So, this is my thought, even though it's pretty draft coz i just came up with it. Please do comment on the idea:

This of course requires that a 2nd (or even 3rd afterwards) game session takes place right after the 1st one finishes.

1. Players can carry on to the next game their finishing strength and craft points at the point they finished the game. Everything else is reset and of course followers and objects are discarded.

2. Players pick new characters at random

3.The carried forward strength and craft points are NOT considered the starting points. Any player can lose those points down to the point of each character's starting quota.

4. All enemies in the game get a +6 on their strength/craft value (including the sentinel)

5. Board spaces like portal of power or mines require 1 extra dice roll when attempting to pass through

6. The adventure and spell decks are not reset (same goes for expansion decks if any are used)

That's the basic idea. I could be missing something that messes up the game's mechanics, so if you wanna share a thought, go ahead. I think it would be interesting because players know that they not only need to reach the Crown of Command first, but they also need to "invest" in finishing the game with as much Strength and Craft for the next one, in order to survive in the 2nd game. Obviously, players who die during the 2nd game (or players who die near the end of the 1st game AND already got a new character, thus resetting their stats), will have a hard time in the "Level 2" game. It could be a lot of fun.

What do you think?

1. Works, although you are dramatically changing balance between games in this way. Some characters have their progress defined by S/C gains others have a ton of items (some of which may give S/C) or a few very powerful items. Changing balance is not bad as such but might come off as unfair and arbitrary. On the other hand the game becomes less fun if all the goodies are outside the decks. If you want to address this, have players "sell" their items for 1g or purchase price for objects, 1g for spells, 3g for magical objects - followers is more tricky, could be 2g or 1g/3g if you can agree on which followers are powerful and which are mediocre or less.

you could also allow players to keep 1 object and 1 follower, and to turn gold into S/C at 5g pr point, (cannot buy more of 1 than twice the other, unless only 1 is bought.)

But like i said, not neccessary as such. but imagine a char w bunch of S/C items/followers who is still lagging behind a char that defeated ton of enemies/streams, and is then made to lose everything while the other keeps everything

2. fun, maybe give the players more/less options the further they were from winning. Ie person who gained most S/C gets only 1 option, second most 2 options etc

4.+5. works as such however, unless most chars gained ca 6 in S/C on average at least, players will either have a very easy (boring) time, or a very hard one. What I'd do is use a factor and multiply S/C/tests with that. fx 1/3 of what highest S/C gained was, or 1/5th of highest achived. So if someone gained 8 or 9 S/C all monster are now at 3 times their normal S/C+6 at runes

S/C is still gained at 7 points and trophies count as noted on the card not the factored value

5 use the factor so you need 15 craft at maze and similar tests. Portal/crypt require either 6/9d6 (multiply) or 5/6d6 (addition), i might be voting the latter especially if you level into 3rd game +

3. resets become rather taxing in the second game (not to mention the 5th), almost a death sentence. perhaps allow "naturalization" of S/C up to the factor

6. id suggest shuffling in all those discarded items and followers in adventure decks

Will take your thoughts into consideration as I put the idea to the test. There certainly are a lot of factors to examine during a second game played in this manner.

1. Selling remaining objects/spells/followers for 1g each sounds good.

2. Define a ranking starting with the player who finished with the least S and C points. He could be allowed to keep 4 cards (objects and followers) for the next game and the higher you ranked in the first game, the less you get to keep.

3. A reset would surely be a death sentence but that's the point of having a level 2 game. Try your best in the first game to make sure you survive in the second.

4+5 definitely need to be put to the test

6. Starting the 2nd game without shuffling back discarded adventure cards is a chance to finally draw cards never used before. Even on a 4 player game, the amount of drawn cards seems like 20% - 25% of the whole deck at most.

Will surely let you know how the test goes

2. or some combination where you choose either an object or some bonus in character selection (in case you have no/sh*tty objects)

3. similar to diablo PC game hardcore, i get it, i just prefer softcore meself:)

4+5 gives a similar experience to first game - some easy kills and some enemies showing up on the board that can only be defeated late game. it gets a little rough for enemies with values over 7 though, but I guess that's kinda in keeping with the whole higher difficulty thing but starting at 3 and defeating a S7 monster is about the same as starting at 12 and defeating 21 - however starting at at S3 and defeating S12 is not the same as starting as S12 and defeating S36.

Not a given that's a problem. It does create monsters/bosses that it will be extremely hard to defeat, on the other hand defeating medium S/C creatures should be easier, so progress should be faster, which should even out.

If not one could add a max of 4-5 pr factor (or 7 pr factor above 1) added pr space/enemy, making a S12 boss in factor 3 game a S26 boss, which is about right, but makes it a little convoluted,

edit: a combination might actually be what's needed; so double at factor 2 and if factor is 3 or higher every extra factor adds 3 or 5 depending how you calculate factor (3 if divide by 3, 5 if...). That makes S7 into S17 in factor 3 and S12 into S27. also solves portal/crypt 6d6+3 seems reasonable.

6. my experience is different usually end up w a second shuffled deck with no/few objects or followers, but certainly if the deck has not been shuffled in first game should not be shuffled before G2

and yeah let me know, im curious how this turns out !