It makes them basically not a factor as far as I’m concerned. It’s very difficult to have enough spare cash to justify an enhancement during a character’s career.
Exactly - basically means all my gold will go to bless - which unbalances the game in a different way
It depends on if the cost is the same - if so, then yeah it’s never going to be worth enchanting skills, but if they made it quite a bit cheaper, I’ll actually like this change quite a bit. I’d rather the upgrades were per character (not per class) and cheap enough that it made sense to invest a little into upgrading your character.
That is a good point Scott. I think per character would be preferable is the costs are balanced for that.
I recognize that not everyone agrees with me, but I much prefer the permanence of class enhancements.
Is this thread for the tabletop game or also the pc version?
The latter has been positively reviewed by RPS
As much as I like this game I must really suck. I’m playing Brute/Scoundrel and can’t even complete the first adventure (on Normal difficulty). I just seem to burn through all my cards before beating the baddies in the third room. I don’t remember having this much difficulty when I played in Guildmaster mode a couple of months ago.
Any advice?
Try not to use abilities that burn your card after use early on. Thats been my biggest issue.
Play a better game?
-Tom, resident Gloomhaven hater
Do whatever you can to avoid burning cards until the last room. When using a move card, move as far as you can using the full movement amount.
I understand Tom’s aversion to it, but things started to click for me more when I conceptualized it more as a puzzle game than an RPG. You have a limited number of turns, and you must complete the objective before that number of turns is up, this you must play conservatively, thinking of the entirety of the scenario.
There’s no shame in bumping it down a difficulty. I contend that the game is overtuned.
-Bradley, resident Gloomhaven enjoyer
I also feel like 3 characters might be easier than 2 characters - even with more enemies on the map. @ShivaX and I are doing a co-op run through the campaign with two characters each, and even playing terribly we wrapped up that first mission on Normal.
Don’t be afraid to lower the difficulty to Easy, or (barring the ability to do that in real time, I’m not sure if you can?) start a new campaign and play on Easy - it won’t actually be easy, but it might reduce frustration while you learn the characters and the mechanics.
Add a third party member. 2 players is really a little wonky imo. Not enough to cover all the bases.
Though people online vehemently disagree with me and say Brute/Scoundrel is the only way to play 2 players and it’s super OP because of the synergy and deleting dudes at will. Which sounds all and good until you realize that you might want to play something else and that synergy will disappear when that happens. Or I guess you can just keep picking Brute/Scoundrel forever, but that seems super boring.
YMMV of course. 3 characters is a lot of process, but if you have Brute/Scoudrel mostly figured out, adding a new class isn’t that bad. It’s just extra bad when you dive into 3-4 characters and try to figure them all out at once.
One thing I just discovered watching a Let’s Play is playing the default move/attack 2 doesn’t cause the card to be discarded. I think that was a big part of the issue I was having.
Then again, the guy also failed with the same party composition, so maybe not :)
What do you mean the card isn’t discarded? Do you mean burned?
Make sure you have a stamina potion and use it when you have an odd number of cards left… It essentially gives you an extra turn.
Avoid moving too slow… This usually requires figuring how you are going to open the next room. For example, with Brute I like to use Balanced measure to rush a room and hopefully eliminate an enemy in a single turn. Very effective if you have boots w +movement. Effectiveness wears off as you level up.
With scoundrels high movement and ranged attack you should be able to slide in and support.
Other advice is to not be scared to use your items. Sometimes clearing an early room quick will help you avoid getting bogged down, and that might require your items.
Get familiar with your card synergies. Can you empower an element and combo to using it next turn? Those things will come naturally as you play.
Absolutely! And I’m being a bit facetious characterizing myself as a Gloomhaven hater. I like it fine, and I’ve spent a lot of time with my copy of the boardgame, even if much of that time has been spent organizing it instead of actually, you know, playing it. I’m looking forward to spending some time with this digital version that was just released.
But when it comes to fantasy puzzles, I’m more of a Legends of Andor “Euro” guy than a Gloomhaven “Ameritrash” guy. But they’re both tactical puzzles with fantasy skins that I can enjoy, even if I think the Gloomhaven design is problematic for leaning so heavily into the idea of exhaustion.
Here’s a picture of my character in Gloomhaven during a pitched battle:
-Tom
I’m honestly MORE excited and enticed by what seems like a faithful digital edition of the game, because even with my fully organized Gloomhaven box, it’s such a chore to play, really; or at least get to the table. And I’m very happy to let a digital game engine remember and even interpret all the rules for me, too.
Almost every scenario in guildmaster mode is about two-thirds the length of a campaign scenario. This massively changes the balance of exhaustion and how to use loss cards.
Be patient would be my advice, don’t be in a hurry to kill off the bad guys too quickly by burning cards.
The maths you need is:
The remaining number of active turns you have left after a rest is the number of your cards squared, divided by 4.
So you have plenty of time to chip away at the bad guys in the first room, I can clear it usually just as I come up on my first rest, which is absolutely plenty of time to finish the scenario, if you are leaving the first room then with very little damage then you are in fine shape to finish in plenty of time.
Doing 2 or 3 points of damage and not getting hit (or hit badly) is a far better strategy and for this you need movement. This means taking all the retaliate cards in the Brute deck and switching them out, they look great but they need you to get hit and not getting hit is much better.
Do not underestimate the power of movement. Movement 3 is far, far better than movement 2 and movement 4 is fantastic and will get you out of trouble many times and also allow you to keep picking on the guy with low hit points rather than spreading it around all the bad guys.
Not sure what equipment you are taking for the Brute but ignore the stamina potion at the start of the campaign you don’t need it for the first few scenarios, take the boots of striding and the healing potion.
The starting brute also has a couple of killer combos at first level which don’t involve you burning cards just discarding them. Use Leaping cleave bottom half one turn to get the air element up and follow that up with skewer to get an attack 4 on 2 targets next turn. Use the movement 4 on Grab and Go along with the top half of Balanced Measure to deliver an attack 4, if you throw in the Boots of Striding then you get Attack 6.
You need to pay close attention to what the AI card it’s drawn is doing with the bad guys and manipulate that to your advantage to avoid damage. If the Bandit archers aren’t moving and only have an attack at range 3 then don’t be at range 3 by the end of your turn.
Particularly in the first encounter (and particularly for the Brute) going early is paramount so don’t pick two early initiative cards, pick one and save the others for next round so you can go early again later on. You don’t want to be getting 3 rounds into a combat as the Brute and going on initiative 60 for instance. You can have initiative 10, 15 and 27 for the Brute and if you spread them out you have a good chance of going first in the first 3 rounds of any combat.
Only discard cards to block damage as an absolute last resort.
Good advice, all (except Tom :)). There’s a lengthy thread on the Steam forum from people having the same problem with the first scenario, so I guess it’s not just me.
I guess the worst habit I picked up playing Guildmaster is wasting cards to hoover up all the gold I could from empty rooms.
There is definitely very little time for that, I would lose that habit sharpish :)