The purpose of this guide is to help new players learn the basics of the Fighter class in Card Quest in order to provide them with an easy playthrough. Unlike the Rogue and Wizard class builds I created, this one has a high card draw rate yet is much slower to damage. I call this build the "antipaladin" because it uses various holy features of the Fighter while exploiting a particular weapon for higher damage. Navigate this guide to see how it works and try it yourself! Note that two cards are provided at the start of the game and are not particular to any of the sets described. They will be explained in the how to play section of this guide.

The following is the selection of cards you should have prepared using Paladin School. I will explain how each card works in detail below.

Paladin School
Paladin School is a selection of cards unlocked after you attain level 7. Make it a priority to get this set. The basic cards you start with makes it easy to attain that level rather quickly. The following is an explanation of each card and its purpose, starting from the leftmost card and moving to the right.

1. Holy Aura - This card has some important bonuses it provides. It can defend an additional 1 point of attack, or add 1 point to your defense if played prior to the enemy's turn. It adds 5 points to your STAMINA regeneration and 1 point to your FAITH regeneration. It always draws 2 cards when played and can be played either in the player turn or while defending.

2. Precognition - One of the most important cards of this build. Precognition dodges any attack thrown at you and draws 1 card. In a chain it draws 2 cards. What makes it particularly useful, though, is it costs nothing whenever you use it, and it draws frequently. This makes defense very easy.

3. Guardian Angel - A few times I almost felt like this card was OP. It is a fairly common drop and for costing 0 energy points its effects are amazing. It defends up to 9 damage, recovers 12 STAMINA, provides 1 FAITH point, and draws 2 cards. It can be used in attack or defense turns as well.

4 Lay on Hands - Less useful than Guardian Angel, Lay on Hands can only be used in the player's turn (attack). For spending 5 FAITH losing 1 FAITH point regeneration per turn its effects of healing 2 HEALTH and drawing only a single card may not seem worth it. However, it can heal any ailments, which against poison, rot, and so forth, is a great saving card.

The following is the selection of cards you should have prepared using the Black Sword as your primary. This is the primary tweak to this build that makes it the "antipaladin."

Black Sword
The Black Sword is unlocked in the City of the Undead after you successfully complete the Castle battle (last battle on the bottom row before the Lich boss). Though this weapon drains the faith you need to use certain effects via other cards, it is critical to this build. The following is an explanation of each card and its purpose, starting from the leftmost card and moving to the right.

1. Cursed Hack - As with the next attack card (Soul Stab), the poison effects of this card are what adds special power to this build. When unchained, or as a first attack, Cursed Hack costs 4 energy points to deal 4 damage and applies 3 points of poison damage per turn to the target (if struck and not dodged) for three turns. In a chain it costs 2 additional energy points, but it deals 4 more points of damage and draws a card. Note that the poison effect can be STACKED, which means incredible damage can be applied for up to three rounds including the enemy's turn.

2. Soul Stab - As with Cursed Hack above, the poison effects of this card can be STACKED. It functions in a similar way, but costs more at 8 energy points upon its first use, though this decreases to 6 in a CHAIN. It poisons for 3 points of damage per turn for 3 turns and draws a card. In a CHAIN it does 2 additional points of damage, ignores up to 2 points of armor, and can randomly recover 1 health point for your Fighter on a successful kill. Note that the enemy has to be something "living" as I found. Something like a Fairy Stone will not give you health if killed. I may be wrong on this, so please let me know if you notice any different.

The following is the selection of cards you should have prepared for your Secondary set. I will explain how each card works in detail below.

Holy Shield
The Holy Shield is unlocked in the City of the Undead after you successfully complete the Catacombs battle (second battle in the middle row). Because of the faith drain of the Black Sword, this shield will balance out your faith points so they remain stable to keep the build functional. Each card is explained from left to the right as shown in the picture above.

