Hi everyone !
So, I started RtL basically as it came out. I've went through Rise of Goblins on release, before difficulties were added. Then started Kindred Fire with a 4 hero party, mid-way through with a 2 hero party, and came back to complete my 4 hero run.
I had the idea to take some pictures of my progression through the final quest of Kindred Fire. I'm here to go through it and give you my opinion and hindsight on Road to Legends and Kindred Fire. Just a side note, I'm an experienced Descent player and overall table-top and rpg player. I also own every single thing except Heroes & Monster packs for obvious reasons; they basically are reworked Conversion Kit things. So going into Road to Legends, I checked in every packs that did not have new characters/monster groups, so you will see some Converted stuff. As much as I can, I play with the 2nd edition version of things, so I apply changes and just use figures from 1st Edition. I also want to apologize the poor picture quality, but the essential is shown !
So let's start with a quick presentation of my party. I have completed almost every side quest I've been able to, except the last one since my morale was low and I decided to recover to town before going into the finale. I had a lot of gold and fame (74 to be exact going into the finale) and never lost a single quest with this party, despite the hard difficulty.
Syndrael - Champion
Mad Carthos - Conjurer (He's not normally available through Road to Legends, but I just used another mage in the app while using him)
High Mage Quellen - Necromancer
Okaluk & Rakash - Apothecary
I just hope this link actually works. You can get through image by image in the album and follow the description;
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10154284755649439.1073741827.586799438&type=1&l=b30bae23a9
With the first picture, you can see I'm quite geared up. Sadly I wasn't able to get a shield for Syndrael ! My two mages having some kind of summons, it helps A LOT in Road to Legends as they can soak some crucial attacks and limit movements.
But here you can scroll through the pictures with the description explaining what's going in as I slowly grind the whole quest. It was just as challenging as I'd expect it; Despite a very powerful group with a more than decent selection of items, I won the quest with only 1 Morale point remaining. A single turn of Alric and Bol'Goreth hitting at me could potentially have turned the tide. But in the end, I manage to win the campaign, not losing a single quest !
Honestly, I had a blast doing the whole campaign alone, almost twice already. I felt like it was challenging enough for me to get a similar feeling to playing against an Overlord. Except monsters are dumb and you can abuse the hell out of it. Actually, at hard, you might need to abuse the hell out of it. I love the fact that the campaign adapts to the things you own, spawning some of my most recent acquisitions in the fight. I even had a Mist of Bilehall based side-quest, and it was my favorite side-quest ! (Mad Moriden's Tower)
Honestly, my biggest advice about Road to Legends would be; try it. I seriously enjoyed it and will probably start a new campaign right away. It's an amazing way to enjoy all your hard earned Descent boxes all alone, or with some friends, without the competitiveness of playing against a friend.
If you want to take the "Hard" route, just take some more time in planning your party. Here's a few points I'd take a look on while choosing heroes and classes;
- Get some pets/familiars. Honestly, those are lifesavers in many situation. Beastmaster, Necromancer, Conjurer, Geomancer, those are all amazing choices for Road to Legends
- Make sure you have something to remove conditions. If you think you played with an OL who likes conditions, wait until you play some RtL.
- Search tokens are MUCH less important than in a standard campaign. Keep this in mind if you're looking to thief or treasure hunter. The only real good of these is that there is more search token for each quest. But don't focus on those too much; unless you have free time, you're searching in hopes of a potions, not gold.
- Tanks are much more interesting in RtL as they can be positioned to actually soak damage. Most of the time, monsters will go for the closest hero. An OL might ignore a 3 defense dice high health hero. RtL will not.
- Focus on the specified objective. If it says kill a specific target; don't bother too much with what's around him. Most of the time, completing an objectif will trigger something else, or even just ends the quest straight up. You don't need to kill everything around a lieutenant to win the quest; if you burst him down, you win.
- Many perils will come back; be prepared. Perils like "share X amount of damage between your heroes" or "each hero not adjacent to another suffers X" will come back, stronger every time. Brace yourself for these.
- Play around the AI. Check monster speed, place yourself accordingly. Sometimes, AI do stupid **** and will often focus closest target. That's where pets or tanks get amazing.
That's all I have in mind. I wish everyone to have as much fun as I did in Road to Legends !