Relatedly, there are only ten player curses, so in my 4p group, the Scoundrel's "ignore scenario drawbacks" perk is a bit less exciting. For "each player gets three curses" scenarios, the party starts with a total of 9 curses instead of a total of 10 curses. Woo?
That is the best perk any time a character has it and I will not hear otherwise. Just because it's less than stellar in this specific instance doesn't impact its overall usefulness.
I started playing Gloomhaven solo. Brute and Spellweaver, and boy howdy did I lose three times before doing scenario one. Bad luck plus enemies never pulling cards that gave me a break plus learning = fourth time lucky.
Still, got some valuable XP.
Did both battle goals and looted the chest on the successful try so that’s good. Onwards.
Technically, the monsters in later rooms shouldn't be on the map until you open the doors. Doesn't matter for that scenario (and having played it three times, you know that) but later in your campaign it might matter.
The successful try had better luck but also better tactics, as I used the big move card on the Spellweaver to open the door to the final room, skip in, land on the chest and then popped the invisibility cloak to sit there undetected while I blew my last spells on the archers. The living bones had to target the Brute, who was in the other room behind traps which ate some of their HP quite nicely. It made me think opening a door and then backing away (if I can't turn invisible) so bad guys have to come out, especially if they've got archers at the back, is often going to be wiser than charging in.
I guess I didn't say that I enjoyed the game a lot. As many have said it's about hand management, and it took a few tries to figure out how to conserve a hand while still putting out damage. It helped on the last go that the first room of enemies got a turn in which they went first but effectively stood still and didn't attack.
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
Not to spoil, but I am sure that was an allusion to a boxed character.
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
Not to spoil, but I am sure that was an allusion to a boxed character.
No they meant that Brute can pull off charging into a room without an exit strategy. Sometimes.
That went badly. The boss just kept opening doors and the curse cards came out every time I tried to hit him. Ugh.
I could go level up before trying again but I’ll go again immediately tomorrow.
Yeah, that scenario is usually pretty rough, depending on what the boss does, hence my earlier comment (spoilered for YouTube, rather than for being a game spoiler):
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
Not to spoil, but I am sure that was an allusion to a boxed character.
No they meant that Brute can pull off charging into a room without an exit strategy. Sometimes.
Yeah, the Brute can get some serious shields up, but it takes some prep. And even then, a badly-timed enemy crit can still ruin your day.
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
Not to spoil, but I am sure that was an allusion to a boxed character.
No they meant that Brute can pull off charging into a room without an exit strategy. Sometimes.
I meant the Retaliate 3 scenario! And I'm pretty sure you have the one I'm thinking of unboxed, Vyo!
The key to victory IMO is minimizing the number of attacks the enemies get to make. If your plan involves letting a room full of monsters beat on you, it's not a very good plan. (This is why archers are some of my least favorite enemies)
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
Not to spoil, but I am sure that was an allusion to a boxed character.
No they meant that Brute can pull off charging into a room without an exit strategy. Sometimes.
I meant the Retaliate 3 scenario! And I'm pretty sure you have the one I'm thinking of unboxed, Vyo!
I do but I can't do both with the same character! My friend did manage to have two different retaliate effects live on the same turn though but neither of them had anything to do with what I was doing...
EDIT: We actually retired that character tonight, unlocking our final character (Bolt). That one's gonna be interesting...
My character, however, is sitting at over 630xp waiting for some goddamned Forest Imps to show up.
Hey, so we finished Gloomhaven. Spoilers for everything.
Main campaign done, at least. Still had a few side missions to go, and we only got to the required prosperity for the last town records book mission on the final boss. The shine definitely wore off a bit near the end once we had all the characters unlocked, but overall it was a pretty good experience? Unbalanced, but fun. I got about a year and a third of weekly gaming out of it, so easily worth the cash.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Hey, so we finished Gloomhaven. Spoilers for everything.
Main campaign done, at least. Still had a few side missions to go, and we only got to the required prosperity for the last town records book mission on the final boss. The shine definitely wore off a bit near the end once we had all the characters unlocked, but overall it was a pretty good experience? Unbalanced, but fun. I got about a year and a third of weekly gaming out of it, so easily worth the cash.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Not gonna click on the spoiler, but define "finished". Like, done all non-mutually exclusive quests? Unlocked all boxes/envelopes/town records/whatever? All of the above?
Hey, so we finished Gloomhaven. Spoilers for everything.
