Most of the games I have played are 3 players and we never have more than 4. I would guess that I have played 7 - 10 times and have played the Dark Pharoh and Dunwich Horror expansions. (I am currently playing Kingsport right now for the first time).

I feel that I am doing something wrong. We only increase the terror level when the outskirts fills up and when the occasional card tells us to.

I would think that the terror level should be in the 6 - 9 range every game which would add to the growing suspense.

Anyone have any ideas for a good system to increase the terror level, in a linear way? Their was a mention on boardgamegeeks about just starting at 6 and closing all stores if it hits 9 or something but that doesn't 'grow the terror'.

Perhaps something like everytime a gate opens roll a die and on a 5 or 6 increase the terror level by one.

No need, the expansions should do a good job of raising the terror level. That said, it may generally stay low, but once in a while it will fly out of control.

The expansion that lends itself to the most Terror increases is King in Yellow. A lot of cards cause terror increases, and there are a lot of gates opening on active spots, which will tend to fill the outskirts more quickly via monster surges. Dunwich does a good job because monsters moving into vortexes cause terror-ups.

Interesting: I've had the opposite experience: the terror level is the only real threat- there's no chance of a GOO awakening due to the doom track (in the base game) and little chance of it awakening due to too many gates open, but the terror level is something to be afraid of. I often lose due to it hitting 10 and there being too many monsters.

My games are all 1 or 2-player; I suspect it's less of a problem with more. But even then I can only assume you're spending a lot of time hunting down and killing monsters if the terror track is never a problem. This is something I never have time to do in 1/2 player games- the gates need sealing so the monsters get left as they are. Because I never have time to kill monsters, often one monster-surge equals +1 terror, and the mythos cards that add 2 monsters to a street area only speed the thing up.

AndrewClarke said:

Depends on how you play. It can certainly happen.

hmmm... depends on how you play might be the right answer:

Our general game style:

Ignore every possible thing except gaining clue tokens.

Whomever has 'The Toughest' character (we choose randomly to begin with) is given all the weapons. That character is our street sweeper and within a couple of turns is usually indestructable. He gives his money and other resources to the others.

Interestingly enough I see posts about how easy it is to defeat the Ancient Ones. We generally win by preventing the Ancient One from coming but if he does come we lose, any of them have killed us easily. Only our very first game did we defeat the Ancient One.

We are on turn 4 of our current game. basic set + Kingsport. Me and my wife are playing The Urchin, The Dreamer, and the Martial Artist all drawn randomly.

We drew the Green Flame Herald so placed an additional Cultist on the first open portal. Then I just randomly added another monster which turned out ot be Soggoth? A nightmarish, double moving spider looking thing.

Well first turn spider moves, martial artist kills it after taking 3 sanity and spending a clue token. On turn 3 the Dreamer returns to Arhkam chooses a gate location with a Moon Beast on it, casts an offensive spell, and kills it. We now have 1 cultist and a creature in the Sky after 4 turns with the Terror level at zero.

We are trying out the "Storm Knight" variant (boardgamegeeks) where the Ancient One doesn't get doom tokens from open gates normally. Supposibly it is easier to start the game but leads to a more climactic ending and there is never a point where the Ancient One cannot break into the world.

By the way I am in Seattle so if there are any boardgamers who want to play a game send me an email/PM! :-)

Hand of Osiris said:

No wonder you're not getting the GOO waking from too many gates, KH is absolute USELESS in that regard (apart from the really, really rare case where gate bursts might cause that on the AH board). DH adds 5 unstable locations, suddenly too many gates becomes a real possibility (darn it easy to miss 1-2 gates on the dunwich board ).

And the investigators (in KH) are just crazy-powerful, but that's another story ...

Hand of Osiris said:

Are you winning most of your games? How many players in your games? When you lose, what causes you to lose? There are several timing mechanisms in Arkham horror that bring the main board game to a close. Terror is just one of them. The other main ones are too many gates (a rule many players often miss) and, of course, the doom track filling up. There are several others such as running out of gate and monster markers.

As another poster pointed out, you appear to be dealing the the monsters pretty well. You can win the game without ever defeating a monster.

Even if the Ancient One comes out, it is not necessarily a loss.

Personally, I've only had the terror level raise to 10 one time in my memory and I've played over 200 games. But we keep score and every terror level raise is a ding on the score, so we try to watch it pretty closely, however. It's gotten high before but usually we end up in the same range as you, even with the King in Yellow.

If you really want to lose and in a myriad of ways, get the Black Goat of the woods and play the herald. That will give you all the suspense you need and more so. It may not raise the terror level as you would like, but soon you'll not be thinking of the terror level at all.

Hand of Osiris said: hmmm... depends on how you play might be the right answer:

Our general game style: Ignore every possible thing except gaining clue tokens.

Whomever has 'The Toughest' character (we choose randomly to begin with) is given all the weapons. That character is our street sweeper and within a couple of turns is usually indestructable. He gives his money and other resources to the others."

So which is true. Do you ignore everything but close or fight monsters?

