I've played RPGs for some time now and have a good bit of experience reading (and trying to understand) rule books. However, I just picked up a copy of Descent (just the base game for now) and I'm having one bit of trouble getting Quests setup. I've read through the rules several times and can't find more than a passing reference to how to setup treasure chests for the quest. The Overlord setup section talks about sorting the treasure chest markers and not to look at the bottoms (for reasons I understand). I couldn't find a section in the rules about which color chest to use. There seems to be a section at the beginning of every quest that talks about treasure and shows some indication of level of power. But I don't understand how to read the chart at the beginning of the quest.

Thanx for your help.

Kizan

As an addendum I'm also having a little trouble figuring out which monster stat cards I'm to use. It seems that I haven't found the rules on how to scale the quests up or down or something.

Thanx,

Kizan

As for which chests to use:

If all is correct you should have a full color layout of the map. On this map you can see up to 3 different colors for chest (copper, silver and gold colors), these should be matched with the corresponding chest marker in the same color.
Make sure not to switch copper with gold (gold is the bright yellow color), gold also only has 2 markers, copper (and silver) have 3.

As for which stats to use for monsters:

You have to count the TOTAL number of PLAYERS (this includes the Overlord).
So if you have 2 heroes and the OL, you should use the cards with the "3" on it. When playing with 4 heroes and the OL, you use the sides with the "5" marked on it. (you should have noticed that you have 2 sets of these creature cards, so 4 sides in total).

Ow, and i forgot about the chart at the beginning:

If a Hero opens a chest, you flip the chest-marker around, check the number and find the corresponding number, with the corresponding color in that chart.
Keep in mind that it reads 1 curse, 1 copper treasure, 100 gold and 1 Conquest token: EACH hero gains 1 copper treasure and EACH hero gains 100 gold, but the group only gains 1 Conquest token. The Overlord "gets" the curse, meaning he gains 1 threat for each Hero in the group (so up to 4 threat). If it would read 2 copper treasures and 2 curses, the heroes would EACH get 2 copper treasures and the OL would get 2 times the threat (so 8 threat-tokens, if there are 4 heroes).

Hope it is clear enough to understand

Actually, while you have to choose which chest token (of a fixed color) to place at random, the overlord is allowed to look at the number when the token is placed, even though the heroes won't know which number it is until they open it.

"If a chest is indicated, the overlord draws a random chest Makers from the appropriate pile, looks at its back, and then places it face up in the indicated space on the board." (p. 7)

Everything else Shmoozer said is correct. Chest color is determined by what's shown on the quest map, use the monster stat cards with a number equal to one more than the number of heroes.

And, incidentally, don't play with less than three heroes. It's just not a good idea.

Stupendus! That was most of the info that I was missing. Thanx to both of you. Your instructions were both clear and informative (harder to find on the internet than one might imagine).

Pertaining to chests
The first quest (Into the Dark). Looking at the color map I count three chests total? (Maybe I'm mis-reading it). Two copper chests and one gold chest. I don't see any silver chests anywhere on the map. Looking at the list for the quest it shows the below list:

Copper 1 - 2 Conquest Tokens, 1 Curse, 1 Copper Treasure
Copper 2 - 1 Conquest Tokens, 100 coins, 1 Copper Treasure
Copper 3 - 2 Curses, 2 Copper Treasures

Silver 1 - 3 Conquest Tokens, 1 Curse, 1 Silver Treasure
Silver 2 - 2 Conquest Tokens, 200 coins, 1 Silver Treasure
Silver 3 - 1 Conquest Token, 2 Curses, 2 Silver Treasures

Gold 1 - 3 Conquest Tokens, 1 Curse, 1 Gold Treasure
Gold 2 - 3 Curses, 2 Gold Treasures

Should I be using all of these, or some these, how does one decide which to use? I think I know the answer to this question. The instructions seem to indicate that selection should be random, but the placement of them should be done by the overlord (per the last post to my question). I think my question is: Why are silver chests listed if they are never used in the quest?

Thanx for the detailed help in understanding monster stat cards (I looked again and couldn't find that in the directions) and treasure allotment. I can see how doing it wrong will really screw the hero's (again I looked in the rules and couldn't find anything about that).

Is there somewhere on line that I could get a complete official set of rules (like d20srd.org) or something? I hope a resource like this exists otherwise new players will only be able to learn by using the forums (for what I think are fairly basic questions) or by playing with people that have played before. </rant> <sheepish>Sorry about the rant. </sheepish>

Thanx for all your help and info,

Kizan

The number in the corner is in correlation w/ the number of players including the OL. Don't confuse this w/ the number of heros actually in the game. The game is based on 4 heros going up against the OL's monsters, dungeons, etc. I made the mistake of running a game w/ myself as OL and 1 other player who had to run all 4 heros. I ran the monsters using stats for 5 players instead of stats for 2 players which ended in the player losing. I admit it was unfair to the hero's player but I'm a noob still on this game.

Oops, I was gonna comment on the treasure chests also so I'll add an addendum.

The charts in the quests give you what is in each chest number. You may realize that not all the chest treasure tokens are used. So you set up a game and when the heros come across a chest (pick a color type it doesn't matter) and you grab one of the corresponding tokens and place it on the board. The hero collects the token and turns it over to reveal a number (pick a number 1 to 3 or 1 to 2 depending on the color). You then go to the chart and look up the treasure color w/ the corresponding number. Voila! It lists the amount of treasure in the chest and you hand it out. Again, just to ephasize, not all of the treasure chest options are going to be used in the quest. The description just details what would be available for all of the tokens.

Kizan said:

The table of chest results gets re-used for a lot of quests, and does list all three colors even if they don't all appear in a given quest.

HOWEVER , the first quest definitely uses all three colors. If I recall, there should be one copper chest in area 1, one copper (to the south) and one silver (to the north) in area 2, one silver in area 3, and one gold in area 4. If you don't see any silver chests, you're definitely missing something (or maybe you have a misprinted quest guide, but it seems more likely that you just overlooked them).

Caladorn said:

Why would this have been unfair? While yes you are supposed to play the game using the stat cards for the number of players this is entirely based on the assumption by FFG that one player is controlling one hero. So even in a game with 1 player controlling 4 Heroes, you should use the monster stat cards for a 5 player game. That's why the monster stat cards for a 2 player game (1 OL, and 1 player controlling 2 Heroes) are the same (IIRC) as the monster stats for a 3 player game (1 OL, 2 players each controlling 1 Hero). FFG assumed that it would always be 1 player controlling 1 Hero for anything past a 2 player game.

Wups! Well Antistone you are correct! I didn't see the silver ones, there are two, one in area 2 and one in area 3. The silver chests blended in with the grey tile peices and I didn't see them. I'm guessing that the reason for more entries on the table for each color is so that the Hero's don't know exactly what is in each chest?

Is there a section in the rules where this is all spelled out. It seems kinda complicated for just the short section I found in the book about Quest setup and stuff.

Thanx SO much for you help,

Kizan

I haven't looked specifically for this, but probably not. Descents rules have a nasty habit of being incomplete at best and partially conflicting at worst.