Conceptually, I like the idea of those quests, but in practice, if you get that quest early you're kind of hosed, and if you get it late you're hosed. And if you get it in the middle, you could also be hosed.
Hopefully the PQs are better in Frosthaven. I'd be ok if all of them were super generic things like "win any six scenarios", "kill any 30 enemies", "earn 12 check marks", etc followed by a 1-2 scenario chain to finish.
Fry on
+3
jakobaggerLO THY DREAD EMPIRE CHAOS IS RESTOREDRegistered Userregular
You can replay old scenarios, the requirement is just that they're new to the character doing the particular personal quest. Conversely, whatever happened before that character joined the party doesn't count for completion.
I guess having to replay a thing could be annoying, although I don't mind much myself. We've done a fair number of replays because me and the other most active player in our kind of drop-in, drop-out group didn't want to skip too far ahead in the storyline on the days the other guys didn't turn up.
We finished the main thing you'd consider the main thing that let's you start forgotten circles if you want. Was definitely a pushover, heh, or at least it was a dps check and we had that down.
I was annoyed that we got a couple things explaining that scenario, after we had already done that scenario.
+2
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
So I've been playing games via tabletop simulator with friends every Friday night; came across a scenario, unlocked from a personal quest I really wasn't happy with.
Spoilers to which class and quest
to open Squidface; quest 52
Spoilers about quest itself
so the quest has you start in 4 spots and you are completely separated from one another and can't interact with each other. You have to get to a treasure chest at the end of a corridor to loot it. You finish the scenario once all chests are looted.
I hated this; if we knew this in advance, we could have all done it in preparation of the next part of the quest line. A complete waste of an evening of playing together
It also wasn't that hard
For this scenario, one of our members had literally just unlocked and created a musical notes. He was so angry.
That entire quest chain is some questionable crap but that scenario might be the most egregious of them.
The other way to unlock Squidface is a pain to achieve (esp in 1E) but at least you actually unlock it without having to run the gauntlet.
It's a very weird chain, being simultaneously one of the most creative bits of work by a guest author and totally insane by comparison with the rest of Gloomhaven. We actually finished the end of it (#54) this week, finally retiring my Lightning Bolts and our 3-Spears guy out of it, and let me tell you, those who can click this spoiler,
Having to basically solo 3 Harrowers at mission level 5 with a melee character is no damn joke. It is also real boring for everyone else.
We finished the town records. I really wish they'd had us get to the next to last step of the town records before being able to face the Gloom. Wouldn't have required anything other than having that scenario only be unlocked after getting next to last in the TR. Was good story though. Now to finish cleaning up side quests, unlock the last two classes we haven't, and roll into Forgotten Circles!
Forgotten Circles question: Do the Forgotten Circles quests take place in the main map at all? We have a number of retirement goals that require doing things in certain places on the main map, for example, and I'm curious whether the FC content might still work for that sometimes.
I looked this up online - answer is, some do, some don't. I didn't exhaustively check, but it looks like there's about one FC scenario per region, if that's what you're wondering.
Fry on
+1
AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
So we're on Jaws of the Lion the last couple weeks and I have to say it looks like most of the lessons worth learning from the original box were in fact learned.
Bleh. I'm going through the rules for Forgotten Circles since we'll be starting that soon, and I remembered that I don't think we got five Ancient Technology to unlock Envelope A. Was there anything interesting in there?
Did scenario 62 last night. Nearly a rare loss for our crew; two characters were beaten to a pulp, the other two had maybe three turns left between them when the objective was completed. Just a very punishing scenario. Not a good matchup for our team of Angry Face, Two Minis, Lots of Circles, and Just Two Circles.
We did scenario 95 the other weekend. Make up is Brute (9 almost 10), Cragheart (9), Spellweaver (8) and Squidface (3, he just retired the previous character). We have put the difficulty of the missions up one, but I said after to my friends that we probably need to look at what the mission has.
First off, it's a guest mission, and what a lot of people like to do for guest missions, is (creature and mission spoilers)
Use Flame Demons. Jeez so many missions now against these unfun chumps.
The mission also has lurkers. So lots of shield and retaliate damage. I can't imagine it was tremendous fun for the new Squidface character sitting on 8 health, to get put up against things that could hit him for 5 ranged retaliate damage.
