I tried my first Descent experience playing "The Resque" map downloaded from FFG website. I read that it was a good simple start for newbies.

We were two players with me being the Overlord and my partner had two heroes.

My questions are:

1. Can a hero buy two daggers and a Cross Bow (the hero has 1 trait in each Melee, Subtrefuge and Wizard)? if yes, how is he going to use that? Does it take Action to swap weapons?

2. Does the shop only offer the double sided weapon cards (why are they double sided?) I read in the FAQ that you can offer Bronze Treasure so long you looted a Bronze Chest (is this true for Vanilla?) if it is then how do you price them?

3. The Breath attack of the hellhounds (or whatever was their name) is confusing. One hero was behind a wall another openned the door. Hell Hound used Breath attack the Cone-Piece used would cover both heroes but one is behind a wall at the very end of it next to the hero who would definitely take Breath damage since there's no obstacles between him and the fire damage. I read the FAQ PDF file and the rulebook they make it more confusing for me.

4. What is a Named monster?

5. Can monsters open/close doors and seek to destroy the heroes?

1. Yes, definitely. You can only devote 2 hands to weapons at once. You get to re-equip all items for free at the start of your turn, and you can also swap mid-turn by spending 2 movement points.

2. Bronze treasures cost 250gp. You draw them randomly: heroes never get to draw a specific treasure card (unlike with shop items). The hero declares their intent to buy a bronze treasure, pays 250gp, and draw a random bronze treasure card. Silver cost 500gp; gold cost 750gp.

3. Difficult to be sure here without seeing a diagram, but I suspect the answer is "both heroes are hit". Breath attacks "billow around" and hit everything in the cone, unless obstacles actually split the cone into two, in which case the section not connected to the attacker is not hit. Diagonal connections count as connected.

4. See the quest guide. Named monster are generally "bosses" fought at the end of the quest. If the quest guide gives the monster a name, it is a Named monster.

5. Monsters may both open and close doors. Runelocked doors may be opened and closed only by Named monsters, however. No monster may ever open a door to an unrevealed area. Monsters in unrevealed areas are not on the map and do not exist (and therefore cannot open doors, obviously) until the area is revealed.

Most of these are answered fairly clearly in the rulebook, except perhaps for the Breath attack, and that Named monsters being allowed to open Runelocked doors is an errata- see the FAQ.

1. Can a hero buy two daggers and a Cross Bow (the hero has 1 trait in each Melee, Subtrefuge and Wizard)? if yes, how is he going to use that? Does it take Action to swap weapons?

Yes he can buy them, but he may only equip two 1-Hand Weapons, or one 2-Hand Weapon. In your example, he could either equip two daggers, or one crossbow and one dagger. The remaining weapon has to be stored in his inventory, which can hold up to three items. At the start of a heroes turn, he can re-equip for free but if he decides to re-equip after he declared his Action (Running, Advance etc.) it costs him 2 Movement Points.

2. Does the shop only offer the double sided weapon cards (why are they double sided?) I read in the FAQ that you can offer Bronze Treasure so long you looted a Bronze Chest (is this true for Vanilla?) if it is then how do you price them?

Market items are doublesided to distinct from the treasure cards which have a chest symbol on their back. At the start of the game you may only buy and equip yourselves with Market items. As soon as you open the first chest of a color (copper, silver or gold) you are allowed to buy treasure cards from the corresponding color in the City. Copper Treasures cost 250, Silver Treasures cost 500 and Gold Treasures cost 750. Example: You are in the City and pay 250 for a Copper Treasure, then you may draw 1 card from the Copper Treasure.

3. The Breath attack of the hellhounds (or whatever was their name) is confusing.

The flames of the Breath Attack are able to travel diagonally. Breath ignores Obstacle such as Rubbles (things you lay on the dungeon pieces), but not Walls (Edges of your dungeon pieces). Look again at page 3 in the FAQ and it may become clearer.

4. What is a Named monster?

A named monster is a Monster which is given a name in the Questbook, usually they are your Questgoals you have to slay to win the Quest. In the First Quest its the Master Giant called Narthak. Unless in the Questbook stated Monsters don't have names. Named Monsters ar able to open and close previously opened Runedoors.

