this game is way too hard

[goober]

tried to play it for fun with a friend and couldn't get past the first scenario. incredibly punishing gameplay for a tabletop

[mutombo]

yes it is, have you tried the easier difficulties?

[Zeel Ara]

Did you play on Friendly difficulty? If not, do that.

[pitiflauticus]

The game is complex. A lot of factors to consider. But it gets easier and easier as you learn more about the things that are under your control.

A party of fresh level 1 characters is at its weakest power-level ever. But there is no penalty for losing, the characters will keep all gold and XP gained, so losing is not a big deal.

Plenty of great advice in these forums :) Read threads with titles similar to this one to find it. A single piece of advice that helped me immensely when I started: there are no true tanks in Gloomhaven until you get access to really specific builds. Therefore you must avoid taking damage as much as possible by using your movement, your initiative (high initiative is not always bad!), obstacles, traps, and tactically opening doors, to not get attacked at all. In this regard, in my opinion all starting parties should buy the two cloaks of invis as their most important starting items.

Good luck!

[CondorDrake]

It's just the first mission, which is completely unbalanced, after that I finished all missions with all 4 dudes alive on hard. In fact, on normal it felt way too easy (aside from the 1st scenario) and hard is relatively chill but you still got to get your combos in, but on hard or impossible I can't get through the first mission either.

[CostlySpider]

Game gets easier, the more you understand it,the further you get it it. Enchaments, some better cards, perks, etc. Not there are not some hard missions out there, but once you get more things.

Like Major stamina potion, thats huge, getting two cards back instead of one.

As pointed out the start is, by far the hardest, as you only have level one cards, 2nd or 3rd mission you start of disarmed, if you do not have the perk ignore secnario effects. Man it can be rough.

I really recommend watching some vids, Jaugar plays, is one guys vids I have watched, he just playing on normal with 3 characters, but goes into a lot of detail, I why he choose, not just what cards, but why he wanted this chard to go early, why others late. Etc



Mandatory quest is another one, playing on brutal I think, but he has also played the board game a ton, and has guides on builds, for every char. So it is a little unfair, why he can play on brutal. Why new people to the game struggle, as he knows what is in each mission before hand. I mean it shows you, enemies, but he knows, map layouts, what cards they have, etc.
Where I had know idea.

Like he burned cards, in the first room on one mission, just because he knew that was the hardest room. How are you sopposed to know that, when every one says, do your best not to burn cards in first room.

A heads up these vids, are long, over an hour for jaugar, each vid, and mandatory streamed his second part of brutal, never saw stream but checked out vid. Over 5 hours for whole thing. But they do explain a lot.

Anyways, you will learn if you keep playing, for me its judgement call on burning cards, you can scroll back to see how big map is, gives you idea of number of rooms. So you can make kind of a gut call on weather or not it is worth burning a card. I have a bad habit, of trying to hold onto them right to the end, when sometimes, it just would of been better to use it a bit sooner.

But you can become crazy powerful, in this game, unlocked some flame sword, needed fire up, also unlocked elemental guy, even though he was low level, had no shoes or nothing, did a mission, had to kill some golem, so many traps in it, my elemental guy was stuck, but he has a thing where he can put up any element every round, so he could not, move but just had him keep putting fire up, so mindthief could hit with flame sword, as its not a one time use item, or needs rest just needs element.

Game is hard, at start, really watch some vids, its ok to fail a mission, and if you know your are going to fail, be it bad luck, take as much gold and exp with you can.

I also had a post about how hard this game was, I was like you are kidding me, got wounded on encounter, then when I got to mission, I had to discard two cards right off the bat, I did come close, but I was like you have to be kidding me.

Anyways sorry for long post, got forced to use my last vaction day, so haveing a few drinks enjoying it. Anyways good luck, and keep at it if you like this game. You will get better.

[goober]

Originally posted by mutombo:

yes it is, have you tried the easier difficulties?

yeah friendly was still too hard lmao

[EatMeImaCookie]

There is a large learning curve and the hardest the game will ever be is with starting characters at level 1 (pretty counter intuitive). However if you stick with it you will get better and it will be more rewarding.

For starting characters with 2 people I'd recommend using Craigheart (he can tank a little plus crowd control and direct damage) & maybe Tinkerer because of the amount of cards she has which leaves some wiggle room.

I would definitely check out some videos (I recommend MandatoryQuest) to see how the game should flow.

In general you want to save burning cards for the most efficient opportunities unless you're close to the end of a scenario. Exception to that is in the opening room of many scenarios you'll want to burn a 1-2 cards sometimes per character to gain control of the enemies (since you have no doorway to funnel them through).

Always try to limit incoming damage above all else. Doing practically nothing on some turns is a much better option than getting hit by everything in the room. Chip away at enemies however possible without taking big attacks - run away from big attacks or stun/disarm/go invisible/etc to avoid them.

