We always play at "hard" difficulty. When we do so we need to complete some side missions to have additional money and fame to complete the main quests in time.

Our problem: replaying side quests is borring and a grind. Actually we only want to play the main quests anymore.

Our question: So you think its better to play at "normal" difficulty and dont do side missions at all? Any experience?

Maybe its even better bcs you wont get many high end items so you have still a hard time in a lower difficulty level?

What I personally do to increase the difficulty is dealing each player a facedown tainted card at the start of each quest (without applying the +2 health).

Once a hero is defeated, they have to flip over their tainted card, but they ignore the part about only being able to recover health by untainted heroes when they are knocked out.

Then the defeated hero is dealt another facedown tainted card, which he flips if he is knocked out again.

After the quest, all tainted cards are discarded and each player is dealt a new facedown card at the beginning of the next quest.

This makes being defeated a bit more punishing and encourages the heroes to try to protect each other.

This of course only works if you own Mists of Bilehall, The Chains that Rust or both.

Hard