So my group downloaded the 3 bonus official quests from FFG awhile back. We had a great time with both the Aerie of Death and The Chase (OL winning one of them in the boss fight, and the heroes winning the other), but we also tried Cult of the 100.

Now I could be wrong, maybe my group was just unlucky, but I think this has to be one of the dumbest quests ever. With no gold treasures and only 1 silver chest, my group of 3 heroes did not draw any silver weapons. This meant that the boss was immune to our piddly attacks, we literally couldn't manage to harm him with just shop weapons. And the rolling boulder idea, though a fun way to try and kill the boss, was impossible to actually use to kill him. Any overlord with half a brain would never leave him someplace he could be hit by the boulder, and thus after about half an hour of trying to squish each other with the boulder and failing, we called it a draw even though the heroes had loads of Conquest left. It was just impossible to harm him and end it. Anyone else had a similar experience with this quest? Is the boulder supposed to be the only way to kill him? Or were we just unlucky in not getting any silver weapons? The other two quests were a lot of fun, but this one was basically a waste of space. Was there something I was missing concerning the tactics of the rolling boulder?

Why would you need silver weapons to kill the boss? And, if you didn´t draw any from the chest, you could always try to buy some in town.

8 Armor + Ironskin is pretty brutal. I believe a hero would need 2+ melee dice or 3 magic dice to even theoretically hurt him with any shop weapon, even with a perfect roll, unless using fatigue, power potions, or other boosts. And copper weapons aren't much better, and the best options are mostly AoD/ToI treasures, so they might not even be available.

Chipping away with Axe + 5 black dice should take around 33 (thirty-three) swings to bring the boss down (assuming 4 heroes). The Leviathan or a Bone Blade + off-hand weapon, still with 5 black dice on every attack, will improve that to 22 (twenty-two) attacks. If you don't want to spend time resting, an Axe with 3 black dice would take around 112 (one hundred twelve) attacks. If you're stuck with three ranged dice and don't want to spend fatigue, your best and only option at copper level is the Ripper (ToI), which can inflict a maximum of 1 wound per attack on a perfect roll.

Silver weapons are an improvement over that, but I'd definitely say you're supposed to win this with the boulder.

So I think the heroes take out the support monsters as quickly as possible (2 dark priests, 3 beastmen, 1 master beastman...2 rounds tops) and then use their own bodies to physically block the boss's movement, while keeping enough LOS coverage that the OL can't spawn more monsters close to the altar. Everywhere the boss could plausibly go is either on the boulder's starting line or right next to it, so as long as the OL can't mess with its direction, you just need to wait for a boulder to happen to stop roughly aligned with the boss, then rotate it for a guaranteed kill. The boss will continue attacking you, of course, but he's only roughly as strong as a beastman.

EDIT: Upon rereading the rules, replacement boulders don't appear until the moment they start moving, so I guess the heroes could be in fairly serious trouble if the boss makes it to the northeast corner before they corral him (or northwest corner before they activate the glyph, if they don't have Astarra), as they'd need to wait for a boulder that only rolled 1 space on its first turn (1/18 chance).

The answer is to play this quest with only 2 heroes. Then you'll never make it to the final room.

Yeah after reading the posts what Antistone said is pretty much spot on. I didn't have most of the expansions at the time, and the shop weapons were not getting the job done at all. Physically blocking the bosses movement with my heroes bodies was something that I ironically, didn't think of.........rather stupid of me. In fact, looking back it probably would've been a fairly simple matter of standing heroes on either side to "pinch" him so he couldn't move when the boulder was near him, then turning it to face him. Even if the boulder killed a hero I had enough conquest it wouldn't have mattered. It was one of our earlier games of Descent and I didn't realize how pathetic a Golem's attack was, nor did I really think about the fact he couldn't move through an enemy. I just had the mentality of "Oooh, it's a boss, stay away from him or he'll one-shot you".

Now that you point that out, it would've been a fairly simple matter to defeat him . Lol, oh well live and learn I guess.

There is, as previously mentioned, the ability to just go buy Silver weapons from the shop. Once you've opened up a silver chest, you can buy the treasure for 500gps. Sure, it's a random draw, but still better than shop weapons.

-shnar

Yeah, the Grinding Axe will let you the boss in only seventeen swings! (assuming 3 black dice and 4 heroes in the game)

Aye, though I originally thought that it was due to bad luck on treasure draws we were having a hard time, I"m sure the whole point of that questoss fight is to use the rolling boulder to kill him, not your weapons.

Antistone said:

The quest says the following about controlling the boulder:

"The altars in this room control the boulders. Once per turn, the heroes may activate a good altar to change the facing of any boulder on the map. Once per turn, the overlord may do the same at the evil altar."

It doesn't say the boulder is restricted to a 90 degree turn. If the boulder rolled too far on its first movement, the heroes could turn it 180 degrees so it rolls back toward the evil altar on the next turn. It still may take a few boulders before they get one that can hit the boss in one of the top corners, but they'd certainly have better than a 1/18 chance per boulder.

I just did some quick math on the odds:

If the boss hides in the top corner, the heroes have more than a 50% chance of killing him in 2 or 3 turns when a new boulder spawns.

5.56% of the time, the boulder will only move 1, so the heroes can turn it toward the boss and kill him on the 2nd turn.

45.99% of the time, the boulder will move (n) spaces south and then (n or n-1) spaces north on the next turn. (n = 2, 3, 4, or 5)

A new boulder could kill the boss 167 times out of 324 (51.54%) in the first 2-3 turns.

mahkra said:

Yes, IF the heroes have extra cash to burn. Activating an Altar of Good costs 250 coins. If you use it when it's not a guaranteed kill, and then you roll badly, you wasted your money.

The exact number of chances the heroes have will vary, and in some cases burning one up to try and win faster may be a good idea. But 250 coins is enough (after only 2 chests in the entire quest) that you probably can't do this very many times, and you might lose some of your money due to hero deaths during the battle.

Good point, Antistone. I hadn't thought about limited finances; that complicates the boss fight a bit more. I think I'd still be aggressive in my use of the altar, though, at least at first. No real need to pinch pennies until you get down to your last 250 coin.

This does change the strategy for the rest of the quest a bit, though. Instead of considering the cost of items in terms of fatigue potions, you'd have to think about them in terms of altar activations. This may limit the number of fatigue potions you quaff & encourage you to stick with shop gear and sell the copper & silver treasures.

EDIT: There's only 1 copper and 1 silver chest in this quest, but there are *eight* coin piles. And all of the chest options include 100 coins each. That means that any hero who doesn't spend the money & doesn't lose it via death would have 4 altar activations from found coins, plus potentially 1-2 more from selling sliver treasure(s). This is probably enough money to gamble a bit with the altar during the boss fight.

A hero that doesn't spend any money and doesn't die a single time seems like a dubious example case to use. But sure, you can probably afford to roll the dice a couple times.