I just ordered Descent: JitD and expect it to arrive sometime this week. From everything I've read on forums and seen on youtube, the game looks like a lot of fun and I'm hoping to get my regular group of RPers into it. If everything goes well I will likely be looking to add some of the expansions.

Is there any particular order in which I should pick up the expansions? RtL seems like it might be a good choice to pick up first because I'm sure my group would get into the game more with some type of ongoing campaign. What is everyone elses opinion?

U might tend to buy them in order if u are going to get all of them eventually. This is because there are some cards in future expansions that use cards from earlier expansions, so if u skip the order then u render the card useless as u dun have the previous.

I would like to get all the expansions eventually, but that will be entirely dependant on my gaming groups level of interest in the game. I'm not sure in which order the expansions were released. Is this the correct order...

1.) Well of Darkness

2.) Altar of Despair

3.) Road to Legend

4.) Tomb of Ice

5.) Quest Compendium

6.) Sea of Blood

Redcrow said:

Yes.
However:

RtL and SoB are different entirely. They are 'Advanced Campaigns' and significantly change the gaming experience. They are compatible with with all the 'normal' expansions (and the base set of course) but more or less incompatible with each other.
And the quest compendium apparently has so many issues that many people recommend ignoring it entirely.

Wanderer999 said:

This statement is somewhat misleading for people like the OP, who don't know the game that well as yet. The only expansions that include cards that rely on other expansions are the advanced campaigns (Road to Legend and Sea of Blood) and the cards in question are few in number and not required to fully enjoy the expansion. They are intended to provide you with some means of using all the expansions if you have them, but they are not by any means required to use the expansion with just the base game.

For example, both of the advanced campaign expansions include monster cards that describe the advanced campaign stats for monsters that came in Well of Darkness and Altar of Despair. If you don't have either of WoD or AoD then these monster cards are "useless" but you also don't have the monster figures that match them or any spawn cards to spawn those monsters, so it doesn't really matter. Those cards just sit in the box until you get the appropriate expansion. You don't lose anything from the advanced campaign for not having the earlier expansions, you just have a few extra bits you can't use yet.

FFG has made a solid policy of not making any given expansion dependent on anything other than the base game, so you can buy them in any order and take or leave them as you like. This has been a source of some consternation for people who buy everything anyways (like me) because it means some elements of each expansion never (or rarely) get used again outside of it. But I think this policy is ultimately for the best because it would be a huge piss off if you bought expansion #4 first and discovered you couldn't use half of it because you need three other expansions as well. I just wanted to clarify that since I think Wanderer's statement might lead you to believe you were REQUIRED to buy them in release order to use them to full extent.

AFAIK, the "vanilla" expansions (Well of Darkness, Altar of Despair and Tomb of Ice) don't have anything in them that refers to previous expansion material. If they both include the same expansion idea (ie: both WoD and AoD have Treachery) then the rules to use said material is repeated in each expansion's rulebook.

The only item that deliberately depends on expansion material is the Quest Compendium, which is a book that specifically incorporates material from everything except ToI and the advanced campaigns (it was released before ToI and it is a vanilla expansion so it doesn't use campaign material.) This was FFG's attempted response to concerns about expansion material never being used again outside the expansion it came in. Unfortunately, the printing suffered some serious errors (both in editing and in the actual printing process) which made the book something of a let down to most fans who bought it. The added fact that a lot of the quests were written by "celebrity guests" who maybe didn't understand Descent's complicated rules as well as they should meant that the book ultimately needed a rather large errata to make it workable. The product was a noble idea, but it was something of a bomb commercially.

I thought Tomb of Ice was not a vanilla set

I had the impression it was for RtL advanced campaign.

Also for the records, I have only the vanilla set I just bought Well of Darkness & Altar of Despair today, but they won't be coming anytime soon (not for at least another 3 weeks anyway) because I hail from Singapore and they ran out of stock here. The info I gave in earlier thread was from the shop employees themselves. Probably they wanted me to buy more expansions and stuff, so they told me that?

Either that or they haven't played the game themselves and don't really know what they're talking about.

Tomb of Ice is a 'vanilla' expansion, but it is the only one (so far) that came with Road to Legend elements. That might be the source of confusion. (It's just because ToI is the only one released after RtL, though. WoD and AoD monster cards, etc. were included in RtL.) All of the 'vanilla' expansions can also be used for 'campaign' play.

