GrooveChamp said:

If you want to house rule it, you can house rule it, but it looks like Tsoth is going to be officially nastier.

Avi_dreader said:

That's the thing, the base difficulty should be geared towards average players. Cutting off those locations in the hardest expansion is ludicrous power gamer territory. Your average gamers shouldn't have to adopt house rules just to prevent the game from being frustrating.

I hate to be "that guy", but I think Innsmouth was the last expansion I'll be buying. The only thing from Black Goat and Innsmouth that isn't gathering dust is the personal story cards. Not quite worth $50. If I hear that future additions return to sane difficulties not aimed at the top 5% hardcore players then maybe I'll pick it up.

GrooveChamp said:

Are you serious? You don't play the AOs or the monsters or the new investigators or the board of Innsmouth? That's... Weird. They're not *that* hard. I love Innsmouth. I do happen to agree that Black Goat was a pretty worthless expansion, although I do love the extra cultists and plan on making a fixed BGotW herald for Shub that doesn't just ensure final battle games and that allows you to use the components, i.e. cult memberships and corruptions, sometime in the next week. Ish). Just houserule Tsoth. Or don't play him if you're that scared.

While the Innsmouth board is unarguably harder than either of the other expansion boards, other than that I don't really think Innsmouth ramped up the difficulty much at all. Sure, the AOs are harder to beat in final combat than the base game AOs, but I remain unconvinved that they're overall harder to close/seal.

My biggest complaint with Innsmouth in general is not that it's too difficult, but that it likes the text "devoured" too much. Being devoured is fiddly and annoying without actually adding much in the way of difficulty.

YellowPebble said:

I love devourings :') they happen so rarely.

YellowPebble said:

Other than the Innsmouth board making it much more likely the ancient one will wake and the Innsmouth ancient ones being impossible to defeat once they wake, Innsmouth doesn't add that much to the difficulty?

The Innsmouth board is gathering dust. It was an interesting idea to dissuade "lazy sealing" victories, but gate bursts and additional "add 2 doom tokens" cards already did that job fine. The deep ones track would have been a little more sane had it only been gates that add to it, but having monster vortexes add to it just put it over the top, especially considering how half the unstable locations led directly to an adjacent vortex. 3 turns and 6 clues to reset it without any increased clue generation to compensate (unlike the more balanced gate bursts)? Bah.

A bunch of the more ridiculous ancient ones are gathering dust until house rules make them sane for average players (bringing Quachil's combat modifier down to 0 to start with). The only things we're using are the encounter/item cards, the investigators (except for the sailor, who'se pretty worthless without the Innsmouth board), and maybe 2 of the ancient ones. The only real new mechanic that Innsmouth introduces is personal stories, which are alright but nowhere close to injury/madness or epic battle cards for necessity.

You can say "just house rule it", but when you have to do it for so many things just to make the game playable and non-frustrating for people who haven't memorized every single encounter and gate appearance odds, it really starts to add up. If we have to house rule over half of the features, we start asking ourselves "What are we paying the designers for?"

Groovechamp, I think the Innsmouth board just takes some getting used to. I do agree that its a harder board than Dunwich at least, and likely harder than Kingsport as well. I suppose that would make it the hardest board expansion. Nevertheless, it's not impossible. Dagon/Hydra reallyramp up the difficulty of the Innsmouth board, but if you dont play with either of these as heralds (at least, not for a little while) you can get the hang of Innsmouth in a few games. I urge you to try it a few more times. Here is some advice:

1. Innsmouth takes a lot of advanced planning. If you wait until you have 4/6 tokens on the track to begin your phone calls to the Feds, you're probably already too late. If you wait until you are at 5/6 tokens on the track to send an Investigator up to that last location on Innsmouth that still needs a clue.... you're probably too late. Innsmouth takes a couple of turns, because you have to get up there, and you have to still be there in the Upkeep phase, which means that a Mythos card is going to roll on you while you sit at the necessary location and wait to spend your clue. Dont let this surprise you. If the track is at 4/6 tokens, that means you need to send someone up to finish it THIS turn.