Main campaign done, at least. Still had a few side missions to go, and we only got to the required prosperity for the last town records book mission on the final boss. The shine definitely wore off a bit near the end once we had all the characters unlocked, but overall it was a pretty good experience? Unbalanced, but fun. I got about a year and a third of weekly gaming out of it, so easily worth the cash.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Not gonna click on the spoiler, but define "finished". Like, done all non-mutually exclusive quests? Unlocked all boxes/envelopes/town records/whatever? All of the above?
All class boxes opened, finished all the missions that were part of the main story progression. Didn't open envelope A. About as done as you can get without grinding out the random side missions.
Hey, so we finished Gloomhaven. Spoilers for everything.
Main campaign done, at least. Still had a few side missions to go, and we only got to the required prosperity for the last town records book mission on the final boss. The shine definitely wore off a bit near the end once we had all the characters unlocked, but overall it was a pretty good experience? Unbalanced, but fun. I got about a year and a third of weekly gaming out of it, so easily worth the cash.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Not gonna click on the spoiler, but define "finished". Like, done all non-mutually exclusive quests? Unlocked all boxes/envelopes/town records/whatever? All of the above?
All class boxes opened, finished all the missions that were part of the main story progression. Didn't open envelope A. About as done as you can get without grinding out the random side missions.
Hey, so we finished Gloomhaven. Spoilers for everything.
Main campaign done, at least. Still had a few side missions to go, and we only got to the required prosperity for the last town records book mission on the final boss. The shine definitely wore off a bit near the end once we had all the characters unlocked, but overall it was a pretty good experience? Unbalanced, but fun. I got about a year and a third of weekly gaming out of it, so easily worth the cash.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Not gonna click on the spoiler, but define "finished". Like, done all non-mutually exclusive quests? Unlocked all boxes/envelopes/town records/whatever? All of the above?
All class boxes opened, finished all the missions that were part of the main story progression. Didn't open envelope A. About as done as you can get without grinding out the random side missions.
Cool!
Favourite class?
Overall opinion on the game? Pros and cons?
Liked it, but hoping future content is a balanced a bit better. It's also still pretty clunky to manage the logistics of, even if you've got a storage solution. Favourite played class was probably Two-Mini.
Hey, so we finished Gloomhaven. Spoilers for everything.
Main campaign done, at least. Still had a few side missions to go, and we only got to the required prosperity for the last town records book mission on the final boss. The shine definitely wore off a bit near the end once we had all the characters unlocked, but overall it was a pretty good experience? Unbalanced, but fun. I got about a year and a third of weekly gaming out of it, so easily worth the cash.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Not gonna click on the spoiler, but define "finished". Like, done all non-mutually exclusive quests? Unlocked all boxes/envelopes/town records/whatever? All of the above?
All class boxes opened, finished all the missions that were part of the main story progression. Didn't open envelope A. About as done as you can get without grinding out the random side missions.
Cool!
Favourite class?
Overall opinion on the game? Pros and cons?
Liked it, but hoping future content is a balanced a bit better. It's also still pretty clunky to manage the logistics of, even if you've got a storage solution. Favourite played class was probably Two-Mini.
After ~14 successful scenarios (15 total) over ~6 months of play and ~45ish hours of play with one group, some general thoughts:
Balance:
I agree with you here. Both scenario balance and intra-class balance. In our starting party of Tinkerer, Mind Thief, Scoundrel, and Spell Weaver, it was a bit wonky. I played the Mind Thief. It was pretty odd. My primary role as the Mind Thief was CC and single target damage. However, the Scoundrel was *way* better at single target damage than I was, and the Spell Weaver generally could apply the same sorts of status effects to multiple monsters at once. I was *mostly* a mop up killer, with occasional clutch stuns. The tinkerer fell by the way side by the end, and was pretty ready to let his character go. Scoundrel will be retiring next scenario, so we'll see what he gets.
As for unlocked characters, we got 2 scenarios with Angry Face, and one scenario with Cthulhu Face so far. My scenario with Cthulhu face had basically everything I tried to do foiled by my party not listening to requirements, and them used to me going SUPER FAST as a mind thief, and not adjusting to CF being *not the mind thief*. As for Angry Face:
He basically passively merc'd more than half the monsters in the scenario, either due to summons, Doom, or getting to do free attack actions whenever a doomed thing died. Plus, the Tinkerer gave him some lost cards bask, so those really powerful doom cards got used twice, and it basically meant he did more than 60% of the work in a 4 player scenario. It was funny because Angry Face and me (Cthulhu Face) were both level 2 for this mission, but a level 6 Scoundrel and a level 5 Tinkerer were also left in the dust
Scenario balance is also all over the place once you get off the main branch of the story (I think - I don't really think we've gone very far into the main story, and have spent most of our time in side missions (5/15 (2 for a personal quest, 3 random unlocks)), the initial 3 missions you don't really have a choice to do, and then pursuing the initial quest giving NPC
The Merchant
Jekserah
.
