THE GUIDE CONTENT
1 – INTRODUCTION
2 – THE ARCHETYPE LIGHTINING
3 - HOW ORBS WORKS
4 - PATH AT ACT 1
5 - PATH AT ACT 2 & 3
6 – REST SITES
7 – SHOPS
8 – RELICS
9 - STRATEGIES FOR SPECIFIC ENEMIES
10 - THICK VS THIN
11- FROST & DARK CARDS
12 - ESSENTIAL COMBO PIECES
13 - BEWARE WITH THESE CARDS
14 - ABOUT THIS TIER LIST
15 - TIER 5 - STARTING CARDS
16 - TIER 4 - OK CARDS
17 - TIER 3 - BASIC CARDS
18 - TIER 2 - POWERFUL CARDS
19 - TIER 1 - MOST POWERFUL CARDS
20 – FINAL WORDS

Before starting a run with defect, I searched steam community for a good guide and was frustrated. Although I’m still learning this game and this archetype, I want to share what I learned playing defect. I hope you enjoy this guide and that it may be helpful for you.

This is the basic and initial archetype for defect, it’s the easiest way for playing it. Its fights are a damage rush, but it may have a reasonable defense with the right defensive cards. “The best defense is to attack”, as dead enemies don't deal damage. However, obviously, you should try to mitigate damage as much as possible by playing defensive cards, once one of the secrets of this game is to administrate your HP and to decide when it’s worth attacking or defending. Saving your HP is crucial to use rest sites for upgrading your best cards.

One of the advantages of damaging with spells (“skills”) instead of attacks is that being weak doesn’t reduce your damage. Also, defense granted by your frost orbs are not affected by frail.

This archetype is especially good for finishing off the last enemy with a damage burst by evoking your orbs. If the last enemy has few HP, go reckless.

You start each fight with one lightning orb from your initial relic. Orbs have two skills: one passive, that applies every turn, and one active, that triggers when you evoke an orb. You can evoke orbs by using cards with that ability.

You have a maximum amount of orbs you can channel. When you channel a new orb while you have the maximum amount, you’ll automatically evoke your oldest orb.

The limit of orbs you can have can be increased with certain cards, although it is only good to do that when you’re consistently generating a lot of orbs (usually at the act 3).

Avoid evoking your orbs except for a final blow or if you can channel new orbs with other cards. If you have all your orb slots filled, the card dualcast and an orb-generating card in your hand, use dualcast before the orb generator unless you’re going for the final blow.

Act 1 and the beginning of act 2 is mostly for collecting cards. Avoid elites, once the rewards they give usually doesn’t pay off the damage they deal. Try to go for rest sites when you need to heal or if you have any cards recommended to upgrade. Save your money to spend in a shop at act 2 unless you hoarded more than 400 gold.

Collecting cards for your deck will almost always be relevant, once this archetype can use a thick deck, but this importance diminishes as you collect powerful cards, and then going for events at unknown locations becomes more effective. Keep avoiding elites unless you’re extremely powerful already, but this shouldn’t happen before act 3, and even though I do NOT recommend facing them.

Try to pass by the latest shop on the map, when you’ll have more gold.

The main use for them are for healing when you’re at low HP or to upgrade important cards, unless you have a relic that adds a better use to the sites. Sometimes, especially at the beginning of the act, you may prefer upgrading over healing unless you have few HP (less than 50-60%).

Relevant relics are the best thing you can buy. When buying cards, look for tier 1 to tier 3 cards or the combo pieces. Removing initial strikes is very important. Removing initial defends is not very good (they can help blocking even being basic), but if you already removed all your strike cards you can remove the defend cards after.

There are no secrets to relics; usually you’ll grab whatever appears. When you have to choose what relic is the best among some options, the best choice tends to be clear.

Relics that gives energy generally are the best, except for the relic that gives you energy but hides the enemies’ intentions; it is only good if you know all the combat patterns.

The relic that makes you retain your hand is very good.

The relic that increases your amount of orbs is not very good in the beginning to the mid game (it makes evoking orbs harder unless you generate many orbs).

Relics that increase strength are useless in this build. Relics that increase dexterity are so so.

Knowing the enemies patterns is important. Do study them. It’s not in this guide scope to give detail about them, but there are other guides that teach.

A thick deck mitigates the disadvantage of enemies that add cards to your deck and the turbo’s void. However, a thin deck rotates faster and grants you’ll have the combo pieces in your hand. There is a balance to aim, and adding too many cards that are not the combo pieces or the most powerful cards is inefficient, making your deck “dirty” with unnecessary cards.

