Ouch. That pretty much sums it up.

Tried this quest for the first time yesterday. The game ended with me having 50 threat and having placed zero progress tokens on the first quest. About as bad a beatdown as you can get.

I am trying to play all of the quests in order. Using only cards that were available at the time. And I have 2 core sets.

So what kinds of decks would you all build using these constraints?

I am playing 2 handed as well.

I am also doing the quests chronologically and I just finished Return to Mirkwood today with a score of 113, although it took me several attempts. It is probably the hardest solo quest I have ever done (excluding escape from dol guldur).

Now as for Conflict at the Carrock, the strategy I used there was to keep my threat below 34 so I would not engage all the trolls at once. I made sure I had my deck ready to take a pounding then deliver it right back. I would optionally engage 1 troll at a time and eliminate them before I would engage the next one. Worked out really well for me. Also I used a Lore/Leadership deck and I had drawn 1 or 2 forest snares which helped me keep the trolls from hurting me too bad.

To keep my threat low I used low threat heroes, Beravor, Denethor, and Gloin. I also have several deck digging cards which I used to bring out Gandalf as soon as I could to lower my threat even more. So far I am 1 for 3 at this quest with a score of 167.

First of all, in the early days of the game the card pool was SO shallow - baby pool shallow - so don't get discouraged. Next, the game designers always left an 'out' for the solo player so that a quest could be completed somehow. For that quest you need to keep your threat low so that you can engage the trolls one at a time on your terms. Good luck and keep at it!

I loved this two player, but I hated to go up against it solo until I could make outlands or gondor shocktroopers with Boromir.