When does the Terror track increase in value?? Does it increase by 1 whenever a gate opens? Or when a monster appears? What if both appear at the same time? Does it increase by 1? The way I read from the rule book, I had assumed that the terror track increases in value EVERYTIME a monster appears in town... Does killing the monster reduce the track value? I read from the book that it says the value never ever decreases. Does this mean the terror tracker will inevitably reach level 10 after 10 turns? (since at least one monster appears at the end of every turn)

I have played 2 games of Arkham Horror (vanilla set):

1 was with my 2 brothers, making us a total of 3 players. It was very fun but we eventually lost the game because of a lack of players to do everything.

I then played another game with 8 players total. It suddenly became very boring and there was not enough clues on the board. Everyone snatched for clues whenever one appeared at the end of a turn. Also, when the gate location appeared several times in a single area, we found that we were idling around doing nothing since there were too many players and there was only 1 gate open. We ended up with only 1 gate open, and many monsters (from all the monster surges when the gate reopened a few times in a row in the same place - graveyard) in that spot.

How can gameplay experience and fun be improved? Am I doing something wrong here for 8 players? probably a rule I missed somewhere that states 2 or 3 Mythos should be drawn for 8 player games instead of the standard one card?

Wanderer999 said:

The game is pretty hard to grasp on your first playthrough: For that specific question you should browse over the later sections in the rule book about Outskirts and number of allowed monsters on the board. You can pretty much count on having to re-read the rules a few times before they fall into place. The terror track does not go up becouse a monster appears rather it goes up when a specific amount of monsters are in Arkham and the extra ones end up filling the outskirts (see the back of the rulebook for the numbers since they depend on the player count).

Consider playing a few solo (or with few players) games with 2-4 investigators and then becoming a game master of sorts while the rest are learning the rules.

Investigators should not fight over clues, the idea is to get someone with 5 as quickly as possible so they can go and seal a gate. Also go look at the unique item: Elder Sign (it is critical for winning in many cases and there are 4 copies). Also with 8 players the game ends with only 5 gates in play (back of the rulebook again). The best way to win is by sealing 6 gates, it is extremly hard to win by closing all gates. I would recomend Azathoth as the AO for your first few games (longer game, fewer special rules and an emphasis on a basic gate sealing game).

Random tips:

The newspaper is a pretty safe place to get money (only one bad encounter there). Red icon locations (where gates show up) tend to give you a chance to get an ally but also have a much higher ratio of cruel encounters. You can spend a clue token to roll a dice even when you would otherwise have minus dice.

No one plays this game the right way the first couple of times they play it, but that doesnt matter as long as you are having fun with it and adding to your knowledge of the game mechanics. I would not recomend an 8 player game until you have a good grasp of what you need to do to win and have the rules ironed out, it tends to slow it down and creates a somewhat aimless experience.

This place is also fantastic for information as you play more and encounter more unclear rules, the regulars have a tremendous amount of usefull information and I am still looking up questions and finding old answers by them from time to time.

Edit to add : Maybe you need to shuffle more since you seem to get the gates landing on top of each other so often. I recomend shuffling, splitting the deck into 4 piles, shuffling those and combinging pile 1 and 3 (as well as 2 and 4), shuffle them more, and then shuffle the whole lot back together. Thats just my method though.

Wow thanx a mil for all that advice! I guess I'll have to rehit the game again, wif less players this time...

I had felt that there was too little gates opening and too many players waiting around for more 'gates to open'

No problem its mostly a collection of the good advice thats scattered around here in other threads.

Good luck and have fun!