Wanderer999 said:

Tomb of Ice includes a few advanced campaign bits, like monster cards with advanced campaign stats for the ToI monsters and a couple new dungeon cards, etc. I'm pretty sure the tiles are double-sided, too, though I'm not sure if the outdoor tile sides get used in the vanilla dungeons. The bulk of the expansion is vanilla stuff though. I would expect all vanilla expansions from here on out to have a similar compliment of AC material, but like Mahkra said, this is the first one to come out after RtL.

As far as the what the shopkeepers told you, I would guess they were either misinformed themselves owing to not being totally familiar with Descent, or perhaps were unintentionally vague and didn't realise what they were saying might be taken the way you took it.

I would prefer to believe they weren't deliberately lying to weasel more money out of you - that doesn't sound like a wise business practice in general. A customer might fall for that once or twice, but eventually they'll cotton on that not everything is as these guys say it is, and then they will at best take the clerk's words with a grain of salt. At worst they'll stop shopping there and tell their friends to watch out.

Thanks for the info everyone! I found a deal online where I could pick up WoD, AoD & RtL all for not too much more than I paid for JitD, so if my group likes the base game I will probably just pick up those and add the rest later on.

I do have another question, though. I've downloaded the game Rules and FAQ and have been trying to familiarize myself with those. Being completely new to the game, are there any common mistakes or pitfalls that beginners have a tendency to make that I should look out for?

Redcrow said:

A list of rules that new players actually interpret correctly would probably be shorter...

In all seriousness, you'll probably play lots of things wrong during your first game. I'd suggest not really worrying too much about forgetting some of the rules on your first session. After you play, then re-read the rules to see all the things you got wrong, and make a 'cheat sheet' of the things that you found hard to remember so that you can easily refer back the next time you play. (You can try to make a reference sheet before your first game, but it's tough to know what's important and hard to remember when you've never played the game.)

Here are some basic things to get you started, though. In no particular order:

• The Overlord starts with three cards and zero threat . (This is in the FAQ, not the rule book, so it can be very hard to look up when you set up your first game.) He gets 2 cards and [one per hero] threat each turn. If he has more than 8 cards, he must discard cards for threat until he has 8 or fewer.
• A hero can only drink one potion each turn.
• A hero can use at most one glyph, in one direction, in a single turn.
• Keep a list handy with movement point costs for various actions.
• Also keep a list with the costs of treasures / training / etc.
• Heroes have to declare an action (advance, battle, run, ready) before they start to move.
• Named monsters are immune to stun. Master (red) monsters still get a "half-action" (move OR attack) when stunned.
• Diagonal movement IS allowed.
• Only one overlord card can be played per triggering event. (e.g. OL cannot play Rage AND Charge on the same monster at the same time.)

Redcrow said:

Common mistakes for vanilla:

- The heroes should be prepared for an actual fight in order to win. If they walk in thinking this is an RPG where they'll probably win in the end and are just here to play out a story, they're in for a big surprise. Unprepared hero parties rarely make it out of the first area alive. Seriously.

- Think of this game like Final Fantasy instead of D&D. A computer game rather than a PnP RPG. I've found that mindset really helps to wrap your head around Descent's twisted rules.

- The slash on the power enhancement face of a power die means you have to choose one range or one damage. Die faces without a slash mean you get everything shown on that face.

- You can use fatigue to move even if you declare a Battle action (double attack.) You can use fatigue to add power dice (up to a maximum of 5) even AFTER rolling. It's better to save fatigue until after the roll in case you get an X.

- A hero can only drink one potion per turn, of any type. That's an errata in the FAQ, but a fairly important one.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. There are a lot of rules even just in the base game, so don't beat yourself up if you miss something the first few times out. Just remember to check the FAQ and don't be shy about asking here if something seems out of whack with the game.

mahkra said:

Just wanted to reiterate this. If I were you, I'd read the base rules, and then play a game. Then I'd reread the base rules, and then the FAQ. Then I'd play another game, and then reread the rules and the FAQ. Repeat another couple times. The number of mistakes you make will slowly approach, but probably never reach, zero. Hell, we've been at this for something like four months and still get things wrong. Also, whenever you get and start using an expansion, follow the same guideline, but substitute the expansion for the base rules - i.e., read the new rules, play, reread the new rules and FAQ, repeat, repeat. And read the forums, too, particularly that stickied "Answers to questions" thread up above. I love Descent, but the rules for this game are a tangle.