You don't have to create the class you unlock. There should be at least two other classes available to them right now.
That said, there's only been one class I didn't care for so far. I just didn't jibe with the Spellweaver at all.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
See, I'm rocking a Spellweaver as my first class and my only issue with the class is the Tinker in the party keeps hanging back even further than me, which has led to a couple scenario failures as I am squishy and the Tinker player is highly conservative. Otherwise I'm having a great time making things go boom.
Yeah I think it was a personal taste issue with me. Wasn't fond of managing the 8-card hand with so many cards that burn in order to be awesome. Plus needing elements without a lot if reliable element generation? I dunno, just wasn't for me.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
0
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
My impression (based only on observing how others play) is that Spellweaver has some subtle differences in the meta of hand management, which is fine for me as a first timer, but could throw an experienced player for a loop until you get your head around it. But each class has it's own flavour and personal subjective opinion is probably still a much stronger influence on impressions of a class.
I spun up a Tinkerer to try it and looove my retirement goal. But I'm hesitant over whether I really want to play the Tinkerer for ten games or whatever. I don't love the heal bot thing.
A much different scenario than everything else we've played. Basically just whack a mole. We had four players, so all enemies were elites. My scoundrel and the brute frowned and put away our instant death to normal enemies cards
I was able to ace two flame demons, which was a huge help. One of them helpfully dropped a trap on its first turn, so I adjusted him into it. The second one I popped with my lost attack that gets stronger proportional to the enemy's shield.
Overall we were not really threatened, and we were not even going as hard on lost cards as we could have. It was just starting to get hairy at the end, if we had to last two more turns, that could have been a problem.
Was interesting having a ton of elements flying around, though we were pretty fortunate and the enemies didn't do much with them, mostly just consumed them to turn on other elements.
Mission reward was super fun. Gimme all the enhancements, nom nom nom. Sad that I can't put debuffs on my ranged attacks (no dots on the attack line) so I settled for extra range, which will still be handy the way I have been playing the last few missions.
Our analysis paralysis player took Triforce out for the first time. Triforce talk:
Hahaha that is really not a good character for AP player to have
He did ok though. Was probably helped by the fact that his previous character was the Spellweaver, so he had some practice breaking his brain and dealing with elements already. Also none of the rest of us use elements, so every time he asked "which elements should I spend" I could just say "use all of them"
Flame Demons fly and are not normally susceptible to traps.
Bolt spoiler
So... this character has an ability that can knock something out of the sky. We recently used it to dunk a Flame Demon into some lava and weren't sure if the hazardous terrain damage should apply since it wasn't technically "entering" the hex. We ruled it did because it didn't actually matter (was not a "kill everything" quest) and because the mental image was hilarious.
And yeah, Triforce might be the absolute worst character for those prone to AP. Ouch.
Vyolynce on
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
As ever, the retirement unlocks are wildly distributed. Plus, a reread of the rules noticed that there are a limited number of retirements. Given each retirement grants an extra perk going forward, you could see a situation where one player has multiple retirements and another has none.
In this case, we fulfilled a character's retirement in literally one map.
The lost island, #17. Almost entirely Vermlings, and objective was to kill 15 vermlings. The entire party pooled all of our "give an ally an attack" cards and softened without killing so the Scoundrel could annihilate basically the entire map for an instant retirement.
As ever, the retirement unlocks are wildly distributed. Plus, a reread of the rules noticed that there are a limited number of retirements. Given each retirement grants an extra perk going forward, you could see a situation where one player has multiple retirements and another has none.
In this case, we fulfilled a character's retirement in literally one map.
The lost island, #17. Almost entirely Vermlings, and objective was to kill 15 vermlings. The entire party pooled all of our "give an ally an attack" cards and softened without killing so the Scoundrel could annihilate basically the entire map for an instant retirement.
We've been playing (mostly) weekly for almost two years and have not yet run out of retirements. We have, however, almost run out of unlocks. We're down to just a handful of random items by now.
Vyolynce on
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
0
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
My Sunday group started up Gloomhaven, and thus I am now in two campaigns at once. For the second group, we instituted a house rule: company loot. All loot goes into a company pile and gets handed out evenly at the end of the scenario. If a character takes the "make no money" battle goal, their share is alloted to the others.
This totally subverts the "me first" mentality of the Gloomhaven flavoring, but it has been great. My first group had a serious problem with the Scoundrel picking up 75% of the money in every scenario, and either I (Spellweaver) or the Scoundrel cracking every chest. Our cragheart made less than 100 gold before his retirement.