1. True Block - Costing only 3 energy points, this card blocks 6 points of damage by itself, can stun enemies (if they can be stunned), and weakens them for 2 turns. This, functionally, means their attack power will decrease. In addition it generates 1 faith point and draws a card. In a CHAIN it costs 1 less energy point but has no further effects.

2. Shield Parry - Costing only 2 energy points, this card blocks up to 3 attack points on its own, can stun the enemy (if they can be stunned), and weakens them for 2 turns. In a CHAIN it defends against an additional 2 attack points and draws 1 card.

3. Raise Shield - This card costs 6 energy points, making it expensive if not in a CHAIN, where it only costs 4. When used it gives you 2 additional defense points or blocks for 2 additional points if used when the enemy is attacking. Note that it reduces energy point regeneration by 1 point as well.

4. Shield of Light - This is one of the most important cards to use with your faith points. Though it only deals 2 points of damage to the enemy it is UNDODGEABLE and will render any enemy that can be affected by it UNAWARE.

The Dwarven Plate Armor has effects similar to some other armor in Card Quest for the Fighter class, but in my opinion this is the only one you should use for any build you try. It is unlocked in the Dwarven Mountains in the Dwarven Fortress battle (final battle in the bottom row before you fight Modir). The first, and most important effect, is it increase your health by an amazing 16 points! Though it decreases your energy point total by 2 and your energy point regeneration by 1 you will hardly notice this, if ever. For the first 2 turns it also grants 1 additional defense point and when used it can block 2 attack points and add 2 defense points depending on when it is used. Since it only requires a single encounter to recharge this also makes it quite useful.

The Rosary is acquired after completing the Sewer battle in the City of the Undead (first battle in the middle row of three after you take either the lower or upper path). It increases your health by 2 points, your energy points by 1, your faith points by 1, and also adds 1 point of faith regeneration per round. When used, it gives 1 health point, 5 energy points, 2 faith points, and 2 armor points (this part only lasts a single turn, please note). It takes 2 full encounters to recharge it for use again. The Holy Water can be used in a similar fashion, and has up to 3 charges to use, but it applies more to the Beserker School if you are building with that set, so I would avoid using it for the antipaladin build.

The Healing Salves are one of the first bag items you will receive as the Fighter. They are acquired after completing the Infested Town battle in the City of the Undead (first battle in the upper path after you take the upper split and complete the Alley Town battle). With 3 full uses, they grant 1 health point and 5 energy points per use. They do, however, take 2 full encounters to recharge a single use, so they are best saved as a last resort.

Now that you know how to set the build, let me explain the basics. If possible, I will add a video later showing you examples of the build in action, but the primary thing you should note before you use it is that it is rather heavy on the defense. Do not expect to waste enemy mobs quickly, it is more about wearing them down with the poison effects of the Black Sword and increasing your defense as you wait. Note that two cards shown near the bottom are provided naturally with any Wizard card set you use. They are not particular to any Style, Primary, or Secondary set.

How to Use Your Card Deck
I have organized each explanation below based on how they were introduced earlier in this guide. Following all of the card sections below is a section describing how to pull it all together.
Holy Aura's primary perk for this build is that it assists in keeping your faith points stable. The Black Sword will constantly drain this so you need to keep balancing it so you can use more valuable cards, like Lay on Hands (see further below) when you need them. Since it costs so little and drops 2 cards upon use whether attacking or defending, never discard this one. Precognition, however, is your primary defense. Depending on how many enemies you have when they start their turn, it is best to have some of these prepared. I would recommend at least 2. Since this particular card generates a high draw rate you will often find you pull more Precognition cards once the CHAIN effect is active, but it is best to be ready. Since it costs nothing it is invaluable. Guardian Angel is great for a save, but I suggest primarily using it at the start of a defense round since it is a CHAINBREAKER. Breaking the chains you create with Precognition can lead to you taking damage. So use it at the start or end of a defense round. It will also help stabilize your faith points. Lay on Hands can be useful, but it saps your faith points, including regeneration. You will likely find this only useful if you need to eliminate effects like poison or rot. The 2 health points it gives you as part of its effects is negligible at best.