However, I wish that some of the side missions were unlocked in a more predictable / consistent way. Two of the 3 side missions were such a drastically more difficult experience than the main game that I was honestly surprised we were "allowed" to do them. I looked up one mission, which is apparently notoriously difficult, and found the designer of that mission saying more or less "Well, if you do the mission later, and have access to these better items, the whole thing is trivialized so I think its fine". Later in the thread, that same designer was like "Oh, I forgot to re-test this scenario with the 2 stretch goal monster cards that ended up throwing off the balance of the Boss monster's abilities".
Personal quest retirement goals are also super random in difficulty / length. Our initial set of 4 will have taken: 12 total scenarios, 13 total scenarios, 14 total scenarios, and 15 total scenarios. However, hilariously enough:
Player A retires after 12 scenarios. Gets New Character 1.
Player B (me) retires after 13 scenarios. Gets New Character 2.
Player C retires after 14 scenarios, gets New Character 3.
Player A then retires New Character 1 after 2 scenarios, unlocks New Character 4.
Next play session, Player D will retire after 15 total scenarios, unlocking New Character 5.
Would you say you feel differently?
Fiddliness
I definitely agree that it's clunky to play without a storage solution. Arguably not worth the effort if you don't have *some* kind of token management system for in play, and an organizer + Gloomhaven Helper can both make the play experience significantly easier. But...
I kind of feel like the major flaw in the design of Gloomhaven is the depths of granularity in hits / conditions / general need for tokens. Meaning...often times, you have a turn. You put damage markers on maybe, one thing. Then you put status markers on another. Then, the next person goes, and kills the thing that you put damage tokens on, so now you have to take those off and put them back in your storage solution. Then the next person goes and kills the thing you CC'd, so that marker needs to go back.
It just feels like it might have been better to go with a <Miss> <Small Wound Token> <Big Wound Token> and limit the total play states that way? It's definitely a design puzzle I'm working on in my own game (which is more similar to KDM than Gloomhaven, but has to solve a lot of similar design issues).
I think this is the biggest weakness of the game, and really, my only *real* complaint.
Story/Narrative
A minor quibble I have is how often times the city/road events are "choose between these 2 nebulous choices: MASSIVE CONSEQUENCES" or "do you want to help this person completely or MURDER THEM DEAD". I understand why they exist in that kind of space, but I wonder if there was more room here? I dunno. Doing it on just one card is tough. I'm sad that many, many times the class-specific trigger things don't get a chance to fire because you pick "wrong". But, I dunno. Someone else in my group reads the cards, so I might be wrong here.
I also don't like how often times the party gets kind of rail roaded into doing kind of terrible things? Like, scenario 3:
You open the back door and find kids, but aren't given a chance to say "Nah, this isn't the kind of party we are, fuck this noise". So, you are forced into being child murderers and burning the place down. It's only afterwards that you're given a chance to say fuck you to Jekserah or not.
Also, scenario 26:
My group was always RPing racism against Vermlings (and the game, too, to a certain extent). And they rejoiced when the "source" of the water poisoning turned out to be Vermlings. Only, SURPRISE, it wasn't the vermlings, they were just peacefully going about their business until wreckless mercenaries came in and fucked up their homes. It might be nice to have to wrestle with those kinds of fuck ups, but the game seems content to just be like LOLRACISM. Maybe I'm wrong - we're not that far in, to be fair.
Diagnosed with AML on 6/1/12. Read about it: www.effleukemia.com
We're trying 5p Gloom tonight. I know it's less than ideal, but it's more ideal than the alternatives of leaving someone out or not playing Gloomhaven.
I'm reading the best way to handle is to give the enemies and traps +1 level (or possibly +2, but we'll start with +1 as it's one player's first game and two others have only played once before) but keep the rewards un-levelled.
We're fine for modifier decks as there are a few app users around the table.
We'll give it a bash and see how it goes. If it really doesn't work but we end up with 5 player situations again I guess we'll just have to have a rotating dungeon-master slot. Not the most satisfying but would keep people involved.
