Overview: What is HellFire?
HellFire is a card game situated in a mythical world, called Hellfire. The player takes on the role of a mage, travelling a path through sections of the world, constantly saving towns from creatures that are entering the world through portals.
One is able to collect cards/creatures, most of which have their own, unique lore, to increase one’s power. One captures these creatures on missions, receive them as rewards or, most often, summon them by means of gems and jewels during weekly events.
There are four elements, namely Fire, Water, Earth and Death. As the logo of HellFire suggests, Fire is strongest when attacking Death, Death is strongest against Earth, Earth is strongest against Water and Water is strongest against Fire. When one attacks a creature of the Death element with cards of the Fire element, the damage multiplies. However, when one attacks a creature of the Death element with cards of the Earth element, the damage done to the enemy is cut in half.
Creatures above a certain rarity have special skills that stand a chance of activating during battle. All these skills are useful, some more so than others. However, the dominant opinion amongst players is that the shift ability is the least useful of the lot.
There are weekly events, each lasting around 6-7 days, alternating between Dungeons and Raids. These events will be discussed shortly.
HellFire was originally a game for mobiles, but is now also available on PCs. The artwork of the game is very well-done and the concept of the game itself is good. It is one of the better card-based games that we know of.
How Does HellFire Work?
Tutorial
When one first plays the game, one is given the option to create a Mobage account (which we suggest), log in with Facebook (which is also acceptable) or continue without creating an account (which we do not suggest – doing so can cause certain problems).
One continues to the tutorial, which is obligatory, where one learns about the game itself: one learns about setting up a deck, missions, collecting creatures, levelling and evolving, allies and wanderers, summoning and so forth.
Setting up a deck
One can choose 9 creatures to be in one’s deck. Three creatures in a row (the deck is set up in a grid formation), each row representing a turn during a mission. The elements and damage of a turn depend on the cards in the corresponding row, as well as which abilities might activate. A deck can be recommended for one, by the game, for attack, defence or a balance between the two. The attack power and defence of all 9 creatures are accumulated to determine the totals of one’s deck.
Missions
In Hellfire, the worlds in which the game is situated, there are many sections, which we will refer to as continents. These continents are divided into five regions, four of which represent one element (meaning that creatures of this element occur more frequently in this region) each and the fifth is a region in which no single element is predominant. In each region, one must complete 10 chapters (that is, 10 missions), the fifth and tenth of which are boss battles.
To do a mission, one uses energy points (15 per mission). One starts off with 100 of these points (100 is also the maximum one can have at any given point). These points regenerate, but one also receives potions, which can regenerate them instantly, as gifts or rewards during dungeon events. Ranking up also fully restores one’s mission energy.
During missions, there are 3 rounds/waves of enemies. The enemies emerge and in the top, right-hand corner of each enemy is a turn-counter (that is to say, this counter shows the number of turns one has before an enemy attacks again). The enemies are each of a certain element and this is shown by the colour surrounding them.
One attacks enemies one at a time by flicking the ball of mixed elements at the bottom of the screen towards the enemy one wants to hit. One can critically hit, hit or miss an enemy: all three do some form of damage, but a critical hit does 1.5 times the stated damage, a hit does the stated damage and missing does half damage to the enemy.
After one has defeated all the enemies of all 3 waves, one wins and receives rewards as well as experience points (30 points), allowing one to rank up. If one is defeated by the enemies, one still receives experience points, but only half as much.
During missions, one stands a chance of capturing the enemy creatures one defeats. These are automatically deposited into one’s card storage. These can be used in one’s deck or to level other cards.
Card rarity
Cards are ranked according to their rarity, a measure of how commonly they are found (and usually also an indication of their relative power). The rarities in HellFire are indicated by means of stars on the card, at the bottom right of the portrait. A card’s rarity increases by one rank at the fourth and final evolution. The ranks are as follows:
Common (1 star) C
Uncommon (2 stars) UC
Rare (3 stars) R
Super Rare (4 stars) SR
Ultra Rare (5 stars) UR
Epic (6 stars) E
Legendary (7 stars) L
Cards that are Rare or above at the first evolution stage have one of several abilities, discussed below. When a card is fully evolved, its rarity increases by one rank or star, but UC (2-star) cards that evolve into R (3-star) cards at their fourth evolution do not gain abilities.
Rarity also limits where cards are likely to be found. Common cards are very easy to come by via Ally or Emerald summons and capturing them in missions. Uncommon cards are plentiful even with Ruby and Diamond summons, and are also occasionally captured in a mission. Rare cards may also be captured in missions, but the capture chance is incredibly low.
Super Rare and Rare cards can come from any type of summon (least likely in Ally or Emerald summons, most common in Diamond summons). Ultra Rare cards can be gained from Magic Jewel summons, but the chance changes due to the Box system.
