Test Your Knowledge - Interactions Quiz

[nh3maser]

Duelyst is notorious for having many strange, “discoverable” interactions.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been messing around in Sandbox to try to clarify how some game mechanics actually work. Before I share my findings, I thought I would post this quiz to see how good the intuition of forum-goers is on these interactions.
After taking the quiz, look forward to a post soon exploring these interactions, and many others, in more detail.

A word of caution before beginning: all of these scenarios were tested in Sandbox mode (enabled via T2K5’s helper scripts). While I haven’t noticed any discrepancies yet, it’s possible in theory that some of these interactions would play out differently on ladder.

SECTION 1: SENTINELS

Question I

You play a Mirage Master copying your opponent’s Bound Tormentor in Sentinel form.

1. Mirage Master becomes:
   a) Bound Tormentor
   b) A Sentinel token that can flip into Tormentor
   c) An “empty” Sentinel token that can’t transform

2. Bound Tormentor’s effect gives you a:
   a) Mirage Master
   b) Bound Tormentor
   c) “Empty” Sentinel token

Question II

You play a Dagona on top of your opponent’s Hundred-Handed Rakushi in Sentinel form.

1. Will Rakushi trigger and damage Dagona?
   a) Yes
   b) No

2. When Dagona is killed, what will pop out?
   a) A Sentinel token that can flip into Rakushi
   b) An “empty” Sentinel token
   c) Rakushi
   d) Nothing

Question III

Your opponent’s Moonlit Basilysk in Sentinel form is adjacent to one of your minions (Manaforger) and one of your opponent’s (Abjudicator). You cast Flawless Reflection on the Sentinel.

1. Your Manaforger becomes:
   a) A Sentinel that can flip into Basilysk
   b) a 2/2 Basilysk
   c) a 5/5 Basilysk

2. The enemy Abjudicator becomes:
   a) A Sentinel that can flip into Basilysk
   b) a 2/2 Basilysk
   c) a 5/5 Basilysk

SECTION 2: MYTHRONS

Question IV

Playing Abyssian, you have in hand a Grand Strategos (obtained from Bound Tormentor) and a 6/2 Zyx (buffed by Phantasm).

1. When you play Zyx, the copy generated by its Opening Gambit will be:
   a) 1/2
   b) 6/2

2. By how much will you progress the Lyonar Trial?
   a) 0
   b) 1
   c) 2

Question V

You’re playing an Abyssian Trial deck.

1. You control a Shadowdancer and cast Dark Transformation on your opponent’s Azure Herald next to their Sunriser. Do you progress the Trial?
   a) Yes
   b) No

2. With a different build of Xor, you control a stolen Catalyst Quillbeast and cast Shadowspawn (your BBS). Do you progress the trial?
a) Yes
b) No

3. Later in the turn, after the Shadowspawn tokens have died, you then cast Wraithling Swarm. Do you progress the trial?
a) Yes
b) No

Question VI

You have completed the Songhai Trial, played Hideatsu to activate the Destiny, and control a Golem Metallurgist.

1. If you play a Brightmoss Golem, how much damage will it deal due to Ox’s Destiny effect?
   a) 4
   b) 5

2. Next turn, you play EMP. How much damage does it do?
a) 6
b) 7

SECTION 3: SPELL TRIGGERS

Question VII

1. You control a Blue Conjurer and cast Fractal Replication on it. How many Arcanysts will be added to your Action Bar?
   a) One
   b) Three

2. What about Mirror Meld on a Circulus?
a) One
b) Two

Question VIII

Playing as Cassyva, you control a Redsteel Minos and an Owlbeast Sage, each with 1 health.

1. If you cast Abyssal Scar (your BBS), which of these minions would die?
   a) Owlbeast
   b) Minos
   c) Both
   d) Neither

Playing Magmar, you control a Thraex, a Prismatic Illusionist, and an Owlbeast Sage.
2. If you cast your BBS, the final stats of the Illusion token are:
a) 2/1
b) 2/3
c) 3/1
d) 3/3

SECTION 4: TRANSFORMATIONS/MANA COSTS

Question IX

The enemy general has 11 health and controls a Blood Taura.

1. What will happen if you cast Aspect of Ego on Blood Taura?
   a) New instance of Taura
   b) Nothing, the spell fizzles
   c) Something else

2. On their turn, your opponent uses Cascading Rebirth on their Taura. What happens?
a) No effect, spell fizzles, keep Taura
b) Sac Taura, get nothing
c) Sac Taura, get something else

Question X

You have the following board state:

Here’s some additional information:
Astral Crusader was played after being replaced twice.
Chakkram was played with its discount.
The second Arcane Devourer was played with the discount from the first one.
Your Bloodshard Golem was a discounted copy obtained from Bound Tormentor.
The fliers were all played discounted by the Skywings.
Spelljammer was played with Flash Reincarnation.
Blaze Hound was played with the discount from Kujata.
Your opponent’s Bloodshard Golem was played with the discount from Golem Metallurgist.
Mandrake was played for 0 mana.

