Don't try if you don't know the board game

[deaconw]

Looks like it could have been fun but man...after what is probably my 10th attempt to play the first mission on ""easy", I'm out. Basically turn-based Dark Souls.

[ZexxCrine]

the early access of this game was my introduction to gloomhaven and since I have purchased all of gloomhaven tabletop available including the fan made crimson scales expansion.

the first mission is the same on the board game. playing it there won't help especially because you will also need to learn how to play out the enemy turns yourself rather than them being automatic. if you want help or advice I would recommend saying what your party comp is or just hop in the discord to ask for advice there or you could play through the first mission with someone watching or in co-op with someone more experienced who can maybe shed light on what you are misunderstanding.

or you could uninstall/get a refund and move on. I hope you have a great one if you choose the latter.

[GuffBall]

Originally posted by ZexxCrine:

the early access of this game was my introduction to gloomhaven and since I have purchased all of gloomhaven tabletop available including the fan made crimson scales expansion.

the first mission is the same on the board game. playing it there won't help especially because you will also need to learn how to play out the enemy turns yourself rather than them being automatic. if you want help or advice I would recommend saying what your party comp is or just hop in the discord to ask for advice there or you could play through the first mission with someone watching or in co-op with someone more experienced who can maybe shed light on what you are misunderstanding.

or you could uninstall/get a refund and move on. I hope you have a great one if you choose the latter.

One of the drawbacks of these type of games on PC's is that unlike many years ago the vast majority of games you learn by playing them. I tried that with Gloomhaven and although I understand the mechanics of the interface I just didn't understand the mechanics of the game. It probably didn't help that I hadn't played any game with a deck of cards at its heart. My solution was rather old fashioned, read the manual and then have a look online for some basic strategies.

That's one of the advantages of TT board games, if you don't read the manual then you can't play it.

[Gavinhawk]

Gloomhaven is a game designed for you to fail quests many many times in pursuit of grinding your characters up to be good enough to finally achieve your goals.

TLDR: You keep what you loot and all XP gained even if you fail the quest.

[Stelas]

I do think that the game could use a big warning saying 'Don't Go Straight To Campaign If You're New'. I had a friend who was new to GH try that and get owned really quickly, then they went to Guildmaster and actually went through the tutorials and that helped them understand a lot of what was going on.

[Slow Dog]

Originally posted by Gavinhawk:

Gloomhaven is a game designed for you to fail quests many many times in pursuit of grinding your characters up to be good enough to finally achieve your goals.

Absolutely not. You should be winning 80%+ of your scenarios at the first attempt, once you've learned the basics.


There's a couple of things new players need to learn.

1. You should avoid letting monsters hit you. Stun them, disarm them. Place obstacles in their way. Go late one round so they walk to you, then you move and hit them; next round go early to hit them and move away. If you were hoping to attack them and the do something unexepected that will hurt you (say, put up a big retaliate), you're often better doing something else.

2. Don't use your big splashy burn cards too often. "Too often" is a judgment you have to learn. A subset of this is knowing what "burn cards" are; if you don't, you need to find out.

There are folks on the Discord who offer training sessions.

[Jo]

What new players need to learn is to go through the tutorials in Guild Master mode before hitting the campaign.

[pitiflauticus]

Originally posted by Gavinhawk:

Gloomhaven is a game designed for you to fail quests many many times in pursuit of grinding your characters up to be good enough to finally achieve your goals.

TLDR: You keep what you loot and all XP gained even if you fail the quest.

I respectfully disagree.

It's "normal" to lose a scenario the first time you play it, because you don't know the number, position, and actions of monsters. Once you know all of that, you can come back to the scenario with the best possible combination of characters, cards, items, and tactics, and steamroll them - at least in normal difficulty.

There are a few, exceptionally hard scenarios in the game (maybe three or four in total) that require really specific party builds, but finding those solutions is part of the fun. All the others are totally doable.

I am not a super smart player or anything special really and I my win rate is close to 90% in normal without super optimizing the builds.

Players who complain about the difficulty are almost always missing some important game mechanics.

[vonTreppenwitz]

Originally posted by deaconw:

Looks like it could have been fun but man...after what is probably my 10th attempt to play the first mission on ""easy", I'm out. Basically turn-based Dark Souls.

Normal mode = insane,
Easy or super easy is no shame using here. Same in the Board Game.

Decks / Character roles are complex. The game on super easy / easy is not crazy hard once you go for endurance of the deck.

Chose teams by maximizing element creation and consumption, not by classic team compositions. Only creating and using Elements and having enhancement cards active and exploiting their situational requirements does deal the damage fast w/o resorting to burn card actions too early.