Skills
Skills are abilities that Rare and above cards have, which activate randomly when the row of the deck that contains the card in question is used to attack. There are several types of abilities, which may be given unique names for special or rarer cards. The types of normal abilities are:
● Direct Damage: "X deals damage to Y enemies"
- instantly deals small amounts of damage (of card's type) to enemies
● Massive Damage: "X deals massive damage to Y enemies"
- instantly deals large amounts of damage (of card's type) to enemies
● Damage Over Time: "inflicts X on Y enemies"
- deals a bit of damage each round to affected enemies
● Healing: "restores a X amount of health"
- heals the player
● Slow: "delays X enemies' attacks by Y turns"
- X random enemies' turn counters do not count down for Y turns
● Rewind: "increases X enemies' turn counters by Y"
- X random enemies' turn counters are increased by Y instantly"
● Shift: "shifts all X enemies to Y"
- all enemies of type/element X become type/element Y
Note: the difference between slow and rewind; this difference is most important in raid events.
Epic and Legendary cards all have a unique ability: they increase and/or decrease the attack and defence of the other cards on the deck, which can significantly alter strategies.
Evolving
When one has two separate creatures of the same sort (example: two Lava Lurkers), one can choose to evolve them to form a stronger version of the creature. One can only evolve a creature three times and when a card is fully evolved, its rarity increases by one star. Evolved creatures retain a little of their components’ power, but none of the levels.
One can evolve:
A first stage and a first stage to form a second stage,
A second stage and a first stage to form a third stage,
A third stage and a first stage to form a fourth (and final) stage.
One cannot evolve:
A second stage and another second stage,
A third stage and a second stage.
Leveling
One can level cards during any stage of evolution. To level a card, one picks the card one wants to level (make stronger) and then chooses the cards one would like to use to level it (these are usually the weakest cards or the cards one no longer wants). One sacrifices these cards, which gives experience to the chosen card, levels it up and thus makes it stronger.
When evolving a fully leveled card, 10% of its strength and defence are added to the new stage’s statistics. If a card is not fully leveled, it carries over 5% of its strength and defence to the new evolution. For this reason we suggest creating a third stage card and leveling it completely, as well as leveling the first stage card one will be using to evolve it. Leveling before the third stage gives less of a boost to the final card; only about 1% at most of the power of the second stage and the card it is evolved with are present in the final card, and even less from the first evolution. This process can be time consuming (and use hundreds or thousands of weak cards), especially with the rarer cards that have a higher maximum level.
Collecting cards
Even though there are a limited number of cards one can own at a time, once one has had a card, it appears in one’s personal collection. This collection exists out of all the cards one has had at each of its evolution stages.
Allies and Wanderers
Allies are other players that one can choose to take along on missions or dungeon missions, one per mission. When taking an ally on a mission for the first time each day, the ally receives ally jewels (which are used for summoning). These allies aid one by occasionally attacking a random enemy. Damage is based on the first card on their deck, and its ability can trigger. The hit always counts as a critical.
Wanderers are randomly selected players who also aid one in one’s attack, while not counting as allies. When a wanderer aids a player, the wanderer receives 10 Ally Jewels (received via the inbox). This is an automated procedure and players need not do anything but log in daily. One has the option of adding wanderers as allies at the end of a mission.
Summons
Other than capturing creatures on missions, one can receive them as gifts or summon them. During events there are Emerald summons, Ruby summons and Diamond summons, along with the usual summons. These will be discussed in the section on weekly events.
There are summons that can be done by using MobaCoins and summons that can be done with a Silver Key (that can only be obtained if an ally sends it to one). However, Magic Jewel summons and Ally Jewel summons are always available and do not require purchased MobaCoins.
Ally Jewel summons require 100 Ally Jewels per summon and only summon creatures of the rarity Rare and lower (however, summoning a Rare with Ally Jewels is uncommon).
Magic Jewels summons require 100 Magic Jewels (which one can obtain by completing regions in missions, floors in dungeons (both for the first time only) or by receiving them as rewards during the weekly events). Magic Jewel summons guarantee creatures of the rarity Rare or above. Thus, during the weekly events, the creatures summoned with Magic Jewels are from the Box.
The Box
The Box is an important thing to know about for any player that wants to improve his or her deck. When a player summons new creatures by spending gems from events, Ally Jewels or Magic Jewels (some Mobacoin summons as well), all the Rare and above cards (R, SR and UR) are drawn from a limited pool of cards known as the Box. Each player has his or her own Box, and can access up to four different boxes during one event, one after another.
