If I have non-reversible choices I get choice paralysis. Like, when I play a computer RPG, unless I have a guide that tells me exactly what skills etc to get, or can respec relatively easily, I simply don't level up.
It's not about tailoring my cards to the mission, it's about not being locked into a bad choice forever.
Thus, I added both level 2 cards to my card pool, but no more than 1 level 2 card to my hand.
My character's personal quest involves going on a specific named sidequest, then doing some other stuff afterward. Unless we start unlocking side quests much faster (we've only found one so far), I would not be surprised if I am playing this character to level 9.
One of the other players in my group is almost done with his personal quest, and we've just hit level 2 as a party. So there's some pretty big variability.
My character's quest is to just do a whole bunch of quests. I'm not completing that anytime soon.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
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DabbleIt has been a doozy of a dayRegistered Userregular
Yeah my first personal quest is to do a group of specific quests, which unlocks other stuff which i then have to do as well. Sooo.. not really a quick jaunt. In fact I'm level 5 and have done 1 of said quests.
Our house rules:
We're strict about gold on the ground at the end, unless it's obvious we've won and still have the cards to pick up whatever is near. We've never had gold problems, though we don't augment cards that much, which requires a gold income that all but requires cheating.
We allow a little fudging with choosing cards the first few adventures with a character.
We stay mysterious about character goals up until the party is required to take certain actions to complete it.
We've found that some of the questionable rules help cut down on the enormous amount of analysis paralysis the game induces. At first we were playing where we just unlocked new cards and made a new deck every time, and it could take an hour just for everyone to decide what deck they were bringing that game. The communications rule cut down on the ability to spend ages planning every move, so even though we were sometimes inefficient, games got over faster. There is still a bit of resentment when someone plans a big move only to have someone with a faster initiative spoil it, so we'll fudge that a bit with "I'm winding up for a big hit on xxx" sometimes.
Rule I'm trying to follow but am having a hard time with: People will do illogical things for reasons they aren't allowed to talk about. Don't press the issue if you can't figure out why they aren't playing the way you think they should. (This one is hard, as one of my group has prescriptions that make her goofy at times, so it's hard to tell if it's pain or a personal goal that is making her play like she does. Plus I'm kind of an asshole.)
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
For me the way I tried to balance the loss cards was to only bring one summon (if that, i haven't found the summons too helpful) and one "Aura" (not sure what they're called exactly but the persistent buff to your attack that adds like Muddle or Poison or heal or whatever the initial one is). After that I just prioritized attacks that give XP but are not loss (Mindthief has a few, and some really good ones iirc, like a ranged attack that immobilizes. After that it's just a matter of saving up your big loss cards for the end of the scenario.
So far I haven't had any issues with running out of cards, but again, I've probably played less than 7 missions with them.
Thinking about the gold after mission more, i think i don't like to change the default. If you allow gold to be picked up after fight, then why limit XP gain after combat...and if you can gain xp outside of combat....why don't i level up in town all the time. No, i'm off the fence, mission end is mission end for us. But rule whatever works for you group, is always in play. If it's not fun to be broke, don't be broke...
First time through we failed, but we had a room wrong. Spawned creatures don't get to act on the turn they spawned IF they spawn in the end step, so the demons all portalled in and then got a free hit on us. That didn't go well.
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
For me the way I tried to balance the loss cards was to only bring one summon (if that, i haven't found the summons too helpful) and one "Aura" (not sure what they're called exactly but the persistent buff to your attack that adds like Muddle or Poison or heal or whatever the initial one is). After that I just prioritized attacks that give XP but are not loss (Mindthief has a few, and some really good ones iirc, like a ranged attack that immobilizes. After that it's just a matter of saving up your big loss cards for the end of the scenario.
So far I haven't had any issues with running out of cards, but again, I've probably played less than 7 missions with them.
This is basically my strategy with the Mindthief and I'm like 6xp away from Lv5. Mindthief apparently excels at gaining XP; I racked up 16 last night before the bonus 8xp for clearing an L2 scenario.
Another important skill for the Mindthief?
Invisibility. I am usually the second-fastest player (stupid Scoundrel) and I easily have the lowest HP, gaining only one per level up so even though I'm at L4 I still have single-digit HP. Attracting aggro is not a good idea. Into the Night is a clutch card, but buying a Cloak of Invisibility will pay off huge down the road.