You cast Echoing Shriek.
Besides the obvious 2-drops, what else gets transformed? (can give multiple answers, or none):
a) Arcane Devourer
b) Skywing
c) Wings of Paradise
d) Young Flamewing
e) Astral Crusader
f) Chakkram
g) Spelljammer
h) Your Bloodshard Golem
i) Your opponent’s Bloodshard Golem
j) Mandrake
k) Blaze Hound

[nh3maser]

Answers

Question I

I.1 - b

I.2 - a

Question II

II.1 - a

II.2 - d

Question III

III.1 - b
III.2 - b

Question IV

IV.1 - b
IV.2 - c

Question V

V.1 - a

V.2 - b

V.3 - b

Question VI

VI.1 - a

VI.2 - b

Question VII

VII.1 - b

VII.2 - a

Question VIII

VIII.1 - b

VIII.2 - c

Question IX

IX.1 - b

IX.2 - c

Question X

X - d and e

[humancalc]

Thanks for the quiz .

When you’ve played a lot of Duelyst but feel like a noob after the quiz .

[duzt]

Man these questions are tough, I keep getting the wrong answer all the time. Duelyst indeed has some questionable interactions.

[mrmana3]

Next time, we’ll think twice before saying we know everything about the game!

[bostwick]

For question 10, can anyone explain why Young Flamewing transforms but nothing happens to the other flyers? It seems at the least that Wings of Paradise should of been transformed, and I’m not sure why it didn’t. What am I not seeing?

Only thing I can think is that it had been dispelled.

[nh3maser]

This is one of the stranger interactions. Most mana discounts aren’t maintained onto the board - for example, if you Reassemble an Obelysk and replay it for 0, mousing over it will show the normal mana cost, and it will behave as usual when using cost-dependent spells such as Aspect of Ego.

One of the only exceptions is Skywing. For some reason, its mana discount ability also shows up as an “aura” effect on the board, applying to nearby friendly fliers (but not itself). In the last question, Flamewing is adjacent to two Skywings, so its mana cost is treated as 2. Meanwhile, Wings of Paradise isn’t next to a Skywing, so its mana cost is treated as 3 as normal.

[mothergreen]

Great questions! Thank you for those. Some answers just make me shake my head though. You’d think, that some of these cards would work the same way, but they just don’t. Especially the Minos and Thaex procs. And question ten ofc^^

[mrmana3]

Spaghetti coding confirmed

[bostwick]

Wanted to find out more so I ran a one with Strategos and some flyers. Cost reduction is exactly as you said of course, but a few interesting things I saw. Skywing does not discount Gryphon Fledgling in hand (which I expected), nor does it’s aura on board, even when the zeal is active.

Replacing dreamgazer with no room to summon just does a normal replace, and no damage is dealt.

Strategos calculates what mana cost will be used to transform a minion before it begins the transformations. (IE Skywing being transformed did not cause a flyer near it to revert to higher mana cost).

The transforms are performed one at a time though to check interactions, beginning at the lower left corner and moving up the column before moving to the next column to the right. This was most noticeable when multiple warblades spawned. Minions to the right and above warblade spawns transformed after buffs were applied, and therefore had not retained the bonuses.

[nh3maser]

Nice observation on the Strategos promotion order! I hadn’t caught that one before.

Yeah, the Warmaster keyword lords don’t play well with conditional keywords. Similarly to the Skywing - Fledgling situation, Solpiercer is never buffed by Arrow Whistler and Crestfallen doesn’t get the bonus movement from Golden Justicar.

[boronian]

Great quiz, love it!

Though you gave me a lot of work on the wiki

I wonder if Dagona works the same with all Minion Sentinels or only with Rakushi? Did you do some testing in that regard? Does the bug still exist where Dagona and Freeblade disappear from board? I can remember there was something like that in the beginning.

Edit:
Question IV: I got that one right and I figure it works the same with Stygian Observer as it does with Phantasm? Did you test that?

Question VI: Does this count for Flyer discounts too (Skywing)?

Question VII: Did you test that interaction with the other minion too? So is this a Mirror Meld / Fractal Replication interaction or does it depend on what kind of generating minion you do it?

Question: IX 1.: Did you try that Aspect of Ego interaction on any other minion which has unique mana cost? I know that Rae turns into Rae and I wonder if the rule is that if there is no other same costed minion it turns into that minion (it is the only explanation for Rae after the change in patch 1.96. Though Blood Taura doesn’t really follow this logic.

