So my group just bought Well of Darkness (our first expansion beyond the base game). Being excited by the boulder tokens we requested to play a dungeon with a boulder. We played the third scenario (Temple of Doom or something like that). We make it through the two rooms, get the keys, etc. We are down to three conquest but confident in our ability to protect our heroes. As we enter the central passage we kill the monsters created through our OL's Hordes of Things and we prepare to continue along the corridor. On the overlord's turn the boulder appears, killing one of expensive characters, losing us the game. This I could not stand.

Perhaps its just the nature of the expansions to add more brutal things and I do not have a problem with this. But something as simple as that "gotcha" boulder just infuriated me. We played for hours getting to this point, only to die to something completely beyond our ability. Its not like a trap card where we even have a slim chance of averting catastrophe or bad rolling or good OL rolling that kills us, its just the scenario. Our OL did not read us the flavor text which may have contributed to this, but I doubt we would have gleamed enough information to deal with that. Is this a trend throughout the expansions? Do we have to loose every time we play a dungeon for the first time so we get to know all these traps? If so, I don't think I am interested in buying any more expansions.

Also, how is one expected to handle the boulder rolling down the central hall? If it does crash through doors, kills monsters, and destroys treasure, is there any way to retrieve the treasure without it being destroyed? According to our OL the boulder moves a red die and yellow die worth of movement. This alone doesn't settle right with me.

Now, I have not looked at the other scenarios because I am of the school of thought that things like that are best left unrevealed until played for the first time, but do the other scenarios have similar "features" that will require multiple playings through until we have a chance to beat them?

I don't own Well of Darkness, but from what I've heard, most of the quests provided with this expansion are extremely difficult. You could alwayus keep on playing after running out of conquest tokens. Witch each death and penalty from this point you'll go into negative conquest count, and in order to win the quest eventually, you'll have to finish with a positive number of conquest tokens(i.e. >0). Most quests are too difficult for the heroes the first time around, anyway. Just keep trying, and you'll get better.

As for the boulder thing, you could sacrifice the hero with the lowest conquest rating to try and retrieve that treasure. If a boulder kills him, the overlord would have one less boulder at his disposal. A fast runner would be good in this case Also, you can take cover by jumping into a pit, and let the boulder roll over you without being harmed.

Acebob said:

I wouldn't say that ALL the expansion maps are like this. The difficulty in the expansions is definitely ramped up from the base game, and boulders in particular are pretty nasty for the whole instant kill thing (even when they don't fall directly on someone, they can still roll around pretty quickly sometimes.) The heroes need to learn to tighten up their performance to stay ahead, for sure, but I wouldn't say it's a case of needing to die to every trap before you know it's there.

If this is putting you off from buying more expansions, then I would definitely recommend playing through all of these quests before you make any decisions about AoD or ToI. (Be aware that there's a misprint in one quest that has water blocking off a passage the heroes need to go though. The water is only supposed to be one space wide, not two.) AoD is largely the same as WoD in terms of quests being more difficult than the base game, although a larger percentage of the difficulty comes in the form of OL options. They can be cruel, for sure, but if your group doesn't like them it's easy enough for the OL to just not use them. ToI isn't especially difficult. The addition of Feat cards for the heroes tends to mean that expansion is viewed as favouring the hero players instead of the OL.

As far as reading the flavour text, you're right about the fact that it wouldn't have given you any particularly useful info before the boulder dropped (just a little foreshadowing.) However, I do notice that this quest is one of the few that gives the heroes more than 5 CT to start with. If the OL didn't read the initial flavour text box he might have missed that. You were supposed to start with 8 CT instead of 5. Granted that may not have helped you if a particularly expensive hero got killed by the boulder, but generally the tanks go up front, so the extra CT would account for at least one squishy mage death.

Edit: almost forgot. You should most certainly be playing with 4 heroes in the expansion maps. The base game maps are hard with fewer than 4, the expansion maps are mostly impossible without 4. Just in case you were playing this quest with 2 or 3. If you don't have enough players, just double up on heroes or have a community hero, but don't play with less than 4. You need the firepower of 4 heroes to keep moving at speed.

Acebob said:

I don't recall if that quest has any special rules regarding that rolling boulder, but by default a rolling boulder is destroyed if it hits a door or wall and has no effect on any tokens it passes over except for rubble.

Movement equal to the range on a roll of Red + Yellow is normal, though.

@Steve-O: Which quest has the misprint with the water blocking off a path? I never heard about this (yet I haven´t played all AoD and ToI quests so far)

Parathion said:

It was a WoD quest I meant, actually. Quest 8: Spiral of Death. In Area 1 there's a 2-space water tile completely blocking the path the heroes need to follow. If memory serves, the correction said the water should only be in the southern space, although mechanically I don't think it makes a huge difference, north or south.