Guides/master guide

Introduction
This Guide is the author’s recommendation for two successful methods for defeating For The King on Master difficulty.

This guide is by no means the only method. Please enjoy the game and discover for yourself all the possibilities. Contained within are some strategies that can be employed to help you achieve a Master Difficulty victory. These strategies are by no means required for a victory. Feel free to develop your own strategies and contribute what you learn to the wiki and the community at large. With these disclaimers behind us, let’s begin.

Challenges
It should go without saying that the Master difficulty is… well… harder! What makes it more difficult?

In particular Master difficulty will challenge you in two ways:


 * No Life Pool :
 * If one of your characters dies without a devotion, they're going to be hard to resurrect. There will likely only be one or two sanctums within reach of your team at the beginning of the game. A character dying early can really set you back. If you do have a character die, you’ll need to use a cult device, Stone Table, or Fountain of Life to resurrect that character. Spending the time finding these things can really slow you down. Best to avoid death!


 * The Timeline :
 * The chaos timeline is much shorter than on the Apprentice or Journeyman difficulties. With only 4 team turns between chaos events, you’ll be pressured to move quickly and efficiently to keep reducing that chaos and preventing it from activating.

Goals
In order to defeat Master difficulty, you must:
 * 1) Be extremely efficient with your movement.
 * 2) Keep the chaos timeline under control.
 * 3) Acquire as much  as you possibly can.
 * 4) Upgrade your gear as soon as humanly possible.
 * 5) Gain experience for your characters as quickly as possible.
 * 6) Avoid taking damage.

Of these six goals, one goal stands out as being of greater importance than any other. That goal is to avoid taking damage; this is the winning strategy for the end game in. Damage can be reduced to zero when following the strategies we detail in this guide. However, in order to reduce damage to zero, it requires acquiring certain weapons that won’t be found until mid- to late game. Therefore, in order to win, you must survive long enough to acquire these all-important weapons.

Strategy for winning
The main strategy to win in on Master difficulty is to not allow enemies to attack. PERIOD. If your enemies can’t attack, you don’t take damage. Easy! Done!

How is this strategy pulled off? There are two effective methods that can achieve this:

Party Rush
Rush your entire party over and over again such that your first turn never ends.

Group Resets
Reset the enemy team using specific weapons.