[Konomi☆Nanasaki]

you might want to start with guildmaster in that case.
it's way easier and basically teaches you the game while the original campaign is pretty much "do or die"

[goober]

Originally posted by EatMeImaCookie:

There is a large learning curve and the hardest the game will ever be is with starting characters at level 1 (pretty counter intuitive). However if you stick with it you will get better and it will be more rewarding.

For starting characters with 2 people I'd recommend using Craigheart (he can tank a little plus crowd control and direct damage) & maybe Tinkerer because of the amount of cards she has which leaves some wiggle room.

I would definitely check out some videos (I recommend MandatoryQuest) to see how the game should flow.

In general you want to save burning cards for the most efficient opportunities unless you're close to the end of a scenario. Exception to that is in the opening room of many scenarios you'll want to burn a 1-2 cards sometimes per character to gain control of the enemies (since you have no doorway to funnel them through).

Always try to limit incoming damage above all else. Doing practically nothing on some turns is a much better option than getting hit by everything in the room. Chip away at enemies however possible without taking big attacks - run away from big attacks or stun/disarm/go invisible/etc to avoid them.

the problem i have is not using any of the fun abilities for almost an entire encounter and fighting an incredible amount of enemies for one scenario. it's just not fun even if it is doable, thought it would play more like dnd but it does not

it's like putting all actions effectively into spell slots where even using your default movement uses an ability, it's frankly just not fun

[pitiflauticus]

Originally posted by MONKEYMAN:

the problem i have is not using any of the fun abilities for almost an entire encounter

Not sure what do you mean by "fun" here but a lot of the skills of the characters that are not burn-on-use are quite fun to use... particularly when you plan one turn ahead.

The Brute has a repeatable disarm that's quite useful at low levels, or a self generated combo of jumping and generating wind and using the wind the following turn to impale two enemies with a powered attack...

The Cragheart has an awesome AoE that also muddles, and can self-power its attacks with earth to push or immobilize enemies...

The Scoundrel has awesome single target attacks and her absurd mobility is hilarious...

The Mindthief has repeatable combos of stun-locking enemies. And also of moving, attacking, and becoming invisible all in the same turn...

etc etc - and all of this without considering combos between characters, or items, or unlockable classes, or perks... there are TONS of ways of having fun :)

[Darklord]

Many games are tough initially, just takes a bit of effort to get into it. Only you can say if you're willing to make that effort.

I found the game challenging to start with. After a few tries and reading the rules it got easier.

Am I glad I persevered? Yes, 236 hours later I've completed 50 odd scenarios, unlocked all the characters. But you know what? I still have a chunk to go! I suspect I'll easily top 300 hours before I feel done. (maybe 400?)

Love the game. :D

Daniel.

[pitiflauticus]

Originally posted by SP2244:

Every time these trolls get courage to post their win and say easy, I can always see by their metrics, money , etc. they are using a cheat code! The game is broken, no doubt !

I am not a troll, nor a cheater, nor an employee of any company involved in this game (virtual or tabletop) and I am not that smart, but I can easily beat most if not all scenarios in normal difficult mode. Finished the campaign four times already without major speedbumps except for a couple of specific scenarios. Jeez, even my 12 years old kid can play this game and beat it.

Rather than approaching the game from the "it's broken" perspective, you could approach it from the "I may be missing a fundamental piece / tactic / way of thinking". Gloomhaven differs from other games in certain critical aspects like the fact that, at least at the start, the characters really suck at tanking damage, or the fact that slow initiative is not always bad.

You said "I keep running out of cards" - that's clearly indicative that you are not accounting for a specific rule (or rules) when planning your strategy. If you are consistently running out of cards, it's because you are taking too much damage, or you are resting at the wrong times, or you are burning cards too often, or you are not focus firing enemies enough.

There is a lot of great advice in these forums for people interested in learning rather than complaining.

[Jo]

Originally posted by SP2244:

snip

Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles. - Dostoievski

[Slow Dog]

The lowest game ownership estimate is 200K. Achievement rates are lower than they should be (many folks played before the game had achievements), but, nevertheless, 20% of players have the "beat the Bandit Commander" (scenario 2) achievement. That would be at least 40,000 people who are company employees or cheaters. I don't think so.

Besides, the game *is* famously hard. Lots of folks fail the first scenario. That failure is because you need to learn how to play the game. Mostly, that's learning how to hurt the enemies while avoiding being hurt back.

[Fringehunter7719]

Originally posted by SP2244:

I would like to see some of these video of their gameplay.... when I see great players out there posting videos and struggling,

I have about four vids from last year of +1 and +2 run throughs of the first mission with a couple of different 2 and 4 man parties. Would you like to see one? Any preferences for 2 player vs. 4 player?

I could probably run the first mission with OBS on now if there's some specific class combination/difficulty you want to see in action as well. It's not a big deal to upload (as long as Youtube doesn't mess me around) a success.

Fair warning: I don't have a mic so it's just gameplay footage

Failing that I know Gripeaway and Mandatory Quest used to stream on Twitch (maybe still do) and play on +2 and +3 difficulty mostly, with high success rates. You could try there, or on Youtube. Lots of good tips to be learned there, I'm sure.