I think that’s a case where it’s up to the players to decide. Which is one of the minor problems of the digital version: it makes choices like that for you.
As far as difficulty goes, I play on hard and generally find Gloomhaven to be reasonably easy, especially once you have completed a few missions and leveled up a bit. I guess it just meshes well with my brain or something.
Some characters really really benefit from leveling but I think filling out your item slots is what really tips the balance from hard at the start into mostly trivial as you go along.
This may be why the game really shines in multiplayer. There is a lot more imperfect information when people are planning their turns so it becomes much less of a puzzle to plan out the perfect turn and more trying to make sure you pick cards that will leave you with options in case somebody else goes before you and does something you weren’t expecting or something you were planning to do yourself.
Has anyone played the new digital version online yet? Discussing with a friend whether we want to give it a go… Xbox and pc, would be the plan
I’ve only played the original via tabletop simulator one scenario or 2 only, and he’s never played it
I’ve played it quite a bit, but only 4 player PC multiplayer. I’ve read that there’s been some instability in cross platform multiplayer, but they’ve been putting out hotfixes for it pretty rapidly.
As for the game, the campaign mode is pretty much all of Gloomhaven (and Jaws of the Lion if you get that DLC). It looks good and handles the rules for you. It’s certainly faster than setting up and playing the physical game , and it’s probably a smoother experience than Tabletop Simulator.
However, it is a little janky. The host of the MP game is the one that makes all the decisions for events and selects scenarios. Sometimes the game is a little slow on progressing on enemy turns when they have multiple targets or other special rules. Finally, it’s unforgiving on picking the wrong card or ability. You can undo things like selecting targets or moving, but picking the wrong part of the card will require the host to roll back to the start of the round.
I have some nitpicks based on having played the physical version, such as all players’ cards being visible to other players and not being able to decide tossups in monster AI.
Don’t take all this as me being down on it! It’s Gloomhaven, and Gloomhaven is awesome. It’s a perfectly fine way to play through it, especially with friends at a distance. I’ve just had a lot of time to nitpick it.
Does the Jaws of the Lion DLC change the first scenario or is it still the same sheer vertical cliff face?
We’ve been doing a weekly digital Gloomhaven night for going on two years now. Getting to the point of running out of new content but it’s been a great ride.
The nitpicks above are valid and you’ll very likely not beat the first scenario on your first go around. But stick with it and it’s a great time.
I’m not sure if Jaws of the Lion digital has its missions available from the start as we upgraded our save to JotL when our party was already reasonably advanced, but the first mission certainly seems easier there.
You still do the original Gloomhaven scenarios for campaign mode. The Jaws of the Lion missions actually get made more complicated/difficult since they aren’t tutorial missions anymore.
So…while we are on the subject, what is the “optimal order” to incorporate the Jaws DLC? I know it was originally intended as a standalone product and when I start a campaign with all dlc enabled, it’s all a jumbled mess with too many characters that offends my sense of propriety. So I just started a campaign without it enabled and figured I’d turn it on after I complete the main game. As you may have guessed, I’ve had a few false starts (as is my custom) both with DLC enabled and disabled and I’ve played a little of the Jaws content.
The main benefit of computer Gloomhaven, IMO, is that you might actually play through it to the end. Not that I’ve ever gotten that far, but but it’s at least conceivable that I might come back to it some time in the future and continue a previously saved game.
I really can’t imagine ever playing Gloomhaven on the table top to the end. 90+ x 2 hour sessions of a single game? Nope… never going to happen, not solo and very definitely not with any gaming circle I’ve ever been a part of.
Start it before you finish the main quest. The problem we’re running into is that we have all the base game stuff completed but our characters still have retirement goals that can only be done in base game scenarios. So in order to retire those characters we have to replay scenarios we’ve already done.
This advice might be out of date now, but 100% start it on Easy difficulty and move up when you feel like you’re ready. I don’t think I ever moved up, there were a few big difficulty spikes playing two characters that kept me grounded. Some day I’ll go back and complete it on Normal.
…raises hand…
Gloomhaven was what my wife and I would do when we got the kids to bed and had enough energy to do more than watch a movie, but no babysitter. We didn’t play all 95 scenarios, of course, but probably 2/3 of them, and then all of Forgotten Circles. It did take us years.
I’m jealous.
I had hoped to get my sons interested in this, and make it a regular thing, but there are just way too many obstacles to bringing this to the table for even that.
I finished the Gloomhaven campaign twice with a friend. As a two player game there was quite a bit left locked when we finished the first time so we explored some alternate plot points and unlocked some different characters the second time around…
Yeah, I get that. When we lived in a tiny apartment with a 2 y.o. I had a whole method where one night we’d do all the prep (item / card selection, city business, city/road events, putting all necessary components for the next scenario into a bag), and the next night I’d set up the scenario while she got the kid asleep, etc, and then we’d immediately dive in and we’d have to stay up until we finished it (fortunately it usually wasn’t an issue with our bedtime).
When we got a house, I was able to leave it set up in the basement (didn’t let the kids down there, heh), which was absolutely necessary when we started playing 2-handed (4 character) scenarios (which we did for Forgotten Circles).
Twice! Good lord! We “cheated” a bit and allowed a personal quest re-draw if we didn’t get one that would open a new box. (Justified, IMHO, for two players, as they added an “inspiration” mechanic in Frosthaven to deal with the lower unlock rate for 2p playthroughs.) When we finished GH + FC, there was one character box we hadn’t opened (saw) and envelope a (for which you needed to get certain random scenarios unlocked to get enough ancient technology, which is BS, I think). So I opened them. But we definitely “missed” out on a bunch of scenarios–but I feel like we had enough, for sure.
The pre-set-up is key - before kids and the pandemic we got through most of the original GH box as a party of three (my wife and a friend), we’d pretty regularly be able to get in two scenarios in ~3 hours or so as long as everything was on the table ready to go for the first one when he showed up. Made it much more palatable as a random Thursday night or whatever where you felt like you were making progress, vs. only getting one scenario done in an evening. The latter was very much the case once my toddler was running around, and is a big part of why we still haven’t opened Frosthaven yet.
We went evil choices second time around, playing as a pair of self-centred jerks purely out for themselves. It was definitely harder this way as the rep hit was pretty brutal at times but it was also a lot of fun…
Yeah, I wondered about that. We are all-in on the goody-two-shoes approach. I definitely remember missing out on some cash money (mostly in choosing scenario paths, the event decisions were typically small potatoes), but I think in the end we saved a lot more with the price discount.
Also, we had the moon/eclipse box as a retirement goal, so it doubly reinforced our goal of getting to +X rep to unlock the sun box.