(mild spoilers for Unspeakable Oath, City of Archives, and Where Doom Awaits)

So, after 2 unsuccessful runs at Unspeakable Oath with William Yorick and Caroline Fern, on our 3rd run, we gave ourselves an extra doom on the 1st agenda. Then, on the third Act, when it became clear that there was still just no way we were going to make it out (we didn't find Daniel until the 4th Patient Confinement room), we decided that the resign was in the entrance, not all the way in the Garden - and even then we gave ourselves an extra few actions to make that work, b/c we were so frustrated and exhausted.

Our decks and characters were just not built to succeed this scenario. Googling indicates that we're not the only ones who struggled with it.

It's odd though that the scenarios that always seem to be the most difficult (for me, City of Archives and Where Doom Awaits) are the ones with the campaign fail conditions - though perhaps it's the campaign fail, rather than the 'pick yourself up and continue' present in most scenarios, that makes them seem more difficult. While I enjoy the cruelty of the game, these scenarios often have conditions where, if you don't have a deck built to withstand them, you are basically screwed before you even begin. WDA I accepted the bleak ending (and didn't replay, or advance to the last scenario), because it was so close to the end of the campaign, and it made sense for the narrative of my Investigators' journey to die on that hill. But CoA forced me to set aside half of my deck, making the scenario ruthlessly difficult, and I had to play it 3 times before I could continue, and it was only my foreknowledge of the agenda/act decks that let me advance.

We were LOVING Carcosa until this scenario, and we're pleased to continue now that we've just kind of house-ruled our way out of the Asylum, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth when I've gotta do that. It breaks immersion in the game world. And just from practical terms, we wanted to advance the story, and instead had to give almost two entire play sessions to this one stupid scenario.

I get that many people feel that you should bend the rules because it's supposed to be fun, but my own feeling is that you can only bend the cruelty of Arkham so far before you break it. How do others of you balance the fact that the game is *supposed* to hurt your investigators, with these scenario conditions where victory is basically impossible and losing means the campaign is totally over, and you can't experience the rest of the story? (I assume the other campaigns also have similarly frustrating potential failstates).

Replaying the scenario is my go-to answer if the other alternative is that I don't get to play anymore. In true solo I'll fudge things considerably to progress the campaign, but as the player count goes up I bend the rules less and less. Even at four players though, I'll propose a redo if things go badly enough; it's basically the least abusive form of save scumming.

As far as the game harming the player, we generally keep it full tilt. As you imply, the game isn't fun if it's not trying to win. Recently though, we've started a three-man ironman run of every campaign, in order, so we decided to take half of the end-campaign trauma to keep it going a bit longer. Even with that rule in mind, if we'd been killed in the last scenario of the core campaign, we would have re-rolled characters. That doesn't really help in the penultimate scenario, where a level 0 deck couldn't hope to tackle the final boss, but it's useful earlier.

Personally I've never had trouble with the asylum and it's been one of my favorite scenarios, but it is crazy that you can all die there. I submit that it's early enough in the campaign that you could roll a new level 0 team, but I find that hard myself if I haven't seen what the deck can do yet. It's definitely tricky.

We haven't found that we've needed to do this so far, we squeaked through The Unspeakable Oath on our blind play through and did okay with Where Doom Awaits and The City of Archives - although I can see how it could be very difficult for some decks so we may have been a bit lucky there.

With that said, time is valuable and I can appreciate that you wouldn't want to replay a campaign from the start to see the story. Some things I'd consider if I found myself in your position:

1. Decrease the difficulty. We play on Standard but I would have no qualms about dropping to Easy, which despite its name does still require you to make decent decisions during play to win.
2. If you gained knowledge from the scenario that would help you beat it then replay it, maybe allowing changes to level 0 cards in the investigators' decks and/or changing how experience was spent if there is a weakness in your deck that the scenario is exploiting (intellect tests for WDA, mobility for TUO, reliance on item assets for CoA).
3. If you don't feel that replaying the scenario would help, or simply don't want to replay it, then you could take trauma instead. Instead of being killed take 1 physical trauma or instead of being driven insane take 1 mental trauma then carry on. You may need to read one of the other resolutions for the scenario to get the necessary campaign log entries if investigator defeat doesn't allow continuing - probably take whichever one looks worst if there is a choice. You could also take however much xp is in the Victory Display at game end.

