Not the Easy, Standard, Hard, Expert difficulty settings, but the setup of the actual scenario.

We are playing through the Night of the Zealot and honestly it feels like a meat grinder this time around (my second time through all scenarios). It might just be because the Ghoul Priest is STILL ALIVE (and will be returning in part three), but it still seems pretty brutal.

For those who have played through the Dunwich Legacy, is it any ... I don't know... smoother? Granted it is an Arkham game and should be a rough road, but wow. There is no hope for any victory here, we are just going to play part three to see what flavor of failure we are going to taste!

A lot depends on which encounter cards you draw when. The same scenario can vary greatly in difficulty just based on the cards you draw from the decks and the timing of those draws(both player decks and encounter).

And don't count yourself out yet. When I played through Night of the Zealot, we thought we were going to get creamed on the final scenario and ended up being able to disrupt the ritual before it went off(although one investigator was defeated).

There was a scenario in Dunwich where the first time through we succeeded completely and on our second playthrough got utterly destroyed and accomplished nothing.

It is true and we COULD get a lucky set of draws when we sit down for the next scenario.. but we only interrogated one cultist, so we get one turn before the Agenda advances. Our only saving grace is that we retired before midnight.

It is still fun, though!

Well, first of all, this has everything to do with Easy/Standard/Hard. If you're having too difficult of a time, reduce the difficulty level. I don't really see how it's unrelated. Unless you're saying you already have it on easy. In which case well... not much more that can be done. You'll learn the game better with more runs and be able to come up with stronger play.

Night of the Zealot with only core cards isn't a walk in the park by any means. But it can be done, or at least I can vouch for Standard and therefore Easy. Maybe you had terribly bad luck this go around. Or maybe you could have just... you know... played better? I mean, I didn't see the games, but I find it hard to believe that you failed to kill the ghoul priest, interrogated only a single cultist, and can claim that you made zero mistakes. Sorry, I don't mean to sound harsh or anything, but can we maybe agree that after 2 plays through of the campaign it's possible you don't have the whole game figured out yet? Learning how to make good decisions in AH takes some time and learning.

Regardless, the Dunwich campaign: Well.... you get more cards, therefore more options, therefore in some ways it is easier. It's still pretty hard, especially if you're playing it 100% progression style. You might even find it more difficult until you get the hang of the new options (cards) presented to you. And of course there will be inevitable surprises with the mission resolutions and the encounter deck. I find the campaign goes pretty smoothly for me *now* up until maybe the last scenario, even on hard mode, since I've played it many times through and give myself access to the full card pool. But when I had a limited card pool and was playing through for the first time, it was very rocky on standard.

1 hour ago, awp832 said:

I mean, I didn't see the games, but I find it hard to believe that you failed to kill the ghoul priest, interrogated only a single cultist, and can claim that you made zero mistakes.

Yeah, for a good run, I'd say you need to kill the ghoul priest in The Gathering and interrogate at least 4 cultists in Midnight Masks. When we finally managed to win in The Devourer Below, it was after interrogating all 6 cultists.

By the way, building decks with 2 core sets helps a lot, by stabilizing your deck(s).

I never said anything about making zero mistakes and it is likely that some were made.

Granted we had poor draws and that auto failure token kept popping up more often than it should. Literally three times in a row once. It was unholy. Neither the fed or the con (names escape me at work) got a weapon drawn the whole evening. Daisy got no spells or tomes until it was almost too late. Wendy did well, but it wasn't enough.

This isn't the fault of the game or the scenario, but as the second play through for me I want to analyze a bit.

I'm not complaining about Night of the Zealot, like I did say we are all having fun. I'm just looking for comparisons without too many spoilers.

I guess instead of difficulty I should have said balance? Because the difficulty setting of the chaos bag is absolutely irrelevant to what I am wondering.

The core set is difficult and judging from what you said with neither skids nor Roland drawing a weapon is a problem, but again how many weapons are in their respective decks? my first several playthrus were this bad or worse, but at the time only having access to a single core set made the decks harder to leverage each characters strength. However sometimes you just have bad luck, which is what it sounds like based on what you have said. so I would say you doing about normal for the core set and also if you have fighters you want to mulligan all your cards if in your opening hand you have no weapon, at least that has been my experience for the core set.

19 hours ago, Manic Modron said:

For those who have played through the Dunwich Legacy, is it any ... I don't know... smoother? Granted it is an Arkham game and should be a rough road, but wow. There is no hope for any victory here, we are just going to play part three to see what flavor of failure we are going to taste!

I think Dunwich is an easier campaign to win, yes. Both because there are many more factors that go into the setup for later scenarios, including at least one point in the campaign where it gives you a boost if you do poorly, and because the design of the final scenario is somewhat less fluke-y. Devourer can be really punishing if either the ghoul priest survives or you have too many or the wrong survivors after Midnight Masks, as well as the raw luck factor of the encounter discard being reshuffled at two key moments and potentially feeding you repeats of the most punishing cards.

In Dunwich, both the final scenario is less luck-based, and it has more shading in its resolution between, "You lose and everyone dies," to, "You win and everyone lives." Although if you choose to play for the draw in Devourer, getting R3 is quite easy, and even if it isn't a win, nor is it a loss.

Thank you, that is good information to know going forward.

I apologize for being a bit unclear with what I was looking for. BD Flory's account is exactly the sort of feedback I wanted.

I have so far only played solo.

My impression on the campaign design in Dunwich Legacy is that doing badly in one scenario does not necessarily punish you as much going forward as it does in Night of the Zealot. Especially The Devourer Below becomes almost too Lovecraftian if you have not handled the Midnight Masks well.
I am only half way through DL by this point, so I cant't speak for the last half, but Blood on the Altar (the midway point according to the campaign log) did not punish me excessively for being on a loosing streak.