When playing with 3 or 4 players my group has serious problems to handle location locks and/or endless surges. My usual attempt is to include Glorfindel with Asfaloth and lots of Northern Trackers. The latter can be handled with A Test of Will or Eleanor. But both requires special deck builds for multi player as none of my usual decks contain all of them.

Which led me to have my primary deck around, a secondary deck (if someone does not have a own deck or I want some variety) and a third supportive deck which is basically only suitabe for these kind of three or four player missions. Imo these kind of decks are not that much fun to play.

So I was wondering if there are any house rules on location locks and/or uncontrolable chains of tracheries?

There no house rules that I know of, except the ones you can make yourself!

Location lock and chains of treacheries can hapen to anyone! But...

-be sure to really, really shuffle the encounter deck well

-one way to get out of a location lock is to quest like mad with all the will power you can get

-some cards can help :

Hey, thanks! As I was reading through the named cards, I've realised that I have to be more specific:

While we usually quest enough to get one location away each round (plus some markres on the quest) we have problems with locations which are flooding the staging area. Like, revealing 3 new locations each round.

From the list above only Snowbourn, Riddermark's Finest, Ranger of The North, Arod and Expert Trackers can handle that. Most of them add only 1 (or 2) tokens in total and are a one time effect. Which I wouldn't call that much effectiv. Which probably means enybody has to include all these cards....

I've not created any house rules for location lock. Generally, I think that location lock is a problem with my deck(s) more than anything else. I understand you may not think building a deck for location lock is fun, however. The deck below is quite useful for dealing with location lock and while has supportive aspects (location control, healing, treachery cancellation) it is generally quite powerful in combat and questing too. It's greatest strength is its flexibility. You can basically switch out Bifur for any other Lore hero and it still works (but the extra resource per turn can be quite handy). This means your third hero can be flexible to adapt to the specific scenario. It is also flexible in what cards you include in your deck. Don't need threat mitigation? Swap Elf Helm for something else. Don't need trap recycling? Swap Anborn for something else. Your friend is running Dain? Include Blue Mountain Traders and Erebor Hammersmiths. Your friends are using unique versions of some of the cards in this deck? Swap them out for other high stat allies. Really, with this deck you can change the majority of the cards and it still works.

I will say that this deck seems to work best in conjunction with my Dain, Thorin, Ori deck. Occasionally the Elrond deck gets stuck with too many high cost cards in hand and cannot get Vilya. With my Dwarf deck I am often able to give the Elrond deck 15-20 resources with We Are Not Idle and the player can play 4-5 strong allies. Perhaps it will be fun for you to play and won't feel so support oriented.

Heroes
Bifur
Elrond
Glorfindel [spirit]
Allies (29)
1x Beorn
1x Boromir
2x Eagles of the Misty Mountains
1x Gwaihir
1x Landroval
1x Legolas
2x Arwen Undómiel
2x Elfhelm
2x Imladris Stargazer
3x Northern Tracker
1x Anborn
2x Gildor Inglorion
1x Haldir of Lórien
2x Master of the Forge
3x Warden of Healing
3x Gandalf [Core]
1x Treebeard
Attachments (18)
2x Light of Valinor
2x Unexpected Courage
2x A Burning Brand
2x Asfaloth
3x Lembas
3x Ranger Spikes
3x Vilya

1x Forest Snare
Events (3)
3x A Test of Will

I definitely know what you mean. If you're playing 4 player, Northern Trackers and Glorfindel/Asfaloth are often a necessity. I've never actually tried this house rule, but I've thought about allowing 2 active locations when playing with 4 and maybe 3 players. There would need to be a first in, first out system with the active locations so you couldn't slap a path on need on one location and keep exploring the other active location.

I was just about to suggest 2 active locations as a possibility. i've never played above 2-player so I have no idea what things are like up there though. Maybe would need some restriction like "only if this would leave 2+ locations in the staging area", or it might make things too easy in the average cases where there are a couple of locations but no more?

In 3-4 player games, from what I've seen in videos, location lock can frequently happen. Some quests are also very nasty for multiplayer who draw a few locations in one turn. I guess that location cards should be present in at least 2 player decks.

In pure solo, location lock is usually a game ending situation. But I'd say that enemy locked is worst in pure solo!

Yes, so far I've tried "enemy locks" did not happen in 3 or 4 player game.

That was why I had something like "when more than 2 locations get revealed (per quest phase) players can decide to discard (without solving) any upcoming locations and surge instead". But that led me to the surge chaining with treacheries..

Alowing "two regular locations" seems better by far!

I don't 'house rule' location lock. As a player, i have to be aware of the possibility of location lock and must be more aggressive in questing to avoid such.

Besides, the encounter deck (the player) does not 'house rule' to make the quest/encounter deck tougher when he wins regularly with a particular deck. I haven't heard of anyone says "I'll house rule this adventure pack and stage 1 extra card, since my deck is pretty strong against it and wins."

That does happen. As an example, sometimes I've heard people play with a rule that says you have to clear all enemies off the board in order to win, after you've completed the other victory conditions of the quest. Or in some quests I've also heard people say they'll omit an objective ally who makes things easier (Grimbeorn for one).

I don't 'house rule' location lock. As a player, i have to be aware of the possibility of location lock and must be more aggressive in questing to avoid such.

Besides, the encounter deck (the player) does not 'house rule' to make the quest/encounter deck tougher when he wins regularly with a particular deck. I haven't heard of anyone says "I'll house rule this adventure pack and stage 1 extra card, since my deck is pretty strong against it and wins."

Except Seastan who when testing certain decks reveals four cards during staging for only two decks whilst also playing nightmare

The quests that bombard you with locations, clearly you need to "deck build for it".

To me, it's not location lock per-se I want to house rule (well, when I'm losing to it yes I f*ing do but usually it's indicative of a quest needing location-blasting cards)... I want to address SURGE (which contributes to this). I'm seriously sometimes wondering if surge should never be allowed to add more than P cards (P = # of players). I'm also starting to disregard the "surge anytime" ruling. Surge during staging? Fine. Surge in some random other moments, yes even if you tell me to REVEAL? No way. Even the word choice itself "surge" imho was meant for staging not for other moments. I think they messed up claiming surge for other moments (I agreed with them in making surge during setup but I think they got greedy after that).

... euh... so, in short, ... no, I haven't used house rules for location lock, but I find often that they have to do with surge pouring them in there (which the idea of two-active-locations is intended to help you cope with, but I want to deal with the root cause)