What do the red pips mean on Monster cards

To start, we must first understand how the four cards are shuffled (The cards themselves can be any combination of "success", "huge success", "failure" and "huge failure"):

1. The cards start shown face up.
2. The cards are flipped face down, maintaining their positions.
3. The face down cards are shoved into a single pile.
4. From the single pile, the cards are seperated.
5. (Steps 3&4 may or may not be repeated more than once)
6. Figure out the positions of the success cards, and choose one.

The important part to remember while watching steps three and four is that the cards maintain their 'order' in the stack. If we take a theoretical Spread (from left to right) or Huge Success (1), Success (2), Failure (3) Huge Failure (4), it may look like this as it shoves them together:

(I've highlighted the cards to better illustrate which ones are top/bottom/middle)

The top card in this case is Huge Success. When they are pulled apart, you can continue to follow the top card. The easiest two cards to follow, in my experience, are the top and bottom cards. This can get complicated when the cards are shuffled more than once, but it is still possible to follow the cards.

If the there is only a single success card and it ends up in the middle, I tend to eliminate the cards that were on the top and bottom, and then have a 50% chance of getting the correct card, which is better than the base 25% chance of just picking one of the four cards at random.

The difficulty of the chance cards depends how far into the game you are, and the 'difficulty' of the encounter that prompted the chance cards. As the difficulty increases, there may be fewer (huge) Success cards,and more (huge) Failure cards. The dealer will also start shuffling faster, and more than once, making it harder to keep track of the desirable cards.

There are a couple cards you can unlock and randomly obtain in future games that can greatly assist in picking the right cards.

• The blessing Guardian Angel will allow you to put back the chance card you picked, shuffle the four cards again and re-choose once per chance encounter. It is no guarantee of getting the right cards, but it does give you another shot at watching the shuffle.
• The equipment Clairvoyant Helm, when equipped, will highlight one of the face-down (huge) failure cards in red.

Both of these cards are unlocked by completing The Apprentice encounter and claiming the card's token by paying either 15 gold or 5 food for a teleportation spell.

I find that the best way to deal with the Lich is to sit back and smash its skeletons and then reflect the magic missiles. It takes a little longer, but the vortex of fire that is left whenever it teleports is difficult to dodge and makes getting up close for melee damage risky unless you have particularly good equipment/blessings and have plenty of health in reserve.

Also, if you can, try to obtain a weapon that does holy damage prior to engaging the Lich. Holy weapons deal bonus damage to the undead, and may cause them to be unable to be resurrected.