5. Can monsters open/close doors and seek to destroy the heroes?

Yes and No. Monsters are able to open and close normal doors, but they cannot open a door to an unexplored area or open from an unexplored area to ambush the heroes. However they can't interact with runedoors.

yewsef said:

1. Yes. However he can only 'equip' 2 single handed weapons at a time. The third weapon will need to be placed in his backpack. See DJitD pg13. Note that the only time a hero can actually use two weapons at once is when making a melee attack with a single hand melee weapon and having a second single hand melee weapon in his second hand. The second 1H melee weapon provides an off-hand bonus to the attack of the first 1H melee weapon. See DJitD pg19. That is the only benefit possible in having two equipped weapons.
As for 'swapping' weapons, each turn the hero gets to rearrange all of his equipment for free, in any way he wishes, during "Step 2: Equip Items" of his turn. See DJitD pg8. If he wishes to change around his equipment later in his turn then he may do so at a cost of 2MP. See DJitD pg16.
Side note a: The dagger is a completely useless weapon and should never be used at all under any circumstances. Use a sword instead, regardless of the extra cost. Look at what the dice rolled by the weapon do. A green dice is worth on average 2 more damage per attack!
Side note b: It is generally wasteful to have both a melee and ranged weapon equipped. Even to bother buying both is wasteful (spending the extra on potions is better).
Side note c: Ranged attacks may be made on adjacent spaces, so you don't need a melee weapon 'just in case'.
Side note d: You are not required to have trait dice in a weapon type to use it, it just helps.

2. Shop items are all double sided. There is no reason for them to have a reverse side since they are never hidden , so being double sided just makes them slightly easier to use.
2a. Once you have opened any treasure chest then you are able to purchase 'random draws' from that treasure deck at the shop. Copper costs 250, Silver 500 and Gold 750. See DJitD pg18

3. What is confusing about it? You place the template as directed. Any figure under the template is affected by the attack as long as a flying (ignores obstacles) figure could move from the attacker to the target without leaving the template. Since a flying figure still cannot pass through walls or closed doors the breath template may be blocked by these. However the flying figure may move anywhere within the template and take a circuituous route rather than a direct route and thus avoid walls. An example of this is the top-right example in the FAQ pg3. In order to reach Carthos the flying figure cannot go direct because it would pass through walls (not possible). However by flying E, NE, E, SE, S, S it takes a circuituous but legal route staying within the template and thus Carthos is hit by the attack. In the bottom left example there is a closed door that blocks any possible route and thus Carthos is not hit by the attack.

4. DJitD pg16
Named monsters (e.g., Narthak) are unique monsters described in the Quest Guide. Like master monsters, they are represented by the red figures. ... Usually these are the real 'bad guys' and killing them is one of the primary objectives of the quest. Any monster that is Named by the quest guide qualifies.

5. DJitD pg13
It is possible for both heroes and monsters to expend movement points to open or close doors, but only if their figure is located in a space adjacent to a door’s closed position (including diagonals)...
Important: Monsters cannot open any door leading to an unrevealed area. ...
Important: Monsters can never open or close a runelocked door. Replaced by...
FAQ pg2
Runelocked Doors and Named Monsters Named monsters may open and close runelocked doors, whether or not the heroes have the runekey to that door. However, named monsters still cannot open any door leading into an unrevealed area.

Get the pdf copy of the rulebook so you can use pdf search function.
Get the FAQ too!

Wow great community! that's the fastest response (and in great detail) I've ever seen in my life!

All my quesitons are answered and even more than answered.

The "treating breath attack like a flying unit moving on the fire template" trick completely removed the confusion now!

But I just need to make sure that the "unrevealed" areas are always stated in the Quest Book by keeping it "greyed out"? so if I opened a door to a greyed-out area then ALL greyed-out areas (unrevealed) are revealed now? (I need to check the Quest Book again, I'm at work now and can't remember exactly how to tell which area should be unrevealed).

But in the Resque Quest I tested there are no "unrevealed" areas, right?

But I just need to make sure that the "unrevealed" areas are always stated in the Quest Book by keeping it "greyed out"? so if I opened a door to a greyed-out area then ALL greyed-out areas (unrevealed) are revealed now? (I need to check the Quest Book again, I'm at work now and can't remember exactly how to tell which area should be unrevealed).

When you first open a door to an area, that entire area, and that area alone is revealed. You then read the corresponding description text.

But in the Resque Quest I tested there are no "unrevealed" areas, right?

Honestly, I would start with the quests in the book, because the lack of glyphs in this quest makes me scratch my head. But whatever! Essentially, you start the map in area 1, and that whole area is revealed. That includes zero monsters, some pits, and three doors. Should you open the door to area 2, that whole area, and that area alone, is revealed. Area 3 isn't revealed, nor is area 4. They only get revealed when you open those doors.