Company gold completely removes the distribution problem.
My Sunday group started up Gloomhaven, and thus I am now in two campaigns at once. For the second group, we instituted a house rule: company loot. All loot goes into a company pile and gets handed out evenly at the end of the scenario. If a character takes the "make no money" battle goal, their share is alloted to the others.
This totally subverts the "me first" mentality of the Gloomhaven flavoring, but it has been great. My first group had a serious problem with the Scoundrel picking up 75% of the money in every scenario, and either I (Spellweaver) or the Scoundrel cracking every chest. Our cragheart made less than 100 gold before his retirement.
Company gold completely removes the distribution problem.
Do you feel it radically changes the game? It's an interesting idea.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Gloomhaven is built on a certain degree of selfishness. Single loot, single battle goals, and single retirement goals all push players to prioritize their own needs over the group. I suspect that the creator added this to try and foment enough dissent to prevent "perfect play" - so that the party doesn't just plan everything out in harmony from the start. These secret objectives encourage you to do things like drop party members in minor danger for your own monetary reward. Yo obviously don't want to get your teammates Exhausted, sure, but a hit or two? They'll survive, and you need those new boots.
Unfortunately, I fundamentally disagree with this premise. The existing information deficits (such as being unable to arrange actions and initiatives outside of vague terms) are enough of a barrier to prevent perfect play. I don't find it fun to do singular loot. Some classes are just better at looting. They will get way more money and thus way more toys based on the default assumptions.
Combine this with the fact that some classes experience an explosion in effectiveness based on some initial money down (such as the +1 shield on the ongoing shield buff for Sun), and you have a recipe for half your party grinding to get that one item that brings their synergy to the next level while the other half buys enchantments on secondary cards cause why not.
So, yes, it radically changes the game, but I think it changes it for the better.
For scoundrel specifically, it feels to me like extra ability to grab loot is balanced against it being a little harder to rack up XP using cards. I have not gotten far enough to have discovered other classes that are especially good at grabbing loot, so I don't know whether that's a consistent theme.
If pooled loot makes it more fun for you, you should definitely do that.
+3
OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I've read that the loot access is supposed to balance the various classes. I still prefer more cooperative gameplay though.
Also that mage I play with really needs to learn how to share. Yes, you have a move 8 jump you can use twice, but I have a move 7 jump I can use as often as I rest, so if I really want that treasure it's mine!
If I lose a card to cancel an attack, does that stop the entire attack or just the damage?
E.g. am I poisoned?
You're poisoned. Effects are always added, even if the attack does no damage (via minus modifiers or whatever).
Which is super annoying. You missed me! How am I poisoned!?
Don't think of it as a miss. They didn't miss, they just didn't do any physical damage.
If a snake doesn't do any damage I still shouldn't be poisoned but I'm not saying it should be different.
I mean I wasn't physically injured by the "you now have swine flu" beach ball I bounced with a PAX crowd back in '09, but I sure as fuck got swine flu anyway.
We had our first run-in with oozes. Things were looking dire, but we got pretty lucky with which actions they drew at the end.
Our brute really wanted to collect a treasure chest, since he's never gotten one before. I talked him out of it, since it would have required taking attacks from ten enemies in one turn (ouch). Which worked out for me, because my battle goal was to loot the treasure chest. 😂
Also, set a new personal best for loot collected, 14 tokens for 42 gold.
After two years of play, my group has finally completed the campaign. Big bad defeated, town records complete. On to the expansion!
Expansion thoughts, no specific spoilers:
I think whoever put this thing together really wanted to make a video game. Way too much futzing with the board, triggering events, and moving shit around. With some of the rooms they wanted to put together, they should have printed new tiles instead of making us cover an entire tile in tokens. I get why some people pushed for undiscovered rooms to be hidden, but in practice it just broke the flow of the game while we dug out the new tokens and monsters, and we wound up just looking ahead and setting everything up anyways.
New class is interesting, but the deck knowledge they get feels underwhelming. Regeneration is a table favorite, and teleportation enabled some nasty tricks such as plucking a single target enemy out of a pack to be torn apart at leisure.
We are definitely enjoying the expansion, but I hope this isn't the future of the game.
+5
FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
edited January 2020
Really want to get back to the table with this, but I'm just so tired after the kids get to bed.
