First off all i should apoligize for my bad english, now thats done i would like to aske some questions about gaining xp (conquest) during rtl.
I have been playing rtl for a while with a group of friends but i cant get my head over it why they are gaining xp so fast and why it takes me so long.
I have the descent core game, wod, rtl and tomb of ice i just mention this so if there would be any trick as ol to gain xp faster that you guys could share these, i would be verry greatfull.
So as i would sume up the options of gaining xp as overlord it would be, every end of a game week i gain 1, And for every razed city i gain an aditional xp.
In dungeons i could gain xp by killing the heros and reshuffeling my deck would get me 3 conquest.
Thhee heros on the other site gain 1 xp a person whenever they get to a area they never vvisitit befor, for every gliph they activate they get 2 a person, when they kill a luitenant or a dungeon leader they gain xp and when they open a chest.
The problem for me is that i dont seem able to kill them off effectefly so i mostly endup gaining only 1 xp a game week and sometimes 3 to 4 extra for killing a player.
While the heros most of the time come out of any dungeon with a total of 30 xp eatch easely, witch delivers a diffrent problem since the heros are not able to enter a legendary area if there cumulative xp is more then the ol's.
I hope im doing something wrong because at this rate they will keep oneshotting my monsters like it where nothing and i dont get a fighting chance.
Allready allot of thanx for your answers

How can they get 30XP each on average? With about 1.2 glyphs and 1.2 leaders/level, heroes should make about 20 XP per dungeon, if they go through the 3 levels. Maybe a little more for chests that do not drop loot.

You need to kill some heroes in order to get XP indeed. Just don't waste your spawn cards, only use them when they stand a good chance of killing one (don't ever spawn hellhounds at copper, don't spawn banespiders, never ever discard a beastmen war party). Try to save XP to upgrade a monster category to silver ASAP. That will change a lot of things.

What is the party composition (heroes/Skills)? What is your avatar?

I'm curious. You said you have Tomb of Ice, so are you using Feats?

I'm not sure either how they are averaging 30 Conquest. Are you sure you are giving out Conquest the right way? I know some people have gotten tripped up there before. You average dungeon should give:

9 Conquest from activating Glyphs

8 Conquest from Leaders (2 CT for the 1st and 2nd floor leaders, 4 for the 3rd floor leader.)

3 Conquest from Chests, assuming you found no Treasure.

So like Galdred said, that's 17-20 on average. So not sure how they are getting 30. I'd double check and make sure you are distributing the Conquest the right way. As for not being able to kill them, knowing what the party is would help us give advice.

I checked and i have been giving away to mutch conquest so it would indeed be around 20 per dungeon.
And to answer the question yes im am using the feat cards witch the hero players love and are a pain in the you know what for me.
The characters they are using are kornak who has the tread ice and immune to frost and fear and has the cleaving spell making this a hard character since he starts with 5 power dice he has the hammer and lleather armor.
the seconnd is okaluk and rakash witch have the stealth ability and the mighty skill, witch makes him handy in close combat but since he also has a crossbow and sword he is pretty good balanced in both he also has the sword crossbow and chainmail.
The third is shiver and he has the aura 4 ability during the overlords turn, and he has the focus skill witch adds 2 more surges, making it a hard one to attack beccause he usaly attacks at distance and up close he has the aura 4 he has the mage staff ghost aromor and tunic.
Then the last one is silhouette who can spend 2 fatigeu to change here rediet order,and has the alertness skill witch gives here the opertunety to make a attack to any figure adjecent to here by spending 2 fatigeu an she as the crossbow chainmail and a shield.
I as ol am playing the beastmanlord and i have the dark strenght skill and the lawlessness witch i bought with my initial 15 xp.
This is a new game we just started out but i have been having the same problem in earlyer games where we were player for about 10 game weeks.
I always try to come up with new strategies to kill the heros off but one of the guys in our group is very expirienced in playing descent and d&d so he directs the whole group witch makes it real hard for me to find room for errors.
Anny tips woulld be apriciated, and im getting aod this month to add more choice to my monsters so i ca be more creative in finding cominations that work well to kill of the players.
And since where at it i would like to aske witch monsters you like to juse and what your strategies are for killing of players.
Allready allot off thanx

and before i forget could someone please post who gets howmutch xp when so i can see if a have been inturpreting the rules wrong.
Thanx

Now, I recently started a campaign as the Titan, and just like you, I felt hammered by the heroes (this is our second campaign, so it's not new to any of us). I felt they were just dancing through my dungeons with much trouble. Then they hit one particularly cruel dungeon, and I turned the entire bucket around and handed them their heads and stuff on a platter. I managed to claw in the xp needed to upgrade my monster category to silver and now the heroes are taking the backseat.