Finally retired our first character, woo! Our tinkerer unlocked Saw and will be switching to it.
First impression of Saw:
The medkit mechanic looks neat! If we can find a way to pass some of those to my Scoundrel, that'll be a help to my longevity, and might even let me afford to use a lost card once in a while.
Lol that the person playing a healerish character switched to... another healer. Fortunately they seem to be ok with that.
"Town Records" book
We had already gotten to Prosperity 3, so after reading several pages of fluff, we were then instructed to read a few more pages of fluff. :P Since everyone was a bit tired by that point, we decided to delay the additional fluff until another day.
Did scenario 2 on the second attempt. The Brute took down the bandit leader in two blows after I swapped in the do X damage where X is your movement, used his big movement card plus boots of striding and pulled the 2x damage modifier. 16 damage off one attack.
Now levelling up both characters (the other one is a Spellweaver) and wondering which perks and abilities to get.
Did scenario 2 on the second attempt. The Brute took down the bandit leader in two blows after I swapped in the do X damage where X is your movement, used his big movement card plus boots of striding and pulled the 2x damage modifier. 16 damage off one attack.
Now levelling up both characters (the other one is a Spellweaver) and wondering which perks and abilities to get.
Anything that pulls red cards out if your deck is usually my top priority after "immune to scenario effects".
Hmmm this Brute ability that just says KILL ONE DUDE seems strong.
It is, and it isn't. It is specifically one regular dude you can kill, not elite, boss, or special enemies. Most of the time I don't feel good about losing a card to deal with one regular enemy. On the other hand, not needing to roll for it is very good.
So I introduced my other group of friends to Gloomhaven and they really seem to dig it. I switched to a DM role since we have five players and I am already running a separate campaign. First scenario was touch and go but they really seemed to get the hang of it, especially one player who chose Scoundrel to start off.
Second night we play they finished up the second scenario and the Scoundrel player wanted to paint all the figures. So I let her take the starter classes and.....well see for yourself.
Love how she made the bases unique to each class. And am amazed at the mountain of gold she put on the Scoundrel Base. Which is fitting cause she made off with the most monies in both scenarios.
There are some minor style choices I don't like in those paint jobs, but for "please let me paint your miniatures for you," holy shit that is good. Top notch work on the bases, too
Fry on
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
Scenario four. Cleared the first room halfway through turn two, feeling pretty good, cleared the next, took some damage, went into the top room and oh my god that shield 2 on the wind elementals almost failed the scenario. Constantly failed to get through it and my cards were being eaten up.
Eventually killed them and the Spellweaver ran off to kill the Earth Demon while the Brute lagged behind. The Spellweaver pulled a lucky bless to almost kill it and then baited it out into the second room while the Brute managed to trundle up and hit it for exactly its remaining HP.
I was on 2 and 1 HP and had played the last two cards for both characters, so if I hadn’t killed it that turn I would have failed. Didn’t have time to loot the last chest, which I discovered was a ruddy trap anyway. Gloriously close game.
Me and a couple friends have been grinding out gloomhaven on Tabletop simulator recently, I dig this game for sure our party is tinkerer, Scoundrel, and Cragheart. I’m digging the cragheart though it took me about 5 play through a to figure out he’s primarily a ranged dmg dealer with a high hp pool, though he does have some melee I I haven’t gotten to a lot of his good melee abilities yet.
Morskitter wrote "Spikes, choppas, tentacles, magic? Can't hold a candle to Sergeant Pimp here."
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Me and a couple friends have been grinding out gloomhaven on Tabletop simulator recently, I dig this game for sure our party is tinkerer, Scoundrel, and Cragheart. I’m digging the cragheart though it took me about 5 play through a to figure out he’s primarily a ranged dmg dealer with a high hp pool, though he does have some melee I I haven’t gotten to a lot of his good melee abilities yet.
The design on Cragheart is definitely a little schizophrenic, yeah.
Posts
That is the best perk any time a character has it and I will not hear otherwise. Just because it's less than stellar in this specific instance doesn't impact its overall usefulness.
Still, got some valuable XP.
Did both battle goals and looted the chest on the successful try so that’s good. Onwards.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
As for scenario 2, insert SmashTV.mp4 here
I guess I didn't say that I enjoyed the game a lot. As many have said it's about hand management, and it took a few tries to figure out how to conserve a hand while still putting out damage. It helped on the last go that the first room of enemies got a turn in which they went first but effectively stood still and didn't attack.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Although remember that non-flying monsters will only step on traps if they have literally no other choice.
