Here a new topic!

Are the three Legendary Areas of Terrinoth so important to improve the party during the adventure? Are their rewards so useful?

What is your experience about it? Do your party choose always to explore those areas?

Copper Legendary is probably worth it because you need money early on, but if it takes too long to finish you may be over halfway through silver. Make sure you're not.

Silver is a must, especially if razed cities have some much needed skills.

Gold is a big no no, and frankly I don't understand why they even made this. Risking losing precious dice upgrades isn't outweighed by the reward.

I'd say the Copper dungeon can be worth it, but as likely as not, the CT gain (of the Overlord) vs. Gold gain by the heroes is probably not worth it. Most RTL dungeons have 800+ gold on each level (2 gold piles and a chest), so the heroes can afford to high-tail it before the situation gets too bleak and the Overlord starts racking up those CT. In the legendary areas they are stuck pushing all the way through.

Silver dungeon is a must. There will be a needed skill that was in a razed city unless the heroes are ridiculously lucky.

Gold. The magical armor is good, but not so freaking good as to make playing the level an absolute must. I think this one has more to do with party composition than any other Legendary dungeon

The Fool's Rapids is a very good deal, and should be done if at all possible ( although it's a bit out of the way, so the OL can get into a dangerous position with his lieutenants while you're going to it). Remember that 2 dice upgrades, especially silver to gold, will probably get you the most XP worth of free upgrades, so they are a resonable choice as well as the free skill.

Caverns of Thul are highly overrated. You can get a similar amount of gold by just doing 3 levels of 2 seperate dungeons, and probably gain more conquest and give the OL less. The thing about the Caverns is that it is a huge dungeon, with gylphs very far apart compared to the norm for RtL. And since it is level 4, the OL will have a choice hand of nasty cards for you. Theres no harm in starting the dungeon, but if the OL has upgraded beasts, or if he has evil genius in play before you get to the bottom, I'd recomend fleeing. The one rumer that gives you 2000 gold as a bonus is much nicer in my opinion.

EDIT: I didn't mention the gold dungeon because I think it is a non issue. If you are late in gold, you'll probably win whether or not you do this. Also, there is no reason not to go here as your final dungeon, since if it puts the total over 600 the OL will not be spending most / all of the conqust you give him, depending on if you allow him one final upgrade before the OL keep.

Copper is good if you go *early* on, and I mean waaaay early on, before the OL has upgraded his monsters. This makes the levels really easy to go through, making the only real challenge the dragons at the end. We were at 16 to 20, heroes lead when we thought, "Hey, the OL hasn't upgraded monsters yet, let's go hit the legendary dungeon!" We hung around for a couple weeks shopping and moving, so OL could get to 21 CP, and then entered the dungeon. After we left, the OL was ahead, but only by 7 points (56 to 49) and we had TONS of gold to go upgrade with

-shnar

Badend said:

+1

The bronze dungeon can be ok if there are no upgraded monsters but is a big risk to a coherent party campaign structure. If your party isn;t et up right or something goes wrong you can lose a lot of CT for a relatively minor reward. In general I would so no harm in going to it, but don't get fixated by the reward and overcommit. Keep thinking of it like a normal dungeon where you are evaluating probably gains and losses at every step and ready to flee.
Although cash is often the scarcest resource for the heroes, I really don't think that the cash gain in that level is enough to be worth the risks. An extra 3k gold over what you would normally get doesn't even get a full round of training for all the heroes.
OTOH, cash IS often the scarcest resource for the heroes, so the extra cash could make a big difference.

The Silver dungeon is critical, just for those extra skills you can recover. Wind Pact, Leadership, Acrobat, Spiritwalker, Quick Casting, Rapid Fire, Taunt, Unmoveable on the Knight, Swift/Tiger Tattoo on the Runner, Ox Tattoo if you keep running into Grapplers/Webs etc etc. Not to mention the ability to double upgrade dice for free (gold upgrades are expensive) or recover a missed secret training.

The gold dungeon is relatively unimportant, but if you plan it right you can afford to give away unlimited CT if it takes you over 600 (silly rule), so there is no reason not to do it.

Except that if you go for Gold dungeon that means there are an additional 2-3 chances the OL can crushing blow an important bit of kit when the party will find it nigh impossible to replace.

SamVimes said:

<shrug>

Equally there are perhaps more chances to accrue more useful gold items than there are to lose them.

In the OLs keep (bigger than the legendary dungeons), even playing with 2 crushing blows (finishing off a campaign started well before the most recent FAQ) and a Dark Relic in my deck I was only able to crush 1 backup Silver item (not enough threat to get a gold one, but use it or lose it) and 1 gold item. Between Wind Pact and lack of threat I just couldn't do better. Heroes at that stage are too fast and hit too hard, too often. The OL frequently doesn't get much opportunity to do anything in a level by late gold, and frequently doesn't have the threat available either. SO the risk is lower for the heroes than it might seem.