The point? I think, when you find yourself in such a tricky position. Wait. Wait and wait. Another user on the forum very well described the situation you should wait for. It is when you have a combination of cards, to not only kill one of the heroes, but to cripple the entire party. Collect Threat. Get hold of two maybe even three powerful spawn cards (thinking Beastman War Party, Ferrox Tribe, Dark Brothers or something equally deadly). A few pits or boulder traps, and perhaps even a Dark Charm. Then assault the heroes endlessly.

This strategy won't work everytime, but it helps when you feel dead in the water. But also, you have to wait for the right time and possible the right dungeon. Some dungeons are 'far' better for the overlord, than others!

In a typical dungeon level, heroes get:

1 point if the chest gives no treasure (1-2 per level)=0-2

3 points for activating a glyph (1 or 2 per level) = 3-6

2 points for killing a leader (1-3 per level) = 2-6 , or 4-12 for the last level

+ some more point in some levels (the ones with peasants to save for instance)

It is possible to score much more if you get trial by fire as last level for instance (4 leaders *4 = 16+3 for the glyph if there is only one), but most levels should give them 5 points:

3 for activating the only glyph, and 2 for killing the leader. They might get a dungeon at 30 XP if they are really lucky (these dungeon levels are usually harder for the heroes though).

7 points for the last level (4 points for the leader, 3 points for the glyph).

The beastmen damage upgrade is probably a better choice than darkstrength (I don't have the cards there, but isn't it only used for the final battle?), and lawlessness may favor the heroes, as green encounters are usually somewhat easy. Screen the important monsters (master beastmen, master skeletons, sorcerers) with the crappy ones.

Concerning killing the heroes, you should usually favor ranged monsters during setup (but don't take bane spiders or hellhounds). Always place them far away from the heroes so that they cannot kill during their opening turn ( they should be placed around the dungeon boss).

And try to focus on the weakest heroes. The problem is that you hero party is hard to engage in melee with aura 4 and alertness, and the stealthy hero is a pain to kill. skeletons or sorcerers are probably the best bet against them. Another powerful anti hero combo is stacking the monster with command abilitiy (favor the monster choices that give you a master beastman or naga during dungeon level setup). Getting 2 monsters with command will make the hero life miserable, just force them to take big risks to get rid of them.

Try to kite them with your skeletons if possible (fire, and pull them back), to force the heroes to spend fatigue to get in range. You can use razorwings and ferrox in order to melee the caster or Silhouette, as they are tough enough to survive the aura, and have great damages (ferrox deals 1 white dice of damage even if they don't bypass armor, and the master doubles the damages that go through armor if the target is out of fatigue).

Keep your XP for a monster upgrade ASAP (you don't have to upgrade humanoids, Eldritch might work better against these heroes, or beasts if you want to protect your lieutenants). Going with Eldritch is never a bad choice. Humanoids are not that great, since they have to stay close to the heroes to deal damage, which is very bad for their health. Sturdy skeletons will give them a very hard time as they have a pretty low damage output.

Don't listen the the people saying that you shouldn't try to make your monsters survive. It is usually the best way to go. Only spawn when you can cripple the heroes, and force them to take risks(and spend fatigue) to kill the monsters that harass them.

It might be hard on the beginning, but once you have upgraded one monster category, things will get much better, as the heroes won't be able to one shot everything anymore.

beastmanlord said:

For a start, make sure Okaluk and Rakash and Silhouette both move at max speed 4 (rather than 6 or 5 respectively). Chainmail reduces a Heroes maximum base speed to 4 (which can be increased again through skills etc). If you have an experienced Descent player playing that player should have picked up on this already (possibly you already are playing them with reduced speed, but surely an experienced player would have argued against that equipment allocation in such a case!)

I find that the heroes, if they are careful and willing to flee dungeons early, actually have the advantage very early on. However once you are able to upgrade one monster set (unfortunately for you it will probably be humanoids, which I find to be exceptionally weak against skilled heroes) you should do much better.

Once you upgrade you'll also find Shiver's special becomes pretty ignorable. Most of the time the heroes can one-shot most minor monsters so

Other than that I think you probably need to read up on general OL gameplay advice. Spawn selections/timings, use of traps and events, manipulating your monsters effectively, patience within a dungeon (time is your ally, not the heroes) and planning over multiple dungeon levels are all worthwhile reading about in threads dedicated to OL playskills rather than a new thread.

