This is more of a strategy question. We have just entered the silver campaign. I am playing the demon prince and I just upgraded eldritch to gold. Is it worth upgrading any of the other monster categories from their copper level? Trying to decide how to spend my points. What are considered must have purchases by end of the game? Thanks.

Brian

What you need to upgrade depends on the Plot you have, and what Avatar upgrades you want. The only way for the heroes to win the campaign is to face your avatar in the final battle. The demon prince is probably the weakest Avatar of them all in terms of upgrades. However, if you were to upgrade ALL of your demons...not sure what you can get as my cards are not handy at the moment...and then buy some green points of treachery, you will just have to chase down the heroes with the Demon Prince's LT. He is quite strong from what I remember. Just harass the heroes.

As for your question, I would upgrade your beasts next, they are much harder to kill in comparison to humanoids, especially when the heroes should have only a few silver items. Again, I don't know the state of your campaign, just going on what I have seen and done in my past.

Upgrading the other monsters categories depends strongly on the ongoing of the campaign itself. How many XP do you have (both total and still to spend)? What other upgrades have you already bought? What's your plot? How is it going? What party are you facing and how are they equipped/upgraded right now? Give us detailed information about your actual situation so we can suggest you better.

I would say yes, but maybe not right away. Get a few other things going to harass the heroes then bump up the other categories.

-shnar

Details:

Demon Prince

Plot: Ascension

Conquest Points: OL - 110 Heroes - 94 Total - 204

OL Purchases:

All 4 LTS. (lost one to the players though)

Siege Engines, 1 pt of Event Treachery, Eldritch to Silver

Exp left: 42

Next turn purchase: Eldritch to Gold

3 Cities have been Razed.

Heroes:

They have most of the copper treasures by now.

The most powerful and damage dealer is: Rune Master Thorn w/ Staff of the Grave, Spiritwalker, Prodigy, and 2 silver dice.

Scout: Tahlia w/ swift and tiger tatoo

Tankish: Brother Glyr w/ Leadership and Windpact

Extra: Laurel of Bloodwood w/ Lucky

This is a very tough group to deal with. Tahlia runs up ahead, the Thorn battles twice through Tahlia. Glyr gives Tahlia a guard order. Then I move to attack Tahlia and she runs 6 spaces away. Glyr and Laurel play clean up with the small stuff.

How is it going? Well in general I run around with LTs. They hit some dungeons and then run to chase my LTs away from razing a city. After losing the one LT. I don't risk the LTs and just run from the encounters. I have to be careful with those fights. If Tahlia can ever move 12(plus fatigue) to get close to my LT, then Thorn battles and can do 13-15 damage easily per shot, combine that with a power potion on of those and then Glyr gives Thorn a guard action. That generally means about 60 damage on my LT before I can blink. So harrassing the players doesn't seem to be much of an option. It might be now that my eldritch are gold. In general, though, my "harassing" them has been forcing them to come to cities to chase my LTs. out.

Thoughts?

Brian

Having better critters all around though can be "meat shields" for your Lt encounters. Having more hits and armor will (slowly) add up, enough to allow your Lt to flee (in Gold, it's very possible to kill your Lt during the heroes' first turn if you don't place enough obstacles in the way).

The great thing about upgrading monsters though is that they last the rest of the game and will harrass the heroes during the final dungeon levels.

-shnar

You are doing pretty well and have a big experience income per week. I think you could spend 25 to bring to silver level...beasts. Since the party you're confronting is strong, I also suggest you start to buy your Avatar's final battle upgrades. Keep the heroes distracted with your Lt. I'd also buy some treachery. I'd go for the red one and buy a couple points. Then you can buy the card that summons 2 master dark priests...they always do fine.

On a side note about the Spiritwalker skill that Runemaster Thorn has, remember that it is reduced to only 5 spaces in RtL, not the 10 that is printed on the card. It's still a very powerful skill, but without that little revision it can get insane.

Sorry for derailing. Regarding the Spiritwalker skill, how do you calculate range for attacks?-Is it the distance from the friendly figure that is being used as the source of the attack, or from the hero who has the skill? Also, is the hero with Spiritwalker required to have line of sight to the figure he's using as the medium for the attack?

zealot12 said:

I don't believe Spiritwalker requires you to have LoS to the friendly figure you're using as a proxy. It's an area effect like Breath, so as long as a single-square flying figure could reach the friendly within 10 (or 5 in RtL) moves, then you're good to go. Range is calculated from the proxy's space and you must have LoS from there to the target.