Unless you have like... retaliate 3. And maybe a way to have all enemies be disadvantaged against you.
Which has happened.
The Brute can pull this off if they're running some Shielding, but it's ... touch-and-go.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Not to spoil, but I am sure that was an allusion to a boxed character.
No they meant that Brute can pull off charging into a room without an exit strategy. Sometimes.
That went badly. The boss just kept opening doors and the curse cards came out every time I tried to hit him. Ugh.
I could go level up before trying again but I’ll go again immediately tomorrow.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Yeah, that scenario is usually pretty rough, depending on what the boss does, hence my earlier comment (spoilered for YouTube, rather than for being a game spoiler):
Yeah, the Brute can get some serious shields up, but it takes some prep. And even then, a badly-timed enemy crit can still ruin your day.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I meant the Retaliate 3 scenario! And I'm pretty sure you have the one I'm thinking of unboxed, Vyo!
I do but I can't do both with the same character! My friend did manage to have two different retaliate effects live on the same turn though but neither of them had anything to do with what I was doing...
EDIT: We actually retired that character tonight, unlocking our final character (Bolt). That one's gonna be interesting...
My character, however, is sitting at over 630xp waiting for some goddamned Forest Imps to show up.
My character path was Cragheart, Saw, Two-Mini, then Cthulhu, which I eventually dropped for Angry Face, since all I was doing was putting up my curse-damage skill and floating around feeling useless for the rest of the mission. The poison side of things wasn't working, as we had both Eclipse and Lightning at the time, so baddies were either at full-health or dead.
There's definitely flaws that I hope the developer learns from for whatever he's got planned. The final boss is a pretty good example of one; he doles out really nasty single hits, but the thing that kills you in Gloomhaven tends to be masses of medium-strength ones, which is another reason why everyone hates oozes. And stuff like the kill skills made some missions trivial; our Eclipse having a repeatable elite-execute turned a couple of unpleasant scenarios into a joke. I'll be very curious what the big expansion looks like when it shows up in a couple of years.
Not gonna click on the spoiler, but define "finished". Like, done all non-mutually exclusive quests? Unlocked all boxes/envelopes/town records/whatever? All of the above?
All class boxes opened, finished all the missions that were part of the main story progression. Didn't open envelope A. About as done as you can get without grinding out the random side missions.
Cool!
Favourite class?
Overall opinion on the game? Pros and cons?
Liked it, but hoping future content is a balanced a bit better. It's also still pretty clunky to manage the logistics of, even if you've got a storage solution. Favourite played class was probably Two-Mini.
After ~14 successful scenarios (15 total) over ~6 months of play and ~45ish hours of play with one group, some general thoughts:
Balance:
I agree with you here. Both scenario balance and intra-class balance. In our starting party of Tinkerer, Mind Thief, Scoundrel, and Spell Weaver, it was a bit wonky. I played the Mind Thief. It was pretty odd. My primary role as the Mind Thief was CC and single target damage. However, the Scoundrel was *way* better at single target damage than I was, and the Spell Weaver generally could apply the same sorts of status effects to multiple monsters at once. I was *mostly* a mop up killer, with occasional clutch stuns. The tinkerer fell by the way side by the end, and was pretty ready to let his character go. Scoundrel will be retiring next scenario, so we'll see what he gets.
As for unlocked characters, we got 2 scenarios with Angry Face, and one scenario with Cthulhu Face so far. My scenario with Cthulhu face had basically everything I tried to do foiled by my party not listening to requirements, and them used to me going SUPER FAST as a mind thief, and not adjusting to CF being *not the mind thief*. As for Angry Face:
Scenario balance is also all over the place once you get off the main branch of the story (I think - I don't really think we've gone very far into the main story, and have spent most of our time in side missions (5/15 (2 for a personal quest, 3 random unlocks)), the initial 3 missions you don't really have a choice to do, and then pursuing the initial quest giving NPC
However, I wish that some of the side missions were unlocked in a more predictable / consistent way. Two of the 3 side missions were such a drastically more difficult experience than the main game that I was honestly surprised we were "allowed" to do them. I looked up one mission, which is apparently notoriously difficult, and found the designer of that mission saying more or less "Well, if you do the mission later, and have access to these better items, the whole thing is trivialized so I think its fine". Later in the thread, that same designer was like "Oh, I forgot to re-test this scenario with the 2 stretch goal monster cards that ended up throwing off the balance of the Boss monster's abilities".