2. As I alluded to already, clue seeding can really help. Ursula Downs seems to be queen of this tactic. Have her start on Marsh's Refinery, make her way up to Esoteric Order of Dagon, and within 2 turns you have 2/3 of the Innsmouth raid track done with, ready for someone to go to the greens and finish it off real quick once you hit the 4/6 mark. Other investigators can do this if she's not in the game, it can be very worth it, especially if Dagon/Hydra are in the game, or you get early bounces or whatever. If possible, it's easiest to do this before the doom track reaches the 1/2 mark, so you dont have to worry about getting arrested. If that's not possible, high sneak characters, Mark, or Tommy will do.

3. Sometimes, you can beat the track to a seal victory. I find this is usually *not* possible with Dagon/Hydra, but sometimes possible without those heralds. If you want to save those clues, you got to ask yourself, do you feel lucky?

4. I dont need to mention killing monsters in Innsmouth is priority, as is sealing Devil's Reef and Yha'Nelthlei if they should open. Dont forget that you can draw aquatic monsters away from vorticies by standing on the River docks or another aquatic location when they move. Occasionally very useful. Tommy Muldoon is also valuble for doing this.

Groove Champ: gloriously insightful. This is why the grognards need to stop recommending Innsmouth so **** quickly for the new players. Yes, Innsmouth is fantastic, but if Groove Champ is any indication of the "other side", perhaps Innsmouth is a bit less fantastic if you haven't been playing Arkham Horror for two years.

jgt7771 said:

I've had AH bit over a year .

jgt7771 said:

The thing is we HAVE been playing for two years =(. Some of the others are hardcore boardgame vets. They still agree that the last 2 expansions have tipped the difficulty too far into frustrating. Dunwich and King in Yellow pretty much fixed the easiness of the base game.

Though I can't imagine even the hardest of hardcore thinking that Quachil and Chaugnar's final battles are reasonable. Especially for 12 doom spaces.

It's fine if you're so super hardcore that you're only satisfied if you're tied up in bondage gear and whipped while you play, but it seems like only the top <5% player base could consider the new stuff too easy. I just think the default rules should apply to the median player. There are a billion rules for making the game harder, not so much for making it easier. Plus like someone mentioned before it just seems insulting to have to adopt easier rules to win, while winning with optional harder rules allows for greater glory.

Dam said:

Really ;') it seems like you've been around forever at least it feels that way ;'D (Actually, I'm kindof shocked, I always imagined that you were an old-timer). I've had AH for nearly four years :')

GrooveChamp said:

Quachil Uttaus is just a solid nut, nothing resembling peanut butter. Chaugnar Faugn, his pathetic slumber ability (what was his win %, 33 I think) got comboed with an annoying, must-gear final combat. Difficulty-wise, CF is reasonable, but implementation of his final combat is stupid. IMO of course.

GrooveChamp said:

Um... I consider Quachil's final battle impossible, and Chaugnar's nearly impossible unless you have a small team and deliberately gear up for him (if you do, he's not *that* hard to survive). Who cares though? It's fine that some AOs you beat in sealing, and others in final battle. No one complains that you can't beat Azathoth in final combat. As long as something is beatable, I'm happy. And if something is just challenging without adding much to fun (like the Black Goat herald, or Hydra and Dagon), I just don't use them. But I love Quachil's stalking, and I appreciate Chaugnar for not having too difficult a game prior to final battle but a *very* difficult final battle (it's a good guy to play against newbies, so they don't build up an expectation that they ought to win, while at the same time giving them a taste for the final battle).

I don't consider the new AOs *easy*, I do think they're lots of fun though, and they're not too difficult (if anything, I'd complain about some of the heralds, but really I don't care so much, I make my own heralds, and heralds that enhanced the base game's AOs so they are more individualized and so their difficulty is more on par with some of the newer stuff). Still, *none* of the new AOs are difficult like Atlach Nacha, if you ask me. Although Zhar and Rhan can both be tricky (especially if you have a very small team).

