Combat in South Park: Phone Destroyer

This article is a combat guide for South Park: Phone Destroyer.

Basics

South Park: Phone Destroyer is a card-based RPG game. The New Kid has the ability to summon units from the cards in their hand and the goal is to defend their tower and conserve their health bars. Matches heavily rely on the player's deck, strategic placement, timing of cards, and level of cards. The New Kid's level gives a slight advantage/disadvantage in combat, depending on their opponent.

Each card costs energy and can be played when the player has sufficient energy. During a game, the player starts off with 8 energy and will gain energy constantly. They can accumulate up to 10 energy, after which no more will be gained.

5 cards will be made available on hand, and will replenish as the player plays their cards. Once a character is played, they will target the nearest enemy unit that is within their range, and will not change target until the unit is defeated, or when an ability (such as Taunting from Zen Cartman) is activated. While the characters themselves cannot be controlled on the battlefield, some may have abilities which can be used when available. Enemies near the New Kid will receive beam damage from the latter over time.

The player's health and attack is dependent on their current level. The player's health is also divided into three equal bars. Each time a health bar is depleted, the player will send a shockwave which inflicts damage and knockback on all nearby units.

Upon victory, the player will be taken to a loot locker interface, where they can open 3 lockers to receive various rewards such as coins, PVP tickets, materials, and cards. The player may also choose to spend premium currency (in the form of "Cartman Cash") or watch a video to open additional lockers.

Decks

Card overview

The player uses a deck of 12 cards in battle. Each deck can carry 12 cards and is restricted to a maximum of two themes. However, the Neutral theme is the exception to this rule. Adding a card that does not belong to that deck will cause the game to ask the player if they would like to replace one of the current themes with the one they are trying to add.

The player should avoid a deck that has two or more cards from the same character (e.g. Program Stan and Toolshed. When a character is in the battlefield, regardless spawned from the player or AI in campaign (but not from opponents in PvP), the player will not be allowed to play another card from the same character.

The player is allowed to create multiple decks based on their card combination preferences. Before playing a PvP match or campaign, they will have the opportunity to choose which deck they would like to use. All decks are labelled with colored bands based on the card themes that the deck is carrying (not including neutral).

Themes

Each theme has its own specialization.

Neutral

Adventure

Sci-Fi

Mystical

Fantasy

Superheroes

• Adventure - Cowboys, Native Americans, and pirates. The Adventure theme focuses on dealing direct damage to enemies and boosting allies' attack power.
• Sci-Fi - Aliens, robots, and space warriors. The Sci-Fi theme focuses on applying negative status effects to enemies such as poison, freezing, etc.
• Mystical - Mythological beings and religious warriors. The Mystical theme focuses on healing, removing negative status effects from allies, and energy manipulation.
• Fantasy - Wizards, elves, and medieval warriors. The Fantasy theme focuses on buffing the stats of player's cards with protection and health boosts while debuffing the stats of an opponent's cards.
• Superheroes - Superheroes and supervillains. The Superheroes theme focuses on brute force and teamwork. This theme can set up dangerous traps on the battlefield and can use their allies to gain an advantage.
• Neutral - Miscellaneous characters taken from several episodes of South Park. This theme does not have a particular focus, as all of the cards have their own unique attributes.

Rarity

Common

Rare

Epic

Legendary

• Common - Common cards have the highest chances to be obtained by the player from the PvE and PVP lockers, PVP packs and Free packs. They are the weakest cards at level 1 but are the easiest and least costly to upgrade and scale. Scaling as goes: LVL 4/LVL 5 Common = LVL 1 Legendary
• Rare - Rare cards have slightly lower chances to be obtained from any locker or pack. However, as the player's PVP rank rises, the PVP packs will have guaranteed X number of rares. They cost slightly more materials to upgrade and are moderately stronger than common cards, while weaker than epic cards.
• Epic - Epic cards are extremely rare but very strong at level 1. They can be obtained from lockers, PVP and free packs. However, they cost a lot to upgrade and may have a huge disadvantage in scaling to match the level and strength of the common and rare cards.
• Legendary - The rarest cards of all. If the player is not opening a legendary pack, it all comes down to luck to come across these cards. They can appear in PVP lockers, PVP packs, and Free packs. They are the strongest cards out there, but are the most costly to upgrade and will have a huge disadvantage in scaling to match the level and strength of the player's other cards.

Abilities

Some cards will include one of the abilities as below:

• Charged - An ability of any type that requires time to charge up upon summoning the unit. This can be disrupted by freezing them or with Power Bind.
• Warcry - An ability of any type that takes place immediately upon summoning the unit.
• Deathwish - An ability of any type that takes place immediately upon the unit's death.
• Enraged - An ability of any type that takes place immediately upon the unit's health being depleted to half.
• Aura - An ability of any type that affects all units around the unit with the ability, and the unit itself if the ability's effect is positive.
• Headhunter - An ability of any type that only specifically attacks the leader of a battle (i.e. The New Kid or bosses of story battles).
• Flying - An ability of any type that allows the unit to fly through the battlefield. Units who are able to fly cannot be attacked, as the other units are unable to reach them, however, Ranged Units, Spells, The New Kid's zap and other Flying Units are able to hurt them.
• Teamwork - An ability of any type that allows the unit to obtain a benefit from other specific allies present on the battlefield.

Status Effects

Using abilities, spell cards, or cards with auras can trigger positive or negative status effects. Most effects do not affect buildings, traps, and non-sentient units such as Energy Staff.

