How to play Alchemaidens

One paragraph, and then you can genuinely start playing.

Every round gives you a score to beat and a small number of attempts. You beat it by selecting up to five cards from your hand and playing them. The game works out what poker hand they form — a Pair, a Flush, whatever — and that hand has a Chips value and a Mult value. Multiply them together and that's your score for those five cards.

Beat the target and you're paid, you shop, and the next round asks for more. Fail and the run ends. There are 8 Cycles, three rounds each, and the last round of each is a boss with a nasty rule attached.

The interesting part is that a plain Pair is worth almost nothing, and a plain Pair played through a stack of Charms you assembled over an hour can be worth millions. You are not really trying to draw good cards. You are building a machine.

This is the loop you'll repeat about twenty-four times per run.

1. Pick your opponent

   Three rounds sit side by side: Small, Big, and the Boss. You take them in order. Small and Big can be skipped for a bonus tag instead of played — tempting, but you skip the money too.

2. You're dealt 8 cards

   You start each round with 4 hands and 3 discards (your starting Order may adjust this). Click cards to select up to five; click again to deselect.

3. Discard what's useless

   Discard up to five cards to draw replacements. Discards are free score — unused ones are simply wasted, so spend them shaping toward one good hand rather than hoarding them.

4. Play a hand

   The cards fly up and score one at a time, then your Charms fire left to right. Whatever total comes out is added to your round score.

5. Repeat until you clear the target

   You do not need to clear it in one hand. Four decent hands beat one perfect one you never assembled. Run out of hands below the target and the run is over.

6. Get paid, then shop

   You're paid for the win, plus $1 for every hand you didn't need, plus interest. Then the shop opens.

If you already know poker, skim the table and move on. If you don't, this is the whole of it.

A rank is the number or letter on the card (2 through 10, then Jack, Queen, King, Ace). A suit is the little symbol — Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades. Every poker hand is just a pattern of matching ranks, matching suits, or ranks in a row.

The bottom three don't exist in real poker. They're only reachable here because you can copy cards, change their suit, and make cards count as every suit at once. Getting there is a whole build.

Every hand type has a level. Using a Metal (the ore-looking consumables) permanently raises the Chips and Mult of one hand type for the rest of the run. Levelling the one hand you actually play is one of the strongest things you can do.

Four things matter; the rest is decoration.

• Top right — who you're fighting, and score / target. That bar filling up is the whole round.
• Top left — your Squad: the Charms currently helping you. Left-to-right order matters (see section 5).
• Bottom — your hand, and the buttons: Play, Discard, and sorting by Rank or Suit.
• The middle readout — the hand type your selection forms, and what that hand type is worth at its level.

The MENU tab

There's a slim tab on the left edge of the screen. Open it. It has two pages: every card left in your deck (greyed out once drawn), and the full table of hand types with their current levels and how often you've played each. It's the single most useful screen in the game and it's easy to miss.

You can also right-click almost anything to inspect it, and press Escape to pause.

Your five permanent helpers. This is where runs are won.

A Charm sits in your Squad and changes how scoring works — adds Chips, adds Mult, multiplies Mult, pays you money, retriggers cards. You have 5 Squad slots. Buying a sixth Charm means selling one first.

In this game a Charm never floats on its own: it always arrives riding an Awakened maiden card, which matters enormously for the next section.

Order matters, and it is not cosmetic

Charms fire left to right. A Charm that adds +4 Mult placed before one that doubles Mult is worth far more than the same two reversed — the doubling has more to work on. Drag a Squad slot to reorder. Two Charms that both just add can be in any order; addition doesn't care.

Right-click a Squad member to sell it. Selling a Charm gives you two options: sell the Charm alone and keep the maiden (she goes back into your deck), or sell both for more money. Keeping her is usually right — she's fuel for section 6.

The part that isn't in any other game like this. Skip it and you'll lose around Cycle 5.

Cards come in three tiers. Ordinary cards are Base. Spend Shards on one and she becomes Awakened — worth more chips, and, crucially, counted as fuel. Gather four Awakened cards of the same rank and you can Fuse them into a Final Form: a single card with a unique signature ability that fires from your Squad.

The chain

1. Awaken — 10 Shards each

   Open the Evolution screen from the shop. Pick a rank and raise four of them.

2. Fuse — 15 Shards the first time

   Four Awakened cards of one rank, any suits. The price rises by 20 for each Fusion after.

3. She joins your Squad

   Her signature only works from a Squad slot. Sitting in your deck she's just a strong card.

Suit doesn't matter for Fusion — four Nines in any mix of suits is a valid set. Hover any Awakened card anywhere in the game and it tells you how many of that rank you're holding.

If you're desperate mid-round, the Ascend button fuses any four cards of a rank on the spot for a flat 75 Shards, no Awakening required. It's an emergency button, priced like one.

Two currencies that never touch each other, on purpose.

Because Shards only ever come from beating rounds, your Final Form timing is fixed by how far you've got — you can't rush it with money. That's the point.

Between every round. Don't reflexively spend everything.

• Charms — the top row. Double-click to buy, or right-click for options, including buying only the maiden and skipping the Charm.
• Packs — open one and choose from what's inside. Maiden packs give cards, Elixir and Ore packs give consumables, Vapor packs give the strange ones.
• Rites — permanent run-long upgrades. Expensive and almost always worth it.
• Reroll — new shop contents for a rising price.
• Evolution — not a purchase. This is the Awaken and Fuse screen from section 6.

You hold 2 consumables at a time. The three families:

• Elixirs change cards — aspects, suits, ranks, copies
• Metals permanently level one hand type
• Sublimates the odd ones — sigils, deck surgery, Charm effects

Three separate slots, and a card can carry one of each.

Aspects — the card's material

Finishes — rare, and they stack on top

Sigils — a mark in the corner

Hover any card to see exactly what it's carrying. A card with a good Aspect, a Finish and a Sigil all at once is a genuine prize — protect it.

The third round of every Cycle. Each one breaks a different rule.

A boss demands roughly double the usual score and attaches a restriction — debuffing a whole suit, dealing your cards face-down, forcing a minimum hand size, taking your discards away, or turning your entire Squad face-down so you can't tell which Charm is which.

The five things that most often go wrong.

1. You're playing whatever you're dealt

   Pick one hand type by about Cycle 2 and shape everything toward it — discards, purchases, Metals.

2. Your Squad is in the wrong order

   Additions first, multiplications last. Drag them.

3. You never Fused

   If you reach Cycle 5 with no Final Form, that's usually the reason the wall appeared.

4. You spent to zero every shop

   Interest at $25 is worth more than most cheap Charms.

5. You're saving discards

   They don't carry over. Spend them.

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