I'm not a Decent newbie (been playing since 1st Edition was new). But I'm getting my butt handed to me in normal mode of Road To legend (Kindred Fire). My party is:

- Orkell the Swift (Beastmaster)

- Ashrian (Apothecary)

- Silhouette (Treasure Hunter)

- Ravaella Lightfoot (Conjurer)

In Kindred Fire, I lost the opening Quest before we fully made it into the second area. My party is very fast moving...most of them have 5 movement and/or 5 fatigue. I try not to linger around and kill every monster. But we were slaughtered.

On the first side quest I went on... the one with the shadow dragon boss where flesh boulders are chasing you... again, i did not linger and we sprinted through the first couple of map setups...and got wasted in the final battle.

(BTW: I own all the expansions and most of the other content, so I'm playing with pretty much every monster. That's been fun to have a wide variety of monsters to fight against)

So my party is 2 quests into the game and I've earned exactly 1 XP and about 300 total gold. I feel like if this doesn't turn around me for me quick, I'm going to get eaten alive as the campaign progresses.

And then here on the forums, I read that people are saying it's too easy. Really? What am I missing? Do I just suck? lol

Help? Are there any good sites where character strategy is discussed?

I can say I didn't came across such a situation. But anyway you'd better kill all the monsters before moving further .

I am playing with such a team:

- Ravaella, the conjurer

- Orkell, the skirmisher

- Avric, the spiritspeaker

- Rendiel, the bard

In the first quest I had a problem with extremely low damage versus high-armoured creatures (only Orkell has high enough damage). On the other hand non-stamina heal and extra armor from stoneskin helps to fight.

Even with such healing opportunities I got 3 deaths.

The one more advice I can give you is to try to find out your weaknesses and remove them with skills you pick or strategy.

As in the standard mode you have to clean an area before heading on. Besides you party hasn't got enough health to my taste.

Our first couple quests were rough as well. In the opening quest, we were slaughtered. Our healer (a Spiritspeaker) didn't have his healing yet, so we didn't get very far in before we exceeded our death allowance. We went back to town, but the available equipment wasn't helpful for our group, so we just spent our 1 XP and tried a side quest. Again, we failed. Back to Tamalir again, we finally found a couple weapons to help our party. And with that we managed to beat the next quest, and with another 2 XP to spend, we were feeling pretty comfortable with our party. The next side quest against the Shadow Dragon went by without a hitch. (It was almost too easy.) So with our record at 2 wins and 2 losses, we're now back in Tamalir ready to start the next major quest in our next gaming session.

So I guess depending on your party composition, the first couple quests can be really hard, but hopefully they get easier for your group as you acquire XP and gold.

Those are all expac classes so I don't know how they operate, but based on what has worked for me is:

- Make sure you have someone with blast. A rune master with blast is so scary, especially once you get sun rune. Being able to wipe a whole goblin archer group in 1 attack is nice.

- At the shop, prioritize defense in the beginning of the game.

- Don't open up doors when more than half of your party's turn is over. If you must, just have everyone waiting in front of the door and have them all rest. Even if you have to eat a minor peril for sitting around, you don't want to open a door, have 3 monster groups spawn, and have them all go one after another.

- Like I mentioned, I don't know those heroes or classes, but try use heroes that have 3's in Willpower and Might. The difference between 2 and 3 of an attribute is very significant from a probability perspective. There's going to be a lot of Willpower testing because of Disease and things like Howl from Barghests. Also, Might is sometimes used to open doors and such.

- Try to stick to the RPG trope of "tank, healer, damage" when making your party. Most monsters just attack the closest target so it's very easy to hold "aggro" on your tank classes. If you can get a Knight with Shield Mastery and chainmail, you'll brush off a lot of blue/yellow minions. Right now I'm running Disciple, Rune Master, and Champion and my basic strategy is to give the Runemaster an extra yellow die through Prayer of Healings buff ability, and then have the Runemaster take the 3 die attack with sun rune, and add an extra surge to it with the other ability, and then take a Fatigue for "surge + 2 heart." If I at least roll 1 surge, that's 4 damage right off the bat without even counting what's on the dice.

- Use surges to recover fatigue, this is something i overlooked for a long time.

I also lost the first 2 or 3 quests, then won a story quest.

I disagree that you should always clear out all the monsters. In one quest we could easily avoid the Zombie group because of its Shambling "trait", as an example.

For me, a new Descent player but a veteran Imperial Assault player, it's a balance between defeating Monsters and moving towards goals.

The Heroes movement capabilities is one of their greatest strengths, and should be utilized when expedient.

Edit: Additional remark - At the core of its gameplay mechanisms, Descent is about managing the limited number of actions Heroes have. Quests roughly play out in 5 - 10 turns, which means each Hero has 10 - 20 Actions. Not a lot, so how you spend Actions is a major factor in your chance of success. Of course you could still get hosed by bad die rolls and such...

A lot of the difficulty of Kindred Fire came from the random, seemingly cheap, attacks. For example, in Kindred Fire, when you get sniped by the "peasants" at the end of every round for one unavoidable damage. I understand it is supposed to be a harder campaign but possibly losing two health at the end of every round is pretty weak. Even worse was Wrath Incarnate. On top of fighting a chapter 2 Lord Merrick, who attacked with 3 dice, we were stuck fighting a regenerating, jacked-up red elemental who got to attack twice in a round. If I did not house rule that stun negated one of this attacks, we would have been slaughtered.

We only had 3 players, so maybe that is what made it so hard. We had Albright as the Disciple, Tahra as the Necromancer, and Grisbane (the slow) as a Berserker. It was a slog. I pitied my reanimate; he kept getting resurrected just to get killed about a turn later.

A lot of the difficulty of Kindred Fire came from the random, seemingly cheap, attacks. For example, in Kindred Fire, when you get sniped by the "peasants" at the end of every round for one unavoidable damage. I understand it is supposed to be a harder campaign but possibly losing two health at the end of every round is pretty weak. Even worse was Wrath Incarnate. On top of fighting a chapter 2 Lord Merrick, who attacked with 3 dice, we were stuck fighting a regenerating, jacked-up red elemental who got to attack twice in a round. If I did not house rule that stun negated one of this attacks, we would have been slaughtered.

We only had 3 players, so maybe that is what made it so hard. We had Albright as the Disciple, Tahra as the Necromancer, and Grisbane (the slow) as a Berserker. It was a slog. I pitied my reanimate; he kept getting resurrected just to get killed about a turn later.

I don't think you are supposed to be fighting an act II Lord Merrick in the opening quest. When you click on the info of a monster it is giving you the surge order for both Act I and Act II monsters/Lts. This can change from act I to act II if the monster/Lt. gains a new surge ability. In act one Merrick only has one surge ability so there is no need to any extra info where is in Act II he adds the ability of Wither. The app could be more clear about this but nowhere does it say to use the Act II card for Lord Merrick.

The elemental only regenerates if Merrick is still alive.

I could have sworn it said Merrick Act II. Maybe I misread it.

I would not be surprised if I managed to make the game harder than it needed to be. I tend to do that quite a bit in games...

On top of fighting a chapter 2 Lord Merrick...

This is wrong...

I hope you get better in the campaign and good luck with the rest of it

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!