The Black Sword is where this build gets the "anti" part. I thought it would be cool to make a build in this way, if possible, and this is the only way to do it. Adding something like the Cursed Armor (not discussed in this guide) removes too much stability. The great thing about the Black Sword, though it drains faith, is that its damage is strong and lasting. Though the cards it deals are costly, in a chain they can be stacked to add more poison damage over time. Though Soul Stab can generate 1 health point back to you, it is only on a kill, and not all enemies will provide this effect. It is also RANDOM, do not forget, so do not count on it for that detail. Chaining Cursed Hack with Soul Stab works best to stack poison on a target, or to at least get the Soul Stab damage on them if they have 1 dodge point. If they are UNAWARE, though using Shield of Light (see further below), you will have enacted a CHAIN and I suggest using Soul Stab immediately on enemies that have dodge to give them maximum damage.

Holy Shield will provide a good chunk of your faith points to counterbalance the effects of the Black Sword. True Block costs more than Shield Parry but it generates 1 faith point when used. However, if you start with Shield Parry, its cost is then reduced to 2 energy points, so if possible start with Shield Parry before you use True Block. True Block, however, blocks some of the strongest attacks so do not avoid spending the extra energy point for the CHAIN effect, because it will CHAIN with other defense cards regardless and it is better to take no hits than any with this build. Raise Shield you will likely find you discard the most. It is good to avoid a line of enemy attacks, but only if your defense is high enough. Some enemies, especially those that enrage, reach levels of damage that you cannot totally absorb, however, so it makes this card's effects somewhat limited at times. Shield of Light, however, is amazing. There are plenty of enemies with low health but dodge capabilities, like fairies, and this will eliminate them all in a single attack, while also making other enemies UNAWARE. Since it sets up a CHAIN as well it makes it the perfect time to pull out the Black Sword after use.


These cards exist within the other classes as well. Concentration provides 2 energy points and draws 3 cards. Inner Strength draws only 1 card, but provides 5 energy points. With the rapid card draw rate of this build, you will see them appear frequently to keep your energy points high. Both are CHAINBREAKER cards, please note, but because of how often you will be drawing Precognition you can easily activate a CHAIN again. They also can only be used in attack phases, not during defense, so be careful to generate enough energy before you go into the enemy's turn.

To How Play the ANTIPALADIN Build
This build requires more patience unlike my other builds. The key feature of the antipaladin is it does damage over time. My Rogue "serial killer" build can wipe out waves of enemies quickly, but the antipaladin needs to save up energy because the attacks of the Black Sword are costly. Thus, you will need to juggle a lot of defense with storing at least 1 card of the sword set for attack after enemies are STUNNED or UNAWARE so they do more damage. If you are able to use two attacks on one target, finishing with Soul Stab, the stacking effects of the poison will wear away even the strongest enemies in only a few turns. Precognition is the most important card to keep your defense active. Even though it adds nothing to your defense points, it dodges anything thrown at you and costs nothing to use so NEVER get rid of this card unless it is safe to do so! The CHAIN effect is particularly important. When a CHAIN is active use this one first unless you have nothing else. Guardian Angel should be always used first or last in a defense round, but Holy Aura is good to stack whenever it appears. Keeping your faith points around 3 to 5 is required to make sure Shield of Light can be used whenever it appears, and to do so you need to generate your faith charges with Holy Aura, Guardian Angel, and True Block so the Black Sword is counteracted. If needed, the Rosary can add more faith, but I generally saved that for big bosses. The Healing Salves are self-explanatory and were also generally saved for big bosses. Really only 2 enemies will give you any potential trouble, so read the final special part before you play! Any questions or suggestions for this guide, let me know and enjoy!

There are only two tricky enemies for the antipaladin build to face. Ultimately they are easy, but because of how the build works you need to approach fighting them carefully. They are the slimes (both green and yellow varieties) and the Fairy Queen (which spawns after killing the Fairy Champion).


