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.
It means that fighting Lv2 enemies is now "normal" difficulty, anyway. We inadvertantly stayed on Lv1 longer than recommended since we were neglecting to pay attention to the math. Fortunately "easy" is a valid option that doesn't hurt development too much.
I switched to the Gloomhaven Helper web app for yesterday's session and we accidentally played the whole scenario on easy. I forgot to set the levels on enemies, whoops!
Other than that, the web app was great. It removes the need for the monster stat cards, monster attack decks, damage tokens, and status tokens. Also puts everyone in an initiative order on the screen so we don't have to keep asking the "who's next" question.
Starting to take over from bears as my most hated enemy. We just did the sewers, three rooms, and first turn of every room, the oozes multiplied. Even rocking a permanent shield 3 and being immune to the poison, they just rolled over our Brute with a million ranged attacks. So annoying.
Seconding recommendation for Gloomhaven Helper. A little finicky when it comes to scrolling to adjust hp (I kept accidentally dragging objects up and down the initiative track) but not having all of the monster cards and blocks was a huge space-saver. Next time we'll test out synching between two devices.
Finally got to play some more of this last night, after a several month hiatus due to people being busy. People give the Concentric Circles class a lot of grief as being one of the weaker classes, but I have to disagree. It's finicky for sure, and can go south real fast if you misplay something, but when it gets going it's an absolute beast.
I'm on the verge of just throwing up my hands and fudging our prosperity numbers. We're very much in the late game (scenarios in the 40s), and our prosperity is still sitting at 5. I glanced through the remaining scenarios and confirmed that we've already mostly exhausted what we can get from scenario rewards, and I'm certainly not going to start grinding gold to get more points. We maxed reputation a long time ago and keep getting more bonuses to it, so maybe I'll house rule that we can convert those into prosperity instead.
Finally got to play some more of this last night, after a several month hiatus due to people being busy. People give the Concentric Circles class a lot of grief as being one of the weaker classes, but I have to disagree. It's finicky for sure, and can go south real fast if you misplay something, but when it gets going it's an absolute beast.
I'm on the verge of just throwing up my hands and fudging our prosperity numbers. We're very much in the late game (scenarios in the 40s), and our prosperity is still sitting at 5. I glanced through the remaining scenarios and confirmed that we've already mostly exhausted what we can get from scenario rewards, and I'm certainly not going to start grinding gold to get more points. We maxed reputation a long time ago and keep getting more bonuses to it, so maybe I'll house rule that we can convert those into prosperity instead.
Learning to fudge numbers every now and again in a coop board game is the path to true freedom and fun.
Tonight we unlocked my Mindthief's retirement quest and I think we'll pull the trigger next week just to keep our Scenario level under control a bit. Gonna miss this little status machine and he ability to make my enemies's heads explode while they attack each other.
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…
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…
Yeah our standees are sorted with their associated action cards in two Plano boxes.
Using an app doesn't change that; you still have to find the standees, obv. But not having to use tokens to keep track of hp/conditions (especially on the 10-group monsters) is great, as is not having to constantly shuffle decks of 8 mini-cards.
We've got the Plano boxes too, but don't really bother with any app stuff. We just use dice for monster HP, and keep the wound tokens to track our own health, since it's a pain to see a party member's HP on those dials. We play with four people, though, and everyone keeps track of their own bit of the game; someone's on dice, on action cards, on elements, and on the monster mod deck.
Hooooooly crap Scenario 61 is some BS. And required for my specific personal goal. We cleared it by a miracle, with three of us exhausted via damage and our Brute making a last-second dive to the final objective.
...one more to go, then I hang up the brain-blasts.
And lo, Sableye the Mindthief did achieve his personal objective of unraveling the Fall of Man. At level 6 (and with 8 perks), he has seen all he wished to see and headed into the sunset for retirement. As he settles off into Gloomhaven in peace (but not before selling his adventuring gear and unlocking an additional talent for any potential future Mindthieves), a new member joins the Faded Legacy party to take his place.
Let's see how Gengar the <Eclipse> fares as the group continues on its mission...
Character spoilers:
Oh man the Nightshroud looks hilarious. Darkness EVERYWHERE, insane benefits for being invisible, curses, and fairly mobile. Not wild about the initiative spread at the moment, but I'm super spoiled; for the last couple of runs my Mindthief didn't have anything in his 10-card hand slower than 29. Doesn't loot very well, though; cash could be tight down the road.
Went with immunity to scenario effects & two +1s and a pair of rolling curses for my perks (one for me retiring a character, one for level 2). Picking up a Cloak of Invisibility was a no-brainer, and grabbing a Minor Potion of Stamina felt correct since I'll only have a 9-card hand going forth.