My wife bought this for me for Christmas, and we've done the first two scenarios. Well, we failed the second when we ran out of cards. Our own fault though. We still had one archer with a sliver of health in the first room, so I ran into the next room thinking my wife would just finish him off on her turn. She critically missed three turns in a row. I swear to god that deck was shuffled well. We then very stupidly just kept going after adds in the next room instead of just taking out you-know-who. We probably killed 6 skeletons.
On the curse cards you add to your deck for that scenario, is it 3 per player or 3 total?
Edit: Just googled it and it looks like we messed up and each took 3 curse cards. Well that changes things. That scenario would have been a breeze.
I hate when the solution to a bullshit scenario is to rush through so you don't have enough standees to generate new spawns, but that's what we had to do last night.
Nearing the end of our campaign. We might actually wrap up on or around our 2-year anniversary of beginning it, which is nice.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Also, my group is approaching our 2 year anniversary with our campaign. The last several weeks have been blank due to holidays and related problems but we are in position to end this basically whenever we want to. Assuming they run one successful scenario a week and maybe keep the side-quests to a minimum they have to be looking at approximately a year, at least. That's a steep commitment.
If anyone can get that done it's LRR but still.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Had another successful outing with my Scoundrel. Becoming quite the murder machine, finally. I actually got to make use of the top half of Visage of the Inevitable, twice! I know people online swear by that, but I have a hell of a time setting it up. Usually the stuff I really want to kill is Elite and/or in a densely packed mob of bad guys.
If you get to 18 check marks, is there a rule that says you can keep getting new perks beyond that point, or do you just stop bothering with battle goals? No sign of my retirement condition edit: online research suggests you just stop getting stuff at that point, with some folks suggesting a house rule of 5 gold per check mark
Leveled up to 6. Have to make some darn tough decisions about how to build my deck for every outing. Starting to run into an issue where I almost want to play garbage level 1 cards just to get Move 5s on the bottom. That's alleviated a little by having two cards with top half moves, but still. I have so many bottom half non-move things I want to do all the time, too. Particularly my Thief Snack, omnomnom. If there was an equipment that was like "every turn you get a free Move 1" I would be all over that.
Did the solo scenario for the three spear class the other day. One monster left with one hitpoint, while I had a whole four. As long as they don't draw something nasty (or if my initiative is lower) this should be over. Monster initiative is lower. Okay, maybe they won't draw a good card and I'll be ok. They draw a 2x. I burn the only two cards in my discard pile and am left with the two cards I'm playing as my final cards. But the monster has only one hitpoint! Of course I draw my null. :x
Beat it on the second try but that was a bit aggravating haha. After our groups last mission we unlocked our last three classes: three spear, music note, and moon/eclipse so I am looking forward to taking them out for a spin!
Finally played scenario 20 after months away, which was very satisfying. Retired squidface after, unlocked three spears, but haven’t really looked into his class much yet.
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Yeah, the solo scenarios have a strong element of RNG. You only have one character, so individual draws can stall you out. Say, for example, an enemy with a strong shield and ranged attacks - you finally catch up and they shield past your damage ability. That's multiple turns burned.
When I did the Sun's solo, the only reason I won on the first try was because the enemies had multiple effect no-op turns to spare my guards.
In other news, scenario 67 has completely enraged me.
The Arcane Library is unmitigated horse shit. Seriously. First room full of lots of tiny ranged attackers that load you up with curses. Second room that's a long corridor with movement penalties. Lose a character to even open the next door and face a Stone Golem with 4x health and shields.
As soon as we opened the door the Stone Golem did a Scorpion-style pull that dropped me into the middle of the room and unceremoniously beat me to death. Then the other characters catch up, each sporting half a hand and 6 curses in each of their decks.
Horrible scenario. Guest designer from House on Haunted Hill, and it feels exactly like some of the ridiculous crapshots from that game.
Yeah, the solo scenarios have a strong element of RNG. You only have one character, so individual draws can stall you out. Say, for example, an enemy with a strong shield and ranged attacks - you finally catch up and they shield past your damage ability. That's multiple turns burned.
When I did the Sun's solo, the only reason I won on the first try was because the enemies had multiple effect no-op turns to spare my guards.
In other news, scenario 67 has completely enraged me.
The Arcane Library is unmitigated horse shit. Seriously. First room full of lots of tiny ranged attackers that load you up with curses. Second room that's a long corridor with movement penalties. Lose a character to even open the next door and face a Stone Golem with 4x health and shields.