And there's also a room full of water where if you finish on a water space, you take 1+L damage. Again this would have almost killed him
I'm not tremendously impressed by these guest missions.
Anyway, My Brute is almost at the level cap. I'm exactly 50% of the way through my personal quest which is
help 2 players complete their personal quests
and all have said they are really going to miss the amount of damage I soak up. I know my next class is going to be anything but a tank.
I can easily see how a bunch of individual guest designers might have all independently decided
ooh, flame demons, those are nasty let's put those in
We've been playing at difficulty +1 for a little while, and it's made the game better.
I started my Diviner at level 1, since I'm going to be playing her for the entirety of Forgotten Circles, and I want to have room for progression. Rather than just starting at level 7 :X
Anyone also try the Steam version? My friends and I are really itching to try this out via Steam, but I'm not familiar enough with the game play to say if we should wait for the campaign next year before starting it or can the game without the campaign also be fun?
Anyone also try the Steam version? My friends and I are really itching to try this out via Steam, but I'm not familiar enough with the game play to say if we should wait for the campaign next year before starting it or can the game without the campaign also be fun?
The steam version won't spoil the campaign at all. It follows the rules extremely well but it's doing its own thing mission-wise (for now). So should be fine to try out and will give a good sense of if you like the game loop.
Am I correct in assuming we'd just pick characters, run the game loop for a bit then when the campaign is released next year we could just start over with new characters? Is the game fun enough for multiple play throughs? My main concern is over playing it before the campaign comes out haha.
It's not really a campaign per se, there is a collection of light story arcs for pairs of mercenaries, but guildmaster mode is essentially randomly generated scenarios.
When the campaign is released you'll start all new characters in that game mode as it should be a 1:1 recreation of the board game with character retirements, etc. the guildmaster mode doesn't have retirements and you'll just gain experience until they reach level 9 so eventually you'll get a complete roster of level 9 characters.
It's a very good way to learn higher level abilities of characters you might have retired in the board game or never seen played. Also very good at teaching the rules that you might have been getting wrong while playing the board game version.
Finally got around to starting Forgotten Circles. It was brutal, the likes of which we haven't seen since Scenario 2.
About three quarters of the way through, I had an epiphany about how I should have played at the beginning of the scenario. Oh well :X Hopefully the thing I figured out will be relevant in some future scenarios.
I've been playing the steam version and it's pretty fun. It's on sale right now. Didn't realize it's be a year before the campaign released though.
What's the Steam version like these days? I recall a year ago it was in pretty rough shape and pretty much just a toy. Is there an actual campaign now? Do the mechanics work? Is it fun?
It's playable and the only way I'll ever get to play it so it's ok. Campaign isn't available yet, just an adventure mode with random missions I believe. Campaign will be a 1:1 copy of the board game.
It's playable, and fun, but I miss the personell quests and playing with other people. One of the draws was you didn't know what another player was going to do.
But I tried like 3 different groups in tabletop simulator and they never went anywhere so maybe I'll be able to actually play the game now. It was too hard for my to justify abourchase of the board game to play with my girlfriend.
I've been playing the steam version and it's pretty fun. It's on sale right now. Didn't realize it's be a year before the campaign released though.
What's the Steam version like these days? I recall a year ago it was in pretty rough shape and pretty much just a toy. Is there an actual campaign now? Do the mechanics work? Is it fun?
It's playable and the only way I'll ever get to play it so it's ok. Campaign isn't available yet, just an adventure mode with random missions I believe. Campaign will be a 1:1 copy of the board game.
It's playable, and fun, but I miss the personell quests and playing with other people. One of the draws was you didn't know what another player was going to do.
But I tried like 3 different groups in tabletop simulator and they never went anywhere so maybe I'll be able to actually play the game now. It was too hard for my to justify abourchase of the board game to play with my girlfriend.
Lost a scenario in Forgotten Circles. Didn't even get out of the first room (granted, only two rooms in the scenario).
I'm noticing a theme where every scenario just has a ton of bad guys to carve through. Which sucks, because you're required to play the Diviner who basically doesn't get to attack at all.
Also, we lost one of our players; he helpfully gave us a replacement player, but ugh these scenarios suck for teaching new players.
The best part about the Gloomhaven video game is that it does all the enemy turns and LoS stuff for you, which is imo the most tedious part of the board game.
