Before last night, my wife and I had played this game 7 times (cycle x2, innsmouth x3, shattered x1, vengeful x1) where we each played a single investigator. We had only won once (the first game on cycle) and the rest were not even close. It's frustrating because it doesn't feel like there was much more we could do. The main culprit seems to be the unrelenting onslaught of mythos events inflicting 3 to 4 damage and/or horror on the same two people every 4 actions.

Last night, we decided to replay Vengeful Impulses again, but this time we each played 2 investigators for a total of 4. We absolutely crushed it! I would not attribute all of this success to prior knowledge of the scenario. In our first play through, we both went insane about halfway through and lost shortly after. Rather, if felt we had twice as many actions per mythos and twice the pool of health/sanity to distribute that mythos into. At the same time, the mythos events seemed unchanged. They did not feel anymore severe than 2 investigators, and certainty not twice as severe.

Has this been other people's experience? A quick look on these forums suggest that mythos and monster health scale with investigators, but this does not seem to be true, at least in the case of Vengeful Impulses. Or perhaps we have had bad luck 2 player and great luck 4 player? Although, I think we have a pretty solid idea now of how to beat Innsmouth and it just seems impossible with only 4 actions a turn.

It's disappointing, because it feels like playing with 2 players is a huge disadvantage. At the same time, playing with 2 each ruins the "feel" as well as the insanity mechanic (we've agreed we will basically ignore alternate win conditions, after all, what does it mean to say Agatha won but Harvey lost when I play both).

I have to agree. If there's a monster on the board, there are 3 things that can affect you in one round. The mythos event, the monster, and the horror check.

If you roll bad all three times, you could start to unravel pretty fast.

My group got SO FRUSTRATED with bad rolls in Escape from Innsmouth, that we started allowing rerolls when it became obvious that the situation was impossible. Even then, with 4 players, we lost.

We've tried that scenario twice and to this day we refuse to play it.

However! We are forgetting the spirit of the game. Hopelessness, despair, horror...

We may just need to come into the game with a better mindset. Have fun experiencing the insanity and ultimate defeat at the hands of greater things.

It does seem like more investigators makes for an easier investigation (generally), the stats we've collected so far seem to bear this out: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/239815-statistics-submit-your-plays/

This has been my experience as well. Playing with 2, 3, and 4 investigators the numbers in the Mythos events never changed across player numbers, nor were there any more or less 'soft' events. The only thing I've seen consistently change based on number of investigators has been monster health, and (I think) the hidden timers on when certain story factors in the scenario move forward.

With the Mythos events not changing / being seeded differently based on number of players, they can wind up feeling pretty cheap, as a bad roll that you have no way to mitigate or change just destroys you.

I recently got the game and have been playing solo. I've yet to come close to winning. The closest I've come is when I've controlled 3 investigators, but we were still beat before I could attempt to solve the puzzle (it doesn't help when a Cthulhu-like monster spawns on the puzzle square).

That hasn't been our experience. My wife and I have won every game eventually with just two investigators in an average of 1 to 3 play throughs of each scenario. The only one we haven't won with just two investigators is Escape from Innsmouth (I think we went through 5 times with just two investigators), and we beat it pretty easily with 4, and What Lies Within, as we've only played it once.

Could it be the power level of the investigators? We pretty much have only played it using our two favorite Arkham investigators, Jenny Barnes and Ashcan Pete. Ashcan in particular can offer some nasty tricks, like if you find the shotgun Jenny can fire it, and then when Ashcan's turn begins he can have Duke Fetch it so he can unload with it.

You can win with just 2 players but my experience is you have to know exactly what to do. It does take some of the fun out of the scenario when you have to learn it inside out to even feel like you have a chance of winning. For most of the missions there's very few wasted moves that you can do and still win.

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