Each Box contains a set number of Rare and Super Rare creatures, and one Ultra Rare creature (The amounts left in one’s current Box are viewable in the summon menu). The UR creature is the same for each Box during an event, giving players the chance to evolve this UR into an Epic. Every Rare and Super Rare card the player summons, is drawn from this pool of cards, and is removed from the pool, which means that the amount of creatures in the Box grows smaller and smaller as more are summoned. As the pool of cards grows smaller, the chance of summoning the UR card with Magic Jewels (the only type of summon that can summon the UR from the Box) increases.
Once the UR has been summoned, a new Box becomes available to the player; each Box contains more R and SR cards than the one before it, but all four have exactly one UR. The only way to guarantee summoning the UR with one Magic Jewel summon is to summon all the other cards first, before using the Magic Jewels.
Weekly Events
Every week, there is an event that lasts +/- 7 days. They begin on Tuesdays, ending the next week on Monday. There are two types of events: Dungeon events and Raid Boss events. As mentioned, these events are weekly, alternating between Dungeon and Raid Boss events. These events have a few things in common.
They make use of a summoning system that consists out of Emerald summons, Ruby summons and Diamond summons. Emerald summons are the easiest to obtain, but also summons the weakest cards, the odds being similar to those of the Ally Jewel summons (Rare and above tend to be slightly less common than 1 in 100). Rubies are more difficult to obtain, but the odds of getting rarer (and therefore better) creatures are higher than with the Emeralds (roughly 1 in 10-20). Diamonds are the most difficult to obtain, but have the highest odds of summoning good cards (1 in 2-3). It takes 10 gems (Emeralds, Rubies or Diamonds) to summon one creature.
During events, one gains event points. These are a measure of one’s achievements during the event and determine one’s rank on the leaderboard. The higher one’s position on the leaderboard (the more event points one earns), the better the prizes one is rewarded at the end of the event. Various rewards are granted as one reaches certain amounts of event points.
Near the end of the event (during the last three days), a final challenge is given to the players. During Dungeon events, this takes the form of a fourth dungeon. During Raid Boss events, it takes the form of legendary bosses.
Dungeon Events
These events are similar to the missions one usually plays in many ways, including that 15 energy points are used per round and that experience points are rewarded. There are 3 dungeons (at first), namely Novice, Expert and Master. As the names suggest, the dungeons differ in difficulty, Novice being easiest and Master being the most challenging before the fourth dungeon is opened. Each event comes with its own unique story and array of characters.
A key difference to the event in comparison to ordinary missions, apart from the event points and prizes, is that there are moving enemies. These include Reinforce Wisps (water card), Reinforce Spirits (fire card), Reinforce Souls (earth card), Reinforce Animas (death card), Chests of Destiny (during holidays) and featured creatures of the event. Some of these enemies, such as the Reinforce cards and Chests, can be captured when defeated. This is done by using seals or magical seals. Seals only give one a chance of capturing the creature, while magic seals give one a 100% chance of capturing the creature. However, magic seals are much rarer than seals. When one runs out of magic seals, there is the option of buying more, while there is no option to buy ordinary seals. Capturing these creatures award a set amount of event points. Completing the section of the dungeon also rewards event points, based in part on the creatures one defeats in the section.
One need not complete the Novice dungeon in order to move to the Expert dungeon and the Expert dungeon to do the Master dungeon. One can start with whichever dungeon one would like, and move between them freely without losing progress.
Dungeons consist out of 10-20 floors each. These floors are divided into 5 sections, the last of which is an illusionist fight. These illusionists are featured creatures of the event and comparable to a boss. The boss produces copies of itself and one must identify the correct one before being able to do damage to the creature. However, if one does any damage to copy, it disappears.
One stands a chance of capturing these illusionists with seals or magic seals when they are defeated on certain floors.
Strategy for Dungeon Events
If one wants to collect cards to level up ones cards, doing the very first dungeon is one's best strategy. One receives up to 500 Emerald gems (50 summons) per floor and even when one retreats, one can get 250 Emerald gems (25 summons) per floor. Considering that there are 10 floors per dungeon, this is a great way to get cannon fodder for levelling up other, stronger creatures. This strategy, however, is not one to use when one wants to gain event point or wants to get the UR card form the Box(es).
Raid Boss Events
Raid Boss events occur every other week, alternating with the dungeon events. The Raid Boss event differs a lot from both the normal missions and the dungeon missions: each dungeon boss is separate from the others (there is no path like dungeons and missions have), fighting a boss is a timed event, the targets are seals rather than creatures, and so forth.
Each Raid Boss is discovered by a player completing a normal mission. Once the mission is complete, if a Boss has been found, a prompt appears that informs the player that he/she has found a Raid Boss, and allows them to either proceed straight to the raids list or to dismiss the prompt and continue with missions. The raids list is a list of all the Bosses the player has found, as well as any Bosses that other players have shared with him/her. Bosses disappear once their timers expire or they are defeated and the rewards collected.