This is all about when to burn cards or not. Either for action or for damage.
Seek ways to achieve steps w/o burning cards. Learn when to burn them.

Don't churn decks as it limits you overall actions.
The game isn't hard, if you play it as it is meant to be approached.

The sweet high impact actions are usually one off and burned. Means they can't be recovered from discard pile. If you don't know the board game, discarded and burned is probably the most overlooked difference by beginners.

Standard tactics of rush forward, tank and engage and max churn your decks for max impact and quick kills will just exhaust your characters middle of the scenario. It wipes them off their fast movement,

First scenario is doable with 3 to 4 cards in each characters hand and only the Spellweaver exhausted when things go awry.

Avoid to burn cards unless the impact on multiple nemies or bosses or summoners does warrant it. Notable exception is the Spellweaver who can recover burned cards once and save lots of team HP by a devastating opening artillery strike entering rooms. With clever use of initiative and/or invisibility you can shield the glasscannon from enemy counterstrikes.

Each deck has cards that are burned only after their long term effect is completed. These a great enhancers that really do unlock damage potential of key options. They usually do resemble playstyles of the same character and need to match in the deck build. Don't modify decks if you don't know what you lose trading card in/out. It can break scenarios if a single characters cannot perform on a broken deck design. In doubt go with the proven standard deck.

This is easier on you leading tanks having maximum of armour item equipped, A Long Rest does restore (armor) items. Delay short resting as much as you can to save on burning cards by resting. Equip anyone with healing potions. Give Power Potion and Goggles to the Spellweaver i/o Healing and use it on Fire Orb early in the scenario. At best reliably wiping several on enemy ranged attacks. Some characters massively benefit from jump(Scoundrel) or speed (Cragheart) boots.

You need to adapt tactics to enemies damage potential a lot and can't really bet on when they draw high DMG/low DMG/support actions. You need to watch what the closest player character is they will focus on.

When to stay back or rush forward depends a lot on available cards, initiatives, obstacles and range of enemy attacks. This is critical on crashing into rooms. A Cragheart with Backup Ammunition and Earthen Clos or Massive Boulder is invaluable for it. Never crash unrested and low on cards to burn for avoiding taking high dmage of enemies.

The game is super fun. The best dungeoin crawler design I ever played.
I paid 150€ on the Kickstarter Board Game and don't regret a dime.
My 2 groups of board gaming friends rave for playing the entire campaign. Most experienced board gamers do love this game. They pick this ampong 70+ heavy strategic board games. Boardgamegeek rates this as 8.7 with standard deviation of 1.66. It leans heavily towards a 10 with very few strong dislikes. That is one of the strongest owner ratings ever achieved.

Not so sure about typical computer action gamers. but strategy gamers/tacticans should be rewarded here. The tutorial seemed doing a decent job teaching the game, but I knew the board game before.

[Trashkan]

Game is not too hard, never played the boardgame and we juts completed the the second half of the first quest on hard. Had to restart once due to the r and g gods but second attempt was more balanced. We even had the boss open all the doors.

My first run on the first half of this quest was also a learning experience as I burnt through way too many cards early and pooped out. After that I was much more conservative with how I played those big hits. Think it took us two attempts on hard, we tried on very hard once and got slammed.

[magritte]

Originally posted by pitiflauticus:

Originally posted by Gavinhawk:

Gloomhaven is a game designed for you to fail quests many many times in pursuit of grinding your characters up to be good enough to finally achieve your goals.

TLDR: You keep what you loot and all XP gained even if you fail the quest.

I respectfully disagree.

It's "normal" to lose a scenario the first time you play it, because you don't know the number, position, and actions of monsters. Once you know all of that, you can come back to the scenario with the best possible combination of characters, cards, items, and tactics, and steamroll them - at least in normal difficulty.

There are a few, exceptionally hard scenarios in the game (maybe three or four in total) that require really specific party builds, but finding those solutions is part of the fun. All the others are totally doable.

I am not a super smart player or anything special really and I my win rate is close to 90% in normal without super optimizing the builds.

Players who complain about the difficulty are almost always missing some important game mechanics.

I agree with this. Nobody in our group had played the board game before and only 2 of the 4 played some guildmaster but we were able to get through the first two quests (on easy) with only one restart each and it got generally easier from there, so we've moved up to normal and we get through most scenarios on the first try. I think a few basic tips (avoid burning cards early in a scenario, don't worry about missing loot, minimize exposure to enemy attacks) goes a long way.