Yeah, I will definitely second the XP gain thing. On my first scenario i think I got something like 14 just from action cards.
Played and won Scenario 5 today. Definitely feels like we've got the flow of battle, finally - I managed to make use of my Scoundrel's Smoke Bomb to get Invisibility while opening a door, for once, and did it in such a way that it forced one of the enemies to route through a trap to squeeze past my invisible self. And then next round I aced the biggest enemy that was in that room with the double damage effect from the smoke bomb, woo!
I have noticed I'm falling behind a little on XP, because my deck just is not good at generating it. I think I'm going to start being a little greedier on using my gold for shared purposes, since picking up a little more loot is my advantage compensating the low XP gain. Our Spellweaver on the other hand makes XP like it's his job, and he made it to level 3 this time, while the rest of us are still level 2 - I think that means we'll be fighting Level 2 enemies next time, right? That should be interesting.
Four retirements today, two of them by the same player (he pulled a retirement quest whose condition was witnessing two other retirements, soooo...) Totally new party makeup for next week, I'm excited!
Normally right there with you. But there are SOOOO MANY. It's taking to long to setup and clean up for us to get more than 1 scenario a month...maybe 2 if we can get together on an off week. I'd like to do 2 a nite, but it's just too much.
Our fearless game owner went to the effort to bag all of the monsters: each monster type has its own ziploc for the monster stat card, standees, and action deck. Then all of the monster ziplocs get split up between two giant ziplocs. That seems to have eliminated like 90% of the setup time for us.
Our fearless game owner went to the effort to bag all of the monsters: each monster type has its own ziploc for the monster stat card, standees, and action deck. Then all of the monster ziplocs get split up between two giant ziplocs. That seems to have eliminated like 90% of the setup time for us.
That is exactly what I did. The problem is to find the right bags…
Having not failed a scenario for ages, we decided to up the difficulty 1 step. Then we tried S13. We got our asses kicked, oh well, back to normal. Nope still got our asses kicked.
Stupid second room. Stupid Spitting Drakes, stupid Bears. The Living Spirits are ok I guess. There are all those traps, but you can only push the bears into them
Time to walk away and level up, and try again later I think.
My gamestore has a copy of Gloomhaven waiting for me and I'm going to play it for the first time with my GF on Saturday. I'm so excited!
This post really has no purpose but I'm at work right now thinking about Gloomhaven and I have no other outlet but to post on these forms.
Battlenet ID: NullPointer
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
I'm all like "I don't remember #13 being that hard," and then I checked our progression chart thingy that one of my guys printed.
We never had a chance; we went to #9 instead of #8.
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
How easy is it to pick up individual games with a potentially fluctuating group size? Will I need to have near-total continuity? If I have a 3 person group and we might have to just duo for a session or two, is somebody going to be hopelessly behind and feel awful?
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
How easy is it to pick up individual games with a potentially fluctuating group size? Will I need to have near-total continuity? If I have a 3 person group and we might have to just duo for a session or two, is somebody going to be hopelessly behind and feel awful?
Probably not hopelessly. Scenario level is scaled based on the levels of the characters attempting it, and while it's definitely true that the first couple levels / items make the largest difference, as your Prosperity goes up so does the starting level for characters.
We've had anywhere from 2-4 people out of 6 who've been involved at any individual mission thus far. Sometimes you might want to avoid something that looks especially difficult for the team you're coming in with but it's pretty easy to negotiate around it.
How easy is it to pick up individual games with a potentially fluctuating group size? Will I need to have near-total continuity? If I have a 3 person group and we might have to just duo for a session or two, is somebody going to be hopelessly behind and feel awful?
I haven't finished it yet, but so far there isn't anything about the scenarios I would have been too upset about having spoiled. It's the box contents that are the prizes, so just house rule that retirements only happen when you have 3? Also there's lots of side quest type scenarios that the duo could nail, saving the meat for when you're a full party. They're generally easy to identify.
I did find the game less fun when we had one character much higher level than the rest, as they were a fast initiative dps type that made it hard for the other players to set up combos. It wasn't terrible, and we just learned to plan around it.