Selecting a Raid Boss from the raids list brings up a screen with various information about the Boss and the players that have attacked it (if any have), and there the player can select how many (1, 2 or 3) Battle Energy points to use when they attack; 2 points triple the player’s damage and health, 3 points provides 5 times the normal health and damage. Bosses can be attacked as many times as a player wants to, but each attack has a time limit. The time limit can be greatly increased by Rewinder creatures in the player’s deck, or slightly increased by Cage/Slow abilities (delays an enemy’s turn) creatures.
The fight against the Raid Boss consists of rounds: each round, several seals appear (each one resembles the icon of one of the elements, and represents that element for type advantages). These seals are only visible for a short time, and disappear once the player can start flicking his or her spells. The player has to aim from memory to hit accurately and match types in the best ways.
Each round has its own seals, and the player gets exactly one shot per seal.
Once the timer runs out or the Boss’s health is reduced to 0, the fight ends and returns the player either to the information screen for the Boss or the rewards screen, respectively. Once a player has attacked a Boss that they have discovered, they can share the Boss with other players to allow them to attack the Boss as well and help to defeat it. Rewards are awarded for participation, the first or last blow, doing the most damage, or having enough players working together. If the Boss escapes (its timer runs out while it has health remaining), no rewards are given.
Battle Energy points regenerate naturally at a rate of about one every 15 minutes, and can be recovered instantly by using Battle Energy potions (small gives 1 point, large gives up to 3 points). Bosses range from level 0 to level 49 for normal Bosses, and are either level 50 or level 100 for Legendary Bosses. Legendary Bosses can be shared by anyone that has attacked them, allowing very large groups of people to work together to defeat them.
Treasure goblins were added to Raid events more recently: they are like most other bosses, but have very short timers (before they escape, and also short timers for attacks against them) and they reward all three types of gems and some Magic Jewels.
Strategy for Raid Boss Events
Merely using one BE point per Boss, instead of 3, one can attack more Bosses than one would otherwise. Especially when the Legendary Bosses are released near the end of the event, this comes in handy. One need not even attack Legendary Bosses. One can cancel the attack and still call for help from other players, who, in turn, call for help from even more players. This strategy of not attacking saves time and gives one a better opportunity of gaining multiple players to attack the Boss. If enough players attack the Boss, more rewards are given to each player.
Suggestions and complaints
One of our suggestions would be to make it possible to skip the animations. The animations take a good bit of time and once one has experienced them a few times, they make one feel impatient. The only "skipable" animations at this stage are the animations when summoning creatures.
We have noticed a fine "cut-off line" for non-paying players. For example, getting a creature of the rarity "Epic" is near impossible. However, recently they have made use of Chests of Destiny during the Dungeon events. These Chests are holiday occurrences only (for example, during Halloween or Thanksgiving) and they allow everyone the chance to win an Ultra Rare (UR) card, which can be evolved into an Epic. But there is still no way for non-paying players to win Epics, which can be evolved into Legendaries.
There is a limited amount of cards that a player can own at the same time (this is determined by the number of "card slots" the player has). Card slots are occasionally given to players by the HellFire team, but other than these gifts, there is no way of getting new card slots. A suggestion we have in terms of this is to make it possible for players to swop gems/jewels for new card slots.
HellFire requires a stable Internet connection and thus the game needs to resynchronise often. This is a pain and can be annoying. However, it is an understandable procedure.
When one finishes the tutorial of the game, one is asked whether one would like to enter another player's username and receive rewards. This allows one to give and receive rewards to/from this player often. However, this is not an option for players who have not created a Mobage account beforehand and thus, renders this feature of the game unusable.
The final complaint we have is that there is no option in declining ally requests from other players.
Final remarks
In its entirety, HellFire is a very good game, especially for a mobile game. There are problems and annoyances, often things that players can overlook, but in comparison to its competition, HellFire is far better.
The lore of the various cards is based mostly on mythology, stories and legends from all over the world, with detailed artwork to accompany it. the mechanics of the game work smoothly in general, aside from the long delays due to some animations that was mentioned above.
One issue that has become clearer as time goes on, is the difference in gaming experience between non-paying and paying players. Both types of events have a leaderboard, and the rewards for one's position on the leaderboard increase almost exponentially as one climbs through the top thousand or so, all the way to a very large set of rewards for the top player.
However, since the most powerful cards (epic rarity) are entirely beyond the reach of non-paying players, the top few hundred are invariably paying players. Whether that lack of opportunity for non-paying players (a pay-to-win attitude) is a fatal flaw depends on what a player wants from the game.
Ultimately, it is up to the player to decide what he/she thinks of the game.
Please note: HellFire has recently made changes. Thus, the images of the main menus differ. These of the Dungeon event are more recent.
