Cards

Killing a monster has a small chance to drop that exact monster's card — a permanent, collectible object tied to the enemy that dropped it. Every one of the 181 monster definitions in the game has its own card: 152 archetype cards (one for each normal-tier monster and one more for its elite-tier form) and 29 boss cards: one per act boss and mid-act guardian across all twelve biomes, plus 5 World Boss cards that only the weekly raid can award. Because coverage is 1:1, no monster in the descent is ever "dead content" — every kill still has a reason to matter.

Infernal cards are stronger. Every card from an Infernal monster has its power values multiplied by ×1.25 (chances, bonuses, reductions and the upside of a tradeoff; thresholds and penalties stay the same, and each value stays within its cap). The effects listed here already include that multiplier.

Grades

Every card carries one of three grades, assigned mechanically from its source monster and never authored by hand: Rare for a normal-tier monster's card (76 of them), Epic for that same monster's elite-tier form (76), and Legendary for a boss or guardian card (29). A card's grade never changes once assigned, and it is separate from the rarity of the gear the card sockets into.

Drop Rate & Pity

Cards are RO-scarce by design: a normal-tier kill has a 40,000-to-1 shot at its archetype card (Rare grade), an elite-tier kill a 5,000-to-1 shot at its own (stronger, distinct) elite card (Epic grade), and a boss or guardian kill a 750-to-1 shot at its boss card (Legendary grade). Every one of the three channels carries its own pity counter, so a specific card is never truly unbounded — each exact card is guaranteed within a bounded number of matching kills without one, even on the worst luck. See each biome's page for that page's exact numbers.

Claiming and Keeping a Card

A card drop is a celebration pop-up, not an automatic grant — until you tap Claim (or tap the card itself), it isn't in your binder yet. The very first card-drop celebration shown on any given day can be claimed whenever you like, with no timer. Every one after that on the same day arms a claim-or-lose countdown: exactly 2 minutes to claim it before it slips away. Let the clock run out and the card is simply lost for good — no grant, no binder entry, and no compensation for the miss.

Once a card is yours, socketing it is never a one-way door: removing a card from an item (unsocketing) is free and instant — no gold, no material, no cooldown — and the card returns straight to your loose binder, ready to socket into something else.

Socketing a Card

A card sockets into exactly one equipment slot — the slot printed on the card itself, shown below as its badge (Weapon, Helmet, Armor, Gloves, Boots, Ring, or Necklace). Only Legendary, Cursed, Mythic, and Divine gear carries a socket at all, one socket per item no matter the piece, so a card is a late-game upgrade layered on top of an already-strong item, never a way to prop up cheap gear.

What a Card Does

A card's effect is always conditional or situational — bonus damage against a tier or range of enemy, damage reduction from a certain kind of attacker, a chance-on-hit/crit/kill proc, immunity or resistance to a status family, a build-defining stat tradeoff, or (the system's signature axis) an effect that only turns on while a specific Vow stays sealed for the run. See Vows & Ordeals for what sealing a vow means.

Play free in your browser Every card on this page drops in the descent.