Finally, losing The Unspeakable Oath doesn't end the campaign by the rules - you continue into A Phantom of Truth with new investigators. Granted starting mid-way through a campaign with 0xp characters is rough and I can understand why you may not want to do that but it would allow you to experience more of the story without breaking the immersion.

We thought about taking trauma to offset our 'taking liberties' with the rules, but after our third playthrough, we were so angry at the game that we didn't want to give it the satisfaction Honestly, our anger and frustration felt like punishment enough!

Maybe next time we'll do a little more deck-juggling. It really hurt us that William Yorick basically couldn't investigate at all - if I'd swapped in Newspaper for Dig Deep, things might have gone a bit more smoothly.

The rules are a little unclear that you can continue with a new team after a total wipe, though I know many people read them that way - it says "If there are not enough investigators to continue the campaign, the campaign is over and the players lose. Otherwise, the campaign continues. (Each player whose investigator has been driven insane must choose a new investigator from the pool of available investigators.)" This reads to me that you can only continue with new investigators if at least one player escaped the asylum - otherwise the campaign simply ends. Otherwise, I think we probably would have continued with new Investigators at 0, which might have made a bit more thematic/narrative sense.

Ultimately I feel like we did the right thing for us, but arg, this game can really be a rollercoaster of emotions! My play partner on this campaign had actually only played 'The Gathering' before, and had had such a bad, frustrating experience that she never came back to it, until we started Carcosa and she loved it. But I can understand, if someone had this frustrating an experience their first time out, that they might just abandon the game. I do wish there was sliiiiiightly more balance sometimes between 'the game's out to get your investigators' and 'the game hates its players'.

Still, looking forward to Phantom of Truth! Maybe I hate myself! 😆

1 hour ago, Sarre said:

We thought about taking trauma to offset our 'taking liberties' with the rules, but after our third playthrough, we were so angry at the game that we didn't want to give it the satisfaction Honestly, our anger and frustration felt like punishment enough!

Or to put it another way, replaying TUO 3 times basically gave us a real-life mental trauma!

2 hours ago, Sarre said:

The rules are a little unclear that you can continue with a new team after a total wipe, though I know many people read them that way - it says "If there are not enough investigators to continue the campaign, the campaign is over and the players lose. Otherwise, the campaign continues. (Each player whose investigator has been driven insane must choose a new investigator from the pool of available investigators.)" This reads to me that you can only continue with new investigators if at least one player escaped the asylum - otherwise the campaign simply ends. Otherwise, I think we probably would have continued with new Investigators at 0, which might have made a bit more thematic/narrative sense.

That particular rule is mostly a holdover from the early days of the game. An investigator who's been driven insane/killed cannot be used in the campaign again. The "not enough investigators" refers to the pool of available investigators - a real possibility when there were 5 or 10, but less so now that we've got 45 or so. It can still be relevant depending on your collection though.

2 hours ago, Sarre said:

Maybe next time we'll do a little more deck-juggling. It really hurt us that William Yorick basically couldn't investigate at all - if I'd swapped in Newspaper for Dig Deep, things might have gone a bit more smoothly.

I think this is the important lesson to take away from this. Even with the lower difficulties, Arkham is not a game where you can just take whatever you want and do well. You have to balance the capabilities of the investigators involved. In your case, Yorick makes a solid fighter but IMHO Carolyn can't perform as a primary Seeker (or at the very least, to avoid the wrath I'll say she's much harder to get good function from). She can do well as a secondary, and her support abilities can shine in larger games, but you probably need a stronger Seeker or Yorick has to make up some ground (more than just 1-2 cards).

I know it's not what you were originally asking, but IMHO this is the better approach. I'll admit to occasionally cheating (in our recent TFA run we lost a character in Depths to about a 0.7% chance of failure) but it's more important to look at why you're having problems and adapt your decks and play. The big problem with cheating through a scenario is that the weaknesses in your builds aren't going to go away - the next scenario will punish you the same way, and the one after that. Understanding your shortcomings lets you adapt via upgrades (in most cases) but sometimes you just need to accept that you brought bad characters/decks and take another run at it.

