So while playing RTL do you normally move through objectives as quick as possible or try and kill all enemies?

I'm finding I'm losing most quests, they always seem to end up reloading enemies and adding peril before I can finish. Maybe I need to start moving and not focus on defeating monsters on the board. I'm playing on normal with Jain, Avric, Grisban and Leoric.

You need to find a balance ...

You can't completely ignore monsters, as they will simply continue to follow you and pound on you. Between those at the back, and those at the front, they will eventually knock you down enough times to lower your moral to nothing.

You don't mention what classes you are playing with for each of your heroes, but trying to find classes that synergize with hero abilities and heroic feats are key. In addition, it helps if the heroes also have some synergistic combinations.

Next, what you do on each of your hero's turns can be key. For example, let's assume there are 2 distinct monster groups on the board, and it is the start of the round.

Hero 1 will go ...

Monster group 1 will go ...

Hero 2 will go ...

Monster group 2 will go ...

Hero 3 will go ...

Hero 4 will go ...

New round

Hero 1 will go ...

After hero 1 goes, one of the two monster groups will be activated. After this occurs, you know for a fact which monster group will go next. There is little value at this point in attacking monster group 1. Typically, try and attack monster group 2 (which has yet to take a turn), because if you can kill enough of them, or perhaps all of them, then you will limit or deny completely what they could do to the heroes. In fact, if you can kill them all, then you will get 3 more hero turns before monster group 1 gets activated again.

The above is a simple example, but demonstrates how properly planning what you are going to do, taking advantage of the knowledge you have of how the game works, can increase the effectiveness of each of your turns, and result in more wins for you.

One last point ... don't forget to use your heroic feats ... especially those that have offensive capabilities. As the saying goes, "you can't take them with you". Often times, those heroic feats, even used early in a specific quest, can make the difference between winning and losing.

Thanks, good advice on attacking which monster group will attack next.

Here are my classes;

Grisban - Berserker

Jain - Wildlander.

Leoric - Necromancer

Avric - Disciple

I did not have problems playing normal descent and I am usually good at these types of games. Most quests I think I'm about to win and then new monsters spawn on top of peril effects.

I've just finished my first run through and from my experience peril is worse than any monster groups on the board. Once w had a peril effect deal 25 damage to the party!! It's game over at that stage.

Peril kicks in when you haven't explored a new section within a set amount of time. Therefore pushing on is a must. Sometimes it's worth opening that door and running off even when you're not done in your current section because there's a good chance that the beasties inside will be easier to handle than an increasingly deadly peril effect every turn. Therefore, always have a game plan to get to the next 'exploration' point, even if it's someone holding back for that purpose. I found Jain was great for that purpose as once you get some movement skills like fleet of foot combined with her feat she can pretty much rejoin the main group any time she wants.

Any2 is right though, you can't ignore the monsters. Try having your party split its objective equally; two heros fighting the hordes off and two focusing on pressing forward. Again you'll need to find a balance between splitting focus and isolating heros and sometimes it will be impossible (like a horde in a tight corridor with no way around) but getting bogged down into focusing on just monster hunting or just objective grabbing is usually a recipe for disaster.

That turned into a massive ramble. I apologise. The short of it is try and focus on both equally and have a plan b!!

I should add that I mean open the doors once peril kicks in, not just running around opening doors for fun!!

Thanks for the tips guys I will try this! it plays a lot different than normal descent. Do you feel different characters/classes make a big difference or are they mostly balanced if you use them right?

Leoric - Necromancer

The Necromancer class is not very popular among fellow Descent players, but our group has found the Reanimate quite useful in RtL. While a human overlord would probably ignore the Reanimate, you can often try to position it so, that it will be attacked first by the RtL App and soak up a lot of damage. Hence our first move in a quest or after opening a door is to activate the Necromancer, summon the Reanimate and place it so that it can weaken the first impact of a fresh Monster group.

I've found that good movement is important in RtL, and it's also even more important than usual to take a break before opening doors, since any monster groups that spawn, sometime up to 2 per tile, will all get to activate after the door opens, even if there are no hero activation left. so it is important that the hero save some activations to respond to the fresh monsters.