HellFire is a card game situated in a mythical world, called Hellfire. The player takes on the role of a mage, travelling a path through sections of the world, constantly saving towns from creatures that are entering the world through portals.
One is able to collect cards/creatures, most of which have their own, unique lore, to increase one’s power. One captures these creatures on missions, receive them as rewards or, most often, summon them by means of gems and jewels during weekly events.
There are four elements, namely Fire, Water, Earth and Death. As the logo of HellFire suggests, Fire is strongest when attacking Death, Death is strongest against Earth, Earth is strongest against Water and Water is strongest against Fire. When one attacks a creature of the Death element with cards of the Fire element, the damage multiplies. However, when one attacks a creature of the Death element with cards of the Earth element, the damage done to the enemy is cut in half.
Creatures above a certain rarity have special skills that stand a chance of activating during battle. All these skills are useful, some more so than others. However, the dominant opinion amongst players is that the shift ability is the least useful of the lot.
There are weekly events, each lasting around 6-7 days, alternating between Dungeons and Raids. These events will be discussed shortly.
HellFire was originally a game for mobiles, but is now also available on PCs. The artwork of the game is very well-done and the concept of the game itself is good. It is one of the better card-based games that we know of.
How Does HellFire Work?
Tutorial
When one first plays the game, one is given the option to create a Mobage account (which we suggest), log in with Facebook (which is also acceptable) or continue without creating an account (which we do not suggest – doing so can cause certain problems).
One continues to the tutorial, which is obligatory, where one learns about the game itself: one learns about setting up a deck, missions, collecting creatures, levelling and evolving, allies and wanderers, summoning and so forth.
Setting up a deck
One can choose 9 creatures to be in one’s deck. Three creatures in a row (the deck is set up in a grid formation), each row representing a turn during a mission. The elements and damage of a turn depend on the cards in the corresponding row, as well as which abilities might activate. A deck can be recommended for one, by the game, for attack, defence or a balance between the two. The attack power and defence of all 9 creatures are accumulated to determine the totals of one’s deck.
Missions
In Hellfire, the worlds in which the game is situated, there are many sections, which we will refer to as continents. These continents are divided into five regions, four of which represent one element (meaning that creatures of this element occur more frequently in this region) each and the fifth is a region in which no single element is predominant. In each region, one must complete 10 chapters (that is, 10 missions), the fifth and tenth of which are boss battles.
To do a mission, one uses energy points (15 per mission). One starts off with 100 of these points (100 is also the maximum one can have at any given point). These points regenerate, but one also receives potions, which can regenerate them instantly, as gifts or rewards during dungeon events. Ranking up also fully restores one’s mission energy.
During missions, there are 3 rounds/waves of enemies. The enemies emerge and in the top, right-hand corner of each enemy is a turn-counter (that is to say, this counter shows the number of turns one has before an enemy attacks again). The enemies are each of a certain element and this is shown by the colour surrounding them.
One attacks enemies one at a time by flicking the ball of mixed elements at the bottom of the screen towards the enemy one wants to hit. One can critically hit, hit or miss an enemy: all three do some form of damage, but a critical hit does 1.5 times the stated damage, a hit does the stated damage and missing does half damage to the enemy.
After one has defeated all the enemies of all 3 waves, one wins and receives rewards as well as experience points (30 points), allowing one to rank up. If one is defeated by the enemies, one still receives experience points, but only half as much.
During missions, one stands a chance of capturing the enemy creatures one defeats. These are automatically deposited into one’s card storage. These can be used in one’s deck or to level other cards.
Card rarity
Cards are ranked according to their rarity, a measure of how commonly they are found (and usually also an indication of their relative power). The rarities in HellFire are indicated by means of stars on the card, at the bottom right of the portrait. A card’s rarity increases by one rank at the fourth and final evolution. The ranks are as follows:
Common (1 star) C
Uncommon (2 stars) UC
Rare (3 stars) R
Super Rare (4 stars) SR
Ultra Rare (5 stars) UR
Epic (6 stars) E
Legendary (7 stars) L
Cards that are Rare or above at the first evolution stage have one of several abilities, discussed below. When a card is fully evolved, its rarity increases by one rank or star, but UC (2-star) cards that evolve into R (3-star) cards at their fourth evolution do not gain abilities.
Rarity also limits where cards are likely to be found. Common cards are very easy to come by via Ally or Emerald summons and capturing them in missions. Uncommon cards are plentiful even with Ruby and Diamond summons, and are also occasionally captured in a mission. Rare cards may also be captured in missions, but the capture chance is incredibly low.
Super Rare and Rare cards can come from any type of summon (least likely in Ally or Emerald summons, most common in Diamond summons). Ultra Rare cards can be gained from Magic Jewel summons, but the chance changes due to the Box system.
