First, this is not a bragging post or something, i just legitimately want to improve my game experience.

I played a few games with a few friends before deciding to purchase it. We ended up playing with mix normal/hard mythos, but we were just crushing the game.

I had checked up the rules to see if i had been making mistakes, and nope. I bought it and started my first game with only one investigator because people say it's the hardest, i picked up Mark Harrigan, and i crushed Azathoth (7 turns left). Then i had been playing a few more games with the Forsaken Lore and random investigators, but the game is still too easy, i am never pushed into the situations everyone says they get into, and i feel safe most of the game. I am going to try out with only with the hard mythos to see if that improves (i expect it to do).

But besides that, how do you tinker the game to raise difficulty ? What expansions, big or small, are the best at hardening the game ?

Cheers, and thank you in advance

Actually, the game is hardest when playing with the Base Game + Forsaken Lore. Anything more makes the game easier and easier. At least that's what the trend from the statistics show.

1 hour ago, Runko said:

Actually, the game is hardest when playing with the Base Game + Forsaken Lore. Anything more makes the game easier and easier. At least that's what the trend from the statistics show.

Depends on if you're using new investigators or not. Although I suspect op is doing something wrong. Anytime someone claims this game is easy it turns out to be a missed rule. The random nature of Eldritch Horror makes consistent easy wins an impossibility, especially one handed.

9 minutes ago, Meretrix said:

Depends on if you're using new investigators or not. Although I suspect op is doing something wrong. Anytime someone claims this game is easy it turns out to be a missed rule. The random nature of Eldritch Horror makes consistent easy wins an impossibility, especially one handed.

I had double checked and triple checked everything and gone online to see common mistakes, haven't found anything to say i am doing anything wrong. I was actually kind of annoyed at how slow Azathoth had been in my games, and i spent an hour browsing through internet to see if i mistaken his ability and no, it's just 1 most of the time (i don't want to spoiler myself checking on the actual cards). I might had been on a lucky streak, i can give you that.

But anyways, i am more interested into opinions on how to make the harder and ideas which could improve it than rather talk than my subjective own experiencie, know, i brought it up first, mostly if someone felt or had the same experience as me could bring up ways he/she did to improve it

I am guessing the game the gets easier with more expansion because added mechanics or investigators that are better than the core game ? So not using them should be fine. What else?! I had seen the data Runko mentions, that's why i picked Mark for my first game alone. Cheers.

Try using all hard mythos cards.

If you win consistently even then, something is definitely not right.

Mmmm,never played with only one investigator. But Maybe Azathot is easier that way,most of his misterys require one or two clues,you will be spawning just one portal per turn,His Reckoning is a joke,i should try it. Going back to expansions, MoM gives you focus tokens but in the other hand,having portals in africa and amazonas is quite annoying. Under the pyramids gives you a ton of strong items and new investigators,but the impairement tokens are a pain in the A$#.I dont own hastur expansion,but it looks quite tough.

On 7/7/2017 at 7:32 AM, DreadStar said:

I was actually kind of annoyed at how slow Azathoth had been in my games, and i spent an hour browsing through internet to see if i mistaken his ability and no, it's just 1 most of the time

What do you mean by this statement? "it's just 1 most of the time"

Are you advancing doom for each open gate that matches the current omen? That's what quite often takes me out, trying to manage the open gates, but then you get a situation where there are 3 of the same omen open, and doom advances 3-4 for a single Mythos card.

Yes i am. I mean that Azathoth special ability with the omen, most of the time will only have 1 eldritch token, and therefore, it will only advance the doom tracker once per 4 turns at best by his ability, not that it won't move at all...

I guess you've been pretty lucky with ( Warning, Spoiler:) the research encounters. There are at least two that do not even give you a chance and just put another eldritch token on the green space. [Plus, since this is in addition to the gates, it can get out of control very quickly. We had one game where doom went down by 5 in just one turn.]

Since you do have Forsaken Lore now, I'd suggest playing against Yig / Cthulhu. [If you still come back with the same results, you should probably consider a career change in order to earn tons of money. ]

Just played through cities in ruin and it's by far the hardest expansion

7 hours ago, moytank said:

Just played through cities in ruin and it's by far the hardest expansion

Oh, come on, you can't just post one sentence, seriously. More info, pleaseeeeeeeeee...

(A session report would be gold here. )

You can not let us all get mad by unknowingness.

14 hours ago, Lorinor said:

Oh, come on, you can't just post one sentence, seriously. More info, pleaseeeeeeeeee...

