Beacon of Hope Scenario Needs Massive Overhaul

[scott_smart2000]

The Trials missions are a massive ton of fun. Finally struggled through the Water God scenario which I think the 1.0 patch really helped eliminate the issue of the enemies always having perfect hands. Trying to win this scenario, and it is so thoroughly poorly designed.

1)You have to go around finding stuff as you need 200 gold and then stumble into the right spot to get the other part in which you're guaranteed to get a negative card (so make that 200+180 gold provided you don't get wrecked in the hard fight).

2)Great! You've accomplished the first part. Now, go hunt for an Elven Ruin. WHICH ISN'T MARKED ON THE MAP OR WITH AN ARROW. This is where having a map you can't zoom out really rears its ugly head. Your characters can barely see anything beyond their noses. Well, that's fine just explore. Wait, why are you punished for exploring? Look at that morale bar plummet like a boulder falling into the ocean. All the while you're wandering around, basically stumbling around desperate to find the elven ruins and level up because #3.

3)If you do completely luck out and find the Elven Ruins, oh boy. How about a Legendary Fight against a Glass Elemental that is so ridiculously OP you just start laughing. In a game where there is only 1 card that does 8 damage without massive setup (Shield Bash) or another that requires a ton of melee buffs (forget the Assassin card's name), You have that enemy start with 70 health, MINUS 1 TO ALL ATTACKS (which means all combo attacks, shock, burning, and acid do no damage unless stacked super-high), tons of armor cards, attacks that randomly do double damage and bypass armor. And again, you can't dawdle at all so you're inevitably going to come in underleveled and underequipped.

I thought that was my problem since I ran into it the first try, but after failing twice due to the stupid morale plummeting, this scenario is just poorly done.

[Robin]

I think it's fun, it's different than the others. I was a bit confused the first time just walking around at random but after reading the description it was fun because it requires some more thoughtful exploring than just following the arrow.

Dunno if that glass elemental really is worse boss than others, I've beat it every time, only played the quest on medium though. You mainly just needs to focus on big damage dealing attacks. Since you know the scenario will always end with the glass elemental you can build your strategy around that.

[Floatious]

I haven't experimented much with this mode, but just a thought regarding #2: If the morale bar is plummeting, does this not mean you're going in the wrong direction? If that is correct, then you could use the morale bar as a compass of sorts.

[Sharpnessism]

I beat the scenario a short while ago and the glass elemental was definitely the hardest boss since you have to build your characters around him to defeat him (and you won't know what he's like the first time).

Best way to win so far is if you can find 2-3 immobilizing cards (or chill) and single target DPS.

The scenario not explicitly telling you where to find the ruins is interesting. Only change I'd make is telling the player what environment the elven ruins exist in (i..e forest).

[scott_smart2000]

Originally posted by Floatious:

I haven't experimented much with this mode, but just a thought regarding #2: If the morale bar is plummeting, does this not mean you're going in the wrong direction? If that is correct, then you could use the morale bar as a compass of sorts.

No, the way the game handles that is each goal has an invisible timer on it to force you to progress towards it, so in any of the scenarios you go from goal 1 to 2 to 3 pretty directly as aimlessly wandering gets your party demoralized and end the scenario. I think the issue is that this particular scenario is shorter than all the others with fewer goals (you only have 1 big fight before the final boss instead of 2 or 3) so there are fewer boosts to the morale track. A fix might be to make it so when you complete each stage of the multi-part quest (another rarity) the morale track goes up.

The scenario as a whole looks like they mapped it out like all the others then panicked when they didn't have a short one and chopped it without balancing it for the shorter time. Though the arrow for the ruins still needs to be added. I sincerely hate wasting time playing a game, and losing after an hour solely because you can't find the Ruins really grinds my gears.

Another thing that annoys me is when games go "Hey, here's a bunch of cool and different characters to fiddle with and enjoy mixing and matching parties. Oh btw, here's a scenario where you have to explicitly use this party to have any chance, and you have to get the right gear because without certain cards you're pretty well screwed." The way they've built the fight pit restricts you already to having at least one melee fighter since the enemy will move across the entire board in one round making Ranged the worst of the 3 attack types. So yeah, after playing around some more, I have my ideal party for that boss. I'll probably break down and play it just for completion's sake, but I won a different scenario so I have the other 2 heroes unlocked now so I can play whatever I want which isn't dealing with that enemy. But when a different final boss literally locks one of the 3 attack types at random each round, has 110-ish health, and group magic attacks and is a breeze to defeat, on Medium btw, that glass elemental needs some tweaking.