One last thing. Nowhere in the ToI rules for Feats (*or any of the ToI rules in fact) is RtL mentioned. Specifically in the rules for feats we see mention of Feats occasionally being found as rewards in Chests, which tells us that in this section of the rules the designers are specifically and only thinking about how Feats play in non-RtL Descent. IMO FFG made a serious error here as there are too many differences between RtL and non-RtL play. RtL was a fairly finely balanced game before, often appearing imbalanced towards one side or the other at times but IMO as more depth of RtL experience has developed the game is being seen more and more as finely balanced. The introduction of a new rule mechanism (Feats) that is entirely beneficial to one side only, without either a balancing cost or another new rule mechanism for the other side, is a seriously imblancing effect IMO and I think RtL run using feats will rapidly become a lot more one-sided than it has been (especially amongst experienced RtL players). Of course, I could be jumping the gun here - just as the overwhelming majority initially thought RtL was too hard on the heroes in bronze (as Hero players become more experienced more and more OLs seem to be having difficulties in getting or staying ahead even in Bronze level).

On the face of it, with what we have now being IMC(onsidered)O rather finely balanced, adding feats for the heroes and nothing for the OL does not seem like it could possibly still be balanced (we will eventually see). As a consequence, I will be arguing with my fellow players for a reduced feats houserule (the hero that activates a glyph gets a feat, and only that hero) for our next, first 'ToI included', campaign. Gotta finish the current ones first though!

Sorry... back to your questions. What monsters to use varies with situations. In yours, I'd be targeting Karnak (16/1 for 4CT) generally where I could as you have the most chance of doing substantial damage to him (with both Chainmails used he must have only Leather armour?) and you get a high return on CT. Razorwings and Leaping Blood Apes to get at Shiver (both can survive his Aura unless he uses the feat card to double it and both can move a looong way). Traps are often a great way to 'finish off' a badly damaged hero who is limping toward a glyph or doorway, but they are also a great way to change or limit LOS's to help spawning! Your Beastman War Parties should be killers, but make sure you save them for opportunities where all three beatsmen will be able to reach and attack a single hero (and use the command on their attack to boot - don't disperse them and if they can't spawn close enough to hit the same turn then save the spawn and threat for another turn when they can - dropping a hero in a pit or behind a crushing block on his last MP is really effective for getting up-close-and-personal spawns...

KevinW came on here in another thread and gave his recommendation for how to use Feats:

Quoted from KW in another thread:

"Jason and I were talking this over, and for now, I'm going to recommend you give them one feat card of the same type as the skill they keep at the start, and then just playing it normally, but carrying the same hand of feats through the whole campaign, drawing one new card each time a glyph is activated. They can still draw feats from any deck corresponding to a skill they have at least a 1 (or an actual skill card) in."

I don't have ToI yet, so it could be that using the Feat cards according to the ToI rules is unbalancing the game towards the Heroes.

Allready allot of thanx for all the good tips and hints, what i have been trying to do till now is spawning a beastman warparty near a bunch of skeletons so they gain benefit from the command skill and then have them and my beast man draw back and keep firing heavy hitting arrows at the heros who by now will do about anything to get too the beastman, and if i by then have gatherd enough treath to spawn again i spawn a kobold swarm behind them en trap them.
I think its great to hear new options that i dident think off before, andd i must ettmit in the beginning i started playing as ol i was always press for time and spawned right away most of the time leading to allot of dead monsters and no hero kills.
And maybe i should indeed revise the feat rules because that makkes the game so mutch harder for me, lets say a hero has a readiet order and i take his gaurd away with a small creature to move in with a big onne and do monster damage.
Now i find my big moster getting smashed because they most of the time are holding 4 feat cards witch kick my butt.

At what points can Heroes trade items while on the Terrinoth map?

If they move, and then take a visit... one to the market, one to the temple... it says the guy in the market must be able to carry what he buys... but can he buy things (up to his carry limit) then at the end of the turn, redistribute the items?

If you take a glyph from a dungeon to town - and go to the market and buy stuff, then take another turn to stay in town and go to the temple (while your buddies are still battling in a dungeon) could you drink potions during this time? There are no movement points spent while staying to restock a 2nd turn, so I'm not sure.

poobaloo said:

As per the FAQ, they can freely trade at any time on the Terrinoth map and in cities without spending movement points. As for the drinking potion, you are unable to since you do not get movement points while doing a Restock action.