To Many Living Bones!!

[WalkerDresden]

Living bones are one of the tanker monster at mid to high levels they heal and can gain additional shields often making them a opponet that takes muiltple card to take down. how strong they are would not be a problem if not for the fact that every cultist seams to be able to summon 2 of them before they can be killed, the cultist get this card far to often and the 2 damage it deals is noting to a mob with mutipile heal cards that all heal at least 3. i have yet to open a door so start off a map with out the cultist's first card being summon living bones which sometimes doubels the number of mobs in the room for a games whos only objective is kill everything this is a problem. either add a limit to the number of summons per level or make the summoned bones not count toward level completion.

[Corence]

The RNG of the monster deck is one of the biggest sources of difficulty variance in Gloomhaven, particularly around monsters who can summon. Anyone who has played the board game has nightmare stories of oozes.

Honestly, I'd support the digital version implementing a different AI action selection system to avoid really bad swings of luck, but I'm one of those heathens that thinks the game should be changed to fit the digital format better.

[dustin1280]

Originally posted by Corence:

The RNG of the monster deck is one of the biggest sources of difficulty variance in Gloomhaven, particularly around monsters who can summon. Anyone who has played the board game has nightmare stories of oozes.

Honestly, I'd support the digital version implementing a different AI action selection system to avoid really bad swings of luck, but I'm one of those heathens that thinks the game should be changed to fit the digital format better.

The best way to deal with oozes is to run away from them and hope they kill themselves before they catch up to you...

My group hates oozes with passion...

[mqpiffle]

And they don't even poop out gold when you kill them!!!@!

[Dinkleberg]

We always played with the rule that if the summoner died then so did the summons. I hate getting bogged down to the point where I can't even move due to the living bones while some skeleton archers and cultists keep healing everyone up in the corner.

[edjackson521]

Agreed. I know there's random chances of luck, but this happens too consistently to be random bad luck swings. Do we know if every enemy action card has been implemented? Are the Cultists, and everyone else, perhaps pulling from a smaller deck, which would explain the frequency we see LB summoned and how often both the Cultist and LB heal.

Edit: You also forgot that LB target 2 by default and sometimes target 1 enemy with all attacks, so in addition to their shield and heal, they can melt HP.

[easyport]

Also the lack of anti-shield cards and stun options for some classes is a problem against living bones.

[Perkus]

Originally posted by Dinkleberg:

We always played with the rule that if the summoner died then so did the summons.

How are you keeping track of which summoned mob belongs to which summoner? You actually write down pairs of standee #s every time something summons? Sounds like a bookkeeping nightmare.

This is probably just my perception, but I could swear they tweaked something with the Cultists in the patch to increase their summon frequency. They always seem to summon now on the first turn. Before the patch they didn't do it as regularly, at least that's how it seemed. They were the easiest opponent type as a result.

[LYM]

Yep nerf bones, indeed to an inch of there lives !

[Perkus]

One tactic vs. Living Bones (aside from trying to kill Cultists before they get their summon off, it's always pretty slow @ initiative 63) is to try to keep your characters positioned such that they can't hit 2 targets at the same time. So either far enough apart or use terrain / other enemies. LB generally do only 1 hp damage / round & as such can be largely ignored if they're not hitting multiple targets. Kill everything else first. Also, the Craigheart's Opposite Strike persistent buff (6x Retaliate 2) will mop up a couple of them passively rather nicely.

It's possible the adventure mode is currently overusing the Cultists / Living Bones, some monsters in the board game campaign are balanced partially by being used sparingly. I haven't played enough scenarios to tell.

[LYM]

Oh yeah I like you very much indeed,hex apart x, you are a very nice standard

[Jeff]

The cultist are a naturally squishy enemy that you can usually take them out easily if you are entering a room correctly (waiting,resting and entering the room with your full turn ahead of you). I've found the adventure mode extremely easy provided I'm not greedy.

[Rick James IA]

The cultists will become much easier once we have more options. They act the exact same as they do in the actual board game. My group has played something around 40-50 scenarios and has dealt with cultists many times without ever having any problems with them, even when they've managed to summon multiple Living Bones. Right now, we're just severely limited on player options making it really hard deal with them.
I'm not saying the current difficulty is fine, but I don't think the way to fix it is making the monsters weaker. We just need to wait until our characters have all of the bonuses that they're meant to have so that we can get closer to the difficulty of the actual board game. The board game played with the correct rules actually becomes quite easy as you advance in levels so long as you play at the suggested monster level.

[tucker_782]

Dealing with the living bones is something that is learned with practice. Positioning yourself to not have a LB attack 2 characters is key. Also the LB bigger attacks usually don’t included move action. So don’t stand next to them during those. I usually leave them last they don’t move far. But they do have a move 4 occasionally. Focus them down 1 at a time, so they don’t heal. Aoe attacks on them are not effective. I have been going through the adventure with brute and scoundrel. They are annoying for sure but not as annoying as other monsters even with their numbers.

[Lowthor]

There is currently a bug that essentially drops one ability card from every monster deck. Which does have the affect of increasing the odds that a Cultist will summon. I have reported the bug.