I agree that different investigators can yield different results and be better suited to different campaigns and a deck build that worked before, may not work in a different setting. Decks should also take into account your fellow Investigators. We learned early on that if you don’t have a solid clue gatherer in your party, you will suffer. It isn’t always the most glam job, but essential to getting through scenarios. If it’s a disaster, we re-play too. As a matter of fact, we are re-playing Finding Elena Harper again with our group, because I somehow omitted reading a sentence in set up that had a major impact on being able to get anything done. Even after years playing, silly mistakes still happen. (I’m pretty sure it was the rancid fish stink and creepy bus driver that had me all in a dither)
That said, we do have a house rule which has helped us avoid some, though not all, of what you are describing. It can be really hard to know exactly what kind of deck you will need for a campaign, if you’ve never played that campaign before. We have learned that the first scenario will generally give you some valuable hints to at least some of what is in store, since the all the new encounter sets show up in the expansion, and usually several are included in that first scenario. Sometimes, we make assumptions about what our deck needs and are dead wrong.
We started playing a couple of years ago, so our first time through the campaigns were in order of release. After NotZ, Dunwich and Carcosa, we were convinced we had to have spectacular Will or at least lots of Will icons to survive encounter card skill tests. Then came The Forgotten Age and that assumption died a horrible and painful death...4 times. We were all defeated in our original run at the opening TFA scenario and that experience became the catalyst for the following house rule.
In between the first and second scenario of a new campaign, and only between the first and second scenario, if your deck build is obviously not going to cut it and needs tweaking, you are allowed to swap out up to five 0 level cards for 0 level cards within your build requirements, without paying the XP. Sometimes you may discover you have the wrong tool for the job, or not enough tools for the job. Sometimes if you are playing a new Investigator, you realize you don’t really know how to maximize their ability without a trial run. We decided we didn’t want there to be a big XP punishment for some minor deck tweaking right at the beginning, in order to help make an investigator work better for the campaign, or work better with the other Investigators in the group. Swapping out a few 0 level cards early, can make a lot of difference down the road and help mitigate some of what you are describing. At least, it has helped us be a little more prepared for what’s ahead, although obviously nothing is guaranteed!
I love this game to be challenging. If I had never tasted defeat, my successes wouldn’t have been as sweet, but it should at least be possible to succeed, even if just barely.

That's a good rule. I think we did redo our decks XP-free a little bit after the first scenario - I realized I didn't understand how Solemn Vow worked, had it under WY instead of CF. And we developed the decks a bit as we leveled too. But we were actually doing really well up until this scenario, which just demolished us 🤪 We have found that these two pretty much need to stay together a lot, which makes very time-sensitive missions (like TUO) more challenging. Will definitely do some deck-tweaking before moving on to Phantom of Truth.

11 hours ago, Sarre said:

That's a good rule. I think we did redo our decks XP-free a little bit after the first scenario - I realized I didn't understand how Solemn Vow worked, had it under WY instead of CF. And we developed the decks a bit as we leveled too. But we were actually doing really well up until this scenario, which just demolished us 🤪 We have found that these two pretty much need to stay together a lot, which makes very time-sensitive missions (like TUO) more challenging. Will definitely do some deck-tweaking before moving on to Phantom of Truth.

There are a couple of things we have learned, which help us in time sensitive missions when you’re hectically running all over the place to accomplish a million things. You may already be incorporating them, but if not...

It’s all about “economy of action.” One thing we (well mostly me) struggled with early on, was my infatuation with assets. I was putting too many in my deck and spending too much time putting them into play. There are a lot of great assets, so it was easy for me to get greedy and the more I had, the more protected I felt. I have learned, less can be more. If I play four assets out as opposed to seven, I have saved 3 actions. So I pick fewer well chosen assets. I generally choose ones that accomplish more than one thing. Holy Rosary, skill boost and horror soak, spells that deal extra damage, or scoop up extra clues, Allies that do more than just give you soak, etc.
Fast events also free up actions, especially if they are played because of an action. Crack the Case, for example is an absolute must in my seeker decks, because it gives me resources as a result of my location being cleared of clues with no action. Two birds, one stone. Lone Wolf automatically gives you a resource if you start your turn alone at your location, Mr Rook searches your deck and find cards without taking actions. Eureka searches and let’s you draw for committing it to a successful skill test. Mists of R’lyeh lets you evade and move with one action. Cards that save actions, grant actions, have lightening actions or reactions, increase movement, give extra damage or clues, can be game changers in time sensitive scenarios.