Frost and dark cards can be useful, although they have few synergy with the lightening cards. Dark orbs deal a decent amount of damage when evoked and frost orbs grant some defense, allowing for a “turtle strategy” (a defensive strategy). The key here is the fact that increasing your focus affects how much defense you gain from your frost orbs, and this defense from frost orbs is not affected by frail. Along with some defensive cards and two upgraded defragment, you can build a tank.

Don’t spend your upgrades on these cards. It’s not worth it.

Good card to use:
Coolheaded (this card pairs well with focus increasing cards. Upgrade it only if you don’t have better cards to upgrade. Use up to two or three copies of this).











Reasonable cards to use (use up to one of each):
















Least reasonable cards to use (not too good, but you may use some of them):

While you don’t have a decent amount of each of the combo pieces, you’ll need to pick them over any other cards in the tier list.

All of these cards are highly recommended to upgrade, except for turbo.

If you finish the first act without two tempest or/and one electrodynamics, you may consider changing your archetype or restarting the game. This is even more true for act 2.

They are:

Tempest + double energy + turbo (I don’t recommend using more than 2 turbo or 2 double energy, but there isn’t a limit for the amount of tempest. Start your turn casting the turbos, then double energy, then tempest).












Electrodynamics.












Thunderstrike (one is enough).













Defragment.

Capacitor.
Increasing the amount of orbs slots is only good if you’re already generating a lot of orbs or if you are in a long fight (against bosses and elites). Usually that happens at act 3. You may pick this card to use later, but while your orb generation is low it will be bad for evoking your orbs, thus reducing your damage in short fights.













Beam cell.
Vulnerability is not good in this build once you’ll deal magic damage, not physical, and magical damage doesn’t benefit from vulnerability.














Consume.
Better for short fights, when you’ll want to evoke your orbs ASAP. I don’t recommend picking any copy of this card, as it is not useful against bosses and elites.

Don’t pick cards outside of this list, once they’ll only dirty your deck.

Cards recommended to upgrade will be listed with the acronym RTU. Cards highly recommended to upgrade will be listed with the acronym HRTU.

Remove your basic strikes ASAP. After them, you may remove your basic defends. Use your dualcast for a final blow or before generating a new orb while you already are with all your orb slots filled. Zap is a RTU.

The following cards are just ok to have. I don’t recommend using more than 1 copy of each, except for “stack”, “white noise” and “melter”. Don’t fill your deck with too many “ok cards”, or you’ll make your deck dirty (5 total ok cards should be the limit).

Barrage (this card pairs well with capacitor. Without capacitor It is not good).












Hologram (useful for recovering powerful cards from your discard pile).













Leap (good amount of defense).












Recursion.












Stack (very situational, better for thick decks. You may use up to two copies of this).












Auto-shields (beware to use it before increasing your block).













Equilibrium.












Loop.












White noise (situational, depends on receiving a good power. You may use up to two copies of this).













Melter (removing block is situational, but may be REALLY useful. You may use up to two copies of this).












Biased cognition (cast it only at the end of the battle).













Core surge (the best of this card is the artifact it gives).












Machine learning.












Multi-cast (for a final blow).

The following cards are basic cards for this archetype. You may use up to two copies of each.

Ball lightning.











Charge battery.













Go for the eyes (HRTU. Especially useful while you can see the enemies’ intents).













Steam barrier.













Bullseye (RTU).













FTL.













Seek (useful to search for combo pieces or powerful cards in your deck).

Boot sequence (there is no limit for how many of this you can use, but 2 copies are enough).















Static discharge (RTU).

All the essential combo pieces from topic 12 fits in this tier.

Self repair (grants survivability along the run, extremely useful. RTU. You may use up to two copies of this. Not useful against bosses once you recover your HP after a boss fight).












Buffer (HRTU. When upgraded, it completely defends you from two attacks. If you have enough block, attacks will be absorbed by your block before the buffer, making it super effective. Also, the buffer lasts along the turns, it doesn’t vanish at the end of the turn. Two or three upgraded copies are enough).












Creative AI (the best card for long fights, however don’t use more than one copy of this – receiving two powers per turn is too much. RTU).

Thanks for your attention and sorry for my English mistakes. I really hope you enjoyed this guide and that it may help you in your runs with defect.