Dam said:

Dam said:

Oh I agree his slumber is one of the weaker ones. Should have been beefed up in combo with his final combat being toned down.

We haven't played ALL of the new innsmouth ancient ones (as a rule we don't look at new cards until they come up in a game), but so far Ghatan is the only one we really like. Fun slumber ability, challenging and fun but not impossible final combat. Quachil's slumber ability is fun, but absoludicrous final combat. Cthugha's slumber ability was original and challenging, but you need specific investigators to make his final combat possible and there are only about 4 in the game good enough at magic to really pull it off.

Did I see someone recommend Ursula? Ugh. Our group unanimously considers her the worst investigator we've seen. Awful stats: can't fight, can't close gates. Worse than useless special ability (given how the large majority of encounters are bad, why would you ever want to take one when using a location ability? The photographer has a much better mechanic for avoiding bad Arkham encounters that doesn't suck up his clue tokens). Her only saving grace is starting out with 4 clues, but Wendy starts out with an elder sign and has much better stats/abilities. Our group would rather take the sailor on a landlocked board than Ursula.

Avi_dreader said:

I do tend to think I master games fairly quickly, I want to play according to the rules from game 1, so I read all the rules threads on BGG and the old (and the even older) FFG forums, even before buying the game. I really only got back into boardgaming around 06 I think, might've been 05, before that they were mostly gathering dust.

And of course, I tend to leave an indelible impact on people, maybe that's why you think I've been around forever .

Dam said:

I wish you'd buy Kingsport already, if only so you could use my heralds and stop complaining about easy final battles ;')

Avi_dreader said:

TBH, they'd still most likely get classed under draw in my stats. Regardless of their difficulty, whether it's Hastur at modifier 0 or Zhar and its 88 hits needed, they get marked the same.

Also, I don't do homebrews, they are like Eurogames, want nothing to do with them.

Dam said:

Feh. Such peculiar fastiduousness. If you printed out the heralds on thick cardboard, they would not be distinguishable from official heralds. I'm not quite sure why you wouldn't be willing to play with custom components if they look like they belong with the game. ::Wiggles fingers:: everything must be official. That and your strange hatred for Kingsport. Clearly you are a member of a mad and godless cult.

I have no idea why you wouldn't count a combat victory against Zhar (especially if you're playing Epic Battle). Oh right. Mad godless cultist.

Yes, i recommended Ursula, you should give her a chance. She's incredibly solid. Pretty amazing actually. Far better than George Barnaby, for example.

She's fast, which is always a major plus in my book, able to get wherever she needs to go. Dunno what you're talking about with 'she cant fight', since she has solid 4s on both fight and will. Nothing to write home about, perhaps, but solid, 5s in san/stamina gives her an edge over those with better fight stats but weaker minds (zoey, perhaps). 5 luck is a nice bonus, but we're not even to what makes her great yet. Thing number 1, starts with 4 clues, amazing. If my current thinking is right, she starts with 5 (since she'll pick up a clue on an unstable location to begin the game). even 4 is good. Start on Marsh's and prime the deep one track, alternatively go for a really quick and easy seal at the beginning.

Her abilities require a bit of thinking to use. Quick-witted is better than you think, because a lot of encounters *at those places* are good. Curiosity/General store, and Science building are perhaps the leaders. If using Dunwich, Harney Jones' Shack, or Dunwich Village have attractive options as well. Adventurer lets her grab hard-to-get clues like those on Witch House or Unvisited Isle without having to worry about opening a gate during the encounter phase.

If that's not good enough, how about her mission? A couple of monster trophies for your pick of 2 out of 5 unique items? That's really nice.

awp832 said:

Eh, for a quick easy seal Wendy and Zoey are just as capable with much better special abilities, and Ursula is out of luck if that first gate is a -2 or -3. How many times is her encounter ability really going to come into play? She gets no money for the shops and is pretty bad at acquiring monster/gate trophies. Her special ability, for us, has always boiled down to "once per game, may take an encounter at a location that may or may not be good but probably won't".

