Hey everyone! I'll be OLing a few sessions at the GCOM Games Days Events next weekend and just wanted to get some opinions of your favorite quests either from an OL or Hero perspective. I haven't played in a while and have played most of base, 1/2 of WoD and the first of ToI so opinions would be welcome!

I'm not sure who the players will be or their levels of experience. I'm basically looking for a couple that are fun and don't have too many ambiguities.

If you can chime in with your favorite 2 from the base, WoD, AoD and ToI I'd appreciate it!

Thanks!

I've always enjoyed the Blade of Light quest from the base game (quest 6 I think?) Also the princess quest was good for a laugh.

I haven't had a chance to play ToI quests yet, and don't really have favourites among WoD or AoD.

I think the one we had the most fun (and frustration with - KOBOLDS!) was the one (PLEASE correct me if I am wrong - I don't have the guides with me) - but the first quest in Well of Darkness?

The quest where a piece of the dungeon caves in each time. I have gotten lucky as the OL a couple times with the Kobold Spawn card - and fill the hall ways ahead and out of line of sight with kobolds - kind of cheap - but really fun to see the heroes have to fight through rows of kobolds as the cave is collapsing behind them.

Base Game:
I always enjoyed Quest 3: A good dungeon design and an inventive boss-fight.
Quest 9 was fun to play, too.
Hmm - I think I like most of the base-game’s quests.

Well of Darkness:
Quest 1 is definitely worth to be played, but it can hardly be won by the heroes.

Altar of Despair:
I would never had expected (from taking a look on the map) how much fun Quest 1 was for my group. The map looks rather strange, but it turned out to be a great challenge. It offered one of the most thrilling experiences my Descent-group ever had.

Tomb of Ice:
I really like Quest 2: Two different ways to win, fast to be played, the boss is nearly right from the start on the board. But unfortunately this quest is way too easy. You should better increase the ice pillars’ wounds or, better, replace the destroying of the pillars by opening them with a “prolonged action” (described in AoD).

Quest 5 was nice to play, but the OL didn’t had a chance to win.

Official bonus quests:

"The cult of the 100" is really great!

Moreover, i can recommend to have a look on the custom-maps in the data base. For example, Matt Kuzmas quest "Caverns of madness" is great.

Personally my group really liked the bonus quest "Aerie of Death" or whatever it was called. "The Cult of the 100" and "The Chase" are both good to though.

Graf said:

Not if the heroes get a slow start.

When my group played this, the overlord happened to draw a Charge card early. Named giant comes up behind the party and sweeps the mage and ranger, killing both, and leaving the melee hero sandwiched between him and the shades in the next room (which he couldn't even attack).

At that point, the heroes couldn't even theoretically have made progress without killing the boss directly (copper weapons vs. 40 health/10 armor) if they hadn't had Telekinesis. Even with it, they lost almost an entire turn getting back to the front lines while the overlord spawned more monsters in area 2, and the next hero death ended the game. The stats of the ice columns never came up.

Admittedly, we were only using 3 heroes, because ToI quest 1 proved very easy and the ToI quests at least pretend to support different party sizes by making boss health scale more. Still, the opening looks pretty volatile.

This was one of the "fastest maps" I ever played. We played it with three Heroes (Arvel, Shiver and Brother Glyr) and I remember the heroes needed exactly 8 turns to win by destroying both pillars.

The OL tried to chase the heroes with the Giant (he took the way through the rune-locked-door to shorten the way to the heroes), but he didn't had a chance - even though slow Glyr was in play. The result: He was at the wrong place for nearly the whole game.

I had the impression that the best chance for the OL is to block the second rune-locked door with the giant (to force the heroes to play area 3 and not to take the short-cut) and to wait for the heroes coming to him.

After all, even if it was too easy, it was great fun and an interesting challenge. I think it's a very fine quest, especially for new players who have to learn that speed is essential (It's quite impressive to have a nearly invincible giant right behind your heroes - this will convince every player to accelerate his play-style).

I think I would immediately play it again to try other strategies, especially if I took the place of the OL.

From JitD I would plump for Last Wishes (Quest 5), always a challenging but doable quest for both sides.

From Wod Buried Alive (Quest 1), possible but a challenge, heores really need to understand what they are doing strategically - only kill what you have to and run whenever possible.

From AoD Holding the Line (Quest 3), probably my favourite AoD request mainly because it is a very different style of quest but fun. Once the heroes start activating the altars you may run out of burn tokens.

From ToI I'd go for Castle of the Dragons (Quest 4) It really does showcase Tomb of Ice very well and will attract lots of attention - Ice Wyrms and the 10x10 room tile.

I wanted to thank everyone for your thoughts about the quests. After looking them over I think I'm going to be going with Quest 1 from AoD- the Thing in the Pit and ToI 4 Castle of the Dragons. I've never played either before, they look fun to play and I think will showcase the game well. Never used the Chaos Beast before and.. DRAGONS!

AoD 3 - all out slugfest where the heroes try to defend the altar and the OL attacks.

A lot of the quests can be cheap if the Overlord knows what s/he's doing. We're thinking of using the Eyes from RtL but in compensation allowing the OL to choose where to put monsters in each area, instead of having to put them on the map as shown. This stops excessive spawning - which can cause the Heroes to lose momentum, and once lost, make it very hard to recover again - it also stops the "Heroes open the door and wail on the boss before the Overlord even gets an attack with him"

Jake yet again said:

Lol, um isn't that what Descent is? Though the house rules do sound interesting, I think for a better solution though my group will soon try the Enduring Evil mod put out by Antistone (if the printer I ordered ever gets here so I could print the cards out ).