(A session report would be gold here. )

You can not let us all get mad by unknowingness.

LOL you're right. I'll start by noting that this was our first impressions of 1 game BUT the new disaster deck dramatically increases the difficulty. You can also add the disaster deck with any ancient one.

We played with 4 investigators, Ashcan pete, The athlete (i forgot her name), Dexter Drake and Harvey Walters along with the prelude for Shudde's set up. Things got bad really fast.

The round track starts at 15 so we thought we had plenty of time to get buffed but my god were we wrong. We failed to close the first gate and doom advanced once which triggered the first of many disasters. A polar storm swept the map hitting most parts of the game board (barely into the game and we nearly died lol). The second disaster destroyed Istanbul and any investigator who's caught in one of these are pretty much dead.

The game now has environmental hazards in the form of destroyed cities. You wanna do everything you can to avoid them since the encounters in them always result in you losing health/sanity, items , gaining an injury, disease etc. Basically everything standard location cards have without the good stuff from succeeding. By the time we hit round 13 everyone either had injuries conditions and/or low health.

The situation got out of hand and we couldn't gain traction to get ourselves properly equipped. Trying to keep up with the world caving in on itself and dealing with disasters made closing portals even harder. This would often advanced doom 2 or 3 times in one mythos phase triggering multiple disasters at once. T-T GG much?

By the time we finished the first mystery, one investigator had died and everyone else were hanging by a thread along with the doom track close to awakening the big daddy. We had to create a relief effort within the destroyed cities to advance the second mystery. Harvey walters got blown away by a tornado, Ashcan pete managed to get a small group of people out of destroyed rome and got obliterated by a meteor storm in the process (we saluted the poor drifter and his dog T-T). Lets just say it was definitely game over at that point. We failed miserably but maan was it epic!

TLDR: Disaster deck increased the difficulty creating hazards around the game board. Health and Sanity management are even more important. GG Shudde Me'll GG

Overall Impressions: I really loved the disaster deck. You are constantly paying attention to your teammates because health and sanity management are even more important. Encountering destroyed cities captured the apocalypse scenario extremely well. The disaster deck brought more theme and helped tightened the gameplay. I'm a huge fan of what this expansion brought to the eldritch horror and would highly recommend it. That being said I CAN'T say that the disaster deck is for everyone. Eldritch horror is already an unforgiving game and some people might not enjoy another layer of difficulty. (One of the players in our group got frustrated from all death and destruction)

7 hours ago, moytank said:

...text...

It's Rita Young, btw. --- Thanks for the report, that sounds horrifying, but I like it.

Seems like this is the expansion DreadStar has been waiting for... or is it?!

Will definitly check it out. Busy right now playing too much arkham horror LCG (****, why didn't i discover this c'thulu crack earlier?)

On 7/7/2017 at 10:08 PM, DreadStar said:

Yes i am. I mean that Azathoth special ability with the omen, most of the time will only have 1 eldritch token, and therefore, it will only advance the doom tracker once per 4 turns at best by his ability, not that it won't move at all...

... I think you are doing it wrong. The special ability is in addition to the regular advancement of doom that occurs during EVERY 'advance omen' symbol from the mythos. If there are any gates that match the current symbol after it is advanced, you drop doom by 1 for EACH matching gate. The eldritch token that goes on the comet is just EXTRA icing on the cake.

I don't play solo myself, but from this, it sounds like you are ONLY dropping the doom from the eldritch token on the omen track. If so, that is VERY not right.

I imagine gate management with one investigator is quite hard as your encounters are extremely limited, not to mention your mobility. I find it very unlikely that you won with 7 'turns' left. I'm not even sure how you could predict 7 turns easily considering how chaotic and changing the board state can be based on what gates open where.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but I have a strong feeling you are calculating doom wrong in general. If not, my apologies, but I advise to re-double-check before you assume you need something to make the game much harder.

As for difficult expansions, definitely Forsaken Lore.

7 hours ago, Soakman said:

... I think you are doing it wrong. The special ability is in addition to the regular advancement of doom that occurs during EVERY 'advance omen' symbol from the mythos. If there are any gates that match the current symbol after it is advanced, you drop doom by 1 for EACH matching gate. The eldritch token that goes on the comet is just EXTRA icing on the cake.

Read the next response. No, i am not doing that wrong. What i am saying is that at the end of the day, azathoth only manages to get his ability tick off a few times because it doesn't "improve" (or it haven't improved in my games, which actually confused me and made me double and triple check if i was doing it right), not that i only move the doom tracker with that lol. And no it doesn't bother me, well, only a little because i already answered that, and i already said i have forsaken lore in the OP. Anyways thank you for the your time. Whenever i have the time to play with only tentacles i will come back here sobbing (hopefully).

