Gloomhaven - Tactical Combat in a persistent world!

We didn’t have good luck in our first scenario after retiring my Brute. I decided to go with the Mind Thief. The scenario was the one where you go into the sewers to investigate the source of a poisoned well. The mind thief just didn’t hit hard enough, so it took too long to kill the enemies. My wife ran out of cards before she got into the final room, and I had one turn left when I got in there. I though the way the mind thief worked was pretty cool, but maybe he didn’t pair well with my wife’s tinkerer. I may go with the Cragheart next time. It seems like people here had better success with the Mind Thief then I did.

Mindthief lives with the +2 damage augment one him from what I’ve seen.

Which is kinda sad since there are other cool ones, but the damage is too good in almost every situation.

I mostly ran the healing augment. +2 damage is really good but not as good when you’re dead.

I primarily used the poison + muddle one. Maybe using the +2 damage would have been better.

Poison is more effective the more people you have, so with only 2 it’s not that great in most situations.

I think next time I’ll try the +2 damage. Also my thinking was that since I didn’t have a lot of health and most attacks are melee that I’d want to give the enemies muddle to help improve my survivability.

Honestly, with +2 damage on your melee attacks, you’ll have fewer enemies to worry about as you murder their faces. That’s the best defense.

Using the AI against itself, you should be able to avoid getting attacked to often (in theory, if you are playing with two characters that might be tougher, not sure - I am used to threre being 2 other figures that can absorb some hits for me), and don’t forget to use your items to mitigate damage (like a healing potion) or inflicting poison (dagger).

Mild spoiler for a skill option at level 5 - skills aren’t behind sealed envelopes so I don’t consider them sacred, but some folks like to be surprised by what they can get when they level up, so spoiler JIC.

And then you can unlock a skill at level 5 that allows you to have two augments up at once, and then you can do poison, muddle, and +2 damage at once (that’s what I’m running right now). I only just unlocked that so I don’t know how viable it actually is (you have to have 3 cards set up in your active area, which means only have 7 to play at max, but the good news is they aren’t lost from active so they are considered in your discard pile and can therefor be picked back up after a rest or by drinking a stamina potion, so in theory it shouldn’t hurt too bad.

All other augments are highly conditional. With The Mind’s Weakness any card can be used as a 4 Damage attack, before adding in possible bonuses from items. If I remember correctly, our Mind Thief was really effective with using the augmented default attack in combination with the bottom attacks on a couple of cards.

Item spoilers, up to Prosperity 4 I think:

I think another part of this element was to use stamina potions and the Empowering Talisman that lets you refresh a consumed item. He retired before the Versatile Dagger that turns default attacks into Attack 3, which would mean Attack 5 for basic attacks.

My son unlocked the squid-faced character last night, retiring (in spectacular fashion) his Spellweaver.

Looking through the skills and leveling him up to three (our cities prosperity) it looks like we are in for a wild fucking day of Gloomhaven with this … character. What a bananas fucking nuts class!

My Moon/Eclipse character has a personal quest that unlocks that one. Sadly I have not had the chance to progress past 2/3 in a while.

Please be kind with the spoilers. Hearing about a new character class way before I can unlock it isn’t cool.

What spoilers?

Played this for the first time with 3 other guys. Played two scenarios. It was really fun!

I am liking my Mindthief character ‘Babs the Brain-Borrower’. I agree with the above that the +2 attack augment seems the best in most sitautions, although the one that gives +2 healing saved me more than once.

I think the class has some good synergy with the tinkerer. He would set up mines and I would borrow an enemy’s brain and get them to walk into it. Good fun and looking forward to playing more.

Talking about squid faced unlocked classes. The mind leaps at that.

That is how we are supposed to talk about locked classes, describing the icon on the card box. I mean, it’s right there? How can that be a spoiler?

Squid-faced is the ICON, just to clarify.

image

Gotcha. I haven’t even looked at the icons. Sorry to be a priss

I haven’t been able to play in 3 weeks - but i have Friday off from work and no kids to deal with. I’m hoping I can binge 3 or 4 scenarios over the course of the day and make some real strides with my Mindthief and Cragheart combo. So far things have been going very well.

Has anyone taken the perk that negates the negative effects from items? That seems like it would be pretty powerful - but I can’ decide if that is better than removing some negative modifiers from the deck.

My personal opinion is removing negative perks is always the strongest move to start with. Getting a -1 is super painful, and getting rid of them is just the best, when every card (except the miss) in your attack deck is good (or at least a +0) you’ll be very very happy.

Removing item negatives is a great idea, but I’d focus on removing normal negatives first and then see if you even really need the armor (heavy armor is what gives -1’s anyway, most of the time). My tank isn’t even using armor and has been fine, but I will admit to wishing I had some now and then, so for my 7th perk I may pick that one and finally get some sort of heavy armor (no spoilers, but there is one I have my eye on in the shop cards we’ve unlocked).

Interesting - I have a nice item from an early chest that seems super useful for my mindthief, but i can’t tolerate the four -1 cards to use it.

Thanks for the advice!

Scenario 2 was way easier for us than #1. Got a bunch o coin and some exp. We’ll keep delving!