Tried scenario 99 again. Folks had to call it a night at the three hour mark, when we were just finishing up the first room. Everyone took notes on their status, and we'll try to resume next time. I believe we had finished eight rounds of play.
This scenario would maybe be ok if we weren't saddled with a Diviner. This is the most front-loaded with enemies of any scenarios we have played, I think, and the Diviner is all long term value. If I had a character that could do some quick offense, that would make it a bit more reasonable.
Incidentally, next time someone complains about Oozes, I'm going to have them try this scenario.
With quite a few hours of puzzling, I managed to solve the cipher introduced in scenario 97, with only one of the in-game clues. Feeling pretty smart right now.
Vague discussion of the cipher. Specifies which clue I had to work with:
Dominic came through big! His clue, along with a few educated guesses about what kinds of words were likely to appear in the text, allowed me to eventually get all of the alphabetic characters. Couldn't do the digits, obviously, and I'm shaking my fist at presumably Marcel for putting those in. Still, I had enough to know I had the right answer.
Quite a lot harder than the cipher in the base game. Which I worked out by hand from a single message, not realizing that the decoder was included in the box and intended to be used, oops.
With quite a few hours of puzzling, I managed to solve the cipher introduced in scenario 97, with only one of the in-game clues. Feeling pretty smart right now.
Vague discussion of the cipher. Specifies which clue I had to work with:
Dominic came through big! His clue, along with a few educated guesses about what kinds of words were likely to appear in the text, allowed me to eventually get all of the alphabetic characters. Couldn't do the digits, obviously, and I'm shaking my fist at presumably Marcel for putting those in. Still, I had enough to know I had the right answer.
Quite a lot harder than the cipher in the base game. Which I worked out by hand from a single message, not realizing that the decoder was included in the box and intended to be used, oops.
With quite a few hours of puzzling, I managed to solve the cipher introduced in scenario 97, with only one of the in-game clues. Feeling pretty smart right now.
Vague discussion of the cipher. Specifies which clue I had to work with:
Dominic came through big! His clue, along with a few educated guesses about what kinds of words were likely to appear in the text, allowed me to eventually get all of the alphabetic characters. Couldn't do the digits, obviously, and I'm shaking my fist at presumably Marcel for putting those in. Still, I had enough to know I had the right answer.
Quite a lot harder than the cipher in the base game. Which I worked out by hand from a single message, not realizing that the decoder was included in the box and intended to be used, oops.
Completed scenario 101 today. I think it's my favorite Forgotten Circles scenario so far (which is, admittedly, a low bar at this point). It does something actually clever with the scenario being split over multiple pages, which surprised and delighted me.
It only took us two years, but we finally completed Gloomhaven. All scenarios we care to do are done. (There are a few random unlocks, and some that are locked, and some that don't lead anywhere any more, but there's no real poin in doing those.) All classes are unlocked, all envelopes unlocked. Prosperity just shy of 8.
So, Forgotten Circles next.
The diviner solo quest, is that unlocked from the start (assuming high enough level diviner), or is that unlocked through progression in the FC campaign?
You have to earn access to the Diviner solo quest, it is not automatically available.
I'd recommend figuring out whether you have the first or second edition of Forgotten Circles (easy way to tell: 2E has the scenario book split into two parts). There were some substantial changes to several scenarios that you'll want to note. There were also changes to almost every Diviner card; I think the second edition Diviner is much more interesting, but it's a lot of DIY to update and the first edition is perfectly playable.
Something I've been looking for if anyone has an answer. All covid we've been playing over zoom with print and play for the players not physically at my table. So far I've only found early editions of cards, which always require me to manually review for errata with the virtual players. Can anyone source digital class decks of the most current edition?
We played the first scenario of Forgotten Circles last night. Squidface, lightning, and diviner. All lvl 7, scenario lvl 4.
We got our asses handed to us.
We ended up redoing the scenario at lvl 2. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a cakewalk, but felt about as difficult as most scenarios we played in regular gloomhaven at normal difficulty (i.e., really easy).
Posts
Hopefully the PQs are better in Frosthaven. I'd be ok if all of them were super generic things like "win any six scenarios", "kill any 30 enemies", "earn 12 check marks", etc followed by a 1-2 scenario chain to finish.