You may also have noticed that Guardians have a tendency to want to defeat every enemy in sight! But sometimes it’s more “economical”action-wise to evade them instead, especially if they have no Victory anyway. Instead of using their whole turn to defeat an enemy, using one action to evade frees up two actions to accomplish other things that need to get done.

In the course of a scenario, all those little extra actions can stack up to the equivalent of having a couple extra rounds to accomplish your goals. It’s not perfect, because you can’t always maximize them, but it can make a palatable difference.

4 hours ago, Mimi61 said:

I have learned, less can be more. If I play four assets out as opposed to seven, I have saved 3 actions.

One thing I'll add here: just because you have an asset doesn't mean you have to play it. Will you actually get use out of it? Do you need it right now, or can you save it for a just-in-time play, waiting to see if you really use it?

Same goes for keeping assets around. A lot of players seriously underplay their health and sanity as a resource. If you've got a soak asset out that gives you other benefits, don't assume it's better to kill them off rather than taking the damage yourself - even (and this is how it relates to the above) if you have a replacement. Killing off Milan only to replace him is an action and 4 resources - was that truly worth trading one damage for?

Look for value in everything you do, from moving to building your board state.

Speaking of economy of action, we just did return to Essex County Express - possibly the ur-example of a scenario where you cannot waste actions - and our survivor (Rita) played Armitage and track shoes on his first turn, and literally never played another asset. Armitage didn't even trigger, he just soaked damage. He was busy the entire game evading enemies and getting what clues he could, and we needed every action he had. It was basically the most effective I've ever seen an investigator with almost nothing in play.

I've definitely come to think of Actions as the central currency of the game - they are a valuable and limited resource! Have also become more aggressive about mulligan-ing, and building a deck with an expectation of getting a few important cards out early.

10 hours ago, Sarre said:

I've definitely come to think of Actions as the central currency of the game - they are a valuable and limited resource! Have also become more aggressive about mulligan-ing, and building a deck with an expectation of getting a few important cards out early.

Same! Mulliganing is key, although it’s backfired for me too.
Sefina is fun to play just for the opening hand!!

The mulligan becomes more important as a cycle proceeds. It's more likely that you've added some individual high-value cards, and/or that your accumulated trauma makes you anxious to get out assets for "soaking" incoming punishment.

So, we finished Carcosa yesterday. Black Stars Rise we were doing terrific, and then at the end things got very hairy. It came down to a single pull to either win the scenario or lose it, and we lost it. So - Campaign Fail!!! We didn't want to replay, since we wanted to finish the campaign in that session, so we decided to make that draw a win, but to not take the 4XP we'd have earned, and to each take a physical trauma. This felt fair to us, as we'd been doing so well until the very end. If there'd just been a 'bad ending but carry on', we'd have accepted those consequences instead, but we were determined to finish the story.

Then, in Dim Carcosa, we blundered into the Palace, got Hastur out almost immediately, drew a million monsters, and realized we had no hope of winning. Rewound to the start, got terrible draws before even murdering the Man in the Pallid Mask (and had forgotten we couldn't investigate while he was out, so wound up wasting turn after turn dealing with encounters), and rewound again. We still hadn't gotten to the 3rd Agenda, so didn't know we'd have to 'find the secret', and hadn't yet flipped a single location card to it's story side, but realized that was probably important. Fore-armed with foresight, we cleared some locations before murdering the Man in the Pallid Mask, started wailing immediately on Hastur when he appeared, and realized quickly that we probably needed to flip the Palace of the King to 'learn the secret'. Though we didn't get the best possible draws, William Yorick was set up well to deflect damage - Aquinnah was able to bump the Beast of Aldeberan's damage to Hastur a couple times, and Survival Knife's fight action during the Monster Phase was super helpful. We did get sliiiiiiightly creative with some vagueness in the rules - we decided that Aquinnah cancelled Massive attacks against other investigators, which she probably doesn't, but who's to say for sure! And we stopped taking horror for saying 'Hastur' out loud after I did it 1,000 times (we figured by the time we'd summoned him, we could acknowledge that he existed). But for the most part, we felt that we stuck closely enough to the rules to feel like we were playing fairly. Caroline was eliminated, and William Yorick had 5 monsters engaged with him, but we managed to pull it off at the last minute (thanks, Aquinnah!). If things had gone really badly this time, when we knew what we had to do and weren't just blundering around, we'd have accepted a failure resolution, but we both played to the strengths of our decks and the synergies of the characters, and we felt like we did good!

