Hi!

My girlfriend and I just finished playing through the Shadow Rune campaign. She was the evil overlord and I commanded two heroes. We first started playing the intro the other way around, but she liked the overlord's minions better so we switched.

Learning the rules as we went along, my instinct was to choose a tank and a healer as heroes, so I went with Avric - Spiritspeaker and Grisban - Berserker.

The quests we chose were

A Fat Goblin (O)

Castle Daerion (O)

A Cardinal's Plight (O)

The Overlord Revealed (O)

The Ritual Of Shadows (O)
Blood Of Heroes (H)

The Frozen Spire (O)

The Desecrated Tomb (H)

The Man Who Would Be King (O)

We played the wrong Finale because I forgot we played Blood of Heroes. Oh well. We shouldn't have been able to play that quest anyway...

The overall impression of the quests was that they were very well done and interesting. I liked the objectives in each of the quests, I was not expecting to find such diversity.

What I didn't like was the overall balance. I only heard afterwards that having 2 heroes is not recommended. My choice of heroes was questionable, and the fact that I had only two made it worse. Grisban is fierce but Avric is weak. His heal was almost non-existent (2 fatigue and an action and then rolling two hearts makes you want to never use that again). Most of the objectives have heroes running around doing things while battling monsters. When opening a nearby door (move + open) is 50% of your actions in a turn, you're in big trouble. I also started out with melee on both, so no chance of catching any Goblins with those. Contrasting this with Leoric Runemaster from a different campaign run who can clear a room from 3-4 spaces away with one of his first class cards...

I was able to get my things together for Act II because 1) I got Avric some powerful ranged attack weapon 2) I stumbled on heavy armor while travelling to the second Act II quest (!!) 3) the Act II quests I won seemed to favor the Heroes very much if they won the first encounter (Eliza had to get Grisban's blood, and Grisban had Blue-Blue-Red axe/ surge-surge + 5 with Eliza only having 10-12 HP... ) The Finale was very one-sided though. I started the second Encounter with 2HP on each hero, so I was killed very quickly (thanks for healing, Avric)

Any thoughts? Comments? We are thinking of doing only 3+-player campaigns from now on, no matter how many people are at the table.

I recommend replaying one or two of the quests yiu've already done witb 3 and 4 heroes, just to see how different it is. You'll need to be quite familiar with their skills if you are controlling all of them.

Also, I would say your class choice was questionable, more than your hero choice. The knight and the disciple can be much more useful.

Aside from balance, glad you enjoy the game!

As I noted in another thread, the spirit speaker is not really a healer. Avric as the Disciple would have been better for you.

A 3 hero game favours the heroes much more. The more balanced alternative is a 4 hero game.

I don't know what sets you have, but when choosing your heroes, try to aim for a "classic" adventuring party composition (if your aim is solely for balance and winning): A tank, a scout, a crowd controller and a healer. Descent offers many different versions of these classes and several classes can even be good at more than one of these, the spirit speaker being an exampel of a crowd-control/healer.

The hero choice was based on 0 prior knowledge, with just knowing the basic rules. I wouldn't have even taken a healer if I knew that dying wasn't such a big deal (apart from the Finale, that is). I'm also not sure I could play the Spiritspeaker to its full potential because I was very focused on running, hitting monsters to actually use Fatigue on some of the abilities. Fatigue was a premium commodity, as I could barely afford to waste time resting.

I used Shared Pain and Tempest most often, Healing Rain only 2-3 times (useless). Cloud of Mist is the only CC ability he has, and in a 2-player game it can hurt me more than it will hurt the Overlord, unless I'm actually running away, in which case moving twice is often better.

edit: BTW, what would you recommend as a first expansion? Trollfens, Lair of the Wyrm, Shadows of Nerekhall or Guardians of Deephall (I know this is only monsters and heroes)?

Do some looking through this forum, as there are innumerable replies where people discuss the answer to that question- for me personally, the big boxes are the way to go. They're not much bigger than the small ones, and they offer more in terms of mechanics and material. Small boxes are also cool, and add the rumor mechanic, as well as (except for manor) the secret room.

I would avoid the hero and monster packs as a first venture- they don't give you any new classes, and their rumor quests are best incorporated along with other rumor cards from one of the small boxes.

It ultimately comes down to what you want from the expansion- whether that's themed tiles/quests, monsters, heroes, hero classes, shop cards, or side quests.

Hi Chilligan, welcome to the descent forums.

For 2 person campaign play heroes will struggle, the games main 'currency' is actions and 2 heroes dont really generate enough actions compared to the monsters the overlord is liable to plonk down to compete in the quests.. As you have found out that changes based on the number of heroes and 4 players balances things pretty well for most people.

