phase a few times so we could go get another couple shrines to get one more heart.)  But, during the levels of the phase, there is no saving.  So, make a mistake and let that bokoblin hurt you for three heart on level 3?  Sorry.  You can start all over again, but you can’t start just before level 3.

Skyrim - Main Quest Complete

In the middle of April, 2017, we completed the "main" quest line of Skyrim.

I had a fantastic time -- pun intended -- living inside this character, choosing the direction of his growth, and fulfilling the Dragonborn destiny.

The game is not "done" as far as I am concerned. I'll keep playing to see more of the world and accomplish more quests, but I do want to pause for a moment and take note of some items as we reached this point.  (I say "we" because most of the time, I was using the PS3 controller, but Sherry was sitting next to me watching, advising, and helping with puzzles and strategy.)

Character Name: Will
Level: 53
Game Days: 396
Calendar days: 66


My game was helped tremendously by having the Sanguine Rose staff, which allowed me to have access to a summoned Dremora, who was always tougher than any Atronoch I could summon.  Sure, I kept having to recharge the staff, and sure, the Dremora (we called him "our demon") had no ranged attack, but generally, if "Atty" (the Flame Atronach) or "the Storm Trooper" (the Storm Atronach) were not being as helpful as we'd like -- particularly in a Boss battle -- we called on the Demon.  We acquired the staff at the end of a quest called "A Night to Remember" which starts with a drinking contest between my character and a guy I meet in a bar.  So, yeah, there are always opportunities in this sort of game to do things which are out of character for me, as a person.  I played mostly "heroic" -- choosing not to Join the Assassin's Guild, for instance -- but could not be saintly.  This game has a story in which there are many times when the "good" choice either doesn't exist, or is not obvious.

I used Lydia as my follower right up until I married her, at which time I recruited Jordis.  Lydia and I adopted Lucia and Samuel.  I owned Breezehome, from early on, but the family never lived there.  I owned Proudspire Manor, which is where the family spent most of the time, until I built Lakeview Manor, at which point we moved there.  Late in the game, I also bought Honeyside, but honestly, once you've lived in Proudspire or Lakeview, who would want to live in Honeyside?  Even when it's fully outfitted, it's crowded and seems a bit dirty -- not unlike Riften, the city it's in.

I "finished" wearing a set of double-enchanted Dragonscale Armor, with a double-enchanted "damage + health-stealing" sword option, and a "damage + soul-stealing" sword option.  By the end, I was typically casting Icy Spear in my right hand, and wielding one of the swords in my left.  I typically used the Ice Form shout in normal battle, though Fire Breath was situationally useful against things which burned easily, and I almost always used Dragonrend, once I got it, when in a battle with a dragon.

Skills: Primary skills I focused on are above the line.

• Destruction: 100 - though I never used, or even acquired, the Master level Destruction spells before completing the main quest. 
• Conjuration: 97 - For a long time, Conjuration was higher than Destruction, but it levels as your summoned creatures do damage, and it's much easier to make sure you, yourself, do damage with Destruction spells than it is to make sure your Atronach gets its licks in.  Oh, and I never used the necromantic Conjuration spells.  It's not my style. 
• Smithing: 100 - Worked hard to advance this, wanting to do Dragon Scale armor.  I focused on the "left" side of the Smithing tree. I only took a "right" perk to be able to use the Dwarven metal we kept finding.
• Enchanting: 100 - I decided early on that I would not try to finish the main quest until I could double-enchant.
• Light Armor: 84 - focused on this skill late, as I wanted the Dragonscale Armor to become "weightless" to wear, and then to provide more protection.  For most of the early and middle game, I wore the Arch-Mage Robes rather than armor, but switched once I could do the Dragonscale smithing.
• One-Handed: 73 - also a late focus, as it became clear I needed to balance my Magika use better.  For a long time, I stayed out of hand-to-hand range, letting my follower and my Atronach handled the close fighting, but I'd run out of Magika if the battle lasted a while, and I decided I wanted to be able to fight continuously.  I couldn't, though, until I was wearing armor. 

------

• Alchemy: 76 - I remember buying training in this a few times, but most of the levels were gained through experience.
• Speech: 80 - Worked on advancing this skill early, to make money faster and more efficiently.  Once I got the perk which allowed me to invest in businesses (which meant I had also gotten the perk to allow me to sell any kind of item to any vendor), then I just let it grow through experience.
• Lockpicking: 73 - never bought a level of this; books and picking locks got it this high.
• Restoration: 58

Aside from the Main Quest, the only other major questlines I completed were the College of Winterhold (I gained character level 12 in the final battle which made me the Arch-Mage) and Dawnguard.  I never chose a side in the civil war, though, I will likely do that as I continue playing.

Here are some stats from this point in the game.

Skill Increases: 801
Skill Books: 56
Dragon Souls Collected: 68
Words of Power: 52
Shouts: 22
Soul Gems Used: 231
Souls Trapped: 303
Locks Picked: 163
Largest Bounty: 1000
Lifetime Bounty: 1045
Items Stolen: 8
Spells Learned: 56

Quests Completed: 82
Misc Objectives Completed: 205
Questlines Completed: 3