Please, FFG, in your Errata / FAQ post for this, fix the Delve quest. You can just lockdown the game, not needing to explore, and just spend turn after turn after turn chipping away at the abomination and healing with virtually no risk. Then after he's dead, go fullly healing and aiding everyone, raiding the entire explore deck, and the rest of the game is trivial. It is one huge bore for experienced players.

I agree they need to fix it, but I also find it rather humorous how experienced players need a fix declared for them. I'm sure any of us could come up with half a dozen ways to fix the quest quickly and simply.

I'm not making fun of you; I have this urge to know the "real" answer myself and have yet to bother coming up with my own fix.

Exactly, I have enough work to do, I do not want to work during my play time!

Also, I'd prefer to see an actual fix...not "difficulty levels" added on. I love that the game does not offer difficulty levels, but instead, a single optmized game experience.

I have been playing a variant where when you defeat the Abomination it is placed in the Nemesis lair - that way if you roll and nemisis symbol it will respawn. Makes you want to have as many location explored as you can before he spawns the first time. Or else you will be constantly battling him to get the locations explored.

I know its not a official Errata but it makes turlting the explore less appealling.

Yep. This all being said, there really is no inherent difference between the delve quest and most of the scenario quests in terms of overall structure. Theoretically, if you somehow had strong enough heroes to each turn come out ahead of Odious Grump activating 2-3 times per turn, then there would be a similar problem in Scenario 1. Without a hard "game end" point on the Peril track, this risk is always present when they create new scenarios.

The trick is, if you are not going to have a hard "Game End" point, you need to have some other method of keeping the outcome in doubt up until near the game's actual end point. Possibly the scariness of the Abomination's appearance by itself was thought to be enough to keep the outcome in doubt, but in practice it is not.

That's not exactly accurate. I finished the delve quest and we were able to complete it last night after a few hours.

Are you remembering that if the Abomination is in front of you, you must still roll a black die? Taking a potential 4 wound hit to attempt to heal a few damage is not my idea of easy.

Yes, if you have no monsters in front of you healing is not an issue with the Abomination, but we had a tough time keeping ourselves healed and could not really 'run the clock'.

Yes, rules are played correctly. You get to the point where you fight the Abomination with no enemies on the board, then you just chip away. Think twice before exploring.

I'm going to try the delve quest with the orc boss as the final nemesis and see what happens - another possibility might be to include the Bright Wizard when you want to have a little more pressure on the party since she has to explore to refresh (and force her to wear heavy armor?).

I think of the delve quest as being a somewhat lighter experience anyway, since you automatically get legendary items.