Thread by @yashkaf

Last year I did a @threadapalooza of overly general life advice. This year it's time to focus on what's really important and give the people what they want.

1 like = 1 thing you should know about the best game no one besides me is playing, Random Dice!

https://twitter.com/yashkaf/status/1205948730337374210

1. Random Dice is a competitive, real-time, deck building tower defense game. All four of those attributes are common to many games, but it's their combination that makes RD special. You have to be good at strategy AND quick thinking, analysis AND intuition, to be good at it.

2. Important up top: it's FtP, but you'd probably want to spend about $50 to enjoy it fully. I've spent around $100 and 300 hours on it, which is a pretty good deal. Or, you can read this mega thread and git so gud you can play forever with no more spend (as I am at this point).

3. RD is developed by Korean studio 111% Games and it's been live for a year with regular updates. It's available for Android and iPhone. There is plenty of good reference online that I won't cover.
random-dice.fandom.com/wiki/Random_Di…
randomdice.gg
reddit.com/r/randomdice/

4. Basic terms: each player builds a DECK of 5 dice types, they are placed on the BOARD where they shoot at MONSTERS. Dice start at 1 PIP and can be merged to increase pip (dot-count) by 1. Killing monsters earns SP which is spent on placing more dice or upgrading dice types.

5. You can play against an opponent with constructed decks (PvP), draft decks (Arena), random identical decks (Mirror), or a crew mode that no one plays. You can also play co-op to earn more dice. PvP and co-op can be with randomly matched players or a friend.

6. My user name is Yashkaf on the USA server. I'm happy to jump on co-op to help people get started with a deck. I usually play PvP until I've mastered the latest best meta deck and then mostly play Arena for the fun and challenge. I'm winning about 70% of my Arena matches.

Taking a break to let people download and try out this game. I know this thread is going to be niche and self indulgent, and the topic choice was a bit of a troll. But if you're curious to read about me optimizing the fuck out of a phone game that has surprising depth, read on :)

7. One piece of noob advice up top to help you win your first 20 matches: dice power scales with total pip-count. So if you merge two 2-pip dice and get a 3-pip, you went from 4 total to 3. Don't do this. This game isn't about merging everything, every merge is a tactical choice.

8. The key strategy: your goal is not to be the strongest ASAP, but to have the stronger deck 𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱. If you both will clearly survive two bosses but not three, you must play to be just a bit stronger on the third wave.

9. High level players routinely fuck this up. They use up hostile dice (royal, hacker, assassin) too early. They upgrade types to max lvl before seeing which has more 3 and 4-pip dice. They leave 1-pip typhoons to merge 2-pip thorns for an easy boss. Patience is a virtue in RD.

10. Usually (by which I mean, in Arena), your goal in the first wave is to get information: what board you'll have, what board the opponent will have, on what wave the game will end. You don't get a bonus for killing the first wave/boss extra quickly, only for not dying.

11. This also means that it's fine to merge 1-pip dice early on to see which 2-pip dice you'll get to plan upgrades and placement. In Arena you'll want to have at least two DPS (typhoon, mighty wind, wave, gamble...) types, for example, but only want to upgrade one of them early.

12. Note on Arena: it costs 100 diamonds to enter, you get 20 dia at 2 wins, 80 at 7, 100 at 10. So if you get to 7 half the time and 10 a quarter, you almost break even + earn a lot of cards and gold and have random fun with no grinding of repetitive decks. This is very doable.

13. OK, let's talk tactics for specific dice and bosses. This site has a good overview of each and basic tactics: wisegeek.ru/aaf/random-dice and this has useful calculators: randomdice.gg/calculator/dps. It's useful to memorize e.g. that 2 typhoon ~ 3 MW ~ 3 gamble and that Elec > Wind.

14. Typhoon! Hardest working die in the game, staple of arena runs and PvP from the point you get it until level 14-15. Remember to upgrade this early because the base damage is only 20 but each power up is 30. Once you have ~10 total pip of typhoon they should be at max level.

15. Modified electric. Another staple and unique* in that it scales with pip-count squared (speed ~ pip, N mobs ~ pip, DPS = speed*N). So a 3-pip die does more DPS than two 2-pips (9>2*4). You want as many of those with 3 or 4 pips.