I think a lot of the frustration comes from players trying to play the campaign on normal without any previous experience of the game. Most games have a difficulty curve where the first few scenarios are just designed to get your feet wet. The first two scenarios are very very hard if you don't understand the mechanics and the tutorial really isn't enough--it teaches you the way the game works but doesn't teach you card management which is absolutely critical.

I wonder whether the mechanics of the board game make it a little easier for players to remember what the monsters can do because you have to resolve their movement and attacks yourself.

[Bmx Bandit]

Too many moronic game design choices in this game like:
- no one can share gold cause "iT's HiS LiFe GOaL"
- no one can share items cause no idea, maybe the armor smells
- no reason at all to do a long rest, you still burn a card and can't recover burned cards, basically you skip a turn for measly + 2 HP
- Characters with low cards in deck will faint before getting in middle of the dungeon
- Lazy ass merchant doesn't get new gear, and when he does, it because you found in a loot box.. and you have to paid for it FFS
- It's not clear when a shield effect wears down
- random ass modifiers when attacking usually trash your plan
- ooze reproduces like crazy, sure takes 2 damge when summons another ooze, but those POS can heal, which brings me to the next point
- game is too damn slow, makes even worse when bastards enemies heal and have shield WTF

[Slow Dog]

Originally posted by Major Cruton:

Too many moronic game design choices in this game like:

[a list]

Let's see:

You can't share gold because of retirement. Retirement is intended to take money out of the game. The game needs to have money removed because too much money makes it trivial.

Sharing items, see previous answer.

I often long rest. It refreshes items, and gives you choice over which card to lose. Notice that the character has exactly as many active turns whichever rest type they take.

You don't understand the difference between finding an "item design" - finding a plan on how to make an item - and finding an item. The latter goes to the Merc that found it. The merchant *does* get new gear, whenever the town increases its wealth.

A shield usually last until the effect that causes it goes away. Those from attack modifiers last until the end of the round.

Sometimes, yes. Plans need to change.

Everyone hates Oozes. But, surely it makes the game more interesting when different monsters require different tactics?

There's a fast forward setting in options -> controls

[pitiflauticus]

Originally posted by Major Cruton:

Too many moronic game design choices in this game like:
- no one can share gold cause "iT's HiS LiFe GOaL"
- no one can share items cause no idea, maybe the armor smells
- no reason at all to do a long rest, you still burn a card and can't recover burned cards, basically you skip a turn for measly + 2 HP
- Characters with low cards in deck will faint before getting in middle of the dungeon
- Lazy ass merchant doesn't get new gear, and when he does, it because you found in a loot box.. and you have to paid for it FFS
- It's not clear when a shield effect wears down
- random ass modifiers when attacking usually trash your plan
- ooze reproduces like crazy, sure takes 2 damge when summons another ooze, but those POS can heal, which brings me to the next point
- game is too damn slow, makes even worse when bastards enemies heal and have shield WTF

I think it's moronic to criticize a game without understanding its rules and mechanics :D No offense intended, but basically as Slowdog explained above you got almost all of those wrong...

Regarding deck modifiers, they are a "mini-deck" and you can at any time see which ones you already have drawn and which ones are left. If for example there are only 4 modifiers left in the mini deck, you should plan around the 25% of drawing the null. Advantage helps. AoEs help. Removing certain modifiers as you level up help.

Regarding oozes, bring your best AoEs. The splitting action takes late really late in the round, so stun them first. Or occupy the spaces around them. Or try to fly/jump over them and go for the scenario objectives if you don't need to kill all monsters - they are generally too slow to pursue you.

And regarding the not sharing gold or items, you may enjoy Guildmaster, where the rules about party wealth are way more relaxed (I prefer that ruleset). The Guildmaster campaign is easily 200h of content, so even if you play that one only, it's more than worth the price of admission!

[Quizzical]

If you think that the first mission is unduly hard even on normal difficulty (let alone easy), that just means that you haven't figured out how to play the game yet. Which is fine, as it's expected that you don't know what you're doing when you first start. I say that the solution is to read how to play. Here you go:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2751554000

[deaconw]

Originally posted by Quizzical:

If you think that the first mission is unduly hard even on normal difficulty (let alone easy), that just means that you haven't figured out how to play the game yet. Which is fine, as it's expected that you don't know what you're doing when you first start. I say that the solution is to read how to play. Here you go:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2751554000

Wow. I appreciate your guide very much. I don't disagree with your assessment either...I know I haven't figured out the game. The issue is that I have to go well outside the game to even get a hint of how to play. With modern games, that really shouldn't be necessary IMO (and I do remember the 80's, 90's, and 2000's where big physical manuals were a necessary thing to read before playing the more complex titles). I may come back and revisit it and go to Guildmaster first to play around. Especially with your guide handy.