Recently purchased the core set..son in law and I tried it last night..lost all 3 games..it seems threat was the main thing taking us out..do u count all the threat in the staging area and include the 2 cards we draw ? there was times we were taking 8-10 threat per round..I figure we are doing something wrong...thank you

It sounds like you were doing it right. Just remember that if you are engaged with an enemy that enemies threat is no longer counted and the same goes for active locations. Also you only raise your threat by the amount that the threat in the staging area exceeds your questing willpower. The core set alone can be tricky with the limited cards, the best way to start is having one if you using the Spirit(blue) cards and the othe doing Leadership(purple). Tactics(red) is very difficult to start with because of the low willpower.

and the check is done by using the willpower of the cards I exhaust ?

I get the basics of the game but the threat stuff is throwing me way off lol

so basically what I need is someone to explain the whole threat mechanics to me..who/what/where/when...as simple as possible...my old brain cant comprehend it for some reason lol

Threat is used to describe a few things in the game:

1. Its the meter that you track each players threat on which starts at the combined total of your heroes threat and can be raised by questing unsuccessfully, doomed keyword and other cards that say raise threat. Threat also raises automatically by 1 pt at the end of the round. If you hit 50 it's game over.

2. Threat is also indicated on location and enemy cards in the top left corner of the card. Its how much threat the cards contribute to the staging area during the Quest phase, that value is only active when the location or enemy is in the staging area. If the location is active or the enemy is engaged you do not count threat during the questing phase.

3. This is closely linked to the 2 above, but during the quest phase you will calculate all the threat values for enemies and locations in the staging area. This will include cards that are already present including the cards you will draw that phase. During the quest phase you will exhaust characters to contribute willpower. Remember once a character exhasuts for questing it is likely there action for the round unless you can ready them with Unexpected Courage or Aragorn's ability You will then compare your willpower value it the threat value in the staging area. If it is equal nothing happens. If will power is greater you add progress to active location first and then to quest. If threat is greater you will increase your threat meter by the difference between willpower and threat, moving you closer to 50 and possibly losing the game.

Getting things out of the staging area each round is very important, traveling to an active location and engaging enemies will get threat out of the staging area. Remember there can only be one active location at a time, so if it's not cleared next round it could be even harder to clear in subsequent rounds especially if more locations are being added to the staging area. This is called location lock and threat can easily skyrocket until the game is lost.

Hope this helps.

Well i try to explain as simple as possible, but i dont promise you anything.

So example, if you are playing Passage Through Mirkwood quest and it´s the quest phase, you would exhaust Eowyn and Aragorn to commit them to a quest, then your friend would exhaust Gloin to commit hes charecter to a quest.

After that, you reveal 2 encounter cards, what are Forest Spider and Forest Gate. So now you count your and your friends commited charecters willpower. Eowyn has 4 and Aragorn has 2 willpower, so thats 6 + Gloin´s 2 willpower = 8 willpower. Then you count staging area´s threat. Forest Spider has 1 and Old Forest Road has 2 threat, so there is total threat 3.

After counting commited charecters willpower and threat of the staging area you count how much progress you have done (or how much you have to raise your and your friend´s threat). 8 willpower - 3 threat = 5 progress to the quest card (or if there is active location example old forest road. You put 3 progress tokens on old forest road and discard it, then you put those 2 remaining progress tokens on a quest card)

Probably little bit confusing, but i hope that you will get it.

Oops sorry for that if you already know this thing. I miss understanded that what you were wanting to know (i am little tired you know...)