+1
KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
I saw it was solo and was curious. I may be able to find a third, I think my GF might like this. She enjoys dungeon hunter after she got the hang of it. I had hero quest and Dragon Strike when I was a kid but only played HQ like 2 times even though i p[ainted all my figures.
If it wasn't damn near $150 I think I'd be all over this. I'm not sure my GF will enjoy it. I bought both Hero Quest and DragonStrike as a kid and never played one complete game. She does like Boss Monster thought. So maybe?
Don't get Gloomhaven if you're even the slightest bit skeptical. It's very expensive, it's an enormous commitment, and the logistics of playing it are a nightmare. It's a good dungeon crawler but there are much cheaper, faster dungeon crawlers to start with.
Well then I fucked up!
My goodness, the thought of organizing that box somehow and sleeving certain cards is filling me with a panic attack. There's no way in hell I want to drop another $100 on a friggin' wooden insert.
Drop $5 on a box of ziploc baggies. Separate baggy for each enemy type, putting the monster's stat card, standees, and action deck all in there. That will do a lot for you. Also a few ziplocs for various terrain and such.
If you can get Planos cheap enough, that's a good option. When I looked into it, I was seeing Plano prices that were nearing the "nice wooden insert" price range, which was not worth it to me.
Don't get Gloomhaven if you're even the slightest bit skeptical. It's very expensive, it's an enormous commitment, and the logistics of playing it are a nightmare. It's a good dungeon crawler but there are much cheaper, faster dungeon crawlers to start with.
Well then I fucked up!
My goodness, the thought of organizing that box somehow and sleeving certain cards is filling me with a panic attack. There's no way in hell I want to drop another $100 on a friggin' wooden insert.
Drop $5 on a box of ziploc baggies. Separate baggy for each enemy type, putting the monster's stat card, standees, and action deck all in there. That will do a lot for you. Also a few ziplocs for various terrain and such.
So we played 2 games this weekend. Did scenario 11 and the one before that, 9 i think? 9, if that's right, was SUPER easy. 11 kicked our teeth in:
So we lost 11, but it was SUCH a slog, that we cheated the end just so we wouldn't EVER have to do that stupid thing again. The final boss was at 3 hp after our last possible attack. We had no more cards after that. So we decided that instead of -2 dmg, we did crit dmg, which finished him off. God i never ever want to try to play with that many monsters again.
Side note on the gloomhaven helper app. We were trying to use it. But we came across a strange "bug"? Everything was setup for scenario 9. We added our chars and put our first init in. Then i hit "Draw" in the bottom left for the monster cards right? They pulled up a refresh card. Which i thought was wierd, so i tested it again just to confirm we hit that 1 in 8 chance. Set init draw round 2. Same exact card for the monsters. We tried this NUMEROUS times. Always the exact same card for the monsters. Something like Move -1 Attack +2 with refresh symbol. This happened over and over.
So i tested with the other monsters on that adventure, each had a different first card, but they were all a version of the refresh. And each time i hit draw, they kept getting the exact same card out of their set.
So i assumed it was the monsters, i tried a different scenario, 1. Same thing. Each monster pulls only 1 card, it's a refresh card from their set, but it's the only card they draw...
After googleing a bit, i didn't find any support. I am assuming i'm missing a "shuffle" option, but can't find one. I did find some forums that say you specifically DON'T shuffle, the app handles it.
So i tested the app again last night, as did my friend who tested with me last weekend. Both seem to be shuffling normally now. It's was very strange, but using it will help quite a bit i think.
And Prosperity 3 means a free levelup for your "freshly-minted level 2 character," right?
Sadly no. We needed his starting gold for the last nudge.
Per the explanation of prosperity on page 48: "Likewise, any character with a level lower than the prosperity level may immediately advance their level to match."
Posts
It's not about tailoring my cards to the mission, it's about not being locked into a bad choice forever.
Thus, I added both level 2 cards to my card pool, but no more than 1 level 2 card to my hand.
One of the other players in my group is almost done with his personal quest, and we've just hit level 2 as a party. So there's some pretty big variability.
We're strict about gold on the ground at the end, unless it's obvious we've won and still have the cards to pick up whatever is near. We've never had gold problems, though we don't augment cards that much, which requires a gold income that all but requires cheating.
We allow a little fudging with choosing cards the first few adventures with a character.
We stay mysterious about character goals up until the party is required to take certain actions to complete it.