My new personal quest, however, could take some time...
My girlfriend was playing cragheart and kind of not fully enjoying the game because she couldn't settle on a role....now she is playing eclipse and no longer has that problem
Cragheart was instrumental in my group clearing my retirement scenario. But yeah it has been hard for his player to identify a role.
Spoilers for S62:
After studying the map a bit, I realized that we could use the Cragheart's ability to create obstacles to close off the natural choke point where the overlays connected the two boards, forcing the ever-spawning Living Bones to bunch up and wander mindlessly into our killbox. Our Brute plugged up the only path left, supported by ranged attacks from the rest of us (and the occasional heal from Cragheart) once we dispatched the two elite Living Spirits on the smaller board.
It was still a long road to kill 10 of the bastards. At level 3, elite Bones have 10 damn hp and we kept flipping their stupid heal cards. Slowly but surely we made progress (mercifully, Brute's retaliation and Cragheart's incidental damage aren't reduced by shielding), but it was infinitely better then being in a wild melee surrounded on all sides would have been.
We somehow managed to time the 10th kill to happen immediately before my action for the round, and I was camped out next to the boss's spawn point because I had picked up some loot the round before. It appeared and punched me, then because we still had 6 other skeletons on the map it had 0 shield so I blasted it with full force twice (thanks, move 4/attack 2!) and then the Cragheart waltzed over to finish it off that same round. 20 hp gone in 3-4 actions just like that.
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.
I believe that's the one I've been bitching about, if I remember my scenario numbers right. Still haven't beat it. We'll go back eventually, but we're at three losses now, so... no rush.
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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.
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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.
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It means that fighting Lv2 enemies is now "normal" difficulty, anyway. We inadvertantly stayed on Lv1 longer than recommended since we were neglecting to pay attention to the math. Fortunately "easy" is a valid option that doesn't hurt development too much.
Other than that, the web app was great. It removes the need for the monster stat cards, monster attack decks, damage tokens, and status tokens. Also puts everyone in an initiative order on the screen so we don't have to keep asking the "who's next" question.
I'm on the verge of just throwing up my hands and fudging our prosperity numbers. We're very much in the late game (scenarios in the 40s), and our prosperity is still sitting at 5. I glanced through the remaining scenarios and confirmed that we've already mostly exhausted what we can get from scenario rewards, and I'm certainly not going to start grinding gold to get more points. We maxed reputation a long time ago and keep getting more bonuses to it, so maybe I'll house rule that we can convert those into prosperity instead.
Learning to fudge numbers every now and again in a coop board game is the path to true freedom and fun.
I use that, and it is.
Although I run it from my laptop rather than my phone so that everyone can see.
It's not on the Apple store; iOs users have to use the web client.
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
New classes are fun.
That is exactly what I did. The problem is to find the right bags…
Yeah our standees are sorted with their associated action cards in two Plano boxes.
Using an app doesn't change that; you still have to find the standees, obv. But not having to use tokens to keep track of hp/conditions (especially on the 10-group monsters) is great, as is not having to constantly shuffle decks of 8 mini-cards.
You're not using the dice? Man, have you been playing it wrong…
...one more to go, then I hang up the brain-blasts.
Let's see how Gengar the <Eclipse> fares as the group continues on its mission...
Character spoilers:
Went with immunity to scenario effects & two +1s and a pair of rolling curses for my perks (one for me retiring a character, one for level 2). Picking up a Cloak of Invisibility was a no-brainer, and grabbing a Minor Potion of Stamina felt correct since I'll only have a 9-card hand going forth.
My new personal quest, however, could take some time...
Spoilers for S62:
It was still a long road to kill 10 of the bastards. At level 3, elite Bones have 10 damn hp and we kept flipping their stupid heal cards. Slowly but surely we made progress (mercifully, Brute's retaliation and Cragheart's incidental damage aren't reduced by shielding), but it was infinitely better then being in a wild melee surrounded on all sides would have been.
We somehow managed to time the 10th kill to happen immediately before my action for the round, and I was camped out next to the boss's spawn point because I had picked up some loot the round before. It appeared and punched me, then because we still had 6 other skeletons on the map it had 0 shield so I blasted it with full force twice (thanks, move 4/attack 2!) and then the Cragheart waltzed over to finish it off that same round. 20 hp gone in 3-4 actions just like that.
Time to walk away and level up, and try again later I think.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Gloomhaven-Board-Game/291875780?u1=- &oid=589058.1&wmlspartner=xzXATABADTI&sourceid=11439280791267722854&affillinktype=10&veh=aff
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.