Related note: the entire map is placed on the board at the beginning of the level, before anything is revealed, as the heroes are assumed to have obtained a map to the dungeon.

Edit: Allow me to express my seething rage at the needlessly complicated posting text editor / tag system.

yewsef said:

Areas are denoted in the quest book by differing (alternating) shades of grey and each area has a designation (Start Area, Area 1, Area 2 etc) alongside. Almost always these areas are separated by either doors or staircases.
An area is 'revealed' once any hero has had LOS to any space inside that area - which usually means once any door leading onto that area has been opened.
When an area is revealed you immediately place all monsters and tokens/markers indicated by the quest guide in that area (and only that area - for example, if there are 4 areas, Start and 1-3 and the heroes open a door from Start that leads to Area 1, only Area 1 is now revealed). Before the area is revelead you don't actually place anything.
I'm not really sure what you mean by 'greyed out'. FWIW there is no need to ever let the heroes see any part of the quest guide booklet.

As for the quest you did, sorry, I've never seen it so can't answer anything about it.

One last addition to the question on areas. You do not reveal all areas once the heroes reaches one of them, only the area they reached. Often maps are divided into several small areas and the heroes will have to explore them all to see what is there. However, once the heroes reach a particular area then that entire area is revealed, not just the parts they have line of sight to.

Once revealed an area is never hidden again (even if someone closes the doors).

For complete clarity, my response regarding breath templates was wrong, in fact: others have answered the question better than me anyway, but for "obstacles" in my description, "walls" should be read.

Also, I have a small number of minor disagreements with Corbon's first post.

Off-hand bonuses are not the only possible benefit to equipping two weapons. Equipping a ranged and melee weapon (one in each hand) has some potential utility, as you can attack with either without re-equipping, and assuming the melee weapon deals more damage, there is some value to this. It is, however, a really poor strategy, but for completeness, it isn't necessarily worthless.

Daggers are not completely useless, though they are generally quite. Using two daggers, however, is a really silly idea. The genuine uses of the dagger are for powering up a powerful late-game gold or silver one-handed melee weapon (since a surge is generally better than +1 damage on a gold weapon), and for very occasional dagger+shield starting equipment (though you need +damage skills to make this remotely worthwhile).

Not all Named monsters are represented by Red figures: Named monsters may be Master or Normal like all other monsters. From memory, though, there are no normal Named monsters in the base game quests (there are some in the Tomb of Ice expansion).

YellowPebble said:

1. You get a free equip at the start of your turn and you should know which sort of attack you are going to do then. The only possible circumstances in which you could use both weapons is with a Battle action when one monster is adjacent and the others several spaces away, and you have no fatigue, and the first monster is tough enough to be a possible but not guaranteed one-hit kill. To even be in those circumstances and not have team mates assigned to taking one of those monsters is both rare and indicative of not very good play.
99.9% of teh time you will be better of with a shield in the second hand.

2. Do not use a dagger + shield, ever . A sword + shield will be infinitely better every time and is more importantly better than anything else you can possibly buy as starting equipment.
Yes, a dagger as a second weapon purchased late in the game to complement a silver/gold 1H melee draw is a possible utility - unless you have ToI and can choose the shop Morning Star weapon instead, or have a second 1H melee treasure (quite probable when playing an Advanced Campaign). However, even if you do not have those things, a shield will be more valuable most of the time as most gold weapons will one-shot most monsters anyway.

3. YellowPebble is correct, for all that my response is a direct quote from the rulebook. As I said, any monster 'named' in the quest guide is a named monster, even if they are using a 'normal' rather than 'red' figure.

I always thought "unrevealed" area is "un-assembled"

Correct me if I'm wrong. For all maps you assemble the tiles all the way (for all areas) you just only add monsters/objects if the area is revealed, right?

I was thinking I "build" the unrevealed area once revealed.

yewsef said:

You are not wrong so can't be corrected. Now at least, it seems.
Unrevealed and unassembled are unrelated... now say that very fast 10x

Yes, you assemble all the tiles at the start. But you only add 'stuff' (monsters, treasures etc) onto the map in each 'area' as it is revealed (the whole 'area' at once of course).

So you 'build' the entire dungeon (the heroes have a map which shows walls/rooms/corridors etc, but not contents). Then each time the heroes open a door to an as yet un-revealed area you 'fill in' that area with all it's stuff.
This is a compromise between revealing only what the heroes can physically draw LOS to at any one time (which is ridiculously tortuous to do, needing a complete recheck every time a hero moves to a new space) and revealing everything before they start.

Thanks Corbon!
That make sense now.

I'm off into another adventure!