Hand of Osiris said: "We are on turn 4 of our current game. basic set + Kingsport. Me and my wife are playing The Urchin, The Dreamer, and the Martial Artist all drawn randomly."

Mageith: I hope the Urchin didn't randomly get chosen as your street sweeper. She should never have to fight a monster! She is one of uber characters. The martial artist is good too.

The terror level isn't something that is always a problem, just if you let it get out of hand. If you really want it to go up you could always raise it by two instead of one each time it goes up but it's not really necesary. If there's only two of you playing why are you using three characters? Why not simply take two or even 3 each. This could change the game significantly for you.

Yeah, as has been said, the Terror level can sometimes rise through the roof, and sometimes will rarely go up. Depends on the game you are having. If you end up with a bunch of gate bursts in a row the Terror level can raise quite quickly, or playing Black Goat of the Woods with the Herald will help it climb too.

Dam said:

How do you know if it's useless? I thought you didn't own the expansion?

I'd have to say that in most of my games, the Terror level hasn't increased much. We generally spend a lot of time hunting down the monsters, though. We also have one investigator dedicated to each of the expansion towns (Dunwich and Kingsport) if we're using them, and the rest of the team cleaning up Arkham. One game, though, we just couldn't keep the streets clean of monsters. Luck of the draw caused too many gate bursts, and suddenly we were overwhelmed. Before we knew it, old Yig came out, but luckily we were able to banish him. This was also the only game where the Great Old One awakened, so we're going to start using some of the variant rules to make the games harder.

In my experience, the terror track either stays relatively low, 2-3 or it gets very high with 8-9. Usually when it gets out of hand, it is due to encounters or mythos cards that I can't directly control (like the one wear the family is found slaughtered raise the terror level 1).

The Terror Track is one of several ways to trigger the final battle. It stand to reason that not all of them will all be used that often but are there to make sure you balance your time against aspects of the game. If the terror track wasn't there, people would probably ignore monsters as best they could. If they aren't fighting monsters, they can spend more time on collecting clues and sealing gates. As it stands, if you do that, you are shortening your game play as the terror track will continue to count down. So if you are managing it well, that is good for you in that aspect but implies you are spending less time working on the gates, which should be the primary concern od any investigator.

Hunch: Less experienced players allow the terror track to go up by avoiding monsters. They avoid confrontation, not knowing that well... AH is really ALL about getting dirty. Very, very dirty, and take lots and lot of risks. Lots.

Theory: Less players = slower/lower terror track.

johnwatersfan said:

KH = 0 unstable locations, so it won't help curb the lack of possible spots where a gate CAN open. You're "stuck" with just the base-AH board places. DH gives you +5 unstables. DH and KH both have gate bursts, so they cancel each other in that respect, so to speak.

XV8Crisis said:

My experience has been just the opposite. Newer players spend too much time fighting monsters. It seems like the obvious thing to do and they are right there in front of you too. Then, oops, there's too many gates on the board and the Old One comes out!

In addition, the calculations involved in determining whether a monster is tough or not is fairly complicated and newer players can't intuitvely figure that out. So they're more apt to go fight a monster and use up their clue tokens doing so.

In addition, it depends on the investigators new players have. Now in my games, the players generally get a choice of two investigators. Their choices may influence my experience. Most often they choose either high magic or high fighting, rather than the more subtle investigators. Most of the folks I have taught choose fighters. Well, the fighters want to fight so they do which tends to keep the monster population down.

XV8Crisis said:

I assume you're basing this on the fact that the outskirts-threshold is higher and that fewer monsters spawn, but I don't think it's actually true.

With a lot of players it makes sense to have one or more players specifically go after monsters to keep the terror track down. But with a very small number of players this really isn't possible and you basically have to ignore/evade the monsters, because you need to spend all your time dealing with gates.

It might also matter what house rules are in play. Specifically, from the set proposed by Richard Launius, there are two that can directly affect the terror track rate: Rule #1 ("two monsters on first gate") and Rule #6 ("Monster guards sucked through closing gates"). I've used them both at times (separately and in conjunction) and definitely observed an effect on how fast the terror level went up.

mageith said:

I believe this is a case of tunnel vision. When you're new you tend to focus on one detail and you can swing either way. When you have played a bit more you realise that you need to do both at the same time. I have played with quite a lot of newbies but since I'm vocal about what we need to do (but not how to do it) we don't tend to have that problem. If they realise that someone needs to sweep then someone will do it.

Oh and my cadre of players don't seem to be that selfish, if someone needs a specific weapon or would be able to use it better he/she usually gets it if a meeting can be arranged. Same goes for blessings. We consider it rude to just take one for your self if a monster fighter could have better use for it.

Oh, and to add something on topic. Our terror level usually doens't rise that much. When it happens it's usually due to a mythos card or something the GOO did.

AndrewClarke said:

It also seems to happen more often in games against Shub-Niggurath. The increased toughness means that even monsters that are normally very easy to defeat become a risky proposition. But it's true that for most games terror level stays low, i.e. up to three. I don't consider that to be a problem, though. I like it that there are several directions into which a game can go.