I have to admit, you piqued my curiosity, as I've never played with just one investigator.
What transpired next is written down below. [Used every expansion except Dreamlands and Cities in Ruin.
--- May contain spoilers for some, so read at own risk.]

Honestly, I can't say I can see how you did it.
You kind of want to go for gates/rumors, so that you'll have more time, but...

With just one investigator, you either can't make it sometimes or you just can't get there.

Kind of doomed if you do and doomed if you don't.

One versus Azathoth

Investigator: Ursula Downs

Doom: 15 ; Eldritch Tokens on Green: 1

Mystery (1): Seed of the Demon Sultan

Expedition: Buenos Aires

Gates:

Buenos Aires (Blue) - Monster: Ghoul

Antartica (Blue) - Monster: Leng Spider

Clues: Buenos Aires

Start Marker: +1 Influence

Turn 1:

- special action: Move from Heart of Africa to space 15.

- prepare for travel (ship)

- travel to Buenos Aires

Encounter:

- Ghoul: Will: 3D, 1 success (no dmg) ; Strength: 3D, 2 successes (no dmg) -> Ghoul dead.

- Research Encounter: 4D (w. special ability), 1 success -> Gain 2 clues.

Mythos: (green card)

- Omen moves to Blue, Doom down to 13.

- Monster Surge:

Buenos Aires: Wraith [Gain a Cursed condition.]

Antarctica: Spawn of Sebak

- Clues: Tunguska

- Card itself: Not relevant.

Turn 2:

- prepare for travel (ship)

- travel to Sydney

Encounter:

- Sydney: Will: 2D, no successes -> Gain a Hunger and a Paranoia condition.

Mythos: (yellow card)

- Omen moves to Red, Doom stays at 13.

- Reckoning:

Green mythos card from last turn is removed from the game.

- Cursed: Rolled 2, condition stays.

- Hunger: 2D, 1 success -> nothing happens.

- Paranoia: 2D, no successes -> flip the card. -> Lost +1 Influence marker.

- Gates:

Buenos Aires (Blue) - Monster: Wraith

Antarctica (Blue) - Monster: Leng Spider ; Spawn of Sebak

Arkham (Red) - Monster: none [Cthonian moves to Heart of Africa]

- Card itself: Draw and resolve another mythos card.

Mythos (blue card):

- Clues: Tunguska ; space 15

- Card itself: Each reckoning removes another mythos card from the game.

Turn 3:

- prepare for travel (ship)

- travel to Shanghai

Encounter:

- Shanghai: Will (-1): 2D (w. special ability), 1 success -> +1 Will.

Mythos: (yellow card):

- Omen moves to Blue, Doom down to 11.

- Reckoning:

1 extra mythos card gone.

- Cursed: Rolled 5, condition goes away.

- Hunger: 3D, 1 success -> nothing happens.

- Gates:

Buenos Aires (Blue) - Monster: Wraith

Antarctica (Blue) - Monster: Leng Spider ; Spawn of Sebak

Arkham (Red) - Monster: none

Amazon (Red) - Monster: Dark Young

- card itself: Impair Influence, lost 2 health and 2 sanity to not impair anything else.

Turn 4:

- prepare for travel (train)

- travel to Tunguska

Encounter:

- Mystery: Observation: 3D, 1 success -> Spend two clues to solve Mystery (1).

Mythos (green card):

- Omen moves to Green, Doom goes down to 10.

- Monster Surge:

- Gates:

Buenos Aires (Blue) - Monster: Wraith

Antarctica (Blue) - Monster: Leng Spider ; Spawn of Sebak

Arkham (Red) - Monster: none

Amazon (Red) - Monster: Dark Young

Shanghai (Red) - Monster: Zombie

- Clues: Tunguska ; space 15 ; space 19

- card itself: Gain a Debt condition.

Turn 5 :

Mystery (2): The True Name [Token: space 13]

- Rest: +1 health, no sanity ; Hunger: Rolled 2, condition stays.

- Gain a Focus.

Encounter:

- Research encounter: Observation: 3D, 1 success -> Gain this clue. -> Now there are 2 tokens on the green comet.

Mythos (yellow card):

- Omen moves to Blue, Doom goes down to 8.

- Reckoning:

Dark Young: Doom goes down to 7.

Zombie: Zombie Horde spawns on Shanghai, Zombie discarded.