[nh3maser]

Dagona works the same with all of the minion Sentinels - it triggers them upon eating, but doesn’t regurgitate them on death. However, Freeblade’s swap trigger doesn’t work on it, so that trigger has no effect. (In fact, it looks like a lot of the buggier Sentinel interaction were cleaned up at some point - for example, Dioltas trading into a minion Sentinel will no longer cause the Sentinel to revive and trigger on the Tombstone, etc.).

As far as I can tell, Strategos only sees base stats and doesn’t take into account any hand buffs.

Ox’s Destiny almost always deals damage equal to the cost displayed on the card. This is equal to the amount of crystals you use when summoning the minion from your Action Bar, but the same paradigm applies even for more complicated summons - i.e., if you discount a Gore Horn with Shadow Waltz, replace it back into your deck, then pull it to the board via Kaido Expert, it will deal 2 damage from the Destiny. The only exceptions I’ve found are when summoning minions with dispelling Opening Gambits, when they manage to dispel the source of the discount before actually entering the board. This is the EMP scenario in Question VI. Similarly, dropping a Lightbender next to a stolen Kujata will deal 4, even though it will only cost you 3 (and the Lightbender won’t even take the ping from Kujata).

The spell trigger one is tricky, and the full explanation of trigger orders is too extensive to get into here, but for this question the relevant distinction is between single-target and multitarget spells. Multitarget spells (those that take two or more clicks on the board to activate) always finish resolving fully before any resulting triggers go off. So in VII.1, the new Conjurers are created in time to “see” Replication being cast. This is also the reason that Quillbeast triggers before the Wraithlings are generated in V.2 but after in V.3.

Finally, what Question IX demonstrates is that Aspect of Ego doesn’t actually work that way! If there’s no other non-token, non-Mythron minion of the same cost (e.g. for Rae, Mandrake, and Blood Taura at most higher life totals), then the spell doesn’t transform into a new instance of the minion but instead does nothing at all. It’s harder to notice with Rae because it dies so easily, but it is true - for example, if you summon Rae, First Wish it, and then Ego it, you won’t get a new 1/1 Rae but will instead keep the same 2/2 Rae.

[boronian]

Thanks for the clarifications, I adapted the wiki

[ponchomango]

I got 14/20 hahaha this was so hard… At least i got the Ox questions right

[ponchomango]

Emp actually costs you 7 mana to play though… You can play it on 6 mana but if you have 8 mana and play a 6 mana emp with metalurgist, you will have 1 mana legt for your turn… So it actually costed you 7 mana to play it

[nh3maser]

I remember hearing that it used to work that way, but it appears to longer be the case. Look at the screenshots for VI.2 and the answer - playing EMP on 9 cores leaves you with 3 mana remaining for the turn.

[ponchomango]

I thought it still worked that way… Maybe that interraction is leftover from that bug though

[nh3maser]

Wanted to bump this once in case anybody missed it the first time around. The promised followup interactions thread is being drafted right now and should go up sometime tomorrow.

[bostwick]

Here’s some dying wish fun. First off I tested this using Aperion’s Claim, which may actually be the more interesting part of this exercise. It kills in a specific order (this is actually very easy to see if you put a bunch of dying wish minions that summon minions in the square since it takes a while for it to process what happens):

9 | 5 | 7
1 | 4 | 2
6 | 3 | 8

So the fun interaction here is if a friendly Ironclad is in this, he dispels any minion killed AFTER him and that dying wish fails. Dying Wish actions that summon minions (Mini Jax, Sarlac, etc) happen after the Aperion’s concludes. This means any minion that dies BEFORE Ironclad has it’s Dying Wish go off, and the resultant minion is not dispelled.

So if we put a friendly Ironclad in 4, and enemy Jaxis in 1 and 5, after our Aperions we will have only one enemy mini-jax spawn.

Dying Wish damage however does not work the same. This time we will put a friendly Gnasher in 1 and a friendly Ironclad in 4 again. There are enemy Void Hunters in 5, 7, and 9. We might expect the Void Hunters in 5 and 9 to die to the gnasher before the Ironclad dispel hits, but in this scenario the dispel still goes off before they die, and our opponent draws 0 cards. I’m sure this has to do with some order of operations in Duelyst, and I’ll leave that for someone smarter than me to explain.

I’ve been trying to test this using Homeostatic to see if board wide abilities have an order but I haven’t noticed a pattern yet. I’m assuming it’s random other wise you could possibly exploit a known pattern to gain advantage. Of course I can’t think of a time when using Aperion’s that this knowledge would of made any difference either.