I've got the Well of Darkness, Road to Legend and Tomb of Ice (and Altar of Despair probably next week, my local game store is good at keeping out of print games for months), what parts of the expansions should I put together into the main box and which parts should I keep separate? Any tips to make gaming easier?

Knuckles Eki said:

I'm a late Descent buyer and player and I made the mistake to wrongly put together some of the expansion stuff since the beginning. I used all Treasure Cards, Ability Cards and Shop Items included in expansions from the very first game. This doesn't help the group learn what items are inside the decks and what you should expect when you draw from them; more variety is necessary for experienced players, not for beginners. So I understand your question very well.

I suggest you don't use new Treasure and Ability Cards until you introduce a new expansion. This avoids confusion, which happens when you give the Heroes useless powers (such as improved Prolonged Actions) or effect tokens that are not used in the base game (e.g. Bleed). What I recommend is to include new Shop Items in the Shop deck. This gives the Heroes interesting and better setup options, especially for magic users.

As for OL cards, the new cards that are supposed to add to the deck are not very useful if you don't play the expansion quests. It isn't nice to spawn Dark Priests if there will be no other Priests on the map. But you can do it if you wish. The Treachery cards that are first introduced in Well of Darkness can be collected and put in a separate OL deck, organized by type (Event, Monster, Trap). Since you choose them at the beginning of the Quest to customize the OL deck, they can stay in the main box. However, I decided to put there only the Treachery cards that are usable with the base game only. Treachery that uses content from expansion stays in the appropriate expansion box.

To sum up, these are things I suggest keeping separate:

- New Monster Miniatures and Monster Reference Cards

- All Dungeon Tiles used in the expansion (incl. Traps & Special tiles such as the Bolt tile and the Dark Glyphs)

- New Overlord Cards related to expansions (including Treachery)

- New Relic cards and counters

- Feat Cards from Tomb of Ice (but you may choose to grant the Heroes those cards if you play the WoD extra-difficult quests)

These are the things I suggest put together in the main box:

- New Hero miniatures and cards (perhaps you'll want to exclude some overpowered Heroes as Kirga, which is legitimate in the huge quests from WoD and AoD, but absolutely unapplicable to the tiny ambients in ToI and even in the base game)

- All Dungeon Tiles that replicate or expand the existing tiles (i.e. the extra staircases)

- New Effect tokens (make a zip-lock bag with all effects, or sort them out better if you wish)

- New Potion tokens (make a zip-lock bag with all potions, or sort them out better if you wish; make new Potions available only if you use the appropriate expansion, in order to avoid problems with Treasure Caches giving potions)

- New Hero Abilities and Familiar Tokens (but I suggest you wait until you actually make the new Abilities available)

- New Treasure cards (but I suggest you wait until you actually make the new Treasures available)

- New Shop Items

- All expansion manuals to have ready reference for abilities and effects, in case they show up unexpected

As for Road To Legend or Sea of Blood, these two shall not mix up with the base game and other expansions. They have no component that is used outside the Advanced Campaign, except some new Dungeon Tiles and Props that you may need to make your own quests.

I might have forgot something, but I think this covers my sorting of Descent expansions so far. And it works nicely

I jam everything together.

Atleast on the Heroes's side I think it's better. I may cut the cursed treasures in AoD, since they are a bit more nuanced. And the "throw a skill back" rule makes it not a big deal if someone draws the prolonged action one. Actually, I've never seen anyone draw it. If the quest had no prolonged actions, I might let them toss it back for free. But I've always been a big fan of random, so the more variety in heroes, skills and treasure, the better.

On the OL side I would add the additional base cards to the deck (making the OL's deck fatter makes the game less unfair for the heroes, I think), but I would probably hold of on Treachery cards until the group has gotten a hang of playing the game.

So maybe you should listen to Warlock, but I'm a fan of big random games and think people learn to swim best by being tossed into the water.

Knuckles Eki said:

Everything can go together in the main box once you're ready to integrate a given expansion into the game. If you'd prefer to play a couple games of "just the base game" first, that's cool too. As long as you mix everything from a single expansion in at the same time, it shouldn't have a drastic impact on game play. (Please note: the jump in difficulty for expansion quests is fairly significant, but you can use all the bits without playing one of those quests. Some bits won't come up as often (or at all) but that's life.)

As for tips, just one: organize! I've always been a fan of Plano modular tackleboxes as a means of keeping all the various tokens organized. You could also use ziplock bags or whatever else though. Whatever helps you keep everything straight, but having all the various tokens in easy to find piles will make game set up and game play run MUCH more smoothly. Having a little fold out table to keep the bits on might also help for some of the larger quests.

Yeah, I use Plano boxes for the various tokens, terrain, potions, etc. If only there's one for the size of the monsters.

I've always wanted to buy Plano boxes, I got some generic box organizers here, but from pictures looks like Plano's are better

From your experience, would you recommend a specific model of Plano?

I can only order them online unfortunatelly so i cannot check them before buying, personally

Here's the one I use for everything except the campaign expansions: Flambeau Outdoors Front Load KwikDraw Tackle Box (got it on Amazon.) Holds EVERYTHING (+ I use cardboard card holders in the top section.) The large monsters fit in the bottom drawer...