As soon as we opened the door the Stone Golem did a Scorpion-style pull that dropped me into the middle of the room and unceremoniously beat me to death. Then the other characters catch up, each sporting half a hand and 6 curses in each of their decks.
Horrible scenario. Guest designer from House on Haunted Hill, and it feels exactly like some of the ridiculous crapshots from that game.
I find that most of the guest designer scenarios are broken in one way or another.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
+4
gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
Alright, now that I have had time to cool off...
This game is at its weakest when it interfaces with timing. The fact that your characters steadily weaken as the encounter goes on is clearly intentional, but its nonsense when combined with large areas of empty movement. Slower classes like the tanks need far longer to cross a field of mud, costing them enormous resources just to get to the interesting part.
We see the same exhausting grind with shields. A low level party versus an elite living spirit has to exhaust big hit cards to get through shields 3. It's not tactically interesting! It's just pitching resources down the drain.
A much more interesting ghost would have something like 'ignores the first attack each round' or 'spend element to dispel its shields'. Some trade off mechanism.
My Sun can maintain shield 2 indefinitely and spike up to shield 6. Good for my party, but not interesting.
Finally, curse completely fucks you. One curse? Eh, sucks. 8 curses? Your character has even odds to whiff every critical shot for the rest of the encounter. This wouldn't be such an issue if there was a mechanism for purging them (like cancel a curse with a bless or something).
Combine all of these problems and you have scenario 67!
You know there's a limit of 10 curses total across the entire party, yes? Not saying it's impossible for one character to pick up 8 (f'n imps...), just checking.
I find the best way to deal with Spirits/Flame Demons is to wound them if at all possible.
AC:NH Chris from Glosta SW-5173-3598-2899 DA-4749-1014-4697 @vyolynce@mastodon.social
Posts
That said, there's only been one class I didn't care for so far. I just didn't jibe with the Spellweaver at all.
Scenario 27, Ruinous Rift
I was able to ace two flame demons, which was a huge help. One of them helpfully dropped a trap on its first turn, so I adjusted him into it. The second one I popped with my lost attack that gets stronger proportional to the enemy's shield.
Overall we were not really threatened, and we were not even going as hard on lost cards as we could have. It was just starting to get hairy at the end, if we had to last two more turns, that could have been a problem.
Was interesting having a ton of elements flying around, though we were pretty fortunate and the enemies didn't do much with them, mostly just consumed them to turn on other elements.
Mission reward was super fun. Gimme all the enhancements, nom nom nom. Sad that I can't put debuffs on my ranged attacks (no dots on the attack line) so I settled for extra range, which will still be handy the way I have been playing the last few missions.
Our analysis paralysis player took Triforce out for the first time. Triforce talk:
He did ok though. Was probably helped by the fact that his previous character was the Spellweaver, so he had some practice breaking his brain and dealing with elements already. Also none of the rest of us use elements, so every time he asked "which elements should I spend" I could just say "use all of them"
Bolt spoiler
And yeah, Triforce might be the absolute worst character for those prone to AP. Ouch.
* Frosthaven, a full sized expansion to Gloomhaven
* Gloomhaven 2
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
In this case, we fulfilled a character's retirement in literally one map.
We've been playing (mostly) weekly for almost two years and have not yet run out of retirements. We have, however, almost run out of unlocks. We're down to just a handful of random items by now.
This totally subverts the "me first" mentality of the Gloomhaven flavoring, but it has been great. My first group had a serious problem with the Scoundrel picking up 75% of the money in every scenario, and either I (Spellweaver) or the Scoundrel cracking every chest. Our cragheart made less than 100 gold before his retirement.
Company gold completely removes the distribution problem.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Unfortunately, I fundamentally disagree with this premise. The existing information deficits (such as being unable to arrange actions and initiatives outside of vague terms) are enough of a barrier to prevent perfect play. I don't find it fun to do singular loot. Some classes are just better at looting. They will get way more money and thus way more toys based on the default assumptions.
Combine this with the fact that some classes experience an explosion in effectiveness based on some initial money down (such as the +1 shield on the ongoing shield buff for Sun), and you have a recipe for half your party grinding to get that one item that brings their synergy to the next level while the other half buys enchantments on secondary cards cause why not.
So, yes, it radically changes the game, but I think it changes it for the better.
If pooled loot makes it more fun for you, you should definitely do that.
Also that mage I play with really needs to learn how to share. Yes, you have a move 8 jump you can use twice, but I have a move 7 jump I can use as often as I rest, so if I really want that treasure it's mine!