• Poisoned - When poisoned, units will turn purple, and lose health per second temporarily.
• Stun/Frozen - Units will not be able to move. Does not affect buildings or traps.
• Mind Control - Units will turn blue, and fight for the opposite team temporarily.
• Transmogrify - Turns units into weaker forms.
• Slow - Halves units' attack speed and movement speed.
• Speed up - Doubles units' attack speed and movement speed.
• Taunt - Attracts units to the target. Used to draw units' attention away from weaker units or the leader.
• Attack up - Units gain attack damage, depending on the card which gave it to them.
• Attack down - Units' attack damage decreases, depending on the card which debuffed them.
• Power bind - Units cannot charge or use their charge abilities.
• Regeneration - Units gain back health per second.
• Invincibility - Units ignore attacks.
• Immunity - Units ignore spells and abilities. The Goth Kids, with Michael's ability, are only immune to harmful spells.

Levels

Card upgrades and donating in Teams award experience, which in turn can upgrade the New Kid's health and attack.

Level	Exp required	Cumulative exp	Health	Beam damage	Shockwave damage
1	0	0	450	7	75
2	10	10	486	7	81
3	25	35	524	7	87
4	50	85	565	7	94
5	100	185	610	7	102
6	200	385	658	8	110
7	325	710	710	9	118
8	500	1210	766	10	128
9	700	1910	827	11	138
10	850	2760	892	12	149
11	1250	4010	963	14	161
12	1900	5910	1039	15	173
13	2250	8160	1121	17	187
14	2550	10710	1209	18	202
15	3000	13710	1305	20	218
16	3500	17210	1408	21	235
17	5000	22210	1519	23	253
18	7000	29210	1639	24	273
19	9000	38210	1768	26	295
20	12000	50210	1908	28	318
21	15000	65210	2059	30	343
22	20000	85210	2222	32	370
23	25000	110210	2397	34	400
24	30000	140210	2586	36	431
25	45000	185210	2791	38	465

Player-versus-Player (PvP)

The player may compete with another player through a PvP match, each lasting 3 minutes. The objective is to defeat the opponent by destroying all three phones, or destroy more phones than the opponent at the end of 3 minutes. In an event of a tie, both players will head to a one-minute sudden death play-off. If no phones are destroyed after 1 minute, the match will be declared a tie.

Each player starts off with 8 energy, earning energy at a rate of 1 energy per 3.5 seconds for the first two minutes, then 1 per 2.4 seconds for the remainder of the match.

Matchmaking

When searching for an opponent, the game will try to match players with similar skill ratings, level and game progress, increasing its threshold of skill rating difference when unable to find a match after some time.

The threshold cannot exceed 700 for players with less than 7500 skill rating, and 1500 for players with at least 7500 skill rating.

Skill Rating

The player earns or loses skill rating depending on the match outcome, and determined by the player's and opponent's skill ratings.

The formula for change in skill rating following a PvP match is:
$Skill\ rating\ gain = 50 + 50 * \tanh(\frac{ O - P }{348})$
$Skill\ rating\ loss = -50 - 50 * \tanh(\frac{ P - O }{348})$

Where $P$ is the player's skill rating, and $O$ is the opponent's skill rating.

Arenas

Arenas can be progressively unlocked with higher skill ratings, allowing the player to receive improved loot from lockers and PvP card packs.

Arena	Name	Skill rating	Locker contents	PvP pack contents
1	Stan's Backyard	0	Common cards Rare cards Epic cards Upgrade items 250	6 cards (2 rares guaranteed) 8 upgrade items 85-105 37-50
2	Basketball Court	300		6 cards (2 rares guaranteed) 8 upgrade items 99-121 41-56
3	The School	650		7 cards (2 rares guaranteed) 9 upgrade items 112-138 43-60
4	The Playground	1200		8 cards (2 rares guaranteed) 10 upgrade items 126-154 46-64
5	Little Tokyo	1800	Outfits Common cards Rare cards Epic cards Upgrade items 350	9 cards (3 rares guaranteed) 11 upgrade items 139-171 51-71
6	Tower of Peace	2500		10 cards (3 rares guaranteed) 12 upgrade items 153-187 55-77
7	Palace Rooftop	3200		11 cards (3 rares guaranteed) 13 upgrade items 162-198 60-83
8	Forbidden Graveyard	3900	Outfits Cards of any rarity Upgrade items 500	12 cards (4 rares guaranteed) 14 upgrade items 171-209 64-89
9	Orc Camp	4600		13 cards (4 rares guaranteed) 15 upgrade items 180-220 74-100
10	Enchanted Forest	5300		14 cards (5 rares guaranteed) 16 upgrade items 225-275 83-115
11	Legendary Arena	6000	Outfits Cards of any rarity Upgrade items 600	15 cards (5 rares guaranteed) 17 upgrade items 270-330 92-130
12	Legendary 2	6500		16 cards (5 rares guaranteed) 18 upgrade items 288-352 110-152
13	Legendary 3	7000		17 cards (6 rares guaranteed) 19 upgrade items 306-374 129-174
14	Legendary 4	7500		18 cards (6 rares guaranteed) 20 upgrade items 324-396 147-196
15	Legendary 5	8000		19 cards (6 rares guaranteed) 21 upgrade items 342-418 166-218
16	Legendary 6	8500		20 cards (7 rares guaranteed) 22 upgrade items 360-440 184-240

Chaos Mode

Chaos Mode is an alternative PvP mode hosted by Professor Chaos, where common cards are set to level 4, rare cards are set to level 3, epic cards are set to level 2, and legendary cards are set to level 1. Participants may play as many as 12 PvP matches in this mode, and will be eliminated after accumulating three defeats. Players may be reinstated at a cost of 50 cash. Few events however, offer a discount or a complete waiver of the reinstating cost.