How do I get better at Gwent?
Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is still in a closed Beta, but that doesn't mean you can't have a look at the leveling system! Once you've passed the Gwent tutorial, you'll be thrust into the public arena where victories lead to the purchase of card packs, the collection of scraps, and ultimately to your progression from amateur to ace. Let's take a look at how the leveling mechanic works and what you can expect to receive.
Competing online
Following the tutorial, you can take a pre-existing deck — the game gives you one for each faction — or you can make your own deck and try your skills against other players online.
Click Casual Match, choose a deck, and the game will automatically search for an opponent that is somewhere near your skill-level. The matchmaking function varies in precision, and we've seen some incredible decks destroy us before we know what's going on. For the most part, though, games are close.
Winning matches
There is a ton of strategy based on intentionally throwing rounds to activate certain cards and their abilities, but the premise of victory remains the same: the first player to win two rounds wins the match.
In the event of a draw, intentional or coincidental, both players will be awarded a win. Use this knowledge to your advantage when trying to outsmart the enemy.
When you win a match, you gain one bar of XP toward reaching the next level. The more you play over the course of a day, the more bars there are in a single level, making it difficult for people to grind a lot of levels in a short amount of time. When the day resets, you'll receive a brand new level bar with brand new rewards. This keeps things fresh and contributes to players coming back day after day.
Rewards
Winning one round in a match gets you nothing — you must win both rounds to advance one bar towards the next level. These bars will sometimes hold a small reward of ore or scraps, while others will hold nothing. Reaching a new level will always reward you with a large amount of ore, which is the primary currency when buying packs of cards. Scraps are used to piece together new cards of your choosing.
There is a Good Game function in Gwent as well. If you feel that your opponent put up a good fight, win or loss, you can send them five ore or five scraps (randomly chosen). This small favor is a nice form of sportsmanship and is rarely ignored.
Card packs
When you've earned 100 ore, you can visit the shop to purchase a keg of cards. Each keg holds four random cards from any faction that you get to flip over one at a time. Exciting!
You also get to pick one card from a list of three visible choices. These cards are usually of higher quality or rarity, making them difficult to choose from. Whichever card you choose goes into your collection, while the other two are destroyed forever.
It's never a bad idea to reference a site like Gwentdb to check the worth of cards before choosing one of the three given to you. Just because you need a card now doesn't mean the other two aren't incredibly rare!
Your Gwent career
Are you in on the closed Beta? What level are you, and what is your favorite card? Tell us in the comments section below!