Just finished Chapter 2 with Legolas and Beravor after breezing through Chapter 1 on normal, and it felt like a massive spike in difficulty.

Both had to do last stands, and were near death again at the end. The threat counter was on 25/26, the map was full of enemies, and it was the last action of the last possible hero phase, when the winning blow was struck.

I literally needed 2 successes to win the chapter on a final three card agility test, with no inspiration left, and Beravor pulled the two successes on her last two cards.

Quite the rush! But man, does it get harder and harder? As I’ll be amazed if I can keep dodging a bullet like that!

Personally, I struggled on the first mission and all missions after that got easier and easier. Second mission I did fail a last stand and thus theoretically beat it on the last turn, but I felt I had it all along (2 strike 3 cards on Aragorn that were prepared). The third mission was the easiest for me, by far. But maybe I got lucky with the app placement?


I'm playing Aragorn (pathfinder/hunter) and Elana (Musician). It really helps that both these heroes can support each other so much. I almost never run out of inspiration and I can scout a lot.

Some of the missions get pretty hard depending on you choices, but I found the middle of the game easier then it spiked again near the end

Two things seem to effect how easy/hard the game is from what I find. The map you get and how much inspiration you can maintain.

My first play through of the first mission was a failure because the map tiles just went in a straight line and all the enemies were between us the objectives. However tests and fighting were easy because of the inspiration, but I got two bad draws in a row, downed and failed the last stand.

The second time since we wanted to at least win the first mission was a lot easier with the map, but combat was hard because my partner dropped inspiration generation by switch to a different character and role. This made combat hard, but we did it just fine since the objectives were much easier to get to.

We are playing a 2 player game - Gimli and Beravor - and the balance feels quite good. A bit on the easy side for my taste, but with a different team/more players it could be different. Maybe i'll choose hard mode next.

We are right before chapter 14 and won all the chapters until this point. Only chapter 13 was quite close because of the time limit. There were a lot of spread out objectives for 2 players and we also had to help the bear guy

12 hours ago, jonamok said:

Just finished Chapter 2 with Legolas and Beravor after breezing through Chapter 1 on normal, and it felt like a massive spike in difficulty.

Both had to do last stands, and were near death again at the end. The threat counter was on 25/26, the map was full of enemies, and it was the last action of the last possible hero phase, when the winning blow was struck.

I literally needed 2 successes to win the chapter on a final three card agility test, with no inspiration left, and Beravor pulled the two successes on her last two cards.

Quite the rush! But man, does it get harder and harder? As I’ll be amazed if I can keep dodging a bullet like that!

I came to the forums just to start a thread about this, I have finished the second scenario (the first battlemap) and I also felt it was far more challenging than expected. I felt there were too many enemies and they are increasingly harder to kill (but I think I didn't use the scenery/terrain in the battle map to my advantage as much as I should have).

I'm playing with Bilbo and Aragorn, and I have another campaign with my wife with Legolas and Bilbo. Any advice on combat moving forward in the Campaign? I find enemies counterattacks overwhelming and a lot of the damage/fear cards seem to stay up and pile on.

Having a range-oriented character like Legolas and a stun-focused character like Beravor makes a big difference for my party avoiding counterattacks. I imagine it would be very tough with melee only builds - unless you win all your negates. But when stronger enemy hits (e.g. Wargs) are doing as much as 4 damage plus fear, you are going to take a fair few cards regardless of your negate results.

Yes, those counter attacks can be avoided either by Stun or ranged character. I did play whole campaign and lost only one (by time) so the game seems to be easy, but have to try with different playgroups to make real considerement about the real difficulty. Definitely easier than for example Ghost Stories or other classic coop games! Even after one campaign.

This is why I highlighted the characters I use above. I think team composition is really important. Someone playing Bilbo/Aragorn might find the game much harder than I did. Musician Elana pretty much makes damage irrelevant as you can easily heal face down damage. Having only 4 success in your whole deck, having the harp to generate free inspiration is instrumental (with the ability of Elana to just pass inspiration around). The only time I have had to pass last stands is when many enemies attack in a row because in that case, I can't heal. Otherwise, Elana just heals everything right away.

