Inscryption: How to Win with the Egg Deck in Kaycee’s Mod

Here are the strategies I’ve developed for winning with the Egg Deck in Kaycee’s Mod. I’ve also included a card list. If you don’t know what the Egg Deck is, then win some challenges and maybe you’ll get it. If you don’t know why the Egg Deck is such a big deal…sorry, but I’m not telling you yet. Let’s just say I’ve spent 100+ hours beta testing the mod because I found it to be a real hoot. A few of my funnier observations are in my comedy guide (“You know you’ve been playing INscryption too much when…”) and there are custom deck editing advice in my modding guide.

There are heavy unmarked spoilers ahead…

….SPOILERS BELOW!!

….NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!!

….ARE YOU READY TO ROCK AND ROLL?!

….ARE YOU **READY** TO ROCK AND ROLL?!

….South of the Border almost there

The obvious downside to choosing the egg deck is that three of your cards are going to be useless for offense, and scoring damage could help you win* (citation needed). This is the challenge and why I like this deck the best.
Kaycee’s Mod introduce a wrinkle where you start with three name cards and two rabbit pelts. The first location on the map is the trader, where you get a limited ability to customize your deck with a choice of two common cards from whatever selection of eight the trader deals. I haven’t figured out if his choice of eight is biased in any way to give you a more playable selection of cards (see the FairDraw discussions about the “Invisible Hand” on the deck — the whole game is a bit of a mindf***, so don’t assume anything is completely random).

These first two cards will influence how the first part of Map#1 plays out. You’re goals, in order, should be:

1. Get a card that can do 2 or more damage (Wolf cub counts, and it is an excellent pick)
2. Get a ringworm or adder
3. Get cards that cover some of the harder to find stat numbers (4 attack, 5 health)
4. Get cards with good sigils (cockroach, magpie, field mice, warren)
5. Get cards from different tribes that you don’t have

These are probably also going to be your goals for the the initial card acquisition locations, although going for a good low-cost striker card (wolf cub, mantis) will influence you more than the other criteria. Items 2,3, and 5 affect the egg sigil, explained later. If you haven’t gotten an adder or ringworm by the end of Map#1, then you might want to pass on future ringworms if there is a good alternative card available (the adder is fine, it can always be sacked for its poison sigil).

There’s alot written about how to build your deck, but I’ll summarize my strategy for the Egg Deck. You need at least one striker card that can do 2 or more damage per turn. The initial decks you face will often have at least one flyer with a strength of 1, so you have to anticipate losing 1 life point per turn. If you can’t do 2 damage, then you are very likely going to be stuck in a stalemate until you run out of cards (when that happens you are REDACTED).

The wolf cub and mantis are excellent cards with a high attack to casting cost ratio. The elk and wolf are good and cover some more uncommon stat numbers. The pack rat (when you land on its location) is great for lots of reasons. The ant queen has its own escort card, and is at least worth thinking about (but the attack stats of ants don’t count towards the fidicial sigil).

The dire wolf, grizzly and shark are ok strikers. With the eggs as extra blood cost sacrifices, you can hopefully hold out long enough to cast them (but later in the game they start becoming a liability). OF the three, the dire wolf is the best because it is a tribe card and has the double-strike sigil that can be farmed later if needs be.

Your eggs start with a “Finicial” sigil. Here is what the manual says:
“Finicial hatchling: A card bearing this sigil hatches when drawn if the numbers 1 to 5 are represented in the health of creatures in your deck, and in their power, and if there is a creature of each tribe in your deck.”

“Finicial” means “finicky” or otherwise “picky”, which is another way of saying “wants very specific things”. So the eggs or any card that gets this sigil will awaken if those three conditions, above, are met. To help you play I have card lists with stats and their tribes are in the next section.

The five tribes are Canine, Avian, Cervid (Antlers), Lizard and Insect.

It is a *huge* spoiler the first time the egg hatches. It is far more fun to find out yourself what happens, so I’m not going to tell you. But if you are really curious as to what happens, look at the brief spoiler text below:

Cake will be served immediately 😉

The 3 conditions to get the eggs to REDACTED are having cards with:

1. 1-5 strength
2. 1-5 health
3. all 5 tribes

In theory you could get this with the right 5 cards with buffs, but it will often take more. A few key points:

• Only the cards printedstrength counts. Cards with symbols for their attack strength, like ants, count as zero. Cards that have the growth sigil, like the wolf cub, count only as “baby” card’s strength. The Ijiraq counts as SPOILER! 4/1
• Buffs that change the printed strength and health do count and are, in fact, essential to unlocking. Each time the lovingly broken Ouroborus gets SPOILER! an increase to its printed stats it counts as the new printed values
• The Amalgam seems to count as one wild card, but only one. Therefore you need the right four other cards and the Amalgam will count as the fifth tribe

A quick glance at the card list, above, shows that none of the cards has a strength of 5 (and very few have a strength of 4). Therefore one of your top priorities should be to acquire or make cards with strengths of 4 and 5.