*Holy sword's special goes with pip^2 as well

16. Switch. Underrated even though it's in the current PvP meta. Not only for position dependent dice (yin-yang, gear, atomic, fire, moon, etc) but it can also swap in for dice under threat from hacks, meteors, and assassination. Plus has enough DPS to keep you alive in wave 1.

17. Speaking of: applying 1-pip supplement to a growth die gives you a 3-pip die for the cost of 2 pips and one board space, a better trade-off than using sup on anything else. Almost no one does that, and it's a big reason why I win 60%+ of games against identical meta decks.

18. Another tactic I came up with and rarely see anyone using: once it's clear that you and your opponent will not survive the current wave or boss (e.g. basilisk on wave 2/3) merge all your DPS into slowdown dice, so the opponent dies a few seconds before you would have.

19. There's almost never a reason to merge hacker or royal dice in wave 1. Especially with hacker dice, you want to wait until the opponent has 2-pip dice so he's either stuck with them or loses pips while merging. And they have enough DPS early, so be patient (and see tweet #8).

20. Random growth. Strong to the point of OP in arena. If you get it just fill out the deck with DPS regardless of synergy, and consider merging other 1-pips early hoping for a 2-pip RG. Just remember that if you get one 45 seconds before a knight comes, it won't do you no good.

21. The best counter to RG is merging royal dice 40-45 seconds after the enemy places them.

This reminds me of my favorite "troll" deck for PvP: typhoon-hell-hacker-royal/assassin-joker. It's not the best at winning, but it's the best at making opponents absolutely despise you.

22. Assassin can be dodged by merging away from the attacked cell, which includes "merging" a joker or swapping with a switch die. Most players merge assassin's as soon as they pop, so you can be ready with the timing by watching their board.

23. In general, there's a lot more to be gained by watching the opponent's board than yours. You can see if they're threatening you with hostile dice, how strong they are and going to be and against what bosses, and, as I said, to estimate on which wave the match will be decided.

Gonna give you tactics to prep for each of the bosses, which is the main thing other players fuck up, if this gets to 30 likes.

Hopefully this thread already scared away everyone who followed me hoping for more crazy drama after yesterday's 30-year-old wife tweet blew up.

Alright, onto bosses which should be useful to new players too.
24. Snake. Piece of cake, and you don't always want to kill it too quickly. More minions summoned = more SP, and maybe you need time for mine or growth dice. When it's coming mostly just plan for the next wave.

25. Silence. Can be dangerous from wave 2 onward so you want a fuller board. Wait to merge unless it's hacker dice which will make your opponent merge dice. Slowdown dice like Blizzard are not helpful against this boss, it can block all your dice before the end of the track.

26. Knight. On wave 1 you want a full board of 1-pip dice even with SP to spare, to preserve your optionality. Start merging only after the second transformation. If you hit a knight with a few high-pip dice you run the risk of them turning to shit.

27. Knight also:
* Triggers sacrifice dice, so leave them unmerged
* Clears hacks
* Resets countdowns on everything from typhoon speedup to growth and wave dice

28. Remember, one boss won't kill you outright. It's better to take a wave 2/3 knight on the chin and win on the next wave than to lose pips when you start merging frantically. Again, the main sin of bad RD players is impatience.

29. Magician. Same as knight, you want a board with no vulnerable high-pip dice so you can dodge the meteors. If the magician dies or hits the end while the meteor flies (which takes 3 seconds) the meteor disappears. You can get a sense for it and then you don't have to dodge.

30. Leon. Reduces 50% of your dice by 1-pip, so you want as few dice on the board as possible. This means:
A - Stop popping dice the moment you have enough to barely survive the wave, save your SP until after Leon hits.
B - Merge ALL 1-pip dice and the weaker 2-pips just before.

31. Hacker. Countered by supplement dice (which remove the hack) and switch (which can take the hack instead). Remember that hacks don't affect things like thorns, landmines, splash/chain damage etc. Wait to merge until it passes so you can merge dice that were both hacked.

32. Basilisk. This boss CAN end you outright especially from wave 2 onward so it's worth it to merge things into the highest DPS you can (ditch thorn and laser, keep iron and typhoon) so you don't get hit by multiple boss special abilities.