[Blastom]

I just fought against the glass golem. He did supprised me by neglecting all combo strike with resilent and cleave my melee team (assassin + warlord + alchemist).
So my assassin soloed it with blade swarm + defensive stance and some damage buffing power.

It could be much easier to block him with a tank and shoot him apart with fragile characters, I think. He was not hitting hard as the hordes of minions and lacked of maneuver capability.

I had the mistake by getting too few defensive cards in earlier runs. It worked ok against minions that easily to remove from a far or with an all-in assault, but didn't work on late game bosses and elite groups that couldn't be killed in short time.

The morale dropping in the first part, before the elven boss, was pretty slow to me, so it's not hard to explore around. The "elven ruin" could be any of the ruins, I think it's totally random - every ruin has a chance to be it and the chance gets up by ruin explored. The same goes for the scale, I think I've seen it in 2 towns, not sure if it's a bug as the first time I saw it, I couldn't afford it, but later I found it in a town with question mark, which should indicate it's another one.

[Robin]

Originally posted by Blastom:

The "elven ruin" could be any of the ruins, I think it's totally random .

The elven ruins are the ones you find in forests. They're called elven ruins when you mouse over them afaik. The ones just called "ruins" are the "human ruins" though.

[bulbatrs]

I think you are overreacting to glass golem, the resistances do close to nothing if you properly buff you damage dealer and his damage is mediocre at best. 1 damage res is not a big deal hen you are doing 20+ and nearly any character can be made into a decent damage dealer.

[Sharpnessism]

The golem isn't particularly strong but I think OP is probably going for it too early instead of farming up some levels before getting there. The fact that there's really only 1 boss to build around makes simple to approach when picking card levelups.

[Sunderbrass]

I fought Nian for the first time last night, the seasonal adventure boss. Just the fight itself took an hour, on Easy difficulty. I suggest you reconcile yourself to difficult boss fights. As you unlock more cards and learn various synergies and strategies, they'll get easier.

I'm kind of amazed and happy at how difficult some of the boss fights are in this game.

[scott_smart2000]

Originally posted by Sharpnessism:

The golem isn't particularly strong but I think OP is probably going for it too early instead of farming up some levels before getting there. The fact that there's really only 1 boss to build around makes simple to approach when picking card levelups.

Two problems with this answer. 1)This scenario is screwed up with the morale track so you can't farm for very long without losing from that. 2)Leveling up does next-to-nothing in this game. There are barely any non-move cards you get from that that are worthwhile. Your gear cards are the real stars of your deck. So the correct response would be "You're going in under-equipped." which is absolutely true because of #1. You need a lot more time for a villain that strong.

[Samseng Yik]

Every boss has their weakness to a certain play style. If your party heroes are not the optimized one, then play well tactically.
Glass Golem indeed is a hard target for conventional strategy, what you need mostly are big damage card instead low mana cost weak card. Expose is extremely useful, status damage bypass resistance thus burn acid shock can be useful.
Nian is intended to be fight by lantern and firework/crackers as these are what depicted in Chinese Folklore. It is still 1 of the hardest boss fight, I manage to wear it down by using Hexer + Elementalist constantly chill, weaken, burn, shock, exposed and finally "Nearby enemies take 3 extra damage per named status on them" by Hexer

[Floatious]

Originally posted by scott_smart2000:

Originally posted by Floatious:

I haven't experimented much with this mode, but just a thought regarding #2: If the morale bar is plummeting, does this not mean you're going in the wrong direction? If that is correct, then you could use the morale bar as a compass of sorts.

No, the way the game handles that is each goal has an invisible timer on it to force you to progress towards it, so in any of the scenarios you go from goal 1 to 2 to 3 pretty directly as aimlessly wandering gets your party demoralized and end the scenario.

I don't think this is correct. I am 100% certain there have been times where I was Wavering, but as I progressed towards the goal, I jumped back up to Determined. The morale calculation is more complex than a simple decrementing step-based timer. Progress towards the goal seems to cause it to increment rather than decrement - at least in the main campaign, and at least in some situations.

[harb]

I beat it first try on Hard mode. Didn't seem to be problematic. Perhaps your strategy was suboptimal.

[Koulmaz]

@morale topic

Feel like players are viewing this game as an open world game and it's not unless you chose that in the special options menu (sundial next to difficulty). As long as you are going in the direction of the main goal, morale will increase. The "time limit" is pretty forgiving unless you're going in the complete opposite direction of the main quest arrow that is on your screen.

tbh this quest seems to be the easiest. The final boss is rather simple and I think like harb said, if you're having issues you may not be playing optimally or going too fast.

And I disagree about cards from level up being worthless, some of the best cards for warlord and witch you get from leveling up. Whereas Hunter seems pretty equipment based.