There are only four ways to change the printed values of a card:

1. Buffs at the campfire (+1 strength or +2 health per click)
2. Mycologist merging to make a new card with combined stats
3. Accidental changes when the painter makes a mistake
4. Natural buffs (see Ouroborus, above)

In order to unlock the egg sigil, you need to use the above to get a card with a strength of 5. There is no way around this. The campfire is the most important of the above methods for doing this, because you have the most control over the results.

Here is the card list I made while beta testing Kaycee’s Mod, it will be important shortly. Bookmark this guide in case you need to refer to these tables in the middle of a game or these into a spreadsheet program so that you can sort or filter the columns. Useful for doing deck editing (see my guide for how to do that).

Cannonical list from main game:

These are cards that are only encountered during play or dropped from other cards, so they don’t count towards the finicial sigil requirements. You can edit them into your deck (again, see my guide on deck editing). In that case they will be treated as zero casting cost cards, except for the talking cards and the REDACTED

Because the campfire is so importing to unlocking the egg sigil, you should always consider taking the Ringworm and Adder if offered.

In Kaycee’s Mod, you get one free buff (clicking on the “+” sign) at the campfire with no risk, and a second with a risk of having your card eaten by the campers. There is maybe a 50-75% chance of your card surviving the second click (there’s a guide where someone did repeated runs and kept stats).

Here is a spoiler for the campfire secret:

Put either the ringworm or adder by the campfire and go for the second click. If either of these cards gets burned, then for the rest of the game whenever you visit the campfire you will be able to always get a free second click with no risk to your card! Should also work with the Long Elk (not sure if I ever tested it with that). Worst case is you get a very buff card. Usually I do two campfires, trying to get my card burnt with two clicks each, before deciding that it’s too buff to want to lose it.

Therefore you can get a card either +1/+2 attack or +2/+4 health per visit. Note that health increases are only even numbers, there’s no way here to get a +1 health here.

If you have a choice of cards (boss rare, trader, and other card acquisition locations), you should think carefully about what you have in the deck and what numbers and tribes you need. The three kinds of card acquisition locations give you selections based on tribe, casting cost or totally random. The tribe card acquisition locations are no-brainers if you need a tribe. But if you are missing a number, then use my card list to give yourself the best chance of picking a good card. Need a strength of 3? The canine tribe has the wolf at 3/2. Need a strength of 4? Pick three blood cost cards. The random selection locations are very good in that you have three choices to get a card that you need (six with the clover, which is why the no-clover challenge hurts more with this deck). There is also the cave challenge locations which are like the random draws. On Map#1 you might encounter the Prospector early, in which case you get a Golden Pelt (health of 3 if you need that) or a random insect tribe card.

The Mycologists can help you if you have stocked up on pack rats (see above). Two pack rats make a 4/4 creature which gives you two harder to find numbers. But beware that if you have no other duplicates then you are stuck merging two eggs. Same with arriving on a sacrifice stone without extra creatures. You’ll either have to sac an egg and put the finicial sigil on a different card (pick a zero- or one-blood cost card) or have to sacrifice a card that you really wanted to hold onto.

It’s a good idea to have an extra card with a sigil or an extra duplicate card so that you don’t have to lose a card when you don’t want to. (this is called “suit protection” in some other card games).

The painter (I call him “Vincent van Goo” for reasons that will become apparent the first time you encounter him) can paint cars for you, but doesn’t always get the stats or sigils right. This works strongly in your favor, because sometimes he will mis-copy a card’s stats and give you one of the numbers you are missing,

There are several great sigils to be farmed that will help you win. The cockroach’s unkillable sigil is by far the best. Think about it for a moment…imagine that you put an unkillable sigil on an egg with a one bone casting cost. And then the egg dies. The egg gives up a bone. And returns to your hand. You can use the bone to cast the egg again and again. You not only have an enternally-renewing roadblock, but also endless sacrifices.

The fecundity sigil is good, too, for the eggs, and the nice thing is that you can get two eggs on the board at once. Magpie’s eye is handy to have, too, for pulling out a powerful card when you need it and can help the eggs be useful in the early parts of your game.

The Warren with its make-a-bunny sigil is underappreciated as a vehicle for receiving other sigils. The new rules in Kaycee’s Mod allow for inheritence of sigils when a parent card drops an offspring card. So a Warren with any good sigil (unkillable, magpie, even the egg’s finicial sigil) will drop a bunny with that same sigil to your hand. Think about the infinite recursion that’s possible when an unkillable Warren drops an unkillable bunny (isn’t there a Law of Thermodynamics against that?)

Deck bloat is a serious concern with the egg deck. For starters, you have three egg cards without offensive potential. Then there is a tendency to have to get loads of cards to satisfy the egg sigil. Always remember that unlocking the egg sigil is a long-term goal, and you should always keep deck bloat in check. Even when you’ve unlocked the sigil, a bloated deck is a hazard.

Happy hunting with the deck, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and one last thought below:

Eggs-eggs-eggs…Eggs-eggs-eggs…Eggs-eggs-eggs-terrr-minate! Eggs-terminate! EGGSTERMINATE! SEEK, LOCATE, EGGSTERMINATE!