We played Darkest Night Second Edition for the first time tonight. I’ve played the original edition with various levels of expansion both solo and with this group before, so it wasn’t a complete novice thing or anything. But it had been a while and there have been a few tweaks, not to mention much nicer components, which made it feel meaningfully more cohesive and approachable. For one thing, a number of mechanics were added over the course of the original edition’s expansions, and these were scattered across several rulebooks and none of them were reflected in the base game components. Since the second edition integrates all the expansion content, all of these things are now part of the default gameplay (though there are optional rules for playing without them if you enjoyed an earlier incarnation of the design) and reflected as such in both rules and components. I personally felt like they were all distinct improvements for both play and thematicity, so I’m happy to see them fully centered in the design. For another, perhaps I’m forgetting some expansion rule or other, but I think the “spark” mechanic is new to this edition and it is yet another improvement. In short, heroes can earn (but not trade) up to three “sparks” at any one time. By default, they can be spent to add an extra die to any roll that hero is making, but they are also referenced by quests, mysteries, events, powers and probably artifacts, whether to earn or expend them. They don’t have an earthshaking effect on the game, generally speaking, but they are a welcome bonus and offer some exciting additional options with the right powers. (I can’t see ever taking the Meditate action to earn a single spark in exchange for my entire turn, though.)
We ran a party of Mercenary, Channeler, Priest, and myself as the Seer. The Mercenary wasn’t, by the end, massively more capable of fighting than either myself or the Channeler (at least, when the Channeler was Astral Surging), but his ability to trigger additional benefits on the defeat of blights, particularly with the Wand of Contagion artifact the Priest discovered in the old Ruins, made for some ridiculous combos and generated a significant number of the powers earned all game. The Channeler got a Weeping Ring that let him teleport around the board and recharge powers when the rest of us took his and could pull off some beautifully crazy stunts with surges at the right time. My Seer was handing out sparks like candy with Promise (which takes an action to give every hero a spark at the cost of one Secrecy and exhaustion), warping fate with the Prophecy of Forks, racking up search successes with the automatic searching of Dowse and a surprisingly badass fighter with Destiny and a magical War Horn. Really the only one of us that wasn’t shining like crazy was the Priest, and that’s because the player wasn’t really exploiting his powers to their fullest (he tends to take a bit to get to grips with games, particularly because he has reading difficulties, so it’s not surprising). Still, he cleared a fair number of quests so he was still putting the work in.
We ultimately finished by the Mercenary chain-killing a whole field of blights and then passing the one relic we managed to unearth to the Channeler to finish off the Necromancer himself. (I tried my best to help clear the field but my dice failed me.) We just had really…terrible? luck with searching. Which is to say, we succeeded a bunch (especially with my Dowse power) but ended up with a lot of artifacts and magic items and power cards and a grand total of two Mystery draws all game, despite repeated searches in Mountains, Forest -and- Ruins. By the time we hit even 10 clue points the Necromancer was at over 20 Darkness, and that despite at least 10 points of Darkness reduction and zero accelerants. So it was combat or nothing.