The only worse investigators we could think of were Montery Jack, Vincent Lee, and original rules Sister Mary.

GrooveChamp said:

Personally, I've found the league scenarios do a very good job at illustrating the finer points of gameplay. There were several where I initially didn't have a clue how I should possibly beat them. But in the end there's always a way to do it.

Tibs said:

Would it be possible for you to give me a link to the said statistics? I find it hard to find anything here, for some reason.

satakuua said:

There's an Arkham Horror Statistics thread stickied at the top of the page on the first page of the Arkham Horror forum with the link.

jhaelen said:

Agreed. While I don't think Ursula is in the top five investigators, she's *very* solid. By the way, I *always* pass her mission before spending her clues and prefer to start her in Dunwich (more clues there than Innsmouth). Being able to draw two out of five unique items is excellent. Not only is that potentially a large sum of cash, probably $10, minimum, it also saves you two turns of shopping (and the time needed to go there). She also *starts* with two unique items. Other than Wendy, she has the best chance of getting an early Elder Sign. Whenever she is drawn, she is often the first person my team tries to get to pass her mission (after draining Dunwich of its clues, or not, it depends on how short the Ancient One's doom track is, and obviously that strategy wouldn't make much sense against Yibb).

As for her ability Quick Witted, just make sure to have her use it at the Science Building (most of the encounters there are neutral or helpful— it's probably best you use it there anyways, considering that the other part of her ability relies on clues) or while shopping, I probably wouldn't use Quick Witted unless she had clues to spare at any other locations unless I felt I had to because the game was getting out of control (I don't know the other locations as well— except that their encounters are often dreadful). It's also quite useful for certain missions, or for handling rifts in Kingsport.

Broaden your mind ;') or visit Yuggoth, where the Migo will do it for you.

Realistically, I think part of your problem with difficulty is that you play a blind game. You don't look at the cards except when you see them, so you don't have a good sense of which locations are more dangerous than others, and where you are likely to get beneficial encounters.

Oh yeah. I'd use her ability at the Bank too :') and the Administration Building (if I ever went there, though I probably wouldn't), and River Docks (lots of River Docks encounters are good). South Church would be a bit iffy, its better encounters involve being blessed (unless I had her bless someone else, it would be a waste for her to draw one), and it has lots of damaging encounters. ::Shrug:: I think it's probably just best to play her with a couple extra clue tokens at all times, and have her do as many encounters as possible at instead of having encounter locations (provided there is something beneficial about her going there) and just canceling any results that you think are too dreadful to deal with. I've only played one game controlling her, but now that I think about how to maximize her potential, it seems obvious that I could do a better job, now that I've thought about her a bit more. I think I'm going to deliberately select her as a starting investigator along with two randoms next game :')

As for Zoey being *better* than her. Absolutely not. Zoey can be very useful (particularly if you plan on going to final combat) but she has a number of problems if you like making a good faith effort to win by sealing. First of all, she's *broke*, and really broke, not fake broke like Ursula. This tends to drain weapons from the other party members. Sure, you can use her as a monster hunter, but keep in mind, you don't win by monster hunting. Sealing is the path to victory. Ursula is better at getting resources and staying conscious (and hence better at getting seals). Ursula also doesn't have a focus one (horrible for adjusting skill sliders so you can close gates). Sanity three is a major handicap unless you avoid having encounters (and of course, if you do that, you're essentially having an investigator not preforming their most important function), even after you gain five trophies, you still have the problem that you don't get five trophies with her without spending about 4 turns in the streets (4 turns!), with someone like Ursula, you might spend 2 turns, and pick off the third monster when you send her into a gate (or if you're really gung ho about efficiency, pick off the first monster with her first gate, the second monster in the street, and the third monster with her second gate). Zoey is far more constrained and constraining in her strategies.

It also sounds like you do not play random investigators? Did I read you right?

I think Ursula is good too, principally for the sole reason that she starts with four clues- I'm convinced number of starting clues is a very large factor in investigator strength.

Her abilities aren't amazing, but they're certainly not bad either.