Hi,

Me and four other friends played our very first game yesterday and I have a few question about game mechanics. We played the very first quest In to the Dark, I was the Overlord and I lost to the heroes who had about 25 conquest tokens. They litterally killed every single monster, even the red ones, in one blow. Narthak went down with two blows. I know it is the first game, but is it supposed to be that easy for the heroes? It was not rare for the heroes to do twice as much damage as needed to kill a monster. I also have a few other questions:

* Web and burn effects; is it one token per damage (before armor adjustment) or is it one token per attack?

* Does burn damage after it is removed with a surge? What if I don't roll a surge and it stays on, doesn't it damage?

* One of my friends played as Landrec the Wise and had two surges on every attack, he also had some skill that gave him +2 range and +1 damage on magical attacks. He then got the Flamestrike rune and killed every single monster with one attack. Is it supposed to be that awesome?

* How does Crack Shot work? It said on the card that a hero can draw line of sight from another hero. Does that mean that he can also attack a monster from say a corner in the other room?

* Can you walk diagonally through a corner? In the first quest, in Area 2 where the big red spider is hiding behind a boulder, could I get my red sorcerer from the end of the halway to walk up to the bolder and then squeeze in between it and the corner?

* Finally, I just read on the forums that we can't use heroes equipment and training from the firsts quest to play the second quest. The core set is apparently not made for campaigns but rather for single games, is this true? We need to buy expansions that are made for campaigning, but which of the expansions are made for campaigns? The way I understand it, Well of Darkness, Altar of Despair and Tomb of Ice work just like the core game with alot of stand alone quests and Road to Legend and Sea of Blood are campaigns.

Thanks!

Monsters dying in one hit is not at all unusual, especially once the heroes get the more advanced treasures. Descent combat is rocket launcher tag. You should treat your monsters as disposable, and should generally use them to attack as early as possible rather than holding them back (since they'll often die anyway), and try to spawn new monsters in positions where they can attack on the turn that they're spawned. The quests also get harder for the heroes.

25 conquest is extreme, though, unless that was hyperbole. I don't remember the exact conquest total for that quest, but that sounds close to what they should have if none of them died the entire game...?

Web , Burn , and similar effects only inflict 1 token per attack. The only status effect that inflicts multiple tokens per attack is Poison , which inflicts one token per wound (i.e. after armor is deducted).

When a figure is activated, you roll a black die for each Burn token on it, remove one token for each surge rolled, and then it suffers 1 wound for each remaining Burn token. This means it is possible to remove a Burn token before taking any damage from it at all.

Re: Flamestrike, the area-effect weapons in Descent tend to be significantly more useful than other weapons, though in your example it sounds like the hero had an unusual number of bonuses to the attack, which may have amplified the effects.

That's not what the Crack Shot card says. You could maybe be thinking of Spiritwalker , though that's an expansion skill. Crack Shot allows you to trace line-of-sight from your attacks starting in an empty adjacent square, rather than your own square; it can be used for firing around corners and the like. See the line-of-sight rules on pages 9-10. Spiritwalker allows an attack to originate from the square of an allied hero, which affects line-of-sight, but also other parts of the attack, such as calculating range.

Yes, you can move diagonally as long as the destination square is open, no matter what's in the corner squares. See the movement example on page 9, where Silhouette moves diagonally between rubble and a beastman (walls are no different).

Yes, Descent is designed for stand-alone games, not as a continuous campaign. If you try to keep all the loot from the first quest into the following quests, the game will be horribly broken. The Road to Legend and Sea of Blood expansions are designed for extended campagin play. Some people swear by them, others don't care for them. You should also note that the extended campaign is still competitive, an early advantage can snowball, and it takes a very long time to finish a campaign, so you might not want to jump straight in without getting some practice, first.

Antistone said:

+1 to everything Antistone said.

I'd just add, about the Advanced Campaigns (RtL and SoB), they ae exactly that - Advanced . It is highly, highly recommended that you play through at least half a dozen normal quests at a bare minimum, before moving on to the Advanced Campaigns.