That said trying to play 4 heroes on your own can be very taxing, especially if your still learning the rules so well done on slogging through the campaign!

Of the expansions to get next you need to determine a few things. 1) do you want to play a whole new campaign? 2) do you want to replay the shadow rune campaign but look at quests that weren't played last time around? 3) how much am i prepared to spend on a cardboard and plastic addiction?

In any case i highly recommend either of the 'big box' expansions as they will give you a new campaign, 4 new heroes and classes and the most new monsters.

Of those which one you chose is largely up to a coin flip, Nerekhall is thematically very different (city setting, new overlord mechanics in corruption) while labyrinth of ruin is more familiar.

If you want to spend less but want a few different quests then the small expansions are the obvious choice, just be aware that you will have to play the quests as a mini campaign or use the rumor card feature (which has a current ongoing thread on the forums here about how playable they are). I would say that of the 3 small expansions you should look into trollfens, manor of ravens and lair of the wyrm in that order, but that's just personal reference.

If you just want more heroes and monsters for variety and are happy to replay the base campaign (as the lack of variety of available open groups is one of only two criticisms i have with the base game) then there are plenty of choices, Oath of outcast has the best set of 4 heroes in my opinion while crusade of the forgotten, for me, has the best overlord monsters.

chiligan , i did play a spiritspeaker through an entire campaign and you are right, it is very fatigue and action intensive. that is why it was not the right choice for you, since you had only two heroes, you were already action limited.

When i played the spiritspeaker, cloud of mists was one power I did not use often (but i used it effectively when I did) because it also tended to adversely affect the other heroes.

For crowd control, Mages are your best bet, but if you play without mages, any class that has skills that affects groups of monsters (like the Speaker's Tempest) works in a pinch.

We just completed the same campaign with 3 hero players. Our feeling was that when the heroes focused on getting all the search tokens, they often lost the quests as they spent lots of actions on moving to and searching the tokens. Even if they look so close, they are often at least one move action out of the heroes "optimal" movement path. When the heroes were ignoring the search tokens they were able to keep up a lot better with the overlord.

So we felt that the heroes had a choise between looting and running a high risk of loosing, or ignoring search tokens and have a good shot at winning. Obviously some quests might be ok to risk loosing, just to gain more gold, loot and such. While other quests might be more important to win for the heroes.

We just completed the same campaign with 3 hero players. Our feeling was that when the heroes focused on getting all the search tokens, they often lost the quests as they spent lots of actions on moving to and searching the tokens. Even if they look so close, they are often at least one move action out of the heroes "optimal" movement path. When the heroes were ignoring the search tokens they were able to keep up a lot better with the overlord.

So we felt that the heroes had a choise between looting and running a high risk of loosing, or ignoring search tokens and have a good shot at winning. Obviously some quests might be ok to risk loosing, just to gain more gold, loot and such. While other quests might be more important to win for the heroes.

k7e9 , what you've posted is something that's been listed as a complaint in many other threads. It's a reality of the game that the balance is a bit off when playing less than 4 heroes.

The issue of going for treasure or going for the win is one that's also been hashed over a lot, since winning a quest for 1 extra Xp, but losing the loot often seems to be the best way to lose the campaign. The answer to this problem lies in the party composition. Descent has so many classes and heroes for each archetype that if a group has all teh expansions and H&M packs, it cna be daunting to choose from; Similarly, if you have only the minimum, you may feel like you have no good options. I would suggest trying different parties with different mixes of heroes and classes. As I said earlier, my own experience has been that you need certain elements to win consistently, and one of these is a scout, a character with a lot of movement and/or a way to get to those well-hidden search tokens. The treasure hunter is considered the pre-eminent class for this, but I've played a shadow walker that also excelled at this and the thief is also a good class for this purpose.

Play, replay, try doing single quests with different groups of heores so you get a good feel of what the characters cna do.

I recommand you a coop Descent (forgotten souls or natures ire). In coop mode you can train synergy and leveling of the heroes in one evening, while in the campaign you get 1xp per session (or 2 if you play 2 encounters). In coop mode you recieve up to 6 xp an level imediately. So you can test hero class cards. An you can test synergy between 2,3 or 4 classes and synergy of class cards. Often beginners do the same misstake, they chose classcards that are cool but dont have any synergy with other classcards, or they chose classcards that are cool and even have synergy but are redundant because another hero takes another classcard that supports the same thing (for example two heros, that restore fatigue). In coop you can test combos and you see, what a heros group need (for example, if yu still lack fatigue, than you can chose 2 heroes restoring fatigue)

Have fun

Greetings

H