Highlights
- Greenhouse Card: Boost plant-based items, refining speed, yield in Abeyance Realms for efficient farming.
- Quarry & Lumber Mill Cards: Enhance stone and wood yield for crafting, great for building materials for new players.
- Tavern Card: Longer food buffs, comfort, stamina regen; tire faster, but helpful for exploration.
The Minor Card system in Nightingale is one of the most innovative things this game adds to the survival genre by a long shot. It's a concept where players can actively modify the world or 'realm' around them by using these cards they've either found or crafted themselves to infuse the realm at a Realmic Transmuter.
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Typically, these Minor Cards buff one aspect of the game while nerfing another aspect, such as increasing weapon damage but also increasing how fast those same weapons break. And, it's not just the mechanics these cards change, but also the visuals of that realm. Depending on the card used, the realm can go from a sunny desert area to a nightmarishly dark realm with a gigantic blood moon. So, now that all this is out there, let's go over which Minor Cards seem to be the favorites of the Nightingale player base overall.
These rankings don't include the 'upgraded' versions of Minor Cards such as Eminent or Apogean variants.
8 Greenhouse Card
The Perfect Card For Farmers
For those who love farming sims or playing the 'farmer' in a group survival game, the Greenhouse Minor Card is one of the best. This card, when active, makes it so that all plants have higher yield, take less time to refine, and in general improve the quality of any item that's 'plant-based'.
This makes farming easier as well as more rewarding while also making any of the processes used after getting these plant materials more efficient as well. It's a pretty specific set of buffs, so it's probably not a card that a group of players in one game will have active often, but for anyone doing a bit of farming or plant gathering, it's a fantastic Minor Card to have in effect. Just keep in mind that this is a Card that's probably best used in Abeyance Realms and not in any other realms players access through any variety of portals.
7 Quarry & Lumber Mill Cards
Have These Active When You're Gathering Building Materials
The Quarry and Lumber Mill Minor Cards are very similar to the Greenhouse Minor Card in that they all offer the same buffs and debuffs that'll help with crafting, with slight variations based on their resource of choice. Quarry Cards increase stone yield and deal with stone products while the Lumber Mill Card deals with wood bundle yield and wood products.
However, compared to plants, which are almost as important in their usage, wood and stone are a bit more useful overall, especially for newer players just getting into the building aspect of the game. Because of this, the Quarry and Lumber Mill Cards are just a bit better than the Greenhouse Card, though not by much.
6 Tavern Card
You Won't Need To Constantly Refresh Food Buffs
There are a couple of different Minor Cards players can choose from if they want their hunger to drain slower, their comfort to last longer, or their rest meter to drain slower. But, personally, the Tavern card is our favorite as it hits all the important categories at once.
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With this card active, players will get a modest duration increase to their food buffs, their comfort buff, and their stamina regen, meaning they can explore and run around much more efficiently. However, as a downside, they'll tire out more quickly, as their rest meter will drain a modest amount faster as well. Still, with how often players need to eat to keep their incredibly useful food buffs active, this Minor Card is a huge help.
5 Thinned Veil
Better Jumps, Less Fall Damage, Faster Movement, & Just A Bit Faster Weapon Degradation
Thinned Veil is a very interesting Minor Card, as it basically gives the players 'moon gravity' while it's in effect on top of increasing their stamina efficiency, their overall movement, and basically nullifying fall damage entirely.
There's no real 'downside' to this card though, outside of maybe players taking forever to touch the ground after jumping off of something. Still, this is one of the most enjoyable Minor Cards to have active in an Abeyance Realm and it helps exploring in new, more difficult, realms too. Especially so if that realm has a lot of small hills or cliffsides.
4 Explorer Card
Easy Breezy Exploration
The Explorer Minor Card is actually pretty similar to the Thinned Veil Card in that they're both typically used to make exploration easier. However, as far as exploring a map is concerned, the Explorer Card is absolutely the better choice, as the movement speed increase is much more noticeable and players also take a lot less damage from enemies.
Of course, as a downside, they also deal less damage to enemies as well, but honestly, it's a small enough damage debuff that players can still keep swinging away at an enemy and get the kill in maybe twice the amount of time at most.
3 Blood Moon Card
High Risk, High Reward
Now it's time to talk about one of the coolest and also one of the more terrifying Minor Cards in Nightingale, the Blood Moon Card. When active, this card seems to make the Bound enemies much more plentiful while also increasing the rarity chances of the resources they drop, while only slightly lowering the player's Max Health.
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Essentially, this card offers a pretty big benefit for a pretty small consequence, making it one of the better cards to use when farming Essence Dust, specific drops, or just the Bound in general.
2 Treasury Card
The Perfect Option For Farming Essence Dust
Moving on to the Treasury Card, this is one of the surprisingly plentiful Minor Cards that can increase the yield of what players find in a realm, be it rare gems, materials, chests, Essence, or more. For the Treasury Card specifically, this increases their overall chance of finding Essence, which is a real lifesaver when players need to farm a lot of Essence to both upgrade their gear and buy from Essence Traders.
Thats entirely all that this card does, there's no slight stat buffs, no debuffs, nothing. It just makes it easier to find Essence, which is probably one of the best buffs to keep pretty 'simple'. Additionally, it also fills the sky with these beautiful purple clouds, turns the tree leaves pink, and makes the grass blue.
1 Trickster Card
A Damage Debuff, But Not Really, & That Jump Height Is Worth It
This next card could be a player's favorite card or their least favorite by far, depending on their luck. From the description, one might assume the Trickster Card simply allows the player to jump high, take less damage, and inflict a bit less damage. However, that's not all, as the 'anomalous effects' it mentions actually mean that while this card is active, material yields are completely random.
Depending on how much a player likes RNG and how much they believe in their luck, this can be a fantastic way to gather some harder-to-find or even late-game resources. But regardless of a player's opinion on the card, they have to admit the skybox it gives the realm when active is one of the best.