Also abilities, feats and skills that target multiple monsters are still important, even if some, like blast, may have been nerfed because the AI tends to bunch up a lot more than a true OL would, so even with the nerf, you can still punish bunching.

You say some abilities like blast, my understanding g was all abilities that let you target multiple enemies suffer the 50% rule for all targets after the first. Is this not the case?

You say some abilities like blast, my understanding g was all abilities that let you target multiple enemies suffer the 50% rule for all targets after the first. Is this not the case?

Correct. Any attack that affects multiple monsters ...

RTL Page 10:

Thought that was the case. Although I never noticed that the original target doesn't have to be the one taking the full hit. That's certainly interesting...

Thought that was the case. Although I never noticed that the original target doesn't have to be the one taking the full hit. That's certainly interesting...

I agree that it is interesting. There may even be some good strategies leveraging that fact ...

Still, I hate this rule, as it implies you can deal full damage to something other than the targeted monster, which is inconsistent to the game's base rules. You can't attack anything until you declare a target for the attack, and said target has to be a space that contains a figure. Anything else that is affected by the attack is just that, affected.

This rule for RTL seems to allow you to target something at range say 2 (which is guaranteed if you don't roll an X), and then apply full damage to something that is at range 3, which could have been a miss under normal circumstances (say you only roll 2 range).

I really don't like this at all.

Oh man that blast rule kills me, I'm struggling even when applying full damage. Anyone know if you can target a space Instead of a monster with blast? If not it will be hard not to hit your own guys

Oh man that blast rule kills me, I'm struggling even when applying full damage. Anyone know if you can target a space Instead of a monster with blast? If not it will be hard not to hit your own guys

No. You must target a space containing a figure.

Thought that was the case. Although I never noticed that the original target doesn't have to be the one taking the full hit. That's certainly interesting...

I agree that it is interesting. There may even be some good strategies leveraging that fact ...

Still, I hate this rule, as it implies you can deal full damage to something other than the targeted monster, which is inconsistent to the game's base rules. You can't attack anything until you declare a target for the attack, and said target has to be a space that contains a figure. Anything else that is affected by the attack is just that, affected.

This rule for RTL seems to allow you to target something at range say 2 (which is guaranteed if you don't roll an X), and then apply full damage to something that is at range 3, which could have been a miss under normal circumstances (say you only roll 2 range).

I really don't like this at all.

My initial thoughts other than cheating range was smacking targets which are out of sight, such as round a corner or behind a screen of minions. I don't think I'll mention this to my group and carry on playing 100% to target 50% splash

There are still some abilities that hit multiple monsters that aren't nerfed... but they are ones that require separate attack rolls.

Like Prismatic Assault, for example: The conjurer gets to make an attack from each of his images...since these are all separate attack, the ones after the first don't get halved.

Thought that was the case. Although I never noticed that the original target doesn't have to be the one taking the full hit. That's certainly interesting...

I agree that it is interesting. There may even be some good strategies leveraging that fact ...

Still, I hate this rule, as it implies you can deal full damage to something other than the targeted monster, which is inconsistent to the game's base rules. You can't attack anything until you declare a target for the attack, and said target has to be a space that contains a figure. Anything else that is affected by the attack is just that, affected.

This rule for RTL seems to allow you to target something at range say 2 (which is guaranteed if you don't roll an X), and then apply full damage to something that is at range 3, which could have been a miss under normal circumstances (say you only roll 2 range).

I really don't like this at all.

My initial thoughts other than cheating range was smacking targets which are out of sight, such as round a corner or behind a screen of minions. I don't think I'll mention this to my group and carry on playing 100% to target 50% splash

I have had an off-line discussion with someone about the whole blast like effect and the rules for dealing damage. This individual is very knowledgeable about the game and has my respect.

He did make a good point in that this is basically how blast works right now, RAW. There is no change to the rules. It simply appears to be different because you are choosing where to apply full damage versus half damage, rather than everything taking full damage.

Still, it has the appearance of counter-intuitiveness. I simply think it would make more sense, and would cause less angst, if the targeted monster was the one forced to take full damage, and the blast effect (say due to being mitigated because of distance and the targeted monster blocking some of the destructive power) causing 1/2 damage to all others.