How to play guide for Nowhere Prophet

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This page will serve as a basic **how to play guide for *Nowhere Prophet***. While there is very little information available at this time, we urge you to check back often, as new information is being added all the time! Feel free to edit this guide with any tips, tricks, and suggestions.

## Basic gameplay

*Nowhere Prophet* plays out like what is best described as a mix of *Oregon Trail*, *Slay the Spire*, *Hearthstone*, and *FTL: Faster Than Light*. The player selects a convoy deck with a predetermined number of followers of various types, and a character class with a predetermined number and set of leader cards.

Depending on the convoy deck selected, the player will start out with an amount of Batteries, Food, and Hope. Batteries is the currency of the game, and can be used to buy equipment, more food, followers, and other things; or may be required for event checks. Food and hope are required for traveling the lands of ***Soma*** - food is also required for healing at designated campsites and rest spots, while hope is not as straightforward to regain, and can only be gained by sharing luxury items with your followers.

Upon starting the game, the player is presented with a world map. They can pick the next node to travel to. Events, *à la Oregon Trail*, will happen at each node, but can also happen en route to the node itself. These events can range from events with choices bearing consequences, or straight up combats. The goal of the player is to proceed to the milestone nodes at the end of each map, beat the boss enemy there to progress, and eventually reach and complete the Crypt.

Combat is similar to *Hearthstone* - the player has a choice of replacing their starting hand before the first turn. The first person (usually the player) to start in a turn will begin with 3 Energy; the second person will start with 4 Energy, and on each turn the Energy capacity will increase by 1. This energy is used to either summon followers, or play leader cards. On each turn, if a follower is able to act, it can either move to a different empty space, or attack. Like *Hearthstone*, a follower that is summoned is Exhausted, and not able to act immediately on the same turn that it is summoned (whether it is by moving or attacking) - unless the follower has the keyword Charge.

Combat, however, differs from *Hearthstone* in the fact that the system is grid-based, as opposed to a single row of summons. The grid-based system is such that only the follower in the frontline (that is, the follower that's on the rightmost position in a row, for the player - or the leftmost position for the enemy) can attack or be attacked (except for units with Sniper or units that are affected by Cover). When a follower attacks, it can either attack obstacles, followers, or the enemy leader directly.

The player can choose to scrap up to one card per turn; in most cases this allows the player to draw a new card from the same pile. Some Equipment may also give the player other actions besides Scrap to use during their turn - but the player can use only one of these actions per turn.

A battle is resolved when either the player or foe's health reaches 0.

## Controls

This game is primarily point-and-click; you do not require the use of a keyboard. On a keyboard, however, 'Esc' will bring up the menu, from where you can either return to your current game, restart the run, exit to menu, or quit the game.

## Tips and tricks

* Make sure to try to explore as many nodes as possible (particularly on the first two maps). This will help ensure you gain enough resources to persist.
* New paths and nodes often appear near the edges of the visible nodes. *In other words, all the nodes and paths visible at the start of a new map are not necessarily the only ones available.*
* Make mental notes about how events turn out - these will repeat on future playthroughs (ie. if you pillage a town, you get two hope items and two pieces of equipment).
* Red nodes are harder fights, but often yield followers.
* Selling followers into slavery is generally a bad idea.

## See also

* Release date
* System requirements