So am I right in saying that the time mechanic, for any quest stage other than 1A, you are basically starting at 1 less than what is printed? For example, I passed stage 1 but couldn't advance until I took control of Grima. Can't take control of Grima until I have no enemies engaged. So during combat I defeated the last enemy, took control of Grima and immediately then advance to stage 2. Stage 2 has a "time" mechanic and the time counter goes down at the end of the refresh phase....and refresh is my next step. This happens again between stage 2 and 3. Since you cannot advance to the next stage until at least completing the quest phase, you will reduce the time counter by 1 on the new stage before you ever get a chance to quest on the new stage.

The fastest you can do it is: round 1, quest. Then travel to The Islet (which has Grima attached). Round 2, quest and clear The Islet. You will then have control of Grima and advance to the next stage if you have enough quest points on the stage (you don't need to clear all enemies before controlling Grima. Did you read that somewhere?). Then, yes, the time counter on stage 2 will be reduced by 1 at the end of the round, and you will not have had any chance to quest on this stage before that happens. You can most likely expect these Time effects to trigger one or more times during a game!

Hm...technically, if you do it following @GrandSpleen 's description, wouldn't you control Grima (and thus advance the quest) before you place progress on stage 2? Which means that, if by some miracle you had enough willpower, you could clear stage 2 that same round and move on to stage 3?

I'm not sure how that's supposed to work exactly.

The progress is assigned to the quest, and then placed on the location first as a buffer. If exploring the location causes you to advance to the next stage, would you really carry over that progress?

1 hour ago, GrandSpleen said:

I'm not sure how that's supposed to work exactly.

The progress is assigned to the quest, and then placed on the location first as a buffer. If exploring the location causes you to advance to the next stage, would you really carry over that progress?

I think this recent ruling about the placing of progress can be helpful in regard to this question

In particular this phrase from Caleb "you will resolve any effects that trigger as a result of the active location being explored before placing any progress on the quest"

Maybe I read Grima wrong. Grima's card says "If free of encounters, the first player gains control of Grima". So you have to clear the Islet and then I took "free of encounters" to mean you are not currently engaged with an enemy. Maybe I interpreted it wrong. Going for theme....Grima is a scaredy-cat and wont come to you until there is a break in the fighting.

http://hallofbeorn.com/LotR/Details/Grima-Objective-Ally-VoI

In terms of progress, I thought excess willpower did not carry over to the next quest stage so you clear the Islet, take control of Grima if able and then flip to 2B and your quest stage is over whether you have excess progress or not.

8 hours ago, Alonewolf87 said:

I think this recent ruling about the placing of progress can be helpful in regard to this question

In particular this phrase from Caleb "you will resolve any effects that trigger as a result of the active location being explored before placing any progress on the quest"

This would imply that Grima is freed and progress can be placed on stage two, but Grima must be "free of encounters" and the Islet is explored long before (in the order of quest resolution) it is discarded.

On 1/15/2019 at 12:24 AM, GrandSpleen said:

I'm not sure how that's supposed to work exactly.

The progress is assigned to the quest, and then placed on the location first as a buffer. If exploring the location causes you to advance to the next stage, would you really carry over that progress?

I've been wondering about this recently, so I got around to asking [spoiler: no, you do not carry over the progress]…

Thanks for getting the ruling!