Hello all. This is my first time posting here, so I hope that I do not ramble too much!

My regular group of players and I finished playing the third quest in Well of Darkness last night (I think the name is Raiders of the Lost Temple), and for the second time on this map the PCs were defeated. Looking objectively at this map, it seems really difficult for the PCs! I was curious to see if there are any hero groups out there that successfully completed this map and what techniques were used to get to the end.

I play as the Overlord, and the first time we ran this map there were only 3 PCs. They made an unwise move at the beginning, opening up both areas that contain the runekeys. By the time they got to the second area with the yellow runekey (after getting the blue), I had an army built up waiting for them.
Last night I had all four players back. They had a run of bad luck as I drew the lightning trap first thing, and ended up Dazing a few of the characters for three or four turns. Then the first chest they finally got to ended up having no treasure at all - just a curse.
Now, maybe they were just not moving fast enough. By the time they had retrieved both the yellow and blue runekeys, I had already gone though the entire Overlord deck, had out Evil Genius and one other Power, had a hand full of 8 cards, and had somewhere over 25 threat just waiting to be used. Couple that with the fact that they were down to just 3 conquest tokens, then there was no way they could make it down the boulder hallway.

I have to say that all the quests presented in Well of Darkness really look to present a higher degree of challenge to the PCs, and I can tell that soon these regular players will become frustrated if they do not stand a chance of winning. Does Altar of Despair continue this difficulty trend, or does the balance swing more in favor of the PCs for that expansion? The guys I play with seem to enjoy a campaign style of play, so I was debating on whether to get AoD next or to move straight on to Road to Legend without AoD.

Thanks for any opinions!

There's some very thorough threads on BoardGameGeek where someone has evaluated the difficulty of quests from the base game and the Well of Darkness . He rates WoD quest 3 as fairly hard, but not unreasonable (and easier than quest 2). He also says he assumes you always play with 4 heroes, which is common advice for WoD and AoD.

He hasn't gotten through the Altar of Despair yet, though, and neither have I. Various references I've heard on the forums suggest that the WoD quests are generally considered the hardest overall, but AoD definitely has some scary stuff in it. If you want to make things easier for the heroes, you could try jumping to the Tomb of Ice expansion, which adds feats.

If you're not satisfied with game balance, you could also try out The Enduring Evil , my personal rewrite.

WoD quest 3 isn't exactly easy on the heroes (though, oddly, I would have said that the strategy of opening both the first two rooms early was a good one, as it denies the overlord two ogres due to figure limits.

Unfortunately, quest 3 is one of the easier quests in WoD. Try "A small problem" or "A hot time" for some real nightmares for the heroes.

We played this last night, 2 players playing 2 characters each. IMO, if you play WoD and you want to have fun (rather than have a sense of grim inevitability), you must use the feat cards from TOI. Feat cards balance out Treachery cards - in their absence the OL is overpowered - just my experience. We had a tough enough time, technically losing, but had a blast. I say 'technically losing' because we play a house rule whereby the players can go into negative Conquest tokens. Since you can recuperate conquest even at the very end of the quest by succeeding in your mission (usually for 4 tokens), going into negative doesn't mean defeat is a foregone conclusion. Also it means you get to play the whole quest without the big downer of having to start again.

Anyhoo, I played Varikas and Runewitch Astaara, and my comrade played Kirga and Mordrog (must have a thing for orcs).

Varikas drew Vampiric Blood, Mighty (+2 dmg) and Taunt. Vampiric Blood, aside from being very appropriate for this walking corpse, alongside his hero ability made for a surfeit of fatigue.

Astaara drew Aura, Wild talent and the astoundingly useful Spiritwalker (also very appropriate to the hero given her ability - like she was some kind of omnipresent spook). I can't tell you what a life saver Spiritwalker was - essentially she never had to move into danger in fights (apart from one notable instance below).

Mordrog drew brawler, bear tattoo and ox tattoo - inked-up orc.

Kirga drew Alertness, Deflect arrows and skilled.

*SPOILERS FOLLOW*

For the first three rooms we were so-so; the scything blades cut us up pretty badly and OL placed a dart field a little bit forward of one of them leaving only a cramped space to move into. He focused on Varikas and managed to take him out with a series of traps. I saved Varikas' ass at one point by using a feat card to fend off a crazy high hit roll from one of the ogres, but it only delayed his doom. I protested that Varikas was already dead and therefore running out of wounds was irrelevant, but as I suspected this didn't wash.