Another extra mythos card is removed from the game.

Hunger: Will, 3D -> 3 successes -> Nothing happens.

Debt: Will, 3D -> 1 success -> Discard Debt condition.

- Gates:

Buenos Aires (Blue) - Monster: Wraith

Antarctica (Blue) - Monster: Leng Spider ; Spawn of Sebak

Arkham (Red) - Monster: none

Amazon (Red) - Monster: Dark Young

Shanghai (Red) - Monster: Zombie

Rom (Red) - Monster: Gug

Turn 6:

- travel to space 19

- Gain a Focus.

Encounter:

- Research encounter: Strength (-1): 5D (w. special ability) -> no successes -> Lost 4 health. -> Dead.

-> Doom goes down to 6.

-> Move corpse to Tokyo.

Mythos (yellow card):

- Omen moves to Red, Doom goes down to 2.

- Reckoning:

Another extra mythos card is removed from the game.

- Gates:

Buenos Aires (Blue) - Monster: Wraith

Antarctica (Blue) - Monster: Leng Spider ; Spawn of Sebak

Arkham (Red) - Monster: none

Amazon (Red) - Monster: Dark Young

Shanghai (Red) - Monster: Zombie

Rom (Red) - Monster: Gug

Pyramids (Blue) - Monster: Sand Dweller

card itself: Nothing happens.

Turn 7:

New investigator.

...

Mythos (green card):

- Omen moves to Blue, Doom goes down to 0.

Game Over.

Though you may have forsaken lore, I'm just saying that it is definitely the 'hardest' addition. Congrats on your early mastery of the game! Either that or you have the best luck, haha. Are you sure you're not an Ancient One? I mean, the stars align, but not every game, haha.

I tried to solo Azathot too. Just rushed the misteries and kinda ignored everything else,i endup losing due to a rumor(the one with the rift in london).But i just needed just one more turn to win the game. I think Azathot and shog are totally soloable. Rise of the elderthings is one of the easiest old ones normally,but when you play with only one investigator its hard as hell,the extra mistery prolongs the game too much,and the extra board becomes a problem too.When you reach the last mistery you just have a ton of open portals,rumors and crap going on. Keep in mind that the rumors and the misteries can give you a complete diferent story,Even with low health the meatball of dunwich and azathots green thingy are a pain in the butt.

Just played Cities in Ruin for the first time last night, and that should make the game harder for you...

I played with 2 investigators against Azathoth last night and lost miserably (worst loss so far out of 12+ games I think). I lost 6 investigators! (advancing the doom 6 due to these losses obviously compounded the early problems).

I've only played Azathoth twice and lost both times so far. I'll continue to try until I can chalk up a win.

I might do a report when i get a chance to play again and attempt to do a report. Since i was playing Mark (i did one with Diana, but i just roflstomped with her, i was really lucky with the spells and events early, and she snowballed into godlike in no time), i couldn't reliabily close gates, so i decided to ignore them except if they were in the way (or maybe losing one movement or that kind of thing, specially for the blue gates), otherwise i would lose too much time without doing the misteries, which is what will make you win. The second game i had a solved mistery shuffled back, but if you tunnel vision the objectives, since you are only one player, they are very easy to do (normally just 1 clue, 2 clues tops).

There is one mistery that can be quite annoying because you will have to do expeditions, but are doable.

So if you are playing solo, you are pretty much tunneling to complete the misteries, and taking detours to close gates isn't that neccessary. Probably it is the same for more players, but i had only played 4 games with 3 players, and we were learning rather and testing stuff out rather than having a good plan and execution.

To make game more harder you have to do just few things

1 play with odd number of investigators . 3 person always more hard then 4.

2 take away easy mythos cards when you build up the mythos deck. That will be very painfully .

Believe me it will be enough to struggle

I agree with Meretrix that you are very likely doing something wrong. When I first started playing this game, I also won frequently...until I learned the rules. Suggest that you may want to watch a play through on YouTube. Catweazle and Jeremy Bowers do a very nice job. If you are playing correctly, then I expect that you have been very lucky.

Nup, i am not doing anything wrong, had checked the rules plenty of times, double checked, triple checked, checked common beginner mistakes, FAQ, playthroughts and the like. It's getting tiresome to be honest, the only reason i posted that was to see if somebody else had been in my place and found ways to make it more interesting, so let's say i had been very lucky thus far and just discuss which expansions add more difficulty to the game, please.

If i do a report by play i will do in a different thread, to not derail this one (my fault to be honest).