Skills
Skills are abilities that Rare and above cards have, which activate randomly when the row of the deck that contains the card in question is used to attack. There are several types of abilities, which may be given unique names for special or rarer cards. The types of normal abilities are:
● Direct Damage: "X deals damage to Y enemies"
- instantly deals small amounts of damage (of card's type) to enemies
● Massive Damage: "X deals massive damage to Y enemies"
- instantly deals large amounts of damage (of card's type) to enemies
● Damage Over Time: "inflicts X on Y enemies"
- deals a bit of damage each round to affected enemies
● Healing: "restores a X amount of health"
- heals the player
● Slow: "delays X enemies' attacks by Y turns"
- X random enemies' turn counters do not count down for Y turns
● Rewind: "increases X enemies' turn counters by Y"
- X random enemies' turn counters are increased by Y instantly"
● Shift: "shifts all X enemies to Y"
- all enemies of type/element X become type/element Y
Note: the difference between slow and rewind; this difference is most important in raid events.
Epic and Legendary cards all have a unique ability: they increase and/or decrease the attack and defence of the other cards on the deck, which can significantly alter strategies.
Evolving
When one has two separate creatures of the same sort (example: two Lava Lurkers), one can choose to evolve them to form a stronger version of the creature. One can only evolve a creature three times and when a card is fully evolved, its rarity increases by one star. Evolved creatures retain a little of their components’ power, but none of the levels.
One can evolve:
A first stage and a first stage to form a second stage,
A second stage and a first stage to form a third stage,
A third stage and a first stage to form a fourth (and final) stage.
One cannot evolve:
A second stage and another second stage,
A third stage and a second stage.
Leveling
One can level cards during any stage of evolution. To level a card, one picks the card one wants to level (make stronger) and then chooses the cards one would like to use to level it (these are usually the weakest cards or the cards one no longer wants). One sacrifices these cards, which gives experience to the chosen card, levels it up and thus makes it stronger.
When evolving a fully leveled card, 10% of its strength and defence are added to the new stage’s statistics. If a card is not fully leveled, it carries over 5% of its strength and defence to the new evolution. For this reason we suggest creating a third stage card and leveling it completely, as well as leveling the first stage card one will be using to evolve it. Leveling before the third stage gives less of a boost to the final card; only about 1% at most of the power of the second stage and the card it is evolved with are present in the final card, and even less from the first evolution. This process can be time consuming (and use hundreds or thousands of weak cards), especially with the rarer cards that have a higher maximum level.
Collecting cards
Even though there are a limited number of cards one can own at a time, once one has had a card, it appears in one’s personal collection. This collection exists out of all the cards one has had at each of its evolution stages.
Allies and Wanderers
Allies are other players that one can choose to take along on missions or dungeon missions, one per mission. When taking an ally on a mission for the first time each day, the ally receives ally jewels (which are used for summoning). These allies aid one by occasionally attacking a random enemy. Damage is based on the first card on their deck, and its ability can trigger. The hit always counts as a critical.
Wanderers are randomly selected players who also aid one in one’s attack, while not counting as allies. When a wanderer aids a player, the wanderer receives 10 Ally Jewels (received via the inbox). This is an automated procedure and players need not do anything but log in daily. One has the option of adding wanderers as allies at the end of a mission.
Summons
Other than capturing creatures on missions, one can receive them as gifts or summon them. During events there are Emerald summons, Ruby summons and Diamond summons, along with the usual summons. These will be discussed in the section on weekly events.
There are summons that can be done by using MobaCoins and summons that can be done with a Silver Key (that can only be obtained if an ally sends it to one). However, Magic Jewel summons and Ally Jewel summons are always available and do not require purchased MobaCoins.
Ally Jewel summons require 100 Ally Jewels per summon and only summon creatures of the rarity Rare and lower (however, summoning a Rare with Ally Jewels is uncommon).
Magic Jewels summons require 100 Magic Jewels (which one can obtain by completing regions in missions, floors in dungeons (both for the first time only) or by receiving them as rewards during the weekly events). Magic Jewel summons guarantee creatures of the rarity Rare or above. Thus, during the weekly events, the creatures summoned with Magic Jewels are from the Box.
The Box
The Box is an important thing to know about for any player that wants to improve his or her deck. When a player summons new creatures by spending gems from events, Ally Jewels or Magic Jewels (some Mobacoin summons as well), all the Rare and above cards (R, SR and UR) are drawn from a limited pool of cards known as the Box. Each player has his or her own Box, and can access up to four different boxes during one event, one after another.