Because the Fighter class, in general, is melee, the strikeback damage that any slime can do to you is highly annoying. As a further problem, all slimes have healing capabilities, which means if you thought storing up faith points and using Shield of Light over several turns will slowly whittle them down, FORGET IT. There is no way around it, you must attack slimes head on. Luckily, the poison effects of the Black Sword can avoid too many attacks on a slime, but expect to take some damage from them. Note also that they split from a Large form to a regular (just under a basic name like Green Slime), to a Small. All forms do strikeback damage of the yellow type. Small green slimes do not. Other forms do.


The Fairy Champion is the boss in the Fairy Grove battle of the Enchanted Forest (last fight on the top row before the Forest King final confrontation). The Fairy Champion, by itself, is short work for the antipaladin. However, after death it splits into the Fairy King and Fairy Queen. The King is barely a problem, so nothing to worry about. The Queen, however, which looks like a slightly larger version of the regular Fairy enemy, can spawn multiple Sprites, which do very little damage but drain energy points upon death if they are close to you. Since the Fighter class is melee damage, this means they will absolutely be close to you. Thus, for this battle you need to make sure you finish off the Queen as soon as possible. Since she has massive dodge abilities, the ability to regen, and the ability to spawn sprites, if you do not kill her she will literally become UNKILLABLE and you will be stuck in a loop as you kill sprites and see your energy points left at nothing, which makes it impossible to hit her. Kill her first after the Fairy Champion is downed, and be prepared for it by having your attacks ready to go! Other than her, and the slimes, the antipaladin build should work seamlessly once you get the hang of it.

Unfortunately, there is one weakness for the Antipaladin build, and that is the Demon in the Box. Now, this is not to say the build cannot beat it, it most certainly can, the issue is that gathering enough souls to open the box in the first place is extremely time-consuming with the Antipaladin. Due to its reliance on defense and damage-over-time attacks, you simply cannot gather enough souls fast enough making it take forever until it happens. Fighting it is rather easy, if you see my other guide for my Rogue Serial Killer build you'll find what you need to do. To reiterate, and to be brief, do not worry about attacking the demon at first! Allow him to decrease his own health by 66 each time as he summons tortured souls. Focus on them until he is below 100 and will not summon any more. At this point you can destroy him and remaining tortured souls with ease.

Some players have suggested a Berserker build for the Demon in the Box Battle, but in my opinion it's too weak in defense and offense to be fruitful. My suggestion is to go with the Harpy Nests battle. Start by choosing to begin at Stage 4 and select that battle specifically. Because of the high add drop (hatchlings and harpy slaves), this build will net you a super-quick soul collection to open the box. But before you start the battle set the following tweaks! The only piece we are keeping from the Antipaladin build is the Dwarven Plate Armor because of how important it is. The rest is described below to make this battle as easy and quick as possible.

Style: Guardian School

We're going with the Guardian School for this encoutner because the Recovery Dodge card (which costs 0 Energy Points) provides Energy Point and Tactical Point regeneration. Guardian School also leads to the drops of the critical Tactical Idea and Tactical Strike cards. The former provides 3 Energy Points and a 2-card draw for only 1 Tactical Point. When you have enough Tactical Points, you can use Tactical Strike to apply STUN to one of the tortured souls and hit something to the right or left of them, including the demon as a bonus. The Defensive Stance card is also helpful for Energy Point and Tactical Point regeneration.

Primary: Warhammer

I never used the Warhammer except to beat the demon. The key detail for this is you need as much STUN ability as possible to keep the tortured souls from attacking you so you can focus on dodging or defending the demon's attacks as he lowers his own health. Every attack of the Warhammer deals STUN effects. It won't work on the demon, but we don't care about that. Hammer Thrust can stun one target in spite of its lower damage, and will even cost 0 when you've activated a CHAIN with other Warhammer attacks. Hammer Swipe, which does better damage, also provides STUN for 2 additional targets next to the primary one, the demon excluded. This means, depending on tortured soul position in the line, you can stun 3 of them at once if the attack is in a CHAIN! Hammer Strike costs a ton, 6 in a CHAIN and 10 when not, but it provides a hefty blow to tortured souls and STUN. But please note the Warhammer, if still in a CHAIN when your defensive round begins, increases the cost of every card including Recovery Dodge! This makes it cost 4 Energy Points instead of 0 so be sure to break the CHAIN before the defensive round or make it a priority to do so when it begins!