Aragorn/Bilbo also seem counter productive since Bilbo wants to be alone, but Aragorn's ability gets stronger by being near other heroes... (That's why I went the way I went, both characters benefits immensely by being nearby, and this is why I went pathfinder for Aragorn as he can easily group every one up once again if I need to separate for any reason.)

10 minutes ago, Seawhale said:

This is why I highlighted the characters I use above. I think team composition is really important. Someone playing Bilbo/Aragorn might find the game much harder than I did.

I'm experiencing difficulty with my current fellowship. I'm using Aragorn Pathfinder and my brother is using Legolas Hunter. Our lack of damage absorbtion and inspiration generation is nearly killing us. We've managed to get through the first two missions successfully, but I've been downed once at the end of each scenario.

Tests can be very difficult because the inspiration we have is either maxed from killing enemies, or depleted because we aren't drawing successes. Once the inspiration runs low/dry, the game rears its ugly head of pain.

1 hour ago, Thaeggan said:

I'm experiencing difficulty with my current fellowship. I'm using Aragorn Pathfinder and my brother is using Legolas Hunter. Our lack of damage absorbtion and inspiration generation is nearly killing us. We've managed to get through the first two missions successfully, but I've been downed once at the end of each scenario.

Tests can be very difficult because the inspiration we have is either maxed from killing enemies, or depleted because we aren't drawing successes. Once the inspiration runs low/dry, the game rears its ugly head of pain.

Same with Gimli/Pathfinder and Legolas/Burglar.

We can kick butt in a fight and each character complements the other in skill checks, but when inspiration runs low, it really runs low.

Drought levels...

When Gimli isn't a guardian the damage piles on as well.

It's very hard to play my two hero campaign. I've played now several journeys with Bilbo and Aragorn and it's almost impossible to survive. After half time limit many enemy groups popup and attack. If they are far away then most of the time they move in one go towards the hero's. There is not really time to interact with persons or threat tokens. I thought maybe with Bilbo's very handy skill ability with "sneak" and "hidden", when he doesn't have to provoke when escaping enemy groups, will help him to survive but that was not the case. The first journey and also the next ones were only possible when to "run" directly to a specific interact token but without interacting during the journey results with no inspiration tokens. Maybe i'll try to start with a three hero campaign and include Gimli as suggested.

Oddly, we haven't lost any scenarios out of 4 with Aragorn (captain/guardian) and Bilbo (pure Burglar).

But I've failed 2 times with Aragorn (captain/guardian) and Beravore (Pathfinder/hunter) out of 6.

I can't tell you what factors contributed to these varying outcomes. Luck? 2nd scenario Aragorn failed a double last stand: damage then fear. 5th scenario Beravore failed her 1st last stand: damage. No success, no inspiration.

The threat bar has never really caused me any issues, it's usually only the inability to deal with damage.

I've just picked up this game recently, and very much regret trying to run my first campaign with the recommended Gimli (Guardian) and Legolas (Hunter) builds. Though they breeze through battle maps (they cut down Uluk like he was a stick of butter), I've lost most of the journey maps because this hero combination simply can't move around the map quickly enough to keep the threat increase down (and if they split up to cover more ground, Legolas *always* seems to die and then fail his Last Stand test -- lost two maps that way).

In addition, even though you still progress after a loss, I feel that the heroes just keep getting further and further behind in Lore, Experience, Titles, and trinkets, which leads to a negative spiral of "lose more".

I'm sticking with the campaign to the bitter end (and it will almost certainly be bitter), but will definitely pick my heroes and roles differently in the future. Even with Legolas and Gimli, I think things would have gone better with Pathfinder for Gimli on journey maps and Guardian on battle maps.

Yeah. Hunter, burglar Legolas and Guardian, pathfinder Gimli is killer combination. Works very well! I really like the multiclass aspect of this game. It allows a lot of interesting combinations.

