First Campaign Mission Impossible and Dumb AF

[Taldren]

WTF is this game? Hard mode is impossible on the first campaign mission. By the time you get to the third room, you have 4-5 cards left...and there are 8 enemies. LOL. The game literally does NOT give you enough cards to complete this. GTFO. Joke ass game. What a waste of time.

[L3wt]

Hahaha

[L3wt]

Just refund the POS?

[InvalidError]

Difficulty in the game is mainly there to re-balance the challenge in case secondary factors such as gear and card enhancements make the recommended level too easy for your group composition. It isn't meant to be something you can max out in every scenario as a fresh group of lv1 starting characters.

[Taldren]

Originally posted by Bitephase:

Just refund the POS?

We started with Guildmaster mode a while back and sunk some hours into that. We had a better time of it, but it wasn't a real questing experience, and Campaign Mode wasn't available at the time. As a result, I have way more hours than the 2-hour max for a refund. Maybe I could convince Steam to allow it anyway.

[Fluke]

The first scenario is hard because you don't have any perks or items to give you a boost so you are at the mercy of RNG. Buying armor that adds more -1 cards makes things even worse, huge new player trap. Getting a curse or other bad effect on the encounter before the mission will also have an oversized impact in the first mission

Getting a round of -2s wrecks your entire turn and now the enemies wreck you so you have to waste more turns and cards healing that damage and if you have to burn cards to avoid damage you might as well reset the mission.

What helped me is never burning a card for it's ability and never burn a card to avoid damage. For instance, the scoundrel card backstab is awful if you burn it. You waste being able to use a full cycle of cards and lose a big move card so now you are using flanking strike to move and that's your best damage card. Also I let the scoundrel take damage and charge ahead, the scoundrel is going to get exhausted but if you do enough damage then your other chars can clean up.

[Swansonhart]

Considering how you have to repeat the same mission again, and make the same moves again makes it for an unpleasant experience to swallow. It's less of a strategy game -- it's just trying to look like one -- and more of an RNG plus puzzle game.

[InvalidError]

Originally posted by SWANSONHART:

Considering how you have to repeat the same mission again, and make the same moves again makes it for an unpleasant experience to swallow. It's less of a strategy game -- it's just trying to look like one -- and more of an RNG plus puzzle game.

If you failed your first attempt at one map and repeat the same moves, you will likely fail again. Even if you succeeded, the "RNG" component will almost certainly force you to make different decisions due to different mobs having different moves, buffs, debuffs, different remaining HPs, etc. on any given turn.

Practically all RPGs and a huge chunk of other genres have some degree of RNGness to prevent exact replay. This is in no way unique to GH, though the impact may be a little disproportionate due to how limited overall resources usually are, especially early on with little or no equipment and few or no enhancements to help mitigate bad luck.

[The Coal Man]

Start with grandmaster mode, its intended to introduce you to the game slowly. The actual campaign (which I also started first) is several times harder than grandmaster mode and clearly not for beginners.

[Taldren]

Originally posted by Coleron:

Start with grandmaster mode, its intended to introduce you to the game slowly. The actual campaign (which I also started first) is several times harder than grandmaster mode and clearly not for beginners.

That's the thing. We did start with Guildmaster Mode. When we noticed Campaign Mode was in recently, we decided to give that a shot because Guildmaster Mode felt aimless and boring without an overarching story.

Our situation is based on players who have successfully completed some difficult quests with a variety of party combinations. That's why this first Campaign Mode mission is so laughable.

There is challenging and difficult. And then there is mathematically improbable. With the RNG, the random modifiers always going 2X for enemies and -1 or worse for us...it's just bad.

Some people recommend grinding the mission and failing enough to simply overpower it. Others recommend resetting the mission the moment bad RNG hits you. Is this really what makes for a good game...on the first ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ level? What a piece of ♥♥♥♥.

[Jo]

Won it second try on hard with a 2 player party with a friend of mine. Moreover, the party had poor synergy: Scoundrel + Spellweaver.
It would appear you focus your learning on swearing rather than how to play the game better.

[Ice]

First, allow me to say:
lol
but also,
lmao

With that out of the way, Gloomhaven can be a very hard game. Specially in the beginning missions were you simply do not have a solid understanding of your character, of your game, items, levels and perks. It's a great filter for people that is simply not suited to take the time to comprehend the nuance and intricacies of the game - and that's alright, there are all sorts of players and not all of them have an inclination for tactical RPGs.

That said, and while the game does have a fair amount of RNG and general randomness, it also has a fair amount of predictability and the tools to circument said randomness to - if not always - at least generally push things in your favor.

If you are in singleplayer, the game is often laughably easy as you are in control of all your mercenaries and you can plan your strategies entirely on your own.
In multiplayer - the only real way to play GH IMO - the necessity to predict what your teammates are going to do, how that is going to affect the playing field, and what can you do to manipulate the odds is where the real difficulty of the game is at. If you lack this, you will fail - no matter the RNG - over and over again at even the simplests of the scenarios.

And trust me, I know the pain of RNG - I was a seasoned player from the tabletop game before moving to the digital version and when I tried to 2man the campaign with a new player, we bounced right off about 5 times in a row. That said, when we changed tactics and reconsidered what we were doing, we completely steamrolled the mission, even with some comically bad rolls from our part.

In summary, it's a hard game but its difficulty depends largely on party and player composition.

[Charian]

Originally posted by SWANSONHART:

Considering how you have to repeat the same mission again, and make the same moves again makes it for an unpleasant experience to swallow. It's less of a strategy game -- it's just trying to look like one -- and more of an RNG plus puzzle game.

I have never repeated a mission in the physical game and only about 10-15% of missions in Digital. According to polls, 10-15% defeats is normal. If you like to grind, that's perfectly fine, but its not needed to win missions on Normal, +1 or +2.

[Will]

I mean I can't get out of the 2nd room on friendly mode so congrats for getting as far as you did.

[Jimison]

Learning a second language is so far easier than this game

[Taldren]

Originally posted by Charian:

Originally posted by SWANSONHART:

Considering how you have to repeat the same mission again, and make the same moves again makes it for an unpleasant experience to swallow. It's less of a strategy game -- it's just trying to look like one -- and more of an RNG plus puzzle game.

I have never repeated a mission in the physical game and only about 10-15% of missions in Digital. According to polls, 10-15% defeats is normal. If you like to grind, that's perfectly fine, but its not needed to win missions on Normal, +1 or +2.

You playing singleplayer or multiplayer? I would imagine playing singleplayer is infinitely easier in this game. Regardless, each quest already eats up so much time, even when things are going well. The difficulty and severe RNG ultimately disrespects the player. And it's harsh. It isn't a simple matter that the game gives me some gold and XP for failing...it also took an hour or more of our time to fail, and then asks us to do it again.

At least in other games, grinding doesn't involve repeating failure. It means hunting lower level enemies in an attempt to gain power. Here, grinding is a test to see how much you hate yourself and don't value your own time.

All of this is to simply say: this game is hard in the most unfun way a game could be.