Secondary: Heater Shield
Raise Shield is basically a card to ignore in this set, though if you have nothing else it gives a little defense as needed. More important are Shield Parry and Shield Bash. The former will STUN tortured souls when they attack, though not the demon, and provides enough defense to avoid damage. Shield Bash will STUN tortured souls as well, though not the demon. Again, this tweaking is meant to provide as much STUN power as possible to make it as easy and quick. Shield Bash thus gives you an additional, though weak, attack to use for this effect. Combined with Recovery Dodge the demon will be unlikely to hit you more than twice during the entire encounter. So try to keep at least 1, or better 2, Recovery Dodge cards in hand for the defensive round, or 1 or 2 Shield Parry cards, depending on what drops into your hand.

Trinket: Rage Mushrooms
These are merely a just-in-case selection. You could similarly use the Lock of Hair, because both of these trinkets increase your Energy Point total by 1 and regenerate 3 upon use, and only the Lock of Hair regenerates 1 Tactical Point at the same time, which you may need in a bind. However, the problem with the Lock of Hair is it can only be used once, whereas the Rage Mushrooms can be used up to 3 times. Because of this, and just in case you need extra Energy Points, I recommend them over the Lock of Hair, even though you will not be using Rage Points at all. Just ignore them. And with this final tweak that's it! Your Bag item has to be the Cursed Box to start the Demon in the Box encounter, but the above will make it simple!

Another special battle for the Fighter class is the Fallen Angel. Note that this battle, when completed, nets you the Angel Feather, but this does not have anything to do with the item totals indicated on the main level selection screen. The Fallen Angel is rather a simple battle if you know what to do, and to beat it requires only a small tweak to the Antipaladin build in order to complete it. The primary trick is to hit the angel with enough damage that it's turn-based healing will never get it back to full health. In order to defeat it you need to get it to roughly half of its health, which is at least 33 points (it starts with 66). The Black Sword will not provide you with what you need, and you have to set the Demon Heart in your Bag in order to summon the angel. So, swap out the Black Sword for the Warhammer, set the Rosary as your trinket, set the Demon Heart, and in my opinion go with the "Harpy Nests" battle in the Dwarven Mountains because this will net you the most minor adds to kill to generate the necessary faith. You will need to raise levels in the battle to get the proper amount of Faith points, because a total of 7 is needed as well as 10 Energy points in order to purify the Demon Heart and summon the Fallen Angel. The Rosary gives you one extra Faith point, but you will need to level to get the final one. By the time you do you will be at the boss of the battle, please note. Here is why the Warhammer is important.

The primary issue, as noted above, is the Fallen Angel heals every turn. If you're trying any other weapon, trust me on this, it will always heal itself up to maximum and you'll never get anywhere with it. You'll also never die, but you'll never beat it. The Warhammer is the only weapon that works. Since the Fallen Angel has Dodge ability, your first attack is useless. As you can see from the Warhammer cards, however, a chain will set up significant damage with the proper set. What you need to do is use Hammer Thrust, at least 1 Hammer Strike, and finally Hammer Strike to finish. The reason this works is the first card will eliminate the dodge, the second two will do the damage, making it so the healing of the angel will never be able to return it to full health. The trick is to make sure you have enough defense cards ready for the Fallen Angel's attack phase and specifically those 3 attack cards with the Warhammer when your attack phase is ready. You will have at least 1 round where all 3 of these cards are not present in your hand, but do not worry, you'll eventually break down the angel's health and it will give up, presenting you with the feather. As far as I experimented, the Warhammer is the only weapon that provides enough damage to complete this battle.