On 4/29/2019 at 5:38 PM, HirumaShigure said:

Oddly, we haven't lost any scenarios out of 4 with Aragorn (captain/guardian) and Bilbo (pure Burglar).

But I've failed 2 times with Aragorn (captain/guardian) and Beravore (Pathfinder/hunter) out of 6.

I've been running captain Aragorn and hunter Legolas. I'm a little surprised that Legolas has for the most part outshined Aragorn. His bow, which runs on his 4 agility, makes him a killing machine.

I am playing Aragorn/Captain and Gimli/Hunter. Gimli is solid because he generates a lot of Inspiration. Aragorn is Luke warm. What I find that is hard is you can receive one up damage card that kills your game. Two is a disaster. Aragorn early in one adventure had up damage that prevented him from scouting to the top of the deck. So I would draw 3 (he gets one more card and those nearby) and be forced to bottom what I didn’t place. Then he got up damage where he could only move 1 space. Soon the map was filled with enemies that NEVER miss and I was thinking, this is impossible. Even Gimli could not fend off the onslaught. I suffered through the inevitable loss and moved on. However, after this I felt less eager to play. The imbalance took the fun out. For a while.
I could house rule it but then I lose the satisfaction of winning the game.

Beautiful game and presentation (As nearly all FFG titles) . But, like D escent, using the app for SOLO play , I feel LOTR:JiME is a bit to difficult for casual play. Too many enemies and too much Damage/Fear.

LOTR:JiME NEEDS to make NORMAL MODE with MUCH LESS DAMAGE/FEAR and fewer enemies.
OR make an EASY MODE with the above in mind. This is good for those of us who want to enjoy the story and discovery NOT just dealing with overwhelming numbers of enemies.

On 8/3/2019 at 1:44 AM, Hannibal_pjv said:

Yeah. Hunter, burglar Legolas and Guardian, pathfinder Gimli is killer combination. Works very well! I really like the multiclass aspect of this game. It allows a lot of interesting combinations.

Ooo, may I ask how you built those? Adding hide effects with strike abilities definitely sounds great, on top of which I find Legolas's ability to get out of an enemy space to be invaluable in a two-character game. Guardian is a great role to put just about anyone into for a couple adventures, if all you get out of it is the 7-cost Ready Defense, and pathfinder again is amazing for getting your characters out of a pinch when 2 of them can't handle all of the enemies. I guess mostly what order did you build those? Start with Hunter/Guardian and then branch out? (Also what equipment).

On 10/23/2019 at 12:09 AM, Gamemasterbob said:

LOTR:JiME NEEDS to make NORMAL MODE with MUCH LESS DAMAGE/FEAR and fewer enemies.
OR make an EASY MODE with the above in mind. This is good for those of us who want to enjoy the story and discovery NOT just dealing with overwhelming numbers of enemies.

I'm sure you could houserule a couple things to make it easier if you're feeling overwhelmed. As the game stands, it seems appropriately difficult for a co-op. Too easy and it'll bore more competitive co-op groups, which is a large part of their audience. That said, I've only tried one campaign on "hard" and eesh is it hard

Anyways, if you're specifically struggling with the number of enemies, maybe you could give one of your characters an inspiration whenever an enemy spawns, or just pretend that each enemy is like 2 fewer health, or something like that? Alternatively, maybe you just need to try a different party build.

You did get Main points how to build it in your own post!
the Main thing is than burglar and pathfinder work very well in joyrney map. The burglar is very often alone. So burglar abilities works well. Hunter gives uumph to combat heavy situations and having hiding cards in your deck even in combat situation is not bad at all ; )

Pathfinder is just ”must” in joyrney map. you can teleport your friend from the other side of the map to the important location, with just one prepared card. Huge time saving! And guardian can give some benefits in combat situation. But the guardian part is the easiest to replase in this combination. It just happened to work well. Maybe musician could be better... hmmm have to try that next