Personal quest retirement goals are also super random in difficulty / length. Our initial set of 4 will have taken: 12 total scenarios, 13 total scenarios, 14 total scenarios, and 15 total scenarios. However, hilariously enough:
Player A retires after 12 scenarios. Gets New Character 1.
Player B (me) retires after 13 scenarios. Gets New Character 2.
Player C retires after 14 scenarios, gets New Character 3.
Player A then retires New Character 1 after 2 scenarios, unlocks New Character 4.
Next play session, Player D will retire after 15 total scenarios, unlocking New Character 5.
Would you say you feel differently?
Fiddliness
I definitely agree that it's clunky to play without a storage solution. Arguably not worth the effort if you don't have *some* kind of token management system for in play, and an organizer + Gloomhaven Helper can both make the play experience significantly easier. But...
I kind of feel like the major flaw in the design of Gloomhaven is the depths of granularity in hits / conditions / general need for tokens. Meaning...often times, you have a turn. You put damage markers on maybe, one thing. Then you put status markers on another. Then, the next person goes, and kills the thing that you put damage tokens on, so now you have to take those off and put them back in your storage solution. Then the next person goes and kills the thing you CC'd, so that marker needs to go back.
It just feels like it might have been better to go with a <Miss> <Small Wound Token> <Big Wound Token> and limit the total play states that way? It's definitely a design puzzle I'm working on in my own game (which is more similar to KDM than Gloomhaven, but has to solve a lot of similar design issues).
I think this is the biggest weakness of the game, and really, my only *real* complaint.
Story/Narrative
A minor quibble I have is how often times the city/road events are "choose between these 2 nebulous choices: MASSIVE CONSEQUENCES" or "do you want to help this person completely or MURDER THEM DEAD". I understand why they exist in that kind of space, but I wonder if there was more room here? I dunno. Doing it on just one card is tough. I'm sad that many, many times the class-specific trigger things don't get a chance to fire because you pick "wrong". But, I dunno. Someone else in my group reads the cards, so I might be wrong here.
I also don't like how often times the party gets kind of rail roaded into doing kind of terrible things? Like, scenario 3:
I'm reading the best way to handle is to give the enemies and traps +1 level (or possibly +2, but we'll start with +1 as it's one player's first game and two others have only played once before) but keep the rewards un-levelled.
We're fine for modifier decks as there are a few app users around the table.
We'll give it a bash and see how it goes. If it really doesn't work but we end up with 5 player situations again I guess we'll just have to have a rotating dungeon-master slot. Not the most satisfying but would keep people involved.
First impression of Saw:
Lol that the person playing a healerish character switched to... another healer. Fortunately they seem to be ok with that.
"Town Records" book
Now levelling up both characters (the other one is a Spellweaver) and wondering which perks and abilities to get.
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Anything that pulls red cards out if your deck is usually my top priority after "immune to scenario effects".
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It is, and it isn't. It is specifically one regular dude you can kill, not elite, boss, or special enemies. Most of the time I don't feel good about losing a card to deal with one regular enemy. On the other hand, not needing to roll for it is very good.
Second night we play they finished up the second scenario and the Scoundrel player wanted to paint all the figures. So I let her take the starter classes and.....well see for yourself.
Love how she made the bases unique to each class. And am amazed at the mountain of gold she put on the Scoundrel Base. Which is fitting cause she made off with the most monies in both scenarios.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm a big fan of that card, allows you to sanction in one blow the difficult Normals that have lots of Defense, like the Stone Elementals.
Scenario four. Cleared the first room halfway through turn two, feeling pretty good, cleared the next, took some damage, went into the top room and oh my god that shield 2 on the wind elementals almost failed the scenario. Constantly failed to get through it and my cards were being eaten up.
Eventually killed them and the Spellweaver ran off to kill the Earth Demon while the Brute lagged behind. The Spellweaver pulled a lucky bless to almost kill it and then baited it out into the second room while the Brute managed to trundle up and hit it for exactly its remaining HP.
I was on 2 and 1 HP and had played the last two cards for both characters, so if I hadn’t killed it that turn I would have failed. Didn’t have time to loot the last chest, which I discovered was a ruddy trap anyway. Gloriously close game.
The cat did not help.
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The design on Cragheart is definitely a little schizophrenic, yeah.