I guess having to replay a thing could be annoying, although I don't mind much myself. We've done a fair number of replays because me and the other most active player in our kind of drop-in, drop-out group didn't want to skip too far ahead in the storyline on the days the other guys didn't turn up.
Would hardly describe it as being hosed, though.
I was annoyed that we got a couple things explaining that scenario, after we had already done that scenario.
It's a very weird chain, being simultaneously one of the most creative bits of work by a guest author and totally insane by comparison with the rest of Gloomhaven. We actually finished the end of it (#54) this week, finally retiring my Lightning Bolts and our 3-Spears guy out of it, and let me tell you, those who can click this spoiler,
Two of my party members retired, so they've now double-lapped me on that
I looked this up online - answer is, some do, some don't. I didn't exhaustively check, but it looks like there's about one FC scenario per region, if that's what you're wondering.
Red Guard is pretty rad.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I can easily see how a bunch of individual guest designers might have all independently decided
I started my Diviner at level 1, since I'm going to be playing her for the entirety of Forgotten Circles, and I want to have room for progression. Rather than just starting at level 7 :X
The steam version won't spoil the campaign at all. It follows the rules extremely well but it's doing its own thing mission-wise (for now). So should be fine to try out and will give a good sense of if you like the game loop.
When the campaign is released you'll start all new characters in that game mode as it should be a 1:1 recreation of the board game with character retirements, etc. the guildmaster mode doesn't have retirements and you'll just gain experience until they reach level 9 so eventually you'll get a complete roster of level 9 characters.
It's a very good way to learn higher level abilities of characters you might have retired in the board game or never seen played. Also very good at teaching the rules that you might have been getting wrong while playing the board game version.
About three quarters of the way through, I had an epiphany about how I should have played at the beginning of the scenario. Oh well :X Hopefully the thing I figured out will be relevant in some future scenarios.
Still won it first try, but with one character standing on their last viable turn.
It's playable and the only way I'll ever get to play it so it's ok. Campaign isn't available yet, just an adventure mode with random missions I believe. Campaign will be a 1:1 copy of the board game.
It's playable, and fun, but I miss the personell quests and playing with other people. One of the draws was you didn't know what another player was going to do.
But I tried like 3 different groups in tabletop simulator and they never went anywhere so maybe I'll be able to actually play the game now. It was too hard for my to justify abourchase of the board game to play with my girlfriend.
Will it have online multiplayer?
I'm noticing a theme where every scenario just has a ton of bad guys to carve through. Which sucks, because you're required to play the Diviner who basically doesn't get to attack at all.
Also, we lost one of our players; he helpfully gave us a replacement player, but ugh these scenarios suck for teaching new players.
Steam: CavilatRest
This scenario would maybe be ok if we weren't saddled with a Diviner. This is the most front-loaded with enemies of any scenarios we have played, I think, and the Diviner is all long term value. If I had a character that could do some quick offense, that would make it a bit more reasonable.
Incidentally, next time someone complains about Oozes, I'm going to have them try this scenario.
Granted, some of that was delays due to a new player, but still. Barf. Just too much to carve through.
Vague discussion of the cipher. Specifies which clue I had to work with:
Quite a lot harder than the cipher in the base game. Which I worked out by hand from a single message, not realizing that the decoder was included in the box and intended to be used, oops.
Is it another stupid alternate reality game?
It is not bullshit, and in fact it's pretty cool!
So, Forgotten Circles next.
The diviner solo quest, is that unlocked from the start (assuming high enough level diviner), or is that unlocked through progression in the FC campaign?
I'd recommend figuring out whether you have the first or second edition of Forgotten Circles (easy way to tell: 2E has the scenario book split into two parts). There were some substantial changes to several scenarios that you'll want to note. There were also changes to almost every Diviner card; I think the second edition Diviner is much more interesting, but it's a lot of DIY to update and the first edition is perfectly playable.
PS Thanks for the answer :heartbeat:
Try this?
https://gloomcards.netlify.app/
Or this
https://github.com/any2cards/gloomhaven
We got our asses handed to us.
We ended up redoing the scenario at lvl 2. That, perhaps unsurprisingly, was a cakewalk, but felt about as difficult as most scenarios we played in regular gloomhaven at normal difficulty (i.e., really easy).