Hi everyone,

After having played several games with several of the adventure and item expansions, I thought I would come and share some ideas I had about variations to make the game more difficult. I really love this game, but I find that towards the endgame it really becomes a walk in the park. Over the course of the last few games we have removed several of the items which we believed were overpowered (Runes and Rituals - both 12 gold ritual cards which give +5 to rolls and +3 to damage... way too powerful; Ghost Armor; Soul Biter - +3 damage to melee or magic after you roll), but I still find the endgame not as challenging.

Once you have enough counters and are beefed up with your best items, I can take on reds without loosing any health (I killed Maragath in the first round with the above ritual card and the white sword). I would like to share my current house rules, proposed ones, and definitely get some insight from people that have their own house rules to make it more difficult.

Here are our current house rules:

• When starting the game, have 2 cards face down, one face up for each town - the 2 cards need to be discovered. this gets more items into the game (currently our market deck is huge and we rarely get through 1/4 to 1/3 of it).
• Death has normal penalties (lose best item, all gold) but in addition you lose one turn recovering
• PvP - Works as normal, but towns are PvP safe zones. I read that a lot of players don't really like PvP and I can't really understand why. It's true that I don't attack my wife's character when she plays (or I'll suffer a -10 to my diplomacy skill in real life), but me and brother keep a wide berth of each other, lest one of us sense easy pickings . So I guess it depends on who you are playing with.
• Just some IMO logical stuff - you can't draw two events in one turn (the second event is placed back in the deck) - you need to face a challenge. No limits on encounters though.

Here is something I was thinking of that might be interesting (feedback is more than welcome)

• Impose a level limit on all items and allies with a value of greater than 4. The new limits would be (Cost/2) rounded up. So for example, a rune of healing would be (7/2) = 3.5 = Level 4 item. We will need to play test this to see is if should be (cost/2) rounded up +1 or without the +1. The idea is that a starting hero is level 1.
• This will make you actually have to race to get that super item - another player might have more gold and be closer, but if you push yourself to pass him/her in levels you can go and purchase it. This will also prevent hoarding gold and buying one super-item. I've found that is what I would do and end up blazing through yellows and blues with absolutely no problem, gathering enough gold during this slaughterfest (4 per encounter) to purchase all the lesser items to really deck out my character and make him invincible. I want to make the yellows and blues viable challenges, and have most of them last more than one round - and be afraid of dying!
• Allies can work the same as items I suppose, although maybe a little more lenient with the level restrictions; maybe have them rounded down.
• This will definately make the game longer, but for me that is worth it (we can get through games in 2 hours if it's me and my brother) with the way things are now.

With these restrictions I want to feel the intensity that I felt when first playing the game and not 100% sure on the rules - when I actually used to die. I haven't died in over 4 games (I have escaped a few times though to prevent it) and want to be in fear of dying from yellows and blues!

Feedback and variations/house rules on making this excellent game more difficult is more than welcome. This game is fantastic and I want to find ways to shore up the exploitable weak points. No more swords of fire to be used on greens on yellows!

I find if you play the game with at least one player who's willing to take a change and fight a yellow earlier on in the game you'll find the difficulty go way up without changing the rules. As soon as there is one player who pushes his limits it will only take a few successes to force the other player to follow suit.
I think that would be the best way to increase the intensity.

Be brave! Lead, do not follow

That being said... House rules are good. I use them too. Usually when we need to make the game a bit faster.

I agree 100% - Usually after 4 green challenges I'll push up to yellow forcing everyone else to follow suit, maybe taking on a green if that is all I can reach on that turn. Last game I pushed hard for yellows and my brother ended up dying twice in a row to a blue so he more or less gave up and I declared victory as Sir Valadir.

I don't see how (unless you're talking about single-player) you can say the game is too easy when all players are in the same boat as regards the rules. If you're finding the red challenges too easy, you're not taking them on early enough, and any player who *does* take them on earlier will win.