It was another situation where, without knowing some of the specifics of the scenario in advance, victory seemed virtually impossible with only 2 investigators. Actions were simply too precious to waste exploring or doing something that wasn't useful in the end. I am starting to feel that the game is basically designed for 3+ players, and anything less is a real handicap.

Pretty sure this was my first campaign win (can't remember how TFA worked out, but Dunwich and Zealot both ended very badly for the world). It feels good! I've found that playing by myself I'm more inclined to be a stickler with the rules and accept all bad luck, but with a friend, it's more fun to be a little flexible when the game itself is out to get you.

It was interesting restarting Dim Carcosa 3 times to see just how much luck is involved in the game, and how much a good initial hand/mulligan, and how much a run of unlucky pulls or draws, can drastically effect the flow of the game one way or another. The amount of luck involved does make me feel a little better about being a bit bendy with the rules at times.

Carcosa has definitely been my favorite of the campaigns I've played - the narrative feels the most coherent and there's not much downtime, even if there are fewer scenarios with unique mechanics.

Indeed. The luck of the draw (chaos bag and deck) is half the battle to win or lose.

I have also found that certain investigators do better in certain campaigns. William teamed with Agnes was a pretty good pair in TFA, for example, but I can see him not be as effective in Carcosa. (Try him with Boxing Gloves someday though. Survivors have lots of spirit cards and combined with his ability, it makes him pretty awesome as a fighter, with lots of opportunities to get the cards back in his hand again).

Carcosa is one of my favorites. We have played it 4 times (twice normal, twice Return To) with both 2 and 4 investigators. The most successful 2 investigator pair in that campaign were Luke Robinson and Sefina Rousseau. I feel like Luke did better in Carcosa than Dream Eaters. He has that seeker ability, so can get clues, Mystics have so many spells that make them good at everything and his Dream Gate is amazing, especially if you keep it charged. He is able to get all over the place, avoid dangerous enemy phases, can get things done in a hurry, can snag clues right out from under an enemies nose without them even knowing he was there, or do damage at one location with his last action and end up somewhere completely different. Open Gate was helpful in that campaign too, if you could get at least 2 of them on the board.

Sefina is the event queen. She can have Leo de Luca with that lovely extra action. As a rogue, she has access to cards that get her tons of resources, so she can afford cards like Small Favor, Intel Report etc. which can purchase clues on ridiculous high shroud locations, do damage or evade without testing. She starts the game with 13 cards, which means she’s pretty much guaranteed to get useful stuff right out the gate, her Painted Worlds are awesome and when she can afford Double Double, she can immediately re-play events. Elusive is also available to her, so she can scoot in a hurry, plus since there are so many ways rogues can get extra actions, she can just get a lot done. As a matter of fact, Double Double combined with Ace in the Hole can give her 9 actions in one turn! 10 if she has Leo and possibly 11 if she has Leo and Swift Reflexes. If she has Ace in the Hole under her and Painted World, she could conceivably do that twice. It’s a lot of XP to set up, but can you imagine having 9 actions with no encounter cards in between? It is awesome, (although a little obnoxious for other investigators who are just watching her run around and clean house). The Gold Pocket Watch is another card that can essentially give all investigators an extra turn with no Mythos phase. That card has saved our bacon on numerous occasions. Since she is a Mystic secondary, she has a lot of great Mystic events available too. (She is the one who had Open Gate). It’s a balancing act, because she needs a lot of resources to do it all. So she has Lone Wolf and Burglary, but once you get Double Double, events like Hot Streak, Pay Day or Easy Mark will automatically double the resource amounts. As investigators, they don’t need to stay together as much, since they have ways to move out of danger. Those two investigators did really well together in Carcosa.

So when the horror subsides and Mr H has receded a little in your memory, take another run at Carcosa. Choose different paths. It’s all as relevant or irrelevant as you want it to be....