I'm pretty sure the proxy also counts as the source of the attack for things like Shadowcloak, but check the FAQ on that. There's an itchy feeling in the back of my skull that says that one might be more complicated that I remember.

The skill says "All aspects of the attack (such as tracing line of sight and calculating range ) are done as though you were in that space."

In RtL neither myself nor my opponent (ie, we play multiple campaigns, some with me OL and some with him OL) ever upgraded more than one monsters type. There was simply better things to spend the CT on (Lts, and lots of Treachery, plot upgrades, Avatar upgrades etc).

In SoB I am running Captain Bones. He has cheap Eldritch and cheap Humanoids. In SoB humanoids are much better than in RtL due to better dungeon design. I naturally upgrade Eldritch first (Siren, exploding skeletons), but in Silver level immediately upgraded Humanoids twice.
1. Eldritch get the best boost from copper to silver.
2. Humanids get the best boost from silver to gold. Gold Beastmen War Parties are truly fearsome, and even Kobolds start to be a serious threat with RG dice + swarm (RGAu for the Masters!)
3. Skeletons don't last long as exploding them is always smart - they move in, take a shot on the way then explode because there is no chance of them still being there for another shot! So there is not a lot of point in making them tougher, and the only damage boost they get silver->gold is a single point of pierce.

In addition, the heroes completed a Rumour which allowed them to make one monster category cost an extra 10CT to upgrade. They chose Eldritch, which means I won't even look at upgrading from silver to diamond when the Gold level begins (if we make it that far).

There are also some additional factors in why I changed policy in SoB.
1. Treachery is much less useful since Lts don't use it.
2. Treachery is more expensive for Captain Bones (20/15/20)
3. There is less need of Avatar upgrades for Captain Bones since the main deal in the Avatar fight is the Battle between ships.

In summary, upgrading multiple monsters is a question of resource allocation.
IMO it was never worth while in RtL. Upgraded monsters, beyond the primary upgrade, generally do very little for you in winning the game. They may increase your CT rate of acquisition, though it is doubtful if they will actually pay for themselves by the time you take into account the opportunity cost as well as the purchase cost.
For the OL, what wins you the game is Lts, Treachery and Plot. So that is where the resources should usually go.

In SoB the equation is a little different (very different for Captain Bones because of his unique avatar fight). Treachery doesn't help you win at all. Lts and Plot are the key, and Avatar upgrade may be important as well.

James McMurray said:

Exactly. Note that it is 'all aspects'.

It really is very simple (Steve-O was worried unnecessarily).
You ARE in the proxy's space for the attack. You gain command/blessing bonus from yourself (because you are in the space), and from any figure within 3 spaces of the proxy. You would not gain command/Blessing bonus from a figure within 3 space of your actual space but not 3 spaces of the proxy. You gain elevated bonus/penalty from the proxy's space. You suffer Black Curse/Ghost/Shadowcloak from the proxy's space. You cont range and LOS from teh proxy's space.
Everything about the attack is treated as though you are in that space for the duration of the attack.

Thanks for all the advice. Sadly for me, we didn't notice the errata on the skill until we were almost to silver level. The players feel that they have made too many decisions based on this ability. So, I am stuck with dealing with spiritwalker reaching 10 spaces. As I said, it is really tough. Tahlia runs out 12 spaces. Thorn blasts through her twice. Then Tahlia gets a guard action from the dwarf. On my turn Tahlia runs attacks and then runs away 6 spaces. It is pretty tough tactics to fight against.

Brian

Unless they're giving you something to compensate, there's no way you should "be stuck" with the unerrataed Spiritwalker. There's a reason they changed it for RtL, and you're suffering through that reason now.

I am curious about that as well. They have scaled down Runewitch Astrata's special ability(glyphs activate six spaces away from her) from six spaces to three spaces due to smaller dungeons, so I was wondering how Spiritwalker was modified for campaign play.

Nevermind, found it: it's 5 spaces, not 10. Still, it's an excellent skill, even when toned down.

Yeah it's been tough, but I got luck on my side, so it balances. We just went into the silver age. I had saved up my xp to purchase gold eldritch. They did their first silver age dungeon. I killed 2 characters last night. For the second character, they had a run of 7 misses (straight up X on the roll) out of 9 rolls. If they had just one more hit out of any of those, then I wouldn't had enough to kill the character. Also, I had to roll max damage on two attacks in a row (which I did).

I am willing to give them the extra 5 spaces if they keep rolling that bad.

Brian

Woerth said:

Have your heroes agreed to this bargain?

Woerth said:

Are they aiming at all? Aiming is usually pretty good in the Advanced Campaign, especially if they're downing any power potions.

-shnar