The true lunacy began when we got to the long corridor. Given the name of the quest we knew boulders were imminent, so we sent Runewitch Astaara in since she had the lowest conquest cost. She had mixed feelings about the decision but she hoped having a speed of 5 would help her out. The bug mistake we made was assuming that once we stood on the pressure plate to trigger the boulder, that would be it. We didn't realise there was an unlimited supply of rocks up there in the roof.

The OL (i think wisely) decided to ignore the rule in the quest that the doors in the corridor can't be re-closed. Frankly I have no idea how the hell you would not have multiple wipes in that corridor without being able to close doors behind you. There's a lot of doors between you and the safety(??) of the pit in the last room, not to mention an undying master ogre. As it was the boulders scored 4 kills. Quite enough.

At one point Astaara found herself all alone looking at the master ogre, with a closed door with a boulder behind it at her back. She spied two silver treasures behind the red guy and I took that opportunity to open the door behind me and fly over the ogre to the chest with a feat card. Ogre is left having to run to the door to close it to avoid being splattered and we get the silver chest. I knew I wasn't going to defeat the ogre by myself but thought I might as well sacrifice myself to get everyone silver goodies. The OL sealed that sacrifice with the curse of the monkey god. Ogre: "Where the hell did that ***** go, who's throwing boulders around the place and where the f*ck did that monkey come from??"

When we got to the golden idol and his buddies we were pretty sure we weren't going to get back to positive conquest tokens, but we made a go of it. We did well to clear the nagas and many of the skeletons and Astaara legged it for the gold treasure chest, having magically activated the glyph and allowing Mordrog, who had decided the boulder corridor was not for him, to come in to the room from town.

As usual, no-one drew the right treasure. Melee guys get runes, clothies get armour, ranged guy gets a dirty big sword. Mordrog decided to run hell for leather to give Astaara the Star of Kellos. She took it, thanked him, and promptly blew his head off with it, thanks to an immaculately timed Dark Charm. Thanks OL, you're a c*ck.

With defeat inescapable, Mordrog decided he had had enough with skeletons, spawned gorillas and the like and managed to weave his way to the golder idol and with the Killing Blow feat card he had been saving from the very start dispatched the walking piece of kitsch in one blow of his gold weapon. Game over. We lost, but only just: -1 conquest.

Especially given the fact that some of the treasure chest draws in this quest give you NOTHING (just curses for the OL), I think this quest is just daft as written. It would have been too hard to be fun. Instead, with the rule tweaks we made, we had a great fun, despite our defeat.

Hi; I am the silly guy behind the 'Quest Ratings' posted above.

As a matter of fact, I have seen all the AoD quests now, but the write-up is still to come. The short version is that, of 6 quests in AoD, one seems very difficult, another probably impossible but depends a lot on underspecified rules, the other 4 range from medium to very easy. On the whole probably easier than the WoD set.

As for Quest 3, if you want the correct strategy (or at least, correct as I see it), read on for a brief overview:

*****************************

Turn 1: Clear the opening area of monsters, put two Heroes next to each door.

Turn 2: The 2 slowest Heroes open their respective doors and go back to town via the starting glyph (The Overlord is deprived of 2 Ogres due to figure count). The two faster Heroes run and activate the glyphs in Areas 1 and 2 and go to town.

The Overlord is now in a bind. All 4 Heroes can come storming in in either area. This is equivalent to a fork in chess. He can try to shore up one area at the expense of the other, or equalize their defenses.

Turn 3: The three strongest "fighty" heroes storm the more heavily defended area, while a 2-CT value runner makes a sacrifice play to grab the runekey in the other area if possible. If the Overlord split his defense equally, consider splitting the Heroes 2-2 and tackling both areas at once; but this depends a lot on party composition. If you have an Acrobat/telekinetic, then sacrificing that character for a runekey is a no-brainer.

*****************************

The rest depends on how things have gone, but the aim is to be ready to head through the center boulder door by the start of Hero Turn 6. As always, speed is key, and sacrifice plays are totally worth it if they speed the party up.