We've found that some of the questionable rules help cut down on the enormous amount of analysis paralysis the game induces. At first we were playing where we just unlocked new cards and made a new deck every time, and it could take an hour just for everyone to decide what deck they were bringing that game. The communications rule cut down on the ability to spend ages planning every move, so even though we were sometimes inefficient, games got over faster. There is still a bit of resentment when someone plans a big move only to have someone with a faster initiative spoil it, so we'll fudge that a bit with "I'm winding up for a big hit on xxx" sometimes.
Rule I'm trying to follow but am having a hard time with: People will do illogical things for reasons they aren't allowed to talk about. Don't press the issue if you can't figure out why they aren't playing the way you think they should. (This one is hard, as one of my group has prescriptions that make her goofy at times, so it's hard to tell if it's pain or a personal goal that is making her play like she does. Plus I'm kind of an asshole.)
Our third player got his first retirement at the end of the scenario, and he unlocked Circles.
It was my first game with the Mindtheif. Having come from Scoundrel I'm not sure how to deal with having so many loss cards, but I'll get there.
I've only played a couple games, but they were the Mindthief, and I really enjoyed it. Spoiler in case anyone cares.
Yeah, I will definitely second the XP gain thing. On my first scenario i think I got something like 14 just from action cards.
I have noticed I'm falling behind a little on XP, because my deck just is not good at generating it. I think I'm going to start being a little greedier on using my gold for shared purposes, since picking up a little more loot is my advantage compensating the low XP gain. Our Spellweaver on the other hand makes XP like it's his job, and he made it to level 3 this time, while the rest of us are still level 2 - I think that means we'll be fighting Level 2 enemies next time, right? That should be interesting.
I use that, and it is.
Although I run it from my laptop rather than my phone so that everyone can see.
Go here
There's a PC version if you have a laptop
I prefer the fiddly bits myself but I'm a tactile kinda guy
That is exactly what I did. The problem is to find the right bags…
You're not using the dice? Man, have you been playing it wrong…
Time to walk away and level up, and try again later I think.
This post really has no purpose but I'm at work right now thinking about Gloomhaven and I have no other outlet but to post on these forms.
We never had a chance; we went to #9 instead of #8.
Probably not hopelessly. Scenario level is scaled based on the levels of the characters attempting it, and while it's definitely true that the first couple levels / items make the largest difference, as your Prosperity goes up so does the starting level for characters.
We've had anywhere from 2-4 people out of 6 who've been involved at any individual mission thus far. Sometimes you might want to avoid something that looks especially difficult for the team you're coming in with but it's pretty easy to negotiate around it.
I did find the game less fun when we had one character much higher level than the rest, as they were a fast initiative dps type that made it hard for the other players to set up combos. It wasn't terrible, and we just learned to plan around it.
It’s good. It’s best with 3, I think.
Drop $5 on a box of ziploc baggies. Separate baggy for each enemy type, putting the monster's stat card, standees, and action deck all in there. That will do a lot for you. Also a few ziplocs for various terrain and such.
If those are what I think they are I've seen em cheap at home depot.
Side note on the gloomhaven helper app. We were trying to use it. But we came across a strange "bug"? Everything was setup for scenario 9. We added our chars and put our first init in. Then i hit "Draw" in the bottom left for the monster cards right? They pulled up a refresh card. Which i thought was wierd, so i tested it again just to confirm we hit that 1 in 8 chance. Set init draw round 2. Same exact card for the monsters. We tried this NUMEROUS times. Always the exact same card for the monsters. Something like Move -1 Attack +2 with refresh symbol. This happened over and over.
So i tested with the other monsters on that adventure, each had a different first card, but they were all a version of the refresh. And each time i hit draw, they kept getting the exact same card out of their set.
So i assumed it was the monsters, i tried a different scenario, 1. Same thing. Each monster pulls only 1 card, it's a refresh card from their set, but it's the only card they draw...
After googleing a bit, i didn't find any support. I am assuming i'm missing a "shuffle" option, but can't find one. I did find some forums that say you specifically DON'T shuffle, the app handles it.
We even tried a second phone, same thing.
Anyone got any hot tips on what we did wrong?
Thanks for the response though.
Per the explanation of prosperity on page 48: "Likewise, any character with a level lower than the prosperity level may immediately advance their level to match."