Each Box contains a set number of Rare and Super Rare creatures, and one Ultra Rare creature (The amounts left in one’s current Box are viewable in the summon menu). The UR creature is the same for each Box during an event, giving players the chance to evolve this UR into an Epic. Every Rare and Super Rare card the player summons, is drawn from this pool of cards, and is removed from the pool, which means that the amount of creatures in the Box grows smaller and smaller as more are summoned. As the pool of cards grows smaller, the chance of summoning the UR card with Magic Jewels (the only type of summon that can summon the UR from the Box) increases.
Once the UR has been summoned, a new Box becomes available to the player; each Box contains more R and SR cards than the one before it, but all four have exactly one UR. The only way to guarantee summoning the UR with one Magic Jewel summon is to summon all the other cards first, before using the Magic Jewels.
Weekly Events
Every week, there is an event that lasts +/- 7 days. They begin on Tuesdays, ending the next week on Monday. There are two types of events: Dungeon events and Raid Boss events. As mentioned, these events are weekly, alternating between Dungeon and Raid Boss events. These events have a few things in common.
They make use of a summoning system that consists out of Emerald summons, Ruby summons and Diamond summons. Emerald summons are the easiest to obtain, but also summons the weakest cards, the odds being similar to those of the Ally Jewel summons (Rare and above tend to be slightly less common than 1 in 100). Rubies are more difficult to obtain, but the odds of getting rarer (and therefore better) creatures are higher than with the Emeralds (roughly 1 in 10-20). Diamonds are the most difficult to obtain, but have the highest odds of summoning good cards (1 in 2-3). It takes 10 gems (Emeralds, Rubies or Diamonds) to summon one creature.
During events, one gains event points. These are a measure of one’s achievements during the event and determine one’s rank on the leaderboard. The higher one’s position on the leaderboard (the more event points one earns), the better the prizes one is rewarded at the end of the event. Various rewards are granted as one reaches certain amounts of event points.
Near the end of the event (during the last three days), a final challenge is given to the players. During Dungeon events, this takes the form of a fourth dungeon. During Raid Boss events, it takes the form of legendary bosses.
Dungeon Events
These events are similar to the missions one usually plays in many ways, including that 15 energy points are used per round and that experience points are rewarded. There are 3 dungeons (at first), namely Novice, Expert and Master. As the names suggest, the dungeons differ in difficulty, Novice being easiest and Master being the most challenging before the fourth dungeon is opened. Each event comes with its own unique story and array of characters.
A key difference to the event in comparison to ordinary missions, apart from the event points and prizes, is that there are moving enemies. These include Reinforce Wisps (water card), Reinforce Spirits (fire card), Reinforce Souls (earth card), Reinforce Animas (death card), Chests of Destiny (during holidays) and featured creatures of the event. Some of these enemies, such as the Reinforce cards and Chests, can be captured when defeated. This is done by using seals or magical seals. Seals only give one a chance of capturing the creature, while magic seals give one a 100% chance of capturing the creature. However, magic seals are much rarer than seals. When one runs out of magic seals, there is the option of buying more, while there is no option to buy ordinary seals. Capturing these creatures award a set amount of event points. Completing the section of the dungeon also rewards event points, based in part on the creatures one defeats in the section.
One need not complete the Novice dungeon in order to move to the Expert dungeon and the Expert dungeon to do the Master dungeon. One can start with whichever dungeon one would like, and move between them freely without losing progress.
Dungeons consist out of 10-20 floors each. These floors are divided into 5 sections, the last of which is an illusionist fight. These illusionists are featured creatures of the event and comparable to a boss. The boss produces copies of itself and one must identify the correct one before being able to do damage to the creature. However, if one does any damage to copy, it disappears.
One stands a chance of capturing these illusionists with seals or magic seals when they are defeated on certain floors.
Strategy for Dungeon Events
If one wants to collect cards to level up ones cards, doing the very first dungeon is one's best strategy. One receives up to 500 Emerald gems (50 summons) per floor and even when one retreats, one can get 250 Emerald gems (25 summons) per floor. Considering that there are 10 floors per dungeon, this is a great way to get cannon fodder for levelling up other, stronger creatures. This strategy, however, is not one to use when one wants to gain event point or wants to get the UR card form the Box(es).
Raid Boss Events
Raid Boss events occur every other week, alternating with the dungeon events. The Raid Boss event differs a lot from both the normal missions and the dungeon missions: each dungeon boss is separate from the others (there is no path like dungeons and missions have), fighting a boss is a timed event, the targets are seals rather than creatures, and so forth.
Each Raid Boss is discovered by a player completing a normal mission. Once the mission is complete, if a Boss has been found, a prompt appears that informs the player that he/she has found a Raid Boss, and allows them to either proceed straight to the raids list or to dismiss the prompt and continue with missions. The raids list is a list of all the Bosses the player has found, as well as any Bosses that other players have shared with him/her. Bosses disappear once their timers expire or they are defeated and the rewards collected.