That was SIXTY-TWO damage.
I remember when boss fights were threatening...
E.g. am I poisoned?
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Which is super annoying. You missed me! How am I poisoned!?
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
If a snake doesn't do any damage I still shouldn't be poisoned but I'm not saying it should be different.
If I have 10 hit points, I wouldn't call the small puncture from a snake 10% of my well-being before death. But here comes the poison!
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Our brute really wanted to collect a treasure chest, since he's never gotten one before. I talked him out of it, since it would have required taking attacks from ten enemies in one turn (ouch). Which worked out for me, because my battle goal was to loot the treasure chest. 😂
Also, set a new personal best for loot collected, 14 tokens for 42 gold.
Expansion thoughts, no specific spoilers:
New class is interesting, but the deck knowledge they get feels underwhelming. Regeneration is a table favorite, and teleportation enabled some nasty tricks such as plucking a single target enemy out of a pack to be torn apart at leisure.
We are definitely enjoying the expansion, but I hope this isn't the future of the game.
My wife bought this for me for Christmas, and we've done the first two scenarios. Well, we failed the second when we ran out of cards. Our own fault though. We still had one archer with a sliver of health in the first room, so I ran into the next room thinking my wife would just finish him off on her turn. She critically missed three turns in a row. I swear to god that deck was shuffled well. We then very stupidly just kept going after adds in the next room instead of just taking out you-know-who. We probably killed 6 skeletons.
On the curse cards you add to your deck for that scenario, is it 3 per player or 3 total?
Edit: Just googled it and it looks like we messed up and each took 3 curse cards. Well that changes things. That scenario would have been a breeze.
Edit:edit: wait no, that's wrong. 3 each?
Nearing the end of our campaign. We might actually wrap up on or around our 2-year anniversary of beginning it, which is nice.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
If anyone can get that done it's LRR but still.
If you get to 18 check marks, is there a rule that says you can keep getting new perks beyond that point, or do you just stop bothering with battle goals? No sign of my retirement condition edit: online research suggests you just stop getting stuff at that point, with some folks suggesting a house rule of 5 gold per check mark
Leveled up to 6. Have to make some darn tough decisions about how to build my deck for every outing. Starting to run into an issue where I almost want to play garbage level 1 cards just to get Move 5s on the bottom. That's alleviated a little by having two cards with top half moves, but still. I have so many bottom half non-move things I want to do all the time, too. Particularly my Thief Snack, omnomnom. If there was an equipment that was like "every turn you get a free Move 1" I would be all over that.
Beat it on the second try but that was a bit aggravating haha. After our groups last mission we unlocked our last three classes: three spear, music note, and moon/eclipse so I am looking forward to taking them out for a spin!
Finally played scenario 20 after months away, which was very satisfying. Retired squidface after, unlocked three spears, but haven’t really looked into his class much yet.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
When I did the Sun's solo, the only reason I won on the first try was because the enemies had multiple effect no-op turns to spare my guards.
In other news, scenario 67 has completely enraged me.
As soon as we opened the door the Stone Golem did a Scorpion-style pull that dropped me into the middle of the room and unceremoniously beat me to death. Then the other characters catch up, each sporting half a hand and 6 curses in each of their decks.
Horrible scenario. Guest designer from House on Haunted Hill, and it feels exactly like some of the ridiculous crapshots from that game.
I find that most of the guest designer scenarios are broken in one way or another.
This game is at its weakest when it interfaces with timing. The fact that your characters steadily weaken as the encounter goes on is clearly intentional, but its nonsense when combined with large areas of empty movement. Slower classes like the tanks need far longer to cross a field of mud, costing them enormous resources just to get to the interesting part.
We see the same exhausting grind with shields. A low level party versus an elite living spirit has to exhaust big hit cards to get through shields 3. It's not tactically interesting! It's just pitching resources down the drain.
A much more interesting ghost would have something like 'ignores the first attack each round' or 'spend element to dispel its shields'. Some trade off mechanism.
My Sun can maintain shield 2 indefinitely and spike up to shield 6. Good for my party, but not interesting.
Finally, curse completely fucks you. One curse? Eh, sucks. 8 curses? Your character has even odds to whiff every critical shot for the rest of the encounter. This wouldn't be such an issue if there was a mechanism for purging them (like cancel a curse with a bless or something).
Combine all of these problems and you have scenario 67!
I find the best way to deal with Spirits/Flame Demons is to wound them if at all possible.