Hey,

Me and 2 friends just lost one of the side quests and I 'think' it was a (mostly) impossible scenario and wanted to see what others thought.

We were in the final chamber of the 'Lair Of Tekaris'. The primary mechanic at play here is that the boss steals 1 health from each of his minions, with any extra being turned into damaged applied to each hero (not shared between). However after this was applied a Major Peril kept being applied called Blood for Blood which healed every enemy for 3 health, with all the damage that was being healed being turned into damage which was then shared between us. So the monsters were getting double healing and we were getting double unblockable damage (on top of normal attacks).

Has anyone else played this side quest? Did you have the same peril events playing out? Does this sound broken to people?

Cheers,

booleanBoy

Well from the sound of it, you would need to deal N damage to the boss each round (N being the number of minions around) in order to mitigate his damage, and would take N damage each round (N again being the number of minions).

This sounds bad, but could be pretty easily mitigated by having one hero hit the boss once (hopefully dealing 2-3 damage) and having every other hero focus on bringing down at least one minion (hopefully without damaging one that is not killed) each round.

Unless your map is absolutely full of minion enemies, you should be able to get this to a point where you can easily sustain it within a turn (ie down to N=1-2).

If you're getting hit by major perils that's the games way of telling you you're taking too long.

Everytime i see this kind of answer "you were taking too long" - to justify some kind of peril - i fell that something is out of place.

I am "ok" with the fact that you should not take too long to reach out the objectives, but, being punished by some kind perils doesn't fit well in a tactic game.

Tendril of Darkness, for instance, isn't a peril that punishes you. It destroys your group with raw damage and you can't do anything to avoid of counter that.

Make things harder is one thing. But turn on the lights "game over" because you were not fast enough still sounds unfair to me.

I really liked the answer of Silidus. He gave us possibilities and a strategic measures to counter a dangerous situation. Thank you!

I have completed this quest twice on hard act 1 (both wins).

The first time we rushed the room and closed off the portals such that only 1 (or maybe 2) flesh moulders got through. Once the others were down Tekaris was easy. The second time we were blocked by the dragon for too long so we just hit Tekaris (he came to us) and ignored minions. If you are doing enough damage you can overcome the heal and win, but you need to be able to survive bit of a beating.

In both cases the worst part was the Barghests earlier. Those guys suck.

Blood for Blood is an unlucky draw that would certainly make it much harder, but I still think it is doable.

5 hours ago, JuniorDRU said:

Everytime i see this kind of answer "you were taking too long" - to justify some kind of peril - i fell that something is out of place.

I am "ok" with the fact that you should not take too long to reach out the objectives, but, being punished by some kind perils doesn't fit well in a tactic game.

Tendril of Darkness, for instance, isn't a peril that punishes you. It destroys your group with raw damage and you can't do anything to avoid of counter that.

Make things harder is one thing. But turn on the lights "game over" because you were not fast enough still sounds unfair to me.

I really liked the answer of Silidus. He gave us possibilities and a strategic measures to counter a dangerous situation. Thank you!

I get where you're coming from, I have a friend that feels the same way. I tried to explain to him that Descent isn't Diablo, it's Final Fantasy Tactics with a turn timer.

In RtL with a balanced party and no turn limit the heroes can not lose. Healing is mostly limited by fatigue, and fatigue recovery is only limited by time. The only realistic ways to counter that are turn limits or have damage so high that it outpaces the healing.

The original game got around these issues by turning the game into a race between both sides, but the app can't really be made smart enough to do that.

You are totally right. I came from Diablo and games like that!

I was so frustrated that i didn't think about perils by your point of view. I still getting used with boardgames and - besides some dificults- i'm loving it!

Thank you for your reply!

@JuniorDRU

You have to think of the perils as being kinda like the Eye of Sauron. The longer you mess about, the more the Overlord can bring his terrible might to bear upon you. Game mechanic wise, major perils are a 'soft' timer, something that marks the end of your allotted time, but isn't an instant game over... just something to start to tip the scale towards the OL and break up any potential stale mate in the encounter.

When it comes to major perils, you can usually expect to get hit by one or two during the longer quests (such as the finale of rise of all goblins), they are random and can end up being an agent added to the frey, or some form of static damage or other effect to deal with, but they are mostly intended to be manageable for a few rounds as you finish off the end of the encounter.

Deadly perils are "you are out of time".

To be fair, I've run through lair of tekaris 3 or 4 times now, and the perils come very early in this scenario. I believe that the first minor peril comes somewhere between turn 6 and 8, thus it's practically impossible to get to the end room without the perils starting. This makes it one of the hardest side quests in the campaign.

I understand that Peril, especially when it turns Major and just randomly does massive damage, feels gamey.
However, to keep the tactics in the game, there has to be pressure on the player(s) to continuously make choices between killing Monsters and attaining Objectives.
Without Peril (or another "timer" of sorts), the pressure is off: Players can take their time slaughtering all the Monsters, then languidly take care of Objectives.
And, especially in a game that is about mobility above all, you need that pressure to make your trade-offs.

Also, keep checking in the app what the current Objective is . You can always call it up in the app (through the Log button), and if you don't take more than a turn to work (partly) towards an Objective, Minor Peril will not turn into Major Peril, by my experience.