Selecting a Raid Boss from the raids list brings up a screen with various information about the Boss and the players that have attacked it (if any have), and there the player can select how many (1, 2 or 3) Battle Energy points to use when they attack; 2 points triple the player’s damage and health, 3 points provides 5 times the normal health and damage. Bosses can be attacked as many times as a player wants to, but each attack has a time limit. The time limit can be greatly increased by Rewinder creatures in the player’s deck, or slightly increased by Cage/Slow abilities (delays an enemy’s turn) creatures.
The fight against the Raid Boss consists of rounds: each round, several seals appear (each one resembles the icon of one of the elements, and represents that element for type advantages). These seals are only visible for a short time, and disappear once the player can start flicking his or her spells. The player has to aim from memory to hit accurately and match types in the best ways.
Each round has its own seals, and the player gets exactly one shot per seal.
Once the timer runs out or the Boss’s health is reduced to 0, the fight ends and returns the player either to the information screen for the Boss or the rewards screen, respectively. Once a player has attacked a Boss that they have discovered, they can share the Boss with other players to allow them to attack the Boss as well and help to defeat it. Rewards are awarded for participation, the first or last blow, doing the most damage, or having enough players working together. If the Boss escapes (its timer runs out while it has health remaining), no rewards are given.
Battle Energy points regenerate naturally at a rate of about one every 15 minutes, and can be recovered instantly by using Battle Energy potions (small gives 1 point, large gives up to 3 points). Bosses range from level 0 to level 49 for normal Bosses, and are either level 50 or level 100 for Legendary Bosses. Legendary Bosses can be shared by anyone that has attacked them, allowing very large groups of people to work together to defeat them.
Treasure goblins were added to Raid events more recently: they are like most other bosses, but have very short timers (before they escape, and also short timers for attacks against them) and they reward all three types of gems and some Magic Jewels.
Strategy for Raid Boss Events
Merely using one BE point per Boss, instead of 3, one can attack more Bosses than one would otherwise. Especially when the Legendary Bosses are released near the end of the event, this comes in handy. One need not even attack Legendary Bosses. One can cancel the attack and still call for help from other players, who, in turn, call for help from even more players. This strategy of not attacking saves time and gives one a better opportunity of gaining multiple players to attack the Boss. If enough players attack the Boss, more rewards are given to each player.
Suggestions and complaints
One of our suggestions would be to make it possible to skip the animations. The animations take a good bit of time and once one has experienced them a few times, they make one feel impatient. The only "skipable" animations at this stage are the animations when summoning creatures.
We have noticed a fine "cut-off line" for non-paying players. For example, getting a creature of the rarity "Epic" is near impossible. However, recently they have made use of Chests of Destiny during the Dungeon events. These Chests are holiday occurrences only (for example, during Halloween or Thanksgiving) and they allow everyone the chance to win an Ultra Rare (UR) card, which can be evolved into an Epic. But there is still no way for non-paying players to win Epics, which can be evolved into Legendaries.
There is a limited amount of cards that a player can own at the same time (this is determined by the number of "card slots" the player has). Card slots are occasionally given to players by the HellFire team, but other than these gifts, there is no way of getting new card slots. A suggestion we have in terms of this is to make it possible for players to swop gems/jewels for new card slots.
HellFire requires a stable Internet connection and thus the game needs to resynchronise often. This is a pain and can be annoying. However, it is an understandable procedure.
When one finishes the tutorial of the game, one is asked whether one would like to enter another player's username and receive rewards. This allows one to give and receive rewards to/from this player often. However, this is not an option for players who have not created a Mobage account beforehand and thus, renders this feature of the game unusable.
The final complaint we have is that there is no option in declining ally requests from other players.
Final remarks
In its entirety, HellFire is a very good game, especially for a mobile game. There are problems and annoyances, often things that players can overlook, but in comparison to its competition, HellFire is far better.
The lore of the various cards is based mostly on mythology, stories and legends from all over the world, with detailed artwork to accompany it. the mechanics of the game work smoothly in general, aside from the long delays due to some animations that was mentioned above.
One issue that has become clearer as time goes on, is the difference in gaming experience between non-paying and paying players. Both types of events have a leaderboard, and the rewards for one's position on the leaderboard increase almost exponentially as one climbs through the top thousand or so, all the way to a very large set of rewards for the top player.
However, since the most powerful cards (epic rarity) are entirely beyond the reach of non-paying players, the top few hundred are invariably paying players. Whether that lack of opportunity for non-paying players (a pay-to-win attitude) is a fatal flaw depends on what a player wants from the game.
Ultimately, it is up to the player to decide what he/she thinks of the game.
Please note: HellFire has recently made changes. Thus, the images of the main menus differ. These of the Dungeon event are more recent.