As for keeping the loot etc, two things.
1. You've already seen the power of the higher grade loot (Flamestrike, for example). You might think about how impossible it would be if the heroes started with that, rather than having to fight their way through the quest until they get to the gold treasure. Note how they start with shop items and find progressively more powerful treasures as they go through the quest? That is a deliberate pattern and a necessary part of the balance structure in the way the quests are made.
2. You actually shouldn't (not can't, shouldn't) even keep the same heroes, let alone skills or treasures. Each quest should be an entirely new game, with only the barest fluff relationship to the last game (if that).
Hero selection is supposed to be random, with an option to allow the heroes to choose. A good compromise is a draw 3 choose 1 system for each hero (as used in the Advanced Campaigns) which allows each player to have some choice, not get stuck with something they hate and allows a balanced party, without seeing the same few heroes all the time.
Using new heroes each game will also allow you to learn different styles and appreciate different possibilities and abilities . You'll simply get more out of the game, though if you want to restrict yourself there is nothing to stop you.

It is also worth noting that the first quest is an easy learner for the heroes. The second is also very easy if they figure out the correct tactic, and near-impossible if they don't. IIRC correctly the 3rd is also pretty easy but it gets variably harder after that. Number 7(? - the Black Blade I think) is by far the hardest in the vanilla set and some groups play it up to 11 times before they beat it (or never do. I think we did it on our 3rd or 4th attempt, mainly due to a nice move that stopped a huge swarm of monsters cold and a fantastic killer turn by one hero).

I appreciate the answers, thank you! I just want to make one thing clear; the quests in Well of Darkness, Altar of Despair and Tomb of Ice are not continuous campaigns? And what about this quest compendium that you can buy? Me and my friends really like to play long campaigns that take numerous sessions to finish.

One final question; Do I have to be the Overlord for the entire campaign or can we use a system of rotating Overlords, so I can play hero sometimes too?

Ranew said:

WoD, AoD and ToI are the same as the base set. The quest are independent of each other, but vaguely tied together by some fluff.

For an Advanced Campaigns, the OL must stay the same person trough an entire campaign because there are long term strategies and purchases for both heroes and OL.
For the vanilla quests since each quest is independent you can swap OLs every time.

Ranew said:

The quest compendium is not a campaign, it's a bunch of completely unrelated quests written by different authors.

Ranew said:

You like really long campaigns that take numerous sessions to finish, but you don't actually like playing on the same side for the entire campaign? That strikes me as...odd.

Ranew said:

As Corbon said, you'd have to stay OL for the whole campaign if you were playing one of the Advanced Campaign expansions, but you have the freedom to switch up each map if you're playing vanilla quests, such as those provided in the base game.

I can understand the desire to switch out the OL role from time to time. Descent is a heavily competitive game and if one person is always the Overlord it can get to feeling like the other players are all ganging up on you. (Gee, I wonder why? =P) Switching gives you a bit of release as well as an opportunity for everyone to learn both sides of the game. For this reason, perhaps more than any other, I would recommend you keep playing vanilla quests for a while. At least until you've played most, if not all, of the base game quests.

The Advanced Campaign is advanced in terms of strategy and mechanics. It's not especially more complicated, but it helps to have a firm grasp of the basic mechanics before you start working on the long-term mechanics you need to use to win the AC (either as heroes or as OL.) You need to know where you're going by mid to late Copper level (at the latest) or else the game will end up very lop-sided, and likely against your favour. It also helps to know the treasures in the deck reasonably well, so you can more easily determine what stuff is worth keeping in the long run (or worth trying to destroy, if you're the OL). Stuff like that.

Another thing about the quest compendium which I haven't noticed anyone else mention - it requires at least Well of Darkness and Altar of Despair. I don't think Tomb of Ice was out when it was released, but I could be wrong. The compendium was designed to provide new material that used expansion rules and tokens since each expansion is designed to be self contained otherwise.

Tomb of Ice was out when the Quest Compendium was released. My understanding was that different quests in the Compendium require different expansions, with some requiring none and one requiring all three of Well of Darkness, Altar of Despair, and Tomb of Ice. But I've never personally laid eyes on it.

Thank you for the answers. We have agreed to play Overlord twice each and then switch to Road to Legend. I read about Road to Legend and it seems you would have the most fun being an Overlord with you lieutenants and all. I don't think we will buy the Altar of Despair and Well of Darkness right away, instead we will start Road to Legend and then add the expansions later on in the campaign.